Hanging on to Jeanne of France

Jeanne of France: Duchess, Queen, Saint (1464-1505)

The unfortunate Jeanne of France,
briefly queen of France

In the year and a half since I retired after thirty-five years of university teaching, I’ve been letting go—not only of stress and anxiety, but of stuff. 

The first thrilling purge was when I was cleaning out my office on campus. Although I would keep artwork and memorabilia, I was determined to get rid of all of the books and files.

The books were surprisingly easy—I invited majors to come by my office and “shop” on my bookshelves. And they came. One student brought two backpacks, another a couple of cardboard boxes. 

Once these literature majors had taken what they wanted, I put all the rest out on a table in the hallway, underneath a sign labeled “Free Books.” Sometimes the assorted titles disappeared so quickly that most of them were gone before I’d returned from my office with another armload for the table. 

(By the way, relatively expensive hardbound desk dictionaries proved to be losers—I had several, and not a single one of them disappeared from the "free" pile. I couldn't even give them away. But I thought for sure no one would want the Norton Critical Edition of Thomas Aquinas on Ethics and Politics—somehow I’d managed to acquire two copies—I was shocked that they both disappeared as quickly as I put them on the “free” table. Who knew?)

The files proved to be easy, once I'd gotten rid of the books—I had spiral notebooks filled with notes from college classes, binders filled with notes I’d taken to study for Ph.D. exams, boxes of 3 x 5 cards of dissertation research, and 35 years’ worth of student evaluations, recommendations, lecture notes, and course files. Shredding what was confidential and tossing what wasn’t into huge recycling bins were liberating acts. 

The clean-out has continued here at home. Slowly I’ve begun whittling down my personal library as I look ahead to downsizing. My research files have also begun to go—mostly file drawer after file drawer of notes on and photocopies of critical articles, all of which are now available online via JSTOR.

And what has this to do with Jeanne of France? Well, my son was here the other day, moving some of his long-stored boxes (children’s books and dinosaur reproductions) from my garage to his basement, and he pulled out a box labeled “Louise of Savoy (+ Jeanne de France).” 

I’d forgotten about this box, honestly. but once I saw it I remembered why it was there, labeled and stored. After finishing a project on Anne of France, I had in mind a couple of new possibilities and hoped to come back to them. I’d put into this box all of the material that might be needed when I decided to write about Louise of Savoy or Jeanne of France, who was, very briefly, queen of France.  

But now I’m at the point in my life where I am facing the reality that I will never write about all the things I’d like to write about—in part, my last year of blogging about women’s history was a way to write about as many women as I could, even if I just posted a short essay, realizing that I’d probably never have the time to write more. 

And I included a lengthy post about Jeanne's sister Anne of France, a powerful and canny politician, even though I’d already written at some length about her and translated her book of advice, written for her daughter Suzanne. I'm always ready to tell anyone who'll listen about this remarkable woman.

I also posted about Louise of Savoy, admitting to myself that I’d probably not get to that long-imagined project, and I at least mentioned Jeanne of France, though only briefly in a couple of posts.

At first I thought getting rid of the box of stuff wouldn’t be a problem—at this point, I could simply toss it all into the recycling bin with no regrets. And that’s what I did. Drafts of material I’d written and then revised out of my Anne of France project, photocopies of articles, a carousel of slides I’d had made for a presentation. (To be honest, the last time I used slides in class, my students laughed at me, and shortly after that, the university got rid of all of its slide projectors because no one was using them. Anyway, if I ever wanted or needed them, I now had an infinite number of Google images at my fingertips.)

But there was one thing in that box that surprised me: I didn't remember that I had a photocopy of René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505), published in 1883. As soon as I saw it, I remembered having ordered the book through Inter-Library Loan. And I could remember the student worker I’d paid to photocopy all 483 pages for me. 

I hesitated before tossing that photocopied biography into the recycling. But, realizing that I’d probably never need it, much less read it for fun, and remembering that I was, after all, downsizing, I dumped it.

And then I had second thoughts. I checked online—the biography is not available through Google Books, though I could buy one of those print-on-demand copies from Amazon for $39.95 if I found I needed it after all.

I could always get the book again through Inter-Library Loan, the same way I'd gotten it in the first place. It wasn't like I was throwing Jeanne herself away. Even so, I found myself late one evening, in the garage, digging the photocopies of the biography out of my recycling bin. 

It wasn’t just that I had spent the last decades of my professional life writing about women whose lives had been largely overlooked by standard histories, and teaching texts by women writers whose work had been “lost.” Although something of that did play a role in my “recovering” Jeanne of France. It was also the particular circumstances of her life:

Born in 1464, Jeanne of France was the second daughter of Louis of France and his wife, Charlotte of Savoy. Jeanne’s elder sister, Anne, had been born three years earlier. Jeanne was betrothed to Louis of Orléans when she was three weeks old and he was two. Since Louis XI had two daughters but, as yet, no son, the proposed marriage of his younger daughter to the heir presumptive to the throne was politically “useful.” 

In 1476, the marriage of the twelve-year-old French princess and the fourteen-year-old Louis was solemnized, though by this point, the king had a son and heir, Charles, born in 1470, and the young bridegroom was not eager to marry Jeanne—when asked if he consented to the marriage, he reportedly said, “I have to; there is no help for it.”

After the wedding, the young duke of Orléans refused to live with his new duchess, who was returned to Lignières, where she had been raised. Her father had no further use for her. Her “husband” threw himself into hunting, womanizing, and political scheming. 

After Louis XI’s death in 1483, the young duke prepared to annul his marriage, hoping both to find a wealthy bride in Brittany and to gain the throne of France for himself. In the meantime, he gathered his allies and travelled quickly to the chateau of Amboise, prepared to take over the regency of the new king, Charles VIII.

He was triply disappointed. Instead of gaining the regency for himself, he was forced to give way to Charles’s elder sister, Anne, who became regent of France. Instead of being able to rid himself of his unwanted wife, Louis found that, once again, political expediency required he maintain his alliance with the new king and with the regent--he couldn't dissolve his marriage to their sister. And in 1491, Charles VIII, married Anne of Brittany, the young heiress Louis had hoped to acquire as his second wife.

But the terms of the 1491 marriage contract between Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany were crucial to what would eventually happen to Jeanne of France: if the new French king predeceased his queen, she was to marry his successor. 

When Charles died childless in 1498, Louis of Orléans inherited not only the French crown, then, but the French king’s widow, Anne, and with her, control of Brittany. If only he could rid himself of the inconvenient wife he had--the woman to whom he'd been married for some twenty-two years.

