Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources (Medieval Interventions: New Light on Traditional Thinking, 9) [1 ed.] 9781433193712, 9781433193729, 9781433193736, 143319371X

Citation preview

Queens, Regents, Mistresses

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS

REFLECTIONS ON EXTRACTING ELITE WOMEN’S STORIES FROM MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN FRENCH NARRATIVE SOURCES

TRACY ADAMS

This book is a series of case studies reflecting on narrative primary source representations of queens, regents, and royal mistresses in medieval and early modern France. Examining stories of famous women, including Isabeau of Bavaria, Valentina Visconti, Agnès Sorel, Diane de Poitiers, Eleanor of Austria, and even Anne Boleyn, who spent her formative years at the French court, author Tracy Adams takes unprovable or false anecdotes as a point of departure and follows them back to their primary sources. When readers open a work of history, they have the right to assume that what they find on the pages is “historically true,” in other words, that it accords with primary sources. And yet scholars studying women of the medieval and early modern periods know all too well how often unprovable or even false anecdotes, frequently scandalous or misogynistic, pass for true. Typically deriving from secondary sources that themselves rely on secondary sources, these anecdotes are passed along in a self-reflexive feedback loop. The central argument of Queens, Regents, Mistresses is that, taken on their own, primary sources cannot be used as straightforward vehicles of truth. Each of Adams’ case studies therefore lays out the process of engaging with these sources. Revised interpretations leave readers with new perspectives on these famous women, and also the bibliographical information necessary to turn to the primary sources for themselves.

Tracy Adams is Professor in European Language and Literatures at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has published widely on women in late medieval and early modern France.

www.peterlang.com

Cover image: ©iStock.com/duncan1890

Queens, Regents, Mistresses

Medieval Interventions Stephen G. Nichols Series Editor Vol. 9

Tracy Adams

Queens, Regents, Mistresses Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources

PETER LANG Lausanne • Berlin • Bruxelles • Chennai • New York • Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Adams, Tracy, author. Title: Queens, regents, mistresses : reflections on extracting elite women’s stories from medieval and early modern French narrative sources/ Tracy Adams. Description: New York ; Bern ; Berlin ; Brussels ; Oxford : Peter Lang, [2023] | Series: Medieval interventions, 2376-2683 ; vol. 9 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023018469 (print) | LCCN 2023018470 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433193712 (hardback) | ISBN 9781433193729 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433193736 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Women–France–History–Sources. | Queens–France–History–Sources. | France–Kings and rulers–Paramours–History–Sources. | France–History–15th century–Sources. | France–Social life and customs–15th century–Sources. | France–Civilization–1328-1600–Sources. Classification: LCC DC60 .A33 2023 (print) | LCC DC60 (ebook) | DDC 944/.0260922–dc23/eng/20230522 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/202​3018​469 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/202​3018​470 DOI 10.3726/b19168 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG ISSN 2376-2683 (print) ISBN 9781433193712 (hardback) ISBN 9781433193729 (ebook) ISBN 9781433193736 (epub) DOI 10.3726/b19168

© 2023 Tracy Adams Published by Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, USA [email protected] - www.peterl​a ng.com All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

Contents



1 2

Introduction: Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources

1

The Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles: History or Persecution Texts?

9

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan: Creating Political Authority

33



3

Misogynistic Throwaways: The Case of Isabeau of Bavaria

49



4

Caught in the Middle: Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft

67



5

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels

79



6

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A Star and a Footnote

93



7

Unpacking Brantôme’s Particularitez

111

vi | Contents



8 9

“Issuing from the Great Flame of This Joy”: Louise of Savoy, Marguerite of Navarre and Emotional Intimacy

129

Catfight or Political Rivalry? The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers

147



10

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen

167



11

“Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres”: Anne Boleyn’s Marriage Strategy?

187

Index

233

newgenprepdf

Abbreviations

CSPS Calendar of State Papers, Spain. 13 vols. Ed. Pascual de Gayangos. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1879–1954. CSPV Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice. 38 vols. Ed. Rawdon Brown. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1864–1947. L&P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII. 21 vols. Ed. J S Brewer. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1875–1910. SP State Papers, published under the authority of His Majesty’s Commission … King Henry the Eighth. 5 pts. in 12 vols. London: J. Murray, 1830–52.

Introduction: Extracting Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources

When the editors of this series asked me to write a collection of essays centered around a common theme, I jumped at the chance. Like the novel in literature, the argument-driven monograph is the gold standard in scholarly studies. A carefully structured monograph whose parts converge in a climactic thesis is, like the well-constructed novel, a thing of beauty. But, like a collection of short stories, a set of essays offers its own pleasures. Free from the tyranny of the thesis, essays let ideas accumulate and retain points that would have been pruned as irrelevant in a monograph. As Adorno put it, “In the essay, concepts do not build a continuum of operations, thought does not advance in a single direction, rather the aspects of the argument interweave as in a carpet. The fruitfulness of the thoughts depends on the density of this texture.”1 In this collection of essays, I have sought “density of texture,” that is, reiterations of, or variations on, an overarching argument that I would characterize as follows: when readers open a work of history, they have the right to assume that what they find on the pages is “historically true,” in other words, that it accords with primary sources.2 And yet, scholars studying women of the medieval and 1 2

Adorno, “The Essay as Form,” 160. This is a minimum; they have other legitimate expectations as well. Helpful recent reflections on the meaning of “historical truth” include those of Jay, “Historical Truth and the Truthfulness of

2 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

early modern periods know all too well how often unprovable or even false anecdotes, frequently scandalous or misogynistic, pass for true in such works. In the following essays, in which I reflect on representations of elite women in narrative primary sources—as opposed to documents like accounts, marriage agreements, or wills, which carry their own interpretive problems—I take this issue of unprovable or false anecdotes as a point of departure, adding that readers also have the right to assume that the secondary sources they find cited in a work of history have been vetted by the author. This means that the author has consulted and verified the primary sources on which the secondary sources rely, or, at least, provided the bibliographical information readers need to trace the secondary source footnotes back to the primary sources for themselves. Not that the relationship between primary sources and what really happened is self-evident. On the contrary. Primary sources require critical interpretation. Although nineteenth- and early twentieth century chartistes like Antoine Le Roux de Lincy, Auguste Vallet de Viriville, Alfred Coville, and Marcel Thibault produced indispensable studies minutely documented with primary sources, they tended to read their sources as straightforward transmitters of information. Chroniclers, however, greatly reduced the complexities of female activity; also, often associated with the Church and lacking direct access to the women whose stories they told, they frequently viewed their female characters unsympathetically, deploying anecdotes about them to make a moral point rather convey a disinterested truth. Earlier historians were generally not attentive to such gaps, and the effects of their readings have lingered. Scholars of course have been aware of such issues for decades and most exercise caution when dealing with ­nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century histories. But historians who are not specialists in women of the Middle Ages and early modern period, along with general audiences interested in women’s history, are often not familiar with the primary sources, with what they actually say, and how they have been interpreted. Another problem is that, compared to the sources for later periods, sources for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are meager, often leaving historians to rely on the testimony of one or two possibly biased or misinformed chroniclers for details. In addition, the primary sources, by focusing significantly more attention on men than women, create the impression that powerful, active women were anomalies, which has encouraged historians to treat them as exceptions. Although recent scholars have shown how intimately women of the period were Historians;” Zammito, “Ankersmit and Historical Representation;” and Gorman, “Historians and Their Duties.”

Introduction: Extracting Women’s Stories from Medieval | 3 involved in social and political life at every level, revisionist histories often seem to have little impact on subsequent studies. For example, a collection that aims to demonstrate how unexceptional politically active medieval women were opens by lamenting that attitudes toward such women have remained so static: Why, after three decades of historical advocacy, of producing and teaching excellent books and articles bringing to light of dozens of women whose political behavior fails to fit modern assumptions of medieval women’s experience, were we still hearing papers describing powerful women in positions of authority as exceptions to the norm. And not only a “norm” but a norm that presumes that a medieval elite woman was a cipher on the arm of her husband, whose only influence came through whispers in male ears and who, should widowhood [have] allowed her a small measure of influence, was merely a placeholder for her male children.3

Primary sources do not necessarily lead to historical truth, then. Using them to reconstruct the lives of elite women of medieval and early modern France is more an art than a science and requires a good deal of educated guesswork. But they are all we have. In each of the following essays, I reflect on how we use primary sources, seeking to surface the assumptions that guided representations of women and revising modern historical retellings of their stories where necessary. My readings of sources are guided by the following premises. First, I assume that most woman of the past, like most women today, were neither saints nor monsters, neither brilliant nor dolts, but imperfect people trying to do their job as effectively as possible. Although earlier historians qualified elite women as greedy, ambitious, flighty, divisive, or any number of unflattering adjectives, typically because they were citing primary sources, I refrain from such judgments because the elite often occupied a world distinct from that of contemporaries writing about them, a world ruled by different mandates. Because the judgments that made sense in one world did not necessarily pertain to another I try to make the documents speak without recourse to the moralizing vocabulary one often finds in the primary sources. Second, I do not assume that the inability to accomplish goals signals incompetence. Some of the women whose stories I discuss exercised power quite successfully: the Duchess of Étampes, Diane de Poitiers, Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy. But many women were confronted with obstacles that no one could have overcome: Philip IV’s Burgundian daughters-in-law,

3

Tanner, Gathagan, and Huneycutt, Medieval Elite Women, 1–2.

4 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Isabeau of Bavaria, Valentina Visconti, Eleanor of Austria, Anne Boleyn. I agree that women of the period were active in ways often not appreciated by earlier historians, but they were nonetheless hindered by structural barriers. In light of the political realities of the past few decades, historians today are more alert than their nineteenth-century counterparts to obstacles like intractable polarization, rigged judicial systems, and the lack of enforcement mechanisms that kept women from achieving goals. I emphasize these obstacles in the following essays. My point is not to apologize for failures to realize goals but to understand. In c­ hapter 1, “The Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles: History or Persecution Texts?” I examine chronicle accounts of the 1314 arrest and imprisonment for adultery of the Burgundian daughters-in-law of Philip IV of France and the horrifying execution of their supposed lovers. Until recently, the chronicle accounts have almost always been taken at face value. I argue for approaching the accounts as what René Girard has called “persecution texts,” that is, narrative accounts that, written from the perspective of the persecutor, mask collective violence. A critical examination of the Grandes Chroniques de France, “official” history of the realm, and the more “popular” Chronique métrique, shows that these texts obscure the violent victimization of the princesses and suggests that these women served as scapegoats for a community torn by strife. Chapter 2, “Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan: Creating Political Authority,” is the first of three case studies that I devote to this once-vilified queen. In this essay, I add detail to a rehabilitation that is already well underway. Regarded by historians following the French Revolution as a monster and, more recently, as a slightly dim and frivolous spendthrift, Isabeau can more accurately be understood, I argue, as a woman tasked by her intermittently insane husband with the impossible job of managing a feud between implacable and well-armed rivals who had no incentive to heed her. I argue that the ordinances authorizing, first, Isabeau’s mediation and, later, regency represent a work in progress and cannot be read as evidence of authority that could be translated into practice. The early historians who focused on the royal ordinances failed to take Isabeau’s lack of enforcement power into account. In “Misogynistic Throwaways: The Case of Isabeau of Bavaria,” c­ hapter 3, I consider the lingering presence of misogynistic tropes in recent scholarship where the woman in question is not the star of the study. Such tropes typically derive from secondary sources that themselves rely on secondary sources, in mutually reinforcing feedback loops reaching back to the nineteenth century. Focusing on a number of very recent subplots that recycle verifiably incorrect assumptions about Isabeau of Bavaria, the essay makes a plea for turning to the primary

Introduction: Extracting Women’s Stories from Medieval | 5 sources even when the woman in question plays a small role, or, at the very least, when the secondary sources consulted offer misogynistic tropes in place of documentation. The heart of the essay is a detailed examination of Froissart’s account of Isabeau’s entry into Paris and coronation, which has mistakenly been read as evidence that Isabeau never mastered the French language. In c­ hapter 4, “Caught in the Middle: Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft,” I turn my focus from Isabeau to her sister-in-law, Valentina Visconti, and primary source accounts of Valentina’s exile from the royal court under accusations of causing the king’s insanity through witchcraft. Valentina is an example of a woman undone by a set of obstacles no one could have overcome. Forced to serve as the scapegoat for the strife caused by the power struggles among mad King Charles VI’s male relatives, Valentina was originally relatively secure because her father, Giangaleazzo Visconti, was an important ally of the French. When the king’s favor turned to the queen’s branch of the Visconti family, Valentina was made to pay the price. Accusations of witchcraft intensified thanks to the new political orientation, and a woman who could have flourished under different circumstances was driven from court. “Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels,” ­chapter 5, argues that the queen’s unjustified reputation as debauched and avaricious has distorted her status as patron in fourteenth and early fifteenth-century Paris. Whereas the princes of the blood have been hailed by historians as patrons of the arts and political actors exchanging jewels and decorations in gift-giving rituals that created and solidified alliances, Isabeau’s commissioning of gold objects has been dismissed as self-indulgent extravagance. Jan Hirschbiegel’s study of étrennes, New Year’s gifts, at the Valois court, reveals Isabeau as one of a small party who exchanged valuable jewelry and elaborate figures as a way of exercising political influence. The queen’s supposed avarice requires a new look in this context. I propose that Isabeau be included along with the princes of the blood as a patron exercising authority through gift-giving. The sixth chapter, “Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A Star and a Footnote,” examines how differently these cousins, both favorites of Charles VII, have been incorporated into the tradition of the French mistress, even though contemporary chroniclers were not flattering to either. But today Agnès Sorel is a star, a fixture in popular culture who enjoys a widespread social media presence, her iconic image as the Melun Virgin adorning internet fan sites, instagram, pinterest, tumblr, and facebook. By comparison, Antoinette de Maignelais, her cousin and successor in the role, is little known, and, where she is known, her reputation as transactional and promiscuous has stuck. Contemporary primary

6 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

sources suggest that in terms of political clout Antoinette’s role more closely resembled those of the later great royal mistresses, like the Duchesses of Étampes and Valentinois and Mesdames de Montespan and Pompadour. Agnès, in contrast, became the ideal against which these women were measured and found too greedy and ambitious. In “Unpacking Brantôme’s Particularitez,” ­chapter 7, I examine some of the observations and anecdotes passed down through the generations by the memoirist of the late Valois and early Bourbon courts, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme. Brantôme’s accessibility as a narrator has encouraged readers over the centuries to take his gossip for unmediated glimpses of court life, even though many of his subjects lived over a century before his birth. This essay examines some figures whose modern reputations have been powerfully influenced by Brantôme. The purpose of the essay, however, is not to deny his historical value but to suggest ways of reinterpreting his anecdotes. Applying recent theories of female power to the anecdotes, we see that much of what Brantôme writes about women simply casts in negative terms qualities that can be “re-processed” through recent feminist models of power. Recast, some of the anecdotes begin to look more positive. Chapter 8, “ ‘Issuing from the great flame of this joy’: Louise of Savoy, Marguerite of Navarre and Emotional Intimacy,” seeks to extract information about the personal interaction between King François I’s mother and sister from a variety of sources. Numerous documents verify that contemporaries regarded Louise and Marguerite as strategic and formidable politicians. And yet, the women adopt fearful personae in their own writings. These personae are worthy of scrutiny, I suggest, representing distinct, deliberate, and emotionally necessary performative poses. In contrast with the forceful personae that gave mother and daughter the courage to advocate, their fearful personae gave them a means of sharing the anxieties that might otherwise have overwhelmed them. The relationship between Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of Étampes, mistress of François I, and Diane de Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois, mistress of François I’s son who would reign as Henri II, is the subject of ­chapter 9, “Catfight or Political Rivalry? The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers.” The two women have often been characterized as jealous vixens and blamed for factionalism at the court of Francois I. Even recent historians continue to construct the relationship as motivated by personal jealousy. And yet, it is preposterous to attribute conflicts arising from major political and religious rifts to female envy. After showing how the jealous vixen trope developed, I turn to contemporary accounts to suggest that far from creating the factionalism, Anne and Diane’s

Introduction: Extracting Women’s Stories from Medieval | 7 relationship was a function of the factions into which they were drawn by virtue of their attachment to the king and the dauphin, and, in Anne’s case, Marguerite of Navarre. Chapter 10, “Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen,” argues that Eleanor’s career represents the epitome of the French version of queenship, despite the common perception that her reign was of little interest. Tasked with guaranteeing peace between her brother Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and her husband François I of France, Eleanor undoubtedly had a thankless and impossible job. Reconciling implacable enemies proved impossible, and, as proxy for the emperor, she was sidelined by the Duchess of Étampes, the French king’s longterm French mistress. And yet, the primary sources treat Eleanor like other Valois queens, showing her involved in mediation. Still, the primary sources also suggest that, beginning with her reign, the French queen was strongly identified with foreignness while the royal mistress, who was always French, became the king’s most trusted advisor. The subject of the final essay is Anne Boleyn, a queen who was not French, although she appeared to be, at least according to some of her contemporaries. “ ‘Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres’: Anne Boleyn’s Marriage Strategy?” reexamines the tenacious image of Anne rebuffing the king’s efforts to make her his “official mistress,” because she wanted to be his queen. The essay focuses on the word “mistress” in several of the seventeen love letters the king addressed to Anne. The problem is that this word, or “mestres,” as Henry VIII renders it, meant a beloved woman one intended to marry in sixteenth-century English and French, not a long-term extra-conjugal partner as it does today. This famous courtship therefore requires revision. I offer these reflections on reading traces of elite women in primary sources in the spirit of collaboration common among women’s historians. There is nothing exceptional about reinterpretations of the long-standing readings that I offer here: uncovering and recasting deeply ingrained inaccuracies is an integral aspect of the historian’s job in general, as well as one of the most interesting. But beyond the inherent interest of such stories, making a point of the processes by which we assess sources is useful. Transparency is the key, because, as Martin Jay writes, “the question of history’s relationship to truth, always a challenge to answer, seems especially fraught in this era of ‘fake news,’ ‘alternative facts,’ and the erosion of established media gatekeepers.”4 Tracing common narratives to their sources, evaluating the sources, making a good faith attempt to critically 4

Jay, “Historical Truth and the Truthfulness of Historians,” 240.

8 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

engage with them from a perspective that recognizes our own inescapable presentism, and, above all, leaving readers with the information necessary to go to the sources themselves when they wish to test our readings, cannot guarantee that our interpretations of sources will always be correct. But, by thematizing the process, we show readers how we arrived at our conclusions. I was once accused by a specialist of a later period of simply switching one interpretative framework for another: aren’t all interpretations equally valid, she asked? No, as a matter of fact they are not. The following reflections represent an attempt to prove the points that although we can never fully recover the past some interpretations of it are more accurate than others and that the existence of multiple truths does not mean that everything is historically true. Open discussion about we handle sources is more important today than ever, and it is something that we owe our readers and students.

1

The Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles: History or Persecution Texts?

On Tuesday of Easter Week in 1314, King Philip IV the Fair received word from an unknown source that two of his three daughters-in-law had been carrying on love affairs with two brother knights. The third daughter-in-law, although not accused of adultery, was alleged to have been an accomplice.1 The reaction of the king, installed at that moment at the Cistercian convent of Maubuisson in Pontoise, was brutal. The presumed lovers, Philip and Gautier of Aunay, were skinned and castrated by order of the king on Friday of that same Easter week; immediately afterwards they were dragged to a gallows in Pontoise newly erected for them, hanged and quartered. Marguerite, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, and Blanche, daughter of the Count of Burgundy, were transported to the Chateau Gaillard in Normandy and left to die. Jeanne, sister of Blanche, was imprisoned in the Chateau of Dourdan, but she was exonerated after the king’s death. The culpability of the actors in the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle, as the incident is popularly known,2 has, until recently, almost always been taken for granted. 1 2

Grandes Chroniques, 8: 297–98. For an explanation of why it is called the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle, see Krappe, “The Legend of Buridan.” Audéon’s recent monograph on the incident refers to it as the Affaire des brus, the “affair of the daughters-in-law,” a more accurate description.

10 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

After all, many assume, the king would not have moved so violently against his own family unless their guilt had been proven beyond dispute. And, as historians point out, some chronicles claim that the brothers of Aunay confessed to their crimes, and a few sources describe Marguerite’s tearful confession, even if Blanche never admitted guilt and Jeanne was exonerated.3 And yet, the chronicle narratives of the incident demand reflection, despite their seeming transparency. Psychologists show that people not infrequently confess to crimes that they did not commit,4 and, in addition, historians, like everyone else, are innately biased in favor of witnesses. This is how Julien Théry explains the widespread belief that the Templars must have been guilty of at least some of the less absurd crimes with which they were charged: a witness “always inspires spontaneous agreement in the listener, at least initially, because ‘belief is the ordinary state of a man’s mind’ and ‘to produce disbelief requires some particular assignable consideration….’ ”5 We tend, in other words, to assume that people do not just make things up. In addition to these human factors, the crime is surely too symmetrical to be true: three Burgundian princesses married to the king’s three sons, involved with two brother knights of Aunay in a scandal that threatened to extinguish the Capetian line in one blow? Finally, the long tradition of queens and princesses falsely charged with adultery cautions against accepting any such accusation at face value. In this essay, I revisit the texts reporting the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle. Although I have not changed the basic position that I laid out in two earlier essays, thanks to E.A.R. Brown’s most recent articles and Gaëlle Audéon’s monograph on the incident, I am able to add significant nuance to my original argument. In what follows I focus more closely on the primary sources bearing the story of the princesses than I have in previous essays. True, the question of guilt must remain open. We are often not sure whether those convicted of crimes in our own day actually committed them; how can we pronounce with any certainty on a crime that occurred eight hundred years ago? Still, I argue in what

3

4

5

The brothers confess in the Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, 1: 405, and the Chronique métrique, 203, line 5932. Marguerite demonstrates remorse in the Chronique métrique, 204, lines 5977–99, and also in Jean of Paris or St. Victor’s Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, 658. According to this same source, Blanche maintained her innocence. The Chronique métrique claims that Blanche did not suffer her fate as patiently as Marguerite, 202, lines 5999–6003. Not all nineteenth-century historians wholeheartedly believed the story. The popular history of France edited by Lavisse, for example, expresses doubt. See the account in Histoire de France 3.2: 212–16. Among the massive scholarship on false confessions, see the discussion of Kassin, “The Social Psychology of False Confessions.” Thèry, “A Heresy of State,” 126.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 11 follows that representations of the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in two key chronicles, the Grandes chroniques de France and the Chronique métrique look too much like what René Girard has called scapegoat or persecution texts to be accepted uncritically as factual.6 If I am right, Philip IV, feeling his moral authority slip in the last few years of his life and eager to recuperate his rectitude, seized the opportunity to strike out against his daughters-in-law when someone suggested to him that they had dishonored his lineage. Chroniclers, believing in the guilt of the young women, dutifully repeated the king’s version of the incident, creating persecution texts.

Persecution texts An “oral or written testament that mentions an act of violence that is directly or indirectly collective” invites examination as a possible persecution text.7 But cen­ tral to the definition of a persecution text is that its author or authors think that they are relating true stories of genuine crimes met with righteous vengeance. In other words, the authors are deluded, but they are not liars, because they believe that the victims are guilty.8 As Girard explains, scapegoating is necessarily unconsciously motivated.9 Girard further notes that persecution typically arises in communities where members sense “an extreme loss of social order evidenced by the disappearance of the rules and ‘differences’ that define cultural divisions.”10 Rather than search for the actual cause of the distressing situation, however, the community targets a scapegoat to blame, a marginal person who straddles insider and outsider status, who is both included and excluded from the community in some sense. Moreover, the scapegoat is accused of “a particular category of crimes.”11 These may be “violent crimes which choose as object those people whom it is most criminal to attack: a king, a father, the symbol of supreme authority, and in biblical and modern societies the weakest and most defenseless, especially young children.”12 Or, alternatively, and most pertinent for this essay, the crimes may

6 See Newell, Desire in René Girard, 94. 7 Girard, The Scapegoat, 24. 8 Newell, Desire in René Girard, 94. 9 Girard, “Generative Scapegoating,” 74. 10 Girard, The Scapegoat, 12. 11 Girard, The Scapegoat, 14. 12 Girard, The Scapegoat, 14–15.

12 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

be sexual, most often those which “transgress the taboos that are considered the strictest in the society in question.”13 Such crimes, writes Girard, level social distinctions; they “attack the very foundation of cultural order, the family and the hierarchical differences without which there would be no social order.” To restore distinction, that is, to restore order, persecutors eject the scapegoat from their midst. As Girard explains, “the import of the operation is to lay the responsibility for the crisis on the victims and to exert an influence on it by destroying these victims or at least by banishing them from the community they ‘pollute.’ ”14 To consider the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle from this perspective, I begin by noting that the final years of Philip IV’s reign were fraught with political turmoil resulting from the king’s persistent consolidation of power at the expense of the papacy and the grands seigneurs of the realm, along with anger at taxes that the king collected to finance his operations.15 Philip IV had been skillful in expand­ ing the kingdom, using reversion clauses in certain acts to create apanages and strategically marrying his three sons.16 But he was often hampered in his attempts to manage gains by networks that formed and functioned quite independently of any of the grands seigneurs who supported him.17 Despite the cooperation and the support of Otto IV Count of Burgundy and, after Otto’s death, his wife Mahaut of Artois, much of the nobility of the Franche-Comté rejected Philip IV’s attempts to establish his sovereignty, and, in Flanders, during the last years of his reign the king was unable to gather support among Flemish cities, which were constantly at war with each other and their rulers.18 But these problems were only preludes to the real crisis of the final year of his reign, when the king was blindsided by a rebellion of the grands seigneurs. This rebellion menaced the hierarchy that made the king the undisputed head of his kingdom. As for scapegoating, scholarship shows royal women to have been particularly susceptible to the practice. Medieval and early modern queens and princesses occupied a complicated in-between position: they belonged to the royal

13 Girard, The Scapegoat, 15. 14 Girard, The Scapegoat, 24. 15 For the troubled period extending from July, 1313, until April, 1314, when the princesses were arrested, see Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 633–45. 16 See Wood, The French Apanages, 37–66. 17 See Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 417–19; Brown, “Reform and Resistance,” 113–16; Funck-­ Brentano, “Philippe le Bel,” 37; Petit, Histoire des ducs, 7: 23–31. 18 Boone’s article, “Urban Space and Political Space,” shows how complicated alliances among the var­ ious levels of society in Flemish cities was, which explains why Philip’s efforts to control them would have been so futile.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 13 family but not exactly;19 “as highly visible and powerful ‘foreigners,’ ” János M. Bak writes, they were “logical choices for the role of scapegoat.”20 Or, as Louise Fradenberg has described it: “When, on the basis of their foreignness, their femaleness, the in-betweenness of their regencies, or the ambiguous nature of their sovereignty, queens are constructed as what…we might call ‘liminal’ figures—marginal to official institutions and practices of authority, though in various ways embedded within them, or made ‘symbolic’ of them—the result is their particularly intense association with the concepts both of division and of unity.”21 Incarnating a peace agreement, queens or princesses also embodied “the forces that might tear that unity to pieces.”22 Marguerite, Jeanne, and Blanche were therefore extremely vulnerable. As princesses, they resided both inside and outside of the royal aura of their husbands, as daughters-in-law they were both members of and outsiders to the royal family, and, as Burgundians, they were part of and yet separate from the French kingdom. As incarnations of French alliances with the duchy and county of Burgundy, they became easy scapegoats. As we will see, the family of Jeanne and Blanche came to their aid but succeeded only in having Jeanne restored. Marguerite’s family could not offer timely defense, because the family patriarch, Marguerite’s brother Hugh V Duke of Burgundy, was dying at the time of his sister’s arrest.23 By the time Eudes, the next in line, assumed the office at his brother’s death in early May 1315, it was too late; Marguerite was already dead. When the claim to the throne of Marguerite’s daughter, Jeanne, was denied in 1316, Eudes did in fact lead the Burgundians against the new king Philip V but eventually settled with him.24

The chronicle sources: Persecution texts? Before approaching the Grandes chroniques and the Chronique métrique as persecution texts, it will be useful first to lay out all of the information about the affair

19

Girard, of course, is making a claim about the very beginnings of civilization. His theory, however, is used in a variety of more restricted ways. 20 Bak, “Queens as scapegoats in Medieval Hungary,” 228. 21 Fradenburg, “Introduction: Rethinking Queenship,” 1–3. 22 Fradenburg, “Introduction: Rethinking Queenship,” 5. 23 On Hugh of Burgundy see Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne; on Hugh’s incapacitating illness see Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, 7: 31–32. 24 Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, 7: 42–59. See also Le Hugeur, L’Histoire de Philippe le Long, 1: 92–105, and Viollet, “Comment les femmes ont été exclues,” 141–43.

14 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

as it is presented in other roughly contemporary chronicles. In fact, although all these examples can be considered persecution texts according to Girard’s definition, they are usually very brief and lacking in detail. Still, some offer important bits of information. Three of the early texts containing the story offer very similar accounts: the continuation of the Chronique latine of Guillaume of Nangis (d. 1300), monk at St. Denis, the continuation of Guillaume of Nangis’s brief Chronique abrégée des rois de France,25 and the continuation of the chronicle of Domincan friar Girard of Frachet (d. 1271), the Chronicon Girardi de Fracheto et anonyma ejusdem operis continuatio.26 They explain that Marguerite, young Queen of Navarre, and Blanche, wife of Charles, the King of Navarre’s younger brother, were imprisoned for committing adultery with two brother knights, Philip and Gautier of Aunay. The two knights, who confessed their guilt, were considered more to blame than the younger and more susceptible women. On Friday of Easter week the knights were skinned, castrated, and dragged to a gallows in Pontoise, hanged there and quartered. The doorkeeper of the queen, complicit in the crime, was hanged beside the men. Jeanne, Blanche’s sister, was initially assumed to have been complicit, but within the year she was cleared in a session of the Parlement of Paris at which the counts of Valois and Évreux were present.27 Along with a sketch of the scandal, the continuation of Guillaume of Nangis’s Chronique latine mentions that a certain mendicant friar accused of being an accomplice and aware of the outrage escaped from authorities. The friar, it was said, worked spells that incited men (including, one assumes, given the context, the brothers Aunay), to illict acts. The continuation also vaguely describes a pandemonium that erupted after the arrests. Many were questioned under torture and many were reported to have died in the general chaos.28 Girard of Frachet’s

25

Guillaume originally composed the chronicle in Latin but later translated it into French. It was later continued until 1316. This continuation exists today only in BNF fr 10132. On the Chronique abrégée, see Guyot-Bachy and Moeglin, “Comment ont été continuées les Grandes Chroniques de France,” 387. For a partial edition see Guillaume of Nangis, “Chronique abrégée de Guillaume de Nangis,” 647–653. On the chronicle’s continuation, see Brown, “Philip the Fair of France,” 73, especially n. 12. 26 Guillaume of Nangis, Chronique latine, 1: 404–6; Girard of Frachet, “Chronicon Girardi de Fracheto,” 40–41. 27 Guillaume of Nangis, Chronique latine, 1: 406. Brown notes that the date can be corroborated with reference to a document cited by Godefroy-Ménilglaise, Mahaut comtesse d’Artois, in his pièces justificatives, 206. Jeanne’s husband, son of Philip IV and future King Philip V, affirms that she returned around Christmas: “she had come to us on the same or the next day that she had been liberated, and she had been liberated around Christmas, on the feast called the feast of Saint John [27 December].” All translations in this and the following chapters are mine except where noted. 28 Guillaume of Nangis, Chronique latine, 1: 406.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 15 continuation reports that the brothers were strung up with “many nobles and non-nobles.”29 Both of these texts report the death of Marguerite and claim that Blanche of Burgundy became pregnant during her incarceration, either by her custodian or her own husband.30 In addition to these three versions of the episode, the chronicle of Jean of Paris or St. Victor, known as Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, auctore Johanne Parisiensi, Sancti Victoris Parisiensis canonico regulari, repeats the same information but adds that Marguerite bewailed her sin while Blanche refused to recognize hers; this version also reveals that just before dying, Marguerite, who expressed maximum devotion, had a letter passed along to her former husband, the new King Louis X. The letter’s contents were secret, but they damaged the standing of Philip IV’s unpopular favorite, Enguerrand de Marigny. As we will see, Jean drew on the Chronique métrique for the story of this letter.31 Bernard Gui’s E floribus chronicorum seu catalogo Romanorum pontificum, necnon e chronico regum Francorum notes only the date of Marguerite’s death, adding that the young woman had been imprisoned because of adultery but no further detail. Although Bernard follows this information with the story of Marigny’s fall, he draws no connection between Marguerite and this event.32 Nor does the anony­ mous chronicle of the kings of France, Ex anonymo regum Franciae chronico, circa annum M.CCC.XLII scripto, discuss the scandal, mentioning only that the former queen had died, that she had been imprisoned for adultery, and that she left only a daughter.33 Extracts from the Anciennes Chroniques de Flandre do not mention the adultery at all, announcing only that when Louis X returned from his coronation in Rheims, madame his wife, who had been imprisoned in the Château Gaillard, had died, leaving a very beautiful daughter named Jeanne.34 The chron­ icle of the monastery of St. Catherine of Rouen, E Chronicle Sanctae Catharinae de Monte Rotomagi, offers the barest outlines of the event and, a few paragraphs later, notes the passing of Marguerite, adding that she left a daughter.35

29 Girard of Frachet, Chronicon Girardi de Fracheto, 41. 30 Guillaume of Nangis, Chronique latine, 1: 419; Girard of Frachet, Chronicon Girardi de Fracheto, 43. 31 Jean of Paris, Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, 658–59; 660–61. 32 Gui, E floribus chronicorum, 724. 33 Ex anonymo regum Franciae chronico, 348. 34 Anciennes Chroniques de Flandre, 401. 35 E Chronicle Sanctae Catharinae de Monte Rotomagi, 348.

16 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The perspective of the Grandes chroniques A significantly more detailed version is offered by the Grandes chroniques de France, an anonymous collection of vernacular translations of Latin histories of the reigns of the kings of France, existing today in roughly 130 manuscripts. The chronicle originated as the Roman des roys, written at the monastery of St. Denis by the monk, Primat, and presented to Philip III in 1274.36 Continuators of the Roman des roys drew on a number of different sources for information to update the work: Guillaume of Nangis’s Chronicon with its Latin continuations along with the still unedited vernacular continuation of Guillaume’s Chronique française abrégée des rois de France. E. A. R. Brown has signaled the importance of the latter, which was long overlooked, including by myself, for the story of the Burgundian princesses.37 Continuators also drew on vernacular translations of lives of Louis IX and Philip III originally composed in Latin by Guillaume; the Latin chronicle of Girard of Frachet with its continuations; and the anonymous Chronique de Flandre. Although the Grandes chroniques has often been considered a “royalist” history, this characterization has been much nuanced in the recent scholarship.38 The section of the Grandes chroniques devoted to Philip the Fair is packed with tales of betrayal and intrigue.39 Some of these are verifiably true, others are fantastical, but, in their entirety, they give the impression of a tenure plagued by conspiracies: the Count of Acerra commits sodomy and conspires against King Charles of Sicily, for which he is impaled on a burning pole (153–54); a group of Jews persuade a nurse to give them a two-year-old child, whom they crucify and eat (192); Bernard Saissset, Bishop of Pamiers, tries to arouse discontent against the king and is thrown in prison (195–96); conflicts between the king and Boniface VIII and revolts in Flanders arise; Bernard Délicieux (although not named) instigates an uprising in the Languedoc against the Inquisition during the king’s visit (226–29); the false prophet Dulcinus and his complices are executed for attempting to overthrow society by preaching, among other things,

36 37 38 39

The most important works on the history of the Grandes Chroniques are Guyot-Bachy and Moeglin, “Comment ont été continuées les Grandes Chroniques de France;” Hedeman, The Royal Image;” Guenée, “Les Grandes chroniques de France;” and Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis. This continuation remains in one manuscript, BNF fr. 10132. The episode is reported on fol. 394r. See Brown, “Philip the Fair of France,” 73, especially n. 12. See, most recently, Brix, “The Making of the Grandes Chroniques de France.” Citations of the Grandes chroniques throughout refer to the page numbers in volume 8 of the ­10-volume edition of Jules Viard.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 17 that women cannot refuse sexual relations without sinning (254–55); Guichard, Bishop of Troyes, is thrown in prison for conspiring to cheat Philip’s queen Jeanne and then killing her through sorcery or poison (263–64); the menu peuple of Paris, outraged when their rents rise threefold because of Philip’s monetary policy, plot against the king, descending on him and forcing him to take refuge in the Temple (250–52); the Templars, who do mysterious things in a dark chamber, conspire with the Sultan of Babylon and sell Christians to him, take money from the King’s treasury to give to those who want to harm him, commit heresy, spit on the cross, worship a cat, know each other carnally, are arrested and 59 of them burned at the stake (272–76); Marguerite Porete is burned at the stake for having transgressed holy scripture (273); a Jew spits on images of Our Lady and is burned (278); the Lyonnais rebel against the king (278); Flanders rebels (283–84); Guichard is found innocent of procuring the queen’s death with the revelation of the true murderer (293–94); the grand masters of the Temple are burnt at the stake (295); Clement V dies, but a faction of cardinals conspires to prevent election of a new pope (295–96); a tax is imposed at the advice of bad counselors and revoked by the king (296–97); the princesses and their knights are prosecuted for adultery (297–98); the barons’ consent to an(other) exceptional tax for the war, masterminded by royal favorite Marigny (299–301); the French withdraw from Flanders without actually engaging in combat, bringing shame upon the kingdom (301–2); Philip IV dies (302–4). But, contrary to what one would expect, the Grandes chroniques does not bring the section on Philip IV’s reign to a close with the king’s death. Before Philip IV’s reign ends, the chronicler recounts the prosecution and execution of Marigny, whom the new king Louis X would eventually hold responsible for evils committed during Philip’s reign (304–316), and the death of Marguerite of Burgundy, Philip’s eldest daughter-in-law (316–17). In certain manuscripts of the Grandes chroniques, a few additional events ensue: the death of Marguerite’s brother, Hugh Duke of Burgundy, the excuses of Robert Count of Flanders, a couple of burnings, a shortage of wine.40 All texts, those that end with Marguerite’s death as well as those adding further information, conclude with “here ends the history of the king Philip the Fair; here afterward begins the chapters about his

40

For examples of manuscripts that close just after the death of Marguerite, see BNF français 2608, 2600, and 10132; examples of manuscripts that add a few additional events after Marguerite’s death include BNF français 2597 and 20350.

18 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

son king of France and Navarre,” even though Louis X had been reigning for at least six months before the deaths of Marguerite and her brother.41 Why does the reign of Philip IV not end with that king’s death in the Grandes chroniques? Certainly it is partly because the author was following the narrative laid out in the continuation of Guillaume of Nangis’s Chronique abrégée des rois de France, which, as noted above, exists today in a single manuscript, français 10132 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France; but why then does the Chronique abrégée adopt this ordering? The story of the Burgundian princesses appears in some mysterious way to require closure before Philip’s reign can end. Approaching this section of the chronicle as a persecution text provides an answer, I believe. From this perspective, the princesses episode deflects from or substitutes for a different crisis that is omitted from both français 10132 and the Grandes chroniques, a crisis still in swing when Philip IV died: a rebellion of the barons. The king had failed to refund taxes collected to finance a war with Flanders, which, scheduled for September 1314, was avoided by a truce, and the barons directly under royal rule as well as many from adjacent areas formed leagues and marched against the king.42 Filling in for the baronial revolt, the princesses episode substituted a manageable betrayal for an unmanageable one. The princesses episode in the Grandes chroniques is surrounded by entries on taxes. The entry just before the princesses episode is a fiction, a tax supposedly imposed for the “wars that had been waged in Flanders” (296) in what would have been April 1314, judging by the entry’s placement between the death of Jacques de Molay in March 1314 and the princesses’ prosecution in late April 1314.43 This exaction, according to the Grandes chroniques, was the fault of Marigny, and it incited protest. The king, who had been unaware of what was happening, quickly revoked the tax. This did not happen in the real world; there is no other record of such a tax and its speedy revocation at that time. Immediately after the princesses episode the Grandes chroniques correctly reports that on 1 August the king summoned an assembly to create support for

41 42 43

See BNF français 10132, fol. 494r. Louis X was crowned only in August 1315. See his itinerary, which shows him in Rheims 3–5 August, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 21: 465. Hallam and West, Capetian France, 404. On the episode see also Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 418–20. Did the author confuse this tax with one that Philip had imposed in 1313, the year prior? The king had been ready to send troops into Flanders but held off when hostilities ended with the Treaty of Arras in July of that year. He then sent the troops home, revoked the tax and returned some of the money it had raised. However, this seems an unlikely explanation because the Grandes Chroniques also describes the Treaty of Arras (290) which had resolved the conflict, although it does not report the exaction or revocation of the tax.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 19 continuing the war against Flanders (299–301). At this assembly, Philip orders his subjects to appear in Arras in September, ready for battle. The chronicle, corroborated by other sources, reports that many of the king’s men pledged their support and that Marigny imposed a burdensome tax to support the war, arousing the hatred of the menu peuple (301). Still worse, the tax revenues raised to finance it remained with the king even after a truce prevented war (302). Omitted from the chronicle are this failure to refund, the anger that it incited, and the subsequent rebellion that spread throughout the kingdom; nor does the chronicle note that on his deathbed, in late November, 1314, the king finally revoked the tax.44 The betrayal of the barons was different in nature from the many acts of treason and conspiracy recounted in the chronicle, a showdown that revealed the king to have failed in his most fundamental duties and that broke the bonds that held the kingdom together. The chronicler, although generally approving of Philip, seems to have been uneasy about the king’s taxes, and he instinctively cuts the catastrophic response of the barons to them out of the reign. In the literary world of this chronicle, the betrayal of the young women, carried out within the bosom of the royal family, functions as a proxy for the betrayal of the barons. In fact, Philip IV’s reign concludes with two tales of scapegoating. In addition to the princesses, the king’s unpopular counselor Marigny is blamed for all of Philip IV’s fiscal wrongs and executed. The difference, however, is that the scapegoating and murder of the unpopular favorite is a well-known trope. The story of the princesses is more subtle. And yet, the Grandes chroniques clearly positions it as key to the king’s final year, by ending of the reign only after the death of Marguerite. The final line of the princess entry had revealed the unifying power of the persecution, the chronicler declaring that the “unfortunate case greatly angered and troubled the barons and the king of France and his sons” (298). Marguerite’s death brings to a final resolution both that episode and Philp IV’s reign. Louis X is free to remarry, which he does in the first lines of the narrative of his own reign. The page is turned, the princesses vanish, having served their purpose.

44

See Brown, “Royal Salvation,” “Taxation and Morality,” 19–120; “Cessante causa,” 577–79.

20 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The Chronique métrique The Chronique métrique differs dramatically in form—rhymed couplets—and tone from the other chronicles I have considered so far. It is nonetheless an important persecution text, I suggest in what follows. Covering the years 1300–1316, the chronicle was assembled by royal chancery clerks who were not at all reticent in their critique of courtly corruption.45 It exists in a single sumptuous manuscript, français 146 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, renowned for its luxury version of the Roman de Fauvel, a satire on courtly corruption featuring a vain and fatuous fallow-colored horse, whom Dame Fortune unreasonably puts in power. A group of political poems follows the satire, and Chronique métrique brings up the rear. As scholars have demonstrated, the manuscript’s “different parts resonate with one another, reinforcing and developing the meanings of each portion….”46 The assimilation to Reynard the Fox of Fauvel, whom the text shows making fools of his followers, seems to target Philip IV’s credulity regarding Marigny. The songs scattered throughout the narrative pick up on various themes presented in the text, and, in this context, the Chronique métrique functions as a historical anchor, pinning the Fauvel satire to Philip IV’s reign. Different from the Grandes chroniques, this chronicle does not promote the reputation of Philip the Fair but paints him as the tool of his counselors and chides him for his gullibility.47 Although the Chronique métrique appears only in this manuscript, Jean Dunbabin proposes that the chronicle also had a life independent of the Fauvel manuscript, circulating as the “equivalent of a popular news-sheet, combining information with comment designed to mould opinion.”48 Its rhymed lines sug­ gest that it was aimed at a wider audience than the sophisticated one envisioned for the Grandes Chroniques, and the fact that the Chronique métrique was composed contemporaneously with the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle makes it likely that the entries on the princesses corresponded to actual discussion, both mirroring and shaping reception of the event.

45 46 47

48

Brown, “Rex ioians,” 54. Brown, “Rex ioians,” 53. The manuscript is not fully condemnatory of the king but, rather, equivocal. Regarding the Templars, for example, the Roman de Fauvel congratulates the king, nephew of St. Louis, on annihilating the Templars, but, at the same time, includes kings in general in tirades against corrupt society. Gervais du Bus, Roman de Fauvel, 40, line 1005; for criticisms of kings see 42, line 1071; 44, line 1131. Dunbabin, “The Metrical Chronicle,” 238.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 21 The chronicle describes a world in moral free fall: beginning with Pope Boniface VIII’s waging war against Colonna, the church has lost its way, the clergy indistinguishable from the laity. The result is complete disorder: “the beasts are left without a shepherd,” the members have no head. Philip IV provides little guidance, behaving like a fool, most explicitly regarding the war with Flanders and the Templars. With reference to the war with the Flemish, the chronicle complains that Philip is “sanz guile” for failing to notice that the region’s cities were full of traitors. “They are in towns and in cities;/ in your castles and in your citadels/ are traitors—it’s the truth….” (121, lines 1504–6).49 The chronicle further asserts that the king’ people do not respect him, but think of him as an elephant, whose force is not feared one bit. He is a dupe, a pucèle, a young girl, because he believes everything that his sergeants put in his ear (122, lines 1573– 79). Philip IV’s persecution of the Templars also plays a role in the narrative. The chronicler pays lip service to their evil ways, writing that they well merited their fate if what was said of them was true (157, lines 3475–77). But the chronicler raises a doubt, writing about the many people who claimed the Templars to be guilty that he does not know if they are lying (157, line 3478). Moreover, the description that the chronicler offers of the execution of Jacques de Molay and his two companions depicts them as nothing less than martyrs calmly accepting death (199, lines 5709–5776). De Molay proclaims that God will avenge their deaths (199, line 5728). The contrast between the Grand Master and the silly king could not be greater. As for the story of the princesses and their knights, the chronicler believes that the accused were guilty. And yet, having been informed of the king’s naïveté early on, the reader will necessarily doubt the veracity of this story, too, especially when the chronicler observes that many could not imagine how the affair between the Burgundian princesses and the brothers Aunay had been arranged. I do not know by what means or how the two agreed between themselves, but people talked about it in many ways…. (202–203, lines 5910–13)

It was widely believed, he continues, that the lovers could only have managed their misdeeds with the help of enchantement, a point that accords with Guillaume of Nangis’s mention of the friar magician.

49

References to La Chronique métrique, ed. Diverrès for page and lines.

22 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Some commonly said that they arranged things through enchantment; others said that they managed without enchantment. Believe which you like, but not everything that you hear…. (203, lines 5913–5918)

As in other versions of the story, Jeanne of Burgundy proclaims her innocence, but, in this account, King Louis X himself inquires into the matter and has her released. The chronicle casts still more doubt on the credibility of the adultery accusation when it recounts Philip IV’s regret shortly before his death: For then the king had great sorrow as well had should have, when he learned that the Pope was dead and the Queen of Navarre taken like a whore and locked up in prison at Gaillard where she had been taken, which had greatly disturbed the kingdom. (210, lines 6344–6351)

The barons then gather and march to the king with their complaints. Taking note of the curses cast upon him by the rebellious barons, the king declares that he has been deceived in counsel (218, lines 6770–6773). At the king’s death, the barons turn on Marigny, addressing him as Renard (222, lines 6987–6988) in a parallel to the Fauvel story. The chronicler’s description of Marguerite’s final days cannot help but heighten the reader’s suspicion that Philip had been duped. Once again, the chronicler maintains the princesses’ culpability, but he simultaneously undercuts his position.50 So far King Louis has been merciful (“piteux”) toward Marigny, he writes, but then a piece of news arrives that “changes the game.” Marguerite, taken ill, summons her confessor; following her vows of contrition, she has a letter sent to her husband, King Louis, which he is to read after her death. Whatever she revealed in the letter, the narrator announces, finally undid (“desconfist”) Marginy and led to his execution (226, lines 7168–69). But the contents of

50

The date of Marguerite’s death is reported differently. However, she must have died before late August 1315, when Louis X married his second wife, Clémence of Hungary.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 23 Marguerite’s letter remain hidden because “the shame could be too great….” Thus the story was not recounted outside, “but hearts knew it, and it’s a wonder that they didn’t break from it…” (226, lines 7177–80). What cannot be amended, the chronicler concludes, should be remanded to God. Marigny is then arrested and later hanged for things that were for the most part apertes, but also for some which were couvertes (226, lines 7197–98). What heartbreaking news involving Marigny could Marguerite have possessed that would have brought great shame had it become publicly known? Brother of Philip IV, Charles Count of Valois, who was in the process of bringing Marigny down when Marguerite died, had already the previous November presided over an inquiry of Parlement that declared Jeanne innocent; her innocence therefore was no longer news by the time of Marguerite’s death.51 Unlike some accounts that reproduce the charges against Marigny, the Chronique métrique does not blame him for Jeanne’s imprisonment, but his role would have been common knowledge. Although guilt for Jeanne’s arrest then might count as one of the apertes reasons for Marginy’s arrest, it cannot be one of the couvertes reasons. But what if Marguerite somehow convinced her husband that Marigny had duped Philip the Fair into imprisoning the princesses and executing the brothers? The abrupt shift in Louis X’s initially merciful attitude toward Marigny supports the hypothesis.52 The chronology is hazy, but, at a certain point, the new king gave up defense of his late father’s advisor and let the prosecution take its course. Had Louis X been presented with incriminating evidence? Furthermore, as the chronicle later reports, on his own deathbed just one year later, in June 1316, Louis X recognized his daughter Jeanne as his own child (236, line 7711).53 A new reason to believe that Marguerite had been innocent of the charge of adultery might have prompted the king’s action. Jean Dunbabin describes the universe of the Chronique métrique as filled with “relentless misery brought about by a failure to recognize natural law.” With men refusing to acknowledge divine order, “events rapidly slipped out of

51

This had already been established just after Philip IV’s death at a trial presided over by the king’s brother, Charles Count of Valois. See Grandes Chroniques 8: 310. 52 The chronicle attributes Marigny’s fall to Charles of Valois with Louis X initially resistant (7261– 7304). In the Grandes chroniques too Charles rather than Louis X brings Marigny’s downfall, 8: 314. 53 The chronicle’s report of Louis X’s recognition of his daughter is further evidenced by a letter of Arnaldus de Cumbis to King James II of King of Aragon, Acta Aragonensia, 1: 209–11. Arnaldus discusses all the claims to the throne in the aftermath of Louis X’s death. Among the claimants is Jeanne, who is said to be held by Lord Charles in a stronghold; her father, the defunct king, recognized her and her rights to Navarre. The chronicle of Jean of Paris, Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, 663, also records the event.

24 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

their control and disaster beckoned.”54 By acting against the princesses, the king blindly attempted to restore the order that had slipped beyond his power to control. But, if the chronicler gives the reader plenty of room to doubt the princesses’ guilt, he toes the line in presenting the case as if it were settled. The text he presents can therefore be regarded as a persecution text.

External reasons to doubt the guilt Of course, the fact that the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle looks like a persecution text does not necessarily mean that it is. To bolster the case, in this section I lay out reasons for doubting the princesses’ guilt independent of the texts in which their story has been transmitted. None of these reasons is sufficient in itself to prove innocence, but, cumulatively, they cast doubt on the charge. The first of these has to do with the spatial layout of royal living quarters. As we have seen, two of the chronicle sources record contemporary belief that magic would have been required to make the affairs possible. Jean Favier explains that the household of Louis, the king’s oldest son, comprised about sixty members, while that of the middle son, Philip, counted about 150. Favier concludes that given that king and his sons lived in close physical proximity, sharing officers and other followers, a group of 400 to 600 people gravitated around the family whenever they resided in Paris.55 The young Philip the son presided over a household that included 10 chevaliers de bannerets, 11 bacheliers (among them the unfortunate Gautier of Aunay), 15 écuyers, as well as numerous live-in musicians.56 Could Gautier have lived beside Philip, dans son intimité, as Favier expresses it, carrying on an affair with his sister-in-law for three years before finally being noticed? As for the hotels of princesses, we know from Philip’s later accounts that the queen’s hotel included a lady, five demoiselles, and a femme de chambre, among the many officers, who also moved from household to household. Separate logis were not available for the queen’s staff.57 Another cause for doubt is that no one in a position of power, including the husbands, deployed the adultery charge once the affair had been disclosed and the alleged criminals had paid the price for their “misdeeds.” The reason that the 54 55 56 57

Dunbabin, “The Metrical Chronicle,” 241. Jean Favier, Un roi de marbre. Philippe le Bel, Enguerran de Marigny, 61–62. Le Hugeur, L’Histoire de Philippe le Long 1: 14–15. See Chatenet, “Les Logis des femmes à la cour des derniers Valois,” 179, and Münster, “Funktionen der dames et damoiselles d’honneur.”

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 25 alleged conspiracy mattered so much in the first place—the danger that the children of the sons of the king of France were illegitimate—was immediately forgotten by those affected. Had it been believed that Marguerite had been involved in a three-year-long affair at the time of her arrest, the paternity of her only child, Jeanne, born in 1312, would have been in question. However, as we have seen, Louis X made a point of formally recognizing her as his own before he died. Nor did Louis’s brother, Philip V, Louis’s brother, raise Jeanne’s possible illegitimacy as an obstacle to the throne during his successful campaign to take it from her, using only the child’s youth and, eventually, gender against her.58 Surely Philip V or the barons whom he was required to convince of the validity of his claim to the throne did not believe that Jeanne might be illegitimate or they would have raised the point to support her disqualification.59 But the chronicle tells us simply that women were declared incapable of inheriting the throne of France.60 The persecution of the princesses would not be evoked again during the reigns of Philip IV’s sons, and certainly the story had no effect on the bid for the throne of Jeanne’s son, Charles the Bad of Navarre, who challenged Charles V for the throne throughout much of that king’s reign.61 A further reason for doubt is a transaction that took place between Philip IV’s brother, Charles Count of Valois, on the one hand, and Gautier V of Aunay and Gillette de Clary, father and stepmother of the brothers Aunay, on the other, not even two weeks after Philip IV drew his last breath. We have already seen that the count presided over the trial that exonerated Jeanne just after Philip IV’s death. In addition, he seems to have restored the lands of the executed brothers to their family. Laurent Nabias explains that the parents granted the count all rights to the seigneuries of Gondreville and Levignen,62 suggesting that the transaction may represent a confiscation of the executed men’s lands, given that 58 59 60 61

62

The classic article on the process by which women were eliminated from succession to the French throne is Viollet, “Comment les femmes ont été excludes.” Viollet shows that Jeanne’s possible illegitimacy was not an issue in Philip’s claim to the throne, 138. See Pinchart, “Lettres missives tirées des Archives de Belgique.” Surely the barons supporting Jeanne would not have done so had she been believed to be illegitimate, and Philip V’s supporters would have claimed that she was illegitimate had they believed that she was. Grandes Chroniques, l: 332. The story only reappears, much later, to delegitimize the claim of Charles the Bad of Navarre, grand­ son of Marguerite, to the throne, in a genealogy of Richard Lescot’s chronicle. Lescot, one of the continuators of the chronicle of Guillaume of Nangis, wants to legitimize the Valois kings; thus he refers to Marguerite, who committed adultery, as the mother of Jeanne, mother “istius muris” (of that rat), Charles the Bad. See La Chronique de Richard Lescot, 175. It is also mentioned in the chronicle attributed to Jean Desnouelles, composed at the end of the fourteenth century, which notes of Jeanne, Marguerite’s daughter, that “for the misdeeds of her mother, she lost that land,” 197. Nabias, “Les Gallois d’Aunay,” 28–29.

26 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Charles of Valois took part in the trial that condemned the brothers. And yet, Nabias continues, the same document recording the transaction states that as long as Gillette lived she was to enjoy usufruct of the lands and receive all rents from them in exchange for an annual rent of 160 livres parisis. Also, the document states that in exchange for a doubling of the rent Charles generously grants the couple, de grace especiale, hereditary rights over the seigneuries for their successors, should Gillette have a son. If Charles of Valois regretted the fate of the brothers Aunay, refusing to take advantage of their parents would have been one way of easing his conscience. It is perhaps significant as well that at the time of the arrests none of the daughters-in-law had produced a male heir. Marguerite, wife of Philip’s oldest son, Louis, had only one living child, Jeanne, to show for nearly ten years of marriage.63 Louis could not have helped but worry about his line and hope to find a more fertile partner: he is reputed to have suffered from ill health, which may have affected his capacity to reproduce, and this would have made him all the more anxious to procreate.64 Nor does the marriage between Philip’s youngest son, Charles, and Blanche seem to have produced a son.65 Jeanne, wife of Philip’s middle son, had born several children, four of them living, at the time of the tragedy.66 But all of the children were girls. Also interesting is the fact that before Philip IV moved against the princesses, he had already taken care to insure that their loss would produce no serious repercussions. For one thing, he acted believing that he would be able to 63 Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 1: 92. 64 After Louis’s sudden death at age 26, just a year and a half into his reign, Mahaut Countess of Artois, mother-in-law of Philip who claimed the throne, was accused of having poisoned the king in hopes of seeing her daughter Jeanne become queen. However, it was determined that Louis’s long-term ill health was sufficient explanation for his sudden demise. See Godefroy-Ménilglaise, Mahaud comtesse d’Artois, 208. 65 It appears that Blanche bore a child in 1313. Father Anselme claims that this child was a son named Philip, based on two separate documents. See Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 1: 96. However, the gender is not referred to in the first document, which notes only that Blanche gave birth. The second document, upon which Father Anselme bases his conclusion that the child was a boy named Philip, refers to a gift by the king to the former nurse for the deceased child Philip, “fils le roy.” Douëtd’Arcq disagrees with Father Anselme’s interpretation, explaining that this young Philip was the son of Philip V, who certainly had a son named Philip. See Les Comptes de l’argenterie, 3–4. Blanche also bore a daughter, Jeanne, who died in 1321. As Brown notes, Blanche must have born at least two children, because the bull nullifying her marriage to Charles IV refers to their “prolem tam masculinam quam femininam.” Brown, “The King’s Conundrum,” 134, n. 46, and by the same author, “Blanche of Artois and Burgundy” and “The Children of Charles of La Marche and Blanche of Artois and Burgundy.” As we saw, a rumor existed the Blanche bore a child in prison, either to her own husband or to a prison guard. See Chevanne, “Charles IV le Bel et Blanche de Bourgogne,” 315–318. 66 Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 1: 94–95.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 27 secure annulments for his sons’ marriages, allowing them to remarry. However, the Grandes chroniques obscures this bit of insurance on the part of Philip IV by misdating the pope’s death, placing it before the affaire episode. The arrests of the princesses, writes the narrator, took place on Tuesday of Easter Week, or 9 April, Easter falling on 7 April in 1314.67 Pope Clement V died on 20 April,68 and his seat remained vacant until John XXII assumed office on 7 August 1316, making annulments of the princes’ marriages impossible for well over a year after the affaire. For this reason, Marguerite’s death in prison in April 1315, which cleared the way for Louis’s remarriage to Clémence of Hungary on 19 August 1315, has been viewed as suspicious. The marriage of the youngest prince Charles was annulled to allow him to marry Marie of Luxembourg when he took the throne in 1322.69 Philip IV had guaranteed that the scandal would have no lasting effect in still one more way. On 2 April 1314, the brother of the Burgundian princess Jeanne, having reached the age of majority, reaffirmed his renunciation of his rights to the county of Burgundy in favor of his sister.70 Just days before Philip had the princesses arrested, in other words, he had verified that the country of Burgundy was safely in the hands of his son, Philip.

Philip IV and the persecution mentality But why would Philip IV humiliate his family in such spectacular fashion? His psychology has been the source of much speculation, with a special interest in the extent to which the king thought for himself or was commanded by his counselors. As we have seen, even during his own lifetime some regarded him as tool, and the view is widely although not unanimously shared among contemporary historians.71 67 See Grandes Chroniques, 297, n. 3. The date can be verified with any number of calculators of medieval Easters. 68 The continuator of Guillaume of Nangis correctly places the Pope’s death just after the scandal, 1: 610, as does the continuator of Girard of Frachet, 41. The Chronique métrique 200, 202, correctly dates the pope’s death but places the princesses episode in May. 69 The ground for annulment in this case was that Charles was spiritually related to his wife’s mother, although of course at the time of his marriage it was already known that Mahaut of Artois had held him over the baptismal font. The story is explained in the Ex anonymo regum Franciae chronico, 20–21. See also Chevanne, “Charles IV le Bel et Blanche de Bourgogne,” 344. 70 See Funck-Brentano, “Philippe le Bel,” 36, n. 10. For a detailed discussion of Philip IV’s marriage strategy regarding his sons and the Burgundian princesses see Brown, “Philip the Fair’s Sons.” 71 Representatives of the two extremes are Strayer, who believed that Philip was always in charge, and Bautier, “Diplomatique et histoire politique,” who examines the same evidence, but arrives at

28 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

More significant, however, a general consensus holds that the king strove throughout his reign to sacralize the monarchy and that he himself was blindly self-righteousness. His lifelong attempts to portray himself as worthy of his grandfather, Saint Louis, are well attested.72 E. A. R. Brown points out the “unprece­ dented insistence on the connection between the king’s causes and those of God and Jesus Christ” in the documents diffused by the king’s chancellery and, as further evidence of Philip’s exalted opinion of the royalty and himself, notes that the king touched for scrofula.73 Frank Barlow writes that by 1307, “the French royal court had become the regular resort of men and women suffering from the royal disease” and explains that on his deathbed, the king passed information about the ritual on to his heir.74 Even Joseph Strayer, generally favorable towards Philip, writes that the king “sought moral and legal justification for all his acts, but he had a tendency to believe that in any dispute right must be on his side and that opposition was therefore inexcusable.”75 Strayer adds that royal officials took advantage of the king’s piety and overweening royal pride to advance their own agendas; in other words, the king’s character traits may have made him an easy mark for an unscrupulous accuser attempting to carry out his or her own agenda.76 In short, Philip IV is widely seen among historians as a “man of grandiose, unrealistic, and conflicting ambitions, of deep-seated insecurities and suspicions, of compulsive scrupulosity….”77 In many ways, the case of the Templars offers a parallel example to that of the princesses. True, the Templars’ arrest was opportunistic and, “like the expulsion of the Jews and Lombards, further strengthened the alliance between the a different conclusion. See also Brown, “The Case of Philip the Fair,” and Favier, “Les légistes et le gouvernement de Philippe le Bel.” 72 See also Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis (IX) of France: and, more specifically on the issue, also by Gaposchkin, “Boniface VIII, Philip the Fair, and the Sanctity of Louis IX.” See also Hallam, “Philip the Fair and the Cult of Saint Louis.” 73 Brown, “The Prince is Father of the King,” 288–89, and “The King’s Evil,” 23–24. See also Brown, “Taxation and Morality;” and Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 417–19. The classic work on the royal touch is Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges. 74 Barlow, “The King’s Evil,” 23. 75 Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 34. 76 Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 34. 77 Brown, “The Prince is Father of the King,” 334. Popular historians of the nineteenth century seem particularly disposed to view the king as oppressive and censorious. See Martin, Histoire de France, 4: 381, who describes Philip’s handsome but cold face, noting that his youthful taciturnity hid what was to come. Martin’s descriptions become progressively more unflattering. Boutaric offers a generally positive assessment of the king’s character in La France sous Philippe le Bel, 408–26. Recent historians are less judgemental, but generally agree that the king was self-righteous. Even Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, favorably disposed towards the king, writes that while the king respected the law, “he could be easily satisfied that due process had been observed” (34).

