Bertha of Burgundy, queen of the Franks? Sort of?

Bertha of Burgundy, queen of the Franks? (succession of Conrad I to the kingdom of Burgundy, 11 July 937)

I am back again to profile yet another of the wives of Robert "the Pious," king of the Franks. But, hey! It's not like the guy is Henry VIII or anything--he only had three wives, and he didn't kill any of them . . . (Once you've read about Robert's three marriages, you'll see why I can't call him "the Pious" without the quotation marks.)

It's not that poor Robert's wives kept dying on him either. Rather, poor Robert needed an heir, but he had a terrible time finding a wife whom he found suitable--his first wife was Rozala of Italy, but he repudiated her because she was too old. Then he married Bertha, who wasn't that much younger than Rozala, but he thought she was better. And then, when he was forced to separate from Bertha because his marriage was deemed "incestuous," he married Constance of Arles. She bore Robert the children neither of his previous wives had managed to produce for him, but he tried to get rid of her too . . . You just have to love "traditional marriage"!

A twelfth-century image
of Bertha of Burgundy
(detail from the Genealogy
of the Ottonians) 

So that's the background for today's post: poor "pious" Robert who just needed a wife. And although he had three, one of whom obligingly gave him an heir (and then some--Constance gave birth to seven surviving children), none of the women he married seemed to be just what he was looking for. 

All that said, here is what we know about the second of Robert's three wives, Bertha of Burgundy.

Bertha (or Berthe) of Burgundy was the daughter of Conrad I, king of Burgundy. Conrad was the second king of a united Upper and Lower Burgundy, inheriting the throne from his father, Rudolf II, who died on on 11 July 937 (and thus the date for today's post). Conrad's mother, by the way, was Bertha of Swabia, who has her own interesting marital connections.* 

As for Bertha of Burgundy's mother, she was Matilda of France, who was Conrad I's second wife. (Conrad's first wife, Adelaide of Bellay, had given birth to at least one child, a daughter named Gisela, born c. 955-60. Adela seems to have died about the year 963, since a charter dated 23 March refers to her, suggesting she was still alive.) Matilda, whose marriage to Conrad thus took place around 964, was the daughter of the Carolingian Louis IV, king of the Franks, and Gerberga of Saxony. (Louis was Gerberga's second husband--she had had four children with her first husband, Gilbert, duke of Lorraine) and then, during her marriage to Louis, she bore eight more, including Bertha.

Bertha of Burgundy was first married to Otto (or Odo or Eudes) I, count of Blois, probably between the years 978-80, and during the years of this marriage, she gave birth to at least three sons and a daughter. In 986, a charter refers to the presence of Bertha, the countess, during the signing of the document--also present were two sons, Theobald and Otto, who was "still in the cradle" (adhuc in cunabulo). Another charter, from 989, also refers to her sons, naming Robert, Theobald, and Otto. A donation in 1001 and a charter from 1024 refer to Agnès, Bertha's daughter. Two other sons may have been born, though their existence seems less certain--in 1007 a charter about property is confirmed by "Count Otto and his brother Landry," and in 1024, a record notes that a boy named Thierry was buried "at his brother Theobald's feet."

As you can see from these references, the birth order of Bertha's children isn't clear. The most reliable source I have found for this period is the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, which I've linked to several times, above. The FMG suggests the following about the births and deaths (and possible birth order?) of Bertha's children: Robert (b. date unknown - d. 989-95); Theobald (b. c. 979-81 - d. 11 July 1004); Otto (b. 982-3 - 15 November 1037); Agnès (fl. 1001 - 1024); Thierry (d. c. 1024); and Landry (d. after 27 September 1007).

  

At some point during the decade and a half of her marriage to Otto, Bertha of Burgundy, then countess of Blois, met the man who would become her second "husband," Robert, king of the Franks. In fact, Robert acted as godfather to one of her children. (An online source suggests this was Theobald, but I have not been able to verify that information.)

Bertha's husband, Otto, died on 12 March 996, leaving her a widow. A few months later, on 24 October 996, Robert's father, Hugh Capet, also died. It was after the death of his father that Robert, now king of the Franks, decided to marry Bertha of Burgundy.

Genealogy of the Ottonians,

including Rudolf II and Berthe

(Royal Chronicle of Cologne

[Chronica Regia Coloniensis],

Cod. Guelf. 74.3 Aug. 2°;

Heinemann-Nr. 2710, fol. 114v)

There was only one problem. In 996, Robert was already married--he had been married to Rozala of Italy since 988, although he had separated himself from her within a year or two of their marriage. But after the death of his father, who had arranged his marriage to Rozala, Robert decided to free himself entirely from his first wife, and he formally repudiated her. The two were divorced. (Rozala doesn't seem to have fought this action, and she returned to Flanders, where she was reunited with her son, Baldwin IV, count of Flanders. Rozala, once queen of the Franks, would never remarry. She died in Flanders in 1003. 

Interestingly, one of the principal reasons Robert gave for discarding Rozala was that she was too old to bear him children. She was not infertile or incapable, that much was clear--Rozala had been married before, and she had borne two children, an all-important male heir and a girl. As for her age--there is a great deal of uncertainty about the date of Rozala's birth (and of Robert's, for that matter) as well as a great deal of exaggeration about the difference in age between Rozala and Robert. But the best historical evidence, as opposed to misogynist story-telling, is that Rozala was probably ten (or perhaps fifteen) years older than Robert, that when she was repudiated for being "too old" for Robert, she was likely in her mid-thirties while he was in his mid-twenties.

But here's the thing--Bertha was not much younger than Rozala. In recent analysis, historian Jean Dhondt suggests that Rozala may have been born just before 962. Bertha meanwhile, was born in 964 or 965. 

But the age of his second wife was the least of Robert's problems. Unfortunately, Robert and the woman he now wanted to marry were too closely related--Robert's father, Hugh Capet, had considered Bertha when he was first looking for a marital alliance for his son, but he rejected her as a possible bride because the two were cousins. A marriage between them would be considered incestuous by the Church because they were too closely related by blood.** Moreover, their "spiritual affinity," the bond that had been created with Robert's role in the baptism of Bertha's child, compounded their incestuous (by contemporary standards) union.*** 

The two, Robert and Bertha, knew about the problematic nature of their relationship, but in December 996, despite the union being "in breach of canon law," they married anyway, the ceremony performed by the obliging archbishop of Tours with some additional French bishops witnessing the marriage.

In reaction, Pope Gregory V convened a synod in Pavia in January 977 (where he had gone after he had been forced to leave Rome). Robert and Bertha were condemned and prescribed seven years of penance. (Archambaud of Tours, who had married the pair, was summoned to appear before the synod and if he failed to appear, threatened with "suspension from communion.") If they did not separate, Robert was threatened with excommunication. And, for good measure, the French clerics who had supported Robert were 'rebuked." But this ruling had no effect on Robert, and so a general council in Rome was convened in 998 and "threatened the king with anathema" (menaça le roi d'anathème). 

Still Pope Gregory V didn't live long enough to bother Robert very much--the pope died in early 999, to be succeeded by Pope Sylvester II, a man that Robert hoped would be more amenable to the king of the Franks. After all, as a younger man, then Gerbert of Aurillac had supported Robert's father, Hugh Capet, in particular when the king of the Franks wanted to establish a co-kingship with his son, and Gerbert had also functioned as a kind of teacher for Robert. But perhaps Robert shouldn't have been so hopeful when Gerbert became pope--at some danger to himself, Gerbert had refused Robert and Bertha when he had been asked to perform their marriage.