Before he could marry the widowed queen, Louis had to have his first marriage, to Jeanne of France, annulled. To that end, he alleged several grounds for annulment—that they were too closely related (consanguinity), that they were spiritually related (Jeanne’s father was also Louis’ godfather), and that he had not freely consented to the marriage (he had been forced to marry under duress). All of these grounds were dismissed, leaving him with a fourth claim: that the marriage had not been consummated. 

Louis claimed that Jeanne’s physical deformity (there is a great deal of contemporary discussion about her “deformity”—including whether she had any physical defect other than being short and unattractive) had prevented consummation. Louis wanted Jeanne, now queen of France, to be subjected to physical examination, while she preferred to rely on testimony from witnesses that their marriage had been consummated (her father had reportedly made sure his son-in-law consummated the marriage in 1476 in order to ensure that there could be no grounds for annulment.)

But the witnesses proved to be not enough, and, thankfully for Jeanne, she was not subjected to the threatened physical examination. And so Louis supplied a sworn statement that, even after twenty-two years, his marriage had never been consummated. Oh, and that his wife was a witch. And since a statement under oath made by a ruling prince must be true, Pope Alexander VI obliged.

The marriage of Louis XII and Jeanne of France was declared void on 17 December 1498, and Louis was married to Anne of Brittany days later, on 8 January 1499. Louis "rewarded" Jeanne with the gift of the title “duchess of Berry.”

Jeanne of France, in the habit of a sister

of the Order of the Annunciation

of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

painted by Jean Perréal

She earned a more enduring title for herself, however; after the annulment, she devoted herself to the religious life, establishing a new order, the Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The order was approved by Pope Alexander in 1502. 

Jeanne died at the Annonciade convent in Bourges in 1505. (Her grave was desecrated and her body burned in 1562 during the French Wars of Religion.)

In 1631, a case for her canonization was begun, and she was beatified in 1742. On 28 May 1950 she was canonized.

And that’s really why I couldn’t throw away Jeanne of France, even if it was just her life on paper. She’d been pretty much ignored by her father and then discarded by her husband. Silly as it may sound, I just couldn’t toss her in the recycling.

Update, 27 December 2017: Since writing this post at the beginning of 2016, I have moved. I downsized from my home--with garage!--and moved back to Seattle, where I went to graduate school. Although I am now living in a condo in the city, I still haven't let go of Jeanne of France. The box is now in my son's basement.

And, when I wrote in 2016, René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505) was not available online. It's still not available through Google Books, but it is included in the Internet Archive; you can access it by clicking here. 

 

Update, 4 January 2024: René de Maulde La Clavière’s Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (1464-1505) is now available on Google Books—click here. And, by the way, I’ve been helping my son clean his out basement. Although we’ve dumped lots of stuff, Jeanne de France is still there…

Anne of France, "Madame la Grande"

Anne of France, duchess of Bourbon and regent of France (died 14 November 1522)

One of the most powerful women of the late fifteenth century, Anne of France is relatively unknown today, at least to those of us whose first language is English.* While she is occasionally mentioned in the political biographies of her father, Louis XI of France, and her brother, Charles VIII, her own story remains unfamiliar--there have been no lavish feature films, costumed television dramas, or best-selling novels about her life, as there have been for her contemporaries in England, who fought so savagely during the Wars of the Roses.

Anne of France, detail,
Master of Moulins

Yet in the waning years of the fifteenth century, Madame la Grande, as she was known to her contemporaries, controlled the government of France for eight years, guiding it through a series of political crises that threatened the state from without and, perhaps more ominously, from within. 

Born in 1461, Anne was the third child of Louis of France and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy, but the first to survive more than a few months after birth. Although we know where she was born—at the chateau of Genappe, some thirty miles north of Brussels—we do not know exactly when, only that her birth preceded the death of her grandfather Charles VII on 22 July of that year. 

Only a few months after her father became king, he began the process of securing political alliances through her marriage. On 27 November 1461, Louis betrothed his only child to Nicholas, the grandson of René of Anjou; by the end of 1462, that alliance was abandoned in favor of an Aragonese match, that project, in turn, giving way to proposals for her marriage to Edward IV of England, then to Francis of Brittany, and even to the French king’s own brother, Charles, duke of Berry.

Meanwhile, we have very few details about Anne’s childhood. On becoming king, Louis XI had installed his mother, his wife, and his infant daughter in the chateau of Amboise; there, the princess was attended by a demoiselle d’honneur, at least two chambermaids, several nurses, and a woman hired to rock her cradle. This female household has not been kindly assessed by Anne’s French biographers, who variously describe Amboise as a prison, an isolated fortress, or as a “royal gynecium”; we might instead regard it as a kind of “city of ladies,” a remarkable environment that made possible the development of a remarkable woman. 

Just as little is known about Anne’s life at Amboise, little has been written about her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, but that “little” is very negative. One contemporary noted that while she was “an excellent princess in other respects,” she was “not a person in whom a man could take any great delight,” another that she failed to inspire the king’s sexual desire. 

Modern historians, at least the few who have mentioned her, have been no more kind, dismissing her as a charming but lifeless non-entity, as a sad, prematurely aged romantic, as a saint-like figure “crowned with a halo of sweetness and modesty” who knew nothing about politics, or as “feeble in health and weak in character.” But surely she was something more. As the daughter of Anne of Lusignan, Charlotte of Savoy was raised by a mother of considerable political influence and skill, while the contents of her personal library indicate the breadth of her intellectual interests. 

Louis XI’s mother, Marie of Anjou, was also part of the Amboise household for the first years of Anne’s life. The dowager queen was the daughter of the formidable Yolande of Aragon, who for fifteen years ruled Anjou as its regent; while Marie may have been “delicate,” as one modern biographer has described her, she is also credited with having been the source not only of her son’s good sense but also for the “discreet work” of diplomacy that reconciled her husband and her brother.

Whatever else happened in the chateau of Amboise during Anne’s childhood, her biographer Jehanne d’Orliac seems rightly to have concluded that her intelligence was “ripened” there. Meanwhile, her father may certainly have abhorred the “intrigues” and “coquetries” of women in general, and the person of his wife in particular, but he must also have recognized both the political expediencies of a female regent and the ability of women to succeed in such a role. 

