Philippa of Guelders, Duchess and Regent of Lorraine: "Do Not Touch Me, Or I Will Prick"

Philippa of Guelders, duchess of Lorraine (her brother, Charles of Guelders, born 9 November 1467)

Philippa of Guelders was born in Grave, a city of the Dutch province of North Brabant. Her father was Adolf, duke of Guelders, her mother Catherine of Bourbon, the daughter of Charles I, duke of Bourbon, and his wife, Agnes of Burgundy. Philippa and her brother were the couple's only children.

 

There is disagreement about the year of Philippa's birth--some sources suggest she was born as early as 1462, others that she was born in 1464 or 1465 or 1467. Many scholars accept that she and her brother were twins, both born on 9 November in 1467 (various online sources, most obviously the Wikipedia entry for Philippa of Guelders), but given recent scholarly work, that seems not to have been the case. 

 

In her extensive articles on Philippa of Guelders, historian Pauline Zwetheul makes a persuasive case for Philippa's birth in 1465, noting that she was baptized in March of that year. Still, since there is some uncertainty, I've decided to post about Philippa of Guelders today, on the anniversary of her brother's birth. Besides, I feel like writing about Philippa of Guelders today.

 

Art historian Ina Nettekoven, in her examination of a manuscript commissioned by Philippa of Guelders, offers a succinct appraisal of the woman who, through her marriage, would become duchess of Lorraine: "Her unusually long life span, but most of all her vicissitudinous fate and her conduct and deeds elevate her to the rank of a remarkable Renaissance princess." 

Philippa of Guelders, duchess of Lorraine,

and her husband, René II, duke of Lorraine, 

with some of their children

(detail from an early sixteenth-century life of Christ,

Lyon., Bibliothèque municipale, Ms 5125, fol. 3v)

 

Philippa's mother died in 1469, when her two children were still very young. Catherine of Bourbon, duchess of Guelders, was only twenty-nine years old at the time of her death.

 

Catherine of Bourbon had been married to Adolf of Guelders just six years earlier, in 1463, during a long-term struggle over property rights and inheritance in the duchy of Guelders (The date of this marriage would seem to make Philippa's birth in 1462 unlikely but not impossible--see below, for example, on the complicated relationship between Phillipa's marriage and the birth dates of her first two children.) 

 

In 1465, as part of this ongoing dispute, Adolf of Guelders--with the assistance of his ally, Philip, duke of Burgundy--imprisoned his father, Arnold, duke of Guelders. But two years later, after Philip died and was succeeded as duke of Burgundy by his son, Charles the Bold, the situation was reversed--Arnold was restored as duke of Guelders, and his son Adolf was imprisoned. This was a very messy situation--during the conflict, Adolf's mother, Catherine of Cleves, supported her son against her husband, Arnold was accused of sodomy by a man who later claimed that Adolf had tortured him into making the accusation, Arnold's efforts to provide for his "bastard brother" (basterbroider) created problems, and, of course, there were still disputes over money and property as well as the title of duke.

 

In 1471, Arnold pledged Guelders to Charles the Bold, now duke of Burgundy, thus disinheriting the son who had imprisoned him. When Arnold died in 1473, Charles claimed Guelders. Only after the death of Charles in January 1477 was Adolf freed from imprisonment. He was restored as duke of Guelders and then went off to war, appointing his unmarried sister, Catherine of Guelders, as regent during his absence. But Adolf died on 27 June 1477, just five months after his restoration. After her brother's death, Catherine of Cleves struggled in her efforts to maintain independence for the duchy.

 

In the midst of all this turmoil and after their mother's death, Philippa and her brother were in Nijmegen (Guelders). But after Charles of Burgundy took the city of Nijmegen in 1473, Philippa joined the Burgundian court in Ghent. Nettekoven indicates the girl was "a valuable hostage at the Duchy of Burgundy," a claim supported by historian Jan Kuys, who notes that both Philippa and her brother were placed "in the hands of Burgundian authorities" after their mother's death. For his part, in his recent book on Guelders, historian Gerard Nijsten writes that Philippa and her brother were "detained at the Burgundian court." 

 

But the situation is not as dire as this sounds. In her extensive work on Philippa of Guelders, Zwetheul details the many close familial links between the ducal courts of Burgundy and Guelders. Philippa's mother, Catherine of Bourbon, was the daughter of Agnes of Burgundy, who was Philip of Burgundy's sister--Philippa herself may have been named for her uncle, Philip of Burgundy, who was her godfather. There had also been regular visits between family members of the dukes of Burgundy and of Guelders, as well as a regular exchange of gifts. So for Philippa to have been sent to the court of Burgundy was not placing her in the hands of hostile strangers. 