Jean-Paul Laurens, 1875

The Excommunication of Robert the Pious

L'Excommunication de Robert le Pieux

(Paris, Le Musée d'Orsay)

As it happened, then, the new pope proved less supportive than Robert might have wished--or, maybe not. Because in 999, after three years of marriage, Robert's second "wife" had failed to provide him with an heir. A single pregnancy had resulted in a stillborn son, which perhaps was a sign of God's disapproval of this marriage. 

In any case, after yet another synod addressed the issue, Pope Sylvester II, formerly Gerbert of Aurillac, confirmed Robert's condemnation. Still, Robert and Bertha stayed together. They finally separated in September 1001 after Rome repeated the call for Robert to separate himself from Bertha and put his kingdom under a sentence of excommunication. Still without an heir, Robert decided at last that Bertha had to go. Robert "the pious" repudiated his second wife about the year 1003. 

Jean-Paul Laurens, 1883
The Parting of King Robert and Bertha
(Philadelphia Museum of Art)--
unfortunately, the painting is very dark,
but if you go to the original, you can enlarge
the image to see the suffering on Bertha's face

Still in need of an heir, Robert "the Pious" married Constance of Arles in 1004. It was a somewhat peculiar arrangement, at least from a modern point of view. I'll let historian Kathleen Nolan describe it:

Bertha [of Burgundy]'s son, young count Odo II of Blois, married Ermengarde of Auvergne, granddaughter of Adelaide of Anjou and her first husband, Stephen of Brioude, while Robert himself wed Constance, daughter of the same Adelaide of Anjou and her last husband, Count William "the Liberator" of Provence. 

In other words, while Bertha's son married the granddaughter of Adelaide of Anjou, her former husband (right after he divorced her) married the daughter of the same woman. Got that?

As Nolan writes, a royal marriage was difficult in the best of circumstances, since a bride "entered a rather closed community" where there were already long-established connections and loyalties. But poor Constance encountered a rather different set of circumstances--she faced "personal animosity, political intrigue, and clerical hostility." 

None of the whole affair between Bertha and Robert seemed to do much damage Robert's reputation, however. Remember, his sobriquet: "the Pious." In his biography of the king, for example, Robert's chaplain, Helgaud de Fleury, did mention the unfortunate nature of the king's marriage to Bertha, but rather than condemning the sin of incest, Helgaud regarded the whole affair as yet another reason to praise Robert "the Pious"--Helgaud compared the "virtuous" and "humble" King Robert to the biblical King David and then explained that Robert's sin had been "washed away" because he had recognized his fault and prayed for forgiveness.

 A distraught Bertha of Burgundy,
detail from Jean-Paul Laurens,
The Excommunication
of Robert the Pious

Despite Helgaud's claims about the king recognizing his sin and praying for forgiveness, Robert wasn't quite done with Bertha of Burgundy. In the words of medieval historian Constance Bouchard, "Robert repeatedly attempted . . . to rejoin Bertha." There is some evidence that, as late as 1008, when Robert visited Rome, he was trying to get Pope John XIII to grant him a divorce his third wife, Constance of Arles, in order to reunite with Bertha. 

According to historian Penelope Ann Adair, Robert was back in Rome again, in 1010, still trying to get a divorce from Constance. And Bertha "followed Robert to Rome hoping for permission to remarry him." But Pope Sergius IV, who had assumed the papacy in July 1009, was no more interested in granting it than his predecessors had been.

Unfortunately--or fortunately?--for Bertha of Burgundy, Robert "the Pious" was never able to divorce his third wife, Constance of Arles who, despite her own set of difficulties with Robert, managed to produce seven children with him, four sons and three daughters.

I haven't been able to trace Bertha after she was separated from Robert, and the date of her death is based on a reference in the records of the cathedral of Chartres recording the death on "XVII Kal Feb" 1010 of "Bertha, mother of count Odo" (Berta mater Odonis comitis), but some sources suggest (without documentation) that Bertha may have died years later. Writing about Bertha, the nineteenth-century historian Chrétien Pfister notes a "legend" that the repudiated Bertha sought refuge in Montreuil, just outside Paris, and built a number of churches. 

Here and there I've also run across speculation that Bertha of Burgundy may be the Bertha who married Arduin of Ivrea, who became king of Italy in 1002, just a year or so before Bertha was finally repudiated by Robert of France. But, then, you find all sorts of crazy stuff online, and I've found no documentation that supports this identification--nothing that provides any sources. 

Still, I'd like to think Bertha of Burgundy was the Bertha who married Arduin of Ivrea, became his queen, had three sons with him, and lived happily ever after for some number of years. That's probably not the case, but, still, it would be a nice ending for her. (I'm not at all a Hemingway fan, but I'll steal a line from The Sun Also Rises: "Isn't it pretty to think so?")

There were no contemporary chroniclers like Helgaud de Fleury who cared to document Bertha of Burgundy's life, and even today there are no biographies of her--there is just too little known about her, other than that she was married at least once, twice if you count her union with Robert, that she had at least four children, maybe two more, and that she was ensnared in what the Church regarded as an illegal marriage. But I have to think that her story would make a great novel . . . 

*Fun fact: after the death of her first husband, Rudolf II, king of Burgundy, Bertha of Swabia, married Hugh of Provence, king of Italy. With this marriage, the widowed queen of Burgundy became the queen of Italy--Bertha was Hugh's fourth wife. Hugh's marital career was as complicated as that of Robert "the Pious." Hugh's first wife died, who knows what happened to his second, and his third wound up imprisoned and dead (and their marriage seems to have been illegal anyway). And oh, by the way--before her marriage to Hugh, Hugh's first wife, Guilla of Provence, had been married to Rudolf I of Upper Burgundy, the father of--you guessed it--Rudolf II, Bertha of Swabia's first husband! To put this another way, Hugh of Provence, king of Italy, married Rudolf II's mother and then his widow. Hugh also married off his son, Lothair, to Rudolf II and Bertha of Burgundy's daughter, Adelaide. All these marriages were attempts to resolve ongoing conflicts bertween Burgundy and Italy.

**Robert and Bertha were cousins. According to historian Penelope Ann Adair, "Robert and Bertha were both great-grandchildren of the German king, Henry I, and thus second cousins." In their excellent edition of Helgaud de Fleury's life of Robert the Pious, Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette LaBoury note that the relationship of Robert and Bertha was calculated "at the third degree" (au troisième degré), a claim that is also made by Elizabeth Hallam. (Being related in the third degree is not the same as being second cousins--degrees count "steps" to reach a common ancestor, while "cousins" are about generations--but to be honest, I just can't figure out cousins/degrees myself.) Anyway, the excellent genalogical table provided by Bautier and LaBoury shows their relationship--Robert II's grandmother was Hedwig of Saxony, while Bertha's grandmother was Hedwig's sister, Gerberga of Saxony, both daughters of Henry the Fowler, king of Germany, and his wife, Matilda of Ringelhelm. On cousinship and degrees, click here.