His paternal grandmother, Isabeau of Bavaria, had been regent of France, and, as we have seen, his maternal grandmother had ruled Anjou for her son. One sister, Yolande of Valois, was regent of Savoy for her son, Philibert, another, Madeleine, was regent of Foix for her daughter, Catherine, who inherited the throne of Navarre as queen regnant; in England, the king’s cousin Margaret of Anjou played an active role in the battle to preserve the throne of England for her son, Edward.

St. Anne, Anne of France,
Suzanne of Bourbon,
part of triptych
by the Master of Moulins

Whatever he felt about his queen, Louis left his son, the dauphin Charles, in the female universe of Amboise, while his daughter Anne became part of his court at Plessis-les-Tours; after her marriage to Pierre of Beaujeu in November of 1473, Anne seems to have spent much of the next ten years in the company of her father. “She is the least foolish of women,” he is famously to have said, “—and as for wise women, there are none.” 

When Louis XI died in 1483, his son and heir Charles was thirteen years old, arguably old enough to succeed to the French throne in his own right, but the aging king circumvented the argument. Just before his death, Louis transferred custody of his son to his daughter and her husband. His son-in-law was a loyal and firm presence, but lacked political skill or insight; Louis named Pierre of Beaujeu lieutenant-general of France. 

The twenty-two-year-old Anne, on the other hand, was different. To this “least foolish of women,” he entrusted the dauphin’s care and education, leaving to her the responsibility to govern France, if not the title of regent. Lacking the name of regent, Anne of France was nevertheless recognized as controlling the person of the king, the finances of the state, and the power of the realm. In his account of her role during the period from 1483 to 1491, historian John Bridge concludes, “We can affirm . . . that the lady of Beaujeu really governed France during the first years of the nominal reign of her brother.” 

When Anne of France left the court in 1491, she was thirty years old, but rather than retiring, she was, instead, beginning a new phase of her political career. In the years following her marriage, she and her husband had been rewarded and enriched first by her father and then by her brother; when the duke of Bourbon, Pierre of Beaujeu’s oldest brother, died without an heir, she acted quickly and ruthlessly. In securing the title for her husband, she “gave herself alone the duchy of the Bourbons.” 

In gaining Bourbon, she secured independence for herself, and for her daughter, Suzanne, who was born on 10 May 1491. In her chateau of Chantelle, not far from the Bourbon capital of Moulins, Anne reigned as sovereign, signing acts with the royal formula Car tel est notre plaisir (“for such is our pleasure”) and reorganizing and codifying the laws of the Bourbonnais. 

She also recreated the “city of ladies” of her childhood at Amboise, educating and training a generation of young girls as they grew into women. As the inveterate gossip Pierre de Brantôme noted, “there were no ladies or daughters of great houses in her time who did not receive lessons from her, the house of Bourbon being one of the greatest and most splendid in Christendom”; on this point he had good authority, since his grandmother Louise de Daillon was among those daughters who had been brought up by Anne of France. 

And she also remained involved in affairs of state. When her brother invaded Italy in 1494, he arranged for his sister, not his wife, to manage in his absence, and like his father, in making this unorthodox arrangement he avoided the official designation of regent; instead, by the “express order of the king,” his queen Anne of Brittany was placed in his sister’s guardianship, and the government of France was “transported” to her court at Moulins. 

By the time the king returned from Italy in 1495, his son, the French dauphin, was dead; three years later, Charles VIII of France, not quite twenty-eight years old, was also dead. The new king was Louis XII, whose rebellion in the first years of Charles VIII’s reign had culminated in the aptly named “Mad War.”

At least one observer thought that Anne of France might intervene in the succession—it was reported that “she thought for a moment to claim the crown for herself, saying that ‘she was the first among the descendants of the kings of France.’” Although she had no such intention, the new king decided “to call his old adversary to his aid”; in exchange for her support, he awarded her more land, more titles, more revenue and, more important, the assurance that her daughter Suzanne would inherit Bourbon after Pierre’s death.

Although Anne of France would also survive Louis XII, we will end our discussion of her life here. It is important to note, however, that she never withdrew entirely from the political center of government; she regularly attended affairs of state, like Louis XII’s entry into Paris, to name only one example, and in 1503, when he fell ill, it appeared as if the king might called upon her to take control of the government of France once more. 

Although he survived this illness, when his death was imminent in 1514, he designated Anne of France to take charge of any posthumously born prince. She was in Paris in 1515 when Louis XII died, and it was again said that she would take control of the government herself. But that was just a rumor; she was in Reims for the coronation of Francis I and in Paris to witness his entry into the city. She herself would live until 1522, her life spanning the reigns of four French kings. 

By the time she died at the age of sixty-one, on 14 November 1522, Anne of France had outlived all her contemporaries, and Madame la Grande had become Madame la Vielle, “the old Madam.” Her brother had died in 1498, her sister Jeanne in 1505. Isabella of Castile, with whom Anne had conducted business for eight years, died in 1504. Ludovico Sforza, who had lured her brother to Italy and who had tried to arrange for the marriage of one of his sons to Suzanne, died in 1508. Anne saw her one-time enemy Louis of Orléans succeed her brother as king of France; Louis died in 1515. Anne of Brittany, married first to Charles VIII and then to Louis XII, was also gone; she died in 1514. And in what must have been a terrible series of blows, Anne’s grandson François, born in July 1517 and named after his royal godfather, died within months of his elaborate baptism. Just a year later, Suzanne gave birth to stillborn twins. Suzanne herself died in 1521, just thirty years old.

Her biographers have viewed the last months of Anne’s life as a period of “darkness and despair”: “She fell victim to the blows of a malady that remains mysterious to us,” comments one, adding that it was a malady “doubtless fed by grief.” Another concludes that “agony of mind and heart finished her off.” 

But one of Madam’s formidable contemporaries faced her own losses and defeats with the unflinching gaze so characteristic of Anne herself. “I am habituated to grief,” wrote Caterina Sforza, “I have no fear of it.” Surely Anne of France would have agreed.

And at some point in her life, probably toward the end of the fifteenth century, Anne of France composed a series of enseignements, or "lessons" for her daughter, Suzanne. Several years ago, as I was working on an English translation of her Lessons, I found myself remembering the words of Virginia Woolf.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf suggested that “we think back through our mothers if we are women.” I found myself thinking of this claim as I was at work translating Anne of France’s lessons for her daughter. The process was a strangely intimate one: slowly, word by word, sometimes even letter by letter, I was deciphering the admonitions, advice, and warnings a fifteenth-century princess directed to her daughter, all the while and against all logic hearing my own mother’s voice in my mind. 