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 29 King and the bourgeoisie” by ridding the kingdom of a dangerously independent force and clearing the way for a new group of financiers who were dependent upon royal patronage.78 This was not lost on contemporaries.79 But if the king was tempted to act by financial concerns, his primary motivation seems to have been his desire to position himself as defender against heresy. In an analysis of documents related to the Templar trials, Malcolm Barber explains that Philip proclaimed his actions necessary to preserve the great chain of being linking his earthly kingdom to that of God in heaven. Philip meticulously presented his “essentially arbitrary seizure of the lands and persons of the Templars,” writes Barber, in such a way as “to convey to the world that the alleged heresies and depravities of the Templars were blows intended to destroy the proper ordering of society based on faith and reason.”80 In a speech made before the Pope, royal minister Guillaume Plaisans describes the actions of Philip and the Three Estates against the Templars as those of “zealots of the Catholic faith, defenders of the Church, the wall of Jerusalem, and the purgers of heretical depravity….”81 Still more forcefully, Julien Théry has recently argued that the crimes attributed to the Templars constituted a heresy of state: these crimes served to construct a royal almightiness, just as heresy in general, defined as “divine lèse-majesté,” had served the construction of papal theocracy from the end of the twelfth century onward. The repression of the Templars’ heresy was an important moment for the rise of French royal absolutism, which initially took the form of a royal theocracy.

The growing discontent among the barons of the kingdom during the last years of Philip IV’s life can be regarded as a leveling of the distinctions that characterized the king’s feudal society. In addition, the self-righteous king seems to have been tormented by moral doubt, experiencing a personal leveling of the distinction between good and evil. A war with Flanders was narrowly avoided in July 1313, but Philip began to fear almost immediately that war would be necessary, which raised the specter of having to ask yet again for taxes.82 This seems to have caused Philip considerable moral anguish. In 1313, he had returned a tax 78 79 80 81 82

Menache, “The Templar Order,” 19. On attitudes in France and Europe more generally towards Philip’s treatment of the Templars, see Menache, “Contemporary Attitudes Concerning the Templar’s Affair.” Barber, “The World Picture of Philip the Fair,” 13–14. Barber, “The World Picture of Philip the Fair,” 18. For a discussion of the Flemish situation of 1313 and 1314 along with the supporting documents see Artonne, Le mouvement de 1314.

30 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

levied for a war against Flanders when a truce was reached; however, as we have seen, when a similar situation occurred just one year later, he did not return the money, leading to the formation of leagues against him. E. A.R. Brown writes that “twisting the truth to his own purposes, he declared that a state of war still existed; only later, when he knew that he was dying, did he abolish the tax, although he did not bring himself, even then, to command restitution.”83 The depth of his guilt over the taxes he had imposed is manifested in a chronicle account of his deathbed confession where he expresses regret for having oppressed his people unjustly through “taxes and extortion.”84 But who would have taken advantage of the king’s self-righteousness and doubt by suggesting that the royal daughters-in-law were betraying their spouses and therefore the king himself? And why? Jules Michelet proposes that the story was invented by a monk who, angered by King Philip’s treatment of the pope, “found a means to tarnish the entire house of Philip the Fair.”85 The king, we have seen, was extremely unpopular with his grands seigneurs. Throwing the royal succession into question would have been a satisfying way for any number of them to avenge themselves. Or the accusation might have come from enemies of the Aunay brothers. The king’s daughter, Isabella, married to Edward II of England, has also been suggested as a possible informant. She was visiting France on behalf of her husband at the time of the tragedy and spent time with her father in Paris on Saturday, 6 April, just three days before the arrests of the princesses.86 Or, as I noted above and have suggested in an earlier article, Marigny seems a likely candidate for role of accuser, given his intimacy with the king.87 But what would have been his motive? In her recent monograph, Gaëlle Audéon corroborates the suggestion and offers a plausible explanation. Marigny, deeply invested in seeing the war in Flanders through to its finish, was horrified by the prospect of a new Crusade, which had been proposed in 1313 by the king and his family, because it would divert the scarce resources that Marigny required. Audéon shows that Marigny’s secret opposition to the Crusade is revealed in a document stored in the Vatican library, edited in 1900 by Jakob Schwalm, analysed and cited by Olivier Canteaut. She incorporates this document into an elegant theory.

83

Brown, “The Prince is Father of the King,” 293. On this same issue see also by Brown, “Cessante causa,” 567–87. 84 See Jean of Paris, Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, 659. 85 Michelet, Œuvres complètes 3: 167. 86 On the three chronicles that name Isabella as the informer see Brown, “Diplomacy, Adultery, and Domestic Politics,” 72–73. As for April 6, see 66, n. 61, of the same article. 87 Adams, “Between History and Fiction,” 181.

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles | 31 Although Marigny succeeded in convincing Philip IV to hold off on the Crusade, he feared that as soon as the king died his heir Louis and Louis’s wife Marguerite would renew the call for a Crusade. Marguerite, after all, was the g­ rand-daughter of Louis IX, ultimate Crusader. Her seconding the call for a Crusade when king’s sons took up the Cross was sure to be taken seriously given this family connection. But why bring down the other princesses too, Audéon wonders? The reason, she suggests, is that Marigny knew that Jeanne and Blanche would have fiercely defended Marguerite; their reputations therefore needed to be hopelessly blackened as well. Just a month before the incident of the daughters-in-law, in a move controversial everywhere but within the Capetian kingdom, Philip IV had had Templar leaders publicly burned at the stake, culmination of a long attempt to crush the order. The chronicle versions of the princesses and their knights mirror the Templars, as challenges to the king’s moral authority requiring ruthless repression; what Théry writes about the Templars is also true of the princesses, that “nothing, apart from their arrest and forced confessions, justifies belief in their guilt. No proof corroborating confessions has ever been discovered.”88

88

Théry, “A Heresy of State,” 127.

2

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan: Creating Political Authority

Thanks to the “Capetian miracle,” the unbroken line of succession from father to son beginning in 987, the question of whether a woman could accede to the French throne did not arise for the first three hundred years of Capetian rule. The miracle seemed to continue when Philip IV died leaving three sons in 1314. However, fate intervened. As we have seen, Grand Master of the Templars Jacques de Molay, condemned by Philip IV to die at the stake, allegedly cursed the king as he awaited the flames.1 The malediction, if it was in fact uttered, proved effective! When Philip IV’s son Louis X died in 1316, he left only a fouryear-old daughter, Jeanne. Although Louis’s second queen, Clémence, gave birth to Louis’s posthumous son, the tiny Jean I died just weeks after his birth. Philip, brother of the defunct Louis X, assumed regency and promised to revisit succession when Jeanne came of age. And yet, over the following months he consolidated his power, negotiated renunciation of Jeanne’s claim with the girl’s maternal relatives, and, using Jeanne’s gender as one among other reasons for passing her over, acceded to the throne in 1317 as Philip V.2 When he died himself in 1322 leaving only daughters, female exclusion, although it would not be enshrined in

1 2

La Chronique métrique, ed. Diverrès, 199, line 5728. Collins gives a useful summary of the complicated series of events, “Dynastic Instability,” 105–9.

34 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

the Salic law for another hundred years, allowed his brother, Charles, to accede to the throne.3 But the Capetian miracle ran its course when Charles IV died in 1328 leaving only daughters: female exclusion, opportunistically invoked by Philip V, led to the demise of the Capetian dynasty. On the other hand, it guaranteed that the French throne would be occupied by a French king. In 1328 supporters of Philip VI of Valois, nephew of Philip IV, renewed the principle to counter a claim to the French throne by the king of England, Edward III, son of Philip IV’s daughter Isabelle. Had women been able to accede to the throne, or even pass on a claim to the throne, the English king Edward III would have succeeded Charles IV. Another advantage of female exclusion is that it prevented strife by limiting the number of pretenders to the throne, as Raymond Cazelles and others have noted.4 The aspect of female exclusion I explore here, however, has to do with its paradoxical facilitation of female rule in France: the fact that, by making women ineligible to accede to the throne, the principle guaranteed that they would be the safest regents. As a direct consequence of female exclusion, France was effectively governed by women for just under 20 percent of the years between 1484 and 1651, five female regents ruling in kingdom that legally prohibited them from doing so. In fact, women ruled longer and more often in France than in England, where women could legally reign. And yet, if women were often called upon to guide the kingdom through the minority of young kings and often did it very skillfully, the job was complicated. Regents were always targets of charges of ambition and greed, and female regents, already disadvantaged by the usual array of negative stereotypes of women, were all the more susceptible to such criticism. The formidable female regents of France, Anne of France, Louise of Savoy, Catherine de Médicis, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria, were all vilified by some contemporaries and modern historians, although revisions of their biographies have now become common. But the tradition of the female regent, as well as her vilification, properly begins with Queen Isabeau of Bavaria (ca. 1471–1435), wife of mad king Charles 3 Giesey, Le Rôle méconnu, 47, argues that Jeanne’s claim to the throne remained a possibility. On the exclusion of women from the French throne the fundamental study remains Viollet’s “Comment les femmes ont été exclues,” but the subject has been much studied since. See Taylor, “The Salic Law and the Valois Succession to the French Crown” and “The Salic Law, French Queenship and the Defence of Women in the Late Middle Ages,” as well his introduction to his Debating the The Hundred Years War; Viennot, La France, les femmes et le pouvoir: l’ invention de la loi salique; Whaley, “From a Salic Law to the Salic Law.” 4 Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, all left daughters, and they and their descendants would have had claims. See Cazelles, La Société politique, 52.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 35 VI (1368–1422), and, although she seems to have been quite well regarded by contemporaries, she has been more harshly treated by historians than the other regents of France, with the possible exception of Catherine de Médicis. Little attention had been given the details of Isabeau’s reign until recently. Certainly the negative attitudes toward women and Germany shared by the most influential nineteenth-century historians of the queen are responsible for this relative neglect. But another major reason for Isabeau’s modern vilification has been the assumption that this queen’s power was comparable to that of later regents and that, had she tried, she could have stopped the civil war in France, invasion by the English, and the infamous Treaty of Troyes ceding the throne to Henry V of England. The assumption is not valid: Isabeau’s regency was a work in progress developing, reactively, in real time, out of a series of proposed solutions to a unique problem, an intermittently insane king, Charles VI, whose male relatives vied for decades to control the government by controlling him. In typical regency situations the king is fully absent, permanently because dead or temporarily because gone from the kingdom for a designated period of time. In such situations, the regent is accorded the authority and power necessary to carry out the job. For example, in a document written up during the fatal illness of Louis VIII, the king wrote that his eldest son, his kingdom, and his other children were to be put under the care (“sub ballo sive tutela”) of his wife, Blanche of Castile;5 Anne of France, jointly with her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, was confirmed by the Estates General as custodians of the young king.6 Isabeau was first appointed not as regent during the king’s absences but mediator, tasked with reconciling the two factions vying for power during the king’s periods of insanity. Only when the leaders of the conflict had proven intractable to attempts to reconcile them was she granted a sort of regency. However, her regency was doomed because her ability to govern depended on the cooperation of those same leaders who refused to step back, continuing their own struggle for control of the king. Her crisis was one of authority: despite the king’s ordinances, Isabeau never possessed the widely acknowledged authority a regent required to govern.7 In what follows I first revisit ordinances dating from 1393 to 1407 relevant to the early years of Isabeau’s regency to clarify the limits of her role at different

5 2: 102, no. 1828. Not that Blanche’s regency was easy. See Grant, Blanche of Castile, 78–105. 6 Masselin, Journal des états généraux, 228. “Let the Lord and Lady of Beaujeu remain beside the person of the king, as they have been til now, as was ordered by the late king and queen.” 7 On the subject of queenly authority see Grant, Blanche of Castile, 1–8.

36 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

periods. I then turn to attempts to enhance her authority, including those of the Royal Council and writer Christine de Pizan. Since the 1970s, Christine’s defenses of women have interested historians seeking to create a female history. In addition, Christine’s writings shed light on the development of female regency. Juxtaposed with the regency ordinances, they offer a window onto a society degenerating into civil unrest along with the reactive attempts to restore peace. Taken together, these writings represent the starting point of a particular tradition of female power in France.

Isabeau’s regency and the crisis of authority In August 1392, while leading a military expedition against Duke Jean IV of Brittany, King Charles VI suffered his first known episode of the insanity that would plague him for the duration of his life.8 The expedition had been moti­ vated by the Duke of Brittany’s harboring of Pierre de Craon, would-be assassin of the king’s longtime friend and advisor, Olivier de Clisson. Although the king recovered within a few days of his initial attack, another episode in that same year dashed hopes that the incident was a one-off. In January 1393, the king promulgated the first in a series of ordinances laying out the chain of command should he die leaving a minor heir, and, although the earliest ordinances do not specifically touch on the issue, assigning responsibility for the continued functioning of the government during his periods of insanity.9 Regency of the realm (“government, guard and defense”) was to go to the king’s brother, Louis, and guardianship of the king’s young son to Isabeau, aided by his uncles, prelates, and other officials, including the king’s uncles.10 Although regents had been named in the past, no general precedent for appointing one existed. Some kings had named a leading religious figure, their wife or mother; others, like Charles VI’s father, Charles V, named a brother, in that case Louis of Anjou. Charles V also assigned his other brothers, Jean of Berry and Philip of Burgundy, to a college of guardians for the minor king. But when Charles V died in 1380, Philip and Jean ejected Louis of Anjou from regency 8 9 10

On the king’s madness see Guenée’s study, La folie de Charles VI, and Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue, 1–21. Famiglietti suggests that the king suffered from schizophrenia. The first regency ordinance of 1392 is a translation into French from Latin of the ordinance of Charles VI’s father, Charles V. Charles VI’s 1392 ordinance is printed in Secousse, Ordonnances 7, 518–522. On Charles V’s ordinance of 1374, see Autrand, “La succession à la couronne de France.” For the ordinance related to Louis see Secousse, Ordonnances, 7: 535; for that related to Isabeau see 7: 530–31.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 37 and seized power for themselves.11 They reigned until Charles VI dismissed them from his Royal Council in 1388 and assumed full rule. With the onset of the king’s madness just a few years later, they reappeared, and the battle for control of the king began. On the one hand, the royal brother, Louis, was authorized by royal ordinance to govern during the king’s episodes. In addition, he claimed priority based on rank; as the living king’s brother he outranked his uncles.12 On the other hand, Philip insisted that regency should be vested in a council headed by himself.13 The dispute would devolve into a feud that led eventually to Louis’s assassination by the Burgundians in 1407 and the revenge assassination of Philip’s son Jean of Burgundy in 1419. Charles VI began to involve the queen in managing the factions in 1402. In December 1401, writes chronicler Michel Pintoin, the Monk of Saint Denis, “seeing the hatred of the two dukes to be excessively dangerous,” the lords of the realm begged the Duke of Berry and the queen “several times to intervene between the parties in the interests of peace.”14 On 7 December Philip entered Paris with 600 men-at-arms and 60 archers. But bloodshed was avoided, thanks to Isabeau’s “long, considered deliberation with the princes.”15 Unfortunately, the peace was temporary. In an ordinance of 16 March 1402, occasioned by a dispute over how to deal with the papal schism, the king tried to boost the queen’s authority by officially naming her to mediate in quarrels when he was incapacitated. The ordinance in question explains that the king, “by means of grace and divine disposition,” seeks to keep his subjects in “peace and tranquility.”16 When Louis and the royal uncles enter into a dispute, they should come immediately to him. When he is absent, they should go to the queen, who will avail herself of counsel as she deems necessary.17 But as modern political polarization shows, minus a final arbitrator capable of enforcing decisions, implacable enemies will continue to battle. If the ordinance of March 1402 affirms his confidence in the queen, the king soon found it necessary to promulgate a new ordinance reinforcing her authority. An ordinance of 1 July references new disputes that had arisen during the king’s latest episode 11 Froissart recounts the story of Philip’s coup in Œuvres de Froissart: Chroniques, 3: 164. See also Autrand, Charles VI, 20–21. 12 “I who am the full brother (‘frère germain’) and the closer to his person than any other except for my said seigneur his son….” Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces, 1: 275. 13 See Gauvard, “De grace especial,” 948–52; on the nostalgia, see 950. 14 Pintoin, Chronique, 3 : 12. 15 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix de pièces inédites, 1: 220–26. 16 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces, 1: 227. 17 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces, 1: 234–35.

38 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

of madness. Shortly before that latest episode, the king had put Louis in charge of collecting payments (“aides”) in the north of the kingdom. But on regaining his senses in early June, the king was told of Louis’s profligacy by the Duke of Burgundy. According to Pintoin, the king then attempted to appease his uncle by naming Philip to share Louis’s post. Predictably, this created further conflict, a fact reflected in the king’s order that, effective immediately, the queen would both mediate between his brother and uncle and oversee finances and other difficulties of the realm when he could not take care of them himself.18 Isabeau attempted to manage the situation, Pintoin writing that she and the dukes of Berry and Bourbon barred Philip and Louis from meetings of the council until the king regained his senses, because their quarreling prevented business from being accomplished.19 The tensions only increased, and an ordinance of 26 April 1403 shows the king employing a new strategy, this one circumventing his male relatives and in effect authorizing the queen to act in his place as co-regent with the dauphin. Once again, the ordinance deals explicitly with succession after the king’s death, but those involved took it to settle regency during the king’s episodes of madness. The ordinance withdraws the regency powers the king had assigned to Louis in 1393, stating that when the king dies the kingdom will have no regent. Rather, the new king, no matter how young, will succeed immediately, “without anyone else, no matter how closely related, taking over the care, regency or government of our kingdom, and without any obstacle, through regency or government of our kingdom or for any reason whatsoever, being placed between our oldest son and the natural right that is due to him.”20 With no specially designated regent, gov­ ernance would naturally fall to the queen, the minor heir’s guardian, who would effectively become co-regent, and, de facto, regent. Louis appealed to his brother, however, and a letter patent of 7 May 1403 in the king’s name acknowledges that “certain” recent ordinances may have been damaging to Louis and that any portion of these recent ordinances that deprived him of his power were to be ignored.21 The ordinance effectively making Isabeau regent therefore lay dormant until it was reinstated some weeks after Louis’s 1407

18 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces, 1: 241. 19 “But as long as they spent the time more often in quarreling than in advising, the queen and Dukes of Berry and Bourbon arbitrated that both cease to come to the royal Council until the king had recovered his health.” Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 3: 36. 20 Secousse, Ordonnances, 8: 582. 21 See Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, 7: 59, for the letter patent.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 39 assassination. Whether this was at the instigation of Isabeau or Jean of Burgundy, hoping to rule by controlling the queen, is not clear.22 In a practical sense, Isabeau was stymied: to be effective her authority required the power to enforce. Such power normally would have come from the king’s closest male relatives, but these men were locked in a struggle with each other for primacy. Other powerful barons were loyal to one or the other of the warring dukes, because during the king’s episodes, Louis and Philip managed to fill the Royal Council with their own men. Attached either to the house of Orléans or Burgundy by office or pension, the majority of the men of the Council had no motivation to follow Isabeau’s attempts to lead.23 Both Louis and Philip could summon armies, which meant that violence was a constant threat. When Philip died in April of 1404, Isabeau’s authority was further diminished. Son of one king and uncle of another, Philip had occupied a central role in the government and had access to royal funds, receiving about half of his total yearly revenues from the royal treasury in the form of ordinary pensions, gifts, and aides for military ventures conducted in the interests of the French kingdom by soldiers from Burgundian territories.24 When the new duke, Jean of Burgundy, took up the role, he expected to retain the privileges his father had enjoyed, but, as a cousin of the king, he was not entitled to them. The feud between the Orleanists and the Burgundians grew still more intense and Isabeau’s ability to manage it still more attenuated. In short, at no point in her career did Isabeau’s ad hoc regency enjoy the kind of backing that later regencies received. The ordinance of 1403 awarding her what might legitimately might be considered regency was overturned at Louis’s intervention, almost as soon as it was authorized, as we have seen. Even as mediator, Isabeau never had adequate support to enforce her authority. In contrast, later regents received explicit designation and support. When Anne of France, who with her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, served as regent for her brother Charles VIII, was confirmed in her position by the Estates General, one of the stated

22 23

24

See the reinstatement see Familiglietti, Royal Intrigue, 65–66. The classic study on the loyalties of the different members of Charles VI’s Royal Council is that of Valois, Le Conseil du roi aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles. Both Nordberg, Les Ducs et la royauté, and Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue, dispute the attachments of some of the individuals considered by Valois, but all agree that Louis possessed the greater influence over the Council. On the loyalties of the sénéchaux and baillis see Demurger “Guerre civile et changements du personnel administratif.” See Vaughan, John the Fearless, 41, Vaughan reports that Philip received 188,600 francs in gifts and pensions from the royal treasury as compared to the 37,000 francs that Jean was assigned (although not paid in full) during the first year of his reign and the 2,000 francs he received in the second year. Vaughan, John the Fearless, 42. See also and Schnerb, Jean sans Peur, 156–158.

40 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

reasons for the confirmation was the danger presented by male relatives, surely a reference to the struggle for power between Louis and the Burgundians.25 Louise of Savoy, who served as regent when her son François I left the kingdom to fight in Italy, did not have to contend with civil unrest, although the Parlement of Paris challenged her at times. Catherine de Médicis was confirmed by the Estates General, as were Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria.26

Christine de Pizan and female exclusion from succession Because Isabeau’s position was visibly weak, Christine de Pizan intervened to support the queen against the warring dukes. Much has been written about Christine’s self-authorization, that is, the ways in which she depicts herself within her writings to justify the audacious act of writing as a woman. Less has been written about how her writings create authority for others. In this section, I read Christine’s Book of the City of Ladies, Le Livre des trois vertus, and “An Epistle to the Queen of France” as highly topical defenses of Isabeau’s regency which add important information about how we should understand the limitations of the queen’s authority. In supporting Isabeau, Christine draws implicitly but unmistakeably on the Valois policy of excluding women from succession to promote Isabeau as the safest regent. Although the Valois originally drew on female exclusion to support Philip of Valois’s claim to the throne over Edward III of England, the principle was accepted in the first place because it conformed to one popular construction of the female as the complement of the male. This is how Christine herself constructs gender. Christine’s promotion of female exclusion from the throne results logically from her notion of gender, and it drives her to support Isabeau as precisely the kind of regent we see emerge in the late fifteenth century. It is not clear in which year the mode of devolution of the French throne to the nearest male relative and the concomitant exclusion of females—the so-called Salic Law—was first associated with the Lex Salica. Chronicler Richard Lescot may have been the first to claim that the “De allodis” clause of the Lex Salica excluded women from succession to the French throne in 1358; however, his claim 25

26

See Masselin, Journal, 140–157. The discourse of Philip Pot makes the point. Despite the belief of some that rule of the realm should go to the minor king’s closest male relative, this was written nowhere. Indeed, such a practice was not an effective way of “keeping the young king safe from conspiracies and great dangers,” 142. See also David-Chapy, Anne de France, Louise de Savoie, 116–124. On these regents see Crawford, Perilous Performances.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 41 may be an interpolation.27 Salic Law is certainly mentioned by Jean de Montreuil in A Toute la chevalerie around 1409.28 This means that Christine de Pizan’s major defenses of women may predate any widespread discourse on Salic Law. Still, as a reader of the Grandes chroniques de France,29 she would have been aware that the Valois had come to power by excluding women from the throne. In her description of the French monarchy in the Livre du Corps de policie of 1407 she discusses different possible types of government, concluding with Aristotle that the best is that of the French, “government and lordship by one,” as opposed to a form of election. But, she continues, beyond their superior form of government, the great fortune of the French is that they have never suffered under a foreign king.30 Of course, it was not true that the French line had passed unbroken from father to son: it was broken when Philip VI succeeded his cousin Charles IV, as Christine would have been well aware. However, she is correct that the French would have suffered under a foreign king had succession passed through women. As a supporter of the Valois, then, Christine supported female exclusion from succession, and she uses the principle to support Isabeau as the best candidate for regent when the king was insane. This becomes clear when we read her writings of 1405 in their historical context. As we have seen, Jean became duke of Burgundy with Philip’s death in 1404 and immediately intensified the struggle for influence over the king with Louis. Isabeau appears to have been alarmed at the threat that Jean represented, because she articulated her support of Louis against Jean, stipulating that she would defend the new Duke of Burgundy only to the degree appropriate to family hierarchy, which meant that Louis, the king’s brother, came first.31 Her new stance was soon put to the test. Although in April 1405 Jean of Burgundy had requested that the usual military aides and the annual allowance for the upkeep of the Sluis garrison be continued, and although his emissary reported that the funds had been allocated, he was unable to collect them.32 Jean sent ambassadors to the

27 28 29 30 31

32

See Potter, “The Development and Significance of the Salic Law,” 247. See Jean de Montreuil, Opera, 2: 7–17. See Walters, “Christine de Pizan, Primat, and the ‘noble nation Françoise.’ ” Christine de Pizan, Le Livre du corps de policie, 93. See Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue. “To these ends, she would use all her power against everyone except the king, her children, and all those to whom by ‘reason and honesty’ she was more obliged because they were more closely related to her than John was. In other words, she would be unable to help John against the duke of Orléans, since, as her brother-in-law, he was more closely related to her, and she would be unable to help him against such personages as the king’s uncles, the dukes of Berry and Bourbon,” 40. See Chousat’s letter describing the affair, in Mirot, “L’Enlèvement du dauphin,” 395–96.

42 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

king, queen, and the Council, but, according to chronicler Monstrelet, they did not receive the funds.33 To impose his will, Jean needed to take control of the Royal Council, which meant disposing of Louis. Jean’s first show of force came on 15 August 1405, when he left Arras for Paris with an army of 800 men, claiming that he wanted only to render homage for his recent maternal inheritance and respond to the king’s request that he come to discuss financial reform of the kingdom.34 However, to Isabeau and Louis, the new Duke of Burgundy looked to be getting ready to seize control of the realm. When the king fell into madness on August 16 or 17, the dauphin became the primary pawn in the struggle. Isabeau and Louis moved to the queen’s fortified chateau at Melun and sent for the dauphin and other royal children. Named guardian of the children in the ordinance of 1393, Isabeau was within her rights to send for them. But Jean intercepted the convoy carrying the dauphin and other children as they made their way to Melun and forced them to turn back to Paris.35 That he recognized that he was violating Isabeau’s authority is made clear by a letter he sent that same day to the cities of France in which he justified his actions: he had intervened, thinking that something was amiss.36 Louis replied in his own public letter of 2 September: “We are amazed at the power and authority that he or they attempted to arrogate in violating the authority over the children that my lord [the king] granted to my lady [the queen] in the presence of all of us….”37 In addition, he claimed, Jean was seeking to gain control of the king, “wanting to hold him in custody or in guardianship.”38 For several weeks, the dukes remained in a stand-off, Jean in Paris, Isabeau and Louis in Melun. The people of Paris and the University supported Jean, seeing him as a good-faith financial reformer. But other significant bodies in Paris, including the Parlement and the Chambre des comptes, refused to take his side.39 Furthermore, the Royal Council denied his authority. Royal uncle Jean of 33 Monstrelet, La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, 1: 98. 34 See his justificatory letter published in Mirot, “L’Enlèvement du dauphin,” 396. 35 The letter of the ambassador Ferrando de Robledo to the king of Castile notes that Louis of Bavaria, brother of Isabeau and member of the group of guardians responsible for the dauphin, showed Jean three “cartas” from the queen ordering that the dauphin be sent to her. See the letter, printed in Mirot, “L’Enlèvement du dauphin,” 397–99. 36 The letter of the ambassador Ferrando de Robledo to the king of Castile notes that Louis of Bavaria, brother of Isabeau and member of the group of guardians responsible for the dauphin, showed Jean three “cartas” from the queen ordering that the dauphin be sent to her. The letter is printed in Mirot, “L’Enlèvement du dauphin,” 397–99. Jean’s letter justifying his actions is printed by Mirot, “L’Enlèvement du dauphin,” 396–97. 37 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces inédites, 1: 276. 38 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces inédites, 1: 282. 39 See Nordberg, Les ducs et la royauté, 201.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 43 Berry took custody of the dauphin shortly after the boy’s return to Paris and had himself named Captain General of the city, organizing the king’s army to defend it.40 Jean increased the size of his army in mid-September, causing Louis to pre­ pare for attack. On 19 September, Jean prepared his own men for attack, arming the Parisians to resist the Duke of Orléans. On 24 September, however, Pintoin reports that a group of the principal bourgeois of the city announced their refusal to use their arms against Louis of Orléans, reminding Jean that they answered only to the king or the dauphin.41 Returning to Isabeau and the problem of authority, as we have seen, Jean ignored the authority granted her by the king as guardian of the royal children: backed by a sizeable army, he could do so. But despite his show of force, Jean did not succeed because his authority was not recognized by the key players noted above.42 He was therefore forced to negotiate with the queen and Louis of Orleans. Isabeau was the obvious party to mediate peace, but she required the authority to begin negotiations. It is important to recall that, according to royal ordinance, Isabeau exercised the role of mediator only when the king was mad. As I noted, the king had fallen into madness on 16 August, but he had regained his senses on 25 August, remaining lucid until September 23 or 25, as Pintoin reports.43 It is difficult to know what this means: it did not necessarily mean that the king was functioning rationally. Still, Isabeau waited until the king was deemed insane again, and, on 27 September, accompanied by Louis, she made a first move to restore peace, leaving Melun for Corbeil, closer to Paris. Christine, residing in Paris, would have been aware of the danger, when she penned her letter of 5 October, “Une Epistre a la Royne de France.” The letter has long been taken at face value, as a personal letter requesting the queen to take action, and it has been adduced as evidence that Christine believed the queen to be frivolous and lazy, neglectful of her responsibilities to the royal family and to the people of France. One phrase in the letter in particular is responsible for the misapprehension: “Most High and Reverend Lady, although your mind is well aware and told of what it should know, it may nevertheless be true that you, seated on your royal throne surrounded with honors, cannot know, except

40 See Lehoux, Jean de France, 3: 51, especially note 5. 41 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys 3: 340–42. 42 See Nordberg, Les ducs et la royauté, 202, on the letter of September 27, in which Jean Chousat, Jean sans Peur’s treasurer and receiver general of finances, writes to the Chambre des comptes in Dijon about the Duke of Burgundy’s dogged attachment to his pretended program of reform and the equally dogged refusal of his targets to play his game. 43 Guenée, La folie de Charles VI, 295.

44 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

by someone’s report, the common problems, in words as well as in facts, which prevail upon your subjects.”44 But the letter read in its entirety tells a different story. Drawing upon the model of the Virgin Mary as co-regent with her son, Christine seeks to establish the authority Isabeau will need to mediate between the dukes. As Larry Scanlon has written, direct address “constitutes” a persona; an author does not merely address “a prince all of whose attributes are available immediately outside the text, but a prince whom he makes high, noble and excellent by so addressing.”45 Addressed not only to the queen but to a wider audience, as medieval letters were, Christine’s letter focuses attention on the queen’s aptitude for mediation and her aptness to serve as regent. After opening the letter with an apology for daring to address the queen, Christine enters into the heart of the matter: Most Revered Lady, do not therefore wonder if to you – who, according to everyone’s opinions and beliefs, can be the medicine and sovereign remedy for this kingdom now so pitifully wounded and injured, and in danger of worse – I turn and come, not to beg on behalf of a foreign land, but on behalf of your own land and natural heritage of your very own noble children. Most High and Reverend Lady, although your mind is well aware and told of what it should know, it may nevertheless be true that you, seated on your royal throne surrounded with honors, cannot know, except by someone’s report, the common problems, in words as well as in facts, which prevail upon your subjects. For this reason, High Lady, do willingly hear the complaint and pitiful regrets of the suffering and suppliant French people now full of affliction and sadness, and who cry with tearful voices to you, their supreme and revered Lady, praying, by the mercy of God, that a humble pity may show to your tender heart their desolation and misery, so that you can proceed and obtain peace soon between these two princes of the same blood and who are loved ones by nature, but who are at present brought to a quarrel by strange Fortune.46

Although Christine greets Isabeau as a powerful figure, she strategically foregrounds the queen’s precariously liminal position. She does not call out to Isabeau on behalf of a foreign land, an implicit reference to the queen’s Bavarian roots. Moreover, she stresses Isabeau’s maternity: the queen is a mother, not only of her own children, but of all the French.

44 Wisman’s edition and translation of Christine de Pizan, ”The Epistle,” 72–73. 45 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 237. 46 Christine de Pizan, “The Epistle,” 70–73.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 45 Most important, Christine’s purpose is not to convince Isabeau that she should act. Isabeau is ready to do just that. Rather, the poet is training the letter’s wider audience, reminding them of the precedent for queenly intervention. She cites a number of queens who intervened on behalf of their people, in addition to the epitome of queenly mediation, the Virgin Mary: Esther, Bathsheba, and earlier queen of France, Blanche of Castile.47 The letter thus builds its argument on female exclusion from rule: a mother, like Blanche, Isabeau poses no threat, unlike the dukes whose struggle to seize power had brought on the dire situation. Christine criticizes them with special severity in her final lines, concluding with a vigorous warning to the powerful man welcomed by Fortune.48 If he does not conduct himself wisely and with charity, he will be forever condemned by his evil reputation. Chased off like a dog, reviled by a crowd of people who shout after him that he has merited his fate, the once-powerful man makes clear that the point of the letter is to promote the queen over the destructive dukes. Reinforcing Christine’s letter, a new ordinance authorizing the queen to mediate was passed by the Royal Council on 12 October. The ordinance accords Isabeau full authority (“puissance”) to resolve the crisis through friendly means, if possible; if not, it stipulates that her orders should be treated exactly like those of the king. Her authority enhanced, Isabeau entered arbitration, and a peace treaty was signed on October 16, temporarily heading off disaster. To support Isabeau against the belligerent dukes over the next few years, Christine further builds her case for the queen in the Book of the City of Ladies and the Book of the Three Virtues. While Christine’s most important feminine defense, the Book of the City of Ladies, praises women for their literary, artistic, moral, and spiritual achievements, it begins and ends with the Virgin Mary, a regent, a woman who co-rules with her son. In chapter four, I discuss Isabeau’s association with the Virgin during her entry into Paris for her coronation; Christine cannot help but evoke the queen with such imagery. The first queen mentioned by the allegorical figure Raison in part one of the Book of the City of Ladies is the Empress Nicole, the Queen of Sheba, frequently interpreted as a figure for the Virgin during the Middle Ages, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly through her association with the Bride of Christ of the “Song of Solomon.”49 A series of regents follows the Queen of Sheba: Fredegunde, Semiramis, Zenobia,

47 48 49

Christine de Pizan, “The Epistle,” 76–77. “Christine de Pizan, “The Epistle,” 80–81. As can be seen in the south portal of the west façade, the portal of the Mère de Dieu, of the Amiens Cathedral.

46 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Artemisia, Lilia, Berenice, Opis, Lavinia, Clotilde, Blanche of Castile, and contemporary princesses of France. Like Isabeau, these women did not rule independently, in their own names, but as regents, representatives, of their husbands, sons or fathers. Isabeau appears in Book 2, at the head of the good and generous princesses of France. She is a praiseworthy woman, Christine claims, “in whom there is nothing of cruelty, extortion, or any evil vice, but only good love and beneficence towards her subjects.”50 The construction implies a contrast between Isabeau and the warring dukes. They are cruel; they are extortionists; they are filled with vice. She is not. Christine, then, promotes Isabeau’s regency, a position compatible with her understanding of gender. As she explains in the Cité des dames, “God wanted men and women to serve him differently, and to help each other and give each other mutual aid, each according to his manner, and He thus created the two sexes to be of different natures, as necessary to the accomplishment of the tasks.”51 Christine also conveys very clearly that women are capable substitutes for men when they are absent. In the Mutacion de la Fortune, she narrates her own metamorphosis into a man so as to be able to take care of her family when she is left a young widow.52 A consideration of Christine’s handbook for female behavior, the Book of the Three Virtues, also written around 1405, further illuminates the poet’s vision of the princess as mediator rather than ruler in her own right. Dedicated to the dauphine, Marguerite of Burgundy, the work offers the girl a lesson in real time with its implicit glossing of current events. The female’s purpose in the political world is to intercede, Christine insists; force for peace, she tempers impulsive male reactions. When war threatens her country, the princess’s task is “to be the means of peace and harmony, and to work to avoid war because of the trouble that can arise from it.”53 Christine also reconciles women’s compassionate, maternal, and peace-loving qualities with the need for the authority. The mediating princess will attempt “through cheer and sweetness to attract [her husband] to her point of view, and if she recognizes that she needs to tell him something, she will bring it up when they are alone, sweetly and gently. Sometimes she will urge him because of the devotion he owes her, sometimes by his pity for her, other times 50 51 52 53

Christine de Pizan, La Città delle dame, 422. To date the most accessible edition of the Book of the City of Ladies is Caraffi and Richard’s edition with accompanying translation into Italian. La Città delle dame, 92. See Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la mutacion de fortune, 1: 46–53. Christie de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, 35.

Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan | 47 laughing as if she is playing.”54 Women are the excluded from certain male occu­ pations and yet essential to society’s successful functioning, because they correct certain potentially destructive male flaws. Despite the traditional association of women with the body and men with rationality, women according to Christine represent measure and intelligence as opposed to unthinkingly emotional men. She writes that “men are by nature hardier and hotter, and the great desire they have to avenge themselves does not allow them to think in advance about the dangers and evils that might come from this.”55 Without female mediation, male society would degenerate into constant strife. In his 1888 study of the Cabochian revolt, Alfred Coville assesses Isabeau’s regency as failure because of her own incompetence and favoritism, pronouncing that she was “incapable of healing the kingdom.” She tried several times to re-establish peace between the dukes, but, at heart, she long bore a marked preference for the Orleanist party. In January, 1403, she managed to get the two dukes, Philip of Burgundy and Louis of Orléans, to sign a treaty of reconciliation; at the beginning of 1405, she accepted a friendship with Jean sans Peur; these demonstrations could not have been sincere.56

Two unjustified assumptions underlie Colville’s judgement, first, that feuding was an aberration easily controlled by competent mediation. Scholarship on feuding suggests, however, that such conflict was endemic, “integral to the conduct of politics in early modern France because it was one of the key forms of competition for power, a mechanism by which the struggle for dominance was played out,” as Stuart Carroll writes.57 Feuding aimed to settle specific conflicts like the one I have been describing, the struggle for custody of the king, and occurred “between groups of roughly equal socio-political power, where there [was] no ‘higher’ political authority which [was] capable of ending the dispute, either through the participants’ mutual acceptance of its right to arbitrate, or through its ability to stamp out the dispute forcibly.”58 A claimant challenged, so to speak, with an act of violence. The victim of the violence responded to prevent the result sought by the instigator, and the violence escalated.

54 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, 55. 55 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, 34. 56 Coville, Les Cabochiens et l’ordonnance de 1413, 23. 57 Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud,” 7. 58 Halsall, “Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West,” 21.

48 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Christine intervened in an increasingly disruptive feud by alerting her readers about the dangers of the diverse claims of Charles’s male relatives and attempting to bolster Isabeau’s authority to mediate among them. As E. Jeffrey Richards has demonstrated, Christine was interested in legal scholarship; she would have been capable of understanding the nuances of the legal arguments about regency common among writers of her time.59 But for her public, she adopted the method of Jean Gerson, who insisted upon the value of images. Gerson advised his congregation to make present the “piteous appearance of your Savior Jesus” in the “eyes of your thought.”60 In the same way, the vividly imagistic “Epistle,” Book of the City of Ladies, and the Book of the Three Virtues promote a theory of female ­co-regency through figures like Blanche of Castile, mother co-ruling with her minor son, and the Virgin Marie, to counter the claims of the dukes who wish to usurp the king’s power. The type of government most likely to protect the French from the dangers wrought by their king’s madness is co-regency, where the queen, who is peaceful and conciliatory, rules in the name of her son or husband.

59 Richards, “Bartalo da Sassaferrato as a Possible Source.” 60 Gerson, Œuvres complètes, 7: 467.

3

Misogynistic Throwaways: The Case of Isabeau of Bavaria

Despite the tools provided by recent studies of female authority in medieval and early modern Europe for examining how women of the past wielded influence, old narratives of female promiscuity, intriguing, incompetence, frivolity, and cupidity continue to circulate in the form of what we might think of as “throwaways” in larger histories. In what follows I focus on some of the throwaways that have been aimed at Isabeau of Bavaria to explore the perduring tendency to base assessments of women tangential to a larger study on outdated tropes from classic secondary sources. In the previous chapter I discussed the need to take into account the specificity of Isabeau’s regency. In this chapter I focus on modern misogynistic descriptions of her—that she was obese, that she was dazed and confused, that she had an affair with Louis of Orléans, that she could not speak French—making the case for going to the primary sources and reading them critically and carefully when secondary sources resort to these old chestnuts in place of primary documentation. The once-reviled Isabeau has been undergoing rehabilitation since at least the mid-twentieth century. Regarding some of the misogynistic anecdotes discussed here, however, their authors either ignore this scholarship in favor of secondary sources that are sometimes centuries old, or indicate that they are aware of at least some of the scholarship and cite it, but do not explain why they

50 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

reject the rest of it.1 To be clear, I do not insist that there are always “correct” or “incorrect” interpretations of Isabeau’s career: although some interpretations are verifiable whereas others are clearly false, or, at least, unverifiable, the primary sources leave much to the imagination. Moreover, the war with which Isabeau is associated, the civil war between the Orleanists, or Armagnacs, and Burgundians, was long and the queen’s role in it relatively short; therefore the harm of relying on such anecdotes may seem negligeable. Still, I hope to make the point that historians have an obligation to encourage students and readers more generally to recognize emotionally compelling but misleading narratives for what they are. I am not suggesting that series like the Tudors, Versailles, or the Borgias, which capitalize on highly sexualized and/or stereotypical depictions of women should not be made. On the contrary. But different levels of accuracy are demanded for different genres. It is imperative that scholarly essays distinguish between black legend and information based on careful readings of primary sources.

Isabellan anecdotes and their sources As a quick google search reveals, in the popular imagination, Isabeau of Bavaria remains mired in unflattering legend. Moreover, her black legend continues to crop up occasionally in broader histories of her period, with references to her imagined infidelities, her greed, and her general incompetence remaining fixtures. The transmission of Isabeau’s black legend to the present is complex. During her lifetime, with the exception of a handful of entries for a single year, 1405, composed under the influence of the queen’s Burgundian enemies, chronicles report positively on her political activity.2 Michel Pintoin, author of the Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, relates for example in an entry of 1408 that Isabeau met with the Royal Council, which, frightened by Jean of Burgundy’s recent successes, decided that it was in the best interests of the kingdom that Isabeau continue to serve as regent. The queen’s lawyer, Pintoin reports, compared Isabeau to

1

Isabeau’s rehabilitation has been extensive. See Heckmann, Stellvertreter, Mit- und Ersatzherrscher; Gibbons, “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France” and The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria; Famiglietti, Tales of the Marriage Bed and Royal Intrigue; Straub, “Isabeau de Bavière, Legende und Wirklichkeit,” Grandeau, “Les dernières années d’Isabeau de Bavière,” “Les Dames qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière,” and “Le Dauphin Jean, duc de Touraine, fils de Charles VI (1398–1417);” Kimm, Isabeau de Baviere, reine de France; and Bonenfant, Du meurtre de Montereau au traité de Troyes. My own work in this area, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria, builds on a well-established body of scholarship. 2 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 4: 90.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 51 Queen Blanche of Castile, who had prudently ruled the kingdom with her son, the future St. Louis. In an entry of 1412, Pintoin reports that “the entire people again received the entering venerable queen and acclaimed her with such exuberant joy, such royal laud, it was as if they were receiving a king returning to the realm from triumphing over enemies.”3 As we saw in the previous chapter, royal ordinances demonstrate great trust in her, assigning her from 1393 on to various positions: mediator between the feuding factions vying for control over the mad king, head of a college of guardians for the young heir to the throne, overseer of the kingdom’s finances. Even her role in the now infamous Treaty of Troyes of 1420 making Henry V the king’s legal heir in place of her own son, future Charles VII of France, attracted little comment during her lifetime. But some years after the Treaty of Troyes a rumor began that Isabeau Charles VII was not his father’s son, and, increasingly remote from the feud that had dominated the early years of the fifteenth century and guided by stereotypes of feminine fickleness, historians of the following centuries began to condemn her as manipulating the dukes for her own gain.4 Her reputation deteriorated further when she became associated with the Cour amoureuse, the Court of Love, whose charter was discovered in the early eighteenth century.5 These dif­ ferent threads were gathered together by champion of the Revolution Louise de Kéralio in her diatribe against the queens of France.6 Kéralio makes the German-­ speaking Isabeau into a prototype of Marie-Antoinette—like Antoinette, Isabeau was “greedy, incapable of moderation in her desires, tormented by the desire to rule”—which was then taken up by nineteenth-century historians, many of whom were themselves rabidly anti-German for long-standing political reasons, and woven into narratives of national identity throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.7 Although nineteenth-century French historians deserve immense credit for professionalization of the discipline and for sifting, transcribing, and piecing together the thousands of primary source documents that formed the basis for much of what we know today about the French Middle Ages, they often approached the women in their sources impressionistically, as potential love interests. For example, Adolphe Mathurin de Lescure, politician, historian and winner of multiple prizes from the Academie française for his works, seems to 3 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 4: 724. 4 See Adams, Life and Afterlife, 38–72, for more detail on what follows. 5 On the Cour amoureuse and Isabeau see Adams, Life and Afterlife, 149–67. 6 Kéralio, Les crimes des reines de France, 99–142. 7 Kéralio, Les crimes des reines de France, 107.

52 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

have preferred brunettes to blondes. After a long rhapsody about the dark-haired Countess of Chateaubriant, he writes about King François I’s extremely influential mistress, the Duchess of Étampes, that “after seeing the Duchess of Étampes, we can say without hesitation: here is a woman with whom it will be easy to be straightforward (“juste”) and whom we will not flatter. We could uncover her pretty white breast, we could kneel down and take the shoe off of her little fairy feet, without the shadow of a naughty thought (“mauvaise pensée”).”8 He then compares himself to a young page assuring his mistress that he could watch the duchess undress without blushing or becoming aroused: “we feel nothing in front of madame d’Étampes …. she does not lead us into temptation, no matter how naturally fragile the historical chronicler may be.” Auguste Vallet de Viriville, chartiste and professor at the École des Chartes, whose archival work on Charles VII in particular has been appreciated for generations, writes of Agnès Sorel, mistress of the king, like a love-struck suitor. In the midst of the terrible moral disorder of Charles VII’s reign, Vallet de Viriville writes of Agnès that the most serious historian and the monuments most worthy of credence show her to have been sweet, pious, charitable, visiting the poor, soothing quarrels. A stranger to politics and nonetheless enjoying an immense, absolute influence over the king, she never participated in court affairs in the restless and misguided way that characterized the more or less hidden power of later ­favorites-en-titre, and wielded only a noble and generous influence through her good deeds.9

She must be acknowledged as the last personification of the lady fair, he concludes, the inspiring lover of the Middle Ages, the ideal woman who could not exist in the world.10 Valentina Visconti, Isabeau’s French-Italian cousin and sister-in-law has also been an object of desire for French historians; Alfred Coville, inveterate critic of Isabeau, as we saw in the previous chapter, remarks that “the figure of Valentina Visconti is too often deformed by a delayed romanticism.”11Émile

8 Lescure, Les amours de François I, 246. 9 Vallet de Viriville, “De l’Amour,” 379. Post 1858, Vallet de Viriville dropped “de Virville.” To avoid confusion I refer to him by the longer form, whatever the year of the publication. 10 Vallet de Viriville, “De l’Amour,” 380. 11 Coville, “Valentine Visconti et Charles d’Orléans,” 17.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 53 Collas pronounces her “one of the most seductive figures in our history.”12 She was not a perfect beauty, but this only made her the more attractive: In fact, Valentina’s face is more adorably delicate, more pleasing, her bearing and attitude more charming than absolutely regular and classically beautiful. Her intelligent face radiates a smiling good will.

Add to this attractive face a cultivated spirit, the taste for art and literature that her education at her father’s refined court had given her, an appreciation, at once innate and developed by circumstance, for all things elegant, which, already familiar in Italy were beginning to spread throughout France… To the charms of Valentina’s face and mind add the qualities of heart that her contemporaries recognized in her.13

Collas, moonstruck over Valentina, deplores the German Isabeau. Describing Valentina and Isabeau’s entry into Paris on 22 August 1389 for Isabeau’s coronation, he contrasts the uncorrupted Italian duchess with the debauched Teutonic queen: Together, these two young women introduced themselves to the Parisians, one of them, Valentina, leaving our history with the purest and most delicate of souvenirs, that of her conjugal love, the seduction of her intelligence, her courage in adversity, while the other, Isabeau, forgetting or scorning her queenly, womanly, and maternal duties, completely in the thrall of her low passions, betrayed and delivered her husband, her son and her people to the enemy. This one, the Bavarian, is the shame of the reign of Charles VI. The other, Italian and French, is its grace and honor.14

Physically, Isabeau was not exactly repulsive, chartiste Marcel Thibault avers, but, in his mind, her features are not those associated with femininity. He does not specify from which images he derives his detailed view, but she has a “raised forehead, large eyes in a wide face with strong features; prominent nose with wide nostrils; large mouth with curved, expressive lips, round, fleshy chin; very

12 Collas, Valentine de Milan, iii. 13 Collas, Valentine de Milan, 21. 14 Collas, Valentine de Milan, 56.

54 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

dark hair….” True, she is not completely without charm, he continues, citing an extremely unflattering poem propagated by her enemies, the Burgundians: Isabeau did not have a pretty figure, nor regular features; still, she made up for her “low stature” in other ways: her face possessed a great “jolivité,” that is, it was vivacious and agreeable; her olive coloring and “her ugly skin,” seemed strange or foreign (“étranges”); she radiated a piquant charm ….15

But she simply did not conform to the ideal of the sparkling, witty conversationalist so prized in Thibault’s upper middle-class fin-de-siècle French society. Moreover, as wife and mother she was sorely lacking. She did nothing to prevent Charles VI from falling into a downward spiral of pleasures, so engaged was she in her own life of luxury. Thibault claims, without footnote, that when she was not off on some pilgrimage, or confined to bed because of childbearing, she lived in a whirlwind of insane amusements and splendid celebrations. And while the king wasted his strength, compromised his dignity, ruined his intelligence, she, because of her immoderate lifestyle, produced for the kingdom only sickly babies.16

Above all, Thibault judges that she was never truly French. She dressed and behaved, outwardly, in ways “that were appropriate to her role on the French ‘stage;’ but, underneath, she remained German.”17 Perhaps most damning of all, Isabeau has consistently been assumed to have been obese, an assumption that lingers even in the most recent scholarship. A 2022 study of representations of queens’ bodies refers to Isabeau’s “embonpoint,” her stoutness.18 The notion seems to have worked its way into modern scholarship via nineteenth-century medical historian Auguste Brachet, who asserted that the queen suffered from a “pathlogical obesity.”19 As for Brachet’s source, he cites Pintoin. However, when one follows the footnote, one discovers a significant misinterpretation. Pintoin reports that in 1409, the king, who had recently regained his senses, decreed, once again, that during his “absences” the queen would substitute for him; when she was prevented from stepping in because of “mole carnis” (physical maladies) or other problems, the dauphin would take 15 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 105. 16 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 207. 17 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 108. 18 Perez, Le corps de la reine, 129. 19 Brachet, Pathologie mentale des rois de France, 44.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 55 over.20 Brachet, following Pintoin’s translator Louis Bellaguet, misinterprets this as excess weight. But “moles carnis” is a common expression for physical illness or anguish of the flesh in a philosophical sense, as quick google search reveals. Still more conclusive, the king’s decree makes the translation of “moles carnis” as obesity impossible. If the queen had been too overweight to rule, she would have been permanently unable to assume duties: obesity is not an occasional problem that comes and goes. As for the unflattering renditions of Isabeau, nineteenth-century historians tend to imagine three periods during which the queen lost control of her reputation: 1405, 1413, and 1417. In 1405, the year that I have highlighted as a particularly strained moment during which Jean of Burgundy tried to incite an uprising in Paris while Louis and Isabeau holed up in Melun, four criticisms of Isabeau appear in Pintoins’s chronicle, the only criticisms of the queen in that massive work.21 It is crucial to note that the chronicler received his information during this period from Burgundians; the short-lived disapproval is therefore predictable.22 During roughly this same time, a Burgundian poem, the “Songe véritable” appeared in which Charles VI’s closest advisors and Isabeau are chastised for cupidity. And yet, a close reading the entire poem shows that Isabeau enjoyed a positive reputation during those years, except among the Burgundians. The poem criticizes Louis of Orléans, Jean of Berry, and the king’s grand maître d’hôtel, Jean de Montaigu, whom Jean of Burgundy would have put to death in 1409, and, last, Isabeau: in short, all those standing between the king and Jean of Burgundy. In the poem, the allegorical figure Fortune proclaims that she is going to deprive the Orleanists, including the queen, of their greatest gifts. But, for the queen this is not her riches. Rather, it is her reputation. Indeed, Fortune adds, she has already begun to erode Isabeau’s good name over the past months. The timing, of course, corresponds to the time when Jean of Burgundy began to perceive Isabeau as a threat.23 Fortune is scheming to ruin other courtiers—but has not yet succeeded at the time of the poem’s composition—and she is also planning to destroy Isabeau’s reputation. Such a scheme only makes sense if the queen was well regarded.

20 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 4: 285. 21 These occur in 3:228; 266; 288–90. I discuss these at length in chapter four of The Life and Afterlife. 22 See Adams, The Life and Afterlife, 124–40. 23 “Le Songe véritable,” 60, lines 1736–38.

56 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The second period during which Isabeau’s reputation supposedly took a hit is the Cabochian uprising of 1413. A common perception exists that Isabeau’s ladies, arrested by the Burgundians, were targeted either because they were genuinely a dissolute group or because they were believed to be so. But neither of these is accurate. Their arrest must be seen the larger context of a series of arrests of non-Burgundians in positions of power. A survey of the chronicles shows that the dauphin’s chancellor and his chamberlain, both of whom the young man had appointed to replace the Duke of Burgundy’s men, were arrested along with several other of his men. About a month later a group of Parisians broke into the Hôtel Saint Pol, where they demanded that another group associated with the royal family, male and female, be handed over.24 The latter group was released on August 4.25 The ladies, then, were arrested, like their male counterparts from the households of the king, the dauphin, and the queen because they held important positions. The chroniclers describing the incident do not distinguish between the reasons for arrest or on their gender, nor do they claim that the ladies were defamed. Only modern scholars focus exclusively on the queen’s ladies and assert that their bad reputations were the reason for their arrest. Finally, in April 1417 the Armagnacs, claiming that certain of the queen’s men-at-arms were up to “dishonest things,” made a sweep of Isabeau’s chateau at Vincennes, arresting several of her men-at-arms and shutting down her court.26 On 5 April 1417, with the Armagnacs in control of Paris, the dauphin Jean of Touraine, a Burgundian protégé, died suddenly. The new dauphin, Charles, had been married into the house of Anjou, which was Armagnac. Just before the death of the dauphin Jean, Isabeau and the young Charles had been in Senlis, negotiating the nervous dauphin’s entry into Armagnac-controlled Paris.27 When Jean died, Isabeau and the new dauphin installed themselves in the chateau at Vincennes. But the Armagnacs did not want the new dauphin to remain with his mother, who was seeking reconciliation between the factions.28 The Burgundians were preparing to march on Paris to “find a way to govern the king and the dauphin,” and the Armagnacs knew that if Jean of Burgundy made peace with the dauphin, they would be cast from power.29 The Armagnacs, “the important men 24 25 26 27 28 29

For accounts of the arrest, see Monstrelet, La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, 2: 352–54; Le Fèvre de Saint Rémy, Choix de chroniques, 80–82, and Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 5:44–46. See Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, 488. Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, 533 See Grandeau, “Le dauphin Jean, duc de Touraine,” 708–13. For details of the episode see Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue, 178–79. See Fénin, Mémoires de Pierre de Fénin, 70–71.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 57 of the court,” counseled the king to chase the queen’s security from her chateau.30 Isabeau was exiled to Blois and then Tours. Despite its flagrantly political motivation, early historians touted this incident as evidence of Isabeau and her court’s reputation for debauchery: the court, historians have assumed, had been regarded as a den of iniquity. And yet, even some contemporary chroniclers understood the political motivation. Monstrelet, for example, notes that with the queen safely under lock and key, the dauphin and the Armagnacs plundered her treasure.31

Isabeau as linguistic incompetent A form of vilification popular from the last decades of the twentieth century has been to cast Isabeau as a foil, as the baleful opposite of a good figure. She has been the traitor and adulterer opposed to the patriotic maid Joan of Arc, promiscuous spendthrift against the austere proto-feminist Christine de Pizan, and evil mother against the good mother Yolande of Aragon (or Anjou), Charles VII’ mother-in-law, also tasked with managing her dynasty. Philippe Erlanger names the first two chapters of his study of Charles VII “La mauvaise mère,” a reference to Isabeau, and “La bonne mère,” a reference to Yolande. In Erlanger’s estimation, Isabeau was neither the monster nor the unnatural mother that she has sometimes been thought to be: she was just busy enjoying the caresses of her lover Louis of Orléans while humble nurses watched over the little Charles.32 Yolande, on the other hand, was the good fairy who snatched the little prince from the evil genies and brought him to a peaceful oasis.33 Throughout the course of the almost entirely footnote-free work Erlanger offers not the slightest justification for the characterizations either of the “Bavarian” or Yolande in whom “burning Spain” and “harsh Lorraine” met under the peaceful protection of the Valois.34 These examples appear farfetched, the anti-Germanism flagrant. It will also be objected that the authors are not serious histories. Still, the narrative continues to circulate in an attenuated form. A recent set of articles on Yolande of Aragon pits Isabeau as the incompetent bungler in contrast with the successful administrator Yolande, as a frivolous dimwit unable to manage her reputation 30 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys 6: 72. 31 Monstrelet, La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, 3:176. 32 Erlanger, Charles VII et son mystère, 22. 33 Erlanger, Charles VII et son mystère, 29. 34 Erlanger, Charles VII et son mystère, 28.