Canon law concerned itself with the blood relationships among those who would marry. For a discussion of consanguinity as an impediment to a valid marriage, and for an explanation of the way these relationships were calculated, click here.

***Among the marriage canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) were several relating to godparents, including one that prohibited the marriage of a person to his/her child's godparent. To be a godparent established a spiritual consanguinity (blood relationship)--so the marriage of a godparent to a godchild, of two godparents to one another, or, as in the case with Prince Edward and Joan, of a spiritual and natural parent, were all considered incestuous. (And the Fourth Lateran council extended consanguinity to the fourth degree, so that marriages of fourth cousins, or any nearer relatives, were prohibited.)

For the problems of finding royal marriage partners during this period, see For the best explanation Constance B. Bouchard's "Consanguinity and Noble Marriage in Tenth and Eleventh Centuries," Speculum 56, no. 2 (1981): 268-87.

Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval: Aristocrat, Castaway, Survivor

Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval (arrival in St. John's, Newfoundland, 7 June 1542)

The story of Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval seems as if it must be a work of fiction, and although "fictionalized" accounts of her extraordinary life were among the earliest to be written, what happened to this young woman in the mid-sixteenth century is not a romantic tale. Hers is a remarkable story of survival against all odds.

Marguerite de la Rocque's story

was told first by

Marguerite d'Angoulême, 

Queen of Navarre, 

in her Heptaméron, published

posthumously in 1558 as

Histoires des Amans Fortunés

(title page of first edition,

Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Little is known about Marguerite de la Rocque before the year 1536, when she is identified as co-holder of the seigneurial estate of Pontpoint (Picardy) and when a surviving documents suggests she pledged "an act of faith and homage" ([un] acte de foi et hommage) for her principal lands in Périgord and Languedoc. Although neither of her parents has been identified, she is somehow related to Jean-François de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, the son of Bernard de La Rocque. 

While Bernard's family was primarily associated with Languedoc, his third wife, Isabeau de Popincourt, brought the title and holdings of Roberval into the marriage, and although there is some disagreement about whether Jean-François was the son of Bernard's second (unnamed) wife or Isabeau, his third, it was Jean-François who inherited the title and property after his father's death. 

Roberval's nineteenth-century biographer, Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne, avoided the problem identifying the mother of Jean-François by saying that when Bernard died in 1514, he left two children, a son (Jean-François) and a daughter, Charlotte. More recent genealogical research indicates Bernard also left a second son, another Jean de la Rocque, this Jean a monk who became prior of his order in Normandy.

Just how Marguerite de la Rocque is related to Jean-François is not clear, but their relationship is crucial to her fate. That she was not Roberval's daughter is certain. Although he did marry at least once, Jean-François had no children. Surviving records indicate that Roberval had "first cousins" (cousins germains), and "close family members" (cloches cousins), but they do not clarify his relationship to Marguerite. In his detailed genealogical work on Roberval, the Québécois historian Robert Robert La Roque de Roquebrune says only that Marguerite is Roberval's "very close relative" (parente très proche), but he adds nothing further.

Despite inheriting great wealth, Jean-François found himself in financial difficulties. In Dionne's words, "his splendor attracted friends, and his prodigality a whole swarm of flatterers." And then, having converted to Protestantism, he was outlawed, along with others of the Reformed faith, in 1534. Although his close relationship with the king, François I, allowed him to return to France (and the royal court), Roberval had by then squandered much of his fortune. 

It was his desperate financial situation that may have led him "to the idea of recouping his fortune in Canada." In 1540, the king appointed Roberval "lieutenant-general in the country of Canada" with the aim of establishing a permanent colony. Although Jacques Cartier, an experienced mariner, had already made two voyages of exploration to Canada, it was Roberval who was charged with founding a colony; he was to be "viceroy," with Cartier as the expedition's "chief navigator."

Title page of Claude Gruget's
1559 second edition of 
Marguerite de Navarre's 
L'Heptaméron
(Bibliotheque nationale de France)

While Cartier sailed in 1541, Roberval did not set off for Canada until 16 April 1542, finally leaving France with three ships, the Valentine, the Anne, and the Lèchefraye. Traveling with him were about two hundred would-be colonists. In addition to men with military experience, like Roberval himself, some of those on the expedition were gentlemen while others were craftsmen. And some joined the expedition after being released from prison; as Allaire Bernard notes in his entry on Roberval in The Canadian Encyclopedia, "the French king decided to increase the size of the original expedition and empty his overcrowded prisons." Also on the voyage were a few women, among them Marguerite. 

On 7 June 1542, Roberval arrived in Canada, entering into the harbor of what is now St. John's, Newfoundland, and I have used that date for this post. On that day, Roberval and his three vessels met with Cartier, who was on his way back to France, the process of settlement not having gone well. Roberval ordered Cartier to return to the colony he had established, Charlesbourg-Royal, but Cartier ignored Roberval and sailed away "under the cover of darkness." 

Roberval and his settlers, having arrived in Canada, were at the end of their long voyage, but it is at this point that the story of Marguerite begins. Many of the details  of just what happened to her differ from one account to another, but the broad outlines of her experiences are clear. Roberval abandons Marguerite, leaving her on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Marguerite survives until she is rescued in the spring of 1544 by French fishermen. She is taken back to France.

The earliest version of what happened to Marguerite de la Rocque is found in the collection of stories written by Marguerite d'Angoulême, the queen of Navarare, and sister of the French king.* In The Heptameron, the young woman's story is recounted by a character named Simontault, a knight who is one of ten young people, five men and five women, who have been stranded during a flood and decide to pass the time by telling each other stories. Simontault says that his narrative is intended "to serve as an example to women, and to give men cause for admiration, to see in the weaker sex what weakness recoils from." But Simontault is clear that the story he tells is fact, not fiction: I "will relate what I heard from Captain Robertval and several of his company." 

While Simontault thus names Roberval and even gives him a title, "Captain," he does not name Marguerite, nor does he reveal that she is related Roberval. Instead, her identity is obscured, and she is introduced as the nameless wife of a nameless "artisan" on board ship. This artisan proves himself to be a "traitor" to "his master," Roberval. Roberval decides that he must execute the traitor, but then he is overcome by "compassion" for the "tears and supplicatons" of the condemned man's poor wife and decides that he will grant the woman "what she asked" (emphasis mine): she asks Roberval to leave her and her husband on a little island, "inhabited only by wild beasts"! 

The wife's request is granted. She and her husband are abandoned--the unnamed woman her New Testament with her (so of course she will be fine). The two, husband and wife, survive for a while on the island, building themselves a shelter and hunting for food, the woman with rocks, the man with an arquebus that Roberval left with the couple. The unnamed "traitor" falls ill and dies, the woman buries him, fights off animals that threaten to eat his corpse, and then, "living like the beasts as to her body, and like the angels as to her spirit, she passed the time in reading, contemplation, prayers, and orisons, having a cheerful and contented spirit in a body emaciated and half dead." But one of the vessels of Roberval's "fleet" sails by, the men onboard see her, rescue her, and take her back to France. (I can't help but add here the reacton of Ennasuite, one of the young, unmarried ladies after listening to Simontault's tale: "If beasts did not bite me, their company would be more agreeable to me than that of men, who are irascible and unbearable.")