And then one day, midway through the process of turning French into English, I looked away from my pile of dictionaries to the framed portraits of Anne and Suzanne that sat on the desk where I was working. Studying their faces, I knew I had to find the quotation that I remembered. 

I did find it, about three quarters of the way through the slim volume, as Woolf was describing the struggle of women writers. Although they were confronted by “discouragement and criticism,” Woolf wrote, “that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which faced them . . . when they came to set their thoughts on paper—that is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help.” And then the sentence: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

Anne of France’s text seems at first to challenge Woolf’s claim, for in composing a series of lessons for her daughter, Anne did have a tradition of women behind her, and a rather long one. As she wrote, she could “think back” to Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies, written a hundred years earlier, a book that Anne had owned and read, a book that, in fact, she had inherited from her mother, Charlotte of Savoy, queen of France. 

And, although Anne addressed her lessons to her daughter, she clearly came to see herself contributing to the tradition she inherited, since her book was passed on to other daughters of other mothers: her lessons were published “at the request” of Suzanne, doubtless with her mother’s approval.

The opening page of the
first printed edition
of Anne of France's
Enseignements

This first edition, printed between 1517 and 1521, was followed by a second printing in 1534. A third edition was published the next year, this time dedicated to Marguerite of Angoulême, a daughter of another powerful mother, Louise of Savoy, and herself the mother of Jeanne d’Albret, who would become queen regnant of Navarre.

But, despite the status of Anne of France and her daughter Suzanne, and despite the fact that the book went through three editions within thirty years of its composition, her work disappeared. The tradition she had inherited was also lost—Christine de Pizan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies, composed in 1405 and widely circulated in manuscript, was printed in Paris in 1497, 1503, and 1536, but, in the words of Sarah Lawson, who published the first translation of Christine’s work in English, “by the seventeenth century hardly anyone had heard of her.”

We almost surely would not be able to “think back” to Anne’s text today if it weren’t for the work of one man, a nineteenth-century scholar named A. M. Chazaud. Chazaud never tells us how or why or when he became interested in Anne’s lessons for her daughter—it’s not even clear that he knew of the existence of her work before he traveled from France to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. 

As archivist of the department of Allier, formed from the old province of Bourbonnais, he may have gone to the Hermitage to work with a manuscript of the chronicles of Louis I, first duke of Bourbon; Chazaud returned to France to publish an edition of that fifteenth-century text in 1876. Whether or not he knew about Anne’s work before he arrived in St. Petersburg, while there he transcribed not only the chronicles of the duke of Bourbon but her text; he added an introduction, appended a discussion of her language, compiled a glossary, and published Les Enseignements d’Anne de France . . . à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon in 1878. 

While he does not tell us how he came to edit Anne’s text, Chazaud does explain how the book that Anne had given her daughter came to be in Russia, for the manuscript he found there was, in fact, Suzanne’s own copy of the book: Ce livre est à moy, Susanne de Bourbon, et l’ey eu de la meson de Bourbon was written on the first folio (“This book is mine, Susanne of Bourbon, and it comes from [literally 'I have had it from'] the house of Bourbon”).

The story of the manuscript’s journey from France to St. Petersburg is fascinating, and starting from the information Chazaud supplies, we can fill in a few more details of the manuscript’s odyssey. After the death of Suzanne’s husband in 1527, the Bourbon library became the property of King Francis I and was transferred from the library of Moulins to Fontainebleu. 

Later, the manuscript was a gift to Diane de Poitiers, who had been educated by Anne of France, and it became part of the library at her chateau of Anet. Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was not only raised by Anne of France, but her marriage was also arranged by Anne; after the death of her husband in 1521, Diane became the mistress of Henry II of France, son of Francis I, who probably presented her with the manuscript. There is no indication when she received the gift or when the manuscript left her library at Anet. 

Two brief notes in the manuscript indicate that on “the last day of the month and year of 1632” a certain Monsieur Baillet de Sainte-Barbe from the town of Dreux gave the book to an unnamed but very happy recipient who lived on Chantre street in Paris; once in Paris, the manuscript passed to the library of Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France under kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. 

From the library of the chancellor, the book passed to his grandson, Henri-Charles du Cambout de Coislin, bishop of Metz, and from him to the library of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. In 1791, in the midst of the French Revolution, some fifty of the Saint-Germain manuscripts were acquired by a Russian diplomat, Peter Dubrovsky, who was in Paris purchasing books for Catherine II, empress of Russia, and, ultimately, for his own growing collection. Anne’s manuscript was among Dubrovsky’s acquisitions; in 1805, it was transferred to the Imperial Public Library. 

And there it remained, at least for a time. The few scholars who have written about Anne’s text have assumed that the manuscript is still there, preserved for us, waiting for us to pick it up and touch the very pages that Suzanne turned as she read her mother’s words. But the manuscript is there no longer—it was sold at some point during the 1930s, and its current location, if it still exists, is unknown.**

And so, in the end, Anne of France’s book seems to illustrate rather than to challenge Woolf’s view that the “tradition” women have inherited is a fragmented and disrupted one. Like so many medieval texts, the survival of her work seems entirely a matter of chance—passed from hand to hand, the manuscript copy of her lessons also passed through more than four centuries of disaster, war, and revolution, only to be sold and then to disappear. 

And yet, despite the odds, her text did survive—one copy of the first printed edition, one of the second, two of the third, and, luckily, a careful edition of the manuscript itself, made before its disappearance. Chazaud’s 1878 edition, which itself survives in only a handful of copies, was reprinted in 1978, ensuring that Anne’s lessons could be passed on to a generation of scholars intent on recovering women’s history and enabling them, in Woolf’s words, to begin rewriting the “short and partial” tradition they inherited. 

From Anne of France to Suzanne of Bourbon to Diane de Poitiers to Catherine the Great to us. 

*This post has been adapted from material in The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan) and from Anne of France: Lessons for My Daughter (Boydell & Brewer).

** For the specific date the manuscript came into the possession of the Imperial Public Library, I am indebted to A. P. Romanov, Chief of Foreign Acquisitions, National Library of Russia, personal letter, 22 July 2002.  According to Romanov, the manuscript (then catalogued as MS. Fr. Q.v.III.2) remained at the Imperial Public Library from its receipt until 1849, when a group of illuminated manuscripts was transferred to the Hermitage Museum as part of a display. The manuscripts remained there until 1861 when, Romanov writes, “all illuminated manuscripts were returned from the Hermitage to the Public Library.” Then, according to Romanov, the manuscript was sold “through the ‘Antiquary,’” which was either “an antique store or an auction”; the library knows “nothing about its location.” 