58 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

in opposition to the supremely confident, damage-controlling Yolande. Unlike Yolande, “Isabeau never matured; she was stuck fast in an adolescent phase of avid selfishness underwritten by an astonishing aptitude for intrigue” and her “flamboyance and party-girl reputation . . . establish[ed] the foundation for the propaganda that weakened her influence.”35 No primary sources are offered as evidence, only secondary sources which themselves offer no evidence: Charity Cannon Willard; Marie-Josèphe Pinet, who propagated the narrative of Isabeau’s bad reputation, claiming, without citation, that “all year [1405], people never ceased to talk about the queen;”36 and Marcel Thibault, whose attitude toward the queen should surely militate against accepting his claim uncritically. According to Thibault: She remained German in her innermost heart and soon we will see her, oblivious to the noble task that had fallen upon her, presiding in a sense over the misfortunes that will rend the kingdom, and which, throughout the long year, cover it with misery and ruins until a heroic girl from the Marches of Lorraine, saves the crown that this foreigner almost lost.37

The most subtle and eloquent example of Isabeau as foil is set forth in Françoise Autrand’s erudite biography of Charles VI. In this work, Isabeau is positioned to her disadvantage against Valentina Visconti. We have seen Collas mooning over the French-Italian beauty and registering disgust for her German relative. Autrand’s Isabeau is not Collas’s “shame of the reign of Charles VI,” or even Willard’s greedy vulgarian, but a dazed and confused woman who, next to Valentina, was quite simply out of her league. In a discussion of Isabeau’s magnificent three-day coronation ceremony in 1389, the biography depicts the queen as a tongue-tied simpleton. The depiction is an old favorite with earlier historians, as well. Autrand draws perhaps on Collas, who zeroes in on Isabeau’s linguistic ineptitude. Glossing chronicler Jean Froissart’s description of Isabeau, accompanied by Valentina, during the parade and subsequent festivities, Collas describes the elite bourgeois of Paris presenting the king, the queen and Valentine with gifts, carried to them on elegant litters. Collas, following Froissart, notes the king’s response: “Thank you, good people, these are beautiful and rich.”38 Collas then continues: 35

Rohr, “Self-fashioning Stateswomanship,” 67 and 70, and “The Practice of Political Motherhood in Late-Medieval France: Yolande of Aragon, Bonne-Mère of France,” 23–47. 36 Pinet, Christine de Pisan (1364–1430), 130. 37 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 427. 38 Collas, Valentine de Milan,12.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 59 The queen seems to have said nothing, which is not surprising, because at that point it seems that she still had trouble speaking French. As for Valentine, the chronicle mentions that she “thanked profusely and wisely those who had presented them….”39

Collas’s image of the tongue-tied Isabeau has been absorbed into the scholarship on her, emerging periodically in such assumptions as Eric Russell Chamberlin’s comment that her “grasp of French was never complete and she spoke with a thick guttural accent to the end of her days.”40 The image features too in Autrand’s Charles VI. Commenting, like Collas, on Froissart’s report on the presentation of gifts by the Parisians, the biography asserts that whereas Charles VI and Valentina offer their gracious thanks, Isabeau, in contrast, “said nothing.”41 Why? Was it awkwardness? Did she not yet speak French even though she had been in France for four years at that point? Or was it simply the malice of a somewhat nationalistic chronicler who was happy to observe that eloquence, that eminently royal quality, belonged only to the French line? As in Collas’s work, the nationalistic chronicler is not named, but it is clear that that both Collas and Autrand are citing Jean Froissart. Of the two major sources of information on Isabeau’s coronation, the chronicle of the Michel Pintoin is extremely concise, and it says absolutely nothing about anyone—the king, the queen or Valentina—responding to their gift-givers.42 The chronicle of Froissart, however, narrates the episode at length. An examination of the episode as Froissart recounts it, however, reveals that it does not at all suggest that Isabeau was incapable of expressing herself in French. This chronicle account offers instead a particularly useful exercise in the necessity of reading sources critically and carefully.

Froissart’s gaps Froissart begins his episode in St. Denis, some five miles north of Paris. It is noon on 20 August 1389, and Queen Isabeau of Bavaria and Duchess of Touraine Valentina Visconti are about to begin the procession south to the city.43 Although 39 Collas, Valentine de Milan,12. 40 Chamberlin, The Count of Virtue, 176. 41 Autrand, Charles VI, 238. 42 See Pintoin, Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 609–617, and Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 5–25. 43 Isabeau was the first queen of France to be crowned separate from her husband. See Fanny Cosandey, La Reine de France, 129–30.

60 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Isabeau had married Charles VI in 1385, she has not yet been crowned because the king has only recently assumed personal rule of the kingdom. The previous autumn in Reims on the return from warring in Flanders, he had called a meeting of his council, apparently planned beforehand because there seemed to be no pressing business to discuss. The rationale for the meeting, however, was quickly revealed by the cardinal of Laon, Pierre Aycelin de Montagu, who announced that the king, then twenty years old, no longer required the tutelage of his uncles and had decided to rule for himself.44 A magnificent six-day celebration was then planned to mark this rite of passage. At the same time, Isabeau would be crowned and Valentina, newly married to the king’s brother and most intimate counselor, Louis, then duke of Touraine, would make her official entry. And yet, picking up the account of Isabeau’s entry and coronation at this point omits something crucial, something that scholars who rely on Froissart for evidence that Isabeau could not speak French miss. Let’s begin again, focusing on the information Froissart himself gives about his chronicle narration. In other words, let’s focus carefully on what the primary sources actually say. On the twentieth day of August in the year of our Lord 1389, writes Froissart, so many people were gathered inside and outside of Paris that it was a marvel to see.45 They had flocked to watch Isabeau of Bavaria, queen since 1385 but not yet crowned, make her entry into the city. The six-day festivities were to be magnificent but also traditional. As the chronicler Michel Pintoin, the Monk of Saint Denis, explains, King Charles had enlisted the esteemed Blanche, Duchess of Orléans, the kingdom’s expert on tradition, to peruse the manuscripts of Saint Denis for information on earlier entries and coronations.46 Earlier in his chronicle Pintoin had related that Blanche had also been Isabeau’s first mentor in France, assuming charge of the girl when she arrived at the royal chateau of Creil just after her marriage.47 Posthumous daughter of King Charles IV (r.1324–28) and his second wife, Jeanne d’Evreux, and married to Philip of Orléans, second son of King Philip VI (r. 1328–), Blanche took her duties seriously, as Froissart’s descriptions of the elaborate pageantry demonstrate. These descriptions are generally accepted as accurate, because Froissart explains that he was there, in person, to record the festival for posterity. Preceding his long narration of the entry and coronation, Froissart recounts that he had been 44 Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, 129. 45 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14:5–6. 46 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 1: 610 47 Pintoin recounts that the king left his new bride in the custodie of the Duchess of Orléans and the Count of Eu, “both of them mature,” Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 1: 360.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 61 in Schoonhoven, in Holland, visiting his patron Guy of Blois, when he decided to return to France to record the events for his massive chronicle-in-progress.48 Of the greatest significance for understanding his depiction of Isabeau, Froissart also reports his method for recording such an enormous, multi-faceted set of festivals. He explains that he returned to France for information on “the meeting that the French and English had held at Leulinghem [where Charles VI had declared his independence from his uncles] and also for the very noble festival that would be held in Paris for the entry of Queen Isabeau of France, who had not yet made her formal entrance.”49 His plan was to record in his chronicle things that he had personally witnessed: “I intended to write and register everything that I saw….”50 But no single human being could witness all of the events of such a festival with his own eyes; therefore, Froissart adds that he would also rely on things that he had been told first-hand: “had heard said about what had truly happened at the entry and the coming into Paris of the queen of France….”51 In his recounting of the entry and coronation festivities, Froissart does not overtly differentiate between what he personally witnessed and what he only heard about from others. Still, the distinction is clear. For example, the chronicler foregrounds his status as eye-witness in his highly-detailed description of the initial procession’s long path into Paris from St. Denis and finally on to Notre-Dame. We learn the precise order in which the party traveled and who accompanied whom. As befitting his position as second to the king alone, the king’s brother, future Louis of Orléans, then Duke of Touraine, rode alongside the queen’s litter, which also carried Queen Jeanne, widow of Charles II of Navarre, and the aforementioned Blanche, Duchess of Orléans; Valentina Visconti, the new duchess of Touraine, married to the duke just weeks before, followed on a richly decorated palfrey, which distinguished her from the other important ladies of the court who rode in litters, the duchesses of Burgundy and Berry leading the pack. Froissart further gives the many pageants that performed for the procession as they made their way through Paris similarly detailed treatment. The pageants’ traditional iconography created parallels between the queen’s entry into Paris and the assumption of the Queen of heaven, he explains, enacting scenes from Virgin’s life.52 Reinforcing the message of the pageants, the date of the festival’s 48 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 5. 49 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 4–5. 50 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 5. 51 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 5. 52 Kipling, Enter the King, 294. See also 78–85 for a detailed description of other pageants relating Isabeau to the Virgin Marie and stressing her status as mediator. See also Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony, 81.

62 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

opening draws a parallel between the queen’s entry into Paris and the Virgin’s into heaven: the octave Sunday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, that is, that holy day’s octave Sunday. At the first gate into Paris on the road from Saint Denis, the Bastide, Froissart writes, young children dressed like angels sing melodiously against a starry sky. Alongside this celestial choir, an image of Our Lady holds a baby waving a toy made of a large nut. The sky is richly adorned with the arms of France and Bavaria.53 A series of pageants is described in similar detail as we follow the queen and her entourage through the streets to the cathedral of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, we are told, all descend, the four dukes, the queen, the others riding on palfreys and in litters, and proceed into the cathedral for the coronation. But once the enormous party vanishes into the church, the flood of detail dries up. All in all, the chronicler uses over 1500 words to describe the procession through Paris. To the coronation, the reason for the procession and highlights of the festival, which went on for days, he allots fewer than one hundred. He does not mention the queen’s ritual anointing or any of the traditions that the duchess Blanche presumably had uncovered. He writes only that the queen of France was conducted and led into the church to the choir at the great altar, and there she knelt and prayed as she saw fit and offered four golden cloths and offered to the treasury of Notre-Dame the lovely crown that the angels had put on her head at the Gate to Paris, where she entered as described above, and immediately were readied messieurs Jehan de la Rivière and Jehan le Merchier who gave her one of the richest [crowns] that ever was and the bishop named above and the four aforementioned dukes put it on her head.54

The summary description of the lengthy and magnificent anointing and coronation reveals that Froissart’s sources for the event were not eye-witnesses. This is not surprising. Had Froissart or his friends managed to crowd inside the cathedral, surely they would not have been among the select few near enough the altar to see the events. For this part of the festival he was working with hearsay. A similar move from a flood of detail to a brief mention occurs much later in Froissart’s descriptions of the gifts that the bourgeois of Paris presented to the king, the queen and, finally, Valentina, each in their own chambers at the Hôtel Saint Pol. It is obvious that the chronicler either saw for himself or received copiously detailed eye-witness reports about what went on in the chambers of the 53 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 8. 54 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 13.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 63 king and Valentina. However, an examination of the order of events suggests that Froissart did not observe Isabeau receiving her gifts. According to Froissart’s description, some forty of the city’s most notable men carried litters with gifts through the city, arriving finally at the Hôtel Saint Pol. First two men dressed as “savages” enter the king’s chambers, which are open.55 The king thanks the men, announcing that the gifts are beautiful and rich. Froissart then observes that the bourgeois leave the room. But Froissart (or his observant eye-witness informant) remains with the king. We know this because after announcing the departure of the bourgeois the chronicler continues to narrate what is happening in the king’s chambers. Froissart details that the king suggests to Guilleme des Bordes and Jean de Montaigu that they approach the presents for a better look, which they do.56 In contrast, Froissart cannot have been present when Isabeau received her gifts. He enumerates the gifts given to Isabeau, which he would have seen being carried through the streets by the two men dressed like a bear and a unicorn, but he has nothing at all to say about the presentation of the gifts. This is easily explained: he was still in the king’s chambers, observing the events noted above when Isabeau accepted presents in her own chambers. He could not register the queen’s response to her gifts if he was not there. However, the presentation to Valentina is carefully detailed, like the king’s, and, once again, Froissart records the recipient’s response to the gifts.57 This too is easily explained. By the time of the third presentation Froissart (or his eye-witness informant) had moved to Valentina’s chamber to hear her words. No one can know for certain how much of the festival Froissart observed. Still, the explanation that I propose here makes sense of the gaps in his narrative passed over in silence by those who attribute Isabeau’s apparent silence to an inability to speak French rather than Froissart’s whereabouts during the time that the queen received her presents. More definitive, however, my hypothesis resolves a contradiction in the last sentence of Froissart’s section on the entry and coronation, a contradiction that like the narrative gap has been passed over in silence by other readers of the gift-giving scene. At the end of the festivities, Froissart writes, the king and the queen “grandly thanked all those who spoke to them and who had come to the festival.”58 Not just the king, but the king and the queen, uttered words that Froissart records as befitting the occasion. 55 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 17–20. 56 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 19. 57 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 20. 58 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 14: 25. My emphasis.

64 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Froissart himself, then, shows us that the queen could speak French: how did she manage to articulate her appreciation “grandly” on Friday if on Tuesday she was incapable of expressing herself in the language? Another fact that makes an inability to speak French improbable is that Isabeau served as a mediator between the warring princes. Such a job requires a delicate touch, a skill at diplomacy, which would be impossible without fluency in the language in which negotiations were being conducted. Frequently depicted mediating in chronicles, Isabeau has left traces of her words in documents that record moments from such negotiations. In a document created by the chancery but written as if in her own voice, she describes the procedures that she will employ for reinstating peace between Louis of Orléans and Philip of Burgundy, explaining that by common agreement, she will, as she sees fit, question, seek, and envision ways and manners by which she can find and keep the peace between them, and that she will advise the king on what transpires.59 Nor is there any sign of a translator in her early years at the French court. When Isabeau first became queen of France she had only one German attendant, Catherine Fastavarin. As of 1396, she began to acquire ladies-in-waiting from Bavaria, but did she really live from 1385 until 1396 speaking only German with a single friend, and not learning French?60 There is also the matter of Isabeau’s library. The queen’s accounts show that as of 1387 she carried a leather-covered trunk with her to transport books in the vernacular (“livres et romans”) when she traveled; that she had her books repaired; and that as of 1393 she employed a librarian.61 Are we to believe that this was all for show, that a woman who could not even speak French carried books in French with her when she traveled and tended to them so carefully? Why would she have gone to such lengths, especially since it would have been obvious to all if she really could not speak French? Understanding medieval women requires us to return to the primary sources, to re-read them from perspectives appropriate to the enterprise. It seems odd that, in a time of ever-more-easily accessed primary sources and awareness of long-held male biases in writing about women of the Middle Ages, narratives like those I have noted here, continue to circulate. It may be too much to ask that medieval

59 Douët-d’Arcq, Choix de pièces inédites, 1: 221–22. 60 On Catherine de Fastavarin see Grandeau, “Les Dames qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière,” 158, no.129, 163, 182–88. 61 Vallet de Vivirille, “La Bibliothèque d’Isabeau de Bavière, 663–78.

Misogynistic Throwaways: Case of Isabeau of Bavaria | 65 historians examine the primary sources and recent scholarship on every woman they mention. I close, however, by suggesting that it would be useful to check up on secondary sources that deploy obviously misogynistic tropes, particularly in those sources—numerous in the case of Isabeau—that do not document their claims.

4

Caught in the Middle: Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft

In ­chapter 1, I suggested that contemporary chronicle accounts of the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle should be read as scapegoat or persecution texts. In this chapter I consider another exilee, Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orléans (1368–1408), who was forced to leave the royal court in 1396, accused of bewitching her intermittently insane brother-in-law, King Charles VI. Strictly speaking, the chronicles recording the story of Valentina cannot be understood as persecution texts, because their authors are not innocents who believe in Valentina’s guilt. However, they tell a story of scapegoating, an attempt by the king’s battling relatives to restore peace by blaming Valentina and sending her into exile. Different from the tragedy of the Burgundian princesses, Valentina’s expulsion is generally believed to have been unjustified. Still, the episode has not been much contextualized. This essay aims less to recalibrate readings of primary sources than to shed light on the episode by fleshing it out, considering the primary sources in a broad context. Valentina’s status as scapegoat becomes clear when her ejection from the court is examined as part of the larger struggle for power between Valentina’s husband, Louis Duke of Orléans (1472–1407),1 and

1

Louis becomes Duke of Orléans in 1392; to avoid confusion I refer to him as Louis of Orléans through­ out this chapter.

68 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

the royal brothers’ uncle, Philip Duke of Burgundy (1342–1404). Philip appears to have begun accusing Louis of casting spells on the king shortly after the king’s first episode of madness, around the time that Charles VI first took measures to ensure the peaceful transfer of power in the case of his premature death by naming Louis regent of the realm. As part of a strategy to discredit Louis, Philip’s accusations of witchcraft incited a vigorous response from his nephew. Reciprocal charges of sorcery soon came fast and furious. And yet, it was Valentina who was eventually made into the culprit and forced to flee. In addition to being entangled in her husband’s conflict with his uncle, Valentina was also caught up during those same years in a preexisting and overlapping rivalry with Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. Representing competing branches of the Visconti family, each woman lobbied for her family’s causes, and the descent of the star of Valentina’s branch of the family in the mid-1390s gave Isabeau the chance to promote her family’s interests. Nineteenth and early t­ wentieth-century biographers regarded the queen as a spiteful tormentor who, jealous of the king’s preference for Valentina during his bouts of insanity, planted rumors that the duchess was poisoning the king.2 More recently, with the rehabilitation of the once-notorious Isabeau, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, to the extent that the conflict between the women has tended to be ignored or denied.3 In this essay I suggest that, based on an examination of the women’s activity in 1395–96, Isabeau was almost certainly involved in Valentina’s departure, but that her motivation, based on the dynastic rivalry within the Visconti family, was political rather than romantic jealousy. While Valentina was being targeted as a scapegoat for the disruptive rivalry between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy, Isabeau was taking advantage of the situation to damage her political rival as part of a larger plan to promote an alliance favored by her own branch of the Visconti. Valentina’s exile from court can fruitfully be read as scapegoating episode, but the story as a whole shows how thoroughly the women were invested in carrying out dynastic obligations.

2

This is the view of Valentina’s biographer and champion, Collas. See his discussion of the incident in Valentine de Milan, 219–230. See also Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 340–344. Most recently, see Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 81. 3 Gibbons, The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 80–81.

Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft | 69

The king’s malady and Valentina as scapegoat As we have seen, Charles VI suffered the first in lifelong series of episodes of insanity in August 1392 during a military expedition against the Duke of Brittany. The chronicler Michel Pintoin, monk of St.-Denis, reports that doctors initially believed the attack to have resulted from a release of black bile brought on by anger that his men-at-arms had not been reacting quickly enough. Another explanation was that God was angry with the sinful French. But, given the suddenness and severity of the illness, Pintoin wrote, most of the nobility and the masses believed that the episode had been caused by a magical spell.4 Cast by whom? Although several different sources describe the Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy accusing each other of bewitching the king over the years, Pintoin, Froissart, and the anonymous author of the Le Livre des trahisons de France reveal that Valentina was a chief suspect. In an entry of 1393 Pintoin writes that many believed that Valentina was bewitching Charles VII, because, during his episodes of insanity, the king loved Valentina above all others, preferring her to the queen, whom he appeared not to recognize. The monk describes the afflicted queen, exhausted with crying, trying to show her husband her love but being thrust away, the king demanding, “Who is this woman whom I am so tired of seeing?”5 Valentina visited him daily, which many interpreted in a negative way, writes Pintoin, all the more so because in Lombardy, where the duchess came from, poisons and spells were more common than anywhere else.6 In the following entry, Pintoin writes that in the summer of 1393, the king’s despairing counselors summoned a magician named Arnaud Guillaume who claimed that he would be able to cure the king with a single word.7 However, the king did not get better under Arnaud’s care, and, when the queen and the nobility questioned the magician about his visible lack of success, he declared that the same actors (“auctores”) performing black magic on the king were obstructing his cure. Although Pintoin does not reveal their names, based on the previous entry, Valentina must have been among the supposed actors.

4 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 24. Veenstra, Magic and Divination, gives a summary of each of the episodes of witchcraft, including this one, 59–76 and 81–84. 5 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 88. 6 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 88. For more on the accusations of poisoning the king against Valentina, see Collard, Le Crime de poison au Moyen Age, 120 and 222–223. 7 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 88; Pintoin has just discussed the king’s second episode of madness, which took place in Abbeville, therefore June 1393.

70 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Pintoin next mentions Valentina’s alleged sorcery in a description of the continuing anxiety at the court – doctors were called upon and then chased away when their cures failed.8 At the same time, many others throughout the king­ dom began to suffer from the same disease, and they also blamed magical spells. Pintoin explains in this entry that suspicion fell on Valentina because of her father, writing that “the people claimed that this was caused by witchcraft and spells and that the king had been bewitched and that this likely was caused by the Lord of Milan.” The reasoning, once again, was that “the king recognized only the Lord of Milan’s daughter, the Duchess of Orléans, when he was deranged, and that he could not bear for her not to visit him daily, and that whether she was absent or present he called her his beloved sister.”9 Pintoin, however, insists that the charges against the duchess were without foundation, professing to believe, along with doctors and theologians, that the king’s state was the result of his youthful excesses. Froissart, who, in contrast with Pintoin, is not at all sympathetic towards Valentina, also describes rumors that the Duchess of Orléans, coveting the throne for her husband, was bewitching the king.10 The chronicler reports that Valentina’s father, Lord of Milan Giangaleazzo Visconti, learned of the gossip and sent messengers to the king and his council with words that the king understood as a threat of war. The king took no heed and sent the messengers on their way.11 But Froissart’s best-known anecdote of Valentina’s supposed sorcery involves a poisoned apple. The anecdote is picked up and embellished in the Burgundianpromoting Livre des trahisons de France. The Duchess of Orléans, daughter of the said Galeazzo, was one day in the garden of the Hôtel Saint Pol, where there were at that moment many noble lords, ladies, young ladies, and children of all sizes of the the lords and ladies. The said Duchess of Orléans took a beautiful red apple; she said to a child she saw in front of her, “My child, take this apple to the Dauphin who is playing there.” The child was thrilled to take the apple, but as he went on his way, he met the duchess’s own nurse, who was holding the child of the Duke of Orléans. The nurse asked for and was given the apple, and as soon as she laid hold of if, the child took it from her eagerly, and immediately put it in his mouth and bit into it, but as soon as he tasted the savor, he held it out and, trembling, his eyes spun. The nurse put him

8 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 404–406. 9 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 404–406. 10 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 352–55. 11 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 262, 354.

Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft | 71 down and cried out so loudly that a crowd including the duchess gathered, and when she realized that her child had bitten into the apple, she fainted; when she came to she cried out loudly: “True God, you are just. How well you know how to pay people back!”12

The accusations came to a head in 1396 when Louis of Orléans, acquiescing to the counsel of many lords, sent his wife from court. Pintoin reports that the Duke, hoping to prevent scandal (“scandalum”), arranged to have Valentina ushered from Paris to another of their properties in a magnificent cortège.13 Valentina’s exile, however, did not bring an end to the king’s episodes. The dukes continued to exchange accusations of witchcraft. Pintoin depicts the conflict in 1398, explaining that connétable Louis of Sancerre summoned two charlatan Augustinians called Pierre and Lancelot to cure the king through magic. When the king continued to fall into his habitual episodes, the pair accused Louis of Orléans of interfering with their cures. The chronicle attributed to Jean Juvénal des Ursins gives a somewhat different version of the event, reporting a rumor that the Augustinians had claimed to be the Duke of Orléans’s men, and that, for this reason, the Duke of Burgundy had them arrested. A further incident involved a magician called Jean de Bar, who was eventually burned at the stake, and whom the Duke of Burgundy accused Louis of hiring, a charge Louis denied.14 Whatever the truth, the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris perceived the frequent accusations at the highest levels of court as so disruptive that in 1398 Chancellor Jean Gerson published a solemn determinatio condemning 28 articles forbidding the use of magic, even for ostensibly positive reasons. As Patrice Boudet and Jan R. Veenstra have shown, the determinatio targets the same practices of which Jean de Bar was accused, strongly suggesting that the document was a response to that specific incident.15 The effects of the determinatio, however, were limited, for by 1403 Philip was back at work. The Duke of Burgundy’s accounts show that for a period of seven months beginning in October 1402, he paid a pair of magicians called Ponset du Solier and Jean Flandrin to discover who was guilty of bewitching the king

12 Livre des trahisons, 31–32; for Froissart’s version see Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 260–61. 13 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 406. See also Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 261. 14 See Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 344–55. 15 Boudet, “Les condemnation,” 123.

72 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

and to cure him.16 But, incapable either of discovering who was responsible or of curing the king, they were both eventually burned. Louis continued to be accused even after his violent death at the hands of Jean of Burgundy’s henchmen in late 1407. In early 1408, Jean engaged the Franciscan Jean Petit to justify the murder of the duke before the court. The harangue, transcribed in Monstrelet’s chronicle and known today as the “Justification of Jean Petit,” offers a long list of Louis’s supposed crimes, among them the use of magical spells and poisons for the purpose of getting rid of the king and assuming the throne for himself.17 Valentina, in contrast, receives no mention. Indeed, Petit ref­ erences the story of the poisoned apple, but makes Louis the culprit. Valentina’s complete absence from the justification and the transfer of the poisoned apple crime to Louis suggests that the real target of the accusations had always been the duke: that Valentina had been made the scapegoat. Although Valentina is named in the earliest days of the king’s malady as a suspect, then, she seems to have been a stand-in; Louis and Philip, and, after Philip’s death, Jean, were the chief antagonists in the battle to control the king. The king’s madness had occasioned a crisis in the form of a power struggle that threatened to break into a war between the dukes, and Valentina, the perfect victim, positioned both inside and outside the royal circle, both foreign and French, was expelled from the community in an unsuccessful attempt to restore peace.

Valentina as political player According to Froissart, when the Duchesses of Burgundy assumed a place next to the queen, ahead of Valentina, Valentina took offense. Rank was a matter of utmost importance, calculated according to the nearness of relation to the reigning king.18 Froissart describes Valentina complaining to her intimate entourage that “the Duchess of Burgundy should under no circumstances approach the crown before me, because I am closer to it than she is.” Her reasoning is impeccable: “Monseigneur my husband is the brother of the king, and he might be king someday.” Valentina then added, “I know why she goes ahead of me to take the honors and put us behind.”19 16

See Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 3: 114–117; Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, 425–426; Mirot, “Un essai de guérisson.” Mirot prints the accounts. For a summary of the incident, see Veenstra, Magic and Divination, 73–77. 17 Monstrelet, 1: 177–243. For the apple story see 1: 228–229. 18 Guenée, “Le Roi, ses parents et son royaume.”. 19 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 96.

Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft | 73 The royal ordinance of 1393 naming Louis regent explains why precedence would have been a pressing issue for the duke and duchess of Burgundy. But, in addition, as Valentina was jealously watching out for Louis’s honor, she was involved in her own political rivalry with the queen. The tense relationship between the queen and the Duchess of Orléans has been treated as faintly amusing, a sort of “cat fight.” As I have noted, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biographers believed that the spiteful and jealous queen, by planting rumors that the Duchess of Orléans was poisoning the king, had caused Valentina to be chased from court, but, more recently, with the rehabilitation of the once-notorious Isabeau, the conflict between the women has tended to be ignored or denied.20 Yet, in a society where women in positions of power served as spokespersons and mediators for their families’ interests, they were political rivals. They also lived together at the royal residence, the Hôtel Saint Pol, exchanged gifts and letters even during Valentina’s exile, and came together as allies after the assassination of Louis of Orléans in 1407. Isabeau and Valentina therefore also worked in concert. Isabeau and Valentina were second cousins: Isabeau’s mother, Thaddea Visconti, who married the Wittelsbach Stephan III Duke of Bavaria, was the cousin of Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo Visconti, Lord, then Duke, of Milan. Together, Giangaleazzo, and Isabeau’s grandfather, Bernabò, had ruled over Milan. However, just weeks before Isabeau’s marriage to Charles VI in July 1385, Giangaleazzo had Bernabò imprisoned. The older man soon died in prison. In the face of this treachery to her kinsman, Isabeau did everything possible to thwart Giangaleazzo, who was trying to create a single united kingdom in northern Italy. Because his plans required the aid of the French against his enemies in Italy for their realization, Giangaleazzo saw Isabeau’s marriage to Charles VI as a threat, and he therefore sought to marry his daughter to the king’s brother, Louis.21 The marriage took place in late July 1389. The two women, then, met at the French court as political enemies, although, under other circumstances, they might have been close friends. Both loved books. Isabeau, as saw in ­chapter 3, possessed a personal library that was enormous for the time.22 As for Valentina, her library at Blois formed the core of the library that would later belong to her son, poet Charles of Orléans.23 Also, Valentina 20

For example, Gibbons, “The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria,” defends Isabeau against the charge that she accused Valentina of witchcraft, 80–81. 21 See Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti, 63. 22 On Isabeau’s 39-volume library see Vallet de Viriville, “La Bibliothèque d’Isabeau de Bavière,” and Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners,” 742–768. 23 Collas, Valentine de Milan, 129–30.

74 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

may have spoken German, Isabeau’s mother tongue, a guess based on the fact that three of the books she brought with her from Italy to France were written in that language.24 In addition, Isabeau, whose mother was Italian, may have spoken Italian. But their family loyalties positioned them on opposite sides. Valentina tried to gather French support for the Milanese, while Isabeau advocated for the Florentines, victims of the aggression of Valentina’s father, Giangaleazzo.25 In 1389 the city of Florence created a set of instructions for ambassadors detailing how to convince Isabeau to intervene with Charles VI to persuade him to assist the Florentines in staving off Giangaleazzo’s advances.26 But as the only supporter of the Florentines at court at that moment, the queen was unable to promote them effectively. Giangaleazzo’s support was crucial for helping Louis of Orléans realize a plan concocted by Clement VII, the Avignon pope—when and if he returned to Rome as the French hoped—of taking over territories in central Italy to form a kingdom for the young duke. Although the Florentines were neutral regarding the Schism and although they offered to turn over to the French any land that they might confiscate from Giangaleazzo if the French helped them out, the possibility was tenuous relative to the immediate support that Giangaleazzo could offer. A treaty between Paris and Milan was signed in 1391. However, the French relationship with Giangaleazzo shifted dramatically over the next several years, opening an opportunity for Isabeau, which she seized just as Valentina was sent from the royal court. It seems more than a coincidence that the queen helped to realize a political alliance with long-term enemies of the duchess’s father at that time. Louis’s plan for the French to invade Italy to overthrow the Roman pope and enthrone Pope Clement VII, supported by Giangaleazzo, faltered, postponed to a later date because Charles had decided to pursue peace with the English, who favored the Roman pope. All hope of establishing a kingdom for Louis of Orléans in Italy had been abandoned as well. When Clement VII died in 1394, the French cardinals in Avignon elected Benedict XIII, whom the French declined to help return to Rome, which had consequences for France’s relationship with Giangaleazzo, on whom they had 24 25 26

See Camus, La Venue en France de Valentine Visconti, 5. In addition, early on, Isabeau was disposed toward the Burgundians. Her marriage to Charles VI had been the work of Philip of Burgundy. See Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 10: 344–47. Recorded in fonds italiens 1682, folios 25–29, of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Instructions from the Commune of Florence to ambassador Filippo Corsini tell him to assure the king of France of the Florentines’ fidelity and remind him of the services that the Commune has rendered his house. If the king refuses aid, the ambassador will go to the queen, niece of Bernabò, and ask her to speak to the king on behalf of Florence (29r and v).

Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft | 75 depended for support of Clement VII. Moreover, in 1395, the French acquired Genoa. Giangaleazzo, wanting the city for himself, created obstacles, pretending to support the King of France’s claim while all the time stirring up Guelf and Ghibelline animosities to prevent France from imposing authority over the city.27 From that point on, as far as the French were concerned, Giangaleazzo was Charles VI’s enemy, Froissart reporting that in 1396 the king held the Duke of Milan in hatred and planned to destroy him with the help of the English.28 The king made his feelings manifest during a dinner celebrating the wedding of royal daughter Isabelle with King Richard II of England in that year. On catching sight of a herald bearing Giangaleazzo’s arms, Pintoin writes, Charles VI had the arms torn from the herald and chased him from the court, threatening to throw him in prison if he ever returned.29 Froissart notes that Giangaleazzo returned the hatred.30 Isabeau was able successfully to promote the Florentine cause against Giangaleazzo’s in this new environment, initiating negotiations with the Florentine ambassador, Buonacorso Pitti, in 1396. Valentina, who would have seen the tide turning and realized what it meant for her, appealed to the queen, offering Isabeau, Isabeau’s grand maître d’ hôtel, Philip de Savoisy, and seven of the queen’s ladies New Year’s gifts, étrennes, as 1396 dawned.31 But the duchess’s efforts to move Isabeau seem to have failed, for at some time prior to April 1396, that is, before Isabeau summoned Pitti, the duchess left Paris. Through no fault of her own, Valentina was undone. On 29 September 1396, an alliance was signed between France and Florence against Milan.32 The rest of Valentina’s life—she died in 1410, not quite forty years old—was marked by stress and sorrow, but also by her attempts to bring Jean of Burgundy to justice. Pintoin describes her entry into Paris on 10 December 1407 to seek redress for Louis’s murder.33 Dressed in mourning and accompanied by her two young sons, she threw herself at the feet of Charles VI, begging for justice.34 Despite his apparent sympathy, the king remained unresponsive, and, wary of

27 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 464–466. 28 Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 308. 29 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 464–66. 30 See Froissart, Œuvres de Froissart, 15: 262. 31 See Hirschbiegel, Etrennes, 383. 32 See the account of the ambassador, Pitti, Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence, 54–55. The alliance came to nothing in the end, however, because of the French’s disastrous defeat in the Nicopolis Crusade. See Verdon, 128. 33 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 3: 748–52. 34 See Hutchison’s article on Valentina’s strategic enactment of her sorrow, “The Politics of Grief.”

76 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Jean of Burgundy, who was on his way to Paris at the head of his army, Valentina returned to the Orléans castle at Blois, which she had reinforced.35 There she called men to arms and waited.36 In March 1408, as we have seen, Jean Petit justified Jean of Burgundy’s hired assassination of Louis; on 11 September 1408, Thomas de Bourg, abbot of Cérisy of Saint-Fiacre, responded to Petit’s charges on behalf of the House of Orléans, and, on September 28 September 1408, Valentina herself spoke at the Louvre.37 Despite Valentina’s pleas, however, the king awarded Jean of Burgundy a letter of remission, and the duke became the king’s trusted advisor.38 The despondent Valentina returned for the last time to Blois, where she died in December 1408. Isabeau could not have forced Valentina’s exile against Louis’s will. In the 1390s, the Duke of Orléans was a far more powerful figure than she. For example, Pintoin remarks with reference to the “Bal des ardents” of 1393 where Louis accidentally lit a number of revellers on fire by leaning too close to them with a torch, killing several and barely missing incinerating the king, that afterwards no one dared reproach Louis, because he possessed such power (“magnitudinem”).39 Isabeau’s power, in contrast, would have been relatively paltry, based on her ability to influence the truly powerful.40 Pintoin tells us that the Duke of Orléans himself ordered his wife’s departure. He was reluctant to send her away, the charges being unfounded, but he finally agreed when a group of his men persuaded him to avoid trouble by doing so. The exile, I believe, aimed, unconsciously, to defuse the tensions that threatened to erupt into social disorder. It might be argued that Valentina was removed from court for the practical reason that it was hoped that she would be less able to bewitch the king from afar. However, as we have seen, Pintoin explains that the exile was meant to prevent a terrible event: the word that the monk uses is “scandalum,” a word related to “fall” or “stumbling.” Louis’s concern was for something more serious than what we understand today by “scandal.” He was worried that war would break out, and, in the worst case scenario, that Philip would gain power of the government and that he, Louis, would fall. Valentina’s story reveals, as Robin Briggs has argued for a slightly later period, that accusations of witchcraft sometimes served as much as a means of handling social tensions as a form 35 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 3: 752–54. 36 Colombini, “Valentine Visconti,” 114. 37 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 4: 92– ; Monstrelet, 1: 269–336. 38 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 3: 766; Monstrelet, 1: 243. 39 Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 2: 72. 40 See, for example, Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue, 28.

Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft | 77 of persecution, showing that accusers tended to be motivated more by the desire to prevent harm than the desire for blood.41 Valentina’s subsequent life apart from Louis and her actions after his death demonstrate her capacity to function strategically on her own. However, because of her premature death, it is impossible to know what role she might have played as the Orléansist-Burgundian feud morphed into war between her son, Charles of Orléans, and Jean of Burgundy. Romantically attributed to a broken heart, her demise so soon after Louis’s death has long been interpreted as a sign of her inability to go on alone: since the murder, “everything had been finished for her,” writes Collas.42 The nature of her final malady is unknown, but it is more likely to have been one of the many diseases that took people in the prime of life than sadness, and it reminds us, once again, of how contingent the exercise of female power really was.

41 Briggs, The Witches of Lorraine, 384–86. 42 Collas, Valentine Visconti, 20.

5

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels

As we saw in ­chapter 3, one of Louise de Kéralio’s chief complaints about Isabeau of Bavaria was her greed: the queen “gorged herself on the nation’s gold.”1 The charge stuck. Jean Verdon expresses a view of the queen still common today: she “enriched herself while the State’s financial difficulties increased…. The jewels accumulated in her coffers….”2 And, indeed, Isabeau’s accounts reveal that she purchased substantial numbers of rings, necklaces, elaborate pins, goblets and bowls made of precious metals and inlaid with jewels.3 Charles V and his brothers, the Valois dukes, followed by Charles VI and Louis of Orléans and their children, also accumulated collections of jewels. But, in contrast with Isabeau’s, their collections have routinely been characterized by historians as reflections of their authority and as currency that allowed them to participate in the gift-giving that was crucial to demonstrating and exercising power. These men have also been regarded as important patrons of the art of goldwork that flourished in Paris around 1400. In addition, recent scholarship 1 Kéralio, Les crimes des reines de France, 114. 2 Verdon, Isabeau de Bavière, 201. 3 The queen’s purchases of jewels are recorded in her Comptes de l’argenterie. The accounts, which are very incomplete, can be consulted in the Archives nationales de France: KK 41 (1393–1401); KK 42 (1401–1403); K 43 (1403–1407) and KK 44 (1420).

80 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

on the patronage of royal and noble women shows that supporting artists was central to female authority.4 The notion of Isabeau as frivolous spendthrift misses the mark: it is no longer tenable to dismiss her jewels as pretty baubles that she purchased for her own amusement, to satisfy her vanity. Isabeau’s interest in acquiring jewels needs to be re-framed, I suggest in this chapter. I begin by considering recent scholarship on the exchange of gifts at the end of the Middle Ages, studies that clarify some of the ways in which power was manifested and negotiated during that period. I then examine from this perspective Isabeau’s collecting of jewels and how she exercised influence through gifting the precious objects.

Gift-giving and the exercise of power Charles V (1338–1380) was the first Valois king explicitly renowned for his interest in jewels.5 Christine de Pizan notes the king’s enthusiasm for inspecting his small treasures in her biography of the king: After sleep he had time with his intimates for enjoying pleasant things, visiting jewels or other riches; and he took this recreation so that his great duties did not affect his health, in the way of those who spend most of their time occupied with laborious business….6

Charles V’s rich and powerful brothers, Dukes Louis of Anjou, Jean of Berry, and Philip of Burgundy, also collected such riches, forming a first generation of lovers of beautiful objects. Charles VI, his brother Louis of Orléans, and their cousin Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, constituted a second generation. Regarding this second generation, Eva Kovacs notes that Charles VI, “always under the care of someone, first as a minor, then because of his mental illness, seems not to have inspired quite the same level of interest in luxury or patronage at his court.” And yet, she continues, during his reign, the royal treasure kept accumulating riches, the court functioning almost automatically.7 It is true, as

4

See the recent studies of Hamilton, Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France and Hamilton and Proctor-Tiffany, Moving Women, Moving Objects. 5 Charles V’s jewels were inventoried shortly before his death. See manuscript français 2705 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, entitled “General Inventory of all the jewels of King Charles V, both of gold and silver, begun the 21st day of January, 1379.” 6 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs, 1: 46. 7 Kovacs, L’ âge d’or, 166.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 81 we will see, that Charles VI did not participate in gift-giving to the extent of the Dukes of Burgundy. Louis of Orléans, however, was active in such exchange during his short life. The king’s two sons, first Louis of Guyenne, who died in 1415 at the age of 18, and the future Charles VII, created a third generation. Even during the worst crises of the reign, the princes of the blood and their clienteles continued to purchase gems and objects of precious metals. Although the rivalry among the princes of the blood was damaging to the kingdom, “the brilliance of the arts in France had never been so great,” the princes commissioning “for themselves or to offer as gifts all sorts of jewels, embroideries, and gems, mentioned in their inventories.”8 Figures of encrusted enamel were especially prized, heralding the arts of courtly societies of the Renaissance. Following the princes of the blood, wealthy clients invested in such objects in gold, silver, or enamel. These objects served multiple purposes. For one, they were easily converted into money. Although the scholarship related to medieval art has long tended to emphasize the esthetic value produced by objects and princely competition as patrons of such art, it is important to note that the objects were viewed as dispensable, or, at least, renewable, frequently recycled into coin. Richard Vaughan observes that a “large proportion of a ruler’s liquid assets took the form of plate and jewellery, so that much of what is listed in the inventories was destined neither for the table nor for personal adornment, but for melting down and sale whenever ready cash was required….”9 For another, as Daniel Russo writes, to the princes, a stash of precious objects “was an integral part of their conception of power and the quality with which they wished to imbue their lives.” Referring to Charles V’s treasure trove, Ingrid Ciulisová enumerates still other purposes for beautiful objects: they functioned as “seals, amulets and ornamenta;” as means of drawing “flattering comparisons between the kings of France and the emperors of ancient Rome;” as health aids; as votives.”10 But, most significant, such objects could serve as gifts, that is, as means of creating dependencies and alliances. The anonymous 1378 treatise on kingship, Le Songe du vergier, which Charles V had translated as part of what Deborah McGrady has called that king’s “sapientia project,” proclaims that kings and emperors are powerful “because they give gifts.”11 The gift and the counter-gift created and represented mutual affective commitments. Brigitte Buettner 8 Russo, “Les arts en France autour de 1400,” https://journ​a ls.open​edit​ion.org/cem/707. 9 Vaughan, Philip the Bold, 190. 10 Ciulisová, “The Power of Marvellous Objects,” 3–4. 11 Le Songe du vergier, 2: 123. For Charles V’s “sapientia project,” see McGrady, The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure?: The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France, 29–53. For a review of the status of

82 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

emphasizes that “gift exchanges—of material goods, services, or people—lay at the core of the social contract; without reciprocity there would be no community.” From a political perspective, she continues, gifts were essential to commanding obedience and forming alliances: they “were used as political weapons to make and unmake alliances, to forge diplomatic ties, to signal dominance.”12 Constrained to solicit the services of the nobility to insure administration and protection of the kingdom, the king gave gifts to those whose support or services he required, even as market economies began to take hold. Without the means to do so he was powerless. Walter Paravicini observes that the monarch, the chief gift-giver, was “in a practical sense helpless in the face of the pressure that he received from inside.”13 The great lords represented a “clientele which it was necessary to cultivate and compensate,” which meant that the king was required to “attach them to himself through largesse and concessions of all sorts….”14 Exchange between the princes of the blood and the nobility worked in the same way. Alain Guéry explains that the transfers of goods and services, even those involving money, were signs of the tacit contracts that existed between participants. Such contracts bound them together emotionally within network of reciprocal obligations: “To give one’s assets over to another is give over a part of oneself; to receive from another is to accept a part of another. Exchange and power are linked in an existential principle where personhood and belonging are the same.”15 Returning to precious objects in particular, in the late fourteenth century we notice an increased emphasis on a special type of gift-giving at the Valois courts, the exchange of étrennes, New Year’s gifts. “Sporadic early in the century,” writes Buettner, “the evidence becomes more consistent from the 1380s onward, and by the reign of Charles VI it was a well-established and major court ceremony despite the fact that January 1 was still not the official beginning of the year in France.”16 At the same time, the étrennes assumed a typical form, that of a beautiful object, often composed of gold or silverwork and jewels. The preference for exchanging sumptuous objects was undoubtedly linked to the rise of Paris as an artistic center in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. Russo details the many factors

12 13 14 15 16

the scholarship on practices of gift-giving in the Middle Ages see Kjaer, introduction, 1–13, to The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition. Buettner, “Past Presents,” 598. Paravicini, “Administrateurs professionnels,” 174. Paravicini, “Administrateurs professionnels,” 176. Guéry, “Le roi dépensier,” 1241. Buettner, “Past Presents,” 600.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 83 that contributed to make the city flourish in this area: the formidable power of rival princes, the taste for precious objects, and the custom of collecting them, as well as the strong pull that the city exercised as a cultural space.17 The gifting of precious objects was also integrated into rituals of power. As Ciulisová explains, “it was customary for friends of the King of France and the members of his household to provide elaborate goldsmiths’ objects, ornamented with gemstones, as gifts for ritual exchange on solemn occasions, including diplomatic meetings.”18 The visit to France of Charles V’s uncle Emperor Charles IV was an occasion for exchanging gorgeous objects.19 The list of pieces presented by Louis of Orléans to Emperor Wenceslas of Luxembourg during the last years of the fourteenth century offers important insight. Louis’s objective, which he accomplished much to Wenceslas’s detriment, was to nudge the emperor to subtract obedience from the Italian pope, Boniface IX.20 The Duke of Orléans first offered offered Wencenslas’s wife, duchess of Luxembourg Sophie of Bavaria, a painting of an Homme de douleurs, a man of sorrows. Shortly after a first encounter, the Duke of Orléans welcomed the emperor to Épernay and presented him with a small golden statue of Charlemagne. But Louis did not limit his gifts to the emperor and his spouse; he demonstrated generosity in equal measure to certain of their officers, distributing 16 silver cups, two small bowls, six silk doublets, and a number of enameled brooches with wolves covered with pearls and precious stones. Nor did the Duke of Orléans forget the emperor’s entourage, allocating to them small enameled brooches. Such attempts at influence through jewels were common. On 1 January 1403 Philip Duke of Burgundy, uncle of Charles VI and Louis, sought to gain the loyalty of 60 men whom he gathered to form the Order of the Golden Tree by giving them brooches decorated with a golden tree between a lion and a white enamel eagle.21 The objects gifted by these dukes resemble those that we find in Isabeau’s accounts, and they therefore permit us to imagine that the queen made use of her objects in the same way as Louis and Philip. When we focus on what was transpiring at the moments at which the queen bought precious objects it seems clear that she accumulated them for strategic reasons.

17 Russo, “Les arts en France autour de 1400,” https://journ​a ls.open​edit​ion.org/cem/707. See also Pringent, ed., Art et société en France au XVe siècle, and Henwood, “Les orfèvres parisiens.” 18 Ciulisová, “The Power of Marvellous Objects,” 9–10. 19 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs, 2: 126–27. 20 For what follows see Schultz, The Artistic and Literary Patronage of Louis of Orléans and his Wife, Valentine Visconti, 1399–1408, 231–237. 21 See Chattaway, The Order of the Golden Tree.

84 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Isabeau of Bavaria, gift-giver The invisibility of female networks of gift-giving has caused the currency that Isabeau collected to be misread as jewels that she purchased for her own delight.22 Isabeau undoubtedly amassed treasures. But she also participated in gift-giving at key moments of her reign. During a festival of 22 May 1395 in honor of Charles VI, she distributed a number of sumptuous gifts. Modern historians have tended to view this festival as an occasion to amuse Charles VI, one writing that Isabeau “adored parties; in addition, it should be noted that his doctors had recommended that the king be entertained.”23 Even the most recent biographers of the queen interpret this particular festival and the gifts distributed on this occasion as personal exchanges devoid of any political significance. We read, for example, that the [p]‌resents bought by Isabeau include […] a collar scattered with black-enameled pods from which hung little golden bowl shapes, made especially to be attached to a black velvet houppelande, both of which were presented by Isabeau to Charles VI at a party that she held for him at her recently-refurbished Vauxla-Reine on 22 May 1395. The next entry details the queen’s order of fifteen gold rings to be given to his companions, enameled in green with a setting for a solitaire diamond.24

Festivals, however, cannot be reduced to simple parties; in addition to awing guests, they offered opportunities for the powerful to enact their authority. If we restore the festival’s political context, it becomes clear that at that moment, the queen was seeking to persuade the king to sign the treaty that I discussed in ­chapter 4 allying him with the Florentines against the Milanese. Along with her Bavarian family, Isabeau supported the cause of Bernabò Visconti, her grandfather, assassinated in 1385, against that of Giangaleazzo Visconti, lord of Milan and assassin of Bernabò, who was attempting to extend his authority over Florence. The principal obstacle to a treaty was the opposition to the latter of the king’s brother Louis of Orléans and his spouse, Valentina Visconti, daughter of Giangaleazzo Visconti. The strategic importance of the Lombard city for France, however, diminished in 1395–1396 at the same time that rumors 22

Kettering notes for a later period how difficult much of gift-giving among women is to recover, “The Patronge Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen,” 837. 23 Verdon, Isabeau de Bavière, 94. 24 Gibbons, “The Queen as ‘Social mannequin,’ ” 389. See also Verdon, Isabeau de Bavière, 96.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 85 accusing Valentina of wanting to poison the king to facilitate her husband’s succession to the throne began to spread widely; Valentina, as we have seen, was forced to abandon the court in March or April of 1396. With Valentina no longer an obstacle, Isabeau was able to reassert her influence over the king on the matter. In May 1396, following closely on Valentina’s flight, the queen summoned Florentine ambassador Buonaccorse Pitti.25 On 29 September 1396, the French sealed an alliance with the Florentines against the Milanese. This context helps us to make sense of the gifts that the queen distributed, especially the rings offered to the men of the royal entourage. She was demonstrating largesse, a key trait of successful rulers. The festival, along with the gifts distributed during it, then, bore fruit for Isabeau, and it should be regarded as an initial attempt to convince Charles VI to accord a positive response to the Florentines, that is to say, implement Isabeau’s politics. Between 1380–1422, Isabeau also took part in the exchange étrennes at the royal court.26 The practice, with its performative element, was an important way of producing and reproducing social relations at court.27 Calculations of how many gifts exchanged hands is not exact, dependent on remaining records, but a comparison of the totals suggests at least who the most prolific givers were. Over the years, Isabeau offered 91 gifts and received 51. Although she was not the most frequent giver, she was in the upper echelons. Ahead of her come the Burgundians, Philip of Burgundy, who leads the pack by far with 743 gifts distributed, and Jean sans Peur with 152; Louis of Orléans comes next with 135 and Valentina Visconti 127, Charles VI with 93. However, Isabeau leads royal uncle Jean de Berry who is recorded giving 45.28 To a large extent, the identities of the givers and receivers of gifts reinforces what we already know about political alliances at court. For example, Philip’s position as far and away the most prolific giver, confirms his ambition to be the most powerful lord of the kingdom. His influence surpassed even that of the periodically insane king. Louis of Orléans, younger and less wealthy than his uncle, offers fewer gifts, as we would expect. Charles, son of the king, appears on the list of donors for the first time in 1420, offering 50 gifts. This is the year in which the young man begins to asserts his rights over the throne of France, from which the 25 Pitti, Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence, 54–55; Nordberg, Les ducs et la royauté, 96–102, argues that the intervention of Isabeau won the king to the cause. See also Jarry, La vie politique de Louis de France,167. 26 Hirschbiegel, Étrennes, 198. 27 Buettner, “Past Presents,” 598. 28 Hirschbiegel gives the total in his table of most important givers and receivers, Étrennes, 137.

86 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

king and queen had tried to disinherit him in favor of Henry V, married to their daughter Catherine. Given that these gifts confirm what we know about networks of influence, they can reasonably be taken as evidence about the strength of a particular relationship. For example, an examination of Charles VI’s commissions to the Parisian silversmith Hemann Ruissel before the onset of his intermittent insanity shows that 17 of the 32 royal commissions were executed in double, the second object produced for the king’s brother, Louis.29 We can therefore conclude that the king and his brother enjoyed a close relationship. If the double commissions had begun only after the king’s first bout of insanity we might have imagined that Louis himself influenced the king to make the purchase, but the frequency of the commissions even before the king fell ill let us assume the Charles VI was responsible for the gifts. Gifts distributed by Valentina Visconti, spouse of Louis of Orléans, highlight other types of political relations. Even after her exile from the court in March or April of 1396, Valentina continued to participate in the exchange of gifts. Of a total of 127 étrennes, she offered only 36 before her flight. This suggests her continuing influence even after she was physically absent from the court. As for Isabeau, a number of interesting conclusions about her politics can be drawn from an examination of her étrennes. First, she offered gifts in sporadic fashion: some years she seems to have offered none at all. Of course it may be that records of her accounts are not complete. Still, the distribution of gifts appears to correspond to what we know about her political career from other sources. She presented many gifts in 1391 and 1392, just before the onset of the king’s madness. What was happening? She may have been using gifts to solicit loyalty. As Sharon Kettering explains, gift-giving was, at the end of the day, “used to create and maintain a personal bond.”30 Why at that time? As I noted in c­ hapter 2, at the end of 1388, after a long period of minority, Charles VI declared himself independent of his uncles, Philip of Burgundy and Jean of Berry. The decision had been long in coming: the king was at that moment already twenty years old. His new independence would have been experienced as significant by Isabeau, as well. The following year Isabeau made her entry into Paris and was crowned. The iconography prepared for the occasion evoked the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity. The royal couple hovered at the zenith of their power, and a radiant future seemed guaranteed. Isabeau would have imagined that she would play a 29 Kovacs, L’ âge d’or, 350–401. 30 Kettering, “Gift-Giving and Patronage,” 131–32.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 87 central role in court life in the years to follow and begun to demonstrate through gift-giving the new clout that she enjoyed with Charles’s assuming full responsibility for the kingdom. The sudden and devastating crisis of madness in 1392 forced the king back under the guardianship of his uncles. Over the two following years, Isabeau is recorded as offering only one gift, to an unknown recipient, but, by 1395, the queen was once again acquiring political clout with her involvement in the project to form an alliance with the Florentines showing results. In that year she once again began to offer gifts.31 In 1398, Isabeau offered étrennes to Louis, Philip, and Valentina; in that year we see the first serious tensions between the houses of Orléans and Burgundy. In this context, the gifts suggest that Isabeau was trying to appease the actors, for whom she acted as mediator in formal peace-making situations. In 1402–1403, she offered numerous étrennes, the dates once again corresponding to the dates of the royal ordinances naming her official mediator between the warring dukes. In addition, during these same years, her accounts show the purchase of numerous beautiful objects.32 In 1408, after the assassina­ tion of Louis of Orléans, ordered by Jean of Burgundy, she offered only one gift, but the recipient was none other than Louis’s murderer, Jean. The gift was surely offered in the hope of creating a practical alliance with a man who represented a serious threat to the kingdom. In 1411, after signing a treaty with Charles of Orléans, son of the late Louis, she gave the young man an étrenne. In 1414, after several years of subjection to Jean, with the suppression of the Cabochian revolt Isabeau found herself again in power, this time with the dauphin. She therefore offered étrennes: diamonds for her husband and for eight unknown recipients.33 The étrennes that Isabeau offers correspond precisely to the more detailed descriptions of objects enumerated in her accounts: twelve silver glasses, several goblets and gold-leafed pitchers, gold rosaries, a small ruby ring, a silver belt, a silver crown, a pin of gold decorated with three diamonds, three pearls, and a ruby, and the list continues.34 Valuable objects given as gifts played a central role in political status, both ostentatiously displaying wealth and therefore making visible the personal worth and largesse of the giver and establishing implicit contracts carrying personal meanings. Surely this is how Isabeau distributed the objects she collected as well.

31 Hirschbiegel, Etrennes, 370–379. 32 See KK 42 of the Archives nationales for these years. 33 Hirschbiegel, Etrennes, 489. 34 Hirschbiegel, Étrennes, 359.

88 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Le petit cheval d’or Like his father, Charles VI had his store of precious objects carefully inventoried. The listing with short descriptions of the gorgeous items in his possession drawn up in around 1405 includes the magnificent statue commonly known as the Petit cheval d’or—or the Goldenes Rössl, because it has resided in Germany since about 1410. This object, 62 centimeters high and decorated in émail en ronde bosse, consists of an image of Our Lady who is holding her child, seated in a garden, done after the manner of a trellis, and Our Lady is enamelled in white and the child in rouge cler and the said image has a brooch at her neck, decorated with six pearls and a ballas ruby and over the head of Our Lady is a crown decorated with two ballas rubies and a sapphire and 16 pearls, and holding the said crown are two small angels enamelled in white and the said garden [is] decorated with five ballas rubies and five sapphires and 32 pearls and there is a lectern where there is a book and this is decorated with 12 pearls, and in front of the image there are three images of gold, that is Saint Catherine, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist, and below the image of the king, kneeling on a cushion decorated with four pearls, wearing the arms of France. And in front of him his book on a stool of gold and behind him a tiger, and in front of the king on the other side a knight, enamelled in white and blue, who holds the golden helmet of the king, and below there is a horse enamelled in white with the saddle and harness of gold and a valet enamelled in white and blue who holds in one hand the bridle and in the other hand a baton, and this weighs about 18 marcs of gold and the base on which these things are set weighs around 30 marcs of silver gilt, and it was given by the Queen to the King the first day of the new year 1404 [1405 new style]. 35

The vast majority of precious objects exchanged among the Valois have disappeared, melted down and reworked, but this rare example offers insight into the intensely political and, simultaneously, personal, relationships that the exchange of étrennes served to shape and reinforce. The Petit cheval d’or regroups three spaces, hierarchically arranged. With the Virgin at the summit and the kneeling Charles VI gazing up at her,36 the statue resembles a three-dimensional donor portrait. 35 The inventory can be read in the form of a later copy, manuscript francais 21444–46 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The description of the Petit cheval d’or can be found on fol. 24r and v of 21446. The statue is held in Altötting, in the Haus Papst Benedikt XVI: Neue Schatzkammer und Wallfahrtsmuseum 36 See Kahsnitz, “Kleinod und Andachtsbild,” 58.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 89 The genre of donor portrait, typically a painting, was devotional, featuring an image of the donor and, often, the donor’s family, in prayer. Although the genre had existed from late antiquity,37 it became very popular between roughly 1400– 1540 among the wealthy and elite, primarily in the Burgundian Netherlands but also in northern France.38 Recent scholarship stresses the dynamic purposes of these images. Stephanie Porras emphasizes that they responded to multiple ambitions, but chief among these was evoking the empathy necessary to a form of private devotion that demanded thorough self-examination.39 Typically a married couple was depicted in prayer in a donor portrait. Isabeau’s omission from the Petit cheval d’or therefore seems strange. Indeed, a similar no-longer-extant object manifesting a similar theme, described in the same account in which the Petit cheval d’or is entered, included the queen beside the king.40 And yet, perhaps the queen is not entirely absent from the Petit cheval d’or. Perhaps she meant to associate herself implicitly with the Virgin. The statue would have encouraged the real Charles VI, practicing private devotion with the object, to think about her when he gazed at the Virgin. The figure of Charles VI has just taken a break from his travels on horseback for a moment of prayer, a pause that can be interpreted metaphorically as the king’s halting in the midst of his travails, physical or mental, to reflect on his situation. The political situation going into 1405 was especially difficult, as we have seen: Jean sans Peur had recently become Duke of Burgundy and was trying to appropriate for himself a major role in the government. This étrenne, with its Virgin crowned by angels, refers back to the optimistic period of Isabeau’s 1389 crowning by angels during her entry into Paris and reminds Charles in symbolic language of the queen’s commitment to watch over him and the kingdom. Also suggestive, the Virgin is surrounded with child-saints whose names recalled those of two of the king and queen’s own children: Jean and Catherine, born in 1398 and 1401. The saints’ attributes identify the three figures as John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and Saint Catherine.41 A sun blazes behind the

37 38

On the early history see Mackie, Early Christian Chapels, 98. Scholars of donor portraiture point out that a variety of different secular figures can appear in religious paintings and caution against use of the term, which they regard as anachronistic. See Falque’s discussion of terms in Devotional Portraiture, 4–6; also Scheel, Das altniederländische Stifterbild, 17–18. For a history of donor portraits see Gelfand, “Fifteenth-century Netherlandish devotional portrait diptychs,” 39. 39 Porras, Art of the Northern Renaissance, 86. See also, in addition to Falque’s Devotional Portraiture, by the same author, “Du dynamisme,” and Scheel, Das altniederländische Stifterbild. 40 Recorded in manuscript français 21446, fol. 21r and v, of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 41 See Sauerländer, “Kinder als Nothelfer.”

90 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Virgin, a reference to Charles’ heraldic device, featured in the same pageant from which the angels descended during Isabeau’s coronation. The Petit cheval d’or seems to make material the argument by which Isabeau and her supporters authorized her position in the government. Although Queen of Heaven, Marie was necessarily co-ruler with her son, never an all-powerful regent. With the incessant disputes over power during the king’s absences constantly threatening to explode into outright war, the étrenne reminds Charles that peace depends on a female mediator, a woman surrounded by children, holding the true ruler on her knee. Certainly the figure represents the Virgin Mary, not Isabeau, but in a climate where the figure of mediator so persistently partook of the earthly and the divine and in a kingdom where the problem of regency was so acute, a figure of the Virgin co-reigning with her son could not have helped but evoke the queen. In addition to reminding us of the personal nature of gifts the Petit cheval d’or also embodies one of the more mundane purposes of such gifts. Shortly after receiving the object, Charles VI passed it on, at the request of the queen, to her brother, Louis of Bavaria, as a guarantee of payment of the 120,000 francs that the king had accorded Louis on his marriage to Anne of Bourbon.42 The Petit cheval d’or therefore ended up in Bavaria, where it remains to this day.43 Fabulous wealth monopolized by a tiny elite is a problem that continues to plague modern societies, and my point in this chapter has been neither to justify the economic organization of a gift-giving society nor what might be taken as its modern counterpart, crony capitalism. Rather, I restore Isabeau’s jewels to their proper context, the same one that gives meaning to the beautiful objects collected and exchanged by contemporary male royalty and nobility. Writing of the patronage of Blanche of Castile, Miriam Shadis point out that a clue to Blanche’s role […] may be found in the nature of what she bought – here, especially, jewels, which apparently were accumulated with some regularity by both the king and the queen for the queen’s household. What were these jewels for? No doubt some were destined for the adornment of both persons and objets d’art, but probably many, if not most, were intended to be used as gifts that would bind the recipient to the giver – the queen….44

42 43 44

Vallet de Viriville has edited the document laying out the objects that Charles VI passed over to Louis for this purpose. See “Documents relatifs aux joyaux de Charles VI,” 711–712. Louis packed the objects up and headed back to Bavaria. See footnote 34, above. Shadis, “Blanche of Castile and Facinger’s ‘Medieval Queenship,’ ” 145.

Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels | 91 Surely Isabeau of Bavaria’s accounts tell a similar story. Although Nicola Tallis’s study of queens’ jewelry 1445–1548 focuses on queens consort of England, the conclusion that the gems worn by these queens mirrored their status and rendered visual their authority is true of Isabeau as well. And, as demonstrated by recent scholarship, including Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben’s volume on female households and Barbara Stephenson’s study of the patronage of Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549)45, women, like men, created communities upon whose members they drew for support through strategic gift-giving.46 But whereas results of the practice are in general relatively visible for men, in the form of offices and territories awarded or alliances in war, such female activity is often invisible to historians, because women so often exerted influence indirectly. The activity therefore tends to be difficult to recover, as Kettering has noted.47 When the intermittent insanity of the king required Isabeau to assume important roles to hold the kingdom together, she sought to reinforce her political clout, and one means of doing this was to amass a store of jewels sufficient to support her participation in the exchange of gifts. Isabeau’s status as patron at the Valois court and her political role during a time when political and private interests were virtually inextricable require us to consider her jewels as part of a political strategy.

45 Stephenson, The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre. 46 Although Stephenson emphasizes Marguerite’s extraordinary position, The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre, 2. 47 Kettering, “The Patronge Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen,” 837.

6

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote

The tradition of the politically influential French royal mistress acquired its shape over the course of the nineteenth century, when historians, popular and scholarly, created a narrative of French singularity from the perception—and the reality— that the kings of France had often taken political advice from women to whom they were not related.1 Defining female “favorites” in France as “royal mistresses who had some influence over the events and men of their time,” Pierre Larousse’s popular Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siecle, published in 1872, goes on to note that “although the history of Spain and that of England also offer many traces of feminine influence in the affairs of State and some rather scandalous examples, it was chiefly in France that there were favorites, veritable shadow queens (‘reines de la main gauche’).”2 If Larousse’s dictionary as a whole is not especially flattering about shadow queens, other sources of the same period present the tradition as a source of pride, dovetailing it with a developing version of French nationalism for which gallantry, that is, a style of interaction between the sexes based on effervescent conversation 1 2

The royal mistress was a very popular book theme throughout the nineteenth century. See, for example, the bibliography on the French royal mistress that Larousse offers at the end of his entry on “favorite,” Grand Dictionnaire Universel, 8: 166–67. Larousse, ed., Grand Dictionnaire Universel, 8: 165.

94 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

and gender complementarity, represented a central value.3 In this context, the legend of Agnès Sorel (ca. 1424–1450), mistress of Charles VII, rousing the king to chase the English from France, took on renewed interest. The period over which Agnès had presided had been “marked by the installation of a permanent army; the reestablishment of order, which had been troubled for almost a hundred years, to justice, taxation, public administration; it came to a close with the recovery of Normandy: this six-year period was one of the most beautiful, grand, and memorable in the history of the monarchy.”4 Assigned a place of honor as first of the French royal mistresses, Agnès represented the tradition’s ideal. JeanBaptiste Capefigue, journalist and politician turned biographer, lauded the “salutary and glorious influence” that she exerted “on the awakening of chivalry.”5 For Jean-Nicolas Quatremère de Roissy she conducted herself with “circumspection” and tried to keep her “sensual relations” with the king a secret; she was “without ambition or greed.” One could even say that she was “disinterested.”6 If Agnès is idealized in nineteenth-century accounts as the beautiful, selfless, embodiment of soft power, the reason is at least in part because she lived before resident ambassadors became a fixture of court life, sending detailed missives of court relationships back to their lords: she is not mentioned in any ambassador correspondence. In contrast, her successors, women like the Duchess of Étampes, Diane de Poitiers, the Belle Corisande, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, Madame de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Pompadour, Madame Du Barry, were a central feature of such correspondence and have therefore come down to us as more ambivalent figures, as ambitious, highly intelligent, adept at manipulating ambassadors to promote the king’s his politics, ruthless, and skilled at dissimulation.7 And yet, these qualities, viewed from a sympathetic perspective, were absorbed into the culture of gallantry. Emphasizing conversation and flair, Larousse’s dictionary describes the Duchess of Étampes (1598–1580), for example, as a woman who

3 See Viala, La galanterie. Une mythologie française, 345-49. 4 Vallet de Viriville, De l’amour et des sentiments,” 379–380. 5 Capefigure, Agnès Sorel, 78. I discuss Agnès and nineteenth-century historians in Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy, 111–127. 6 Quatremère de Roissy, Histoires d’Agnès Sorel, 25, 28. 7 See, for example, Chateauneuf, Favorites, XV: “You will permit that a Frenchman sees some difference between the loveable Agnès Sorel, who by a trait of character awakened the besotted soul of a king happily losing his kingdom, and the belle Ferronière….”

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 95 did not seek the king’s love, and she restrained herself from loving him. She wisely limited her ambition to pleasing him, and she pleased him all his life. Through conversation she held on to one whom [sexual] pleasure alone would have would left indifferent. She was the long-term mistress of an artistic and lettered king….8

In a guidebook of 1855 showcasing the buildings, history, monuments, and landscapes in the Paris region, the chapter on Versailles boisterously praises mistress of Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan, attributing to her influence “the splendor of the royalty at Versailles.” Did she not counsel her “royal lover to protect the arts, letters, and sciences, to heed the voices of great men, to build sumptuous palaces, plant marvelous gardens, to put in to practice every second great, noble, and useful ideas?”9 It goes without saying that it is impossible to generalize about the majority of any complex society at any given time; but we can attest that in the nineteenth century a contingent with access to publication invested itself emotionally in gallantry as a value. Indeed, in the words of Alain Viala, gallantry came to represent a national superiority complex, a way to evoke the ghost of old French distinction and so to compensate for defeat. This patriotic image of galanterie was gradually adopted even by the lower middle class, at a time when France was confronted by Germany, as we shall see soon; and galanterie was also a way to mimic the old aristocratic distinction.10

The tradition of the royal mistress was an important element of this culture. Still, Agnès was always the ideal of the tradition. The primary sources are too sparse and contradictory to allow speculation on whether she was as selfless as she has been made out to be. But if the primary sources yield little on this count, the ways in which they were deployed by later historians to create of Agnès a loving and angelic founding mother of a glorious tradition are worthy of study in their own right. Particularly interesting is how Agnès has been paired with her cousin Antoinette de Maignelais in a binary relationship that flatters the former at the latter’s expense. In what follows I explore the Agnès-Antoinette binary, which, visible by the seventeenth century, flowers in the nineteenth, and remains common today, with the goal of comparing the perception of the good versus bad 8 Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel, 7: 1001. True, later in the article she is excoriated for plotting with Charles V and for intriguing against Cellini. 9 Nodier, ed., Les environs de Paris, 15–16. 10 “La galanterie française.” http://www.mhra.org.uk/centen​a ry/viala​100.

96 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

cousin with what the primary sources really say. The studies of Laurent Guitton on Antoinette and Christine Juliane Henzler on the women of Charles VII have recently moved discussion beyond this binary of Madonna versus prostitute, but more remains to be done. Of course we inevitably read primary sources through a modern lens; in the conclusion I will suggest some ways in which we might update how we imagine the cousins by recalibrating how we read the primary sources.

Agnès and Antoinette: The good and bad cousins Different from her nineteenth-century historians, contemporary chroniclers write little that is positive about Agnès Sorel, except that she was beautiful. They are still less enthusiastic about Antoinette de Maignelais.11 Antoinette’s repu­ tation worsens in seventeenth-century historical romances, where she becomes Agnès’s dark and envious double, sometimes responsible for Agnès’s death.12 Following Antoinette into the nineteenth century, we find nothing good about her in histories of that period, either, where she is typically depicted as motivated by the desire for wealth. One of Charles VII’s nineteenth-century biographers, Auguste Vallet de Viriville, who cannot praise Agnès highly enough, writes about Antoinette that she besmirched the role that she accepted by pimping (‘à l’emploi de proxénète’) for the king; she later took over supervision, like the Pompadours and Du Barrys, of royal debauchery. She squandered her favor in low and vulgar intrigues, to the great prejudice of public affairs and of Charles VII, who dishonored his youth with his licentious old age.13

Even some recent historians read the cousins in this way. According to one, Agnès’s “replacement was greedy and cynical;” in contrast with Agnès, who had “brightened the maturity of a fragile and tormented man, raising him above himself, Antoinette lowered him to the level of a lustful old man whose excesses outraged his entourage.”14

11 Antoinette is mentioned by three chroniclers: Chastellain, Œuvres, 3: 17–18, Le Clerc, Cronique Martiniane, 108–10, and Du Clercq, Mémoires, 90–91. 12 See, for example, La Roche-Guilhem, Histoire des Favorites, 91–144. 13 Vallet de Viriville, Charles VII, 3: 247. 14 Kermina, Agnès Sorel, 166.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 97 But what do we actually know about the cousins? Nothing at all about their relationship, unfortunately. As for their circumstances, Agnès’s are better attested than those of her cousin. Although Agnès’s date of birth is not confirmed in any contemporary document, the puzzle of her age at time of death in 1450 was resolved in 2006 when the French Ministry of Culture and the General Council of Indre and Loire,15 planning a transfer and new restoration of Agnès’s tomb, took advantage of the project to commission a study of Agnès’s remains by medical doctor and forensic historian Philippe Charlier and his team. Agnès’s teeth and the sutures in her skull show that she was about 26–27 when she died.16 As for her background, she was a member of the minor nobility. Her father, Jean Soreau, was a counselor to the Count of Clermont, later Charles, Duke of Bourbon, who was often in contact with the king’s brother-in-law René, Duke of Anjou;17 she spent her early years at the court of René and his wife Isabelle, Duchess of Lorraine. Agnès’s mother was Catherine de Maignelais, and Catherine’s brother was the father of Antoinette.18 Agnès would have become Charles VII’s mistress in 1443 or 44 and joined the royal court in 1444; we know that she was his mistress because he officially recognized their children, that is, their three daughters who lived to maturity.19 Although contemporary chroniclers commented on her great beauty, they also criticized her: the king had elevated far above her station, and her presence was mortifying to the queen, Marie of Anjou.20 Finally, she died in 1450, of an abrupt, acute ingestion of mercury, which we know, once again, from the studies commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, in this case a series of independent lab tests on hairs from her armpits, pubic region, and head.21 As for Antoinette de Maignelais, there is no record of her birth either, but historians assume that she was somewhat younger than her cousin. Based on the accounts of three chroniclers, Georges Chastellain (ca. 1405–1475), Jean Le Clerc (ca. 1440–1510), and Jacques Du Clercq (ca. 1420–1501), she is believed to have become Charles VII’s mistress either shortly before Agnès’s death or

15 See Blieck’s government document on the process and goals of the study. 16 Charlier, When Science Sheds Light, 102. Charlier details the examination in “Les dents,” 1512–13. 17 See Vallet de Viriville, “Nouvelles recherches,” 22–24. 18 Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 8: 540, 701. Anoinette de Maignelais was the daugh­ ter of Catherine’s older brother, Jean, 8: 541. 19 See Beaucourt, “Charles VII et Agnès Sorel,” 218–19. Among the “Registres de la chancellerie royale ‘stricto sensu’ ” for Charles VII, in JJ 187 of the Archives nationales, are an act of legitimation for Marie as well as a letter dated October 1458 detailing her dowry for her marriage to Olivier de Coëtivy. 20 On Marie of Anjou, see Rohr, Yolande of Aragon, 180, 229, n. 126. 21 Charlier has published many articles on the studies run on Agnès’s remains. See, for example, “L’empoisonnement de la Dame de Beauté.”

98 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

just afterwards. The king married her to his favorite, André de Villequier, in October 1450, roughly eight months after Agnès’s death.22 Chastellain has noth­ ing good to say about Agnès, lamenting the humiliation she caused the queen; about Antoinette, he writes that “at this time a woman named the demoiselle de Villequier, niece of the one who used to be called the Belle Agnès, was widely acknowledged to rule over the king, and this demoiselle was married to the Norman seigneur de Villequier.”23 Le Clerc is not particularly enthusiastic about Agnès or Antoinette, either, describing Agnès as “most beautiful young women of her time, and who was in the good graces of the king as much as could possibly be.”24 As for Antoinette, “she followed Agnès after her death.”25 Jacques Du Clercq writes that Antoinette “governed” the king just as Agnès had before her, and, in addition, asserts that she pimped for the king.26 With the death of Charles VII, Antoinette joined the king’s most prominent courtiers in moving to the Breton court of future father of Anne of Brittany, Duke François II, whose mistress she may have become by the end of the 1450s.27 At Nantes, she was at the center of politics, bore the duke four children, and overshadowed the duchess. Breton chronicler Alain Bouchart writes that the young and handsome duke took Antoinette to Brittany where he maintained her publicly until her death in “great estate” alongside his wife, a woman of the greatest virtue, daughter of the Duke of Brittany, grand-daughter of the King of Scotland.28 Agnès, then, according to legend, loved only the king, who never married her to anyone else. In contrast, the king married Antoinette to one of his men; in addition, she may have taken up with the Duke of Brittany even before the death of the king.

Agnès’s political role It will be useful to begin with what the primary sources do not say about Agnès as a political player. The elaborate narratives common in popular histories and 22 23

See Contamine, “Pouvoir et vie de court,” 545, citing Chastellain, Œuvres, 3: 18. For Chastellain’s lament about the poor queen see Chastellain, Œuvres, 4: 365; for the passage about Antoinette see Œuvres, 3: 17, 18. 24 Le Clerc, Cronique Martiniane, 95. 25 Le Clerc, Cronique Martiniane, 95. 26 Du Clercq, Mémoires, 90–91. 27 Du Clercq, Mémoires, 91. 28 Bouchart, Les grandes croniques, 215r.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 99 the custom of calling her the first “maîtresse-en-titre” or the first “official royal mistress,” as the expression is typically rendered in English, make it is easy to overestimate her visibility during her lifetime.29 But despite the claims of modern historians, the expression “maîtresse-en-titre” was manifestly not invented for Agnès Sorel. No contemporary document refers to her in that way.30 Indeed, the word “maistresse,” to designate a beloved woman whom one was courting or hoping to marry, begins to appear only later. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’académie française defines the word as “girls and women sought after for marriage” and adds that it can also be applied “to someone who is loved by another.”31 Henri IV routinely addresses his favorite, Gabrielle d’Estrées, as “ma maistresse,” in letters of the last years of the sixteenth century.32 Brantôme, writing during roughly the same period, refers to the Duchess of Étampes as François I’s “principal lady and mistress” (“sa principalle dame et maistresse”).33 As for the later addition, “en titre,” it normally means incumbent, as in “champion du monde en titre,” the current world champion, although it can sometimes mean “official,” as in “comptable en titre,” a qualified or official accountant. The composite expression “maîtresse-en-titre” becomes common only around the mid-eighteenth century as a general way of designating a favorite or current mistress,34 used to refer to the king’s favorite mistress but by no means restricted to this use. Agnès, then, is never referred to as anything like official mistress. The titles that she held were associated with the properties given her by the king: she was the Dame de Beauté, Roquecezière, Issoudun, and Vernon-sur-Seine, although it is not clear that she actually exercised any real control over these towns.35 Another thing that the documents do not say is that Agnès was publicly acknowledged as the king’s mistress; it is not true as one historian writes, that in 1444, the king “publicly designated Agnès Sorel as the first official royal favorite” during a joyous

29

For example, “Agnès Sorel had rapidly attained the status of official favorite (“favorite officielle”) of the king; she would be the first official mistress of a king of France.” Michel Benoit’s recent Les morts mystérieux d’ histoire, 11. 30 Nor is she called the “Favorite,” an expression that appears only in the late sixteenth century. Le Roux, Faveur, 23. 31 See the Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 2: 13, for the entry. 32 Henri IV, Henri IV, Lettres d’amour. 33 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 3: 244. 34 On use of the term “maîtresse,” see Ruby, Mit Macht Verbunden, 3–8. As for “maîtresse-en-titre,” I draw this conclusion from my own experience of extensive searching of seventeenth and ­eighteenth-century documents. 35 See pièce justificative 5 in Champion, Dame de Beauté, 175, for her many titles.

100 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

entry.36 There is no trace of such a presentation in any document. Nor was she ever mentioned as the center of attention at any festival, or even at any festival. Still, chroniclers were aware of Agnès, and the attention that she receives from them far surpasses that devoted to any other woman of comparable rank of her time. As a basis of comparison, we might take the mistress with whom Charles VII’s father, the insane Charles VI, was supplied to protect the queen from the abuses that he showered on her. Odette de Champdivers figures in exactly one chronicle and then not even by name.37 The chroniclers who men­ tion Agnès and were either rough contemporaries or active within about fifty years after her death and therefore able to consult people who had known her include Thomas Basin; Jean de Bourdigné; the Bourgeois of Paris; Jean Chartier; Georges Chastellain; Jean Le Clerc; Jacques Du Clercq; Mathieu d’Escouchy; Robert Gaguin; Nicoles Gilles; Jean Juvénal des Ursins; Olivier de La Marche; Thierri Pawels; Pope Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. With one exception, Jean Chartier, who claims that the king never touched Agnès below the chin, they affirm that Charles VII loved Agnès madly, that she was beautiful, and several note that the king bestowed inappropriate material favor upon her. For a hint of her political activity we can turn to Olivier de La Marche, Burgundian memoirist and chronicler, who writes in an entry about negotiations that took place in May and June 1445 that the king had recently taken up with a beautiful lady and that she did much good for the kingdom “by bringing before the king young men-at-arms and excellent companions, by whom the king has since been well served.”38 This suggests that she was able to influence the king’s appointments. In addition, we have mentions of her influence over the king in three depositions, each related to court factionalism and plots to overthrow the king along with Pierre de Brézé, his righthand man and the dauphin’s nemesis. One recounts, for example, that Pierre de Brézé controls the king through “that Agnès who serves the queen.”39 In another set of depositions relative to a different bit of political intrigue, the deponent refers to Pierre who has the king’s ear partly through the help of Agnès, “from whom Pierre has whatever he wants.”40 The same document says that the deponent had been instructed to inform the king that the dauphin was so upset with the king that he, the dauphin, was going to

36 Wellman, Queens and Mistresses, 29. 37 Pintoin, La chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, 6: 486. 38 La Marche, Mémoires, 2 :55. 39 Bueil, Jouvencel, 2 : 342. 40 Escouchy, Chronique, 3: 268.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 101 put things in order himself and chase Agnès away. In addition, the deposition lists code names for members of the court. Agnès’s is Helyos: Héloïse? The sun? Agnès unexpectedly joined the king in Normandy in January 1450, having crossed France, pregnant, to tell him, according to one chronicler, that he was about to be betrayed by some of his people and turned over to the English. She then fell mortally ill of what we now know was a sudden ingestion of a massive amount of mercury.41 Certain chronicles reference the dauphin’s hatred of Agnès and a handful of sources suggest that he had her poisoned.42 Simply the fact that contemporaries thought that the dauphin might have done her in indicates a perception that she was influential. The evidence adds up to what may have been clout with the king, but a profile so low that no ambassador was ever given instructions to seek her out, or, at least nothing indicates that any ever did. Nor is her presence ever mentioned at festivals, something that would have suggested her importance. Ambassadors to François I’s court, for example, routinely mention that François’s most significant mistress, the Duchess of Étampes, was present at court festivities, often mentioning where she was seated and with whom she spoke. But Agnès’s presence at such events was never noted.

Antoinette’s role In contrast with her cousin, Antoinette de Maignelais was the star of some banquets, and her influence was also recognized by at least one ambassador. For this reason, I suggest, she has as good a claim to the title of first significant mistress of a French king as Agnès Sorel, and this is despite that fact that it is not clear whether she was ever the king’s mistress according to received modern definition of that word. I will return to the point of whether or not she was the king’s mistress and why it does or does not matter. Antoinette enters history for the first time in a document of August 1449. Issued by Charles VII, en route to regain Normandy, the document specifies that the king removes “la terre de Maignelay” (the Maignelais land) from the Count of Clermont, Charles de Bourbon, to give it to Antoinette.43 Numerous historians have cited the document as a sign of special favor and therefore as evidence that 41 42 43

See Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 2: 181–86. See Du Clercq, “Mémoires,” 175; Le Clerc, Cronique Martiniane, 95. See Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 5: 59. Champion, Dame de Beauté, also discusses the docu­ ment, 105, n. 129.

102 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Antoinette became the king’s mistress before Agnès died the following February. An equally plausible explanation, however, is that Charles VII wanted to show favor to the family of his beloved mistress, possibly even at Agnès’s request. The king continued to show Antoinette favor, marrying her, as we have seen, to his “premier” favorite André de Villequier in the autumn of 1450, roughly eight months after Agnès’s death.44 André died prematurely in 1454,45 and Antoinette remained involved in court life until the king’s death in 1461, at that point following a group of courtiers who, fearing the new king Louis XI, moved to the court of the François II, Duke of Brittany, whose mistress Antoinette became.46 Different then from Agnès, for whom Charles VII never arranged a marriage, Antoinette as royal mistress—if she was indeed the king’s mistress—had a civil status to protect her,47 and much of the early favor shown her came to her as part of a married couple. André had already begun to receive gifts from the king in January 1444, coinciding with Agnès’s rise, and the gifts continued in abundance throughout his short life.48 The king explains his obvious generosity toward André in a letter, writing that the young man had had many opportunities to make a marriage that would have brought him great wealth, but he had conformed to royal desire in agreeing to marry the king’s “tres-chiere et bien amee Anthoinette de Magnelaiz, demoiselle.” To discharge his conscience, the king continues, he drowned André in gifts.49 Some historians have interpreted this statement as an admission of adultery, assuming that the king needed to discharge his conscience of guilt over his affair with André’s wife. And yet, the reading is not self-evident. The king may indeed have felt guilty about preventing André from making a fabulous marriage. Therefore, to offset his lost wealth, the king awarded Antoinette and André the territory of La Guerche and made André vicomte as a marriage gift; at the same time to Antoinette specifically he ceded Issoudun, which had belonged to Agnès, for use during her lifetime of the chateau, town, seigneurie and the salt. He also granted the married couple generous sums of money. When André lay dying in 1454, the king guaranteed that Antoinette would retain La Guerche and offered her a pension.50 44 45

See Contamine, “Pouvoir et vie de court,” 545, citing Chastellain, Œuvres, 3: 18. See Contamine, “Pouvoir et vie de court,” 545, citing Chastellain, Œuvres, 3: 18. On Antoinette and André see Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 5: 57–64. 46 Bouchart, Les grandes croniques, 215r. 47 This will become typical of other royal mistresses: either they came to the position already married, or the king chose a husband for them. Louise de La Vallière, mistress of Louis XIV, was one of the exceptions that proves the rule. 48 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 3: 177, n. 5. 49 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 5 : 62. 50 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 6:84.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 103 As André’s wife and, later, his widow, Antoinette seems to have been enmeshed in political life in a way that had not been possible for Agnès.51 In 1420 while still dauphin, Charles had been disinherited by his parents, Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria, in favor of Henry V of England. He therefore spent his early adulthood trying to secure his throne. Until l453 he was involved in wars against the English, and, over those same years, he was preoccupied with dealing with revolts by his own nobles, in the form of minor intrigues and full-fledged rebellions, like the Praguerie, in which his own son Louis took part. This means that his court was less spectacular than his father’s had been; he rarely went to Paris but lived primarily in Tours and Bourges.52 But by the time Antoinette began her rise, court life was making a comeback. By the mid-1450s Charles VII was no longer constantly at war, festivals were more magnificent, the favorites, for better or for worse, more in view.53 In this newly vibrant environment, Antoinette, along with her husband, and then with other favorites and their wives, played a more visible role than Agnès ever had in surroundings more magnificent than any that Agnès had enjoyed during her tenure. Such a court provided the kind of setting in which a royal mistress can become involved in politics: where ambassadors begin to piece together the system of favorites and start to solicit information from those closest to the king. Antoinette, in this context, was recognized as a person of influence. Chronicler Jean Chartier describes festivities to mark the Duke of Brittany’s homage to the king for his duchy, remarking that at that time “Monseigneur de Villequier” and “Madame,” his wife, held great authority at the royal court.54 For a festival held on 5 June 1455 in honor of Antoinette and Madame de Chateaubrun, lady of the queen recently married to a favorite of the king Charles de Gaucourt, seigneuer de Chateaubrun,55 the Duke of Savoy’s instructions to his ambassa­ dor say that he should approach “the king, the members of his Council, and Madame Villequier….”56 This presages later ambassador instructions that place the Duchess of Étampes among the most important court figures to solicit. Chastellain, too, describes Antoinette, again with Madame de Châteaubrun, as 51 52

See Guitton, “Fastes et malheurs,” especially 154–61. Charles VII has been the subject of several useful biographies. The following facts can be found in any of these: Contamine, Charles VII; Vale, Charles VII; Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII. 53 On the make up of Charles VII’s court during these years see Contamine, “Le sang, l’hôtel, le conseil, le peuple.” 54 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII. 2: 249. 55 Beaucourt Histoire de Charles VII, 6: 17. 56 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 6: 29, citing manuscript français 18983, of the Bibliothèque natio­ nale de France, fol. 24r. Surely it is significant that Antoinette figures at the head of a list of officers.

104 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

the center of the ambassadors’ attention during a festival to celebrate the engagement of princess Madeleine to the young Hungarian king.57 Other documents that hint at a politically oriented role include one of 1453 which shows citizens of the city of Compiègne, devastated by the plague, sending an embassy to plead with Madame de Villequier and Étienne Chevalier that their taxes be lowered.58 Vallet de Viriville suggests that Antoinette and André were part of the faction involved in the downfall of Jacques Cœur, who was accused of poisoning Agnès, because she profited from the fall.59 The Cronique Martiniane claims that shortly before the king’s death, Antoinette was alleged to have been supplying the dauphin with information about the royal court.60 The accusation is generally believed to have been a set up by the dauphin, but the fact that it was considered plausible suggests Antoinette’s continued involvement in court politics. That she exerted political influence at the royal court is all the more plausible because she is later described as a significant force at the court of Brittany. Bearing the duke four children, she is reproached by Breton chronicler Alain Bouchart for overshadowing the duchess; indeed, she was accused of preventing the duke from producing legitimate children with his wife. The relationship “between the duke and the aforementioned Antoinette,” he concludes, “had greatly damaging consequences for the male posterity of the line of Brittany, as many wise men said at the time and also as we have seen since.”61

The divergent paths of the cousins’ afterlives The difference in the reputations, or afterlives, of the cousins is striking. Several factors can explain the discrepancy. The first, as I have noted, is that Antoinette later became the mistress of Duke François II. Breton chroniclers did not describe Antoinette favorably, and the relationship undoubtedly diminished her prestige, suggesting that she was motivated by greed rather than love.62 In contrast, Agnès died at the heigh of her glory, adored by the king. Another factor is the Melun diptych, commissioned from painter Jean Fouquet by one of the executors of Agnès’s will and royal favorite Etienne Chevalier, whom we have just seen with 57 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 6: 168, citing Chastellain, Œuvres, 3: 376. 58 L’Épinois, “Notes extraites,” 496–7. 59 Vallet de Viriville, Charles VII, 3: 286–99; 454–55. 60 On the letters and their possible status as forgeries see Le Clerc, Cronique Martiniane, 108–10. If they are forgeries they nonetheless suggest that Antoinette was known to be involved in politics. 61 Bouchart, Les grandes croniques, 215r. 62 See Guitton’s assessement, “Fastes et malheurs,” 155.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 105 Antoinette and the king at the chateau of Ville Dieu. This gorgeous Virgin with child depicted on the left panel of the diptych is said to bear the facial features of Agnès. The image has left an enduring impression of Agnès as both pure and erotic. No image at all memorializes Antoinette, much less a fabulous one like the Melun Virgin. Still another is that Charles VII never married Agnès to anyone, which might suggest a particularly deep affection; in the eyes of historians over the years, the “double” adultery of Antoinette and the king has been regarded as the more sinful of the two relationships.63 In addition to these factors, as I have noted, the king fathered none of Antoinette’s children: two of her sons, Artus and Antoine, were fathered by André de Villequier, and two sons and two daughters by Duke François II of Brittany.64 The king recognized his three daughters by Agnès, and all were handsomely married. This matters because Agnès’s daughters and their families took the lead in shepherding Agnès’s positive image into future generations. Some of the efforts taken by Agnès’s daughters’ families to manage Agnès’s reputation after her death remain visible today. One of the most significant positive stories about Agnès is that she inspired the king to take up arms against in the English, which first appeared in the chivalric novel, the Jouvencel, written in about 1466 by father-in-law of Agnès’s daughter Jeanne. The story was elaborated over the centuries to make her the savior of France along with Joan of Arc. Another means of adorning Agnès’s reputation was depicting her as chastely resistant to the enamored king’s advances. A miniature in the Book of Hours of Marguerite de Coëtivy, Agnès’s grand-daughter, makes the argument. The miniature shows King David leaning out the window of a structure that recalls the Sainte Chapelle to ogle a Bathsheba who has been associated with Agnès by James Kren.65 Pointing out the resemblance between Marguerite’s Bathsheba and the Melun diptych, Kren speculates that in the eyes of Marguerite, the depiction “honoured the controversial Agnès’s position as object of royal desire.”66 Assuming that the identification is valid, the Bathsheba miniature suggests that neither Agnès nor her family can be blamed for her surrender to the king; she simply responded to royal orders. The attitude of this Agnès-as-Bathsheba recalls that of her gisants, two magnificent tombs, one to contain her heart (no longer extant), the other her body (still 63 Vallet de Viriville, Agnès Sorel, 37. 64 Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 2: 1332; 8: 54. On Artus and Antoine see Charles VIII, Lettres de Charles VIII, 332. 65 The manuscript resides today in the Musée Condé as manuscript 74, fol. 61r. 66 Kren, “Bathsheba,” 178.

106 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

standing in Loches), commissioned by the king. Both were decorated with gentle creatures like doves and lambs suggesting Agnès’s docility, modesty and obedience. The epitaphs on both tombs stressed Agnès’s charity toward the Church and the poor.67 They also praised her administration of La Roquecezière, Vernon, and Issoudun, describing her as “gentle in her words, soothing quarrels and scandals,” and, in a clear reference to the assumption of the Virgin, as ascending into heaven where she would take her place on a throne surrounded by saints.68 In addition, Antoinette, or one of her children, appears to have commissioned a series of frescoes depicting Agnès that once decorated the walls of the chateau de La Guerche. Although no longer extant, the frescoes are detailed in a 1778 article in the periodical Bibliothéque universelle des romans on Agnès’s portrayal in histories of Charles VII.69 According to the article, the frescoes traced the events of Agnès’s life, illustrating a “beautiful person” in the midst of “different ornaments and allegorical figures related to the different situations of her life.” One illustration drew on the familiar trope of innocent beauty modestly trying to dodge the attentions of a powerful lord. Agnès was shown discouraging the king’s advances, initially refusing a shower of royal gifts.70 Although no record remains of the date that the frescoes were painted, Antoinette’s son Artus undertook major renovations on the chateau in the last years of the fifteenth century, which may be when he commissioned the images if they were not already there. Another striking sign of such care is noted by René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marquis d’Argenson, eighteenth-century owner of the chateau: Agnès’s “chiffre,” as he calls it, presumably A, which, along with the frescoes, was visible everywhere.71 Besides Agnès’s family, Guillaume de Gouffier, favorite of the king and protector of Agnès, played a key role in safeguarding her reputation. Gouffier must have passed the story of Agnès on to his own son, Artus de Boisy, preceptor of François I, who reigned 1515–47, and his grand maître d’ hôtel, because the wife of this Artus collated an album of sketches of François I’s living courtiers, including with them a sketch of the long-dead Agnès probably based on a sketch that Fouquet had done to prepare for the Melun diptych.72 François I’s mother Louise of Savoy then had her own album done, retaining Agnès’s sketch and bringing

67 See Champion, Dame de Beauté, 64. 68 Champion, Dame de Beauté, 65. 69 For the article see “Histoire d’Agnès Sorel,” 115–206. The author is not named. The periodical ran from 1775–1789. For more information see Poirier, La Bibliothèque universelle des romans. 70 “Histoire d’Agnès Sorel,” 129–30; 141-42. 71 See Combeau, Le comte d’Argenson, 414, citing Arsénal 4562, fol. 91–2. 72 For more detail see Adams, Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy, 88-91.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 107 her and her legend into the court of François I. The Melun diptych itself and the sketches spawned an industry of copies, one of which was still hanging in the chateau of Ugny-le-Gay in Picardy, seat of one branch of the Sorel family, as late as the late eighteenth century. Another sign of family curation is the story of Agnès transmitted by Bernard de Girard, Seigneur du Haillan, named historiographer of the king under Charles IX.73 The first time that Haillan treats Agnes, in De l’estat et succez des affaires de France of 1572, he has nothing positive to say about her, depicting her as distracting the king from his duties. But then something changed Haillan’s mind. For in the Histoire générale des roys de France, first published in 1576, Haillan supplements his earlier narrative to give Agnès a positive role, repeating and embellishing the legend of the young woman’s arousing the king’s sense of valor that we first saw being promoted by Agnès’s family, giving us the immortal scene that will remain central to her legend. Agnès told the king that when she had been a girl, an astrologer had told her that she would be loved by one of the most courageous and valorous kings in Christendom, but she now thought he could not have meant Charles VII, who was letting the English remain in France. The king began to cry but then went out chased the English from France.74 Why the change? Haillan was appointed official historiographer of the king on the recommendation of René de Villequier, son of Artus de Villequier and therefore grandson of Antoinette. René would have been in a good position to pass along the legend after seeing his ancestor disparaged.75 As for Antoinette’s afterlife, after the few chronicle references that I have mentioned, in gallant literature of the seventeenth century she suddenly reappears as Agnès’s rival and even assassin, and, with the professionalization of history, she is absorbed in the histories of Charles VII as an immoral gold digger and political schemer. To conclude, I would like to return to whether Antoinette was in fact the king’s mistress. The favor that the king showed her could just as well be one more example of his generosity toward Agnès’s relatives, which was extreme,76 73 74 75

76

Fossier, “A propos du titre d’historiographe,” 378. Haillan, 1627, Histoire générale, 1: 1055–56. As he explains himself in a pamphlet for Charles IX detailing his plans for a new history of France. See Bonnefon, “L’Historien Du Haillan,” 460, 480. René goes on to figure in a horror story of his own, murdering his wife, Françoise de la Marck, in 1577. See McIlvenna, Scandal and Reputation, 1–2, 41–43. Her mother received a pension after Agnès’s death, see Anselme, Histoire généalogique, 8: 540; Her uncle Geoffroy Sorel was awarded administration of the abbey of Saint-Crépin of Soissons in 1447 and raised to bishop of Nîmes in 1450, see Anselme, Histoire généalogique, 8: 70, and, in addition, Vallet de Viriville unearthed further information about Geoffroy Sorel, “Recherches historiques,”

108 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

and toward André Villequier and his family, which was equally so.77 True, as I have noted, three chroniclers describe Antoinette as succeeding Agnès as royal mistress. But it is difficult to know if they were correct. Disapproving of Agnès, chroniclers reasoned that the presence of her cousin in a prominent position at court just after Agnès’s death must have meant that Antoinette too was the king’s mistress. A close examination of the other evidence shows almost nothing. The most significant of Charles VII’s nineteenth-century biographers, Gaston du Fresne, Marquis de Beaucourt, cites as evidence of affair the fact that the king spent some time during the summer of André’s death in Preuilly and Pressigny, each about a ninety-minute walk from La Guerche. The conclusion that the king therefore spent the summer at La Guerche, consoling the widow (Beaucourt archly italicizes he word) and undoubtedly took her along with him to the chateau of Bridoré, where he went next, is pure conjecture. I would propose that Antoinette may not actually have been the mistress of the king, in the way that we understand the term. I do not claim to be sure: I simply propose the possibility, for two reasons. First, both Antoinette and Charles VII had several children, but never with each other. Antoinette’s children were born during the short lifetime of her husband and during her long-term relationship with the Duke of Brittany. Between 1454 and about 1462 she bore no recorded children. Charles VII’s last recorded child was a premature baby who died with Agnès in 1450. Certainly this is not conclusive proof that there was no sexual relationship. It does seem odd, however, that two verifiably fertile individuals would have been intimately involved for some seven years without producing offspring. Second, Antoinette was a proponent of Agnès’s positive reputation, but neither she nor her family took steps to curate her own reputation. If Antoinette was not the king’s mistress they would have had no reason to do so. She would have had no idea that hundreds of years later her relationship with the king would be assumed to have been sexual and would have seen no reason to do damage control of the kind she performed in helping to curate the reputation of Agnès. Lacking this reputational mitigation, Antoinette was easily slotted into the role of debauched counterpart of her cousin. Paradoxically, then, the lack of an intimate relationship between the king and Antoinette may be the ultimate cause of her vilification.

298–300. Her brother Charles was part of the king’s household; brother Louis was a squire for the king; brother Jean, seigneur of Saint-Géran, was the Grand Huntsman of France. 77 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 5: 59–64.

Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A star and a footnote | 109 More paradoxical still, even though she may not have been intimately involved with the king, Antoinette, I suggest, was crucial to the development of the tradition of the French royal mistress. Whatever the reality of her relationship with Charles VII, she was taken by some contemporaries to be the king’s mistress and seems to have been recognized as politically influential. This has not served her reputation well. The Agnès/Antoinette binary, like its Marie/Eve counterpart, allowed the role of the royal mistress to be conceived of positively, anchoring the role in its positive guise to Agnès while pushing negative associations onto Antoinette. For the long-term effect of the binary I return to the narrative of the French royal mistress as it emerged in the nineteenth century, when Agnès and Antoinette became the two essential faces of the role: Agnès as the ideal that justifies or hides Antoinette, the political reality, or, put slightly differently, Agnès as the loving mistress persona giving cover to Antoinette, the political actor. Agnès and Antoinette, beautiful muse versus greedy opportunist, combined, offer a perfect standard for distinguishing the good mistress from the bad and promoting the good. For this reason, Antoinette’s role might be considered a sort of supplément to the role of royal mistress as realized by Agnès, who was typically assumed to have been little interested in politics. Antoinette might be seen as the active element required to complete the role; the cousins together add up to the French royal mistress of the later type.

7

Unpacking Brantôme’s Particularitez

Memoirist Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (1540–1614), born into a family of courtiers, was well placed to gather oral histories about the kings and queens of France and the men and women who served them. His grandmother, Louise de Daillon du Lude, was raised at Anne of France’s court and later served Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of François I;1 his father, François de Bourdeille, and two of his aunts served Queen Anne of Brittany;2 his mother, Anne de Vivonne, was goddaughter of Anne of Brittany, and his maternal aunt Jeanne de Dampierre waited on François I’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, and remained in the service of queens all her life. The author himself spent time as a boy at Marguerite’s court alongside his grandmother, and he later knew another Marguerite of Navarre, “la reine Margot” (1553–1615), daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis.3 1 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 10: 45, 47. Portions of this chapter first appeared in “Gender, Reputation, and Female Rule in the World of Brantôme,” Queenship, Reputation and Gender, ed. Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz St. John (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 29-49. They are reproduced here with permission of Palgrave Springer Nature. 2 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 10: 34–36. On Jeanne de Dampierre see also Boucher, Deux épouses et reines, 56. 3 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 2: 214. For more detail see Lalanne, Brantôme: sa vie et ses écrits, 8; on his life see also Lazard, Pierre de Bourdeille.

112 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Given his intimate connections to court life, the portraits and anecdotes that Brantôme presents in the works widely known today as the Vies des dames illustres and the Vies des dames galantes are considered important sources of information about the women of the French royal court. Brantôme insists that his stories are accurate, even those which he did not witness himself. He admits that at times his knowledge of court intrigue comes from books, but, he affirms, he also learned the truth from Madame la Sénéschale, my grandmother, and from Mme. de Dampierre, my aunt, a true Court recorder, and as clever, wise, and virtuous a lady as ever entered a court a hundred years ago and who knew well how to discourse on everything. From the age of eight she was brought up at court and forgot nothing. It was good to hear her talk….4

And yet, despite the tags like “I read,” “I heard it said,” and “I saw” that punctuate his work, encouraging readers to understand his descriptions as genuine memories of his own or of trustworthy eyewitnesses, Brantôme’s stories cannot all be accepted at face value.5 In addition to borrowing from literary sources while purporting to convey an eye-witness testimony,6 he recounts anecdotes that feel improbable, leaving readers wondering at times whether they are reading something wild but authentic, basically true but hyperbolized, or completely fictitious.7 This is especially true of the anecdotes about individual women’s words, features, or actions that Brantôme scatters throughout his memoirs, anecdotes that he calls particularitez, particularities. In what follows I consider how modern historical portrayals of the women Brantôme describes have at times been influenced by literal readings of his particularities. I do not propose dismissing particularities, however. On the contrary, I suggest that a kind of truth can often be teased out of them. A particularity, whether it reflects Brantôme’s own observations or those of his grandmother, father, mother, aunts, or another source entirely, is always presented to the reader 4 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 7: 330–31. 5 Pingaud, “Brantôme, historien,” 199. 6 As Lalanne points out, Brantôme borrowed at least one of his anecdotes about the regent Anne of France from a book of “facéties” and “motz subtiles,” Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 8: 104–5, note 2; Cottrell, in Brantôme: The Writer as Portraitist, 62, n. 45, shows that although Brantôme claims to have taken his description of the death of Marie Queen of Scots from an eye-witness, his account repeats word for word Blackwood’s La mort de la Royne. 7 Pingaud writes that Brantôme “mixed with his memories the expression of his disappointments and resentments,” “Brantôme, historien,” 187. Brantôme’s hyperbolizing has received much scholarly attention. See, for example, Vaucheret, “Les éloges hyperboliques dans les Dames illustres.”

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 113 wrapped in an interpretation that gives it meaning. That is, a particularity is a telling detail, as writers of fiction might say.8 This means that alternate interpre­ tations of a particularity are always possible, which means, in turn, that we can “reprocess” particularities through cultural templates that feminist scholars have developed to discuss female power. In this way we arrive at alternate readings of the conduct of some Brantôme’s illustrious characters. Certainly the method is not fool-proof, especially given that we can never be certain that a particularity is in fact based on an eye-witness report at all. Still, as I hope to show here, some re-processed particularities can be corroborated by other sources and taken as plausible details about real women. First, however, it will be useful to consider in more detail how Brantôme uses particularities.

Encomium and particularities In a passage following his laudatory portrait of Elizabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain, daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, Brantôme pauses to justify his copious use of particularities. I know that in this discourse and others preceding it, I can be criticized for putting in many small particularities that are totally superfluous. True, but I know that if they annoy some, others appreciate them. It seems to me that it isn’t enough when we praise people to say that they are beautiful, wise, virtuous, worthy, valiant, magnanimous, open, generous, splendid, and absolutely perfect. These are general accolades and descriptions, commonplaces that everyone uses. It is important to be specific about the whole and, in particular, describe perfections in such a way as to bring them to life … .9

For Brantôme, particularities are the personal details that he adds to a more general description, or type, of a person; as Robert D. Cottrell has noted, Brantôme uses particularities to support his encomia, which effectively “level distinction.”10 If it is true, as John Pope-Hennessy has written, that “portraiture, like other forms of art, is an expression of conviction, and in the Renaissance it reflects the reawakening interest in human motives and the human character, the resurgent

8 See Cottrell, Brantôme: The Writer as Portraitist, 58–65. 9 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes,” 8: 21. 10 Cottrell, Brantôme: The Writer as Portraitist, 76.

114 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

recognition of those factors which make human beings individual,” Brantôme’s particularities individualize his biographical sketches.11 Brantôme admits only to the use of positive particularities. For some women, the memoirist has only praise. Amidst his general comments about Marguerite of Navarre, sister of François I, the particularities are all flattering: for example, he notes she was adept at worming information from ambassadors, which the king greatly appreciated.12 Nonetheless, many of the individualizing details that he recounts about women are unkind, to say the least, at times biting, even scurrilous. In addition, Brantôme sometimes lavishly praises and undermines the same woman. The combined effect of such extremes creates the impression of a narrator oscillating, Cottrell writes, from “appearance to the exposure of hidden truth,” simultaneously idealizing and undermining.13 True, such ambivalence is not always jarring. One example is his 70-page encomium of Catherine de Médicis paired with the anecdote, which he recounts much later, of the queen boring holes in the ceiling to spy on her husband, Henri II, trysting with Diane de Poitiers.14 Brantôme turns the anecdote into an occasion for ribald laughter, noting that the queen, initially demoralized, soon made a pastime of the spying and turned it into a joke. The effect of the anecdote is to reveal the very human jealousy of this magnificent queen, but, more important, to show her coping in a sort of blackly humorous way with a painful situation. More generally, laudatory passages and undermining particularities often occur at a distance from each other within the text; moreover, as far as most modern readers are concerned, they occur in different genres, the memoirist singing his most fulsome praise in the Vie des dames illustres and saving his nasty remarks for the Vie des dames galantes. It is important to keep in mind, however, as Claude La Charité explains, that Brantôme himself conceived of his work as a single volume. The two parts represented a whole in his mind, each side containing seven sections, which suggests 11

Late sixteenth-century portraits display individualizing details the purpose of which is not so much to depict the subjects realistically as to illustrate their inner state, according to Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, 3. 12 For the anecdote, Œuvres complètes,” 8: 118. Grewe, “L’historiographie des femmes,” explains that the portraits of princesses that Brantôme presents in the first half of his work amount to a history of femmes fortes, strong women, and demonstrate how deeply these women were involved in politics. 13 Cottrell, Brantôme: The Writer as Portraitist, 97. As Cottrell notes, Brantôme’s narrative persona often feels divided, moving quickly between the ostentatiously reverent biographer, on the one hand, and, on the other, the “restless and assertive ego,” “the hablador, the cynical victim of Fortune, the shrewd observer and the unwitting debunker of courtly reputation,” 78–79. 14 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 7: 332–403; 9: 284. In the latter case, Brantôme does not name the figures, but there is little doubt as to their identities.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 115 that he intended the halves in some sense to mirror each other. If the discordant notes are deliberately placed, they cannot easily be ignored.15 Emily Butterworth’s recent examination of Brantôme as a gossip offers a plausible way of reconciling the conflicting images: gossip was a form of currency at court, and those who circulated it grew their social capital. From this perspective, Brantôme slips in particularities in the way a gossip inserts small pieces of slander into mostly positive discourse about a third party to create a bond with the listener: like a secret, sharing a negative particularity creates a sense of intimate complicity. Brantôme’s work, writes Butterworth, “demonstrates the normative and conservative function of gossip which upheld the morality of the dominant culture,” and it was “thus aggressive as well as supportive, exclusive as well as inclusive….”16 Against the backdrop of generalized, stereotypical praise, Brantôme’s mean details have often seemed to historians to ring true, precisely because they are unflattering. But just as gossip often represents a partially accurate assessment warped by antagonism or jealousy, Brantôme’s particularities often seem to be distortions crying out for re-processing. I would like in what follows to examine Brantôme’s at-times-scathing personal remarks as pieces of gossip that contain some truth but, filtered through a temporally unfriendly or jealous observer, demand alternate interpretations. By applying a more positive template than Brantôme’s to unflattering particularities and testing the result against other contemporary documents, I attempt to reclaim some of Brantôme’s questionable observations.

Anne of France and Anne of Brittany: Jealous rivals? Brantôme’s assessments of Anne of France (1461–1522), daughter of Louis XI and regent for her younger brother Charles VIII, and Anne Duchess of Brittany (1477–1514), queen of Charles VIII and Louis XII, both praise these royal women in generic terms and undermine them with nasty particularities. The particularities have often been accepted as straightforward truths. Georges Minois’s 1999 French biography of Anne of Brittany relates that in the spring of 1492,

15 La Charité, “La construction du public lecteur,” 123. La Charité explains that first printer of Brantôme’s work presented the single work as two separate works, adding the adjective “galante” to the title of the second, 113. 16 Butterworth, The Unbridled Tongue, 154.

116 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

[a]‌t court, the young queen [Anne of Brittany] was well accepted, except by her sister-in-law, Anne, now Anne of Bourbon or France …. Still young, 31, [Anne of France] had not reacted well at first to her brother’s attempts to emancipate himself from her guardianship. Intelligent and authoritarian, she still claimed an important political role for herself. In this area, she didn’t have much to fear from the young queen, who was awarded no political authority. It was more in the area of honor, worldly vanity, that the two women were jealous of each other.17

Minois brings his commentary to a close by asserting that “the constant rivalry occasioned a multitude of incidents.”18 Minois derived his characterizations of the two Annes from Brantôme. Brantôme lauded both of the Annes, but, following Minois’s footnote, we find that he also undermined that flattery, writing of Anne of France that she wanted to exercise her prerogative and authority regarding Queen Anne; but she met her match, as they say; because Queen Anne was a true Breton, very proud and haughty towards her equals, to such a degree that Madame de Bourbon had to yield and allow the queen, her sister-in-law, to maintain her status and majesty, as was right; it must have bothered her greatly, because, as regent, she clung fiercely to her status.19

These particularities have been extremely influential. Minois is not alone in relying on them. Another historian writes that Anne of Brittany saw in the Regent [Anne of France] the organizer of French victory, and she hated her on that account from the bottom of her Breton heart and with all the fervour of her Breton patriotism. As a wife, as a queen, and as a woman, she disliked [Anne of France’s] influence, coveted her authority, and resented her position.20

To become queen in the first place, writes another, “the little duchess had been vanquished by the regent; therefore she was her inferior, in debt to her.”21 Another historian claims that Anne of France, for her part, was angry that she had “to cede precedence to her sister-in-law, who reigned in intimacy, over her royal 17 Minois, Anne de Bretagne, 317. 18 Minois, Anne de Bretagne, 317. 19 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 8: 102–3. 20 Bridge, A History of France, 1: 240–41. 21 D’Orliac, Anne de Beaujeu, 109.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 117 husband.”22 The dislike was mutual, according to still another: “Fifteen years younger than Anne [of France], Anne [of Brittany] was equally ambitious and even more self-willed. While the Regent acted with calculated ruthlessness, the Breton heiress was passionate and unpredictable.”23 At first glance the descriptions of the women and their relationship seem entirely plausible. After all, in 1491 the French under Anne of France had forced Anne of Brittany to surrender her duchy to them; even worse, Anne of France had forced Anne of Brittany, betrothed to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, to marry Charles VIII to guarantee that Brittany would remain in French control. But if Anne of France had won a victory over Anne of Brittany, the duchess’s marriage to Charles VIII elevated her rank over the regent’s. Certainly Anne of France might have resented losing her priority. What is objectionable on reflection, however, is the way in which the women’s presumed rivalry is cast, as petty squabbling. If the Annes were genuinely rivalrous, the object of their jealousy would not have been “wordly vanity” but power, access to the king. Early modern Europe offers any number of examples of male rivals: François I and Henry VIII, François I and Charles V, Maximilian I, and Charles VIII to name a few. However, historians do not represent these men in anything like the terms they apply to the Annes: these men are not haughty; they do not hate from the bottom of their hearts; they are not little; they are not strong-willed, passionate, or unpredictable. The long-term effect of Brantôme’s diminishing of the Annes is evident in Minois’s conclusion that “the constant rivalry occasioned a multitude of incidents.” In fact, Minois presents only one example of such an incident, writing that relations between the two Annes over the winter and spring of 1492 were “deteriorating” to the point that a group of men—ministers and the Duke of Orléans—stepped in on 5 July to convene a family meeting “to settle things.”24 The family appealed to the women’s Christian sentiments, explains Minois, and took the matter very seriously: before the True Cross, Archbishop Georges d’Amboise, principal minister, had the two Annes swear to “lend mutual aid and help, with good love, union and intelligence, to safeguard the king and bring to a finish the great disorder that reign in his House.”25

22 Tourault, Anne de Bretagne, 103–4. 23 Salmon, “The Regent and the Duchess,” 343. 24 Minois, Anne de Bretagne, 317. 25 Minois, Anne de Bretagne, 317.

118 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

A search through histories and collections of documents related to 5 July 1492 does indeed turn up a treaty recounting that on that date, “seeing the great disorder that reigns in the House of the said King,” Anne of Brittany, Louis of Orléans, Pierre of Bourbon and Anne of France found it necessary with “good love, union and intelligence” to protect the king against his enemies, and, “in the presence and between the hands of the Archbishop of Narbonne [Georges d’Amboise], holding the True Cross,” swore to each other to ally against the king’s enemies. But the document has nothing to do with a squabble between the women. Instead, the document shows the Annes, Louis of Orléans, and Pierre of Bourbon allying in a league to bring to a stop the great disorder being caused by the king’s enemies. The document begins: We, Anne by the grace of God queen of France, and Louis Duke of Orléans, and Pierre and Anne Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, seeing and considering the great affairs and damnable actions that enemies of Monseigneur le Roy perpetrate daily against the king and his kingdom and the great disorder reigning today, also in the house of the king, which could cause great trouble for his subjects; for this reason we, who want only the good of the king and his kingdom, as those closest to the situation, find it necessary that we share love, union and intelligence in order to better serve the king and his kingdom and prevent, resist and prevail against those who wish the contrary….26

The document goes on to specify that the principal enemy against whom they were uniting was the Admiral Louis Malet de Graville. The reference to the “great disorder that reigns in the House of the king” seems to have caught Minois’s attention, and, his view colored by the long tradition via Brantôme of the Annes’ cat fighting, the historian concluded that this “disorder” referred to supposed rivalry between the two haughty females. It is certain, however, that the alliance was in no way motivated by Louis of Orléans’s desire to “settle things” between the Annes—as if he would have had the authority to intervene in such a way, in any case. The document targeted by Minois as evidence of a cat fight, then, turns out to be just the opposite, a snapshot of the women pursuing a common political goal. As such, the document further authorizes a revised interpretation of Brantôme’s particularity: it reveals a degree of anxiety about female power on the part of the memoirist. This seems clear when we examine another notable particularity that Brantôme attributes to

26 Jaligny, Histoire du roy Charles VIII, 625.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 119 Anne of France. She was, he writes, “filled with dissimulation and a great hypocrite, who, because of her ambition, hid and disguised herself in all ways.”27 The positive contemporary assessments of her conduct and her own writings suggest that, as an adult, she continued to conform to conventional modes of behavior. Although she apparently knew how to impose her will, she seems to have done so quietly. We might note, for example, her strategic absence from the gathering of the Estates General in 1484, which had met to decide, among other things, who would have regency of the young king. Only her husband Pierre appeared before the delegates.28 This appearance of submission that both masked and made possible her power is what Brantôme refers to as dissimulation and hypocrisy. In contrast with Brantôme, we might think of such behavior as enabling her exercise of power. As for Anne of Brittany, we find the lingering effects of Brantôme in many modern interpretations of her. In his portrait of the queen in the Vies des dames illustres, Brantôme begins by praising the queen, but, abruptly, just after claiming that, according to what he has heard from his sources, Anne was “very good, extremely merciful and very charitable,” he announces that it is also true that she was very quick to vengeance and could not forgive.29 He offers two examples of her avenging nature: her treatment of Pierre de Rohan, the Maréchal de Gié, and Louis of Orléans. Bernard Quilliet picks up on Brantôme’s assessment, writing that, on the positive side, Anne had “a sense of duty,” “quick wit,” and “at times demonstrated great finesse.” On the negative side, she was “dry of heart and cold-headed,” and had a taste for “torturous intrigue, tenacious resentments, the most opulent splendour, and the most ostentatious devotion.” She was “ferociously jealous,” “vindictive,” “selfish and haughty,” “monomaniacal,” “hateful,” and prone to “Breton sulking;” her devotion was “almost pagan.”30 Minois cites Quilliet, claiming that the judgement, if harsh, is mostly true. Minois then goes on to analyse Anne’s character in a section with the heading “An authoritarian, hard, rancorous, and humorless woman.”31 Recent work on Anne of Brittany eschews these old stereotypes.32 However, Brantôme’s particularities about Queen Anne can be usefully unpacked and 27 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 8: 102. 28 See Masselin, Journal, 5–8. 29 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 7: 310–12. 30 Quilliet, Louis XII, 236–37. 31 Minois, Anne de Bretagne, 421–22. 32 For example, Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France; Brown, The Queen’s Library; Le Fur, Anne de Bretagne.

120 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

reprocessed as evidence of her political engagement. Anne’s treatment of Gié, which is often cited by modern biographers as evidence of her vengeful nature, is by no means transparent.33 Several contemporary sources attest that Anne, believing King Louis XII to be at death’s door, was ready to return to her duchy of Brittany with her daughter, Claude. Gié, however, prevented the boats from departing. With Louis dead, Anne rightly feared that Claude would be married to François of Angoulême, heir to the throne, later François I. Anne fought against this marriage, knowing that Brittany would be fully absorbed into the French kingdom if it took place. She worked instead for a marriage between Claude and the heir to the Holy Roman Empire, a marriage that would guarantee Brittany’s continued existence as an independent duchy. As Lucien Bély observes, for Anne, the French kingdom was “familial, feudal, or dynastic,” and she wanted to marry Claude to the heir to the Holy Roman Empire to ensure her duchy’s continued independent existence, whereas Louis XII’s vision was “national and sought to defend at all costs the integrity of the [French] territory.”34 Anne’s case against Louis XII and his men and her fury at Gié, then, should not be regarded as the grudge of a petulant child, but as a sign of her desire to keep her duchy free from French rule. That she failed should not be taken as a sign of her weakness or the unworthiness of her cause but recognized as the inevitable result of the overwhelming power against her, a centralizing power that was slowly eroding the power of the kingdom’s great seigneurs. As for the Louis of Orléans example, Brantôme writes that Anne took offense at Louis’s gaily dancing at a masquerade at Amboise shortly after the death of her son, because she believed him to be rejoicing that he, Louis, was now the heir to the throne. In the face of her anger, Louis was forced to flee to Blois. If the story is true as Brantôme relates it, it is understandable that Anne was furious to see Louis dancing for joy because he stood to gain politically from her terrible loss: this does not mean that she was vengeful.

33

This entire story comes to life in Maulde la Clavière’s edition of the depositions related to the affair, Procédures politiques du règne de Louis XII. 34 Bély, La Société des princes, 215.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 121

Eleanor of Austria’s large jaw, Mary of Hungary’s masculine appearance If Brantôme’s particularities about the Anne’s reveal a nervousness about the power of two women whom he also genuinely admired, his descriptions of Eleanor of Austria (1498–1558), sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r. 1519–56) and second consort of François I (1494–1547), suggest something quite different. Eleanor has been called “one of the most neglected of the French queens,” “a forgotten queen,” and “among the most invisible of the queens of France.”35 A num­ ber of recent studies have begun to remedy the situation, revisiting the primary sources to uncover a much richer story than the traditional one of an effaced and little-loved woman. Art historians have highlighted how Eleanor asserted her Habsburg identity through her Spanish-style clothing choices in her portraits and through her patronage of the arts, while cultural historians emphasize the size and quality of her entourage, along with its “cosmopolitan air,” and suggest that the far from being effaced, the queen was a vibrant presence. Still, she remains understudied. Although Brantôme in fact pays Eleanor little attention, blame for her invisibility cannot be laid at his door: she does not figure prominently in other French primary sources, either. Had he written about the queen in the effusive and glowing terms he reserved for the French women he praised she might have been more present in the history of French royalty, and she might also have been remembered differently. But along with a few neutral and/or banal words, he relates two rather grotesque anecdotes about her.36 Before focusing on these, however, I create some context for re-interpreting what they might mean. Comparing how Eleanor was regarded by her own family and other witnesses favorable to the Habsburgs to Brantôme’s bizarre representations reveals a profound discrepancy. Eleanor, eldest the six children of the Philip the Handsome of Burgundy and Juana, sometimes called La Loca, of Castile, was well-prepared, along with her sisters, Isabella and Marie, to promote the dynasty’s interests. The three girls were raised by their aunt Marguerite of Austria alongside their brother Charles, later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, at her court in Malines—the two youngest children Ferdinand and Catherine grew up in Spain with their mother. Marguerite’s court (into which Anne Boleyn was welcomed in 1514), was 35 See Pardanaud-Landriot, “Plaider, convaincre,” 195; Combet, “Éléonore d’Autriche, une reine de France oubliée,” 15; and Jordan and Wilson-Chevalier, “L’Épreuve du mécénat,” 341. 36 For the neutral and/or banal see Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 2: 163; 3: 161; 9: 316, 525, and 620.