There, in the Burgundian court, Philippa became a close companion of Mary of Burgundy and took part in the ceremony when Mary, the only child and heir of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, was married to Maximilian of Austria in 1477. After the death of Mary of Burgundy in 1480, Philippa was raised with Mary's only child, Margaret of Austria, her education overseen by Margaret of York, who had been Charles of Burgundy's third wife.  

Early sixteenth-century manuscript

of Ludolf of Saxony's Life of Christ,

frontispiece depicting Philippa of Guelders

and her family

(Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms 5125, fol. 3v)

In 1483, when Margaret of Austria was sent to the French court of Louis XI, where she was expected to marry his son and heir, the dauphin, Charles, the little girl was accompanied by Philippa of Guelders. According to historian Ghislain Tranié, Philippa, then about age eighteen, was a kind of tutor (tutrice) or attendant for Margaret, who was just three years old.

 

Philippa herself was under the guardianship of Anne of France, then regent of France for her brother, Charles VIII. (He was about thirteen when the three-year-old Margaret was sent to be his "little queen.") Philippa was related by marriage to the French regent: Philippa's mother, Catherine of Bourbon, was the sister of Pierre of Bourbon, Anne of France's husband. 

 

The French regent seems to have been the one to arrange for her Philippa's marriage to René II of Lorraine. As duke of Lorraine, René vacillated between allegiance to France and Burgundy--thus the reason for the match, designed to secure an alliance favored by Anne of France.

 

But this solution was not quite as simple as it seemed because the duke of Lorraine already had a wife, Jeanne d'Harcourt, countess of Tancarville, whom he had married in 1471. René seems to have made some effort to separate himself from the unfortunate Jeanne as early as 1474, citing as his reason her inability to have children. Several years later, in 1481, the Estates General of Lorraine explored the possibility of "dissolving" the marriage. Nevertheless, René and Jeanne d'Harcourt seem still to have been "married" when René, duke of Lorraine, married Philippa of Guelders on 1 September 1485.

 

As for the inconvenient Jeanne d'Harcourt, countess of Tancarville? She was sent back to Tancarville in 1487 where she was kept "under the hand" of the king of France, Charles VIII (still under his sister's regency). Jeanne d'Harcourt died--conveniently for René--in November 1488 (her will is dated 7 November 1488). After her death, René's second marriage was formally celebrated in December. A papal dispensation for this marriage, sought years earlier, was finally granted on 1 January 1489.

 

Who knows what Philippa of Guelders made of all of this? 

 

Regardless of the exact status of her marriage to René, the couple clearly consummated it in 1485, because two children were born before the formal marriage was celebrated in 1488: Charles, born in August 1486, and François, born just less than a year later, in July 1487. Both of these children died as infants. A third son and heir, Antoine, was born on 4 June 1489. Philippa would give birth to nine more children, though not all would survive infancy. 

 

Philippa's children were born in many different places within Lorraine (Nancy, Pont-à-Mousson, Bar le Duc, Lunéville, Château de Condé-sur-Moselle), thus demonstrating that, as duchess, Philippa traveled widely through the duchy. Interestingly, historian Stuart Carroll claims that Philippa's "favorite son" was Claude, born in 1496--"possibly because her eldest, Antoine, had been born before the death of her husband's repudiated and barren first wife." (While Jeanne d'Harcourt's will is dated 4 November 1488, the exact date of her death isn't clear.) The "rumours" that Antoine was "a bastard" caused "some tension" between the two brothers.

 

In addition to fulfilling her "obligation" as a wife by bearing an heir for her husband, Philippa was known for her pious works, including helping provide for people during a great famine in 1502 and during a plague that extended from 1503 to 1506. She also administered the duchy during her husband's absences on military campaigns.  

 

A seventeenth-century portrait of René of Lorraine
and Philippa of Guelders

 

René of Lorraine was a patron of arts and artists, a cultured Renaissance prince, and Philippa shared in these interests. Zwetheul offers an excellent overview of the couple's architectural and gardening projects, their courtly entertainments, and their patronage of poets and scholars. They also had quite a collection of exotic animals! (For all of this, click here.)

 

Also as duchess, Philippa of Guelders commissioned many lavishly decorated volumes, some of them produced by an illustrator now called "the master of Philippa of Guelders" (many manuscript pages and illustrations from the master of Philippa of Guelders seem to be regularly offered at auction--a Google search will result in beautiful examples). In her discussion of an illustrated book of hours produced for the duchess, Nettekoven notes that the illuminator of this manuscript, Jean Coene IV, also received many commissions from Philippa--and that he was "not based in Lorraine but in Paris, where the Duchess apparently had most of her manuscripts made."