One further query produced a confirmation from Marie-Elisabeth Boutroue, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (Centre Nationale de la Recherche), Section de l’Humanism (Paris), who indicates that nothing further is known of the manuscript, but who holds out the hope that “with luck” it may perhaps be found someday (Email, 17 January 2003). 

Juana of Castile: Not Her Mother's Daughter

Juana of Castile, queen of Castile and Léon, queen of Aragon (born 6 November 1479)

The third child--and second daughter--of the Spanish monarchs Isabella of Castile and Léon and Ferdinand of Aragon, Juana was born in Toledo and received an education that reflected the best of Renaissance humanist training.

Having herself had relatively little opportunities for education, Isabella made sure that, as Giles Tremlett writes, "the education of [her] daughters was taken with an unusual and remarkable degree of seriousness." (The education of the Spanish princesses was undertaken by the remarkable scholar Beatriz Galindo, "la Latina.")

Juana of Castile,
about 1495-96,
the time of her marriage

Juana proved to be an adept scholar, a good student of Latin and contemporary languages, of classical authors as well as of Christian writers, of typically "female" accomplishments like needlework as well as of aristocratic pastimes like hunting, and of music. She was also taught law and trained carefully for her political duties, as a woman: marriage. 

In 1495, the Catholic monarchs signed a treaty with Henry VII of England and with the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian aimed at limiting the power of France.*

Thus, Juana of Castile was married to Philip of Austria, and Catalina of Aragon to Prince Arthur of England. Catalina was transformed into Catherine, and her life was to be spent in England where, after Arthur's death, she married his brother, becoming the first of King Henry VIII's six wives. 

Juana's reputation in history is as notorious as her name--she is Juana la Loca, or "Juana the Mad." As it is generally told, the narrative of Juana's life is fairly simple, a kind of fairytale turned horror story. Married to a handsome prince who is as unfaithful as he is charming, the beautiful princess is tormented by her uncontrollable jealousy. Inheriting a strain of madness from her maternal grandmother (Isabella of Portugal), she descends into madness herself. 

As this fairytale/horror story continues, when Isabella of Castile and Léon dies, Juana becomes queen regnant of Castile and Léon, but she is unable even to care for herself, much less for her country and her people. Her husband, then her father, and finally her son undertake to act for her as regents. The madwoman is locked away, kept company by her youngest daughter (Catherine of Spain) and visited faithfully by her oldest son. In her death, she triumphs--her sons become emperors and her daughters all become queens.  

Juana may well have been mad, or she may have become mad, but her story is at once more complicated and more tragic. Certain elements of her tragedy are clear. Her marriage to Philip of Austria, duke of Burgundy, Philip "the Handsome," was arranged in 1496, and she left Spain in August of that year. When she finally met the waiting Philip on 18 October, he was so struck by her beauty that he demanded they be married that very day so they could consummate their union without delay. The birth of their first child, Eleanor, in 1498 was followed quickly by the birth of Charles, a son and heir, born in the city of Ghent on 25 February 1500.

Despite the initial attraction between the two, their relationship deteriorated quickly. In some accounts, Philip is depicted as a kind of sexual psychopath, a ruthless sadist who "held Juana in a vicious cycle of affection, abuse, and intimidation from which she was constitutionally unable to escape," while Juana is portrayed as a woman so "madly in love" that "she allowed herself to be psychologically abused," unable to free herself from her husband's "domination and sexual magnetism." 

In other versions of their relationship, Juana is a beautiful but fragile hysteric: "a mercurial temperament subject to soaring changes of disposition, scaling the heights of joy one moment and groveling in a bottomless well of self-pity the next." Modern historians thus differ in their views, but their contradictory assessments of the couple are no more incompatible than the views of Philip and Juana's contemporaries.

Those who actually met the pair recorded equally inconsistent views: In 1499, for example, a Spanish priest observed that Juana was "so frightened that she could not hold up her head," while in 1500 the Spanish ambassador judged that "in a person so young I do not think one has seen such prudence."

After the deaths, in rapid succession, of Juana's elder siblings, Prince Juan of Castile in 1497 and Isabel in 1498, and of Juan's infant son, Prince Miguel, in 1500, the crowns of Castile and Aragon fell to Juana as her parents' heir. Isabella and Ferdinand summoned their daughter and her husband to Spain. 

Philip ignored their urgent request and put off the journey at first, preferring to send a representative to Spain to act on his behalf, but Juana refused to sign the document appointing Philip's choice of an ambassador. By 1501 Juana was pregnant for a third time, delaying the trip still longer. The archduchess gave birth to another daughter in July, naming the baby Isabel after her Castilian grandmother. 

When Juana was finally able to travel, she and Philip began their trip to Spain, not by ship, as Ferdinand and Isabella planned, but through France, as Philip preferred. In France, Philip swore fealty as Louis XII's "good neighbor, humble servant, and obedient vassal," but Juana was determined to assert herself as the Infanta of Castile rather than as Philip's archduchess and a vassal of France. 

She refused to kneel to the French king, but she was maneuvered onto her knees forcibly in a gesture of submission by two formidable women: as Juana approached Anne of Brittany, queen of France, she was either shoved or tripped by Anne of France. 

Later, when she found herself in yet another "compromising position," Juana responded proudly by refusing to accept an offering of gold coins from the French queen. Her refusal earned the hostility of Anne of Brittany and the anger of her husband.

Juana of Castile in 1500,
portrait by Juan de Flandres

By the end of January 1502, Juana and Philip arrived in Castile. On 22 May the couple were formally designated Isabella's heirs in Castile, and in September they traveled to Aragon to be recognized as Ferdinand's.

The Aragonese Cortes recognized Juana as primogenita succesora, heir presumptive to the crown, declaring her the "true and lawful heir to the crown, to whom, in default of male heirs, the usage and law of the land require the oath of allegiance." 

Philip was recognized only as her king-consort. But, if Isabella were to predecease Ferdinand, the Aragonese parliament declared that any male child Ferdinand might have in a subsequent marriage would take precedence over Juana. On 27 October Juana became the first woman to whom the Aragonese Cortes swore an oath of fealty.