122 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

renowned for its brilliance in letters, art, and music. The siblings’ pride in each other and their devotion to family manifests itself in their epistolary exchanges. In the massive collection of letters that Marie and Charles produced during the years 1532 and 1533 alone, they record their attention to the details of governing and profess mutual affection. They also manifest a tender attention to Eleanor’s situation at the French royal court.37 Recent scholars, aided in some cases by letters between Habsburg brides and their families, have revealed the ways in which the Habsburg women contributed to the flourishing of the dynasty from their new homes, Anne J. Cruz noting that the “vast correspondence produced by Habsburg women has allowed for a close examination of their relations with their families and political allies, as they formed virtual communities of letters across borders.”38 Anne-Marie Jordan Gschwend writes that the “veneration of the Habsburg house ignited by Maximilian, and actively promoted by his grandson, Charles V, evolved into a collective family consciousness….”39 Gschwend’s point finds reinforcement with the energetic support upon which Charles V drew throughout his life, the support of Marguerite of Austria, his brother, and his four sisters, Eleanor, Isabella, Marie, and Catherine. During Charles’s minority, his aunt Marguerite assumed the role of governor of the Netherlands. On Marguerite’s death in 1530, Charles assigned the post to Marie, who had been freed for service by the death of her husband Louis II of Hungary. When Eleanor entered the French royal court as the queen of France, however, she stepped into a world in which she was immediately cast as an enemy. The Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was the foremost rival of the French king, and, even though Eleanor’s marriage to François I was meant to seal the peace between the dynasties, the union brought no fundamental change. For the reader, moving from a context where Eleanor was valued to one in which she was so little prized produces a shock. The first of Brantôme’s particularities about Eleanor involves a bit of gossip that he claims to have learned from Madame de Fontaine-Chalandray, Claude Blosset, lady-in-waiting to the queen. Also known as the La Belle Torcy, Claude Blosset had served Eleanor from a young age first in Flanders and then France. Brantôme describes La Belle Torcy as one of the wisest, most beautiful, virtuous and honest ladies it was possible to be; he then adds a particularity about her character, that “she let herself be effaced 37 See Correspondance de Marie de Hongrie avec Charles Quint. 38 Cruz, in her introduction to Early Modern Habsburg Women, 9. 39 Gschwend, “ ‘Ma meilleure sœur,’ ” 3: 2571.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 123 by no Spanish, German, Flemish, Italian, or any other woman.”40 La Belle Torcy apparently was able to hold her own wherever she went. Whatever positive qualities La Belle Torcy may have possessed, kindness seems not to have been one of them; in particular, she was not kind about her mistress. Brantôme reports that he heard La Belle Torcy recount that Eleanor, when dressed, seemed to be a very beautiful princess, a verifiable assessment, as Brantôme explains, because several people still at court in his day had actually seen the queen in person. She had indeed been of rich and lovely stature. But undressed, La Belle Torcy’s story goes, the queen appeared to have the body of a giant and the legs of a dwarf.41 The particularity feels like a betrayal, the most negative type of gossip, an exposure of something intimate, to a gawking listener. The remark may have been essentially correct, if hyperbolic; perhaps Eleanor’s legs were short relative to her torso. Still, the literal information, whether true or false, conveyed by the piece of gossip is not its most important function. More interesting is what it implies about how Eleanor was regarded. La Belle Torcy, member of the old Norman family Estouteville and the Blosset family of Champagne,42 was cultivating an exclusionary bond with her French listeners. Given Eleanor’s situation as sister of the French king’s greatest enemy, it is not surprising that loyal courtiers were prejudiced against her. But the particularity is more precise than that, mocking a mismatch between the queen’s appearance and reality. The sumptuous dress created the illusion of stature; it was a cover for something that was smaller than it appeared. The description as a whole suggests that Eleanor demonstrated a pride to which she she was not entitled. Also interesting in this context is that La Belle Torcy may herself have been a genuinely stately woman. François I’s accounts record a gift of cloth to make dresses for some ladies in the queen’s household. She received 11 aulnes whereas the other ladies received 10.43 Brantôme reinforces the impression that Eleanor was perceived as inordinately proud in his second grotesque anecdote. He has just noted that Eleanor’s sister Queen Marie of Hungary was very beautiful, or so he gathers from the reports of people who had seen her and according to the portraits that he has seen. These portraits of Marie show “nothing of the ugly, nothing to reproach, except for her large mouth, thrust out in the Austrian manner.”44 But, he hastens 40 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 2: 163; see Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique, 7: 25. For more information see Purser, Palmerin of England, 181–84. 41 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 272. 42 Purser, Palmerin of England, 183. 43 Purser, Palmerin of England, 184, citing Laborde, Les comptes, 2: 399. 44 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 612.

124 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

to add, the mandibular prognathism did not in fact originate with the House of Austria but the House of Burgundy, from which she and Eleanor descended, their grandmother being Mary of Burgundy, as his anecdote confirms. Having introduced the famous Habsburg jaw, Brantôme goes on to associate it with Eleanor as well. He claims that he heard a lady at court at the time recount that once Queen Eleanor, passing through Dijon, had stopped to pray at the monastery of the Chartreux there and visit the venerable sepulchers of her ancestors, the dukes of Burgundy. She was curious to have them opened, as several kings had had done for theirs. She saw there several [bodies] so well preserved and whole that she recognized several features, and, among others, the mouth in their face.45

On seeing these mouths, Eleanor revealed a deep fascination. She cried out Ha! I thought that we got our mouths from our Austrian ancestors, but now, according to what I see, we got them from Marie of Burgundy, our ancestor, and other dukes of Burgundy, our ancestors. If I ever see my brother the emperor I will tell him….46

The woman who had observed the incident assured Brantôme that the queen had uttered the words as if the sight of the long-dead ancestral faces with their protruding jaws gave her pleasure. As for Brantôme, he interprets Eleanor’s presumed remark as an avowal that the House of Burgundy was the equal of the House of Austria. Brantôme agrees with the assessment, noting that the House of Burgundy had been founded by a son of France, Philip the Bold, and great good had come from it. Never had he seen four greater dukes than the dukes of Burgundy. In his deadpan acceptance of the hereditary mandibular prognathism as sign of something to be proud of Brantôme is making fun of the queen’s smug attribution of the Habsburg jaw to her Burgundian relatives, that is, to the immediate family among whom she had grown up, rather than her Austrian relatives, like her grandfather Maximilian, with whom she would have had less personal contact. And yet, the particularity offers further intriguing information. Odd as it sounds, Eleanor genuinely may have regarded her own possession of the trait

45 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 613. 46 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 613.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 125 as a valuable sign of her lineage. Describing shifting understandings of portrait likeness over the centuries Yael Rice and Sonja Drimmer note that even traits that we might not appreciate could be valued if they proved one’s membership in a prestigious family: Once a particular trait—say, that jaw—entered the canon of Habsburg portraiture, it was in the sitter’s interest to have an artist paint him or her with it to signal their membership in the dynasty…. What better way to “prove” one’s purebred status as a Habsburg than to have a portrait painted with the trademark trait?47

Or, as Lisa Mansfield notes, “portraits played a vital role in transmuting the Habsburg dynasty’s genetic disfigurement of mandibular prognathism (Habsburg jaw) into a powerful physiognomic symbol of imperial resolve.”48 Eleanor, after all, was well pleased to be a member of the glorious House of Habsburg, a pride she demonstrated in her dress. When she first moved to Portugal she retained her Flemish fashion, and her heritage was honored by the adoption of the fashion by her new countrymen. An account of her marriage to her first husband, Manuel of Portugal, in Crato on 24 November 1518 describes “the splendid events, sumptuous clothes, rich gems and elaborate ceremonial, both Portuguese and Burgundian, observed by the Portuguese court. In honor of the new queen, king and courtiers wore Flemish clothes.”49 During her entry into Lisbon 20–21 January 1521, the city drew on the long tradition of Flemish civic pageants and festivities to welcome the new queen. Moreover, the king and the court dressed themselves in Flemish clothing during the ceremonies, and Eleanor and her ladies continued to wear Flemish dress during her short tenure.50 When Eleanor moved to France as queen of François I, she deliberately represented herself as Spanish, demonstrating her pride in the expansion of the House of Habsburg to include its Spanish territories. “During her formal entry into Bayonne in 1530, in Spanish dress, she bore herself ‘like a princess conscious of her line, source of all virtue and of imperial luster…’ ” writes Gschwend.51 Chroniclers specifically refer to the Spanish mode of dress of the queen and her 47

Rice and Drimmer. “How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture.” https://hypera​ller​gic.com/604​897/ how-sci​enti​sts-use-and-abuse portraiture/ 48 Mansfield, “Portraits of Eleanor of Austria,” 195. 49 Gschwend, “Ma meilleur soeur,” 3: 2573. 50 Gschwend, “Ma meilleur soeur,” 3: 2574. 51 Gschwend, “Ma meilleur soeur,” 3: 2577, citing Anderson, “Spanish Dress worn by a Queen of France.”

126 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

ladies, an impression confirmed by portraits of the queen revealing the Spanish style of her hair, clothing, and jewels.52 And it seems that Eleanor’s pride in her lineage may have extended to her jaw. Whether or not Brantôme’s tale of the Burgundian origins of the Habsburg jaw is literally true, it reinforces the impression of a proud princess, visually displaying her heritage, and the amused reactions of the courtiers she had not won over precisely because of that heritage. Brantôme effectively diminishes the arrogant queen by reducing the most prominent outward sign of her lineage to a joke. Different from his tepid attitude toward Eleanor, Brantôme sings the praises of the queen’s sister, Marie of Hungary, who served as the emperor’s regent for the Habsburg Burgundian territories after the death of the siblings’ aunt Marguerite. As I have noted, Brantôme mentions Marie’s beauty, except for her Habsburg jaw, and refers to her several times as a valiant foe of the French during her regency. Following his discussion of Eleanor’s visit to the sepulchers in Dijon, he returns to Marie, remarking again that she was beautiful, pleasant, and very loveable. However, he then undercuts his praise with a particularity, adding that she was actually a bit what we might call “butch” (“hommasse”).53 He does not intend the adjective as a compliment, as his earlier declaration that Catherine de Médicis was not “hommasse” indicates. No woman rode a horse more skillfully, writes Brantôme of Catherine, and yet, she was not “hommasse” in form or manner, like “a bizarre Amazon,” rather, she was a “refined princess, beautiful, most agreeable, and sweet.”54 As for Marie, Brantôme quickly notes that she was not any the worse in love because of her masculine air, or in war, which was her principal exercise. In Eleanor’s case, the queen’s pride in her jaw gave Brantôme an excuse for relating some snide gossip. As for Mary, he seems to be doing something different. The particularity in this case surely evinces anxiety at Mary’s effectiveness as a Habsburg, as protecting the family lands. Brantôme compares the queen’s combativeness to that of her aunt and predecessor as regent, Marguerite of Austria, who had “ruled the Low Countries with as much sweetness as her niece ruled with rigor.”55 But he also discusses Marie’s effectiveness. For 23 years, she helped her brother Charles V, who could not have ruled his massive territories without his sister. That was indisputable. The particularity in this case serves to acknowledge

52 Gschwend, “Antoine Trouvéon,” 12–13. 53 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 613. 54 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 7: 365–66. 55 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 614.

Unpacking Brantôme’s “Particularitez” | 127 Marie as powerful while snidely commenting on her lack of femininity, a classic case of Brantôme’s gossip, giving with one hand, taking with the other. In other words, he does not find the Habsburg jaw attractive and wields it as a weapon to puncture the proud Habsburg sisters. Brantôme’s particularities cannot be taken as literally accurate descriptions of a woman’s features or actions, but, approached as pieces of gossip, they reveal something about how Brantôme’s “dames” were regarded within court circles. As we have seen, Brantôme often offers a particularity in the form of a remark that someone shared with him, even describing the circumstances under which he received the information. Like the stories that circulate about the private lives of public figures or even colleagues, Brantôme’s recountings of particularities evoke the image of friends deepening their ties by creating a temporary foil against whom to define themselves as a group, and, like such stories, the particularities often suggest a distorted anxiety or jealousy. “Gossip’s precondition is physical intimacy,” writes Karen Adkins, comparing gossip to primate grooming: The symbolism in grooming is clear: yes, hominids are checking in with one another, but the checking-in is all immediate and direct. The transition from grooming to language marks the ability to check in about each other in part by discussing somebody or something else; with gossip, then, indirection emerges.56

The word gossip began as a noun, Adkins points out, noting that the “ ‘godsibbe,’ or god-sibling, wasn’t simply a casual declaration of family intimacy; it was a formal role of pastoral and baptismal sponsorship.”57 Gossip is by definition not officially verified, but it demonstrates what the gossipers imagine might be possible about the object of their talk. Their emotional reactions to a piece of gossip—sympathy, glee, horror—create bonds among the gossipers and reveal as much about them as the one under discussion. Brantôme’s assessment of Eleanor in particular reveals how the court of François I felt about the queen, even when the memoirist resorts to bizarre details. Brantôme’s parting comment on the queen summarizes nicely in neutral language what his nasty anecdotes imply and what the courtiers knew to be true: she became the queen of France

56 Adkins, Gossip, Epistemology, and Power, 21. 57 Adkins, Gossip, Epistemology, and Power, 22.

128 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

at the request of the emperor, in order to serve as the firm seal of peace and public tranquillity, but the seal did not serve long; because war followed, cruel as ever, but it was not the fault of the poor princess, because she did all she could. And, for all this, the king her husband did not treat her any better, for he cursed the alliance.58

58 Brantôme, Œuvres complete, 9: 620–21.

8

“Issuing from the Great Flame of This Joy”: Louise of Savoy, Marguerite of Navarre and Emotional Intimacy

In June 1521, Marguerite, sister of King François I of France, opened a three-year epistolary exchange with the Bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet. Her husband, Duke Charles of Alençon, has led the king’s army into Champagne, where the men will likely engage in warfare, Marguerite explains, and her beloved aunt Philiberte is about to leave her for Savoy. Involved in things that give her cause for great fear, Marguerite intends to involve (“emploie”) Briçonnet in her affairs and requests spiritual aide.1 The anxious female subject that Marguerite creates in this letter contrasts poignantly with the familiar politically savvy, self-possessed one that emerges from other writings and especially with the assessments of her in ambassadors’ correspondence. True, early-modern French letter writers routinely represent themselves as small and frightened when they address spiritual advisors, social or family superiors, or, at times, close friends. Marguerite’s mother, the formidable Louise of Savoy, regent during the king’s absences, also represents herself as uncertain and frightened in letters to her daughters and the king.

1

Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1:25. Portions of this chapter first appeared, under the same title, in Emotional and Affective Narratives in pre-Modern Europe, ed. Andreea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 65-86. They are reproduced here with permission of Palgrave Springer Nature.

130 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

What I would like to argue in this chapter, then, is not that Marguerite’s fearful persona is unusual, but that, far from a simple convention of ­letter-writing, it was an important element of an emotional regime: it was a genuine emotive, in William Reddy’s terms, that is, an expression of emotion that acts on the emotional state of the one uttering it.2 Female political activity demanded a high level of emotional labor, and, I propose, Marguerite and Louise assumed fearful personae within their intimate circles as a means of relieving the burden.3 Focusing closely on sources in which Marguerite and Louise describe themselves in this way takes us beyond the conventions of letter writing and adds an important element to the our understanding of how these powerful women managed the anxiety that they would certainly have experienced as they negotiated the duties that fell to them as defenders of the Angoulême-Valois dynasty, especially after the defeat of their brother and son by the troops of Emperor Charles V at Pavia in 1525.

Contemporary images Louise of Savoy (1476–1532) was only twelve when she was married to Charles of Angoulême, son of a cadet branch of the Valois originating in Louis of Orléans, brother of Charles VI, and still in her teens when she bore Marguerite in 1492 and François in 1494. She raised them at Cognac alongside the children of her husband’s mistresses. Although no record of discord exists among this extended family, Louise, Marguerite and François conceived of themselves as a group apart, as an inseparable Trinity.4 Widowed in 1496, Louise never remarried. With the premature death of Charles VIII and ascension of Louis XII in 1498, François unexpectedly became heir presumptive. According to seventeenth-century biographer Hilarion de Coste, however, Louise was not surprised, having earlier

2 3

4

Reddy uses the expressions “emotional regimes” and “emotives” (the language used to discuss one’s emotions) in The Navigation of Feeling. See especially 121–29. On Marguerite’s correspondence with Briçonnet see Kong, Lettering the Self, especially 153–162, here 157. I use the term “persona,” following Bond, to mean the partly-conscious but ingrained adoption of norms of comportment within a particular social situation. It is “something like ‘a character /role staged in public primarily through discourse’ ” which applies “equally well to the sound of individual social existence as to the individual voice of rhetorical invention.” The concept, Bond continues “floats between ‘a being with speech’ and ‘a speech with being, sincerity and deception, society and art.’ ” The Loving Subject, 6. See Anne-Marie Lecoq’s discussion of the Trinity in François I imaginaire, 393–433.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 131 learned from the hermit, later saint, Francesco di Paola, that she would give birth to a king.5 François acceded to the throne in 1515, fulfilling the prophecy. Louise served as Francois I’s regent when he led troops into Italy and while he was held by Imperial troops in Spain for over a year after the devastating French defeat at Pavia in 1525. Her right to rule in her son’s absence derived from her status as mother of the king, that is, the feudal precedent that made the mother legal guardian for her fatherless children.6 But in addition to providing a juridical foundation for regency, maternity offered a persona for framing her political activity. As a mother she was expected to educate, protect and support her son, and to rule on his behalf when he was absent.7 The iconography that supported Louise in the role has received scholarly attention, most notably from Elizabeth McCartney and Anne-Marie Lecoq.8 Regarded by some as exemplary, by others as too controlling, Louise was nearly always characterized as a strong, prudent and watchful mother in works dedicated to her. A treatise on the virtues housed today in the Bibliothèque Nationale of France gives the allegorical figure of Prudence Louise’s face.9 She is depicted as a powerful, prudent maternal men­ tor for her son in several manuscripts from her own library, including Le Compas du dauphin, renowned for its miniature of her carrying a compass, a common attribute of Prudence.10 A manuscript recounting the story of Blanche of Castile, mother of and regent for Saint Louis, associates Louise with Blanche and thus prudent motherhood. The work concludes by lauding Blanche, “whose regency and great prudence and virtue are succeeded by the most high and strong and excellent princess, and my powerful lady, Madame Louise, mother of the most Christian king of France.”11 François evoked his mother’s prudence in a letter patent naming her “regente et gouvernante” when he set off to conquer Milan in 1523: he had perfect confidence in her “sense, virtue, prudence and integrity.”12 As prisoner, François extended Louise’s regency, emphasizing her “long experience” and her “great prudence, honesty and goodness.”13 The English Cardinal Wolsey 5

“[H]‌e assured her, on behalf of God, that she would have two children, a girl and a boy; he prayed her to raise them well and instruct them to fear God, especially because her son would be not only a great prince, but also king of the French.” Coste, Les Éloges et les vies des reynes, des princesses et des dames illustres, 2: 160. 6 See McCartney, “The King’s Mother,” 117–41. 7 Although female regency was often contested. See McCartney, “The King’s Mother.” 8 See McCartney, “The King’s Mother” and Lecoq, Francois Ier imaginaire, 69–117. 9 Bibliothèque Nationale française, manuscript français 12247. 10 Bibliothèque Nationale française, manuscript français 2285. 11 Bibliothèque Nationale française, manuscript français 5715. 12 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 1 and 4. 13 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 420.t et compassion en-,

132 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

noted at the time of the Treaty of Madrid in 1526 that Louise had demonstrated a “profound prudence, long and assured experience, unequaled conduct and marvelously great dexterity.”14 Even when not acting officially as regent, Louise exercised political influence, controlling access to the Royal Council.15 She was also intimately involved in negotiations related to the triple rivalry among France, England, and the Empire, over which Charles V was elected to reign when his grandfather Maximilian died in 1519 despite François I’s best efforts to get himself elected. The threeway relationships underwent permutations in the years leading up to the fateful defeat of the French at Pavia, continuing to shift throughout the rest of the decade as François I sought his own release, the return of his ransomed sons, and the repossession of Burgundy, which he had ceded to Charles V as a condition of his release. Contemporary observations of Louise at work highlight her health, forceful personality and sway over her son. A comment of 1518 by the Cardinal Louis d’Aragon, recorded by his secretary Antonio de Beatis, offers an example. Louise was very tall and lively, with a still-beautiful complexion.16 She appeared to him to be about 40 (in 1518 she would have been 42), and he gave her ten more years of excellent health. The Cardinal also noted that she accompanied her son and Queen Claude everywhere and played the “governess without restraint.”17 In a letter to Cardinal Wolsey, an unnamed clerk describes how he conveyed Henry VIII’s interest in making peace with the Pope, François I, and the emperor to the Pontiff, who replied that the French king could not be trusted until he was no longer ruled by Louise and the seigneur de Bonnivet, Admiral of France.18 A series of letters of 1521 written by ambassador to France William Fitzwilliam to Wolsey regarding a rapprochement between the English and the Empire reinforces these impressions. In response to his question of to whom he should turn for information, Fitzwilliam reports, the seigneur de Bonnivet, Admiral of France, had directed him to “my Lady as formerly, and after her [Florimond Robertet].”19 A few weeks later, Fitzwilliam notes that the French’s suddenly unfavorable political situation had caused them to seek peace, commenting that many blamed Louise because it is never good when ladies rule.20 14 Jacqueton, La Politique extérieure de Louise de Savoie, 431. 15 See Michon, “Le Rôle politique de Louise de Savoie,” 106–7. 16 “Complexion” here must be understood in Leonardo da Vinci’s sense, as “connot[ing] a person’s whole physiological and temperamental makeup.” See Britton, “(Hu)moral Exemplars,” 177. 17 Beatis, Travel Journal, 107–8. 18 L&P, 3: 1063–1075, no. 2522. 19 L&P, 3: 575–594, no. 1441. 20 L&P, 3: 1561–1586, no. 29 (appendix).

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 133 On the other hand, Fitzwilliam shows this influence in a more positive light when a few months later he remarks to Wolsey that in case of conflict Wolsey should apply to Louise, because “when the king would stick at some points, and speak very great words, and then my Lady would qualify the matter;” the king is so “obeisant” to her that he refuses nothing that she requires him to do.21 A year later, Fitzwilliam notes to Wolsey that the king “spends his time in the chace with the Cardinal of Lorraine, leaving everything to his mother, the Admiral and the Chancellor.”22 Louise appears especially regularly in ambassadors’ reports during François I’s captivity.23 Although these letters report that her regency received serious challenge from the Parlement in Paris, a too-optimistic view on the part of the English as it turned out, Louise remained firmly in control, warning the unruly body that had she not been regent she would not have let them get away with such effrontery, but that she was too powerful to seek vengeance.24 Louise knew how to exercise her authority by manifesting anger in a carefully controlled and thus effective manner. Marguerite, too, was believed, like her mother, to be prudent, but her effectiveness was generally attributed to her charm rather than her grit. Although not an exact contemporary, Brantôme knew enough people who had seen Marguerite with their own eyes to be credible in his claim that she had a gift for worming secrets out of ambassadors.25 Briçonnet believed in her influence, as well, pushing her to convert Louise and the king to the cause of the Reform.26 And Marguerite was taken seriously as a politician by fascinated English ambassadors during her brother’s captivity in 1525. Although their banter about Marguerite’s physical appeal has been much noted, their anxiety that she would win the emperor over indicates their awareness of her reputation for negotiation rather than any serious fear that she would sweep Charles V off his feet: surely Cuthbert Tunstall’s apprehension that Marguerite was on her way to woo Charles V for herself and Eleanor for her brother suggests primarily that he understood her to be persuasive.27

21 22 23 24

L&P, 3: 676–692, no. 1651. L&P, 3: 1063–1075, no. 2522. See, for example, L&P, 4: 749–757, nos. 1692–4, 1697, 1701–2. On the challenge see the Registers of the Parlement of Paris, printed in Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 393–402, especially 396–7. On this period in Louise’s career see also Michon, “Le Rôle politique de Louise de Savoie,” 180–81. 25 Brantôme, Œuvres completes, 8: 117. 26 See for example Briçonnet’s letter of December 1522, regarding the denunciation of Michel d’Arande before the Parlement. Briçonnet cautions Marguerite to “couvrir le feu” (cover the fire) for a time. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1: 230. 27 L&P, 4: 655–673, no. 1484.

134 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Similar, Tunstall’s comment to Henry VIII that Marguerite would be inclined to seek out Eleanor to “cackle” with her to “advance her brodyrs matter” signals his anxiety at Marguerite’s capacity to persuade both the emperor and his sister.28 When she arrived in Spain, Marguerite demanded respect, writing to her brother that she refused to “court” the emperor or play his “servant” by soliciting him but was waiting for him to make the first move.29 As for contemporary perspectives on the relationship between mother and daughter, Fitzwilliam saw them as accomplices. Louise directed Marguerite from the sidelines, letting the younger woman charm her interlocutors. In a letter of 13 September 1521, a time of mutual distrust with the French suspecting that the English were siding with the emperor whose troops had sacked Ardres just days before, Fitzwilliam reports that the king would give him no information. Therefore he spoke first to Louise and then to Marguerite.30 Louise discussed with him her interest in peace according to Wolsey’s terms and tried to extract information about Ardres from him, but, when he replied that he knew nothing, she departed. At that point Marguerite entered to express hope that France and England would not go to war. Fitzwilliam gives the impression that the audience with Louise and Marguerite was strategically planned to impress him, first, with the French’s resolve and then, quickly, with a softening of tone. Another letter of 15 September suggests the same strategy.31 Here Louise first menaced the English by insisting on the French right to let heir presumptive to the Scottish throne, Duke of Albany John Stuart, leave France to wreak havoc in England. Louise then bade Fitzwilliam farewell, but lingered as the ambassador also said goodbye to Marguerite, who proceeded to question him forcefully about Ardres. The younger woman eventually left off her stern manner and began to speak “fair,” assuring Fitzwilliam that she would trust in Henry VIII until he did something to prove her wrong. She continued to speak many “good words.” For Fitzwilliam, the scene was “devised” by Louise, who stood within earshot the entire time. Fitzwilliam complains that as a choleric young man he hardly trusted himself to listen to such words, presumably those of Marguerite, which touch upon his king’s honor, and he asks to be transferred from his post. But his mistrust focuses on Louise rather than Marguerite: although the king and Louise “speak fair with

28 L&P, 4: 655–673, no. 1485. 29 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 359. 30 L&P, 3: 650–664, no. 1569. 31 L&P, 3: 650–664, no. 1581.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 135 their mouths” he perceives “well what they think in their hearts.”32 John Taylor, ambassador to France and Burgundy, reported in a letter of 1526 to Wolsey that Marguerite was “a wise and marvellous well-spoken woman…”33 A description of the women’s reactions to news of the defeat at Pavia and the king’s capture shows them rapidly taking control after initially giving expression to their distress. The two were residing in the Abby of Saint-Just outside of Lyon when on 1 March 1525 they received the news. Sébastien Moreau de Villefranche, référendaire général for the duchy of Milan, recounts that Louise, upon hearing that her beloved only son had been taken and forced to submit to his vassal and great enemy, piteously cried and lamented.34 Marguerite and the whole court, indeed, all the Lyonnais, followed suit. But urged by her advisors to shake off her melancholy, Louise quickly recovered and ordered borders to be secured to prevent invasion by enemies ready to take advantage of the suddenly vulnerable kingdom. She and Marguerite initiated ransom negotiations. François requested that Louise come to negotiate on his behalf, but, occupied with governing, the regent decided to send Marguerite to face the emperor, accompanying her as far as Aigues-Mortes, where the younger woman boarded a ship on 28 August for Spain.35

Louise and Marguerite’s humble personae In other, more personal situations, however, Louise and Marguerite at times presented as small, frightened, ill, and helpless. Cardinal Louis of Aragon’s remarks on Louise’s robust health notwithstanding, as of 1519 Louise began to suffer from gout, an organic malady aggravated by stress, and other illnesses, and Marguerite, too, reports frequent sickness.36 In the three extant letters from Louise to Marguerite during her trip to Spain to negotiate the king’s release, the regent discards her forceful and prudent

32

33 34 35 36

See Prescott’s fascinating analysis of Marguerite as seen by English diplomats on this letter. Prescott assumes that Fitzwilliam’s comment about my Lady’s fair words refers to Marguerite. However, it must refer to Louise because Fitzwilliam consistently calls Marguerite the “king’s sister,” applying “my Lady” to Louise. “And then she fell on a great laughter,” 50. L&P, 4: 930–943, no. 2068. Cited in Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 81. The Registers of the Parlement of Paris report that when news that the king was ill reached her she retired for a long time to the monastery of the Celestins where no one could reach her. Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 394. On this frenzied period see Michon et al., Les Conseillers de François Ier, 199–200. Gout followed sadness, among other causes. See Porter and Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady, 23.

136 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

maternal persona in favor of an anxious one. In the first letter, she worriedly hopes that God will continue to work through Marguerite, allowing the accomplishment of their family goal, the return of François to the kingdom. She prays for Marguerite’s good health and begs her to send news of her well-being often.37 In the second, Louise again worries about divine favor.38 She also doubts that things are progressing as well for her children as her informants suggest, telling Marguerite that she has sent “another gentleman” to Spain in order to receive the “veryté nouvelle,” the real truth, about their health. (Louise had reason to worry that she was not being told the whole story: her attachment to her family was perceived as so intense that her family sometimes shielded her from the truth.)39 In the third letter she recounts the signing of the Treaty of Moore with the English, one of her greatest foreign policy coups, bringing English support against Charles V.40 Things have turned for the better, the letter affirms. Peace between France and England has been re-established. But Louise could not have endured the situation had it not been for Marguerite’s caring for François in Spain. Mother and daughter have suffered greatly, Louise admits, but the deliverance of François will compensate for that. Louise’s small persona is also prominent in a letter of October 1525 to the king where she worries that she will be unable to keep the Parlement of Paris in line during his absence. She assures him that his affairs are order. Still, she pleads, his presence in France is absolutely necessary. In a letter of November 1525 to Jean de Brinon, her président du conseil throughout François’ captivity, Louise diminishes her and Marguerite’s political activity, describing her daughter’s trip to Spain as if it were the visit of one sibling to another’s sickbed to “see, visit and console the king her brother” rather than a high-stakes diplomatic trip.41 These letters show Louise defining herself as devoted mother devoid of personal political ambition and freely acknowledging that that the family’s prosperity depended on Marguerite as much as herself. She is utterly dependent on God and her children’s well-being for her own, and the accomplishment of the family’s goals is her only desire. Recent social theoretical work emphasizes the 37 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 328. 38 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 329. 39 In a letter of 1523 Marguerite notes that the little prince Charles was sick and that Louise made herself sick taking care of him. See Marguerite d’Angoulême, Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême, 161. As François observes in a letter to Marguerite, Louise’s grandchildren are her seconde chaire (François and Marguerite being her première chaire). Marguerite d’Angoulême, Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême, 271. 40 See the summary in L&P, 4: 799–811, no. 1797. 41 Jaqueton, La Politique extérieure de Louise de Savoie, 339.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 137 inextricability of political and libidinal attachments, and within the context of the Trinity, whose political and familial relationships quite literally overlapped, the family created and maintained political attachments, also quite literally, through avowals of love, and they formulated and diffused their political anxieties through avowals of humble dependence.42 As for Marguerite, descriptions of herself and Louise as sick and vulnerable characterize her exchange with Briçonnet. From Paris, while the Imperial army sacked Ardres and then laid siege to Mezières, she asks Briçonnet to look upon the blindest of all the people, that is, Marguerite, with pity, and through writings, prayers and remembering help pull her from the darkness.43 From Lyon in 1522 she apologizes for bothering him but insists that she is constrained by necessity to “importune” him “opportunistically” (“importuner opportuneement”) for “alms:” the court lacked (spiritual) bread.44 At a particularly difficult period in October 1523 as the royal army prepared to move into Italy and Queen Claude lay ill (she would die the next year), Marguerite assured Briçonnet that his charity was needed nowhere more than in Blois, asking for comfort for herself, an “ungrateful mirror” in which Jesus sees not his image but only filth (“ordure), a mother (Louise) burdened with cares, and a sick queen.45 In a letter of that same month, Marguerite begs for more crumbs. After requesting pity, she signs herself “vostre sterile mere.”46 But the events of 1524 and 1525—personal losses and the long wait for news about the royal army in Italy—motivate Marguerite’s most pitiful representations of herself and her mother. Shortly after 9 March 1525 Marguerite writes from Blois of Louise’s frightening illness: a terrible fever accompanied by extreme pain in her side, head, stomach and spleen. Fortunately the fever broke, and Louise survived. But if not for Louise’s tranquility before God, Marguerite could not have borne the “multitude and vehemence” of her mother’s sufferings.47 She writes to Maréchal Anne de Montmorency of the same illness, that never before had she seen her mother “so quickly enfeebled.”48 Shortly after 27 March, she describes her mother’s body completely wracked with new and diverse torments 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

The recent literature on political engagement and love is vast. For an accessible discussion of some of the main stakes of the discussion see for example Lauren Berlant’s “A Properly Political Concept of Love.” Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1: 37. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1: 194. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 63. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance 2: 66–67. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance 2: 134. “Marguerite de Navarre, Lettres inédites,” 106.

138 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

in a letter to Briçonnet.49 On 4 May Marguerite informs Briçonnet of the death of her beloved aunt, Philiberte, expressing the sorrow of the “compagnie.” Of herself she writes that her imperfect feebleness cannot bear the “indiscretion” of love (that is, its tendency to make itself felt).50 On 26 July Marguerite informs Briçonnet of Queen Claude’s death. She struggles in the opening paragraphs of the letter with the notion that to make hard hearts feel a single spark of incomprehensible divine charity God became man and suffered. And yet, Marguerite cannot understand God’s spiritual language any more, indeed, she understands it even less than unreasoning beasts.51 Louise took the news so hard, she contin­ ues, that she began to hemorrhage as if with a terrible fever to the extent that she would not have survived had it not stopped. The disasters continued. The king’s daughter Charlotte fell ill in August. In early September Marguerite writes from Blois that she has told neither her mother nor her brother of the child’s malady, fearing that Louise will be unable to stand the news and that François I already has too much on his mind.52 On 18 November 1524 Marguerite writes to Briçonnet of Charlotte’s death, which Louise, knowing nothing of the illness, mourned terribly, with one tear following the other, but all the while giving Marguerite the comfort that she, Marguerite, owed Louise.53 The final blow arrived on 1 March, when Marguerite and Louise learned of the defeat of the French army and the capture of François I. In response to a letter from her recentlycaptured brother, Marguerite writes of her and Louise’s initial despair and compares news of his survival to the appearance of the Holy Spirit after the Passion. The information had filled Louise with such strength that she had redoubled her efforts in the kingdom on his behalf.54 In a letter to Sigismund von Hohenlohe, reformer and dean of the Cathedral Chapter of Strasbourg, Marguerite describes herself and Louise as “mother and daughter, poor widows, not without affliction.”55 In a letter to the king just before her departure for Spain, she assures him that her fear will not keep her from him. She is so used to the fear of death, prison, and various evils that she associates

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance 2: 142. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance 2: 155. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance 2: 229–30. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 261. Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 272. Marguerite d’Angoulême, Nouvelles lettres, 27. Marguerite d’Angoulême, Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême, 180. On the relationship see Reid, King’s Sister--Queen of Dissent, 2:342.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 139 these with liberty, life, health, glory and honor. The fears allow her to participate in his fortune.56 But Marguerite’s fearful persona is nowhere so evident as in the single extant letter from her to her mother, a verse letter composed in 1530 in celebration of the return home of François’s two sons, whose release had been procured by Louise in what has come to be known as the Ladies’ Peace, signed on 3 August of that year.57 Although the princes’ return was a momentous event, all the more so because they arrived with the king’s new bride, the emperor’s sister Eleanor of Austria, Marguerite could not accompany her brother and mother to Bayonne, where the group from Spain landed, her pregnancy forcing her to remain at Blois. She imagines the celebrating king, Louise, and new queen, a poignant reminder of the family trinity, and entreats them to remember her and how she longs to remain a small point on that perfect triangle.58

Bearing the unbearable, sharing the joy Courtly education for men and women of the time consisted of two incompatible ethical frameworks mandating two different personae with two sets of practices. As morality became increasingly detached from religion from the twelfth century on, even theologians assumed that, in addition to “salvific” virtue, a parallel type ordered morals in political and social activity.59 Noble men and women would have developed salvific virtue, which prized Augustinian-style self-abasement, with the aid of their confessors. They would have acquired the second, which demanded minute attention to rank and worldly goods, by observing courtiers steeped in such works as Denis Foulechat’s translation of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, itself an “adaptation of a Ciceronian rhetorical ethics.”60 Two guides for female comportment to which Louise and Marguerite would have had access, Christine de Pizan’s Livre des trois vertus and Anne of France’s Enseignements à sa fille, which owes much to Christine’s work, undertake to resolve the tension between the ethical frameworks and their personae. These guidebooks, I suggest, describe the development of the two personae within the still larger framework of the virtuous habitus. 56 57 58 59 60

Nouvelles lettres de la reine de Navarre, 40. On the Ladies’ Peace see Russell, Diplomats at Work, 94–158. Marguerite de Navarre, Selected Writings, 50, line 89. See Bejczy, “The Problem of Natural Virtue.” Denery, “Christine Against the Theologians,” 246.

140 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The guidebooks deal specifically with creating effective courtly personae, Christine devoting sections of her text to worldly prudence (“prudence mondaine”) and justified hypocrisy (“juste hypocrisie”), where she praises the “sense and prudence of the wise woman who knows how to dissimulate wisely (“dissimuler saigement….”).61 Anne instructs her readers to maintain an impassive, docile face with “eyes to observe all and see nothing, ears to hear all and know nothing, a tongue to answer everyone without emitting a prejudicial word.”62 And yet, both guidebooks are also deeply invested in creating a female subject who admits her helplessness vis-à-vis worldly matters and abandons herself to divine will. Each emphasizes in its opening chapters the need constantly to be aware of God’s watchful eye. Christine’s narrator goads her reader: “And you, who are a simple little woman, who has no strength, power or authority except given to you by others, do you think that you can dominate and surmount the world at will?”63 Anne’s narrator issues a similar warning: ““[H]‌ave faith in abso­ lutely nothing: not in the intelligence, strength or discernment that you believe yourself to have; rather, live in great fear and always be on your guard so that you will not be fooled….”64 The notion of habitus clarifies how the guidebooks understand the relationship between the two personae. Originating in the Aristotelian hexis (the term of course has been made famous by Pierre Bourdieu, who uses it to explain how modern social classes reproduce themselves at the individual level, but I am interested here in its medieval usage), the term habitus for medieval thinkers referred to an individual’s tendency to act in good or evil ways such that the individual became virtuous or evil. Thus habits and innate disposition (one’s predominant humors in medieval thinking) stood in a reciprocal relationship: the repetition of good or evil deeds affected one’s innate disposition. The notion can thus be productively compared to Reddy’s “emotives,” to which I referred in my opening paragraphs. For Reddy, emotion occurs when “an array of loosely linked thought material is activated, simultaneously, and translated by the subject into a ­socially-produced form of expression. But, most pertinent here, these forms of expression, emotives, are “self-altering,” that is, they both translate the mass of thought material and modify the speaker, the speaker taking on the emotion that she describes.65 61 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, 55. 62 Anne de France, Enseignements, 45–46. 63 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, 20. 64 Anne de France, Enseignements, 40. 65 Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 110–11.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 141 Ambrose, Augustine, and other of the Church Fathers refer to habitus, but Aquinas gives it a detailed examination in the Summa Theologica, placing a long section devoted to it (ST 1a2ae, 49–89) just after an analysis of the passions (ST 1a2ae, 22–48).66 Passions are of the body, but, in humans, subject to reason. However, reason’s control is not absolute, because, being of the body, the passions are incited by organic conditions and may arrive suddenly and intensely (ST 1a2ae, 24). Aquinas then turns to how passions are modulated by reason in a discussion of what he calls habitus, the acquired disposition through which an individual processes passions. Drawing on Aristotle, he explains that habitus, developed through repetition, integrates passions and reason (ST 1a2ae, 51, especially article 2). Although Christine and Anne advocate the development of two separate personae, their mandates that the lady obey God and acknowledge her own essential weakness come first in their instructions. Through regular, heartfelt devotion, the lady will develop a virtuous habitus, so that even when enacting courtly norms of rank and engaging in politics, she will safely process the passions that come with court life; she will integrate reason and passion, to take up Aquinas’s formula.67 To return to Louise and Marguerite, then, it is not accurate to imagine their double personae as an exterior courtly attitude masking a frightened interior, as I noted earlier. The personae, as Christine and Anne demonstrate, are interdependent, exerting checks on each other, although enacted at different times in different situations. Thus they both move between inner and outer, all the more so given “premodern beliefs that the body was filled with moving currents of air in the bloodstream, that the air taken within the body became part of the stuff of consciousness,” in other words, that bodies were not tightly contained.68 I will return to this point. The purpose of the formidable political persona that I have been describing is evident, and, although much could be said about how certain words and gestures might create the confidence necessary to act, in what remains I have space only to briefly discuss the fearful persona. As I have just suggested, this persona was central to the ethics of court life that Christine and Anne propose. But to fully appreciate this persona’s emotional purpose, it is necessary to turn from Reddy, for whom bodies are bounded (an individual’s emotions remain within him or

66 All references to the Summa Theologica (ST) from http://www.newadv​ent.org/summa/, accessed 10–20–2015. 67 See especially ST 1a2ae, 54, article 4. 68 Paster, Humoring the Body, 41. See also Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England, 10.

142 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

her) to Teresa Brennan. Affective piety of the late Middle Ages prized compassion, redistributing grief through figures like the Virgin at the foot of the cross or the suffering Christ: affects have an “energetic dimension,” writes Brennan, and “they can enhance or deplete.”69 The transmission of affect “was once con­ scious to some degree in Europe (we do not know how far) but is now (generally) unconscious there and throughout the West,” she explains.70 Our ancestors sensed that “complex human affects are communicated by chemical and electrical entrainment….”71 Keeping Reddy’s emotives and Brennan’s transfer of affect in mind, I turn back to Marguerite, first, to a particularly rich set of letters between her and Briçonnet composed during the difficult months in spring of 1524. Marguerite, describing the burdensome tasks that she had assumed because of Louise’s illness, employs the emotives of religious devotion, writing that “all these things that I know to be naturally unbearable to me without any aid, the Almighty carried them without my feeling it in flesh or spirit.72 It is not important here to make a convincing case for the reality of affective transmission: what matters is that Marguerite is not writing metaphorically. She and Briçonnet believe that pain can be shared, in this case through prayer, and thus mitigated, or, to put it another way, that what we would think of as agency can be dispersed among different subjects. Briçonnet responds by reinforcing Marguerite’s idea: “We are relieved of our great tribulations only through conformity to the will of the Almighty. Mere flesh and blood are incapable of bearing the things that He who carries all for us makes us bear joyfully, carrying our sins and even ourselves….”73 Later he writes that “[s]‌harpness of infirmity is bearable for the one who has suffered all, carrying and bearing through his mercy our falls and stumblings, having carried all for us, but still suffering with us (“compatissant) in our infirmity.”74 To return now to the points that early modern bodies were filled with moving air and that innate disposition was conceived of as humoral, the transfer of affect is effected in part by means of the humors. Marguerite’s language reveals her hope of heating her cold, dark humors so that she will eventually be able to transcend earthly cares. Early in their correspondence she had marvelled that Briçonnet and Master Michel’s letters had opened her eyes, turning her toward 69 Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, 6. 70 Brennan, Transmission of Affect, 18. 71 Brennan, Transmission of Affect, 97. 72 Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 143. 73 Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 144. 74 Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 2: 148.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 143 the light, and she begs that they continue to write to her so that her “poor frozen heart, dead with the cold, might feel the spark of love and be consumed by it and burn to a cinder.”75 She refers to her frozen heart in a number of letters. The burning love that Marguerite seeks, I suggest, is the literal heat, transmitted to her through the letters, which, according to humoral theory, could transform cold, dark, and negative melancholy to a positive version, white and natural bile (“candida bilis et naturalis”).76 Such fiery love, in turn, had the capacity to gener­ ate a vision of true wisdom. In a more mundane context, Louise and Marguerite speak literally when they note the material effects of good and bad news on their bodies, which transferred emotion in a “two-way, inward and outward movement.”77 Louise expresses her reciprocal transmission of emotion with her captured son through the imagery of a single heart: they share, through their love, one heart, one will, and one thought.78 Mother and daughter send the newly captured king a joint letter supplicating that the letter presented to François be “received with the affection (“afecyon”) – meaning here a literal movement of the soul — that they send him with all their hearts.79 A more everyday way of expressing the transmission was to describe the physical results of good news. In a letter begging the king that if God gives her the grace to be able to journey to Spain to see him he let her know what she should do and whom she should bring, Marguerite assures her brother that although Louise had been assailed by gout and cares the day before, the pleasure (“aise”) that hope of his release had vanquished the pain so that it was just bit of inflammation. Louise was so happy that Marguerite had no complaints to pass on (“que je ne la plains de nul mal”).80 In December of the same year, Marguerite, then in Madrid, writes to the king that she had received a letter from Louise with the news that although her gout had been very bad news of the king’s good health had completely cured her of all pain.81 Marguerite expresses her understanding of how emotion works—as affective transmission and as humorally based—in the verse letter of 1530 to Louise to which I referred above. In the first lines of the poem, she assumes her fearful 75 Briçonnet and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1: 33. 76 Citation of Agrippa of Nettesheim’s “Occulta philosophia,” Klibansky, ed., Saturn and Melancholy, 355. 77 Kerns, Humoring the Body, 41. 78 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 109. 79 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 142. As Godefroy defines “affection”: “an agreeable or painful mod­ ification that the soul feels, a movement that brings the soul towards or distances it from a thing.” Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française. 80 Nouvelles lettres de la reine de Navarre, 37–8. 81 Nouvelles lettres de la reine de Navarre, 53.

144 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

persona, ruefully remarking on the futility of the letter that she is composing and hoping that her mother will not be offended by her, Marguerite’s, descriptions of her immense joy at the homecoming. Such description is unnecessary, she writes: Louise already recognizes Marguerite’s happiness because they share the emotion. It is written in Louise’s flesh, indeed, engraved on the tablets of her heart (“Ce que partez escript en vostre chair… gravé sur les tables /De vostre cueur”). Marguerite thus contents herself with reproducing, although in a fainter version, her mother’s experience, explaining that she simply reiterates what is already manifest elsewhere. Although her letter adds nothing new to the happy occasion, which properly belongs to Louise, a thin line of smoke issuing from the great flame of joy (“yssant de la grant flamme de ceste joye”) in Marguerite’s heart, via the ‘tube’ that is her pen, bears witness to the contents of her burning heart.82 Although the smoke — her writing — disperses quickly in the wind, the fire in her heart causes her to live by, in, and for Louise.83 Marguerite “burns” in response to the shared joy, and, although she does not speak explicitly of the humors, we can imagine that when thus heated the black bile that had held her in a negative state of melancholy became yellow, thereby transforming her melancholy into a positive state. The ardent Marguerite shares her family’s joy even though physically distant. Louise has her grandsons before her very eyes.84 Others have described the joy written on Louise’s face, but only Marguerite senses the liqueur that flows through her mother’s veins, intoxicating her.85 Marguerite and Louise share a mutual will, so much that Fortune, vanquished by the mother, comes after the daughter; in other words, Fortune has been foiled by Louise’s joy and so prevents Marguerite from joining the family reunion, from being in the one place she longs to be.86 The royal family drew upon the image of the royal Trinity to glorify the king and authorize Louise and Marguerite’s political activity on his behalf. But they also used the image among themselves to express their love for each other. Louise’s attachment to her son has been compared unfavorably at times to her feelings for her daughter.87 And yet, the mother willingly shared her own glory by making her daughter an integral part of royal family politics, something that she

82 83 84 85 86 87

Selected Writings, 59, line 18. Selected Writings, 60, line 26. Selected Writings, 61, lines 71–73. Selected Writings, 61, line 67. Selected Writings, 63, line 108. It has been assumed that beneath Marguerite’s devotion to her brother, her “original radical displace­ ment must still have rankled.” See Snyder, “Guilty Sisters,” 40.

Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy and Intimacy | 145 did not need to do.88 The pay-off for this inclusion can be gleaned by returning to the image of the Trinity. As Richard of St. Victor had once explained in a treatise on the Holy Trinity to which evangelical author Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples devoted a commentary in 1519, perfect love shows itself not just in reciprocal love between two, but also in the shared love of two for another.89 Louise and Marguerite, as I hope to have shown, were each other’s pillars of support, their mutual desire to support Francois strengthening their own relationship. In their intense attention to their own and each other’s weakness and their avowals of dependency, they shared their burdens and joys, engaging in a “perfect love” that heartened them until Louise’s death in 1532. To return to my opening paragraph, Marguerite’s anxious persona was anything but a mere epistolary convention. It was a central element in a sustaining emotional regime.

88 Middlebrook suggests that Louise enlisted Marguerite to guarantee that the older woman’s body would not be sexualized: “in celebrating Louise as a mother, the family and their councilors inadvertently brought her image back onto the terrain of female sexuality,” “ ‘Tout mon office,’ ” 1120. The Trinity allowed Louise to “displace associations with the body and sexuality from the Regent onto her daughter” (1111). 89 See Hunt, The Trinity, 63–70, and Vance, “Twelfth and Sixteenth Century Renaissance Discourses on Meditation and Contemplation.”

9

Catfight or Political Rivalry? The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers

In contrast with the lack of specific documentation about Agnès Sorel’s political role, a substantial body of evidence suggests that François I’s favorite Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of Étampes (1508–1580), and Henri II’s Diane de Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois (1499–1566), wielded real influence. Anne and Diane, like male favorites, served their kings as trusted counselors and dealt at times with foreign diplomats. However, their influence differed in a significant way from that of male favorites. Whereas the latter were often military leaders and/or officers of the king, the tenure of the royal mistress was always unofficial, or, more accurately, the roles that she performed on the public stage of the court—lady-in-waiting to the queen, governess to the royal children—had nothing to do with her political role, which she performed discreetly, backstage. The Duchess of Étampes has been characterized over the centuries in reflexively misogynistic terms, and traces of the misogyny remain despite the scholarship of David Potter and Francis Nawracki demonstrating that that she was a central political figure during the last years of the reign of François I (r. 1515–1547). She is described, for example, as “undoubtedly a detestable person, capricious, arrogant, taking advantage of her powers as favorite of a feeble, aged

148 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

king,”1 and as “the duchess, insolent, capricious,” who “made sure that no one was unaware of the power that she held over [the king].”2 She was at “the heart of much in-fighting at court,” and she was “fickle.”3 Charges of greed and vainglory persist, as well: “Combining intelligence with beauty, she was also ambitious and grasping.”4 The reputation of Diane de Poitiers among historians has been differ­ ent. She was much reviled immediately after her death, but, by the nineteenth century, she had been embraced as a romantic icon, and, ever since, she has been treated with sympathy or curiosity—the story that she ingested gold to preserve her beauty has garnered considerable interest in the popular press over the past few years—in recent biographies.5 The issue I would like to explore in this chapter, however, is not the reputation of these two individuals but, rather, how they have been regarded as a pair. A handful of references in ambassadorial correspondance suggests that the women were not friends. As mistresses of the king and the dauphin, whose father-son relationship was often rocky, they allied themselves with the faction members loyal to their respective partners, as we would expect. And yet, their animosity has typically not been attributed to political difference but to personal jealousy, and they have been cast as rivals, one a youthful beauty, the other an aging former beauty. As I have suggested in earlier chapters, historians frequently treat pairs of women as adversaries motivated by vanity and an overweening and illegitimate ambition for riches and power. Anne and Diane, like Isabeau of Bavaria and Valentina Visconti, Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais, and Anne of France and Anne of Brittany, have been treated with snide amusement. In what follows, I propose that many historians have attributed Anne and Diane with too much power to control the events around them and insufficient interest in the court politics in which they were embedded. Also, much modern discussion of their relationship encodes the assumption that allowing mistresses political influence is inherently corrupt, an assumption itself grounded in the broader one that political nepotism is corrupt. Certainly nepotism is understood as corrupt today. However, for the court society within which Anne and Diane were active, nepotism was a given, a constant feature of governance. This point is taken for granted in recent discussions of male favorites and regents like Louise of Savoy and Catherine de Médicis, whose regencies on behalf of their sons are no 1 Jestaz, “Benventuo Cellini,”131. 2 Berthière, Les reines de France au temps des Valois, 1: 272, 3 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 484, 497. 4 Knecht, “ ‘Our Trinity,’ ” 84. 5 See Le Fur’s chapter on Diane’s early afterlife, Diane de Poitiers, 210–38.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 149 longer regarded as improper interventions into the political order. Assumptions of corruption, along with the trivialization of political factionalism, subject of this essay, need to be revised in the case of French royal mistresses as well. I first briefly explore the position of French royal mistress in the sixteenth century, fleshing out the cultural space within which the role became possible. Developments during the 1530s, that is, the period immediately preceding Anne and Diane’s rise, permitted their roles to emerge. In the second part of the essay, I revisit the popular notion of Anne and Diane as jealous rivals around whom court factions formed while the women carried out their personal agendas and suggest some more appropriate ways of understanding their political activity.

The female political favorite The French role of political royal mistress was not a function of royal favor alone, although this was a prerequisite. A one-off politically powerful mistress, like Alice Perrers or Dyveke Sigbritsdatter, might flourish solely on the basis of royal favor, even though they garnered massive disapprobation. But the French tradition of politically active royal mistresses was supported by certain social structures particular to the royal court that, in interaction with the king’s favor, enabled and legitimated a role that eventually became a tradition, part of the French court system. Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of Étampes from 1534, and Diane de Poitiers, Seneschale of Normandy, Countess and, after Henri II took the throne, Duchess of Valentinois, both began their court careers as attendants to the queen mother Louise of Savoy.6 Diane’s father, Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint Vallier, traced his ancestors to the twelfth-century Dauphiné, and, although no direct evidence proves it, before moving to the royal court, Diane may have been raised by Anne of France, later Duchess of Bourbon, who served as regent for her younger brother, King Charles VIII. As we have seen, Anne of France is said to have mentored a number of young women who also became politically powerful,

6

For Anne, see the document granting her and her husband the county of Étampes. The king mentions that having first served the queen mother, after Louise’s death in 1531, “she joined the entourage of our dearest, most beloved daughters, Magdelaine and Marguerite de France.” The document is printed in Fleureau, Antiquités de la ville et du duché d’Étampes, 224–26. Diane is mentioned in Louise’s accounts for 1515 as one of the queen mother’s “Dames et demoiselles,” earning 35 livres. She is also mentioned in accounts for 1522 (the only others available), receiving 300 livres. See Le Franc and Boulenger, Comptes de Louise de Savoie, 8 and 12.

150 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

including Marguerite of Austria, Louise of Savoy, and Philippa of Guelders.7 After being married at fifteen to the 55-year-old Louis de Brézé, seigneur of Anet, grand seneschal and later governor of Normandy, Diane resided both at the Brézé’s château at Anet and at court. She would have been part of Louise’s entourage when Anne, born in 1508, first appeared at court, although the precise year of the young woman’s arrival is not known. Anne is believed to have caught François I’s eye when she accompanied Louise as a lady-in-waiting to greet the king upon his return in 1526 from his captivity in Madrid at the hands of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Although no contemporary source attests to it, later chronicles claim that the king fell in love at first sight with “this young lady of excellent beauty.”8 Although the royal mistress was a known quantity at the French royal court before Anne and, later, Diane, assumed the role, it did not imply a great deal of political influence. As discussed in ­chapter 6, Agnès Sorel’s story had been passed down among some families in continuous service to the crown, and her portrait appeared in sketch albums possibly as early as 1515. But her primary claim to fame during that period was that she had inspired Charles VII to recover France from the English.9 Françoise de Foix, Countess of Chateaubriant, was recognized as François I’s favorite mistress at least by 1520 when King Henry VIII gifted her a crucifix “worth about 2,000 crowns” at the Field of the Cloth of Gold festival.10 However, she is never mentioned in ambassadorial correspondence as a political actor.11 Nor does Anne seem to have wielded much political influence during her early years as royal favorite. The first mention of her dates from 1527, ambassador Anthony Browne writing to Henry VIII that François I favored her above all others, although, according to Browne, her beauty was not to be highly praised.12 A report of 1529 notes that she attended Louise of Savoy during the queen mother’s stay in Cambrai for negotiations of what has become known as “The 7

For what follows on Diane’s background see any of the standard biographers, for example, Cloulas or Thierry. Guiffrey’s introduction to her collected letters is also useful and better footnoted then either Cloulas or Thierry. Also useful are Thompson’s two articles, “De nouveaux aperçus” and “Diane de Poitiers.” I have not been able to verify Diane’s presence with Anne of France, but biographers routinely make the claim. 8 Sainte-Marthe, Histoire généalogique, 1: 751. 9 One of the sketches bore a poem on the back proclaiming her “the cause of the recovery of France.” For more detail see Adams, Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy, 88. 10 CSPV, 3: 72–79, no. 94. 11 See Garrigues, “Les clairs-obscurs de Françoise de Foix,” for a summary of the little that is known of her. 12 SP, 6:599.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 151 Ladies’ Peace” between Louise and Marguerite of Austria.13 Anne features again in ambassadorial correspondence in March 1531 when Francis Bryan writes to Henry VIII that instead of laying or speaking with his new queen, Eleanor of Austria, François I spent all his time in Anne’s chamber. The king made a public spectacle of his lack of concern for his Habsburg wife when, during her entry into Paris, he placed Anne before him in an open window and spoke to her for two long hours in view of the general public.14 But the predominance of Louise of Savoy, the king’s most trusted advisor, seems to have limited Anne’s significance as a political figure, a hypothesis I base on the lack of any discussion about Anne as a political player among ambassadors during those years. When Louise died in 1531, however, the way was clear for Anne to begin her rise, and her credit began to grow. First she received the position of governess for the royal daughters. In 1532, the king married her to Count of Penthièvre Jean de Brosse, and, in 1534, raised their county of Étampes to a duchy.15 Her credit was further augmented when sometime around 1536 she became a cherished friend and religious ally of Marguerite of Navarre, sister to the king, Marguerite dedicating her love debate of 1541, La Coche, to Anne, whom she addresses as her “parfayte amye” (“perfect friend”).16 Anne’s correspondence shows her approaching the Grand Maître, Anne de Montmorency, before 1538, when he became connétable, asking favors for family members and assuring him that she is carrying out requests on his behalf.17 She is counted among the highest nobility of the realm, accompanying Marguerite in 1538 when Montmorency was elevated to connétable of French. Similar, she appears among noblewomen attending the baptism of the first son of the dauphin Henri and Catherine de Médicis. In 1538 she accompanied Queen Eleanor to southern France where the 13 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 272–86. For Anne’s presence, see Potter, “Anne de Pisseleu,” 538, citing Paris, Étude sur François premier, 2: 240, who cites a report on the festivities after the treaty’s signing, but without bibliographical information. 14 SP, 7: 291. 15 For her position see Paris, Étude sur François premier, 2: 251, citing the letter patent awarding the County of Étampes to Anne and her husband. She is mentioned as part of the The letter is printed in Basile Fleureau, Antiquités de la ville et du duché d’Étampes, 224. For the primary source references to her marriage, see Potter, “Anne de Pisseleu,” 538. 16 See folio 43v of manuscript 0522 of the Bibliothèque du château d Chantilly for an illustration of Marguerite presenting Anne with a copy of the manuscript. Papal nuncio Hieronimo Dandino reports in 1541 that Marguerite had avowed that Anne had much helped her at time when she needed it, and, for this reason, she remained Anne’s slave and spoke of her like a goddess. AGN 3: 13. But references in letters to the king indicate that they were friends by 1536. See Marguerite de Navarre, Nouvelles lettres, 129, 139, 147. Anne is referred to as part of the households of the Dauphine and Marguerite in 1538; see Laborde, Les comptes, 2: 248 and 251. 17 See the letters transcribed by Desgardins, Anne de Pisseleu, 84–89.

152 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Treaty of Nice was signed, temporarily bringing peace between France and the Empire.18 When in 1539 François I gave the emperor a safe conduct to cross France on his way to the Low Countries, the latter’s ambassador to France Jean de St. Mauris thought Anne important enough to explain to the emperor why she did not like him.19 By 1540, Anne begins to appear in ambassador letters as a central player in court politics. Ambassador letters, “carefully prepared statement[s]‌of the political situation … filling in the background with special attention to the character and motive of the important persons and factions,” are filled with references to “Madame d’Étampes.”20 Because one of their primary functions was to gather information, ambassadors stationed at the French court enhanced the opportunities for female courtiers to participate in politics. As far as ambassadors were concerned, women, particularly the royal mistress with her unparalleled access to the king, could be crucial sources and also mediators for passing along requests. As Anne’s credit rose, her authority was bolstered by the artistic program commissioned by François I to transform his chateaux, Fontainebleau in particular, into theaters for his displaying his power. From the early 1530s Italian-born artists like Rosso and Primaticcio helped establish François I as a very particular type of king. He had already been associated with various members of the “neuf preux,” lauded by Pierre Sala as “a second Cesar or Alexander.”21 Étienne Le Blanc prefaces his 1529 translation of Oraisons de Cicero with a comparison of François I to Alexander, Artaxerxes, Trajan, and Augustus, likening François I’s triumph in Marignano in Lombardy 1515 to “the glorious conquests of Alexander.”22 But after asserting the French king’s superiority in the matter of war, Le Blanc announces François I’s accession in another area especially: And if these things declared above were not sufficient to give renown and honor to your name, Sire, you are superior to all the princes of the world because of one above all that is to be marveled at. That is that during your time and during your reign you have caused to flourish Latin and Greek letters, which had long been neglected ….23

18 CSPS, 5.2: 479–495, n. 206. 19 CSPS, 6:1, 244–59, no. 117. 20 Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 112. 21 See Lecoq, François I imaginaire, 246 and 255, citing Sala. 22 Bibliothèque nationale de France, manuscript français, 1738, fol. 2r and 3v. 23 Bibliothèque nationale de France, manuscript français 1738, fol. 5r.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 153 This image of François I as a cultivated warrior king was further propagated through the king’s artistic program. To this image, François I added his easy interaction with intelligent women, visualized through the vivid illustrations of heroines of mythical and classical fame that decorated the palace. Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf notes that Fontainebleau was a “world of female power—a Venus world dominated by sensual pleasures, water, and fertile lands and woods with springs, fruits and animals” where the “slender naked female figure recurring as the nymph, as Venus and as symbol of pleasure is the characteristic visual sign of the place and the style of its imagery.” As for Anne in particular, the comparison between the cultivated French warrior king and Alexander is also promoted in the program that decorated her apartments in Fontainebleau. In Apelles Painting Alexander and Campaspe, Alexander and his mistress entwine themselves in a sexually explicit embrace, undoubtedly a reference to the king and Anne. Other images thematize the king’s right to authorize marriages and conduct love affairs with whomever he chose: Alexander marrying Campaspe to Appelles (we recall that Françis I married Anne to Jean de Brosse) and he himself marrying Roxanne in another. Another image of Alexander with the Amazon queen, Thalestris, showing her climbing into his bed, seems to speak to the nature of Anne’s political role: not the king’s equal, she is nonetheless a formidable match. The overarching lesson of the Alexander program created for Anne’s apartments at Fontainebleau, argues Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, was to announce that “one man alone controlled all:” to justify the king’s right to distribute offices as he saw fit. More specifically, he justifies his reliance on Anne. Within this context, Anne flourished. Ambassador correspondence of the first years of the 1540s reveals an avid interest in her rise, which was linked to the diminishing credit of Montmorency, the most powerful of the king’s male favorites throughout the 1530s. In early 1540, The Duke of Norfolk describes in a letter to the English king his surprise at being informed by sister of the king, Marguerite of Navarre, that his best chance of getting François I’s ear was to win Madame d’Estampes to his side. The astonished Norfolk writes: “I answered to Her, that I thoght it was a strange thing for me to serche any thyng at suche a woman his hande.”24 Marguerite replied that she was only advising Norfolk to do what she herself did. In letters of the following months, Norfolk describes his cultivation

24

SP, 8: 259.