While the queen of Navarre's work was not published until nearly a decade after her death in 1549, she most certainly would have had some personal knowledge of events--she knew Roberval well, not only through their court connections (Marguerite was the sister of François I), but also because of her support for the Reformed faith. The queen of Navarre is thus careful in the way she positions herself as she relates the story. It is distanced from the queen--it is framed as a story-within-a story and put into the mouth of the narrator Simontault. 

As for the two principal actors. Marguerite of Navarre is telling this story when both Roberval and Marguerite de la Rocque are still living, In this, the first known version of the story, "Captain Roberval" is seen to have acted justly--he condemns a traitor to death. He also acts mercifully--he grants the wife of the condemned man what she asks for, to spare her husband's life. He even acts generously, under the circumstances, not only setting them down on the island, as the wife had asked, but also by leaving them a few helpful supplies, like a weapon with which to hunt. In crafting her nararative, the queen of Navarre does not have her narrator utter a single word of cricism of Captain Roberval's behavior. 

At the same time, in composing her narrative, the queen of Navarre shields the identity of Marguerite de la Rocque. She does not name the woman on board the ship, nor does she reveal her social status. Instead, the unnamed woman is presented as the wife of a craftsman, not as an unmarried aristocrat. As important, the wife in the queen of Navarre's narrative is free from any fault or failing herself, her behavior under these dire circumstances serving as a model for all women.

François de Belleforest,
Le Cinquiesme Tome des
Histoires Tragiques, 1572 ed.
(Bibliotheque nationale de France)

When the poet François de Belleforest recounts the story of Marguerite de la Rocque in Le Cinquiesme Tome des Histoires Tragiques, first published in 1570, he too frames her story. In his "tragic histories," Belleforest collects a series of sensational tales, frequently focused on revenge and betrayal, especially within families (one of his tragic histories is widely cited as the source of Shakespeare's Hamlet). Belleforest then embellishes these scandalous narratives with a healthy dose of moralizing--I love the marginal notes that frequently offer his sober, pious comments on the events in the story being told. 

Marguerite de la Rocque's story is prefaced by a rather long history of heroic adventurers, conquerors, and explorers, extending from Alexander the Great and Hannibal to Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Jacques Cartier.** 

Having arrived at the "great voyagers of our excellent century," Belleforest then relates the story of a "young gentlewoman" who wants to see the wonders of nature and experience "strange and distant lands" for herself. Her brother agrees to take her with him on an extended sea voyage, though he is concerned about how she will fare. The trip is full of peril--he's worried about the rigors of the voyage, of course, but he sees potential danger to his sister posed by the men who will be on board the ship.

In this version of the story, Marguerite de la Rocque once again remains nameless, but so does her brother, who is only referred to in Belleforest's "tragic history" as "the captain." Despite his misgivings about his sister's reputation and the possibility of a physical "assault" upon her virtue when she is onboard a ship surrounded by so many men, the captain takes on board a young, handsome gentleman--one who isn't rich, but who is graceful, well-read, and likes poetry (and there is a very long poem by the young man embedded in the story once the three principal characters have been introduced). Belleforest also suggests--but does not make it certain--that the unnamed gentleman "perhaps" got himself onto the ship because he wanted to appeal to the "good graces" of the captain's sister. 

The demoiselle is enchanted with the young man's amorous verse, and the two are soon burned by the "flames of love." Indeed, the captain's sister becomes "the happiest gentlewoman alive," and the peculiar liberty offered them on board the ship allows them the freedom to enjoy the pleasures of one another's company.  (The narrator of the story at this point inserts his own very long reminder that women must cherish their honor and that gentleman should not make an idol of love.)

The pair consider marriage, but the demoiselle knows her brother--he is a proud man who would never allow his sister to marry the handsome gentleman, no matter how beautiful his poetry. She says that they should keep their love secret. And so their idyll continues as the ship sails on an incredible journey--Belleforest includes an itinerary that carries on for pages, more poetry, and a long discourse on love before returning to our pair of lovers, who at last decide to marry par paroles de present ("by words spoken in the present," or per verba de praesentia, a legal form of marriage, the consensual exchange of vows, though not necessarily the formal marriage that would please the young woman's brother!). Despite her clandestine marriage, the demoiselle is cautious about her honor and delays consummation--much to the ardent gentleman's despair. Belleforest's marginal comments here is worth quoting: "Too much privacy causes the ruin of chastity."

But after pages and pages of the young man pressuring the young woman, and the young woman denying her "husband" (he is now identified as son mari), the lovers are finally united in body as well as in spirit, as Belleforest discreetly phrases it. And the woman becomes pregnant. 

Now the captain had had his suspicions about the two during the long voyage--three months and counting--but he finally looks at his sister and sees the unmistakable signs of her pregnancy. He speaks angrily to her, accusing her of having besmirched not only her honnor but her family's name. The young woman defends herself, at last revealing that she has not ignored her reputation--she claims she has been "legitimately married," and she defends the gentleman she has married, saying he is "virtuous, honest, wise, and valiant." A long debate continues, followed by another long discussion of all the lands the captain's ship passes on their voyage.

At length (and I do mean "at length"), the ship reach a "lost" and deserted island, and the captain decides to leave the couple there. "I am not as cruel as you are ingrateful," he tells them. He leaves them some arms and ammunition, but adds something just for the "gentleman": ink and paper so he can amuse himself by writing virelays and ballads. And that's that. The young woman's brother sails away "without saying another word."

And the rest goes more or less as Marguerite de Navarre told the story. The two pray, they build a shelter, and they support one another. In a marginal note, Belleforest identifies the island where they have been cast away "the isle of demons in the western sea." Belleforest's narrative diverges from the queen of Navarre's with the woman's pregnancy, however. Some weeks after the two have been left on the island, the gentlewoman gives birth to a son--the baby's parents serve alsoas his priest and baptize him. The infant does not live long, however; since the gentlewoman has only roots and grass to eat, she cannot produce milk, and he soon dies. 

Soon the gentleman also becomes ill. He composes one more lengthy poem when he feels his end approaching--more than five pages long in the printed edition--and then he dies. The gentlewoman, now alone on the island, buries her husband at the foot of a tree and awaits the hour of her own death. She cries "for several hours," before realizing that she isn't dying. She continues to live.

At last, after a year has passed, the ships that have abandoned her return, and the gentlewoman thinks her brother has come back, sorry for having abandoned her. The privations of island life have left her looking so "hideous" that the men on the ships mistake her for a monster or a phantom--maybe one of the demons on the isle of demons. They soon give up that idea when they realize "the monster" can speak French. Her brother, however, has not returned because he pitied her--God has punished him, and he is dead. The men take the gentlewoman on board ship with them, and she returns to France. Although Belleforest tells his readers that she never regains her beauty or her joy, she is "worthy of praise." She lives thereafter with dignity--and in isolation--devoted always to the memory of her dead husband.

Closing out his story, Belleforest apologizes for not knowing the names of the demoiselle, the young gentleman, or the lady's brother, even while telling his reader that "our memory" of these events are still "fresh," having taken place "hardly twenty years" before the present day. He has taken the occasion to write the story down for those whom he "wishes to please."

Whew! Belleforest's version of Marguerite de la Rocque's story is much longer than Marguerite of Navarre's--in the first edition of L’Heptaméron, it occupies just over three pages of printed text. Belleforest's version of the story runs to some thirty-five pages. Still, the broad outline of the tale is the same--the demoiselle on a ship, she is abandoned by the captain and left on a wild island, and then she eventually returns to France. In both stories, the unnamed woman is also a wife, cast away with her husband. 