By 19 December Philip was gone, leaving Juana--pregnant again--behind with her parents. His departure was followed almost immediately by his betrayal of Juana and los Reyes Catolicos. On 5 April 1503 Philip concluded the treaty of Lyon with France; it provided for the marriage of his son and heir to Louis' daughter and agreed to Ferdinand's renunciation of the kingdom of Naples, which he had just conquered. In 1504 Philip joined his father Maximilian and the French king in yet another treaty against Aragonese interests.

Before Juana rejoined her husband, she gave birth to her fourth child, another son, named Ferdinand after her father, on 10 March 1503. When she finally left Spain in May of 1504, she left this child behind, to be raised by his grandparents. In the meantime, Juana's increasingly erratic behavior, Philip's perfidy, and Queen Isabella's failing health led to a reeevaluation of the Castilian succession. 

When she drew her will in October, Isabella named Juana as her successor: the crown of Castile would be inherited by her "dearly beloved daughter" as "universal heiress of all . . . said kingdoms and lands and lordships . . . , proprietress . . . conformable with what I owe and am obliged by law." Juana and Philip--"as her husband"--were to receive "obedience from her subjects." 

But to exclude Philip from power, Isabella stipulated that Juana appoint no foreigners to office and that she consult the Cortes on all decisions. She further ordered, in the event that Juana as queen "does not desire or is not able to engage in government," the regency of Castile fall not to Philip but to Ferdinand. If Juana were incapacitated by absence or illness, her father was to function as her regent until Juana's son and heir, Charles, "shall be at least twenty."

Isabella died on 26 November 1504, and Juana was immediately proclaimed her successor: "Castile, Castile for our sovereign lady, Queen Juana." But in Brussels, Philip had himself proclaimed "King of Castile, Léon, Granada, archduke of Austria, prince of Aragon and Sicily, duke of Burgundy, [and] count of Flanders." 

What followed was not a smooth succession but a succession crisis. In the new queen's absence, Ferdinand assumed the role of regent of Castile, but his position was vigorously opposed by Juana's husband. Ferdinand convened the Cortes in January 1505, and Juana was recognized as "legitimate and proprietary ruler" of Castile and Philip as her husband and consort. But Ferdinand claimed that, by the terms of Isabella's will, Juana had to return to Castile and prove herself capable of rule. 

In a letter he declared Juana had shown "illness and emotional upheaval" and "disorder" during her previous trip to Castile and that, out of "prudence" and because of "great sorrow," Isabella "did not wish to declare what the impediment was." "Because of the gravity of the situation," he wrote, "it is better that you comprehend the reasons that moved the queen, her mother, to word her will as she did." 

Since the matter "touches the royal person of Queen Juana, you must all swear a solemn oath to keep this matter secret." The Cortes ultimately decided to acknowledge Ferdinand as regent "owing to the incapacity" of Juana. A letter announcing the decision was sent to Philip in Flanders.

In pursuit of his wife's interests, Philip insisted that Juana was capable of ruling and that, as her husband, he had the right to the regency. He was supported by a significant number of the Castilian grandees, who were suspicious of the Aragonese king. 

For his part, Ferdinand solicited a letter from Juana approving of her father's assumption of the regency. But Juana was betrayed by one of her Castilian servants, who turned the document over to Philip. The new Castilian "queen" was forced to substitute a letter in support of Philip. Ferdinand received the letter, along with reports that indicated Juana's signature on it was either forged or coerced.

It may well be that, at this point, Ferdinand decided on another tack to maintain power in Castile; some reports indicate that he sent an emissary to Portugal to negotiate a marriage with his wife Isabella's old rival, Juana la Beltraneja. Through her he could oppose Philip and Juana and claim the crown of Castile for himself. If he did make such an overture, nothing came of it. 

He did, however, sign a treaty with France; instead of a marriage with Isabella's niece and rival for the throne of Castile, he married the French king's niece, Germaine of Foix. In response, Philip attempted to force Juana to sign a denunciation of her father, but once again she refused. Ferdinand's ambassadors at Philip's court objected to the conditions under which Juana was forced to live; they were finally allowed to see her but not to speak with her.

After Juana gave birth on 13 September 1505 to another daughter, named Mary, Philip decided to travel to Castile to claim the throne. Ferdinand, meanwhile, declared that Juana was sane but a prisoner, publishing a proposal to rescue her. He also prepared for a compromise with Philip that would exclude Juana but benefit both of them. 

Philip and Juana arrived in Castile on 26 April 1506; as they traveled toward a meeting with Ferdinand, Philip kept his wife in the background, Philip presenting himself as the king and Juana merely as his consort. Juana resented her husband's efforts, however, and refused to sign documents that Philip prepared for her. The Castilian grandees who supported Philip against Ferdinand were increasingly unhappy with Juana's husband and her position as well, noting her isolation and his disregard for their interests.

Philip and Ferdinand finally met in June. Philip was deeply suspicious of his wife and of his father-in-law; he refused to allow Ferdinand to meet with, or even to see, Juana. But on 27 June the two men finally agreed to a treaty of peace, a "hellish compact" that "sealed the fate" of Juana. The agreement stated that the queen "on no account wishes to have anything to do with any affair of government or other things." 

After this categorical statement, it continued: "and, even if she did wish it, it would cause the total loss and destruction of these realms, having regard to her infirmities and passions which are not described here for decency's sake." Juana, therefore, was excluded from governing, and if she should "of her own accord or at the instance of others . . . attempt to interfere in the government or disturbed the arrangement made between the two kings, they will join forces to prevent it." Ferdinand was willing to declare Juana's unfitness, even though it had been over two years since he had seen her. 

After signing the document, Ferdinand turned around immediately and denounced it, swearing that he had been coerced and that Juana was, after all, quite fit to rule. He swore to "liberate" Juana from her imprisonment and to return to her the government of Castile. Juana managed to assert herself again in July, when she and Philip were in Valladolid. She refused to enter the city following two banners, insisting that she alone was queen and that one of the banners should be removed. 

The Admiral of Castile finally forced Philip to grant him an interview with Juana, and after a two-day meeting with her he reported that "she never gave a random answer." He saw no sign of the insanity that both her father and her husband had, at various times, asserted. On 11 July, under the influence of the Admiral of Castile, the Cortes swore allegiance to her as queen of Castile and to Philip only as her consort. Juana appeared in person on 12 July to receive their oath of allegiance.

In the meantime Ferdinand was forced to withdraw from the struggle with Philip. Facing increased opposition in Castile and having his own interests in Naples to pursue, he retreated to Aragon. But Philip's ascendancy in Castile did not last long. By September he was dead. Although Juana declined any role in the government after her husband's death, Ferdinand, on his way to Naples, would not have her declared incompetent, instead issuing orders that she was to be recognized as obeyed as queen regnant.