154 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

of this increasingly important court figure, convincing Henry VIII to court her with gifts. Ambassadorial correspondence more generally throughout the rest of 1541 reveals the growing realization that Anne had to be taken seriously. Certain ambassadors occasionally describe her as silly or flighty. A couple of characterizations in letters from imperial ambassadors to Charles V in particular have shaped her modern image in a negative way. I noted that Jean de Saint Mauris informs the emperor in August 1540 that Madame Étampes did not much like him. The reason that he adduces casts Anne as vain and stubborn. Regarding the possibility of getting back into her good graces, he writes: I am doing my best according to Your Majesty’s instructions. I fancy that the Chancellor and the lady are not much attached to Your Majesty or Your ministers …. I hear from a good quarter that the reason for her angry feelings is that when Your Majesty passed through this kingdom [to go to Flanders] you did not make so much of her as she expected, which has hardened her heart in such a way that it will be very difficult, nay, almost impossible, to appease her.25

Imperial ambassador Nicolas Villey, seigneur de Marnol, describes the duchess to Charles V as “fickle and unstable” (“legiere et instable”) in a letter of 1542.26 But he worked with her nonetheless: that same year Paget writes to Henry VII that “ThEmpereurs Ambassadeur practiseth much with Madame dEstampes for peax….”27 And yet, it is striking that ambassadors do not make explicit Anne’s relationship to the king, referring to her as Madame d’Estampes without further information. She continues to be mentioned as attendant to the queen, Edmond Bonner, for example, writing in 1540 to Thomas Cromwell that “the King, Quene, ladyes, and nobilitie of the Court, went on hunting, comming underneth my dowre, the Quene goyng afor in her litter, having Madame de Estampes with Her in the same….”28 At the baptism of Elisabeth or Isabelle, daughter of Prince Henri and Catherine, we see “the Queen, whose train was borne by Mme. d’Étampes as lady of honour, and who was followed by Mme. Marguerite of France, the Princess d’Albret and Mme. de Vendome walking together.”29

25 26 27 28 29

CSPS, 6: 1, 244–59, no. 117. Primary source cited by Potter, “Politics and Faction,” 143. SP, 9: 83. SP, 8: 236. CSPS, 8: 427–446, n. 293.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 155 Diane de Poitiers, too, would conduct politics as an open secret, and her position would be treated in ways similar to Anne’s. The precise chronology or even nature of the relationship between Diane and Prince Henri remains a mystery. They had opportunities to meet because they were often at the same events, but nothing can be pinned down.30 The earliest eye-witness report of the nature of their relationship from Venetian ambassador to the French court Marino Cavalli in 1547, apparently addressing rumors, denies any physical relationship. According to Cavalli, the 28-year-old dauphin is not at all a womanizer; his own wife [Catherine de Médicis] was sufficient; for conversation, he seeks that of [Diane], who is 48 years old. He has a genuine tenderness for her; but it is said that there is nothing lascivious in it and that this affection is like that between a mother and son; it is held that this lady has undertaken to instruct, correct and counsel M. le Dauphin, and to push him to all action worthy of him.31

Ambassador reports acknowledge the relationship without comment, referring to Diane as the dauphin’s “dama.”32 Whatever the case, with the death of François I and accession of Henri II in 1547 Anne was forced from the court, and Diane began to perform the role of royal mistress in plain sight but without overt mention of her relationship to the king, her career both evident and ignored, like Anne’s before her. Because the focus of this essay, however, is on the women’s reputation as rivals, I do not follow Diane into her heyday but turn now to the factionalism at François I’s court for which they have often been held responsible.

Personal rivals? Anne and Diane lived off and on at the royal court from the early 1520s until 1547. Contemporaries remark on tensions between them from the early 1540s on, and, as I have noted, historians have often described the bad blood as personal envy, blaming it for the tension between the king and the dauphin, on the one hand, and, on the other, between the dauphin and his younger brother, Charles

30 See Godefroy, Céremonial, 1:501; 773–74. 31 Baschet, La diplomatie vénitienne, 431. 32 For example, Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae, 3: 25–26 ; 6 : 61.

156 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

duke of Orléans.33 Already in his chronicle composed between 1643–51, François Eudes de Mézeray claims that the two women, motivated by their mutual animosity, had gathered factions around themselves: There were two factions at court, that of Madame d’Étampes, mistress of the king, and that of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of the dauphin. The first of the ladies, who, filled with a furious jealousy against the second, having no advantage over [the second] either in youth or beauty, had nonetheless won the love of the young prince Henri, heir to the throne; [the second] had attached herself to the Duke of Orléans, [younger brother of Prince Henri], to have the support of this prince….34

Nineteenth-century historians draw on this notion of female jealousy. In his 1865 study of the love life of François I, Adolphe Mathurin de Lescure laments the “intrigues that, under the reign of women, replace politics, and the funereal results for an entire people of such powder room battles.”35 “These two beautiful and implacable enemies, like the real women they were,” he continues, began by slapping each other in the face. Anne threw her age at the head of Diane, who responded with a list of her infidelities. “The year I was born,” the Duchess of Étampes affected to say with a perfidious disingenuousness, “is the year that Madame the Seneschale got married.”36

In his study of 1871, popular historian Arthur-Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand describes a “feminine duel” played out for the merriment of all, especially the king, who delighted in the “quarrels,” “zizanies” and “intrigues.”37 Francis Decrue de Stoutz in his still indispensable biography of Montmorency of 1885 claims that the female rivals “transmit[ted] their mutual hatred to their royal lovers” and that Emperor Charles V, seeing the battle lines drawn and wishing to incite further trouble, invested his own son with Milan, giving François I the excuse he needed to eject Montmorency.38 Thus, concludes Decrue, the real 33

See the letter of 19 February 1542 of Imperial ambassador Nicolas Villey de Marnol, who writes that “The said lady of Étampes will not desist from harassment until she has offended all the friendships of the grande Seneschale [Diane de Poitiers], not only because of the rancor that [Étampes] bears [the Seneschale], but also to diminish the credit of said Connétable….” Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Frankreich Diplomatische Korrespondenz Berichte, Weisungen 10. 34 Mézéray, Histoire de France, 2: 1031. 35 Lescure, Les amours de François I, 268. 36 Lescure, Les amours de François I, 268. 37 Imbert de Saint-Amand, Les Femmes, 198. 38 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, connétable, 3.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 157 reason for Montmorency’s disgrace was “the jealousy between the king’s lover and the Dauphin’s.”39 Such characterizations have retained their influence. According to a web site of popular history, while Diane de Poitiers attracted the sympathy of Henri, she made an enemy in the person of Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Étampes, mistress of François I. Renowned for her great beauty, Anne was outraged that the young prince was attracted to a woman older than she was. From that moment on, the two women engaged in a struggle without mercy and the court divided into two camps: those supporting the Duchess of Étampes and thos on the side of Henri and Diane de Poitiers.40

The women’s later antipathy began as personal dislike but escalated into conflict, according to a popular history of Catherine de Médicis, as Anne, “whose cupidity and hold over Francis can only be described as phenomenal, began to fear the day that she would be displaced by Diane.”41 When the king proposed to the emperor in 1538 that Prince Charles marry the emperor’s daughter and be invested with Milan, it was because he was “egged on by his favourite,” who hoped in this way to make Charles powerful enough to care for her when the king was dead.42 The proposition aroused the ire of the dauphin, who considered Milan his own prize, and tensions between the brothers devolved into a “dangerous feud,” led by the “two rivals Diane de Poitiers and the Duchesse d’Étampes ….”43 Another popu­ lar history admits that the conflict did not arise from feminine rivalry alone, but that the petty Anne de Pisseleu threw the first punch by commissioning vile verses about Diane from a poet of little talent, Jean Voulte. More subtle, Diane began the rumor that Anne de Pisseleu was unfaithful to François I and made fun of his sentiments.44

39 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, connétable, 3–4. 40 https://www.histo​ire-et-secr​ets.com/diane-de-poiti​ers-dame-de-coeur-dhe​nri-ii/ 41 Frieda, Catherine de Médicis, 62–63, 42 Frieda, Catherine de Médicis, 63, 43 Frieda, Catherine de Médicis, 63, See also Baumgartner, Henri II, 34–5. 44 Libert, Les plus mauvaises mères de l’Histoire, 153.

158 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Even scholarly histories at times depict the women as slightly ridiculous divas, describing the royal court, for example, as a “theatre for rivalry between the leading court ladies.”45

Political rivals? After the fall of Montmorency Anne’s position as unofficial adviser became so unshakeable, as we have seen, that ambassadors describe her as all-powerful. Diane’s power was in no way comparable to Anne’s while they resided at court together, and this fact alone means that it makes no sense to seek the origins of court factionalism in a rivalry between the two women. As the mistress of the dauphin, Diane did not have the credit to challenge Anne, the most important female political figure at court, even had she been inclined to do so. David Potter and Francis Nawrocki explain that during the period of Anne’s maximum influence, factionalism was relatively weak in the sense that central political figures did not rise and fall in rapid succession, as they had earlier, and that policy was reasonably coherent. Potter writes: Although the political division remained evident during the final years of the reign of François I, compared to the 1530s, the court was quite stable from 1540 to 1547. This stability was partly the result of the influence of the Duchess of Étampes on the choice of royal favorites and political strategies.46

But even during these years of political stability, factional conflict continued, and, in these disputes between factions, Anne and Diane found themselves by virtue of their relationships to the king and the dauphin in an adversarial position. However, nothing suggests that they were rivals for personal supremacy and certainly not personal rivals motivated by jealousy of each other. To make the case, it will be useful to examine the factions more closely. The first decade of François I’s reign, which began in 1515, was relatively intrigue free, but divisions began to appear after 1526, one long-term rivalry forming between “two of the king’s favourites: Anne de Montmorency and Admiral Philippe Chabot de Brion.”47 This rivalry was embedded within, or entwined with, a more

45

Potter, “Politics and Factions,” 130. As I noted above, Potter has become significantly more sympa­ thetic to Anne in his more recent work. 46 Potter, “Anne de Pisseleu,” 556. See also Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 198–99. 47 Knecht, Renaissance Court, 56. See also Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 180–83; 196–202.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 159 general one centered around, on the one hand, Montmorency and Charles V’s proxy, Queen Eleanor, representing a group favorable to Charles V, and, on the other, Chabot, Marguerite of Navarre, and, eventually, Anne, representing a group who mistrusted the emperor. Although the king held Charles V in enmity throughout much of his reign, he fluctuated on how to handle the emperor, and, for this reason, membership in the factions was very fluid, shifting as individuals calculated which side was likely to be more useful them at any given time.48 But if the membership and immediate goals of the factions were mobile, the division itself endured. Montmorency would be banished from court in about 1542 and Chabot would die in 1543, but the factions continued, centered in a new form around the king, Marguerite of Navarre, Anne, and the youngest prince, Charles Duke of Orléans, on the one hand, and, on other, the second dauphin, Henri, and his men. The factions are a frequent topic of ambassadorial correspondence. In June 1533, the Duke of Norfolk reports back to Henry VIII that Montmorency, then the king’s Grand Maître, supported all the “emperor’s affairs” and, in addition, was readier than any man in France to “serve and please the Queen [Eleanor].” Norfolk further notes that in the Queen’s chamber there are two bands, of those who take the King’s or the Queen’s part, and they keep different sides of the chamber. The Dolphyn [Prince François] and his mistress were upon the Queen’s side; with which the King was much displeased, and rebuked the Dolphyn very sore for being so much in the Queen’s company, considering that he knew she did not behave as she ought to his father….49

Factionalism begins to center more clearly around Montmorency and Chabot as the king’s principal long-term grievance—the king wanted the emperor to restore the duchy of Milan to him—failed to find resolution. Montmorency’s conviction that peaceful negotiation with the emperor was the only possibility for achieving a positive result prevailed for some years. Indeed, Montmorency’s approach appeared to have vanquished Chabot’s in 1541, when the latter fell from grace and was arrested for financial malfeasance. Knecht writes that an enquiry allegedly turned up

48 49

Potters’ “Politics and Faction” gives a historical overview of factionalism at the French royal court. See also Le Roux, Faveur, 34–38, and Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 180–83; 196–202, on the composition of the factions that I am discussing here. L & P, 6: 306–13, no. 692.

160 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

malpractices by his subordinates, and, in 1540, his own conduct came under scrutiny. Accused of corruption, he was tried by a special commission under [Chancellor] Poyet’s chairmanship. In February 1541 Chabot was stripped of his offices, heavily fined, banished from court and imprisoned at Vincennes….

But Anne, who had reached a stage of major influence by then, intervened with François I on the admiral’s behalf, turning the tables by convincing the king that Montmorency’s policy regarding the emperor was ineffective. By March 1541 Chabot was reinstated. And yet, the Montmorency-Chabot fight persisted, perceived by ambassador Anthony Paget as a zero-sum game, as he explains to Henry VIII in a letter detailing his discussion of October 1542 with Chabot. Paget avers that because of his affection for the Admiral he was worried for him: It is not unknowen (quod I) unto all the woorld, that this Courte is divided, for there is the Quene of Navarre, Mons’ dOrleauns, Madame dEstampes, and you, and on thother syde the Quene, the Dolphin, the Constable [Montmorency], and all moost all the Cardinalles against youe; and as you be now before and they behinde, so they having nowe thadvauntage, which they have looked for a great while, if they gett before you ones, you shall not be able to overtake them again.50

Chabot acknowledged Paget’s concern replying that he was aware of the troubles but adding that they went with the territory: as for those that woold me and my freendes il, quod he, I trust we shall beware wel ynough of them. No man can serve in my place without many and great ennemyes, and yet men must serve, (quod he) and abyde the aventure; wherof, if a man meane well, thende can not but be good, whatsoever fortune in the meane season.51

Anne, then, was involved in this primary quarrel, but she was not a faction leader; and there is no sign of Diane. However, the dauphin, who appears to become very attached to Montmorency around 1536 because of their joint military successes, starts to be mentioned in reports on factionalism in the early 1540s, and Diane begins to be referenced along with him.52 In September 1541 William Howard reports to Henry VIII that the dauphin “has no great affection to the 50 51 52

SP 9: 194. SP 9: 195. For detail on the military campaigns Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître, 254–338.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 161 Admiral [Chabot], because of his familiarity with Madame de Estampes, ‘which the Dolphyn favoureth in no wise.’ ”53 Dandino too mentions the bad blood between Anne and the dauphin, looping in Diane and Montmorency when he remarks that same year that “the dauphin dares not offend Diane, his lady, who is related to the connétable,” and that “Anne helps as much as she can, and with skill behaves wisely, but everyone knows that the connétable hates her and that she hates the connétable her enemy, as much because of the facts of the matter as because he has the king’s heart.”54 An anecdote, related by Adrien Thierry in his biography of Diane, details a dispute involving Anne and Diane that played out in 1544.55 According to Ferrarese ambassador Giulio Alvarotto François I sent Diane from the royal court. Although initially the ambassador did not know why, a few days later he claims to have learned from a reliable source that the dauphin, who was away fighting on the front in Boulogne, had written to the king passing along a request that Claude d’Annebaut, admiral following Chabot’s death, be removed from his position. The king and Anne, according to Alvarotto, believed that Diane had been behind the request, hoping to have Montmorency sent to replace Annebaut. Alvarotto concludes the letter by observing that “the king and Anne were saying terrible things about [Diane]. Also, the king chased her from court, either on his own, or at the demand of Madame d’Étampes, great friend of [Annebaut].” When the dauphin returned, he demanded that Diane be allowed to return, and he departed the court for Diane’s chateau Anet when the king refused.56 The Peace of Crépy, which ended hostilities with the emperor on 18 September 1544, also intensified the bad blood between the king and the dauphin and therefore between Anne and the dauphin, and, presumably, Diane.57 The treaty, which contained a marriage agreement between the king’s younger son Charles and a niece of the emperor, brought hope of regaining Milan. Prince Charles was to choose between Charles V’s daughter Mary with the Netherlands and FrancheComté as a dowry and the emperor’s niece Anna, who would bring Milan. Henri, thinking ahead to his own reign, opposed the treaty because it would make his 53

L&P, 16: 553–60, no. 1199. On the growing dislike, see Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 199–202. 54 Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae, 3: 25–26. 55 For the anecdote and its source, see Thierry, Diane de Poitiers, 60. 56 Thierry signals a letter from Henri II to Diane written shortly after François I’s death, reminding her, as a sign of his devotion, that he had taken her side against the king. The letter from Henri II to Diane, which points out that he no longer fears losing the good grace of his father (who has recently died) on Diane’s behalf, is printed in Diane de Poitiers, Lettres inédites, 219–20. 57 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 493–94.

162 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

brother too powerful and lead therefore to instability.58 At Fontainebleau in December Henri signed a protestation against the ratification of the treaty.59 Anne and Marguerite of Navarre favored the treaty.60

The poetic evidence Those making the case for a jealous rivalry have also perceived its traces in court literature dating from the late 1530s and early 1540s. Clément Marot indicates great admiration for Anne, dedicating two flattering pieces to her, awarding her the golden apple for her beauty and praising her complexion in his collection of short étrennes,poems of 1538, for the ladies of the court; Diane’s étrenne, however, feels equivocal, Marot claiming to have heard that she had had less fun in her youth than she was having in middle age (“au printemps/ qu’en autonne”). This is surely a reference to her autumn-spring relationship with Henri.61 A scur­ rilous poem by Jean Voulé, also published in 1538, mocks Diane’s aged face and ­heavily-applied cosmetics. Referring to this poem, E. Desgardins writes that the rivalry “became so impassioned that the Duchess of Étampes inspired Jean Voulé, poet from Champagne, author of a calumnious publication against Diane.”62 Such writings, Thierry asserts, “originated in the hatred of the Duchess of Étampes for Diane de Poitiers: inspired and remunerated by the jealous mistress of François I, they could not do otherwise than express the emotions that animated her.”63 But these poems, which have suggested a jealous rivalry to some historians, were composed by known Reformist sympathizers, and it is in this context, I believe, that they assume their full meaning. Anne was undoubtedly Protestant later in her life, described by the English envoy Thomas Hoby in 1566 as “a grave, godlie, wise, sober and courteious lady, one of the staies of the refourmed religion in Fraunce” and welcoming Protestants leaders in her castle at Challuau in 1576.64 But historians have disagreed about how or when her convictions first 58

A dispatch to Henry VIII on French attitudes toward peace with England following the Treaty of Crépy notes that the “Dolphin desireth ernestly, that this peace may be concluded; for he feareth his brothers advancement….” SP 10: 521–22. 59 For the protestation, see Recueil des traitez de paix, 2: 449–50. 60 See Paris, Étude sur François premier, 2: 301–4, who traces the accusation to an addition to Du Bellay by Beaucaire. 61 Marot, Œuvres choisies, 2: 371 and 372. 62 Desgardins, Anne de Pissleu, 50. This is the same poem to which I refer on page 000. 63 Thierry, Diane de Poitiers, 130. Thierry offers no source. 64 Potter, “Cruel Marriage,” 10–11, citing a letter from Anne to the Archbishop of Rheim, and, by the same author, War and Government, 297.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 163 appeared, Desgardins going so far as to see her beliefs as a function of her rivalry with Diane: “it seems probable that Anne de Pisseleu became a Protestant out of her hatred for Diane, ardent Catholic.”65 The sincerity of Anne’s reformist tendencies, however, is evidenced by the fact that “during the period 1540–1546 an evangelical faction, whose anchor had long been Marguerite, continued to operate at court; ” it included “Admiral [Chabot], the Du Bellay brothers, and less reliably, madame d’Étampes,” writes Jonathan Reid.66 Throughout the mid-­ 1540s, Reid documents, Marguerite and Anne were in close secret contact with the English, professing their support for the reformist cause and striving to bring peace between Henry VIII and François I. By 1545, St. Mauris wrote to Charles V that Protestants at the French court were receiving great favor because Anne “inclines to the Lutheran discipline,” and Queen Eleanor agreed.67 Returning to the poets, Marot’s religious beliefs require no further explanation. His étrennes to Anne and Diane, considered from this perspective, seem to laud the regenerative new power of the Reformed religion and deplore the deception of Catholicism. The poem ridiculing Diane’s make-up, too, was composed by a known Reformist, Jean Voulé (also known as Voultré, or Visagier), friend of Marot and part of the circle of Rabelais and Étienne Dolet.68 Charles de Sainte-­ Marthe, himself part of the same circles, strengthens the impression that Anne was perceived as a religious ally, dedicating his Poésie françoise to her. SainteMarthe, who had composed an admiring letter to Calvin in 1537, found himself imprisoned in Grenoble in 1540.69 “In view of his tribulations,” writes Christine Scollen, “it is not surprising that Sainte-Marthe agreed to the suggestion of a friend, the Duc de Montausier, that he should dedicate the Poésie française to the Duchesse d’Étampes, thus hoping to gain her protection in times of trouble.”70 After a long storm, Sainte-Marthe writes in his dedication, he is steering his ship toward Anne’s “much desired port.”71

65 Desgardins, Anne de Pissleu, 56. 66 Reid, King’s Sister, 2:499. 67 Reid, King’s Sister, 2: 499 n. 4, citing L&P, 21.2, 188–203, n. 406. 68 Reid notes that Visagier wrote to Jean Du Bellay, asking him to work for Marot’s return from exile, in King’s Sister, 2:460, n.11. For Visagier more generally see the introduction to Arlier, Correspondance and Arlier’s three letters to to him, 128, 169, and Visagier’s poems to Arlier, 230. Guiffrey, “Un Correspondant provençal,” 178–81, discusses him as well. 69 Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy in France, 80, citing Correspondence des Réformateurs 4, no. 625. 70 Scollen, The Birth of the Elegy in France, 80. 71 Sainte-Marthe, La poésie françoise de Charles de Sainct-Marthe, 5. For the story of Sainte-Marthe’s strategic decision to dedicate his work to Anne and his informing Marot that he had done so, see Ruutz-Rees, Charles de Sainte-Marthe, 117–26.

164 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

This court literature, casting doubt on the case for a personal rivalry between the mistresses, suggests instead that already in the late 1530s Anne was known to be participating in Reformist circles and was seen therefore as a potential patron, whereas the Catholic Diane would have been mistrusted by these poets. As Reid has recently suggested, Anne’s interest in the Reform can be dated to summer of 1542 at the latest, when she “vaunted to an ambassador that she had recently come to a knowledge of the word of God by reading the Gospel, and then turned to Marguerite to complain teasingly: ‘Madame, how could you have wanted to do me this ill-turn of hiding and depriving me of such a great good for so long? I am now so calm and confident that I count myself happy and do not know how to thank God enough.”72 However, Anne’s long friendship with Marguerite of Navarre coupled with Marot’s admiration and Sainte-Marthe’s dedication suggest a still earlier date. Francis Nawrocki has cautioned against imagining the conflicts at the court of François I as what we would think of as factions, parties, coteries, or cabals, words whose connotations complicate their use when we apply them without the requisite nuance to “interactions among diverse movements, supple and evolving networks of service, information, and actions that were fundamentally more social than political.”73 Members within or across the groups might work together or against each other at different times. Never during the reign of François I, writes Nawrocki, do we see anything like a party “to which adherence would be exclusive.”74 Changes of tactics were motivated by shifts in the situation: Marguerite of Navarre, for example, switches sides depending on the issue, as does the king himself. Such movement is quite simply the inevitable result of factional court politics, which means, by definition, the spontaneous formation of groups to promote results in the absence of overarching institutions formally invested with the authority to arbitrate. Nothing like a political ideology of the type that unites members of modern political parties and determines their response to issues motivated members of factions. And if factions are also social formations, it is nonetheless difficult to find evidence of friendship as a motivating factor. Family interest generally took priority of friendship as a reason for decisions. Rather than thinking of court factions as entities akin to modern political parties, Nawrocki suggests that we might more accurately envision networks arranged in “pyramids of favor.” At the summits, the most important figures at 72 Reid, “Imagination and Influence,” 285. 73 Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 195. 74 Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 195.

The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers | 165 times became embroiled in violent oppositions. But the peaks were constructed upon a common base whose members might seek favors from any of the most highly placed figures. Anne would have occupied the summit of a pyramid after 1541 or 1542, but she would also have occupied a middle stratum during other periods, depending on the issues at stake. Diane, imagined as part of a pyramid of favor, would never have occupied a summit position, at least not during François I’s reign. Although Anne and Diane were involved in the factions, then, the strife was not caused by a personal jealous rivalry between the women, or, if such a rivalry did exist between the two, their contemporaries did not record it. Many contemporaries remark on the antipathy between Anne and Montmorency, between Anne and the dauphin Henri, who was a great friend of Montmorency, and, as we have seen, a few suggest that Anne and Diane disliked each other. But none characterizes the women as personal rivals leading their own factions much less blame them for court factionalism in general. Not that anyone would suggest that the women were friends. On the contrary. Anne fell and Diane rose with the death of François I in 1547, and, despite the king’s plea that he look kindly upon Anne, Henri II quickly sent her and most of the previous administration packing. Obviously Diane did not intervene. But there is no need to invent tales of feminine jealousy to explain the women’s antagonism, which is explicable as a function of their relationships to the king and the dauphin, which, in turn, determined their positions in other factions. Feminist scholarship on early modern women has shown that women with access to the king and his intimates and a knack for promoting the members of their faction(s) could often participate in politics as effectively as men. This helped Anne and Diane. But, in addition, because of a combination of François I’s genuine tendency to trust women for guidance, the particular intensity of the culture of dissimulation at the French court, and the abundance of feminine models from antiquity and classical mythology there, a tradition of powerful political mistresses was able to take hold.

10

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen

In this essay on how Eleanor of Austria (1498–1558), consort of François I (1494– 1547), became the first “foreign” French queen, I take as a point of departure a recent observation that Eleanor seems insignificant “when juxtaposed against other women of political and cultural power in the Habsburg dynasty and Valois court during the first half of the sixteenth century.”1 Although the observation may be true, it is important to add that powerful Habsburg and Valois women were not queens of France. Or, to be more specific, if they were queens of France, they were queens regent or queens who had come to the marriage as rulers in their own right.2 Relative to the reigns of other non-regents or non-proprietary queens of France, like Marie of Anjou, Charlotte of Savoy, Claude of France—who was also Duchess of Brittany and nevertheless seems not to have been very politically influential—Catherine de Médicis before the death of Henri II, Elizabeth of Austria, Louise of Lorraine, Marguerite of Valois, Marie-Thérèse, Marie Leszczyńska, or even Marie-Antoinette, famous for other reasons, Eleanor’s

1 2

Mansfield, “Portraits of Eleanor of Austria,” 175. Queens of other lands were sometimes significantly more powerful than queens of France. Eleanor’s younger sister, Catherine, queen of Portugal, for example, seems to have been very influential. See Gschwend, “Verdadero Padre y Señor,” 3: 3015–16.

168 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

seems entirely typical. Her primary task, like theirs, was to attend to relations between her House and that of the French king. Still, if the queens I have just mentioned represent a common institution, each dealt with a unique set of circumstances. Eleanor’s challenge was to insure peace between bitter enemies, her brother Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and her husband François I, who were active players in a frequently shifting three-way rivalry that also included Henry VIII of England. Enthusiastic crowds greeted Eleanor when she made her various entries into the towns of France as the embodiment of a peace treaty with the Empire. But reconciling Charles V with the French king proved impossible. No previous French queen had been charged with such a task. True, Anne of Brittany had been married to Charles VIII as part of a treaty to end the conflict between France and Brittany, and Marguerite of Valois would be married to Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV, to make peace between Catholics and Protestants. But Anne came to the marriage as sovereign Duchess of Brittany, and, in a practical sense, Marguerite never really served as queen of France. The sharpest difference, however, was that neither Anne of Brittany nor Marguerite of Valois was perceived as foreign.3 Nor would Eleanor have been in a different time. Raised by her French-speaking aunt, Marguerite of Austria, in Flanders, Eleanor became foreign as a result of the enmity between Charles V and François I. In what follows, I first lay out the context for Eleanor’s reign and then suggest that her career represents the epitome of the French version of queenship, which, beginning with Eleanor’s reign, was strongly identified with foreignness.

Duty to the dynasty By the sixteenth century Europe was controlled almost exclusively by rulers descended from a small caste of dynasties whose members married among themselves.4 Intermarriage within these dynasties helped to maintain their prestige. In addition, the practice was believed to limit any local jealousy and violence that would have resulted from a king selecting his bride from among his subjects.5 But 3

Although Anne of Brittany appears to have thought of herself as more Breton than French. See Santrot’s citation of Anne’s coat-of-arms topped with a double (Breton and French) crown in Les doubles funérailles d’Anne de Bretagne, especially 226–28, 240, and 250. 4 See Cosandey, La Reine de France, 73–82; Burguière and Lebrun, “The One Hundred and One Families of Europe,” 2: 85. 5 Chériziers, Reflexions chrestiennes et politiques, 101–2.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 169 the most important driver of choosing partners from within the caste was the perceived usefulness of marriage for building alliances and extending empires, with the Habsburgs in particular renowned for relying on Venus rather than Mars to expand their domains.6 Under Eleanor’s grandfather, Maximilian (1459–1519), the Habsburgs deployed marriage strategies to expand north and west from their ancestral lands in central Europe: into Burgundy in 1477 when Maximilian wed Marie of Burgundy, and, after his election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1493, through the marriages in 1496 and 1497 of his and Marie’s two children to two children of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Marguerite was married to Juan, heir to the Spanish throne, and her older brother, Philip, to Juana, sometimes called La Loca. Juan died shortly after his marriage to Marguerite, and, with the demise of Queen Isabella in 1504 followed by the unexpected death of her heir, also named Isabella, Juana became Queen of Castile. Following Philip’s premature death in 1506, Juana and Philip’s eldest son Charles inherited the family’s Burgundian territories, and, although Juana lost rule of Castile to her father, Charles would claim his grandparents’ thrones and install himself in Spain when Ferdinand II died in 1516. Marriage brought the Habsburgs further territories when in 1506, Maximilian and Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, entered into a treaty whereby Maximilian married his grand-daughter Marie to Vladislaus’s son and heir Louis and his grandson Ferdinand to Vladislaus’s daughter Anna. Louis acceded to the throne as a child in 1516 but died in 1526 fighting the Ottomans at the Battle of Mohács. Ferdinand claimed his thrones, winning Bohemia easily, and, after a lengthy struggle, Hungary as well. Managing his family’s vast territories eventually took its toll on Charles, who, in addition to his other responsibilities, was elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V when Maximilian died in 1519. Charles V would abdicate in 1556. His brother Ferdinand had governed the Habsburg’s ancestral Austrian lands in central Europe since 1519; with Charles V’s abdication, Ferdinand received the office of Holy Roman Emperor while Charles V’s son Philip received the Spanish lands. But as long as he reigned, Charles V was aided not only by his male but his female relatives. The siblings’ aunt Marguerite of Austria, who raised Eleanor, Charles, Isabella, and Marie at her court in Malines (as I noted earlier, the youngest, Ferdinand and Catherine, grew up in Spain with their mother), served Charles V 6

“Let other wage war, you, happy Austria, marry, for Mars gives to others what Venus gives to you” (“Bella gerant Alii, Tu felix Austria nube, nam quae Mars Aliis, dat tibi regna Venus). See Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, 243, for the woes of such a marriage policy.

170 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

as regent for the Netherlands from 1507–1515 and from 1519 until her death in 1531, when Marie, widowed queen of Hungary, took up the baton. Studies of the siblings’ correspondence has shown how they shared in a sense of duty to their House and cultivated their family relationships. Tupu Ylä-Anttila rightly notes that Marie’s “performance aimed at the smooth functioning of the regency” and that she “very consciously moulded herself into the role of Charles’s obedient companion” all the better to offer him advice.7 Recent scholarship stresses that performance of “emotives” often produces as well as reflects affect, and Marie’s very diligence suggests a genuine commitment to the role. Isabella’s marriage to King Christian II of Denmark at the age of thirteen did not in the end work to the advantage of the Habsburgs: exiled along with her husband during a civil war, she wrote frequently to her sibling asking for aid. The young queen died at the age of 25.8 But the letters of Catherine, who grew up far from Charles, demon­ strate perhaps the most clearly how the siblings maintained and shaped their ties. Although the pair met only twice in their adult lives, Catherine represents herself in her correspondence as deeply devoted to her brother and eager to work on his behalf.9 She begs the emperor for news of his health and sends him foods to try; she lacks the words to sufficiently express her appreciation that the king sent Don Miguel Velasco to see her while she was ill; she cannot tell him what she would do to serve him because she would do anything for her true father and lord; her only desire is to kiss His Majesty’s hand a thousand times for the love and the letters.10 In 1553, Catherine dispatched one of her own servants to live at the imperial court to tend to Charles and cook for him.11 As for Eleanor, her devotion to the House is most clearly visible in her acquiescence to brother’s marriage strategies and energetic mediation between her brother and the French king. Charles twice married Eleanor for political reasons, and, in both cases, she assumed her role with loyalty and dedication, whatever her personal feelings may have been. Her compliance in the first case must have

7 8 9 10 11

Ylä-Anttila,“Habsburg Female Regents in the Early Sixteenth Century,” 174–181. On Isabella, see Hein, “Isabella of Austria, Queen of Denmark,” 3: 2613–23. Hein writes that Isabella wrote to Eleanor lamenting her new husband’s flagrantly obvious mistress, indicating a close relationship between the sisters. 3: 2616. See Gschwend, “Verdadero Padre y Señor,” 3013–23. Lettres des souverains portugais. See 83, 88, 92, 176. As Geschwend discusses, 3: 3015. See Smuts and Gough’s discussion in “Queens and the International Transmission of Political Culture,” 5. “The power wielded by women within European courts therefore needs to be considered largely – though not entirely – in terms of a ‘politics of intimacy,’ carried on through direct and usually private communications that circumvented formal institutional channels.”

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 171 cost her dearly, for she seems to have been hoping to marry one of Charles’s closest advisors, Frederick, who, as son of Philip, Elector Palatine and Margarete of Bavaria-Landshut, would later himself be Count and Elector Palatine.12 At the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon in January 1516, Charles began to plan a move to Spain to claim the throne,13 and one way of guaranteeing the seam­ less continuation of rule in the Netherlands would have been to marry his sister to his advisor and leave them to govern.14 But sadly for Eleanor and Frederick, Charles had just set off for Spain in May 1517 when he learned that Marie of Castile, second wife of King Manuel of Portugal, had died (Both Marie and Manuel’s first wife, Isabella, were sisters of Eleanor’s mother Juana, and therefore Eleanor’s aunts). Spain having become his most urgent interest, Charles was eager to maintain good relations with Portugal, prevent the French king from marrying one of his daughters to the newly single Manuel, and take advantage of new opportunities for expansion and profit from Portugal’s colonial adventures. Charles therefore negotiated for Eleanor to marry the twice-widowed Manuel, thirty years her senior. Although Manuel’s son and heir João would have been an age-appropriate match, the king was ready for an immediate marriage, and he had ready money.15 Marguerite of Austria therefore again assumed governorship of the Netherlands,16 while Eleanor departed Brussels, first for Spain and from there for Portugal. Referring to Eleanor’s “acceptance of a much older man,” Gschwend affirms that throughout her life, Eleanor “was selfless in advancing the emperor’s ‘honor and profit.’ ”17 Manuel died only three years into the marriage. For this reason, it is impossible to know what sort of long-term role Eleanor might have played as queen of Portugal; the influential role of her sister Catherine as queen of Portugal’s João II 12

Moeller lays out the case. An act dated 16 August 1517 and notarized by Maître Robert Robyns tells the story: “Frederick, duke in Bavaria Count Palatine, had two years ago tried to suborn, solicit, and convince Madame Eleanor of Austria to marry him….” But as Moeller persuasively points out, Eleanor must have been the instigating party. She was too closely surveilled for Frederick to have approached her without her active consent. Éléonore d’Autriche, 189–197. 13 Charles’s decision to seek the throne for himself, even though Isabella, mother of Charles and his siblings, was technically the heir, was controversial. Ferdinand II had kept Juana from the throne, because of her presumed mental instability. See see Aram, Juana the Mad, 111–36, and 91–110. 14 Moeller, Éléonore d’Autriche, 220; 274, n. 1. Moeller refers to a letter of 16 May 1516 to Henry VIII from the English king’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Thomas Spinelly. See L&P, 2: 537–556, no. 1895. Spinelly recounts that “the king means to leave his sister, the Lady Eleanor, gouvernante, pro forma saltem.” 15 Moeller, Éléonore d’Autriche, 298. Charles would marry his sister, Catherine, to João in 1525. 16 On the controversy surrounding who would govern for Charles, see Moeller, Éléonore d’Autriche, 275–94. 17 Gschwend, “ ‘Ma meilleure sœur,’ ” 3: 2572.

172 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

suggests that Eleanor, too, might have enjoyed similar latitude had her reign been longer. Whatever the case, Eleanor’s next job on behalf of the Habsburgs, marriage to François I of France, was long-lasting and the desired outcome obvious. In 1525, the French king and his army were defeated by imperial troops near the Italian city of Pavia, and the king transported as Charles V’s prisoner to Spain. The Treaty of Madrid, which led to the king’s return to France, stipulated a marriage between François I and Eleanor. The king then made his way back to Paris, and his two sons were sent to Spain, to guarantee that he fulfill the terms of the treaty. Eleanor waited to be summoned to France.

Habsburg queen of France Contemporary descriptions of Eleanor suggest that she was a credit to her House: well-educated, beautifully mannered, musically skilled, and dedicated. When called upon to marry the French king, she performed her role impeccably. In a letter of May 1525 to her future mother-in-law, regent Louise of Savoy, composed during François I’s captivity, Eleanor expresses her readiness to advance peace.18 A dispatch from Toledo to Louise of 19 July 1525 from ambas­ sadors François de Tournon, Archbishop of Embrun, and Jean de Selve offers a clear impression of Eleanor. They had gone to the Queen of Portugal to present Louise’s letters which [Eleanor] received generously and read in our presence; and, afterwards, we told her that we had permission to pass on your and the king’s cordial recommendations. After hearing how much she desired the liberation of the king and peace, we thanked her on your behalf, begging her to continue until the very end.19

The queen, “with great sweetness, after having them sit very close to her, told them she was striving with all her heart for peace and the liberty of the king.”20 Sébastien Moreau, treasurer for the Milanais for François I and author of The History of the capture and liberation of François I, arrival of the queen and return of the children of France, created an entertaining romance with long descriptions of Eleanor and the king’s engagement. The couple had heard so much of each 18 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, Eleanor to Louise, 192 19 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 260–61. 20 Champollion-Figeac, Captivité, 260–61.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 173 other’s beauty that they had already fallen in love before ever laying eyes on each other. Before leaving Spain, the newly liberated king was invited to a feast by the emperor: [The king] was filled with joy, especially to see the ladies of Spain, most of all the exalted and illustrious princess Madame Eleanor, dowager of Portugal, sister of the said Emperor, whom he had heard lauded by many, as an accomplished princess of such virtue that none could surpass her; and together with this widow, given that both [the king and she] were marriageable, an alliance and beautiful marriage could be made. Both of them had already heard of the other’s beauty, and without even seeing each other they were in love….21

The two could not get enough of exchanging glances throughout dinner; their sighs secretly signaled their deepening affection, and, in speaking together, their honest conversation lacked for nothing.22 After a wait of nearly five years, during which time the French king reneged on certain terms of the treaty, claiming that he had agreed to them under duress, Eleanor finally married the king by proxy on 20 March 1530, François II de la Tour, viscount of Turenne, standing in. In a letter to the king just before her departure for France, edited by Chloé Pardanaud-Landriot, Eleanor has assumed her new role, performing gratitude and promising devotion: Monseigneur, giving thanks to God for the gift he has given me, that is, the conclusion of that for which it has pleased you to send here your ambassador Monseigneur de Turenne, along with the words you told him to pass on to me, I also thank you most humbly for having done me the honor in your last letter of showing that you no longer want to dissimulate in giving to me, Monseigneur, that of yours, upon which I have always counted; I have never expected less from you [word illegible] than the good and honor that it pleases you to give me…. Your most humble and very obedient wife, Léonor.23

Eleanor, along with the young dauphin François and his brother Henri, arrived in Fontarabie on the border between Spain and France in late June. On 7 July 1530, the king arrived from Bordeaux to meet the group and lead them back to Bordeaux where they joined Louise and then continued on to Paris.

21 22 23

Moreau, “Histoire de la prinse et délivrance,” 321. Moreau, “Histoire de la prinse et délivrance,” 323. Pardanaud-Landriot, “Plaider, convaincre, entrer en scene,” 205.

174 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Eleanor continued her diplomatic efforts from her new home. The emperor, keeping a close eye on the events, wrote to his wife on 31 July: In France the most Christian Queen, our sister, has been received in pomp, and the marriage consummated. Great rejoicings and festivals have been made, of which a full account has been remitted to Spain. The King, moreover, seems determined to keep this peace, and preserve our friendship.24

But the emperor was too optimistic. The love narrative, so convincingly related by Moreau, was disavowed by the king, who almost immediately began to display an indifference toward the emperor’s sister equal to that he had shown the Treaty of Madrid. Already in May 1529, Henry VIII’s ambassador to the French court Thomas Boleyn had reported that “although [François I] was anxious for the delivery of his children, he had little desire to marry lady Eleanor,”25 and, once arrived in Paris, the king made a point of showing how little the new queen mattered to him. I noted in the previous chapter that during her entry to the city on 16 March 1531 English diplomat Francis Bryan informed Henry VIII that the French king sat with his mistress Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly perched in front of him throughout the ceremony, “in the syght and face of all the peple; whych was not a lytyll marvelyd at of the beholders,”26 and, also according to Bryan, that the king and queen had had not lain together once in four nights, and the king spent most of his time with his mistress. Nonetheless, Eleanor persisted. Her aunt Marguerite of Austria, who monitored her niece’s first months at the French court from Malines, advised her to be gentle. In of letter of July 1530, Marguerite instructed the emperor’s secretary, Jean Le Sauch, how to counsel the new queen.27 Marguerite seems to have received news that Le Sauch had misadvised Eleanor by suggesting that she discuss political matters directly with the king and the regent. On the contrary, Marguerite explains that it is necessary above all things that she conduct herself according to the will of the king and by the hand of Madame, his mother, and that she do everything according their desire and wish, capturing their benevolence and grace, as best she can, without arguing in any manner whatsoever; for I know them, and

24 25 26 27

CSPS, 4.1: 659–669, 391. L&P, 4: 2466–2473, no. 5583. SP, 7: 291. De Boom, ed., Correspondance de Marguerite d’Autriche, 130.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 175 [Eleanor] will get more with sweetness than by pushing too hard. And without fail, any other counsel is too dangerous….28

The new queen won warm approval. On 12 August 1530 Philip Lalaing, Marguerite’s maître d’ hôtel, adviser, and occasional ambassador, reported to his lady from Louise’s palace in Cognac that Louise and the king were most beholden to Marguerite for the peace, the return of the king’s sons, and the queen, whom Louise lauds “wonderfully, saying that she is the most virtuous and best lady that it is possible to find; and she said that she is ashamed that the said queen does her, Louise, such honor….” Lalaing adds that he has personally observed and heard it said by many people that the praise is well deserved.29 Along with Louise, whom Eleanor addresses as she who holds “all power,”30 Anne de Montmorency, François I’s grand maître de France, became the new queen’s most significant ally at court. Montomorency had praised Eleanor lavishly even before she arrived in France, writing to Marguerite of Austria that the “wise, beautiful and honest woman” had “conversed with him about subjects as good and honest as they could possibly be.”31 He placed his younger sister, Louise, Maréschale de Chatillon, in the queen’s entourage as her principal l­ady-in-waiting.32 In a letter of instruction to his advisor, Jean de Sainte-Aldegonde, seigneur de Noircomes, Charles V asks Noircomes to recommend him affectionately to Montmorency and “thank him for the good work that his had done and does every day for his sister and for the good of peace and friendship between us….”33 But Eleanor lost a powerful ally when Louise died in September 1531. With the most influential proponent for good relations with the emperor gone, even Montmorency’s continued support did not persuade much of the court, and, over the next several years, opinion turned increasingly against the emperor and toward an alliance with Henry VIII. In particular, the king’s reform-minded sister, Marguerite, whom historian Ghislaine de Boom describes as seducing a naïve Eleanor with displays of friendship even as she worked to convince the king of the emperor’s malign intentions, tended in this direction.34 Marguerite of Austria, in 28 De Boom, ed., Correspondance de Marguerite d’Autriche, 130. 29 De Boom, ed., Correspondance de Marguerite d’Autriche, 42. 30 Pardanaud-Landriot, “Plaider, convaincre, entrer en scene,” 201. 31 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître, 163, citing manuscript français 5116 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, fol. 6. See Pardanaud-Landriot, “Plaider, convaincre, entrer en scene,” 203, 204, 206, for Eleanor’s letters to Montmorency discussing the release of the royal sons before she arrived in France. She refers to Montmormency as “cousin,” and her letters reveal her confidence in him. 32 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître,168. 33 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître, 175, citing Granvelle, 1: 479. 34 De Boom, Éléonore d’Autriche, 96–7.

176 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

the letter of instruction cited above, had signaled the importance of winning over the king’s sister.35 However, this Marguerite’s religious convictions placed her beyond Eleanor’s reach as an ally. In 1533, the Duke of Norfolk, Henry VIII’s ambassador to France, reports meeting with the king’s sister, whom he describes as “affectionate to your Highness [Henry VIII] as if she were your own sister, and likewise to the Queen [Anne Boleyn].”36 Norfolk further describes for Henry VIII Marguerite’s assessment of the relationship between the king and queen, relating that in Marguerite’s opinion, “no man can be worse content with his wife than her brother is, so that these seven months he neither lay with her, nor yet meddled with her.” Norfolk asked why this was. Marguerite replied, “ ‘Because he does not fancy her’; nor when he doth lie with her, he cannot sleep; and when he lieth fro her, no man sleepeth better.” At which point Norfolk asked, “Madam, what should be the cause?” to which Marguerite replied, maliciously, one assumes, “She is very hot in bed, and desireth to be too much embraced.” Then Marguerite “fell upon a great laughter, saying, ‘I would [not] for all the good in Paris that the king of Navarre were [no be]tter pleased to be in my bed than my brother is to be [in hers].’ ” Certainly Marguerite’s account must be taken with a grain of salt, but ambassadors confirm that the king visibly preferred Anne de Pisseleu, who became the Duchesse of Étampes in 1534. Although Anne remained in the queen’s household, they report the king’s visits to his mistress, his leaving Eleanor behind while hunting with Anne and the “little entourage,” and his advice-taking from Anne on political matters.37 As I discussed in the previous chapter, the Duke of Norfolk also notes that Eleanor’s servants had formed two “bands,” one taking the king’s and one the queen’s side, keeping to different sides of the chamber. The dauphin François and his mistress were on the queen’s side, which angered the king, “who

35 36 37

“[Eleanor] should also earn the love of the king’s sister [Marguerite], who has great credit with her brother and mother; and [Eleanor] should use [Marguerite] as her mediator with them.” Marguerite d’Autriche, Correspondance de Marguerite d’Autriche, 130. L&P, 6: 306–313, no. 692, for this quotation and the following paragraph. This continued throughout the entire reign. See, for example, Alberto Turo, who writes that the king was supposed to be returning to Paris but stayed with Anne de Pissleu, Madame d’Étampes, who was accompanied by four or five of her favorite ladies, or Giulio Alvarotto, who reports that king went hunting in La Muette with the little entourage (“piccolo trayno”) while the queen stayed behind with the rest of the court. In Nawrocki, “Le conseiller favori, objet de la décision royale,” 49, citing a letter of 17 January 1546, in busta 22, of the Archivio di Stato di Modena, Cancellería, Sezione Estero, Carteggio Ambasciatori, Francia. Madame d’Étampes does not figure among the ladies in the hotel of the queen listed in manuscript nouvelles aqcuisitions 9175, fols. 372r-373, of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 177 reminded the dauphin that the queen ‘did not behave as she ought to his father’ and exclaimed that he would keep him ‘out of her company.’ ”38 Still, Eleanor continued to do her job, requesting a first a rendez-vous with her sister Marie of Hungary in 1532. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had visited François I in Calais in October of that year. Having reached an impasse with the pope regarding the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who was the aunt of the emperor and Eleanor, the king solicited the support of the French king, which worried the emperor who was trying to keep England and France from allying against him. Eleanor insists that she wants only to see her beloved sister again; she has no interest in talking politics, no treaty will be signed, Marie writes to Charles V, and Eleanor wants her invitation to remain a secret if the meeting does not happen. But, if it does, the king of France might accompany the queen a few days later.39 Both Marie and the emperor are sus­ picious: she notes that the French are “clever, cunning, even malicious;”40 the emperor believes that the king is behind the proposed visit, noting that the French often say such things when they want to profit from a situation.41 He therefore asks Marie to find a plausible excuse – the recent flooding in the Netherlands– for refusing the meeting.42 Eleanor sought a meeting with her sister again in 1535 when the emperor and king were about to go to war; this time she prevailed. François I was obsessed, from the time of his accession to the throne until his death, with the desire to recover the duchy of Milan, which he claimed as his birth right, via his great-grandmother, Valentina Visconti. After taking the duchy early in his reign, he had lost it to the emperor in 1525 with the defeat at Pavia. When Duke of Milan Francesco II Sforza died suddenly in October 1535, the king demanded a marriage between one of his sons and an imperial daughter or niece, who would bring the duchy as dowry. Charles V appears at several points to have been ready to cede, but, each time, he postponed. The meeting between the sisters, however, which took place in Cambrai, 16 August 1535, settled nothing.43 War seemed inevitable when Charles V, hav­ ing captured Tunis in 1535, began to work his way up the Italian peninsula in early spring 1536,44 exposing Montmorency’s diplomatic approach as hopelessly 38 L&P, 6: 306–313, 692. 39 Lanz, Correpondenz, 2: 28–29. 40 Lanz, Correpondenz, 2: 29. 41 Lanz, Correpondenz, 2: 41. 42 Lanz, Correspondenz, 2: 42. 43 CSPS, 5.1: 223–35, no. 197; 535–44, no. 202. 44 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 329–30.

178 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

naïve. Eleanor’s in-between position became excruciating. Louise of Chatillon was removed from the queen’s entourage, an aggression carried out at the behest of Marguerite of Navarre, or so a letter of Charles V to his advisor Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle claims.45 Charles V’s ambassador to France Jean Hannaërt writes on 29 March 1536 to Charles V’s wife, Empress Isabella, that courtiers were watching the emperor’s moves with interest, asserting that “the Turk will soon give the Emperor so much to do in various parts of the Mediterranean sea that he will be unable to defend himself if attacked simultaneously at so many points.” Eleanor, he reports, “is in very good health, though sad and dejected at the signs of the approaching war.”46 François I, publicly disavowing Montmorency’s—and Eleanor’s— philosophy of peace with the emperor, invaded Savoy; in response, the imperial army took Piedmont and then invaded Provence in July 1536.47 The French army attempted to take Milan but failed, and war broke out in earnest, with Charles V simultaneously invading Provence and northern France. When the dauphin François, whom Norfolk had described as “on the queen’s side,” died suddenly in August, rumors circulated that the young man had been poisoned at the order of emperor and that had the poisoner not been quickly arrested he would have done the king in as well.48 And yet, this war eventually offered Eleanor an opportunity to carry out the work for which she had been married to the Valois king in the first place. She appears with the king, who had accompanied Montmorency north to oversee military action in April 1537.49 In a long letter to his ambassador of 15 September 1537 on how to deal with the Pope, the emperor leaves no doubt that he sees his sister as central to peace making initiatives. François I, he writes, had noted in general terms, without specifying anything, that he was a Christian prince and wished to obviate the sufferings of Christendom; that it would not be his fault if peace was not concluded, and that he could certify that. The Queen, our sister [Eleanor], and the Grand Master of France [Anne de Montmorency], 45 Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître, 251, citing Granvelle, Papiers d’État, 2: 419. The Maréschale de Chatillon was replaced by Françoise de Longwy dame de Givry, wife of the Admiral Chabot de Brion, close ally of the Duchess of Étampes. 46 CSPS, 5.2: 66–79, no. 42. 47 The factional rivalry is attested by such writings as Jean Du Bellay’s warning to Montmorency’s secre­ tary in March 1530 that Brion was doing everything possible to discredit Montmorency. Letter cited in Knecht, “Philippe de Chabot de Brion,” 469. For the details of Montmorency’s temporary loss of favor to Brion see Decrue, Anne de Montmorency, grand maître, 244–52. 48 L&P, 11: 443. 49 See L&P, 12.1: 1005 and 1016.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 179 both of whom were present, expressed the same wish in warmer and more explicit terms, saying that the King was more inclined than ever to peace, and that they both would strenuously work for it, or at least for a good long truce, during the preliminaries of which peace might be settled.

The queen and Montmorency, he continues, had explained that if he, the emperor, sent his mandate to Marie, Eleanor “could easily obtain from her husband [François I] the necessary powers and instructions to treat.” Eleanor was about to “send a person” to the emperor to discuss “meeting the King at some place on the frontier.”50 The end result was the Truce of Nice in July 1538 between France and the Empire, followed by a personal meeting between the king and emperor. The long account of events composed by Cardinal Siguenza offers Eleanor a visible role.51 The king of France arrived at Villeneuve “with great pomp and splendor and with a large suite of courtiers, for he has with him his Queen [Eleanor], and an infinite number of ladies,” including the ever-present Duchess of Étampes, an array of other family members and advisers, and “8,000 Swiss to guard his person.” During a reception in Nice, the Emperor’s envoys asked permission from the king to “go and kiss the hand of queen Eleanor.” They were led to the rooms of the queen, “who was anxiously expecting them; all kissed her hands, and she embraced them with tears in her eyes.” The queen’s presence is next recorded when on 7 June she appears accompanied by Montmorency, bringing “in her suite many ladies and gentlemen beautifully dressed and arrayed.” On 10 June the queen visited her brother, “who, knowing of her arrival beforehand, had ordered the open ground before the palace where he is now living to be carefully swept, awnings of linen-cloth to be prepared as a guard against the rays of the sun.” A bridge was erected to receive the queen’s boat and imperial galleys sent out to welcome her. When the queen arrived, “the emperor advanced a few steps, stretched his hand to his sister, and, reaching the pier, embraced and kissed her most affectionately, his countenance beaming with joy. In this way brother and sister remained for some time….” Suddenly the pier collapsed, and everyone, including the emperor and the queen, were plunged into the shallow water, causing much merriment after the initial shock.

50 51

CSPS, 5.2: 375–79, no. 163. For the following see CSPS, 5.2: 479–95, no. 206.

180 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The following year, François I allowed Charles V to cross through France on his way to Ghent to suppress warring cities in Flanders.52 But he waited in vain for Charles V to cede Milan, and, in April 1540, the emperor changed course, offering, along the dauphin his niece and the Low Countries, Burgundy, and the Charolais rather than the duchy that the king so coveted. In October, Charles V invested his own son Philip with Milan. No record of Eleanor’s chagrin remains; still, it was clear that Montmorency’s policy was a failure and that the queen’s situation would worsen as the outraged François I turned against Montmorency.53 Eleanor’s victory, then, was short-lived. Her position was furthered damaged by the increased influence of the Duchess of Étampes, who by 1540 appears regularly in ambassador reports as a much-sought after, fully engaged political figure. Montmorency and the queen’s faith in the emperor afforded Anne an opportunity to convince the king that she was better equipped to promote his interests. Eleanor, always discreet, left only one straightforward trace of her sentiments toward the duchess. During the 1538 meeting between her husband and brother in Nice, gossip circulated that although the king “declared himself the ‘cavalier servente’ ” of the duchess, Eleanor not only felt no jealousy but even welcomed her husband’s comportment, “thinking that it [was] only a fit of courtly gallantry on his part.” However, the queen seems to have revealed the truth behind her public acceptance to her brother, as the report continues. The queen confessed to the emperor that “she was upset and humiliated” by the illicit relationship. She even recruited the emperor to “pay his court to the said lady and signal in such a manner that all should see and notice it,” presumably to annoy the king. The emperor complied. No record of the king’s reaction remains.54 And yet, Eleanor experienced a final triumph, or so it seems, against the duchess and her ally, the king’s sister, Marguerite, when the king signed the Peace of Crépy with the emperor on 18 September 1544.55 In May 1543, Henry VIII, having agreed with Charles V to invade France within the year, sent François I an ultimatum threatening war and, on 22 June, war was declared.56 Despite an important French victory at the Battle of Ceresole on 11 April 1544, the king still failed to gain Milan, forced to send troops from Italy to Picardy, which

52

Letter from François I to Charles V inviting him to cross France, Granvelle, Papiers d’etat, 2: 540–42. On the lead up see Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 388. 53 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 395–97. 54 CSPS, 5.2: 479–95, no. 206. 55 Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 493–94. 56 Potter, Henri VIII and Francis I, 84, 147.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 181 the English and Charles V had just invaded.57 Charles V, struggling to manage religious turmoil in the Empire, eventually asked Henry VIII to continue the fight without him or to allow him to make a separate peace with France.Without waiting for the reply, the emperor sealed peace with the French with an agreement of marriage between the king’s younger son, Charles, and a niece of the emperor, reawakening the king’s hope of regaining Milan by diplomatic means. Most interesting, the treaty contained a secret appendix, presumably known only to François I and Charles V—and possibly Eleanor?—and unfavorable, one assumes, to the reform-minded duchess and Marguerite, in which the king promised to help the emperor support the church, specifically, the Council of Trent, make no separate peace with the English, and contribute to the war effort that Charles V was planning against the Protestant Schmaldkaldic League, which had formed in 1531 against him.58 With the king’s death in 1547, Eleanor rejoined her sister Marie in Brussels. As Ghislaine de Boom notes, the queen would never have the pleasure of an honorable retirement at the court of François I’s successor, his son Henri II.59 The new king, who as a child had been held hostage along with his older brother in Spain while his father decided whether or not to honor the Treaty of Madrid, wanted nothing to do with Eleanor. She had done her best to make the boy’s captivity as pleasant as possible, but even as a grown man he did not overcome his grudge. Once again, she was left to manage an impossible situation not of her own making. When Charles V abdicated in 1556, she and Marie joined him in Spain.

Eleanor the foreign queen In Scenes From the Marriage of Louis XIV, Abby E. Zanger analyses the ways in which two “simultaneously existing systems,” or states, come together in dynastic marriage but retain their tensions. Marriage joins two bodies or two nation-states, absorbing the difference, which it cannot erase. To do so would defeat the purpose of the symbolic event. Maintaining a trace of difference offers a reminder that there has been an exchange of kin, an 57 58 59

On the decision to continue the fight in Italy which led to the Battle of Ceresole, see the vivid discus­ sion of Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, 294–299. Although the sudden death of Prince Charles on 9 September 1545 undid the basis for the Treaty of Crépy. For the text of the secret appendix see Hasenclever, “Die Geheimartikel,” 420–422. See also Nawrocki, L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault. De Boom, Éléonore d’Autriche, 103–4.

182 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

interaction between two groups. Keeping that difference in sight also emphasizes the power of the group that triumphs in the exchange process. Marriage … is an activity that underlines its process of incorporation, although there is a price to pay for needing to incorporate foreign elements.60

Marriage, she goes on, produces “nuptial fictions,” which “continue the adjudication of tensions between two regimes….”61 Such fictions are an essential component of the king’s image and therefore of power and the monarchy more generally. François I and Eleanor’s nuptial fiction told a different story from the one that the authors of the Treaty of Madrid and Eleanor had anticipated. Far from the most Christian prince whose great wish was to “obviate the sufferings of Christendom,”62 as François I claimed to be, the role that he played in his mar­ riage fiction was that of a jealous and ambitious monarch who humiliated and marginalized his enemy’s sister to symbolically assert his mastery over his rival. As for Eleanor, the fiction made her into the first “foreign” queen. In an earlier time, she would not have been considered an outsider. French was her native language, and, after growing up in Brussels, she “became” Portuguese and then Spanish only as an adult, when she left Brussels to marry the King of Portugal, and, after his death, to join her brother in Spain. When she moved to France as queen of François I, she deliberately represented herself as Spanish, to demonstrate her pride in her Habsburg heritage.63 During the progresses that took much of her time during her first years in France, observers frequently note her Spanish style of dress, which, early on, seem to have signified to her audiences only that she represented harmony between France and the Empire.64 Her style

60 Zanger, Scenes From the Marriage, 8. 61 Zanger, Scenes From the Marriage, 9. 62 CSPS, 5.2: 375–79, no. 163. 63 Gschwend, “Ma meilleure soeur,” 3: 2577, citing Anderson, “Spanish Dress worn by a Queen of France.” 64 For her entry into Angoulême, see Castaigne, “Entrée de la Royne et de nosseigneurs les enffans de France, 129. The queen rode in a French-style litter, dressed in white satin speckled to reveal the gold cloth underneath, and her hair was done in the Spanish style. See also Moreau’s description of her entry into Bayonne, Moreau, “Histoire de la prinse et délivrance,” 437. The Cardinal de Tournon and Archbishop of Aire, mounted on beautifully decorated mules, rode along speaking with Eleanor, who was decked out in a way that was “unforgettable.” Her fine gown of black velvet was lined with crimson satin, the sleeves decorated with crimson satin with gold cloth bands holding ribbons of fine silk worked with gold and pearled enamels. Her headdress was Portuguese …. She was a credit to her House and a source of virtue and imperial illustriousness.” See also Journal d’un bourgeois sous François I, 416, 417: “The said queen … was dressed in the Spanish style.” Her hair was “done in the Spanish style,” as well.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 183 of dress seems to have aroused no consternation as long as peaceful relations were within the realm of possibility. Several recent studies affirm Eleanor’s role as patron and emphasize the size and quality of her entourage, suggesting that she established herself confidently in her role.65 Aline Roche’s work on Eleanor’s household emphasizes its “cosmopolitan air” and revises the image of a timid queen, suggesting that far from being effaced, the queen was a vibrant presence.66 However, in about 1537, paintings reveal a shift in her style of dress. In that year, the king sent Eleonore’s Spanish ladies-in-waiting home, leaving her with French attendants, and, from that point on, the queen is depicted in French clothing.67 What had happened? Eleanor’s difference, rendered visible through her fabulous Spanish entourage and her own dress, became an affront impossible to integrate into the marriage when war broke out between her husband and brother in 1536. As we have seen, the meeting between the king and emperor at AiguesMortes in the summer of 1538 raised the king’s hopes that the emperor would return Milan to France, Montmorency and Eleanor assuring François I that the emperor would come through. But François I waited in vain. In April 1540, the emperor abruptly changed course. In October, he invested his own son Philip with Milan. Eleanor was unable to complete the nuptial fiction that she had so unreasonably been tasked with enacting. The king turned to his competent, politically savvy, and, above all, French, therefore loyal, mistress. Anne remained his most intimate advisor throughout the remainder of his reign. Convinced of the emperor’s perfidy, she sought to convince the king that his interests would be better served by allying with England, which cast doubt on Eleanor’s allegiance and rendered her unable to surpass her status as the Other, a foreign representative of a despised rival. Although French queens had at times come from different lands, the concept of foreignness seems not to have been attached to them to marginalize them. And yet, the concept of foreign was available and ready to be put to use. Claude de Seyssel, for example, warns in 1515 against women ascending the throne, because French queens were at times foreign, which meant the throne might fall to a foreigner. He praises the Salic Law, 65 See Cox-Rearick, “Power-Dressing at the Courts of Cosimo de’ Medici and François I”; see also Geschwend, “Antoine Trouvéon, 11–20. 66 Aline Roche, “ ‘Une perle de pris.’ ” 67 Geschwend, “Antoine Trouvéon,” 12; Cox-Rearick, “Power-Dressing,” 49. As for the alleged ejection of the Spanish ladies, it can be traced to a note in Roblot-Delondre, Portraits d’ infantes, 22, n. 3. Unfortunately, she gives no source.