But many details have changed from one account to the next. The woman whom Roberval abandons in Belleforest's tragic history is, like Marguerite de la Rocque herself, a well-born woman. Her personal identity is still preserved, however, since she remains unnamed. There is the addition of a poor but attractive gentleman, his desires, the clandestine marriage, and the pregnancy. And though all of this may seem to shade the gentlewoman's honor and reputation, Belleforest ends his narrative with praise of her. 

While the captain, named in the queen of Navarre's account, he is also unnamed in Belleforest's version of the story. He is, however, described as the young gentlewoman's brother. His actions may seem understandable, if not excusable--anger, disgust, and disappointment at his sister's behavior--but it is the unnamed brother who is judged badly, not his sister. And his actions are condemned not just by Belleforest (and his readers), but by God. It may be that Belleforest feels himself able to cast this judgment on the "captain" because, by the time his tragic history is published, Jean-François de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval, has died.***

Title page of André Thevet's
La cosmographie vniuerselle,
1575

The third and last contemporary source for Marguerite de la Rocque's story is that of the Franciscan explorer and historian André Thevet. In La Cosmographie Universelle, published in 1575, Thevet claims to describe every part of the known world--and frequently says he has traveled to all these places himself and seen all that he describes firsthand.****

Although Thevet did travel extensively in the eastern Mediterranean and Brazil, he never sailed to North America as he claims to have done. As Marcel Trudel notes in his essay in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Thevet was a "bogus scholar and a naive compiler of facts." He "recorded indiscriminately everything he read or heard, while at the same time creating the impression that he himself had actually visited the countries (including North America) that he described."

Nevertheless, while Thevet may never have been to Canada, he did do his research, using published works by those, like Jacques Cartier, who had. But Thevet also included information that was not in these source works, leading scholars to conclude that he acttually "talked with explorers." Despite his "gross errors and contradictions," Thevet "accumulated data to be found in no other sources," leading at least one modern historian to refer to him "an amazing source."

And so, what does André Thevet have to say about Marguerite de la Rocque? Notably, Thevet claims to have direct knowledge not only the story but of both principals, Jean-François Roberval as well as Marguerite de la Rocque. Indeed, Thevet refers to Roberval as "my familiar" (that is, "a close friend or associate," a "person whom one knows well," Oxford English Dictionary). In his account of the expedition, Thevet writes that Roberval was following the instructions of the king to "populate" the "land of Canada" in order to benefit France--if it didn't bring François I "much revenue," then least it would gain "immortal honor" for the king, who will have "rescued" the "barbarous people" inhabiting the land from their "ignorance." 

Roberval's expedition will include the experienced Cartier, Thevet writes. And Roberval will also bring along a group of people to help "populate" the new land, including some "gentlemen," "artisans of all kind," and "several women," among them Marguerite, whom Thevet describes as "a rather close relative" of Roberval's. (In a later retelling of the story, Thevet says that Roberval is Marguerite's uncle.) Among those on board is an unnamed gentleman who has decided to take part in the journey "more for the love" of Marguerite than "for the service of the king" or "respect" for Roberval, the captain of the ship. 

Once on board ship, the unnamed "gentleman of good birth" wastes no time in pursuing Marguerite, his pursuit encouraged by an old servant of Marguerite's (une vielle servante), a woman named Damienne, whom Thevet describes as "a very clever bawd." Like Belleforest, Thevet is notably discreet in his account of the relationship between the young gentleman and Marguerite--he says only that the two quickly "passed beyond promises and mere words." But Thevet blames the love affair on Marguerite's old servant, claiming that it was aided and abetted by the "clever bawd" Damienne, who "played the sentinel" while the two young lovers "went about their business." Thevet says that "all this"--the behavior of the two lovers--is due to the "prompt[ing]" of the servant Damienne.

Roberval is not ignorant about what is going on--he is informed about the relationship by several of those on the ship--as carefully as the two lovers thought they were being, there is not much privacy on a ship, even if a "clever bawd" is helping you! Thevet says that Roberval is "clever and wise." Instead of reacting immediately, he "disguised his wrath," more angry at Marguerite than the young gentleman. In order to "punish her," without "wronging" her young lover, Roberval separates the two, isolating them on separate ships. His intention is to punish his young relative but not to "wrong" the unnamed gentleman. But, seeing their continued love and loyalty, Roberval "decided to give them a surprise." 

As Thevet recounts this "surprise," he does not do so without judging Roberval's actions. "[B]ursting with spite," Roberval abandons Marguerite and Damienne on the "Île des Démons" (Isle of Demons), telling her "this was the place he had ordained for the penitence of her crime and of the scandal she had done him." He leaves the young woman with not one but four arquebuses and some ammunition. 

The Island of Demons, from
André Thevet, La Cosmographie Universelle,
1575

Marguerite's lover observes what is happening from the ship he is on board. Fearing that he will suffer the same fate, but imagining that he will be abandoned on some other island, far from his beloved, the young man gathers together quite a haul of supplies and "precipitate[s] himself  onto the isle to accompany his mistress." In a note to their translation, Schlesinger and Stabler suggest this phrasing has led many later interpreters to say the young man was somehow able to swim ashore carrying all the provisions he'd gathered. 

In Thevet's original, the young man is said to "throw himself" (il se lanç[a]it)--it still isn't clear just how he got to the island from the ship, but whatever he did, he did it while "forgetting the peril of death into which he was hurling himself." For his part, Roberval sails away, still angry that he had been insulted by his young relative but glad that he had gotten rid of the pair "without soiling his hands with their blood."

The young lovers seem to live happily for a while. The island is full of terrible monsters that assume the shape of wild animals, but the two manage to build a shelter, make a bed, and feed themselves by hunting and gathering. At last the demons are conquered by "the Christians," whose "constancy" and "perseverance" make them feel ashamed--the monsters continue howling horribly at night, but otherwise they leave Marguerite and her companions alone. 

In Thevet's account of Marguerite's story, the young woman becomes pregnant only after she has been abandonned on the island--unfortunately, as her time of delivery nears, the young gentleman becomes ill and dies. Thevet attributes his death to his "grief and vexation" (tristesse et facherie) that, in the eight months they have been cast away on the island, no vessels passed that could help them. Following his death, so "grievous" to the young woman, she and her serving woman must defend themselves from the "ferocious beasts." The young woman becomes proficient with both gun and sword--in one day she manages to kill three bears, one of them obviously a polar bear--in Thevet's words, this bear is as "white as an egg" (aussi blanc qu'en oeuf). 

The young woman gives birth to her child, a son, and baptizes him, but then she suffers another blow: her old servant, Damienne, "followed the road" of the young gentleman, dying some "sixteen or seventeen months" after they were left on the island. And then, "a short while later," the young lovers' baby dies too, leaving the poor woman all alone. Well, not quite alone, because the terrible beasts are still on the island. 

Rescue finally comes some after two more months of isolation--at last, two years and five months after she was first abandoned on the Island of Demons, the young woman is rescued by some fishermen. As in Belleforest's version of Marguerite's story, they at first mistake her for one of the demons on the island--they believe the fires she sets to signal them are "illusions" created by the monsters. Once they figure out she is a woman and not a monster, they take her with them back to France. 