Juana refused to assume her role as queen, indicating that her father should act in her stead. In this situation, reports about her mental state vary. According to Ferdinand's secretary, "there is no one, big or little, who any longer denies that she is out of her mind, except Juan Lopez, who says that she is as sane as her mother was."

Another account attributes her withdrawal from the world not as madness but as an almost stoic resignation; she is "a woman to suffer and behold all the things of this world . . . without change of heart or courage." Sane or insane, competent or incompetent, she was watched carefully by her father's supporters; Ferdinand was now as interested in having her confined as Philip had been.

On 17 January 1507, Queen Juana gave birth to her last child, another daughter, who was named Catalina. When Ferdinand finally arrived in Castile at the end of the year, he assumed the regency for Juana. Her father continued as regent of Castile until his death in 1516. He was followed as regent by Juana's son Charles.

It is impossible now to determine with certainty whether Juana was, indeed, mad, but there is no question that she was la Loca. Most scholars assume without question her incapacity and the necessity of husband, father, and son to rule Castile in her stead. 

But not all scholars assume Juana la Loca's madness. The historian S. B. Chrimes, for example, has considered the claims of Juana's discreditors carefully. He notes that in 1507, Henry VII, the widowed king of England, had entered into serious negotiations with Ferdinand for a marriage with Juana. A treaty for the match was signed in 1508, though the marriage never took place.

About the failure of the alliance, Chrimes writes, "the project faded away, not surprisingly because in fact [Juana] was being kept in close confinement, first by Ferdinand and then by [her son Charles], in harsh and sometimes brutal conditions." He continues, "the story of her 'madness' was never, until perhaps towards the end of her long life, more than very successful propaganda put out by her ruthless and unscrupulous father and son."

The royal convent of Santa Clara in Tordesillas

Chrimes indicates that Henry VII, who had met Juana as recently as 1506, "knew or suspected the truth, which oddly enough appears largely to have evaded the serious consideration of modern historians." That Juana was not mad, Chrimes notes, is clear from the "overwhelming weight" of contemporary evidence, which "compels such conclusions."

I will add that the fortress of Tordesillas, with its "royal convent," had been used before to imprison "inconvenient" queens, including Maria of Portugal, queen of Castile; Leonor Teles, queen of Portugal; and Blanche of Bourbon, queen of Castile.

Whether she was mad or not, Juana remained la Loca. For nearly fifty years, from 1507 until her death in 1555, Queen Juana of Castile was confined--as prisoner, as recluse, or as madwoman--in the fortress of Tordesillas.

On a happier note, Juana's daughters (unlike her son, they did not imprison her) included Eleanor of Austria, married first to King Manuel of Portugal and then, as part of the "Ladies' Peace," to the French king, Francis I; Isabel of Austria, queen and regent of Denmark; Mary of Austria, queen of Hungary and regent of the Netherlands; and Catherine of Spain, queen and regent of Portugal. 

If you are interested in reading a careful and thoughtful biography, I recommend Bethany Aram's Juana the Mad: Sovereignty & Dynasty in Renaissance Europe. You may also like a dual biography by Julia Fox, Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile.

On the education of the Spanish princesses, I have quoted from Giles Tremlett's Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII.

The British Library owns a beautiful Book of Hours created for and owned by Juana of Castile--you can view the entire manuscript, which has been digitized, by clicking here.**

There are quite a few historical novels about Juana--please skip them.

*Portions of this post have been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

**As a result of a cyberattack, much of the British Library online collection is unavailable, supposedly temporarily. I've kept this link here, just in case . . . 

Louise of Savoy: The "King's Mother" and Regent of France

Louise of Savoy, regent of France (born 11 September 1476)

Louise of Savoy, the daughter of Philip II, duke of Savoy, and Margaret of Bourbon, may be the most amazing woman you don't know much about.*

Louise of Savoy

Her life is entwined with the lives of many of the women whom we have already met. She was related to Anne of France both by birth and by marriage, for example, and was raised with Margaret of Austria, who would, much later, marry Louise's brother, Philibert of Savoy.

Louise of Savoy was at court when Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's younger sister became, briefly, queen of France. And, later still, Anne Boleyn would arrive at the French court, just as Louise of Savoy was acting as regent of France on behalf of her son, who had become king.

Even so, despite such connections, there was little in Louise of Savoy's early life to suggest the role she would later come to play in French politics and government. 

In France, King Louis XI married Charlotte of Savoy in order to secure his border with Italy. To strengthen his alliance with Savoy, he also awarded his new queen's younger brother Philip of Savoy the title of count of Bresse. In 1478, to strengthen his political alliances, he arranged the betrothal of his two-year-old niece Louise to Charles of Angoulême, twenty years her senior.

Louise's mother Marguerite of Bourbon died in 1483, when the girl was seven years old. After the death of his wife, Philip of Savoy sent his daughter to Amboise to be raised and educated by Anne of France, Louis XI and Charlotte of Savoy's daughter. There Louise joined Margaret of Austria, who had been sent to France at about the same time to be raised as its "queen." 

In a 1972 essay about Louise, John F. Freeman describes the education that she would have received under the "supervision" of her aunt; "one may assume," he writes, "she learned the traditional fare of home management and principles of Christian morality." 

Certainly "home management" and "Christian morality" would have been part of her training, but she certainly learned much more, for in that same year, Anne of France became de facto ruler of France as regent for her brother, Charles VIII. In Anne of France, Louise had found a crucial political model and tutor.

On 16 February 1488, when she was twelve years old, Louise married Charles of Angoulême, to whom she had been betrothed ten years earlier. But Louise apparently did not begin living with her husband until 1491, when she was about fifteen. At that point she joined her husband's household at Cognac, which included his mistress Jeanne de Polignac and several illegitimate children. 

Rather than antagonism, the two women, wife and mistress, forged durable bonds, and it might be said that in her husband's mistress Louise found another influential tutor. Jeanne became Louise's "permanent ally" and companion. Louise took into her service Jeanne's brothers.

She also accepted Jeanne's children into her household, while Jeanne, in turn, raised Louise's children, Marguerite, born in 1492, and Francis, who, according to Louise, had his "first experience of earthly light at Cognac" on the afternoon of 12 September 1494. While Jeanne de Polignac "nursed Francis . . . through his first seven years," Louise would later arrange advantageous marriages for her husband's illegitimate children.