184 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

for by falling into the feminine line [the throne] can come into the power of a foreigner, a pernicious and dangerous thing, since a ruler from a foreign nation (“homme d’estrange nation”) is of a different rearing (“nourriture”) and condition, of different customs (“meurs”), different language, and a different way of life from the men of the lands he comes to rule. He ordinarily, therefore wishes to advance those of his nation, to grant them the most important authority in the handling of affairs, and to prefer them to honors and profits. Moreover, he always has more love for and faith in them and so conforms more to their customs and ways than to the customs of the land to which he has newly come, whence there always follows envy and dissension between the natives and the foreigners and indignation against the princes, as has often been seen by experience, and is seen all the time.68

Eleanor, brother of the French king’s enemy, was never fully accepted into court life by her husband. But it would be Eleanor’s successor, Catherine de Médicis, who would be cast still more forcefully as a foreign queen. In 1561, the expression was not yet used with real hatred, although it was certainly not flattering. Michel Suriano reports: As for the queen, suffice it to say that she is a woman, a foreigner, and, on top of that, Florentine, born of a private house and not corresponding at all in grandeur to the French kingdom. Because of this, she lacks in the authority that she might have possessed had she been born French or to a more illustrious house. Still, one cannot deny that she is a woman of great merit and intelligence; and if she had more experience in matters of state and if she were a bit more forceful one could expect great things from her.69

As the Religious Wars blazed on, Catherine’s status as foreigner was evoked with increasing viciousness. The vituperative Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et desportemens de Catherine de Médicis of 1575 begins by mentioning the queen’s Florentine birth, because “natural qualities are hidden in the homeland.”70 Italians are gifted in “finesse” and “subtilité,” the pamphleteer claims, which become deceit when incarnated in a bad person.71 Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michieli observes, also in 1575, that the queen “is accused of all the

68 Seyssel, The French Monarchy, 48–49; La grand’monarchie de France, 8. 69 Suriano, “Commentaires sur le royaume de France,” 2: 549–51. 70 Discours merveilleux, 4. 71 Discours merveilleux, 5.

Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen | 185 evils desolating the kingdom. Foreigner and Italian, she is little loved; at the moment she is detested.”72 The foreignness of Eleanor and then Catherine, would have aroused little interest in earlier centuries, judging by the ways in which their Capetian predecessors were treated. But both of these women were clearly perceived as foreign queens, the first little loved, although not detested, the second becoming an object of genuine hatred as the Religious Wars continued. French queenship, incarnated in these women, comes to represent the imperfect and temporary transformation of a powerful enemy into an ally; queens are therefore irremediably Other, mother of the royal children, emblem of peace, but potentially traitorous and therefore carefully contained. Eleanor, a perfectly typical French queen, became the first foreigner to occupy the office, cast in the role through no fault of her own.

72

Michel, “Relation de Jean Michel,” 2: 243.

11

“Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres”: Anne Boleyn’s Marriage Strategy?

I conclude this series of reflections by revisiting a persistent narrative about Anne Boleyn. Why a chapter about an English woman in a study of women of ­late-medieval and early-modern France? One reason is that even though Anne was born in England her “Frenchness” was, and remains, legendary. According to a frequently quoted observation by Lancelot de Carle, secretary at the time of Anne’s trial and execution to French ambassador to England, Bishop of Tarbes Antoine de Castelnau, people knew that Anne was English, and yet she seemed to them to be “in her manners” a “natural-born Frenchwoman.”1 Generations of historians have assumed that she owed her grace and wit to the training that she received at the French royal court, where she passed her formative years. But the more compelling reason is that this essay’s argument depends on the sixteenth-century definition of a French word, one that I discussed in ­chapter 7 on Agnès Sorel: “maîtresse,” “maistresse” in sixteenth-century French, or, as Henry VIII renders it, “mestres.” Between 1527 and 1528, the king penned seventeen love letters to Anne, nine in his fluent but imperfect French, eight in English. He addresses her in several as his “mestres” and, in one, famously promises to make her his only mistress, his “seulle mestres.” This letter has been woven into 1 Carle, The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn, line 53, 157. English translations JoAnn DellaNeva.

188 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

a legend that Anne refused to become Henry VIII’s mistress, resisting her ardent suitor’s advances and holding out for nothing less than marriage. By strategically refusing to become the king’s mistress, Anne Boleyn became the queen, so the legend goes. In what follows I re-examine this legend, showing how central it has become in popular representations of the queen. I then turn to Henry VIII’s use of the term “mistress” in the love letters, in particular in the “seulle mestres” letter, which has been used as evidence to support the image of a strategically coquettish Anne, to consider what “mistress” actually meant to courtiers of early sixteenth century England and France and what this means for the popular image of the queen.

“Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres” In May 1528 the sweating sickness struck England. The illness, which had first appeared in 1485, followed by flare-ups in 1506, 1511, and 1517, was much dreaded.2 Fleeing the epidemic with his family, the king left Greenwich for Waltham just after 11 June.3 As for Anne, in a letter of 18 June, French ambas­ sador to England Jean Du Bellay writes that she had fallen ill with the sweat and been sent home to Hever.4 Shortly before 20 August she was back at court.5 Henry VIII soon sent her home again, anticipating the arrival of papal legate Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, dispatched by the Pope to settle the question of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In a letter of 8 September, imperial ambassador Íñigo López Mendoza notes, “The King fearing that Cardinal Campeggio might think that he was only seeking this divorce to enable him to marry Anne Boleyn, has sent her home, so that the Cardinal may not find her at Court on his arrival.”6 During these two separations, the king penned a series of 2 3 4 5 6

Holmes, “Anne Boleyn, the sweating sickness, and the hantavirus.” L&P 4, 1911–1929, no. 4356. See Du Bellay’s letter in L&P 4: 1911–29, no. 4391. “On Tuesday one of the ladies of the chamber, Mademoiselle de Boulan, was infected with the sweat. The King, in great haste, dislodged, and went 12 miles hence, and I hear the lady was sent to her brother the Viscount in Kent.” French ambassador to England Jean Du Bellay writes that she had returned in a letter of 20 August 1528. L&P 4: 2008–2023, no. 4649. CSPS 3:2, 779–792, no. 541 and 550. Anne was back at court in December. See French ambassa­ dor Jean Du Bellay’s comment of 9 December 1528, L&P 4, 2170–2181, no. 5016. “Mademoiselle de Boulan is at last come thither, and the King has lodged her in a very fine lodging, which he has prepared for her close by his own. Greater court is now paid to her every day than has been to the Queen for a long time. I see they mean to accustom the people by degrees to endure her, so that when the great blow

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 189 love letters to Anne. Unfortunately, none of Anne’s responses exists, leaving us to reconstruct the dialogues from the king’s words alone. The letters reside today in a single codex in the Vatican Library, manuscript Vat.lat.3731.pt.A., where they occupy, in succession, folios 1r-16r. The digitized manuscript can be viewed on-line.7 Although no one knows how the letters ended up in Rome, the most recent theory speculates that they landed there in the first years of the seventeenth century, in contrast with the older hypothesis that they were stolen from Anne, possibly by papal legate Lorenzo Campeggio,8 to bol­ ster Catherine of Aragon’s case against Henry VIII’s request for an annulment.9 Because the letters are not dated, their original order can only be guessed from internal clues, and no order has won consensus among their many editors. For convenience, in the following discussion I adopt the Vatican codex ordering. Neither the rarity of such letters nor their significance for the insight they offer into the relationship between Henry VIII and Anne can be overstated. Indeed, they are responsible for one of the most tenacious narratives about the relationship. In several of the French letters, the king addresses Anne as his “mistress” (“mestres”) (letters 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 12), and, in letter 4, he famously promises to make her his only mistress, his “seulle mestres,” provided that her love for him is a singular one, “ung singularis.” Historians have taken the letter to be a plea for Anne to become his long-term extra-conjugal sexual partner, that is, his mistress in the modern sense of the word. The letter, coupled with the fact that the king eventually proposed marriage, has led historians to extrapolate that Anne strategically rejected the proposition in hopes of inveigling a marriage proposal. “What was Henry asking and offering?” wonders Anne’s great biographer Eric Ives with reference to the “seulle mestres” letter. Whatever the king had in mind, Ives continues, it was clearly more than a conventional love pose but certainly not marriage. He appears to be offering a recognized permanent liaison, perhaps like the French

7

8 9

comes it may not be thought strange. However, the people remain quite hardened, and I think they would do more if they had more power; but great order is continually taken.” The letters are viewable at https://digi.vat​lib.it/view/MSS_​Vat.lat.3731.pt.A. The transcriptions and translations are my own. They have been edited by Thomas Hearne (1714); William Gunn (1822); Georges Crapelet (1826); J. O. Halliwell Philipps (1906); Henry Savage (1949); Jasper Ridley (1988). Susi Bellinello offers an impeccable diplomatic transcription of the letters in her 2016 Masters thesis. For the newest hypothesis see Lake et al, “A real papist plot.” For the Campeggio hypothesis see Henry VIII, “The Love-Letters of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn,” 328. See Starkey, Six Wives, 278. Ives hypothesizes that they were taken to the Vatican during the reign of Mary I, Life and Death, 375, n. 49.

190 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

maîtresse en tître. Francis I, after all, had had Françoise de Foix and was even at that moment (though Henry probably had yet to hear of it) fixing his interest with the woman who was to be his companion for the rest of his life, Anne d’Heilly, later duchesse d’Étampes. Why should Henry not have his Anne Boleyn?10

Ives’s interpretation is widespread. Carrolly Erickson writes of the letter that in it “there was no hint of marriage; rather the king seemed to be trying to persuade Anne to become his official mistress.”11 George Bernard too believes that Henry VIII was intent on making Anne his mistress. “It is vital to note,” he writes, “that what was in question was the title of royal mistress: there was no question here of Henry offering to marry Anne and make her his queen.”12 Before addressing these historians’ reading of the situation in greater detail, I note that no French concept of an “official” royal mistress upon which Henry VIII could have drawn existed at the time that he penned his love letters. Extraconjugal relationships were common, of course: Henry VIII verifiably had mistresses, or, at least one, evidenced by his recognition of Henry Fitzroy as his son; although François I had no recorded (or at least verified) illegitimate offspring, contemporaries discuss his mistresses.13 However, the politically powerful royal favorite, a woman who served as the king’s political advisor and acted as a ­go-between for the king and foreign diplomats—the role that modern historians call the “official royal mistress” even though the role was in no way “official”— did not exist in France until the Duchess of Étampes began to be courted by ambassadors at the end of the 1530s. No trace of ambassadors seeking to do business with François I via Françoise de Foix exists; nothing suggests that she was any more politically influential than Henry VIII’s mistresses. If Françoise de Foix can pass for an “official” mistress so can Elizabeth Blount or Mary Boleyn. In 1527, in other words, the king of England certainly could not have been thinking of Françoise de Foix as a model for an “official” mistress, because she was no different from his own mistresses. Still, whatever sort of mistress Henry VIII had in mind, to historians applying the modern meaning of the term, the king’s position seems reasonably clear. But because we have no responses from Anne, her position is less so. Certainly she was attracted to the king, writes Ives. But despite this, she refused to sleep with 10 Ives, The Life and Death, 85. 11 Erickson, Mistress Anne, 107. 12 Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, 25. 13 See, for example, Beatis, Travel Journal, 107.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 191 him and stayed away from court. Why? Ives concludes that she was holding out for a ring on her finger and that she won. Realizing that he could not live without Anne and that to get her he would have to marry her, the king finally proposed marriage. Although no letter indicates this directly, Ives deduces it from letter 5 in which Henry VIII thanks Anne for sending him a gift, an étrenne, symbolizing, as the king writes, her “too humble submission.” Anne’s hesitation, to which the king alludes in letter 4, has disappeared, the idea of marriage transforming her “hitherto distinctly muted response to Henry’s ardour.”14 This idea of Anne’s position, too, is widespread.15 According to Henry VIII’s biographer J. J. Scarisbrick, Anne refused to follow the conventional path of her sister, Mary Boleyn, “either because of virtue or ambition.” The result was that “the more she resisted, the more, apparently, did Henry prize her,” and eventually her persistence was rewarded.16 Antonia Fraser asserts that “Anne Boleyn, capri­ cious fascinating ‘Brunet’ ” was not “willing to be another Duchesse d’Étampes.”17 Or as David Starkey puts it, she gave Henry “only half of what he wanted: her heart and her love. But as for her body, he would have to wait.”18 Alison Weir also sees the refusal as strategic: Anne’s brother and sister were notorious for their sexual exploits, and even her mother’s reputation was suspect. Given such a background, it is hard to believe that she remained virtuous, and almost certain therefore that her calculated refusal to succumb to the king’s advances stemmed from self-interest and ambition rather than her much vaunted moral principles.19

For months, Anne played “hard to get,” a ruse that led the king to “beg her to come back.”20 When he pursued her too ardently, “she would tactically withdraw home to Hever….” At some point along the way it became clear to Anne that, “if she played her cards right, she could win not just her King but also the consort’s crown.”

14 Ives, The Life and Death, 86. 15 The narrative of Anne shrewdly denying the king what he most desired to force him into marriage occasionally has been questioned, George Bernard, for example, cautioning against the assumption because “it would have been a very risky strategy for Anne.” Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, 27. 16 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 149. 17 Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII, 131. 18 Starkey, Six Wives, 279. 19 Weir, Henry VII, 267. 20 Weir, Henry VII, 275.

192 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

To serve as evidence for Anne as coquette, “seulle mestres” letter must be interpreted as an illicit proposition; reexamination of it therefore begins with the meaning of the word “mistress” in sixteenth-century English and French. It should be noted that the modern interpretation has not always seemed ­self-evident. In fact, the two earliest compilers of the letters in England, Thomas Hearne (1678–1735) and William Gunn (1750–1841), insist that the letters prove the king’s honorable intentions.21 For Hearne and Gunn the meaning of mistress would have been equivocal: it might, but did not necessarily, mean a long-term extra-conjugal partner. They reasonably assume that with the expression Henry VIII means something like the modern “fiancée.” As for Henry VIII, writing two hundred years before Hearne, whether he was thinking in French or in English, the word “mistress” certainly did not mean a woman with whom one had an enduring extramarital relationship. During his lifetime, the English word “mistress” or the French word “maistresse” meant a woman whom one loved and, in many cases, intended to marry. Only around the beginning of the seventeenth century did the word, either in English or French, come to include among its possible definitions a woman with whom one carried on an adulterous affair, and, even then, this was not the primary definition. Kurath, Kuhn, Reidy and Lewis’s Middle English Dictionary offers the following for mistress: a woman in charge of household; sovereign lady or queen; a supernatural being; a beloved woman; women who is a leader or an example; a schoolmistress; a woman expert in some skill; a polite mode of address to a woman.22 The Oxford English Dictionary offers a similar suite of definitions and shows that these usages continued into the seventeenth century. The word was first and foremost the female equivalent of “master,” but it meant other things as well. The OED gives an example from Stephen Hawes’s The Pastime of Pleasure published in 1509, relatively close in time to the love letters, that ties the term to marriage by citing the words Grande Amour, who later marries Belle Pucelle. He tells her: “You are my lady, you are my masteres, Whome I shall serve with all my gentylnes.”23 The term, then, suggested a woman whom one intended to wed.

21

22 23

Hearne writes: “It will not be doubted by any that read these Letters, that the King’s Affection to Anne Boleyn was altogether upon honourable Terms. There appears no Pretension to any favours, but when the Legates shall have paved the Way.” Henry VIII, Love-Letters from King Henry Viii. to Anne Boleyn, XVIII; according to Gunn: “That Henry at first sought Anna Boleyn with dishonorable intentions, is a slander clearly disproved by the tenour of this correspondence.” “The Love-Letters of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn,” 327. Kurath et al, Middle English Dictionary, 6: 45–46. Oxford English Dictionary, OED Online.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 193 A shift is perceptible beginning in the seventeenth century. The fifth definition offered by the OED is “a woman loved and courted by a man; a female sweetheart. Obsolete.” Why did the meaning become obsolete? “By the late 19th cent. (my emphasis) this usage was generally avoided as liable to be mistaken for sense A. 7.” Turning to A. 7., we finally find the definition common today: “a woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting sexual relationship.”24 As for when the word “mistress” began to mean this, although it is not the primary meaning, the OED gives the example of John Donne referring in 1631 to those “those women, whom the Kings were to take for their Wives, and not for Mistresses, (which is but a later name for Concubines).” The word “mistress” in early sixteenth-century England, then, meant a woman with whom one was in love, often a woman one would marry, and it held no implication of an affair outside of marriage, although presumably it did not exclude a sexual relationship. Still, it is important to remember that Henry VIII does not use the term when writing in English; in his native language he addresses Anne as “darling” or “sweetheart.” The term appears only in the French letters. What did it signify in sixteenth-century French? Huguet’s Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle shows the same set of definitions as the English dictionaries. A maistresse is a “woman who is loved and courted.” Some of the usage examples cited in the dictionary are drawn from Étienne Pasquier, who writes that “Women are always considered to have the upper hand over the one who is courting them.” The term is also applied to a woman one intends to marry, Henri Estienne offering, “Today a mistress is she to whom one speaks of love for marriage, either in fact or appearance.”25 In its first edition of 1694, the dictionary of the Académie française is still defining “maistresse” as women and girls sought after in marriage, or, simply loved by someone. There is no word about mistress in the modern meaning.26 The mid-seventeenth-century dictionary of Antoine Furetière defines the word (after mistress of the house, mistress of the inn, of the cabaret, of the Three Kings, the Golden Cross, etc.) as “a clever woman, who knows how to govern her family, the business of the house. One says it especially of a young woman whom one seeks to marry.”27 Finally, “one says it about a person of dubious morals and generally, of a person with whom one makes love.” Like its English counterpart, by the

24 Oxford English Dictionary, OED Online. 25 Huguet, Dictionnaire. 5: 90. 26 Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 2: 13. 27 Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, no pagination.

194 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

seventeenth century, “maistresse” can mean an extra-marital partner, but this is not the primary meaning. Moving from dictionaries into other writings of the period, Brantôme, writing in the early seventeenth century, provides an instructive example, noting of a character in a romance of the late fifteenth century, that “she declared to [Jehan de Saintré] that she wanted to be his lady and lover; because in those times the word mistress was not used.”28 And King Henri IV of France provides a partic­ ularly apt example. In letters to Marie de Médicis, Princess of Tuscany, written in the months before their marriage, the king addresses his wife-to-be as “ma maistresse.” They cannot possibly have slept together at this point, because they had not yet met in person. He will call her “maistresse,” he writes, until he finally marries her in Marseilles, where “you will exchange [the title of maistresse] for a more honorable [title].”29 Mistress, then, is the woman to whom Henri IV is engaged to be married; once married, she will no longer be his mistress. Once again, the term means what we would consider fiancée. A study of the word in courtly literature turns up more of the same. Late ­fifteenth-century romance hero Charles of Hungary addresses the woman he loves and will eventually marry as “ma damme, m’amye et ma maistresse.”30 Proposing marriage, he says to her, “Madame, I would like that you, who are my lady and “maistresse,” be my wife, my “amie,” and that I remain your husband, servant, and friend.”31 In the popular late-fifteenth-century romance, Cleriaduc kneels before Meliadice, the woman whose hand he will finally win, calling her “my lady,” “ma seule maistresse.”32 It should also be noted that “ma seule mais­ tresse” is a fixed phrase in courtly literature. Undoubtedly the expression can be translated as “my only mistress,” but, because it was so widely used, the idea of “only” may have lost some of its force. When Henry VIII used it, Anne may not have felt that the king was proposing something truly exceptional, any more than a modern reader would find “my one and only love” substantially different from “my true love” or any number of popular terms of endearment.

28 Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, 9: 705. 29 Henri IV, Lettres intimes, 335. 30 Le Roman de messire Charles de Hongrie, 95; see also 79, where Charles disguised as le Chevalier bleu addresses her as “ma dame et ma seule maistresse.” 31 Le Roman de messire Charles de Hongrie, 164. 32 Cleriadus et Meliadice, 32.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 195

Revisiting the “seulle mestres” letter Applying the modern meaning of mistress to sixteenth-century usage has forced historians to posit that the “seulle mestres” letter must have been written in early to mid-1527. The reason is that by August 1527 the king had revealed his intent to marry Anne: in that month he formulated a request for a dispensation, conditional on the successful annulment of his marriage to Catherine, “to marry another, even if she have contracted marriage with another man, provided it be not consummated, and even if she be of the second degree of consanguinity, or of the first degree of affinity.”33 Although she is not mentioned by name, the dispensation is generally agreed to refer to Anne, who had entered into an unconsummated “understanding” with Henry Percy in 1523, and who was calculated as among the second degree of consanguinity or first degree of affinity to Henry VIII because of his prior sexual relationship with her sister, Mary. By 16 August 1527 a rumor that Henry VIII had decided to marry Anne was circulating, as a letter from imperial ambassador Íñigo López Mendoza to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V verifies.34 Clearly the king would not have asked Anne to be his mis­ tress when he had already asked her to be his wife. Therefore, the argument goes, the letter must have been written earlier than August 1527. This dating, for which no other evidence exists, feeds the narrative of the coquettish Anne by allowing historians to conclude that she retreated strategically to Hever to inflame the king’s longing and lust for her. And yet, no trace of a stay at Hever for Anne exists for 1527, whereas in 1528, as we have seen, she verifiably spent time there on two separate occasions. These sojourns moved the king to write, but they were not contrived by Anne. As we have seen, in the first case, she fled the sweating sickness, in the second, the king sent her away. If we adjust the meaning of “mistress,” there is no need to hypothesize a 1527 stay at Hever, a coquettish Anne, or a lusting king manipulated into marriage. Still, how exactly did Henry VIII come to propose marriage to Anne if she did not force him into it with her refusal to become his lover? To reassess the question, it will be useful to return to the “seulle mestres” letter.

33 34

See the letter of William Knight to Henry VIII, SP 7: 3, relative to the draft. For the entire document see Pocock, Records of the Reformation, 1: 22–27. “It is generally believed that if the King can obtain a divorce he will end by marrying a daughter of Master Bolo, who was once ambassador at the Imperial Court, and who is now called Millor de Rochafort.” CSPS, 3:2, 323–38, no. 152.

196 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

The scenario to which Henry VIII appears to respond in the letter is a serious bout of nerves related to the projected marriage on Anne’s part. To make the case, it will be useful to examine the letter in full: As I debate with myself the content of your letters, I am in great agony, not knowing how to understand them, whether to my disadvantage, as in some places you lay them out, or to my advantage, as in some others I understand them, begging you with all my heart to please make clear to me your sincere intention regarding the love between us two, for necessity forces me to seek your response, having been more than a year [ago] struck by the dart of love, not being sure of failing or finding a place in your heart and certain affection, this last issue recently [“depuis peutemps”] has kept me from calling you my mistress, [because] if you do not love me with another sort of love than common love [“amour commune”], this name is not at all appropriate, because it denotes a singularity [“ung singularis”], which is very distant from the common,35 but if it pleases you to assume the role of a true loyal mistress and friend and give yourself body and heart to me, who wants to be and has been your very loyal servant; if you don’t forbid me this by your rigor, not only will the name be your due, but I will take you for my only mistress [“seulle mestres”] and cast aside all others beside you, except you, from my thoughts and affections and serve you alone, begging you to give me a sincere response to this my unrefined letter as to what and on what I can rely, and, if it does not please you to give a written response, assign me a place where I can have it by word of mouth, and I will be there with all good will, no longer in fear of annoying you, written by the hand of he who would willingly remain your H Rex.

The letter shows that the couple had already entered into some kind of agreement because he had been calling Anne his mistress. Only recently (“depuis peutemps”) had her letters made him question whether the term was appropriate. Were the king in fact proposing a long-term sexual affair, he would not have been wondering whether to call Anne by that name, because according to that definition she 35

The pairing of “commun(e)” love and “sinuglaris” love is quite common in love literature, but the meaning of the distinction depends on the context. Andreas Capellanus, for example distinguishes “amor communis,” mutual love, from “amor singularis,” unrequited love, The Art of Courtly Love, 28; in contrast, the Knight of the Tour Landry seems to mean a sort of “polite sympathy shown to anyone” with “amour commune.” See Gendt, “ ‘Plusieurs manières d’amours,’ ” 123. The two types of love also appear frequently in religious writings. In Richard of St. Victor’s Tractatus de quatuor qradibus violentae charitatis, amor singularis is the third stage of love where one loves God with all one’s soul, Patralogia Latinae 196, 1215–1216. In classical Latin the word “singularis” is an intensifier. It seems clear that Henry VIII uses the pair commun(e)-singularis to distinguish ordinary love from truly overwhelming, exceptional love.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 197 unambiguously was not his mistress. However, if we substitute the word “fiancée” for “mistress,” after the manner of Henri IV and Marie de Médicis, the scenario makes sense. The matter of marriage had been settled between them, and, for this reason, the king felt the term “mistress” appropriate. But recently Anne has been conflicted, and the baffled and upset king begs her to tell him honestly “on what I can rely.” In other words, is she still willing to marry him? Looking specifically at the “seulle mestres” expression, it is important to consider it in the context of the imagery within which it is embedded. If Anne assures him of her love, the king writes, giving herself body and heart to him, he will make her his only mistress and cast all others from his thoughts and affection, serving her alone. Although the Book of Common Prayer and its wedding rite would not be published until 1549, those vows derived ultimately from the Sarum rite of mediaeval England, which requires the couple to forsake other men and women. Marriage demands fidelity, a turning away from all others. This is what Henry VIII promises. The vows also contain the affirmation “with my body I thee worship.” The vow first “distinguishes lawful marital intercourse from ‘unlawful copulation’ which ‘doth pollute and dishonour both parties,’ and, second, it positively describes the authority over each other’s bodies that husband and wife have, according to 1 Corinthians 7:4.”36 The body was integral to marriage; the vows had to be sealed by sexual intercourse to be valid. If sexual relations were not present a marriage could be annulled. But if the king and Anne had already agreed on marriage, why was Anne hesitating at this date? Her fears can easily be imagined. She could not have helped but be aware of the great risk wedding the king would pose for her: how would she ever be accepted as legitimate queen? Henry VIII responds to those fears throughout the correspondence. In letters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, and 17, he either questions her about whether her feelings have changed or reassures her that she need not worry so much. Letter 8 in particular offers insight into the source of her anxiety, the king soothing her fear of marrying so far above her station by addressing his habit of positioning himself as her servant. Again, I translate from the digitized version of the manuscript: Although it is not fitting for a gentleman to treat his lady as a servant, nonetheless, following your desires willingly, I will grant it to you if by this I should

36

Kinney, Swain, Hill, and Long, Tudor England, 474. See also letter 5, the étrenne letter: “assuring you that from now on my heart will be devoted to you alone and strongly desiring that my body could also be….”

198 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

find you less uncomfortable in the place chosen by you than you have been in the place given by me, thanking you very cordially that it pleases you still to remember me.37

By all rights, she is his servant, his subject, not the reverse, she seems to have claimed; and yet, a gentleman should wait on his lady, writes the king. Still, if she would rather be his servant, he will comply with her wishes. It appears that he succeeded in calming her worries, for in the final letter of the series, letter 17, he rejoices that she has come to her senses and left her worries behind, assuring her that if she remains reasonable they will soon achieve the greatest possible tranquility: To informe yow what Joy it is to me to understand off your co(m)formabylnes to reson and off the sulpressyng off your invtille and vayne thowghys and fantesys w(i)t(h) the brydell off reson I ensure yow All the god in thys worlde colde nott co(n)terpause for my satysfaction the knowlege and certente theroff wherfore good swetthart co(n)tynu the same nott wonly in thys but in all your doynge heraffter for therby shall co(m)me bothe to yow and me grettest quiettnes that may be in thys world.

Seth Lerer has described Henry VIII’s love letters as “preoccupied with naming and renaming: Henry as lover, servant, scribe, and secretary; Anne as beloved, mistress, and potential Queen.” Translating “tropes of love into expressions of royal power,” the letters “construct an epistolary identity for the King and a social identity for his beloved.”38 One of these identities was the “king as suitor” for a reluctant lady’s hand in marriage. Here Henry VIII was in uncharted territory, required to court his potential bride. In marriage negotiations in general, the king was not required to act on his own: that was state business, conducted by diplomats. Not only was the king forced to court for himself, he was courting a woman of much lower rank, whose House, if noble, was not in the same league as Catherine of Aragon’s Trastámaras. Paradoxically, Anne’s very lack of royal status gave her the power to refuse and forced Henry VIII into the role of desperate suitor. Without her complicity, such a marriage quite simply could not have taken place. Had Anne retired to Hever, the king would have been forced 37

Vat.lat.3731.pt.A, fol. 7r. “Nenmains que il nappertiente pas a ung gentylle homme pur prendre sa dame au lieu de servante toutefoyse ensuyvant vos desires volentiers le vous outroyroy si per cela vous puisse trovere mains ingrate en la place per vous choysye que aves este en la plase par moy donnee en vous merciant trescordiallement queil vous plete encors avoire quelque sovenace de moy.” 38 Lerer, Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII, 92.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 199 to retreat. Imagining for a moment the spectacle of his announcing to his people, the Pope, and Christendom that he required an annulment to cast aside Queen Catherine in favor of a woman who did not consent to the marriage reveals how preposterous the idea is. Because Anne had to come willingly to the marriage, he created identities for himself and her, he assuming “the mask of servitude” and “ventriloquizing the language of love” to woo his lady, and, most important, comfort her when she worried.39 Anne’s apprehension was well founded. Henry VIII’s annulment was not deplored in principle but, specifically, because he intended to marry Anne. Wolsey seems to have initially believed that he was seeking an annulment on behalf of the king so that the monarch could marry a royal bride, perhaps Renée of France.40 In a letter of November 1528 to Charles V’s ambassador Mendoza refers to the projected union with Anne as “so abominable that it may lead to the worst consequences.”41 Special envoy from the emperor to Rome Juan Antonio Muxetula writes that “scarcely one courtier can be found who does not despise [the king] for [his relationship with Anne], as well as for what he is doing, or trying to do, against his honour and conscience.”42 The Pope writes to Henry VIII in hopes of making him realize that a match with Anne was “unworthy of a religious prince.”43 Charles V himself promises that he will try “with the Pope and the Queen, to annul the [marriage] contracted with her Majesty” if Henry VIII agrees to make a suitable marriage instead of going through with his “love match.”44 The emperor even suggested a bride: his own sister. In a report of 29 January 1533 to Signory of Venice, ambassador Carlo Capello writes that “the Emperor would wish his Majesty to marry [the Emperor’s] sister, the [Queen Marie of Hungary].”45 39 Lerer, Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII, 94. 40 Although Renée was quickly eliminated from the running for perceived physical imperfections. See the discussion of Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, 62–64, regarding Wolsey’s letter recounting the cardinal’s meeting with the Hungarian ambassador who had been seeking Renée’s hand for his own king but dismissed the possibility after seeing her. Writes Wolsey to Henry VIII: “And thus, wading further with the said Ambassadour, he shewed unto me, that he had a special commission from his master to commen with the French King upon aliaunce and mariage with the Dame [Renée], having ample instructions to conclude the same. Howbeit, when he saw the personage of the said Madame [Renée] not mete to bring forth frute, as it apperith by the liniacion of her body, he forbeare, as he affermith, to open that matier unto the French king.” It should be mentioned that Renée married Duke Ercole II d’Este and bore him five children, two of them male, who lived to adulthood. 41 CSPS, 3.2, 839–858, no. 586. 42 CSPS, 4.2, 31–47, no. 608. 43 L&P, 5, 350–367, no. 750. 44 CSPV, 4, 384–391, no. 864. 45 CSPV, 4: 374–377, no. 847.

200 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

It was because marriage to Anne seemed so farfetched that Henry VIII’s persistence was ridiculed as a function of his excessive sexual desire. Numerous early kings, perhaps most memorably Philip I of France, were accused by popes of lust when it is clear that they wanted to bolster their dynasty with male heirs.46 The intermittent insanity of King Charles VI of France was attributed to his youthful debauchery.47 The failure of the father of Anne of Brittany to father sons was attributed to his lust.48 It is not surprising that in a letter to Charles V of 1528, Mendoza describes the king as “so blindly in love with that lady [Anne] that he cannot see his way clearly.”49 A year later imperial ambassador to England Eustace Chapuys reports to Charles V that as far as he “can hear and judge, this King’s obstinacy and his passion for the Lady are such that there is no chance of recalling him by mildness or fair words to a sense of his duty.”50 The infatua­ tion, writes Muxetula to Charles V in the letter cited above, caused the pope “to laugh most heartily.”51 Chronicler Edward Hall observes that—although they were wrong—Queen Catherine’s ladies were saying that Anne had “entised the kyng, and brought him in such amours.” Reginald Pole scolds the king for letting himself be seduced into marriage: You, a man of your age and with such experience, are miserably burning with passion for the love of a girl. She, indeed, has said that she will make herself available to you on one condition alone. You must reject your wife whose place she desires to hold. This modest woman does not want to be your concubine! She wants to be your wife.52

Henry VIII himself strongly denied that he was driven by sexual desire. Wolsey describes the pope’s “misapprehension” that the king was acting, “not from fear of his succession, but out of a vain affection or undue love to a gentlewoman of not so excellent qualities as she is here esteemed.”53 According to Hall, the king favored Anne “in all honestie, and surely none otherwise.”54 The

46 47

Duby tells the story of Philip I of France and Bertrade in The Knight, the Lady and the Priest, 11–17. His madness came “ex excessibus” during his youth. See Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-­ Denys, 2: 406. 48 See L’Estrange, “Penitence, Motherhood and Passion Devotion,” 86. 49 CSPS, 3.2, 839–858, no. 586. 50 CSPS, 4.1, 220–52, no. 160. 51 CSPS, 4.2, 31–47, no. 608. 52 Pole, Defense of the Unity of the Church, 185; the Latin original reads “concubina enim tua fieri pudica mulier nolebat, uxor volebat.” Pole, Défense de l’unité de l’Église, 37. 53 L&P, 4, 1736–1754, no. 3913. 54 Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 759.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 201 chronicler records the king’s explaining that it was “no folishe or wanton appetite” that caused him to abstain from Catherine’s company but the fact that doctors of the universities “haue determined the marriage [to Catherine] to be voyde, and detestable before God.” He is too old to be moved by carnal desire, Halls reports the king as saying, for at forty-one years old “the lust of man is not so quicke, as in lustie youth.”55 We cannot know what motivated Henry VIII. But in 1514 we find the first trace of his plan to repudiate Catherine, “his brother’s widow, because he is unable to have children by her,”56 and, given this early interest in an annulment and his well-documented obsession with producing a male heir, there is no particular justification for imagining that lust for Anne drove him to move heaven and earth to marry her. Anne, too, was judged harshly, inculpated for arousing the king’s lust. But blaming women for men’s sexual desire was of course typical, and, despite the contemporary gossip and modern perceptions, we have no real reason to believe that Anne withheld her body from the passionate Henry VIII until she had been guaranteed marriage. I propose in the following section that the opposite seems more likely: that Henry VIII had to work long and hard to convince a reluctant Anne to become his wife.

A providentially ordained marriage It is easy enough to imagine why the king and Anne would have been drawn to each other. The king, intimately involved in exploring a religious issue having to do with papal authority, must have found much to discuss with Anne, who was raised at the French court in under the care of the reform-minded Queen Claude in a household whose primary figures were committed to reform of the Church.57 Anxious that God had deprived him of a male heir and increasingly involved in investigations into the issue, Henry VIII must have taken comfort in speaking

55 Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 788. 56 Sanuto, I Diarii, 19 (1 September 1514–28 February 1515), 1. It should be noted, however, that some historians doubt whether the information was accurate. 57 Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier makes the case Queen Claude was tapped early on by circles of the reform-­ minded, although she was overshadowed in the 1520s. Along with Marguerite of Navarre, and, in the early days, Louise of Savoy, Claude was involved in reform targeting Benedictine houses, attempting to renew from within without breaking from the established church. See Wilson-Chevalier, “Claude de France; In her Mother’s Likeness;” “Denis Briconnet et Claude de France;” “From Dissent to Heresy;” and “ ‘Trinités royales’ et ‘quadrangle d’amour;’ ” and “Claude de France and the Spaces of Agency.”

202 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

earnestly with Anne about religion. The king married two other women renowned for their intelligence and piety: Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr. Closer to Catherine Parr than Catherine of Aragon on the central religious issues of the day, Anne resembled both in their intellectual acumen, judging by her library. Based on the nine books known to have belonged to her, six of which offer proof of her reformist inclinations, historians conclude that Anne was deeply interested in direct access to Scripture.58 She owned Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaple’s translation of the Bible into French, a two-volume edition produced in Antwerp and condemned by the Sorbonne. She also possessed a translation in French with English commentary of Lefèvre d’Etaple’s Latin Introductory Commentary on the Four Gospels, published in 1522. The book was gifted to her by George, her “moost lovying and fryndely brother,” as the first sentence of its preface, deciphered by James Carley with the aid of ultraviolet light, demonstrates.59 She owned a French psalter, derived from a 1515 Hebrew text translated by Louis de Berquin, created at an atelier in Rouen or Paris specializing in works for the French court.60 Moreover, three of Anne’s men are known to have traveled abroad buying reformist books; in addition, Rose Hickman, a woman from a merchant family, describes her father saying that when he “used to go beyond sea, Queene Anne Boloin that was mother to our late Queene Elizabeth caused him to get her the gospells and epistles written in parchment in French together with the psalms.”61 Other strong evidence of Anne’s interest in reform is her protection of Nicolas Bourbon, a young master of arts at the University of Paris, whose works were suppressed because of their evangelical perspectives.62 Thrown into prison in 1534, he was released thanks to the influence of Marguerite of Navarre, who apparently sent him on to Anne in England. While in England he worked as a tutor to a small group of young men, including Henry Carey, son of Anne’s sister, Mary.63 When Marguerite later recalled Bourbon to France, she hired him to tutor her daughter Jeanne d’Albret.64 In his Nugarum, he declared Anne to be a new light to the French, brightening all and bringing back golden days.65 A letter from Norfolk, cited in c­ hapter 9, claims that Marguerite disclosed to him “divers 58 59

Ives, “’Entente Evangelique,’ ” 92; Carley, “ ‘Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother,’ ” 261. Carley, “ ‘Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother,’ ” 267. The manuscript is today BL Harley 6561. See also Ives, “’Entente Evangelique,’ ” 93. 60 Ives, “’Entente Evangelique,’ ” 92. 61 Dowling and Shakespeare, “Religion and Politics in mid Tudor England,” 97. 62 Reid, The King’s Sister, 2: 430–31. 63 Ives, “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn,” 22. 64 Ives, “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn,” 26. 65 Cited and translated by Ives, “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn,” 26.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 203 matters of importance” that he could relate only to Henry VIII and Anne.66 Carley observes that the fact that a group of books associated with Marguerite “turn up in a context which can be clearly tied to Anne and her circle suggests very strongly that Margaret functioned as an intellectual model for Anne during the 1530s… . ”67 But marriage to Anne? No matter how engaging her discussions of religious matters, Anne was an inappropriate choice, because the monarchs of Europe typically chose brides of their own caste.68 In this context, the coquette narrative looks particularly implausible. More likely, the king believed that in the pious and intelligent Anne he had found the woman providentially ordained to bear the Tudor heir. After all, he had been alerted to the invalidity of his marriage to Catherine by a divine sign: God denied him a son.69 And it was common among the king’s contemporaries to act on divine guidance. In 1528, Thomas More feared that he was about to lose his daughter Margaret to the sweating sickness. Repairing to the church, he was given to know that she required a “glister,” or enema. It seems that the intervention saved her life.70 In a world where God could be contacted, either directly or via intermediaries, to intercede in earthly affairs, the king undoubtedly would have been soliciting divine aid. Catherine had last born a child in 1518; by 1525 she was forty, and, at a certain point, the king would have lost hope that a son was forthcoming. Given the circumstances, it looks as if after deciding that he needed to annul his marriage and find a woman more apt to bear children, the king fell upon Anne, whose qualities led him to believe that God wanted her to be his wife. Literature dealing with the marriage with Anne describes it as divinely approved. A pamphlet published towards the end of the year 1533 justifies the marriage in this way: And how God herewith is pleased, we think it doth evidently appear by many things, First, so briefly upon this latter and lawful matrimony, so soon issue had; Secondly, so fair weather, with great plenty of corn and cattle; Thirdly, peace and amitie lately sought by divers princes and potentates of our prince;

66 L&P, 6: 692. 67 Carley, “ ‘Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother,’ ” 271. 68 Although Henry VIII’s own paternal grandfather Edward IV married the non-royal Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VIII would not have seen this as a positive example. After all, when Edward IV died, his heir and spare were declared illegitimate by Parliament, the throne handed to Richard III, and the boys murdered. 69 See Murphy, “The First Divorce,” 139; Rex, The Theology of John Fisher, 167–68. 70 Roper, A Man of Singular Virtue, 49.

204 | Queens,

Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting

Fourthly, the pureness of air without any pestilential or contagious disease, by so long time during, which things we ought to thank God for, and to take them for demonstrations that he is pleased both with our prince and his doings. Wherefore let us all that be his true subjects both rejoice in it and apply us accordingly to serve both God, him and his in it, according to our bounden duties.71

The king speaks about Anne’s coronation of 1 June 1533 in words that further manifest his theological conception of what he was doing: in accordance with divine will his archbishop has declared his first marriage invalid, and for this reason he has married Anne, according to the laws of the Church. The coronation, he proclaims, will be carried out “as becoming the praise and glory and honour of the omnipotent God, the security of the succession and descent of the Crown … and to the great pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction of all the subjects of this realm.” Having made himself right with God with the annulment of his first marriage, the king is convinced that an heir will follow, because all that has happened has been in accordance with the “common consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and of the Commons of this realm, by authority of the Parliament, as in like manner by the assent and determination of the whole clergy in its constant convocations held and celebrated in both the provinces of this kingdom.”72 Hall’s chronicle reinforces the notion of heavenly approbation, writing that although many believed that the king had brought a curse upon the English through his marriage to Anne, “wise men” said “God loued this mariage, consideryng that the newe Quene, was so sone with childe.”73 In January 1534, Henry VIII sent an embassy to the German Princes with instructions to explain the reasons behind his cause. They were to say that “the King has done everything for the discharge of his conscience” but also that “has been strengthened in his opinion by the clergy of both provinces in his realm and by the most famous universities of Christendom, and by the evident words of God’s law.” The king was at “liberty to exercise the benefit of God for procreation of children.”74 Anne too expresses the idea that the marriage was divinely sanctioned. Early on, she recognizes her own unfitness to be queen in a letter to Wolsey,

71 Pocock, Records of the Reformation, 529–30. 72 CSPV, 4: 430–441 no. 933. 73 Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 796. 74 L&P, 7: 4–12, no. 21.

Vous pranderay pour ma seulle mestres: Anne Boleyn’s | 205 “remembering how wretched and unworthy I am comparing to his highness.”75 Her new station was not owing to anything that she had done. Rather, God had “inspired his Majesty to marry her,” as she explains to the Venetian ambassador on 24 June 1533, shortly after her coronation.76 If I am right, her belief that God wanted the marriage explains why Anne agreed to such a risky proposition as wedding a king who already had a queen. And yet, in retrospect, it is clear that Henry VIII and Anne were too optimistic. Anne did not produce a living son, which cast God’s opinion of the marriage into doubt and made her position precarious; had she borne the son she miscarried in early 1536, her story would have been entirely different. Much has been written about Anne’s fall, and the details suggest a number of possible interpretations of precisely how, when, and by what means the king formed the idea of literally destroying his wife. But the most important point is that at some moment, or, perhaps, over a period of many months, it dawned on Henry VIII that his marriage with Anne had never been divinely inspired at all. Because he could not possibly have been wrong himself, he could only have been misled.

75 Dean, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, 46–47, edition of letter in British Library, Cotton manu­ script Vespasian FXIII, fol. 80. 76 CSPV, 4: 415–430, no. 924.

Bibliography

Primary Sources Manuscript Archives nationales de France, Paris series KK, files 41–44. Bibliothèque du château, Chantilly manuscript 0522 Bibliothèque Nationale française, Paris manuscript français 1738. manuscript français 2285. manuscript français 5715. manuscript français 12247. manuscript nouvelles aqcuisitions 9175 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna Frankreich Diplomatische Korrespondenz Berichte, Weisungen Vatican Library Manuscript Vat.lat.3731.pt.A

208 | Bibliography

Printed Acta aragonensia. Quellen zur deutschen, italienischen, französischen, spanischen, zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jaymes II (1291-1327). Ed. Heinrich Finke. 3 vols. Berlin: Rothschild, 1908–22. Acta Nuntiaturae Gallicae. 17 vols. École française de Rome; Paris: Boccard, 1961–2002. “Anciennes Chroniques de Flandre.” Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 22: 329–429. Anne de France. Les Enseignements d’Anne de France, duchesse de Bourbonnais et d’Auvergne, à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon. Ed. A-M Chazaud. Moulins: Desroziers, 1878. ———. Enseignements à sa fille. Histoire du siège de Brest. Ed. Tatiana Clavier and Eliane Viennot. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2006. Arlier, Antoine. Correspondance d’Antoine Arlier: humaniste languedocien: 1527–1545. Ed. Jan Noble Pendergrass. Genève: Droz, 1990. Baschet, Armand. La diplomatie vénitienne, les princes de l’ Europe au xvie siècle d’après les rapports des ambassadeurs vénitiens. Paris: Plon, 1862. Beatis, Antonio de. The Travel Journal of Antonio de Beatis: Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France and Italy, 1517–1518. Trans. and ed. John Rigby Hale. London: Hakluyt Society, 1979. Bernard Gui. “E floribus chronicorum seu catalogo Romanorum pontificum, necnon e chronico regum Francorum.” Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 21: 690–734. Bouchart, Alain. Les grandes croniques de Bretaigne. Ed. Henri Le Meignen. Nantes: Société bibliophiles bretons et de l’histoire de Bretagne, 1886. Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de. Oeuvres completes. Ed. Ludovic Lalanne. 11 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1864–82. Briçonnet, Guillaume, and Marguerite d’Angoulême, Correspondance, 1521–1524. Ed. Christine Martineau, Michel Veissière, and Henry Heller. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1975–79. Bucer, Martin. Briefwechsel. Band VI (Mai 1531 – Oktober 1531). Ed. Reinhold Friedrich, Berndt Hamm, Wolfgang Simon, and Matthieu Arnold. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Bueil, Jean de. Le Jouvencel par Jean de Bueil, suivi du commentaire. de Guillaume Tringant Intro. Camille Favre. Ed. Léon Lecestre. 2 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1887–1889. Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice. 38 vols. Ed. Rawdon Brown. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1864–1947. Calendar of State Papers, Spain. 13 vols. Ed. Pascual de Gayangos. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1879–1954. Capellanus, Andreas. The Art of Courtly Love. Trans. and notes John Jay Parry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Carle, Lancelot de. The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle. Trans., ed. and essays JoAnn DellaNeva. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS Press, 2021. Charles VIII. Lettres de Charles VIII, roi de France: publiées d’après les originaux. Ed. Paul Pélicier. 5 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1898–1905.

Bibliography | 209 Chartier, Jean. Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France. Ed. and intro. Auguste Vallet de Viriville. 3 vols. Paris: P. Jannet, 1858. Chériziers, René. Reflexions chrestiennes et politiques sur la vie des Roys de France. Paris: Jean Camusat, 1647. Christine de Pizan. La città delle dame. Ed. and trans. Patrizia Caraffi and E. J. Richards. Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997. ———. “The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life” with “An Epistle to the Queen of France” and “Lament on the Evils of the Civil War.” Ed. and trans. Josette Wisman. New York: Garland, 1984. ———. Le Livre de la mutacion de fortune. Ed. Suzanne Solente. 4 vols. Paris: Picard, 1959–1966. ———. Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V par Christine de Pisan. Ed. and intro. Suzanne Solente. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1936. ———. Le Livre des trois vertus. Ed. Charity C. Willard and Eric Hicks. Paris: Champion, 1989. ———. Le Livre du corps de policie. Ed. and intro. Angus J. Kennedy. Paris: Champion, 1998. La Chronique métrique attribuée à Geffroy de Paris. Ed. Armel Diverrès. Strasbourg: Imprimerie de Bussac, 1956. Correspondance de Marguerite d’Autriche et de ses ambassadeurs à la cour de France: concernant l’execution du Traite de Cambrai (1529–1530). Ed. Ghislaine de Boom. Brussels: Lamertin, 1935. Coste, Hilarion de. Les Éloges et les vies des reynes, des princesses et des dames illustres. 2 vols. Paris: Cramoisy, 1647. Diane de Poitiers. Lettres inédite de Dianne de Poytiers. Intro. and ed. Georges Guiffrey. Paris: Renouard, 1866. Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et desportemens de Catherine de Médicis, pamphlet, no publication information. Douët-d’Arcq, Louis Claude. Choix de pièces inédites relatives au règne de Charles VI. 2 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1863. ———. Les Comptes de l’argenterie des rois de France au XIVe siècle. Paris: Renouard, 1851. Du Bus, Gervais, and Chaillou de Pesstain. Le Roman de Fauvel. Ed. Arthur Långfors. Paris: Didot, 1914. Du Clercq, Jacques. Mémoires. Choix de chroniques et mémoires relatives à l’ histoire de la France. Ed. Jean-Alexandre Bûchon. Orléans: H. Herluison, 1875. E Chronici Rotomagensis continuatione. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 23: 343–350. Erasmus, Desiderius. The Education of a Christian Prince. Trans. Lester K. Born. 1936; rept. New York: Octagon, 1963. Escouchy, Mathieu d’. La Chronique de Mathieu d’Escouchy. Ed. Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt. 3 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1863–1864. Ex anonymo regum Franciae chronico, circa annum M.CCC.XLII scripto. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 22: 16–21. Fénin, Pierre de. Mémoires de Pierre de Fenin: comprenant le récit des événements qui se sont passés en France et en Bourgogne sous les règnes de Charles VI et Charles VII (1407–1427). Ed. Émilie Dupont. Paris: Renouard, 1837.

210 | Bibliography

Ferron, Arnoul le. De rebus gestis Gallorum. Paris: Vascosanus, 1549. Froissart, Jean. Œuvres de Froissart: Chroniques. Ed. Joseph-Marie-Bruno-Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove. 26 vols. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1967. Galen. On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. Trans. Margaret May. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968. Geffroi de Paris. Six Historical Poems of Geffroi de Paris. Written in 1314–1318. Ed. Walter Storer and Charles Rochedieu. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1950. Gerson, Jean. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Palémon Glorieux. 10 vols. Paris: Desclée, 1971. Girard of Frachet. Chronicon Girardi de Fracheto et anonyma ejusdem operis continuatio. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 21: 1–70. Godefroy, Frédéric. Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle. Paris: Librarie des sciences et des arts, 1937–38. Godefroy, Théodore. Le Cérémonial françois. 2 vols. Paris: Cramoisy, 1649. Grandes Chroniques de France. Ed. Jules Viard. 10 vols. Paris 1920–1953. Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de. Papiers d’État du cardinal de Granvelle: d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Besançon. Ed. Charles Weiss. 9 vols. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1841–52. Guillaume of Nangis. Chronique abrégée de Guillaume de Nangis. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 20: 647–653. ———. Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300 avec les continuations de cette chronique de 1300 à 1368. Ed. Hercule Géraud. 2 vols. Paris, 1843. Haillan, Bernard de Girard du. Histoire générale des roys de France. 2 vols. Paris: Sonnius, 1627. Hall, Edward. Hall’s Chronicle: containing the history of England, during the reign of Henry the Fourth, and the succeeding monarchs, to the end of the reign of Henry the Eighth. Ed. Henry Ellis. London: Johnson & Johnson, et al, 1809. Henri IV. Henri IV, Lettres d’amour, 1580–1610. Ed. Françoise Kermina. Paris: Tallandier, 2010. ———. Lettres intimes de Henri IV avec un introduction et des notes. Ed. L. Dussieux. Paris: Baudry, 1876 Henry VIII. Love-Letters from King Henry Viii. to Anne Boleyn: some in French, and some in English. To which are added, translations of those written in French. Ed. Thomas Hearne. London: J. Churchill, 1714. ———. “The Love-Letters of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Now first correctly printed from the Autographs in the Library of the Vatican Palace.” Ed. William Gunn. The Pamphleteer: Dedicated to Both Houses of Parliament 21, no. 42 (1823): 325–358. Jaligny, Guillaume. Histoire du roy Charles VIII. Ed. Théodore Godefroy. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1684. Jean de Montreuil. Opera. Ed. Nicole Grévy-Pons, Ezio Ornato, and Gilbert Ouy. 4 vols. Turin: Giapichelli; Paris: CEMI, 1963–1987. Jean Desnouelles. Extraits de la chronique attribuée à Jean Desnouelles, abbé de Saint-Vincent de Laon. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 21: 181–197.

Bibliography | 211 Jean of Paris or St. Victor. Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, auctore Johanne Parisiensi, Sancti Victoris Parisiensis canonico regulari. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Ed. Martin Bouqet et al. 24 vols. Paris: various publishers, 1738–1904. 21: 630–676. Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris sous le règne de François Premier (1515–1536). Ed. Ludovic Lalanne. Paris: Renouard 1856. Juvénal des Ursins, Jean. Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France, et des choses mémorables advenues durant quarante-deux années de son règne: depuis 1380 jusqu’ à 1422. Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’ histoire de France. Ed. Joseph-François Michaud and Jean-JosephFrançois Poujoulat. 3 series. 34 vols. Paris, 1836–39. First series, 2: 333-569. Kéralio, Louise de. Les crimes des reines de France depuis le commencement de la monarchie jusqu’ à Marie-Antoinette. Paris: Prud’homme, 1792. La Marche, Olivier de. Mémoires d’Olivier de La Marche. Ed. Henri Beaune and J. D’Arbaumont. 4 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1883–88. Lanz, Karl. Correspondenz des kaisers Karl V. Aus dem Königlichen Archiv und der Bibliothèque de Bourgogne zu Brüssel. 3 vols. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1844–46. La Roche-Guilhem, Anne de. Histoire des favorites: contenant ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable sous plusieurs règnes: divisée en deux parties. Amsterdam: Marret, 1697. Layettes du Trésor des Chartes. Ed. Alexandre Teulet. 5 vols. Paris: Plon, 1869–1909. Le Clerc, Jean. Cronique Martiniane. Ed. Pierre Champion. Paris: Champion: Paris, 1907. Le Fèvre de Saint Rémy, Jean. Choix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’ histoire de France. Ed. Jean Alexandre Buchon. Paris: A. Desrez, 1838. Le Franc, Abel and Jacques Boulenger. Comptes de Louise de Savoie (1515, 1522): et de Marguerite d’Angoulême (1512, 1517, 1524, 1529, 1539). Paris: Champion, 1905. Leglay, André. Négociations diplomatiques entre la France et l’Autriche durant les trente premières années du XVIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: L’Imprimerie royale, 1845. Lescot, Richard. La Chronique de Richard Lescot. Ed. Jean Lemoine. Paris: Renouard, 1896. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII. 21 vols. Ed. J S Brewer. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1875–1910. Le livre des trahisons de France, La geste des ducs de Bourgogne, Le Pastoralet. Ed. Joseph Marie Bruno Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove. Brussels: Hayes, 1873. Marguerite d’Angoulême. Lettres de Marguerite d’Angoulême. Ed. François Génin. Paris: Renouard, 1841. Marguerite d’Autriche. Correspondance à la cour de France de Marguerite d’Autriche et de ses ambassadeurs à la cour de France concernant l’exécution et du traité de Cambrai (1520–1530). Bruxelles: Lamertin, 1935. Marguerite de Navarre. “Marguerite de Navarre, Lettres inédites.” Ed. Pierre Jourda. Revue du seizième siècle 15 (1928): 100–133. ———. Nouvelles lettres de la reine de Navarre: adressées au roi François Ier, son frère. Ed. François Génin. Paris: Crapelet, 1842. ———. Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition. Ed. and trans. Rouben Cholakian and Marie Skemp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Marot, Clément. Œuvres poétiques de Clément Marot. 2 vols. Ed. Gérard Defaux. Paris: Bordas, 1990–93.

212 | Bibliography

Marie de Hongrie and Charles V. Correspondance de Marie de Hongrie avec Charles Quint et Nicolas de Granvelle. Ed. Laetitia Gorter-van-Royen, Jean-Paul Hoyois, and Heide Stratenwerth. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Masselin, Jean. Journal des états généraux de France tenus à Tours en 1484 sous le règne de Charles VIII. Ed. and trans. Adhelm Bernier. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1835. Mézeray, François Eudes de. Histoire de France depuis Faramond jusqu’au règne de Louis le juste. 3 vols. Paris: Denys Thierry, 1685. Michel, Jean. “Relation de Jean Michel.” Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens sur les affaires de France au XVIe siècle. Ed. and trans. M. N. Tommaseo. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1838. Monstrelet, Enguerran de. La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, 1400–1444. Ed. Louis Claude Douët-d’Arcq. 6 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1857–62. Moreau, Sebastien. “Histoire de la prinse et délivrance de François Ier, venue de la Royne, et recouvrement des enfans de France, par Sébastien Moreau.” Archives curieuses de l’ histoire de France, depuis Louis XI jusqu’ à Louis XVIII. Ed. Louis Lafaist and Felix Danjou First series, 14 vols. Paris: Beauvais, Member of the Historial Institute, 1834–1837. 2: 251–451. Pintoin, Michel. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys contenant le règne de Charles VI, de 1380– 1422. 1844. Ed. and trans. Louis Bellaguet. 6 vols. Paris: Editions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1994. Pitti, Buonaccorso. Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati. Ed. Gene Brucker. Prospect Heights, Il: Waveland Press, 1991. Pocock, Nicholas. Records of the Reformatio: the divorce 1527–1533. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1870. Pole, Reginald. Défense de l’unité de l’Église: en quatre livres. Trans. and notes Noëlle-Marie Egretier. Paris: Vrin, 1967. Sainte-Marthe, Charles. La poésie françoise de Charles de Sainct-Marthe. Lyon: Chez le Prince, 1540. Sainte-Marthe, Scévole and Louis. Histoire généalogique de la maison de France … avec les illustres familles qui sortent des roynes et princesses du sang. 2 vols. Paris: Cramoisy, 1647. Salmon, Pierre. Les Demandes faites par Charles VI touchant son état et le gouvernement de sa personne avec les réponses de son sécretaire et familier Pierre Salmon. Ed. Georges-Adrien Crapelet. Paris: Crapelet, 1838. Sanders, Nicholas. Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism. Trans. David Lewis. London: Burns and Oats, 1877. Scève, Maurice. The Entry of Henri II into Lyon September 1548. A Facsimile with intro. Richard Cooper. Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1997. Secousse, Denis-Francois, et al., ed. Les Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race. 21 vols. Paris: L’Imprimerie nationale, 1723–1849. Le Songe du vergier. Ed. Marion Schnerb-Lièvre. 2 vols. Paris: Editions de CNRS, 1982. “Le Songe véritable.” Ed. Henri Moranvillé. Paris: Extract from Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France, 1890. 217–438. Suriano, Michel. “Commentaires sur le royaume de France.” Relations des ambassadeurs vénetiens sur les affaires de France au XVI siècle. Ed. M. N. Tommaseo. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1838. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. http://www.newadv​ent.org/summa/.

Bibliography | 213 Varillas, Antoine. Histoire de François Ier. Paris: Claude Barbin, 1691. ———. Histoire de François Ier. 2 vols. Paris: Barbin, 1685. Vital, Laurent. “Premier voyage de Charles-Quint en Espagne, de 1517 à 1518.” Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays-Bas. Vol. 3 of 4 vols. Bruxelles: F. Hayez, 1881.