It is in France that Thevet claims to have met with Marguerite--he visits with her in Nautron, in the "country of Perigord": when he was there, she told him all about what had happened to her. Aside from living quietly, Thevet does not say what she doing in Nautron. For that, we need to return to the queen of Navarre's first version of Marguerite's story. 

Keeping Marguerite de la Rocque's identity secret, the queen of Navarre says that the sailors take the unnamed woman back with them to La Rochelle: "and there, when they had made known to the inhabitants the fidelity and perseverance of this woman, the ladies paid her great honor, and were glad to send their daughters to her to learn to read and write. She maintained herself for the rest of her days by that honorable profession, having no other desire than to exhort every one to love God and trust in Him, holding forth as an example the great mercy with which He had dealt towards her."

Château de La Mothe, 
Nontrone, France

Marguerite de la Rocque may have first landed in the port city of La Rochelle, as the queen of Navarre says, but most of those who have written about her accept Thevet's claim that she lived in Nautron, specifically at the late fifteenth-century Château de La Mothe. Certainly the locals believe this--as of April 2026, the "small château" is for sale, its online notice making much of the story of Marguerite de la Rocque. 

The dates of Marguerite de la Rocque's birth and death are not known. Neither the Dictionary of Canadian Biography nor the Canadian Encyclopedia hazards a guess about where or when she was born and where or when she died. The French version of Wikipedia offers only "fl. 1536-1542" after her name (the abbreviation "fl.," for fluroit, or "flourished," indicating active dates). Many sources, like the English Wikipedia, cite a date of 1515 for Marguerite's birth, but that seems to rely on the surviving 1536 document--it assumes that she must be twenty-one to swear her oath of fealty, but women could make such an oath at the age of fourteen. And, in any case, it is not certain that this document refers to our Marguerite de la Rocque, though it is likely her.

 

There are only two "certain" dates in Marguerite de la Rocque's life: she set sail with Roberval on 16 April 1542 and arrived in Canada on 7 June 1542. She may have been as young as twenty years old or as old as twenty-seven when she made that voyage. Thevet claimed she was abandoned on the Isle of Demonns for two years and five months, but he doesn't say how soon she was cast away after Roberval arrived in Canada, nor how long her return journey was. She was back in France before Marguerite of Navarre died on 21 December 1549. 

Her life may have been a long one--Thevet doesn't mention her death when he published his Universal Cosmography in 1575. If Marguerite were still alive, she could have been between fifty-three and sixty. A long life. 

However long Marguerite de la Rocque's life, her afterlife is very long indeed. Her story has been told and retold for more than four and a half centuries . . . 

And if you buy Château de La Mothe, please invite me for a long stay!

*Marguerite d'Angoulême's collection of stories, L’Heptaméron, was first published in 1558 by Pierre Boaistuau with the title Histoire des Amans Fortunés (you can see the title page, above). The entire first edition is made available online by the Bibliotheque nationale de France, which you can access by clicking here (that should take you right to the beginning of the story--if not, it is found on fol. 157r). 

Because this edition is incomplete (it includes only 67 stories, among other issues), a second edition was published by Claude Gruget in 1559. He reordered the stories, restored some of the first edition's omissions, and added the title by which we now know the work, L’Heptaméron. At times I have had trouble accessing this 1559 edition at the Bibliotheque nationale's Gallica website, but it is readily available through Wikimedia (click here). Gruget's 1560 edition is also available at the Bibliotheque nationale's Gallica site (click here). And if you're really interested, many of the manuscript versions of Marguerite de Navarre's work have also been digitized--click here, for a list, with links, provided by the Marguerite de Navarre Society.

I've made it easy for myself here (and I hope for you) by quoting from a nineteenth-century edition of Marguerite de Navarre's story collection, in an English translation, posted at A Celebration of Women's Voices; you can access the full story of Marguerite de la Rocque, as told in L’Heptaméron, by clicking here (it's "Novel LXVII").

**François de Belleforest’s Le Cinquiesme Tome des Histoires Tragiques was published in 1570 and again in 1572. I haven't found an English translation online, but the complete text of the 1572 edition is at the Bibliotheque nationale's Gallica website (click here). The translations are my own. By the way, Belleforest was associated with the French court and knew Marguerite de Navarre.  

***When Marguerite d'Angoulême died in 1549, only a few years after the events she relates in her version of Marguerite de la Rocque's story, Jean-François de la Rocque, sieur de Roberval, was still alive. Roberval struggled after returning to France after his voyage, never having resolved his financial problems, and he died in Paris in 1560. By the time Belleforest published his Tragic Histories in 1570, then, Roberval had been dead for a decade. In case you were wondering, Roberval was beaten to death by Catholics when he was leaving a Calvinist church meeting . . . Yikes!

****La Cosmographie universelle d'André Thevet, cosmographe du roi was published just five years after Belleforest's tragic histories. the two men having first been collaborators and then vicious rivals. I have used the second volume of the 1575 edition available at the Internet Archive (click here). The recounting of Marguerite de la Rocque's story, translated into English, is in Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, André Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View (click here). I've relied on Schlesinger and Stabler's translation at times, while checking it against the original. 

Andre Thevet tells Marguerite de la Roque's story a second time. The later version is in hs Le Grande Insulaire et pilotage d'André Thevet angoumoisin, which was unpublished. The part of the manuscript covering North America is available at the Bibliotheque nationale's Gallica website (click here). Schlesinger and Stabler include transcriptions of parts of the original, including Thevet's new version of Marguerite's story (click here).

Anna of Kyiv, Queen and Regent of France

Anna of Kyiv, queen and regent of France (married 19 May 1051)

Anna of Kyiv was the daughter of Yaroslav I Vladimirovich, grand prince of Kyiv. If you read that he was called "the Wise," the source for that soubriquet is not to be found among his tenth-century contemporaries but, as historian Christian Raffensperger notes, in the nineteenth century, part of a "nation-building scheme" by academics. And it wasn't only Ukrainian academics who burnished Yaroslav's reputation--in his 1878 Histoire de la Russie, French historian Alfred Rambaud called him "the Charlemagne of the Russians" (les Charlemagne des Russes).

A "portrait" of Anna of Kyiv, 

(detail, MS NAL 779, fol. 176r

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale)

Anna of Kyiv's mother was Ingegerd Olofsdotter, a Swedish princess, the daughter of Olof Skötkonung, king of Sweden, and his Slavic wife, Estrid of the Obotrites (the Obotrites were members of a West Slavic confederation). Estrid's family and history are not known. According to the Saga of St. Olaf (Óláfs saga helga), Estrid had been kidnapped and brought back to Sweden, where she was "lawfully" married to Olof about the year 1000. That's important to note, because while Estrid became Olof's queen, another Slavic woman became his concubine. Like Estrid, Edla had also been captured and taken to Sweden, but she was Olof's "slave woman" (and mother of two of Olof's sons and two of his daughters).*

Unlike many of the women in this blog, whose lives are difficult to trace, much has been written about Anna of Kyiv, though very little is known about her childhood. The exact date of her birth is unknown; as Emily Warden notes in her recent work on Anna of Kyiv,  "the best estimates have still only succeeded in narrowing it down to sometime between 1024 and 1032."