 

In 1508, the fifty-seven-year-old René died, leaving Philippa, then about forty-three years old, as a widow with at least two small children. Her ninth child, a son named Louis, had been born in 1500, and her twelfth (and last), a boy, another François, born in 1506. (Philippa's second son, the first François, had been born nearly twenty years earlier, but died as an infant.) Philippa had also given birth to twins, her tenth and eleventh children, Claude and Catherine, in 1502, but they seem to have died shortly after their birth.

 

After her husband's death, Philippa moved to become regent for the new duke of Guelders, her son Antoine, but at that point, since he was already nineteen years old, the Estates of Guelders determined he did not need a regent. Within a year, however, Antoine was off to war, leaving Lorraine to his mother and the bishop of Toul to act as regents during his absence. For the next eleven years, the widowed Philippa managed Guelders for her son--when he was not at war (during the Italian campaigns of Louis XII's and then François I), Antoine resided with the French court, where his marriage to Renée of Bourbon was arranged by the French king in 1516.

 

Meanwhile, Philippa's second surviving son, Claude (the one born well after the papal dispensation for his parents' marriage), was married in 1513 to another member of the extended French royal family, Antoinette of Bourbon. The marriage took place in Paris, but the couple then traveled to Bar-le-Duc, Philippa's principal place of residence after her husband's death. In Bar, Antoinette gave birth to her first child, Marie, in 1515. The two remained there with Philippa of Guelders until 1518. 

 

In 1519, Philippa of Guelders, duchess of Lorraine, entered the convent of Sainte-Claire at Pont-à-Mousson, taking her vows on 19 December 1519, in the presence of her sons and their wives (who seemed to have been shocked at her decision and who attempted to persuade her to join a less demanding religious order). Philippa would remain in the convent for the next three decades, dying there on 26 February 1547. 

 

Although she lived a relatively simple religious life in the convent, Philippa remained interested in the affairs of Lorraine, consulting with her sons, offering them advice, and maintaining an active correspondence--she received a letter from the pope in 1520, for example, commending her for joining the religious order. She also received visits from family members. 

 

In the convent, Philippa oversaw the education of her granddaughter, Marie of Guise, who joined her grandmother after the birth of her brother. (At age fourteen, the young Marie would leave the convent, and after a brief first marriage, she was married to James V of Scotland--Marie of Guise's daughter was Mary Stuart, queen of Scots.) Also in the convent, Philippa received Christina of Denmark in 1541 when the young woman (she was just twenty) was on her way to marry Philippa's grandson François, the son of Antoine, duke of Lorraine. The couple would return to the convent to visit Phiippa in 1543.

 

Philippa of Guelders commissioned the production of an altarpiece for her convent. The convent was "nationalized" (seized and secularized) in 1792, during the French Revolution, and the altarpiece Philippa commissioned is now displayed in the Église Saint-Laurent de Pont-à-Mousson. 

 

The altarpiece commissioned by Philippa of Guelders

In the lower-left panel on the left side of the altarpiece is a depiction of the marriage of the Virgin Mary--Philippa herself is included, as a member of those looking on during the ceremony. She is the figure on the far right, in her religious habit.

 

Detail from the altarpiece commissioned by
Philippa of Guilders--who is depicted on the right,
a figure in the habit of a nun

 

Philippa of Guelders was frequently ill during the years she spent in the convent, but by the beginning of her final decade there, her health began to fail. In 1540, she was declining so badly that her family gathered, but she recovered. She fell seriously ill again in 1545, eventually dying on 26 February  1547. She outlived all but two of her children--her son Antoine, duke of Lorraine, had died in 1544, but her son Claude, who had become duke of Guise in 1527, was at Philippa's bedside. (Philippa's son Jean, born in 1498, had a long ecclesiastical career, eventually becoming cardinal of Lorraine--he died in 1550.) 

 

Philippa of Guelders, duchess of Lorraine, was buried in a simple grave in Pont-à-Mousson, as she wished, but her family soon moved her body into the chapel at the convent and erected an imposing monument to her, though in the reclining sculpture on her tomb (a gisant), she was depicted in her nun's habit. When the convent was secularized during the French Revolution, her body was moved to a nearby village. After 1820, the reclining sculpture of Philippa of Guelders was moved to the Église des Cordeliers in Nancy, part of a Franciscan monastery built by her husband René II and located next to the ducal palace.

 

 

Philippa of Guelders, duchess of Lorraine, reclining tomb effigy (gisant)

Église des Cordeliers (Nancy, France)--

the small kneeling figure wearing a crown represents a nun of her convent

The subtitle for this post, "Do not touch me, or I will prick," (Ne mi toqués, il point) is Philippa of Guelders's motto, which accompanies her emblem, a thistle and chestnut.