Secondary Sources Adams, Tracy. Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy: History, Gallantry, and National Identity. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2022. ———. “Between History and Fiction: Revisiting the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle.” Viator 43 (2012): 165–192. ———. The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Adkins, Karen. Gossip, Epistemology, and Power: Knowledge Underground. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. 2017. Adorno, T. W. “The Essay as Form.” Trans. Bob Hullot-Kentor and Frederic Will. New German Critique 32 (1984): 151–171. Anderson, Ruth. “Spanish Dress worn by a Queen of France.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 98 (1981): 215–222. Anselme de Sainte-Marie et al. Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, grands officiers de la Couronne, de la Maison du Roy et des anciens barons du royaume. 9 vols. Paris: La compagnie des libraires, 1726–1733. Artonne, André. Le mouvement de 1314 et les chartes provinciales de 1315. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1912. Autrand, Françoise. Charles VI: La folie du roi. Paris: Fayard, 1986. ———. “La succession à la couronne de France et les ordonnances de 1374.” Représentation, pouvoir et royauté à la fin du moyen Âge. Paris : Picard, 1995. 25–32. Bak, János. “Queens as scapegoats in Medieval Hungary.” Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe. Ed. Anne Duggan. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press 1997. 223–234. Baldwin, John W. The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Balsamo, Jean. “ ‘Dire le paradis d’Anet.’ Les poètes français de la génération de 1550 et l’architecture.” Travaux de littérature XII: Architectes et architecture dans la littérature française. Ed. Madeleine Bertaud. Paris: Klincksieck, 1999. 339–349. ———. “Les poètes d’Anet.” Henri II et les arts. Paris: Ecole du Louvre, 2003. 417–425. Barber, Malcolm. The Trial of the Templars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. ———. “The World Picture of Philip the Fair.” Journal of Medieval History 8, no. 1 (1982): 13–27. Barlow, Frank. “The King’s Evil.” English Historical Review 95, no. 374 (1980): 3–27. Bates, Blanchard Wesley. Literary Portraiture in the Historical Narrative of the French Renaissance. New York: G. E. Stechert & Company, 1945. Baumgartner, Henri II: King of France 1547–1559. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. Bautier, Robert-Henri. “Diplomatique et histoire politique. Ce que la critique diplomatique nous apprend sur la personnalité de Philippe le Bel.” Revue historique 259 (1978): 3–27.

214 | Bibliography

Beaucourt, Gaston du Fresne de. “Charles VII et Agnès Sorel.” Revue des questions historiques 1 (1866): 204–224. ———. Histoire de Charles VII. 6 vols. Paris: A. Picard, 1881–91. Bejczy, István P. “The Problem of Natural Virtue.” Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century. Ed. István P. Bejczy and Richard G. Newhauser. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 133–154. Bell, Susan Groag. “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Piety and Ambassadors of Culture.” Signs 7 (1982): 742–768. Bély, Lucien. La Société des princes: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1999. Benoit, Michel. Les morts mystérieux d’ histoire: 16 récits extraordinaires, du Prince de Condé à Marilyn Monroe. Paris : Eyrolles, 2016. Bernard, George W. Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 2010. Bertière, Simone. Les reines de France au temps des Bourbon. 4 vols. Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1996. Bijsterveld, Arnoud-Jan. “The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding and Political Power: A Comparative Approach.” Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context. Ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke De Jong. Leiden: Brill, 2001. 123–156. Blieck, Gilles. “Le tombeau d’Agnès Sorel à Loches (Indre-et-Loire) Histoire et restauration d’une œuvre manifeste.” Patrimoine restauré no. 28, 2020. PDF available at https://www. cult ​u re.gouv.fr/Regi​ons/Drac-Cen​t re-Val-de-Loire/Res​s our​c es/Publi​c ati​ons/Patr​i moi​ nes-en-reg​ion-Cen​t re-Val-de-Loire/Pat​rimo​ine-resta​u re/Le-tomb​eau-d-Agnes-Sorel-a-Loc​ hes-Indre-et-Loire Bloch, Marc. Les rois thaumaturges: étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre. Paris: Librairie Istra, 1961. Bond, Gerald A. The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence and Power in Romanesque France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Bonenfant, Paul. Du meurtre de Montereau au traité de Troyes. Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1958. Boone, Marc. “Urban Space and Political Space in Late Medieval Flanders.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, no. 4 (2002): 621–640. Bordo, Susan. The Creation of Anne Boleyn, A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Boucher, Jacqueline. Deux épouses et reines à la fin du XVIe siècle: Louise de Lorraine et Marguerite de France. Saint-Etienne: Publications de I'Université de Saint-Etienne, 1995. Boudet, Jean-Patrice. “Les Condamnations de la magie à Paris en 1398.” Revue Mabillon 12 (2001): 121–157. Boutaric, Edgar. La France sous Philippe le Bel. Étude sur les institutions politiques et administratives du Moyen Âge. Brionne: Le Portulan, 1971. Brachet, Auguste. Pathologie mentale des rois de France. Paris: Hachette, 1903. Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Brewer, John S. The Reign of Henry VIII from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey. Ed. James Gairdner. 2 vols. London: James Murray, 1885. Briggs, Robin. The Witches of Lorraine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Bridge, John S. C. A History of France from the Death of Louis XI. 5 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921–36.

Bibliography | 215 Britton, Piers D. “(Hu)moral Exemplars: Type and Temperament in Cinquecento Painting.” Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550. Ed. Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide. Ashgate: Aldershot, England, 2006. Brix, Antoine. “The Making of the Grandes Chroniques de France: Reassessing a Literary Success.” Revue historique 694: 2 (2020): 3–39. Brown, E. A. R. “Blanche of Artois and Burgundy, Château-Gaillard, and the Baron de Joursanvault.” Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage, and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom. Leyden: Brill, 2009. 223–248. ———. “The Children of Charles of La Marche and Blanche of Artois and Burgundy.” Medieval Prosopography 34 (2019): 151–174. ———. “The Case of Philip the Fair.” Persona et Gesta: The Image and Deeds of the ThirteenthCentury Capetians. Ed. John W. Baldwin, special issue of Viator 19 (1988): 219–246. ———. “Diplomacy, Adultery, and Domestic Politics at the court of Philip the Fair: Queen Isabelle’s mission to France in 1314.” Documenting the past: Essays in medieval history presented to George Peddy Cuttino. Ed. Jeffrey S. Hamilton and Patricia J. Bradley. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989. 53–83. ———. “ ‘Laver de ses pechiés une pecheresse royale’: Psalm Collects in an Early FourteenthCentury Devotional Book.” Cultural Performances in Medieval France. Ed. Eglal DossQuinby, Robert L. Krueger, and E. Jane Burns. Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK. 2007. 163–180. ———. “Philip the Fair and His Family.” Medieval Prosopography 32 (2017): 125–185. ———. “Philip the Fair of France and his Family’s Disgrace: The Adultery Scandal of 1314 Revealed, Recounted, Reimagined, and Redated.” Mediaevistik 32 (2019): 71–103. ———. “The Prince is Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip the Fair of France.” Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987): 282–334. ———. “Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-Century France: The Leagues of 1314–1315.” Parliaments, Estates, and Representation 1 (1981): 109–137. ———. “Rex ioians, ionnes, iolis: Louis X, Philip V, and the Livres de Fauvel.” Fauvel Studies. Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 146. Ed. Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. 53–72. ———. “Taxation and Morality in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Conscience and Political Power and the Kings of France.” French Historical Studies 8 (1973): 1–28. Brown, Cynthia J. The Queen’s Library: Image-Making at the Court of Anne of Brittany, 1477–1514. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Bryant, Lawrence. The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual, and Art in the Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 1986. Bueno de Mesquita, David Meredith. Giangaleazzo Visconti: Duke of Milan (1351–1402). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941. Bührer-Thierry, Geneviève. “La Reine Adultère.” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 35 (1992): 299–312. Buettner, Brigitte. “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400.” The Art Bulletin 83 (2001): Burguière, André, and François Lebrun. “The One Hundred and One Families of

216 | Bibliography

Europe.” A History of the Family. Ed. André Burguière, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Martine Segalen, and Françoise Zonabend. 2 vols. Cambridge: Polity, 1996. 2: 11–94. Butterworth, Emily. The Unbridled Tongue: Babble and Gossip in Renaissance France. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016. Camus, Jules. La Venue en France de Valentine Visconti, duchesse d’Orléans, et l’ inventaire de ses joyaux apportés de Lombardie. Turin: François Casanova, 1898. Capefigue, Jean-Baptiste. A king’s mistress; or, Charles VII and Agnes Sorel and chivalry in the XV Century. Trans. Edmund Goldsmid. Edinburgh: Privately Printed, 1887. Carley, James. “ ‘Her moost lovyng and fryndely brother sendeth gretyng:’ Anne Boleyn’s Manuscripts and their Sources.” Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters. Essays in Honour of Janet Backhouse. Ed. Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick. London: British Library; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. 261–280. Carroll, Stuart. “The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France.” Past and Present 178 (2003): 74–115. Castaigne, Eusbèbe. “Entrée de la Royne et de nosseigneurs les enffans de France en la ville et Cité d’Angoulesme.” Bulletin de la société archéologique et historique de la Charente 1 (1845): 126–137. Castelain, Marie-France. Au pays de Claude de France. Sous le signe du cygnet. Sologne: Société d’art, d’histoire et d’archéologie de Sologne, 1986. Cazelles, Raymond. La Société politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois. Paris: Librairie d’Argences, 1958. Chamberlin, Eric Russell. The Count of Virtue: Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Eyre and Spottiswoods, 1965. Champollion-Figeac, Aimé. Captivité de François Ier. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1847. Charlier, Philippe. “Les dents d’Agnès Sorel.” L’Information dentaire 87–25 (June 22, 2005): 1512–1513. ———. “L’empoisonnement de la Dame de Beauté.” Dossier pour la science 50 (2006): 104–109. ———. “Vie et mort de la Dame de Beauté: L’étude médicale des restes d’Agnès Sorel.” La Revue du praticien 55 (November 2005): 1734–1737. ——. When Science Sheds Light on History: Forensic Science and Anthropology. Trans. Isabelle Ruben. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2017. Chateauneuf, Agricol Hippolyte de Lapierre de. Les Favorites des rois de France: depuis Agnès Sorel, d’après les sources les plus authentiques. 2 vols. Paris: Chez Jehenne, 1826. Chatenet, Monique. “Les Logis des femmes à la cour des derniers Valois.” Das Frauenzimmer, die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Ed. Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini. Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000. 175–192. Chattaway, Carol M. The Order of the Golden Tree: The Gift-Giving Objectives of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Chevanne, J. Robert de. “Charles IV le Bel et Blanche de Bourgogne.” Bulletin philologique et historique (jusqu’ à 1715) du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1936–37): 315–350. Childs, Jessie. Henry VIII’s Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. New York: Random House, 2014.

Bibliography | 217 Ciulisová, Ingrid. “The Power of Marvellous Objects: Charles IV of Luxembourg, Charles V of Valois and their Gemstones.” Journal of the History of Collections 33 (2021) : 1–13. Cloulas, Ivan. Diane de Poitiers. Paris: Fayard, 1997. Collard, Franck. Le Crime de poison au Moyen Age. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003. Collard, Franck. “Excès débilitants, passions énergisantes: la sexualité de Charles VII relève-t-elle de la pathologie politique?” La pathologie du pouvoir: vices, crimes et délits des gouvernants. Ed. Patrick Gilli. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 397–409. Collas, Émile. Valentine de Milan: Duchesse d’Orléans. Paris: Plon, 1911. Collins, James B. “Dynastic Instability, the Emergence of the French Monarchical Commonwealth and the Coming of the Rhetoric of ‘L’état’, 1360s to 1650s.” Monarchy Transformed: Princes and their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe. Ed. Robert von Friedeburg and John S. Morrill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 87–126. Colombini, Deborah. “Valentine Visconti: Contribution à l’histoire d’une princesse ­italo-française.” Mémoire de licence, University of Liège, 2003. Combet, Michel. “Éléonore d’Autriche, une reine de France oubliée.” Être reconnu en son temps: personnalités et notables aux Temps modernes. Actes du 134ème Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, Célèbres ou obscurs: hommes et femmes dans leurs territoires et leur histoire. Paris: Editions du CTHS, 2012. 15–25. Contamine, Philippe. Charles VII: une vie, une politique. Paris: Perrin, 2017. ———. “Pouvoir et vie de cour dans la France du XVe siècle: les mignons.” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 138, no. 2 (1994): 541–554. ———. “Le sang, l’hôtel, le conseil, le peuple: l’entourage de Charles VII selon les récits et les comptes de ses obsèques en 1461.” À l’ombre du pouvoir. Ed. Jean-Louis Kupper and Alain Marchandisse. Liège: Presse universitaires de Liège, 2003. 149–167. Cosandey, Fanny. La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe-XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 2000. ———. “De Lance en quenouille. la reine dans l’état moderne.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 52 (1997): 799–820. Cottrell, Robert D. Brantôme: The Writer as Portraitist of his Own Age. Geneva: Droz, 1970. Coville, Alfred. Les Cabochiens et l’ordonnance de 1413. Paris: Hachette, 1888. ———. “Valentine Visconti et Charles d’Orléans.” Journal des savants 12 (1914): 15–26. Cox-Rearick, Janet. “Power-Dressing at the Courts of Cosimo de’ Medici and François I: The ‘moda alla spagnola’ of Spanish Consorts Eléonore d’Autriche and Eleonora di Toledo.” Artibus et Historiae 30 (2009): 39–69. Crawford, Katherine. Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Cruz, Anne J., and Maria Galli Stampino, eds. Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2013. David-Chapy, Aubrée. Anne de France, Louise de Savoie: inventions d’un pouvoir au féminin. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016. De Boom, Ghislaine. Eléonore d’Autriche: reine de Portugal et de France. Dessart: Bruxelles, 1943. Decrue de Stoutz, Francis. Anne, duc de Montmorency, connétable et pair de France sous les rois Henri II, François II et Charles IX. Paris: Plon, 1889.

218 | Bibliography

———. Anne de Montmorency, grand maître et connétable de France à la cour du roi François Ier. Paris: Plon, 1885. Demurger, Alain. “Guerre civile et changements du personnel administratif dans le royaume de France de 1400 à 1418: l’exemple des baillis et des sénéchaux.” Francia 5 (1978): 151–298. ———. Jacques de Molay: Le Crépuscule des templiers. Paris: Payot, 2002. ———. Les Templiers. Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge. Paris: Seuil, 2005. ———. Vie et mort de l’ordre du Temple, 1120–1314. Paris: Seuil, 1998. Denery, Dallas G. II. “Christine Against the Theologians: The Virtue of Lies in The Book of the Three Virtues.” Viator 39 (2008): 246. Desgardins, E. Anne de Pisseleu, duchesse d’Étampes et François Ier. Favorites des rois. Paris: Champion, 1904. DeVries, Kelly. Joan of Arc: A Military Leader. 1999; re-edited Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2014. Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, dédié au Roy. 2 vols. Paris: Vve J. B. Coignard et J. B. Coignard, 1694 D’Orliac, Jeanne. Anne de Beaujeu, Roi de France. Paris: Plon, 1926. Dowling, Maria, and Joy Shakespeare. “Religion and Politics in mid Tudor England through the eyes of an English Protestant Woman: The Recollections of Rose Hickman.” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 55 (1982): 92–102. Duby, Georges. The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France. Trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Dunbabin, Jean. “The Metrical Chronicle Traditionally Ascribed to Geffroy de Paris.” Fauvel Studies. Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 146. Ed. Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. 233–246. Erickson, Carrolly. Mistress Anne. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Erlanger, Philippe. Charles VII et son mystère. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. Famiglietti, R. C. Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI, 1392–1420. New York: AMS Press, 1986. ———. Tales of the Marriage Bed from Medieval France (1300–1500). Providence, RI: Picardy Press, 1992. Favier, Jean. Un roi de marbre. Philippe le Bel, Enguerran de Marigny. Paris: Fayard, 2005. ——. “Les légistes et le gouvernement de Philippe le Bel.” Journal des Savants 2 (1969): 92–108. Firnhaber-Baker, Justine. Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250–1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Fleureau, Basile. Antiquités de la ville et du duché d’Étampes. Paris, J.-B. Coignard, 1683. Fradenberg, Louise. “Introduction: Rethinking Queenship.” Women and Sovereignty. Ed. Louise Olga Fradenburg. Edinburgh: Ediburgh University Press, 1992. 1–10. Fraser, Antonia. The wives of Henry VIII. New York: Knopf, 1992. Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de Medici. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. Froude, James A. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. 4 vols. London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 1862. Funck-Brentano, Franz. Philippe le Bel en Flandre. Paris: Champion, 1897.

Bibliography | 219 ———. “Philippe le Bel et la noblesse franc-comtoise.” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 49 (1888): 5–40 ; 238–253. Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots françois tant vieux que modernes, et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts. The Hague: A. et R. Leers, 1690. Gaposchkin, M. C. “Boniface VIII, Philip the Fair, and the Sanctity of Louis IX,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003): 1–26. ———. The Making of Saint Louis (IX) of France: Kingship and Sanctity in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008. Garrigues, Véronique. “Les clairs-obscurs de Françoise de Foix, dame de Châteaubriant (1494?1537): revisiter l’historiographie d’une favorite royale.” Femmes à la cour de France: Charges et fonctions (XVe – XIXe siècle). Eds. Caroline Zum Kolk and Kathleen Wilson. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2018. 321–337. Gauvard, Claude. “De grace especial”: Crime, état et société en France à la fin du Moyen Âge. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991. Gendt, Anne Marie de. “ ‘Plusieurs manières d’amours’: Le débat dans Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landy et ses échoes dans l’oeuvre de Christine de Pizan.” Fifteenth Century Studies 23 (1997): 121–137. Gibbons, Rachel C. “The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1392–1417.” PhD Diss., University of Reading, 1997. ———.“Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6:6 (1996): 51–74. ———. “‘The Queen as ‘Social mannequin.’ Consumerism and expenditure at the Court of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1393–1422.” Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000): 382–392. ———. “The Piety of Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France, 1385–1422.” Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Diana Dunn. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1996: 205–224. Giesey, Ralph. “The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right to the French Throne.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 51 (1961): 3–41. ———. Le rôle méconnu de la loi salique: La succession royale, XIVe-XVIe siècles. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2007. Girard, René. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1965. ———. “Generative Scapegoating.” Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Ed. Robert. G. Hamerton-Kelly. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. 73–105. ———. Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. Trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. Godefroy-Ménilglaise, Denis-Charles. Mahaud comtesse d’Artois. Accusation de sortilège et d’empoisonnement, arrêt d’absolution, confédération des nobles du nord de la France. Mémoires de la société Impériale des Antiquaires de France 8 (1865): 181–230. Goldstone, Nancy. The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc. New York: Viking, 2012. Gorman, Jonathan. “Historians and Their Duties.” History and Theory 43 (2004): 103–117.

220 | Bibliography

Gorris Camos, Rosanna. “Diane de Guindaye, Pentasilée et les autres, ou les Diane de Jacques Gohory.” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné: Le mythe de Diane en France au XVIe siècle 14 (2002): 291–332. Grandeau, Yann. “Les Dames qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière.” Bulletin philologique et historique. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1975. 129–239. ———. “Le Dauphin Jean, duc de Touraine, fils de Charles VI (1398–1417).” Bulletin philologique et historique. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1971. 665–728. ———. “Les dernières années d’Isabeau de Bavière.” Cercle archéologique et historique de Valenciennes 9 (1976): 411–428. Grant, Lindy. Blanche of Castile: Queen of France. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016. Grewe, Andrea. “L’historiographie des femmes. L’exemple de Brantôme.” L’ histoire en marge de l’ histoire à la Renaissance. Ed. Dominique de Courcelles. Paris: Editions rue d’Ulm/Presses de l’Ecole normale supérieure, 2002. 113–127. Gschwend, Anne-Marie Jordan. “Antoine Trouvéon, un portraitiste de Leonor d’Autriche récemment découvert.” Revue de l’Art 159 (2008): 11–20. ———. “ ‘Ma meilleure sœur: Leonor of Austria, Queen of Portugal and France (1498–1558).” Royal Inventories of Charles V and the Imperial Royal Family. Ed. Fernando Checa Cremades. 3 vols. Madrid: Villaverde, 2010. 3: 2569–2592. ———. “Verdadero padre y señor: Catherine of Austria, queen of Portugal.” Los inventarios de Carlos V y la familia imperial/The Inventories of Charles V and the Imperial Family. Ed. Fernando Checa Cremades. 3 vols. Madrid: Fernando Villaverde Ediciones, 2010. 3: 3015–3044. ——— and Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier.“L’Épreuve du mécénat: Alienor d’Austriche, une reine de France effacée?” Patronnes et mécènes en France à la Renaissance. Ed. Kathleen WilsonChevalier, with the collaboration of Eugénie Pascal. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2007. 341–380. Guenée, Bernard. La folie de Charles VI, roi bien-aimé. Paris: Perrin, 2004. ———. “Les Grandes Chroniques de France, Le Roman aux roys (1274–1518).” Les Lieux de mémoire, La Nation. Ed. Pierre Nora. 3 vols. Paris, 1986. 1, part 2: 189–214. ———. “Le Roi, ses parents et son royaume en France au XIVe siècle.” Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo et Archivio Muratoriano 94 (1988): 439–470. Guéry, Alain. “Le roi dépensier: Le don, la contrainte, et l’origine du système financier de la monarchie française d’Ancien Régime.” Annales E.S.C. 39, no. 6 (1984): 1241–1269. Guiffrey, Georges. “Un correspondant provençal de Jean Du Bellay, Abbé de Lérins: Denys Faucher.” Melanges Offerts a Abel Lefranc par ses élèves et ses amis (no editor). Paris: Droz, 1936. Guitton, Laurent. “Fastes et malheurs du métier de favorite: Antoinette de Maignelais, de la cour de France à la cour de Bretagne (1450–1470).” Maîtresses et favorites, dans les coulisses du pouvoir du Moyen Âge à l’Époque modern. Ed. Juliette Dor, Marie-Élisabeth Henneau et Alain Marchandisse, Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2019. 153–167. Guyot-Bachy, Isabelle and Jean-Marie Moeglin. “Comment ont été continuées les Grandes Chroniques de France dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle.” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 63 (2005): 385–433.

Bibliography | 221 Hallam, Elizabeth M. “Philip the Fair and the Cult of Saint Louis.” Studies in Church History 18 (1980): 201–214. Hallam, Elizabeth M., and Charles West. Capetian France 987–1328. Third Edition. New York: Routledege, 2020. Halsall, Guy. “Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West: An Introductory Survey.” Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West. Ed. Guy Halsall. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press, 1998. 1–45. Hanley, Sarah. “Identity Politics and Rulership in France: Female Political Place and the Fraudulent Salic Law in Christine de Pizan and Jean de Montreuil.” Changing Identities in Early Modern France. Ed. Michael Wolfe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. 78–94. Hasenclever, Adolf. “Die Geheimartikel zum Frieden von Crepy von 19. September 1544.” Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte 45 (1926): 418–426. Heckmann, Marie-Luise. Stellvertreter, Mit- und Ersatzherrscher: Regenten, Generalstatthalter, Kurfürsten und Reichsvikare in Regnum und Imperium vom 13. bis zum frühen 15. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. Warendorf: Fahlbusch, 2002. Hedeman, Anne D. The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274–1422. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Hein, Jørgen. “Isabella of Austria, Queen of Denmark.” Royal Inventories of Charles V and the Imperial Royal Family. Ed. Fernando Checa Cremades. 3 vols. Madrid: Villaverde, 2010. 3: 2613–2623. Henneman, John Bell. Olivier de Clisson and Political Society under Charles V and Charles VI. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Henwood, Philippe. “Les orfèvres parisiens pendant le règne de Charles VI (1380–1422).” Bulletin archéologique du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques 15 (1979): 85–180. Henzler, Christine Juliane. Die Frauen Karls VII und Ludwigs XI. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2021. Hirschbiegel, Jan. Etrennes: Untersuchung zum höfischen Geschenksverkehr im spätmittelalterlichen Frankreich der Zeit König Karls VI. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003. Hamilton, Tracy Chapman. Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France: The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260–1321). Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. ——— and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany, eds. Moving Women, Moving Objects (400–1500). Leiden: Brill, 2019. Holmes, Frederick F., MD. “Anne Boleyn, the sweating sickness, and the hantavirus: a review of an old disease with a modem interpretation.” Journal of Medical Biography 6 (1998): 43–48. Hufstader, Anselm. “Lefèvre d’Étaples and the Magdalen Author(s).” Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 31–60. Huguet, Edmond. Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle. 5 vols. Paris: Didier, 1961. Hunt, Anne. The Trinity: Insights from the Mystics. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010. Hutchison, Emily J. “The Politics of Grief in the Outbreak of Civil War in France, 1407–1413.” Speculum 91 (2016): 422–452. Imbert de Saint-Amand, Arthur-Léon. Les Femmes de la Cour des derniers Valois. Paris: Édouard Dentu, 1871. Isambert, François André. Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’ à la Révolution de 1789. 29 vols. Belin-Leprieur: Plon, 1821–1833.

222 | Bibliography

Ives, Eric. Anne Boleyn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. ———. “Anne Boleyn and the ‘Entente Evangélique.” Francis Ier et Henri VIII: Deux princes de la Renaissance (1515–1547). Ed. Charles Giry-Deloison. Lille: Centre d’histoire de la région du Nord et de l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, 1996. ———. “A Frenchman at the Court of Anne Boleyn,” History Today (August, 1998): 21–26. ———. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Jacqueton, Gilbert. La Politique extérieure de Louise de Savoie: relations diplomatiques de la France et de l’Angleterre pendant la captivité de François Ier (1525–1526). Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1892. Jager, Eric. Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014. Jarry, Eugène. La Vie politique de Louis de France, duc d’Orléans, 1372–1407. Paris: A. Picard, 1889. Jay, Martin. “Historical Truth and the Truthfulness of Historians.” Integrity, Honesty, and Truth Seeking. Ed. Christian B. Miller and Ryan West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Jestaz, Bertrand. “Benvenuto Cellini et la cour de France.” Bibliothèque de l’ école des chartes 161 (2003): 71–132. Kahsnitz, Rainer. “Kleinod und Andachtsbild: Zum Bildprogramm des Goldenen Rössls.” Das Goldene Rössl: Ein Meisterwerk der Pariser Hofkuknst um 1400. Ed. Reinhold Baumstock. Munich: Hirmer, 1995. 58–89. Kassin, Saul M. “The Social Psychology of False Confessions.” Social Issues and Policy Review 9 (2015): 25–51. Kenrick, Douglas T. Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity are Revolutionizing our View of Human Nature. New York : Basic Books, 2011. Kettering, Sharon. “Gift-Giving and Patronage in Early Modern France.” French History 2 (1988): 131–151. ———. “The Patronge Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen.” The Historical Journal 32 (1989) : 817–841. Kimm, Heidrun. Isabeau de Baviere, reine de France 1370–1435. Beitrag zur Geschichte einer bayerischen Herzogstochter und des französischen Königshauses. Munich: Stadtarchiv, 1969. Kinney, Arthur F., David W. Swain, Eugene D. Hill, and William A. Long. Tudor England: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. Kipling, Gordon. Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Kjaer, Lars. The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition: Ideals and the Practice of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, eds. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. London: Nelson, 1964. Knecht, Robert J. “Philippe Chabot de Brion (v. 1492–1543).” Les Conseillers de François Ier. Ed. Michon et al. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2011. 463–480. ———. “ ‘Our Trinity’: Francis I, Louise of Savoy and Marguerite d’Angoulême.” Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Penny Richards and Jessica Munns. New York: Routledge, 2003. 71–89. ———. The French Renaissance Court, 1483–1589. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Bibliography | 223 ———. Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. The Valois: Kings of France 1328–1589. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007. Kong, Katherine. Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France. Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2010. Kovacs, Eva. L’Age d’or de l’orfèvrerie Parisienne au temps des princes de Valois. Dijon: Editions Faton, 2004. Krappe, Alexander Haggerty. “The Legend of Buridan and the Tour de Nesle.” Modern Language Review 23, no. 2 (1928): 216–222. Kurath, Hans, Sherman McAllister Kuhn, Robert E. Lewis, John Reidy, and Mary Jane Williams. Middle English Dictionary. 15 vols. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975. Laborde, Léon. Les comptes des bâtiments du Roi (1528–1571): suivis de documents inédits sur les châteaux royaux et les beaux-arts au XVIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: J. Baur, 1877–1880. La Charité, Claude. “La construction du public lecteur dans le Recueil des dames de Brantôme et les dédicataires, Marguerite de Valois et François d’Alençon.” Études françaises 47, no. 3 (2011): 109–126. Lalanne, Ludovic. Brantôme: sa vie et ses écrits. Paris: Laurens, 1896. Lake, Peter, Michael Questier, Kendra Packham and Estelle Paranque. “A real papist plot: How did Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne Boleyn get to the Vatican?” TLS no. 6250 (13 January 2021): 13. Larousse, Pierre, ed. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle: français, historique, géographique, mythologique, bibliographique. 17 vols. Paris: Administration du grand dictionnaire universel, 1866–77. Lavisse, Ernest, ed. Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’ à la Révolution. 3.2: Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, les derniers capétiens directs (1226–1328). Paris: Hachette, 1901. Lazard, Madeleine. Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme. Paris: Fayard, 1995. Lecoq, Anne-Marie. François I imaginaire: Symbolique et politique à l’aube de la Renaissance française. Paris: Editions Macula, 1987. Le Fur, Didier. Anne de Bretagne: Miroir d’un reine, historiographie d’un mythe. Paris: Guénégaud, 2000. ———. Diane de Poitiers. Paris: Perrin, 2017. Lehoux, Françoise. Jean de France, Duc de Berri: sa vie. Son action politique (1340–1416 ). 4 vols. Paris: Picard, 1966. Le Hugeur, Paul. L’Histoire de Philippe le Long, roi de France (1316–1322). 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1897. L’Épinois, Henri de. “Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiègne.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 24 (1863): 471–499. Le Roux, Nicolas. La Faveur du roi: mignons et courtiers au temps des derniers Valois (vers 1547– 1589). Paris: Diffusion, Presses universitaires de France, 2001. ———. Le roi, la cour, l’Etat: De la Renaissance à l’absolutisme. Paris: Champvallon, 2013 Lescure, Adolphe Mathurin de. Les amours de François Ier. Paris: A. Faure, 1865. L’Estrange, Elizabeth. “Penitence, Motherhood and Passion Devotion: Contextualizing Anne de Bretagne’s Prayer Book, Chicago Newberry Library MS 83.” The Cultural and Political

224 | Bibliography

Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents. Ed. Cynthia Brown. Cambridge, 2010. Libert, Louise-Marie. Les plus mauvaises mères de l’Histoire: Légendes, crimes et vérités. Paris: La Boîte à Pandore, 2014. Lingard, John. A History Of England From The First Invasion By The Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII. 8 vols. London: Mawman, 1825. Loades, David M. The Politics of Marriage: Henry VIII and his Queens. Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994. MacLean, Ian. Renaissance Notion of Women: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Marchandisse, Alain. “Milan, les Visconti, l’union de Valentine et de Louis d’Orléans, vus par Froissart et par les auteurs contemporains.” Autour du xve siècle. Journée d’ étude en l’ honneur d’Alberto Varvaro. Ed. Paola Moreno and Giovanni Palumbo. Liège: Publications de l’Université de Liège, 2008. 93–116. Mansfield, Lisa. “Portraits of Eleanor of Austria From Invisible to Inimitable French Queen Consort.” Power at the French Court, 1483–1563. Ed. Susan Broomhall. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018. 173–205. Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. “Amour Courtois, Société Masculine et Figure du Pouvoir.” Annales ESC 36 (1981): 969–982. Martin, Henri. Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789. 17 vols. Paris: Furne, 1855–60. Mattingly, Garett. Renaissance Diplomacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955. McCartney, Elizabeth. “The King’s Mother and Royal Prerogative in Early-Sixteenth-Century France.” Medieval Queenship. Ed John Carmi Parsons. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 117–141. McGrady, Deborah. “What is a Patron? Benefactors and Authorship in Harley 4431.” Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference. Ed. Marilyn Desmond. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. 195–214. ———. The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure?: The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2019. McIlvenna, Una. Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Menache, Sophie. “Contemporary Attitudes Concerning the Templar’s Affair: Propaganda’s Fiasco?” Journal of Medieval History 8, no. 2 (1982): 135–147. ———. “The Templar Order: A Failed Ideal?” The Catholic Historical Review 79, no. 1 (1993): 1–21. Micha, Alexander. “Les manuscrits du Lancelot en prose.” Romania 81 (1960): 145–187; Romania 84 (1963): 28–60 and 478–99; Romania 85 (1964): 293–318 and 478–517; Romania 86 (1965): 330–59; Romania 87 (1966): 194–233. Michon, Cédric. “Le Rôle politique de Louise de Savoie.” Louise de Savoie (1476–1531). Ed. Pascal Brioist, Laure Fagnard, and Cédric Michon. Rennes: Coédition Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015. Michon, Cédric, et al. Les Conseillers de François Ier. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Middlebrook, Leah. “‘Tout mon office’: Body Politics and Family Dynamics in the verse epîtres of Marguerite de Navarre.” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 1108–1141.

Bibliography | 225 Minois, Georges. Anne de Bretagne. Paris: Fayard, 1999. ———. La Guerre de Cent Ans: naissance de deux nations. Paris: Perrin, 2008. Moeller, Charles. Eléonore d’Autriche et de Bourgogne, reine de France. Paris: Thorin et fils, 1895. Mirot, Léon. “L’Enlèvement du dauphin et le premier conflit entre Jean sans Peur et Louis d’Orléans (1405).” Revue des questions historiques 95 (1914): 329–355; and 96 (1914): 47–88 and 369–419. ———. “Un essai de guérison de Charles VI en 1403.” Revue des questions historiques 91 (1912): 96–101. Münster, Anna-Manis. “Funktionen der dames et damoiselles d’honneur im Gefolge französischer Königinnen und Herzoginnen (14.-15. Jahrhundert).” Das Frauenzimmer, die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Ed. Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini. Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000. 339–350. Nabias, Laurent. “Les Gallois d’Aunay, un lignage francilien.” Paris et Ile-de-France: Mémoires 60 (2009): 23–51. Nawrocki, François. L’Amiral Claude d’Annebault, conseiller favori de François Ier. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015. ———. “Le conseiller favori, objet de la décision royale.” La prise de décision en France (1525– 1559). Ed. Roseline Claerr and Olivier Poncet. Paris: Publications de l’ École nationale des chartes, 2008. 35–52. ———. “Le dauphin Henri (1519–1559).” 591–97. Les Conseillers de François I. Ed. Cédric Michon. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Newell, William L. Desire in René Girard and Jesus. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Nodier, Charles, ed. Les environs de Paris, Histoire, monuments, paysges: Versailles, Saint-Cloud. Paris: Boizard, 1855. Nordberg, Michael. Les ducs et la royauté : Etude sur la rivalité des ducs d’Orléans et de Bourgogne 1392–1407. Uppsala: Svenska Bokförlaget, 1964. Norton, Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn: In Her Own Words and The Words of Those Who Knew Her. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2011. Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online. Oxford University Press. Ozouf, Mona. Les mots des femmes: Essai sur la singularité française. Paris: Fayard, 1995. Pardanaud-Landriot, Chloé. “Plaider, convaincre, entrer en scène: Éléonore d’Autriche et la libération des Enfants de France, d’après sa correspondance inédite.” Seizième Siècle 4 (2008): 195–216. Paravicini, Werner. “Administrateurs professionnels et princes dilettantes. Remarques sur un problème de sociologie administrative à la fin du moyen âge.” Histoire comparée de l’administration (IVe-XVIIIe siècles). Ed. Werner Paravicini and Karl Ferdinand Werner. Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 1980. Paris, Paulin. Étude sur François premier, roi de France, sur sa vie privée et son règne. 2 vols. Paris: Léon Techener, 1885. Parsons, John Carmi. “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantaganet Evidence, 1150–1500.” Medieval Queenship. Ed. John Carmi Parsons. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 63–78.

226 | Bibliography

———. “Of Queens, Courts, and Books: Reflections on the Literary Patronage of ThirteenthCentury Plantagenet Queens.” The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women. Ed. June Hall McCash. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. 175–201. ———. “The Pregnant Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval Construction of Motherhood.” Medieval Mothering. Ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler. New York, NY: Garland, 1996. 39–61. Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Patrouch, Joseph F. “ ‘Bella gerant alii.’ Laodamia’s Sisters/Habsburg Brides: Leaving Home for the Sake of the House.” Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities. Ed. Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2013. 25–38. Pélicier, Paul. Essai sur le gouvernement de la Dame de Beaujeu 1483–1491. Chartres: Imprimerie Edouard Garnier, 1882. Perez, Stanis. Le corps de la reine. Paris: Perrin, 2022. Perret, Paul-Michel. Notice biographique sur Louis Malet de Graville, amiral de France (144?-1516). Paris: Picard, 1889. Petit, Ernest. Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne. 9 vols. Paris and Dijon: Le Chevalier, 1885–1905. Pinchart, Alexandre. “Lettres missives tirées des Archives de Belgique concernant l’histoire de France 1317–1324,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 45 (1884): 73–80. Pinet, Marie-Josèphe. Christine de Pisan (1364–1430). Etude Biographique et Littéraire. Paris: Champion, 1927. Pingaud, Léonce. “Brantôme, historien.” Revue des questions historiques 10: 1 (1876): 199. Plancher, Urbain. Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne. 4 vols. Dijon: Chez Antoine de Fay, 1739–1781. Pollard, A. F. Henry VIII. London: Longmans, 1919. Pope-Hennessy, John. The Portrait in the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966. Porter, Roy, and G. S. Rousseau. Gout: The Patrician Malady. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Potter, David. “Anne de Pisseleu (1508–80) maîresse et conseillère de François I.” Les Conseillers de François I. Ed. Cédric Michon. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011. 535–556. ———. Henry VIII and Francis I: The Final Conflict, 1540–1547. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ———. “The Life and After-Life of a Royal Mistress, Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Étampes.” Women and Power at the French Court, 1483–1563. Ed. Susan Broomhall. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018. 311–336. ———. “Marriage and Cruelty among the Protestant Nobility of Sixteenth-Century France.” European History Quarterly 20 (1990): 5–38. ———. “Politics and Faction at the Court of Francis I: the Duchesse d’Étampes, Montmorency and the Dauphin Henri.” French History 21, no. 2 (2007): 126–146. ———. Politics and Faction at the French Court from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance: the development of a political culture. Paris, Cour de France.fr. (https://cour-de-fra​nce.fr/arti​cle1​ 883.html).

Bibliography | 227 ———. War and Government in the French Provinces, Picardy 1470–1560. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Potter, John Milton. “The Development and Significance of the Salic Law of the French.” The English Historical Review 52 (1937): 235–253. Prescott, Anne Lake. “And then she fell on a great laughter: English Diplomats Read Marguerite de Navarre,” Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women. Ed. Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seeff. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. 41–65. Pringent, Christiane, ed. Art et société en France au XVe siècle. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1999. Proctor-Tiffany, Mariah. Medieval Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clémence de Hongrie. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Purser, William Edward. Palmerin of England. Some Remarks on this Romance and of the Controversy concerning its Authorship. London: David Nutt, 1904. Quatremère de Roissy, Jean Nicolas. Histoires d’Agnès Sorel et de Madame de Chateauroux. Paris: Le Normant Père, 1825. Quilliet, Bernard. Louis XII, père du people. Paris: Fayard, 1986. Reddy, William. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Redoutey, Jean-Pierre. “Philippe le Bel et la Franche-Comté.” Provinces et États dans la France de l’Est. Le Rattachement de la Franche-Comté à la France. Espaces régionaux et espaces nationaux. Actes du Colloque de Besançon, 3 et 4 octobre 1977. Ed. Roland Fiétier and François Lassus. Besançon, 1979. 207–231. Reid, Jonathan A. “Imagination and Influence: The Creative Powers of Marguerite de Navarre at Work at Court and in the World.” Women and Power at the French Court, 1483–1563. Ed. Susan Broomhall. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018. 265–289. ———. King’s Sister. Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549) and her Evangelical Network. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Renaudet, Augustin. Préréforme et humanisme à Paris pendant les premières guerres d’Italie (1494– 1517). Paris: Champion, 1916. Rennell, Tony. “Anne Boleyn, harlot or heroine?” http://www.dailym​a il.co.uk/fem​a il/arti​cle-1296​ 826/Anne-Bol​e yn-har​lot-hero​ine-Was-schem​ing-sex​ual-preda​tor-brave-refor​mer-chan​gedBrit​a in-ever.html#ixzz3J​2 XeX​HgN. Rice, Yael, and Sonia Drimmer. “How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture.” https://hypera ​ller​ gic.com/604​897/how-sci​enti​sts-use-and-abuse-port​rait​ure/?fbc​lid=IwAR0jDSLGqc8q7FR65bxieMFOswkyYUfJ​8rAy​g3JE​78z8​qgPj​iPUO​_OE3​4 AA. Richard, Jean. Les ducs de Bourgogne et la formation du duché du XIe au XIVe siècle. Paris: Société des Belles Lettres, 1954. Richards, E. Jeffrey. “Bartalo da Sassaferrato as a Possible Source for Christine de Pizan’s Livre de Paix.” Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan. Ed. Karen Green and Constant Mews. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 75–91. ———. “Les Enjeux du culte marial chez Christine de Pizan.” Desireuse de plus avant enquerre: actes du 6e congrès international sur Christine de Pizan. Ed. Liliane Dulac, Anne Paupert, Christine Reno, and Bernard Ribémonet. Paris: Champion, 2008. 141–166.

228 | Bibliography

Ridley, Jasper. Henry VIII. London: Constable, 1984. Roblot-Delondre, Louise. Portraits d’ infantes. Paris: G. Oest, 1913. Roche, Aline. “ ‘Une perle de pris:’ la maison de la reine Eléonore d’Autriche.” Cour de France.fr, 2010 [http://cour-de-fra​nce.fr/arti​cle1​646.html]. Rohr, Zita Eva. “The Practice of Political Motherhood in Late-Medieval France: Yolande of Aragon, Bonne-Mère of France.” The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Sean McGlynn and Elena Woodacre. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 23–47. ———. “Self-fashioning Stateswomanship,” Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Ed. Sean McGlynn and Elena Woodacre. Leiden: Brill, 2015. ———. Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442). Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry. New York: Palgrave, 2016. Ruble, Alphonse de. Le Mariage de Jeanne d’Albret. Paris: Labitte, 1877. Ruby, Sigrid. Mit Macht verbunden: Bilder der Favoritin im Frankreich der Renaissance. Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, 2017. Rüdiger, Jan. All the King’s Women. Polygyny and Politics in Europe, 900–1250. Trans. Tim Barnwell. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Russell, Joycelyne Gledhill. Diplomats at Work: Three Renaissance Studies. Wolfeboro Falls, NH: Alan Sutton Publishing Inc, 1992. Russo, Daniel. “Les arts en France autour de 1400. Création artistique, questions iconographiques.” Bulletin du centre d’ études médiévales d’Auxerre. https://journ​a ls.open​edit​ion. org/cem/707. Ruutz-Rees, Caroline. Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1512–1555). New York: Columbia University Press, 1910. Salmon, J. H. M. “The Regent and the Duchess: Anne de Beaujeu and Anne de Bretagne.” History Today 16, no. 5 (1966): 341–348. Santrot, Jacques. Les doubles funérailles d’Anne de Bretagne: le corps et le coeur (janvier-mars 1514). Geneva: Droz, 2017. Sauerländer, Willibald. “Kinder als Nothelfer: Parergon über das sogenannte Goldene Rössl.” Das Goldene Rössl: Ein Meisterwerk der Pariser Hofkuknst um 1400. Ed. Reinhold Baumstock. Munich: Hirmer, 1995. 90–101. Scanlon, Larry. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. Schnerb, Bertrand. Les Armagnacs et les Bourguignons. La maudite guerre. Paris : Perrin, 1988. ———. Jean sans Peur: le prince meurtrier. Paris: Payot, 2005. Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert and Milson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Schultz, Christopher R. The Artistic and Literary Patronage of Louis of Orléans and his Wife, Valentine Visconti, 1399–1408. PhD Diss., Emory University, 1977. Schwalm, Jakob. “Beiträge zur Reichsgeschicte des 14. Jahrhunderts aus dem Vaticanischen Archive” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde zur Beförderung

Bibliography | 229 einer Gesamtausgabe der Quellenschriften deutscher Geschichten des Mittelalters 25 (1900). 559–584. Scollen, Christine M. The Birth of the Elegy in France: 1500–1550. Geneva: Droz, 1967. Seward, Desmond. The Warrior King and the Invasion of France. 1988; revised edition New York: Pegasus, 2014. Seyssel, Claude de. The Monarchy of France. Ed. Donald R. Kelley, trans. J. H. Hexter and Michael Sherman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. ———. La grand’ monarchie de France. Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1558. Shadis, Miriam. “Blanche of Castile and Facinger’s ‘Medieval Queenship’: Reassessing the Argument.” Capetian Women. Ed. Kathleen Nolan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 137–161. Smith, Lacey Baldwin. Anne Boleyn: The Queen of Controversy. Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2013. Smith, Pauline. The Anti-courtier Trend in Sixteenth Century French Literature. Geneva: Droz, 1966. Smuts, R. Malcolm and Melinda J. Gough. “Queens and the International Transmission of Political Culture.” The Court Historian 10, no. 1 (2005): 1–13. Snyder, Susan. “Guilty Sisters: Marguerite de Navarre, Elizabeth of England, and the Miroir de l’âme Pécheresse.” Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997): 443–458. Spiegel, Gabrielle. The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey. Brookline, MA, 1978. Starkey, David. Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Straub, Theodor. “Isabeau de Bavière, Legende und Wirklichkeit.” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 44 (1981): 131–155. Strayer, Joseph. The Reign of Philip the Fair. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Stephenson, Barbara. The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre. Aldershot and Burlington, VI: Ashgate, 2004. Tallis, Nicola. All the Queen’s Jewels, 1445–1548: Power, Majesty and Display. London: Routledge, 2022. Tanner, Heather J., Laura L. Gathagan, and Lois L. Huneycutt, eds. Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Taylor, Craig. “The Salic Law and the Valois Succession to the French Crown.” French History 15 (2001): 358–377. ———. “The Salic Law, French Queenship and the Defence of Women in the Late Middle Ages.” French Historical Studies 29 (2006): 543–564. Taylor, Jane H. M. The Making of Poetry: Late-medieval French Poetic Anthologies. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Teyssot, Josiane. “ ‘Reine’ et princesse, Anne de France en Auvergne et Bourbonnais.” Anne de France: Art et pouvoir en 1500. Ed. Thierry Crépin-Leblond. Paris: Picard, 2014. 15–25. Théry, Julien. “A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the ‘Perfidious Templars,’ and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy.” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 39: 2 (2013): 117–148. ———. “The Pioneer of Royal Theocracy: Guillaume de Nogaret and the Conflicts between Philip the Fair and the Papacy.” The Capetian Century, 1214 to 1314. Ed. William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Philipps. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. 219–259.

230 | Bibliography

Thibault, Marcel. Isabeau de Bavière: Reine de France. La Jeunesse (1370–1405). Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1903. Thierry, Adrien. Diane de Poitiers. Paris-Genève: La Palatine, 1955. Thompson, Patricia Z. “De nouveaux aperçus sur la vie de Diane de Poitiers.” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné 14 (2002). Special issue: Le mythe de Diane en France au XVIe siècle. 345–360. ———. “Diane de Poitiers: A Re-assessment.” Stanford French Review 13 (1989): 49–63. Tourault, Philippe. Anne de Bretagne. Paris: Perrin, 1990. Turner, Sharon. The History of the Reign of Henry VIII. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1826. Vale, Malcolm G. A. Charles VII. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Vallet de Vivirille, Auguste. “La Bibliothèque d’Isabeau de Bavière, reine de France.” Bulletin du bibliophile 36 (1858): 663–678. ———. “De l’Amour et des sentiments chevaleresques, études historiques de mœurs.” Revue de Paris 18 (1853): 191–206 and 369–381. ———. “Documents relatifs aux joyaux de Charles VI, roi de France, engagés par les suggestions de la reine Isabelle de Bavière.” Revue archéologique 13 (1856): 710–715. ———. Agnès Sorel. Etude morale et politique sur le quinzième siècle. Paris: J.-B. Dumoulin, 1855. ———. Histoire de Charles VII, roi de France, et de son époque, 1403–1461. Paris: Renouard, 1862–5. Valois, Noël. Le Conseil du roi aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles: nouvelles recherches suivies d’arrêts et de procès-verbaux du Conseil. Slatkine-Megariotis Reprints, 1975. Vance, Jacob. “Twelfth and Sixteenth Century Renaissance Discourses on Meditation and Contemplation. Lefèvre d’Etaples’ Commentary on Richard of St. Victor’s Trinity.” Meditatio—Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture. Ed. Karl Enenkel and Walter Melion. Leiden: Brill, 2011. 153–180. Vaucheret, Étienne. “Les éloges hyperboliques dans les Dames illustres de Brantôme.” Manierismo e letteratura. Ed. Daniela Dalla Valle. Turin: Albert Meynier, 1986. 511–524. Vaughan, Richard. John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power. 1966; re-edited Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005. ———. Philip the Bold. The Formation of the Burgundian State. 1962; re-edited. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Veenstra, Jan R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Viala, Alain. La France galante: Essai historique sur une catégorie culturelle, de ses origines jusqu’ à la Révolution. Paris: PUF, 2008. ———. “La galanterie est un ensemble vaste, mouvant, contradictoire.” https://www.human​ite. fr/la-gal​a nte​rie-est-un-ensem​ble-vaste-mouv​a nt-con​trad​icto​ire-671​734. ———. “La galanterie française.” http://www.mhra.org.uk/centen​a ry/viala​100. ———. La galanterie. Une mythologie française. Paris: Seuil, 2019. Viennot, Eliane. La France, les femmes et le pouvoir: l’ invention de la loi salique (v-xvi siècle). Paris: Perrin, 2006. Viollet, Paul. “Comment les femmes ont été exclues en France de la succession à la couronne.” Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions 34, no. 2 (1893): 25–78.

Bibliography | 231 Verdon, Jean. Isabeau de Bavière: la malaimée. Paris: Tallandier, 1981. Walters, Lori J. “Christine de Pizan, Primat, and the ‘noble nation françoise.’ ” Cahiers de recherches médiévales [online] 9 (2002), http:// journals.openedition.org/crm/83. Accessed November 14, 2022. Warnicke, Retha. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Weir, Alison. Henry VIII: King and Crown. London: Jonathan Cape, 2001. Wellman, Kathleen. Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Whaley, Derek. “From a Salic Law to the Salic Law: The Creation and Re-Creation of the Royal Succession System of Medieval France.” The Routledge History of Monarchy. Ed. Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Zita Rohr, and Russell Martin. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019. 443–464. Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984. ———. “The Manuscripts of Jean Petit’s Justification: Some Burgundian Propaganda Methods of the Early Fifteenth Century.” Studi Francesi 13 (1969): 271–280. Wilson-Chevalier, Kathleen. “Claude de France; In her Mother’s Likeness.” The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents. Ed. Cynthia J. Brown. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010. 123–146. ———. “Denis Briçonnet et Claude de France: l’évêque, les arts et une relation (fabriste) occultée.” Les Evêques, les lettres et les arts. Ed. Gary Ferguson and Catherine Magnien. Seizième Siècle 11 (2015): 95–118. ———. “From Dissent to Heresy. Queen Claude of France and Her Entourage: Images of Religious Complaint and Evangelical Reform.” Representing Heresy in Early Modern France. Ed. Lidia Radi and Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2017. 93–129. ———. “Claude de France and the Spaces of Agency of a Marginalized Queen.” Women and Power at the French Court, 1483–1563. Ed. Susan Broomhall. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018. 139–172. ———. “ ‘Trinités royales’ et ‘quadrangle d’amour’: Claude de France, Marguerite de Navarre, François Ier, Louise de Savoie et la réforme fabriste de l’Église.” La dame de Coeur: Patronage et mécénat religieux des femmes de pouvoir dans l’Europe des 14–17 siècles. Ed. Murielle GaudeFerragu and Cécile Vincent-Cassy. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016. 123–136. Wood, Charles T. The French Apanages and the Capetian Monarch 1224–1328. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. Ylä-Anttila, Tupu. “Habsburg Female Regents in the Early Sixteenth Century.” PhD diss, University of Helsinki, 2019. Zammito, John. “Ankersmit and Historical Representation.” History and Theory 44 (2005): 155–181. Zanger, Abby E. Scenes From the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Zum Kolk, Caroline, and Kathleen Wilson, eds. Femmes à la cour de France: Charges et fonctions (XVe – XIXe siècle). Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2018.

Index

Affaire de la Tour de Nesle 9–12, 20, 24 Anne of Brittany, Queen of France  98, 111, 115–20, 148, 168 Anne of France, Duchess of Bourbon  34, 35, 39, 111, 112 n. 6 Rivalry with Anne of Brittany 115–119 

Beatis, Antonio de  132 Blanche of Burgundy 13–14, 26 n. 65, 31 Blanche of Castile, Queen of France  35, 45–46, 48, 51, 90, 131 Boleyn, Anne, Queen of England  176, 177, 187 Modern perceptions of 189–192  Henry VIII’s love letters to 195–199  Match with Henry VIII deplored 199–201  Library 202–203  Marriage with Henry VIII as divinely ordained 203–205 

Boleyn, Mary  190, 191

Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de  99, 194 Particularitez 111–115  Assessment of Anne of France and Anne of Brittany  115, 119 Assessment of Eleanor of Austria 121–128 

Brézé, Pierre de  100 Briçonnet, Guillaume, Bishop of Meaux  129, 133, 137–138, 142 Browne, Anthony  150 Bryan, Francis  151, 174 Carle, Lancelot de  187 Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England 188–189, 195, 198–199, 201–203 Catherine de Médicis, Queen of France 34–35, 40, 111–113, 126, 148 Relationship with Diane de Poitiers  152, 154–155

Chapuys, Eustace  200 Charles IV, King of France  34, 41, 60

234 | Index

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 95 n.  8, 117, 121–122, 127, 136, 150, 154, 156 Relationship with François I  130, 132–133 Relationship with sisters  126, 159, 163, 168–169, 175, 177

Charles V, King of France  25, 36, 80–81 Charles VI, King of France 53–54, 58–61, 67, 68–69, 73–75, 100, 130, 200 Insanity of 35–37  Gift-giving 79–90 

Charles VII, King of France  94, 96, 98, 100–103, 105–109, 150 Charlier, Philippe  97 Chartier, Jean  100, 103 Chastellain, Georges 97–98, 100, 103 Chevalier, Étienne 104  Claude, Queen of France  167, 201 De Molay, Jacques  18, 21, 33 Diane de Poitiers  94, 114, 147–150 Relationship with Catherine de Médicis  152, 154–155 Supposed rivalry with the Duchess of Étampes 156–158, 160–165

Eleanor of Austria, Queen of France 121–122, 133–134, 139, 151, 159, 163, 167–168

Étrennes  75, 82, 85–88, 162–163 Fitzwilliam, William 132–134, 135 n. 32 Fontainebleau 152–153, 162 François I, King of France 156–158, 160–165, 167–168, 172–183, 190 François II, Duke of Brittany  98, 102, 104, 105 Françoise de Foix, Duchess of Chateaubriant  150, 190 Froissart, Jean 37 n.  11 Description of Isabeau of Bavaria’s coronation 58–64  And Valentina Visconti 69–72, 75

Gerson, Jean  48, 71 Girard, René 11–14  Goldenes Rössl (  see Petit cheval d’or) Gossip  115, 122–123, 126–127 Guerche, Chateau de La  102, 106, 108 Hall, Edward  200 Henri II, King of France  111, 112, 114, 149, 155, 161 n. 56, 165, 167, 181 Henri IV, King of France  99, 168, 194, 197 Henry VIII, King of England  117, 134, 150, 151, 154, 159–160, 163, 168, 174–177, 180–181

Brantôme’s assessment of 123–127  Spanish fashion of  125, 182–183 Devotion to family 169–172  Marriage to François I 172–181  Perceived foreignness of 181–185 

Love letters to Anne Boleyn, 187–199 Marriage with Anne Boleyn ridiculed 200–201  Marriage as providentially ordained 203–20 

Étampes, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of  52, 94, 99, 101, 103

Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France  34

Supposed flightiness of 147–148  Rise to power 152–154  Supposed rivalry with Diane de Poitiers 156–158, 160–165 And Eleanor of Austria  176, 178–180

And regency ordinances 36–40  Supported by Christine de Pizan 40–48  Vilification  35, 49–57 Supposed affair with Louis of Orléans  49, 57

Index | 235 Supposed inability to speak French 57–59, 64–65

Jean, Duke of Berry 36–38, 41 n.  31, 43, 55, 80, 85, 86 Jean, Duke of Burgundy  37, 39, 41–43, 47, 50, 55–56, 76–77, 80, 85, 87 Jeanne of Burgundy 9–10, 13–14, 26–27, 31 Proclaims innocence  22 Exonerated 23 

Kéralio, Louise de  51, 79 Knights Templar  29, 31 Ladies Peace, The  139, 151 Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques  45 Louis I, Duke of Orléans 37–40, 55, 57, 60, 64, 67, 68, 71–74, 80, 130 As regent for Charles VI 36–37  Stand-off with Jean of Burgundy 41–43, 47, 49, 55 Assassinated by Jean of Burgundy  37, 39, 72, 73, 76, 77, 87 Gift-giving  81, 83–87

Louis II, Duke of Orléans (later Louis XII, King of France)  115, 118–120, 130 Louis X, King of France  15, 17–19, 22–24, 26, 31, 33 Louis XI, dauphin, later king of France  102, 103, 115 Louise of Savoy  34, 40, 106, 129–139, 141, 143–145 Maignelais, Antoinette de 95–98, 106–109 Bad reputation among historians  96, 98, 104– 105 Influence at court 101–104 

“Maîtresse-en-titre”  99

Marguerite of Austria 121–122, 126, 150–151, 168–169, 171, 174–175 Marguerite of Burgundy 9–10, 13–15, 17–19, 22–23, 25–27, 31 Marguerite, sister of François I, Queen of Navarre  91, 111, 114, 129–130, 136–139, 141, 180–181 In the eyes of ambassadors 133–135, 153, 154, 176, 178 Spirituality  129, 142–143 Love for mother, Louise of Savoy 144–145  And Duchess of Étampes  151, 159, 162, 163, 164 Reforming efforts 201 n.  57, 202–203

Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre  111, 167–168 Marie de Médicis, Queen of France  34, 40, 194, 197 Marie of Anjou, Queen of France  97, 167 Marie of Hungary  122, 123, 126–127, 169, 177, 199 Marigny, Enguerrand de  15, 17–20, 22–23, 30–31 Marot, Clément 162–163  Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor  117, 122, 124, 132, 169 Mendoza, Íñigo López  188, 195, 197, 200 Montmorency, Anne de, Grand Maître and Connétable of France  137, 151, 153, 156, 158–161, 165 Ally of Eleanor of Austria  175, 178–180, 183

Norfolk, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of  153, 159, 176, 178, 202 Parr, Catherine, Queen of England 202  Pavia, Battle of  130, 131, 132, 135, 172, 177

236 | Index

Perrers, Alice  149 Petit cheval d’or 88–9  Pierre of Beaujeu, Duke of Bourbon  35, 39, 118–119 Philip I, Duke of Burgundy 36–39, 47, 64, 68, 71–72, 74 n. 25, 76, 80, 83, 85–87, 124 Philip IV, King of France  9, 12, 16–19, 25–27, 33–34 Depicted as gullible 20–23  Self-righteousness of  11, 27–31

Philip V, King of France  13, 25, 33–34 Pintoin, Michel 37–38, 43, 50–51, 54, 59, 60, 69–72, 75–76 Pole, Reginald  200 Richard of St. Victor  145

Salic Law, The  34, 40–41, 183 Sigbritsdatter, Dyveke  149 Sorel, Agnès 96–101, 109 Depicted as beautiful  96, 98, 100 Reputation of  52, 94–95, 96, 105–108 Death of  101, 104

Treaty of Troyes  35, 51 Villequier, André de  98, 102–103, 105, 108 Visconti, Bernabò  73, 74 n. 26 Visconti, Giangaleazzo 73–75, 84 Visconti, Valentina, Duchess of Orléans 60–64, 73–77, 148, 177 Idealization of 52–53, 58–59 Accused of witchcraft 67–72  Exiled from court  71, 74, 76

Yolande of Aragon 57–58 

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS

New Light on Traditional Traditional Thinking Thinking Stephen G. Nichols General Editor

Medieval Interventions publishes innovative studies on medieval culture broadly conceived. By “innovative,” we we envisage envisage works espousing, for example, new research protocols especially those involving digitized resources, revisionist approaches to codicology and paleography, reflections reflections on medieval medieval ideologies, fresh pedagogical practices, digital humanities, humanities, advances in gender studies, as well as fresh thinking on animal, environmental, geospatial, and nature studies. In short, the series seeks to set rather than follow follow agendas agendasin inthe thestudy studyofofmedieval medievalculture. culture. Since medieval intellectual and artistic practices practices were were naturally naturally interdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, the series welcomes studies from across the humanities and social sciences. Recognizing also the thethe field worldwide, the series also endeavors to publish works thevigor vigorthat thatmarks marks field worldwide, the series also endeavors to publish in translation from non-Anglophone medievalists. works in translation from non-Anglophone medievalists. additionalinformation informationabout about series or the forsubmission the submission of manuscripts, For additional thisthis series or for of manuscripts, please contact: please contact: Peter Lang Publishing Acquisitions Department 29 Broadway, Broadway,18th 18thfloor floor New York, York, NY NY 10006 10006 To order order other other books books in in this this series, series, please please contact contactour our Customer CustomerService ServiceDepartment: Department: To 800-770-LANG 800-770-LANG(within (withinthe theU.S.) U.S.) 212-647-7706(outside (outsidethe theU.S.) U.S.) 212-647-7706 FAX 212-647-7707 FAX Or browse online by series at: www.peterlang.com www.peterl​ ang.com