Anna was one of nine children born to Yaroslav I and Ingrid Olofsdottir. (Ingrid may have been Yaroslav's second wife; as the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy notes, the existence of a first wife is possible--there does seem to have been a son, Iliya Yaroslavich, born before Yaroslav's marriage to Ingrid, though the existence of this child seems also uncertain.)

Nothing is known about Anna's education either, though something of it has been inferred. Anna was born during the period, from 988 to 1244, identified as the "golden age" of Kyivan Rus´. Under her father's rule, Kyiv "became eastern Europe’s chief political and cultural center." Yaroslav I expanded his territories, supported arts and artists, and built St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. In addition to territorial expansion and the "embellish[ing]" of his capital, Anna's father "collected books" and sponsored their translation. He also founded schools. 

At least one modern historian has speculated that, given Yaroslav’s father's interest in education, his daughter would have been well educated. Anna is known to be literate--what may be her autograph signature survives, in Cyrillic script, which suggests she learned to write before her marriage. And she presumably learned French before her marriage in order to converse with her husband. (As Joel Rosenthal notes, there is no evidence that the man Anna would marry, Henry I, king of the Franks, was himself literate, and "no direct evidence which testifies to any appreciable education.")

The life of Anna of Kyiv emerges more fully after her marriage. A fair amount of analysis has focused on the making of the marriage between the daughter of the grand prince of Kyiv and the king of the Franks. As Talia Zajac notes, "Over two hundred articles and books exist on the reign of the princess who left her Eastern Orthodox cultural environment of Kyiv (Kiev) and travelled some 2,000 kilometres across Europe to become the wife of the French king."

The fourteenth-century family tree

(arbre généalogique) showing

Anna of Kyiv, on the right; 

Henry I's first wife, Matilda,

is just to Anna's left 

(MS NAL 779, fol. 176r,

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale)

Much of the analysis about Anna's marriage reflects the need for the Capetian king, grandson of Hugh Capet, to avoid his father's marital disasters. Hugh Capet had looked to the east to find an appropriate bride for his son, Robert "the Pious"--reflecting the concern of the king of the Franks about arranging a marriage that would not violate clerical injunctions against spouses who were too closely related by blood. Hugh Capet had first sought a bride for his son and heir from the Byzantine emperor.** When it came time for Hugh's grandson, Henry I, to seek a wife, these worries about consanguinity were still significant. (And the Church's strictures about such marriages will be important later in Anna's life too . . . )

For Henry, this would be a second marriage. He had been betrothed to Matilda of Franconia, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II and Gisela of Swabia, but the girl died in 1034, before any marriage could take place. (By the way, Matilda was just six years old in 1033 when she was betrothed to the twenty-five-year-old Henry.) In 1034, "little Matilda was replaced by 'another Matilda,'" who was also quite young. The king of the Franks married Matilda of Frisia (b. c. 1025-27), daughter of Liudolf, the marquis of Frisia, and Gertrude of Egesheim.*** Matilda of Frisia gave birth to a daughter about the year 1040. Within four years, both mother and child had died. 

And so, after 1044, Henry needed a wife--or, rather, he needed an heir--but it wasn't until 1049 that his envoys reached Kyiv in search of a woman who would bear him children. 

Meanwhile, Anna's father had been securing significant marriages for his many sons and daughters throughout the continent. The identity of the wife of Yaroslav's son Vladimir of Novgorod (b. 1020) is not clear, but Yaroslav's daughter Anastasia of Kyiv (b. c. 1023) married Andrew I, king of Hungary; his son Iziaslav of Kyiv (b. 1024) married Gertrude of Poland, daughter of Mieszko II, king of Poland; his daughter Elisiv of Kyiv (b. c, 1025) married Harald II, king of Norway****; Sviatoslav (b. 1027) married Killikiya (or Cecilia) of Dithmarshen, daughter of Etheler, count of Dithmarshen, and then, after Killikiya's death, he married Oda of Stade, the daughter of Liudolf of Derlingau and Ida of Elsdorf (who, by the way, was the sister of Matilda of Frisia, Henry I's first wife--yikes!)--Oda had also been a nun, and she was the sister of the bishop of Trier; Vsevolod of Kyiv (b. c. 1030) married a Byzantine  princess whose name was Irina (or maybe Anastasia), and after her death, he was married a second time, to Anna, the daughter of a khan of the Kumans (or Cumans); Igor Yaroslavich (b. c. 1034-6) was married to the countess of Orlamünde (whose name may have been Konigunda); and then there may have been Agatha (b. before 1030), about whose parentage nothing is known, but who has been suggested (by some scholars) as a daughter of Yaroslav, and who was married to Edward the Exile (Edward Ætheling), an unsuccessful claimant to the English throne.

A map showing the "dynastic connections"
of Yaroslav's "ruling family"
and the rest of medieval European royalty
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
(Ukrainian Research Institute,
Harvard University)

I've listed all these marriages in order to show the range of Yaroslav's politcal connections, alliances secured by the marriages of his children. (I've also included the dates of birth for Anna's siblings here to demonstrate possibilities for her date of birth.) As for Anna, in 1043, Yaroslav had sent an envoy to the Holy Roman Emperor, seeking to arrange a marriage between his daughter and the emperor, Henry III. As Raffensperger lays out the advantages for the emperor, Yaroslav's daughters "were the queens of much of Europe, ruling [in] the German Empire, Hungary, Norway, and Poland in the mid-eleventh century." But the emperor declined the invitation, most likely because he needed to secure alliances on his western, rather than his eastern, "frontiers." (The emperor wound up marrying Agnes of Poitou, daughter of the duke of Aquitaine.)

Anna of Kyiv,
miniature from the fourteenth-century
Grandes Chronices de France
MS Royal 16 G VI, fol. 269v
(British Library)--
I love the hesitant expression 
on Anna's face!

And so, when Henry I sent two bishops to Kyiv in 1049, seeking a bride from among Yaroslav's daughters, there were political advantages for both men. Raffensberger notes that there are no surviving records of the negotiations, but their success is clear: in 1050, Anne Yaroslavna arrived in France with the bishops and some unspecified gifts. On 19 May 1051 she was married to the king of the Franks in a ceremony in Rheims and consecrated as queen. The king was forty-two years old, and Anna between nineteen and twenty-seven.

The new queen of the Franks quickly fulfilled her most important role, at least in Henry's eyes: she had children. She gave birth to a son and heir, Philip, in February of 1052 (though there is some uncertainty about this date). His birth was followed by Robert (b. before 1054), whom chronicles say died young, and then Hugh (b. 1057). A daughter, Emma, may have been born about 1054, between the births of Robert and Hugh. 

As was the practice for Capetian kings, Henry had his heir crowned in Rheims on 23 May 1059, when the boy was about seven years old. And then, having secured the succession, Henry died a year later, on 4 August 1060.

Recent scholarship has revisited Anna's role as queen consort, arguing her active role during Henry's reign rather than relegating her to a role as a producer of heirs. In Emily Joan Ward's words, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians' views of Anna of Kyiv, reducing her to a "pious" queen and "dutiful" wife,  were "limited by a refusal fully to recognize the evidence with which they were presented." Historians also focused on her foreignness, identifying Anna as an "alien" queen, unable to play a significant role as queen. As Talia Zajac notes, Anna was dismissed for her "inability" to exercise her public abilities as queen" or for her lack of preparation to do so.

I will not rehearse their arguments here--I've linked you to two great sources, readily available online, and you can access these materials if you are interested. In brief, royal charters demonstrate Anna's role in royal power, as does her presence in the royal court (curia regis) when important disputes were heard and resolved. Along with her husband, Anna also extended patronage to numerous ecclesiastical institutions.

After Henry I's death, Anna's son, Philip, became the sole king of the Franks. Since he was still a minor, the young king had two regents, his mother and his uncle Baldwin V of Flanders (Baldwin was Henry I's brother-in-law, married to the king's sister, Adela of France--both Henry and Adela were the children of their father's third marriage). Anna's role as co-regent has also been discounted in the past, though contemporary chronicles emphasize the queen's significance in her son's reign. Just a few months after Philip became king, in a document dated 25 November 1060, the bishop of Chartres addressed Anna and Philip jointly "our most serene lords, the kings" (dominos nostros serenissimos reges)--though the document has only the young king's seal affixed, with the notary acknowledging Baldwin's acceptance. The young king also acknowledges the role of his mother in a charter from 1061:  "I, Philip, his [Henry's] son I, when still very young, assumed the kingdom together with my mother" (ego, Philippus, filius ejus [Henrici] admodum parvulus, regnum unacum matre suscepissem).

But quite soon after her son became king of France, the dowager queen married again. Her "hasty marriage" to Raoul, count of Crépy-en-Valois, encountered some difficulties because of Raoul's complicated marital history. But whatever scandal this second marriage may have caused among her contemporaries, it did not alienate Anne from the royal court, nor did it end her active role as co-regent. Recent scholarship, like that of Ward and Zajac, has emphasized, in Ward's words, Anna's ongoing "maternal power in the minority kingship of Philip I of France."

And now, we are back to the Church's views of what constituted a valid marriage and what did not--and what role these views played in the judgments made of the dowager queen's second marriage. Before Raoul of Crépy's marriage to Anna, he had been married twice. He first married Adèle of Bar-sur-Aube (he was her fourth husband), and after her death (about 1053-4), he married a woman possibly named Eleanor (or Alienor), who was also derisively referred to as "La Haquenée" (or "the mare"), supposedly a great heiress. But Raoul repudiated his second wife, accusing her of adultery, and then married Anna.

Aside from the obvious charge of bigamy (as if that weren't enough), another problem for this marriage was the relationship between Anna's first and second husbands. The two men were second cousins, both descendants of Herbert of Vermandois, this connection falling well within the prohibited degree of consanguinity (blood relationship). In the words of one outraged chronicler, "Count Raoul, [the king's] cousin, married his widow, which was contrary to human law and divine law [contre jus et fas]" (comte Raoul, son cousin, épousa sa veuve, ce qui était contraire au droit humain et à la loi divine [contre jus et fas]). Raoul's repudiated second wife may have gone to Rome to appeal her case, and Raoul may have been threatened with excommunication or even excommunicated. Sources on all this vary. 

But surviving evidence suggests that Anna continued her role as co-regent for her son despite whatever "scandal" may have been the result of her marriage. She continued to play a role at court and her name continues to appear in numerous royal charters. She was described as the queen throughout her second marriage. As well, Anna arranged for the marriage of her son, Hugh, with Raoul's granddaughter, Adela of Vermandois. And Raoul's son, Gautier, fought with his father at the siege of Vitry, both men serving King Philip. Anna's role as co-regent did not end with her remarriage: as Zajac observes, "it was not when Anna remarried in 1061 that her status as queen changed." Anna remained a strong presence in her son's life even after he began his personal rule in 1066. Her significance only diminished "when her son Philippe married in 1072 and hence had a queen of his own."*****

Anna of Kyiv's second husband died in 1074. In the mean time, Anna had devoted herself to the restoration of the abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis, where she had dower lands. According to the charter of foundation, her support was "a gift from my goods and those which king Henry, my husband, gave me at our marriage, all of which, with the favour of my son Philip, by the grace of God king, and the counsel of all the magnates of his kingdom, I granted to be assigned to it." Anna's further contributions are documented in two surviving charters signed by Philip, one of which was issued after his mother's death.

The last documented evidence of Anna of Kyiv is in a charter of 1075. There is no record of her death--but in 1079, her son made a donation to the Church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs (Paris) for the remission of his own sins and for "those of my father and mother and of all the kings of the Franks, my ancestors" (Facio autem hanc donationem pro remissione peccatorum meorum et genitoris gentricisque meę et omnium regum Francorum, antecessorum meorum). Her place of burial is unknown.

The monastery at Senlis dedicated an annual memorial service for Anna of Kyiv every year, on 5 September, which suggests she may have died on that date. The memorial was held until the French Revolution.

Mykola and Valentyn Znoba's
bronze statue of Anna of Kyiv
at Senlis (Ouse, France),
unveiled in 2005 as a gift from Ukraine

A selection of letters from Anna of Kyiv can be found at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters. Letters come from both Anna and Henry, from Anna and her son, Anna and her second husband, and Anna alone. Also included there is a letter to Anna of Kyiv from Pope Nicholas II. 

I've linked to so many of my sources above that I will not add any further suggestions for reading here. As I have noted, there is a great deal written about Anna of Kyiv, so an interested reader will have no trouble finding a wide range of online sources as well as books and articles to be accessed through libraries. 

By the way, Anna of Kyiv can be linked to Olga of Kyiv, a woman whom I've written about before in this blog. Olga was the grandmother of Vladimir the Great, while Anna was the granddaughter of Vladimir the Great--Vladimir the Wise was Vladimir the Great's son.

*For an extended exploration of marriage during this period, and of how Olof's relationship to Edra might have been understood at the time, I recommend Caroline Wilhelmsson's The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden, c. 970-1330: Their Lives, Power, and Legacy.

**Henry I was Hugh Capet’s grandson. His father,  poor Robert "the Pious," had a disastrous marital career. To read about his first wife, Rozala of Italy, click here. To read about his second, Bertha of Burgundy, click here. And to read about his third, Constance of Arles, click here. (Robert’s third wife, Constance, was Henry I’S mother.)

***Little is known about this "other Matilda," but what is known is carefully articulated in Szabolcs de Vajay's “Mathilde, Reine de France Inconnue,” Journal des Savants 1971, no. 4 (1971): 241-60 (full text availble here). Vajay undertakes extensive genealogical research, a research that leads to this rather startling claim: in marrying Anna of Kyiv, Henry I is "united" with the "sister-in-law of the niece of his dead wife, who was, herself, the niece of [the woman to whom he was first betrothed]." (See especially the family tree on p. 259.) Yikes! Is it any wonder it was hard to find a royal alliance that didn't challenge ecclesiastical "laws" about marriage!

****This Harald is the Harald who invaded England, landing in the north, on 25 September 1066, while William of Normandy invaded on 28 September, landing in Sussex. Elisiv and her children may have landed in England with her husband. 

*****Anna's son had his own marital scandals. He repudiated his first wife, who had given him an heir, and then "remarried" a woman who may or may not have still been married to her first husband . . . The king of France was excommunicated--more than once, since he kept going back to the woman from whom he was supposed to separate. I'll let  you follow up on all this on your own, but you can start by clicking here . . .