But events far away from Cognac were to affect Louise of Savoy's life and her children's future. In 1496, her  husband died, and in 1498 Charles VIII died, leaving no child of his own to succeed him. His successor, Louis XII, married Anne of Brittany, Charles VIII's widow. But until they had children, Louise of Savoy's son Francis of Angoulême became the king's heir presumptive. 

Louise and her children were moved to Amboise, and the new king appointed a guardian for Francis. Louise herself was offered a number of marriage proposals, including an alliance with Alfonso d'Este and Henry VII of England, but she rejected any inducement to remarry. 

The king, meanwhile, had begun to prepare for the succession if he were to die without a son and heir. A daughter, Claude, had been born in 1499; and April 1505, the king arranged for the betrothal of his daughter to the heir presumptive, Francis of Angoulême.

He also made arrangements for the government of France should he die while his successor was still a minor, planning for a regency to be shared by Anne of Brittany and Louise of Savoy. The betrothal of the king's daughter and the king's heir was celebrated on 21 May 1506, when Claude was seven and Francis twelve. 

On 3 August 1508 the young Francis left his mother and Amboise for the king's court at Plessis-les-Tours. By 1509, her daughter, too, was gone; Marguerite left her mother to be married to Charles, duke of Alençon. 

Even though her son's future looked promising, Louise of Savoy could not be sure that he would become king of France--Anne of Brittany might still provide Louis XII an heir. In late 1509, ten years after Claude's birth, that possibility threatened; the queen was pregnant, but the baby, born in April of 1510, was a girl, Renée. In 1512 the queen was again pregnant. In January 1513 she gave birth to a son who did not survive. 

After the queen's death in January of 1514, Francis--and his mother--grew more confident; the heir presumptive's marriage with Claude was celebrated in May of that year. But, despite Francis's doubt that the widowed king would "commit the folly of marrying again," that is exactly what Louis XII did. The wedding of the "extremely old and feeble" king, as Louise of Savoy described him, and Henry VIII's sister, the "young" Mary Tudor, took place in October 1514.

Louise of Savoy as regent,

taking hold of the rudder of state,

detail from a sixteenth-century

manuscript (Français 5715,

 Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Although Louis may still have hoped to produce a male heir of his own to succeed him, by January 1515 he was dead. Louise of Savoy's son became King Francis I, Louise herself recognized as "the king's mother," Madame Mère du Roi. Her status as mater regis was both acknowledged and appreciated by her contemporaries, among them Pope Leo X. 

Charles Brandon, the duke of Suffolk, sent Henry VIII an equally glowing assessment of the king's mother: "Sir, it is she who runs all, and so may she well; for I never saw a woman like to her, both for wit, honour and dignity. She hath a great stroke in all matters with the King her son."

The Venetian ambassador, meanwhile, judged that "the Most Christian King's most illustrious mother . . . would prove the greatest and most faithful friend Venice ever had."

Like the young Henry VIII in England, anxious to win glory for himself shortly after his accession to the throne, Francis I was almost immediately attracted to the possibility of armed conflict. In order to renew French claims in Italy, he began to prepare for a military expedition, designating his mother, rather than his wife, to act as regent of France.

"All the princes and nobles of our blood will accompany us," Francis wrote, "And in consideration of this, we have decided to leave the government of our realm to our well beloved and dear Lady and Mother . . . in whom we have entire and perfect confidence." Because of her "virtue and prudence," she would, he proclaimed, "know how to acquit this trust." 

Francis returned home early in 1516, and thus Louise's first tenure as regent was only a few months' duration, from July of 1515 until the king's return early the next year. Louise continued to be an extremely influential force in her son's government, however, even after the period of her official role ended. Relations with England remained strained, and in 1521 the English ambassador in France suggested to Cardinal Wolsey that he apply to the king's mother for help: 

I have seen in diverse things since I came hither . . . that when the French king would stick at some points, and speak very great words, yet my Lady [Louise] would qualify the matter; and sometimes when the king is not contented he will say nay, and then my Lady must require him, and at her request he will be contented, for he is so obeissant to her that he will refuse nothing that she requireth him to do.

Even so, the ambassador did not consider her influence on her son to be entirely for the good, since he added, "and if it had not been for her he would have done wonders." Francis "eventually agreed" to a "comprimit," or conference, regarding the ongoing dispute, "very grudgingly, and in deference, he said, to his mother." Cardinal Wolsey, for his part, urged English envoys in France to promote "unity, peace and concord": they were to "exhort, stir and move by all means and ways to them possible." Wolsey particularly recommended that they address themselves to Louise of Savoy, "the mother and nourisher of peace."

On 27 April 1522 French troops just outside Milan were defeated by imperial forces at a battle known as "la Bicocca," the name of a nearby country home, and in August English forces invaded Picardy. By October the English were only fifty miles from Paris. Once more Francis went to war. On 12 August 1523 he again appointed Louise of Savoy as his regent. A letter announcing his decision cited Louise's experience and outlined her considerable powers in his absence.

Louise of Savoy's second regency lasted considerably longer than her first, because on 24 February 1525 the French king was defeated and captured at the battle of Pavia. He was taken first to Pavia itself, then on to Genoa. From there he was sent to Naples. By June he was in Barcelona, and in July he was sent on to Madrid, where he would remain until February 1526, when his release was finally arranged.

Just after his capture, Francis wrote to his mother to "inform" her "of the extent" of his "misfortune"; "of everything," he wrote, "nothing is left but my honour and my life." He begged her "not to lose heart," but to "exercise" her "customary prudence." He recommended to her his "little children," who were, he reminded her, also hers. He signed himself her "humble and obedient son." 

Louise responded: "I cannot better begin this letter than by thanking our Saviour that it has pleased him to preserve your honour, your life, and your health." "On my part," she continued, "I shall support the misfortune in such a manner for the succour of your little children and the affairs of your kingdom that I shall not give you occasion for more pain."

To defend France from invasion she mobilized forces for defense, securing the country's borders. She successfully negotiated an alliance with Henry VIII (treaty of the Moore, 1525) and, in Italy, with the pope and the Venetians (League of Cognac, 1526). In upolding the crown's authority, Louise was equally successful. Immediately after the king's capture, some members of the Parlement of Paris were moved to propose an alternate regent, but that effort failed.  

Louise ultimately proved her competency, dealing effectively with the parliament and, to secure her son's release, she made every effort to raise the money needed to ransom the king. The chancellor of France assured the captive king that the "said lady has managed so well that the rea[l]m is on its accustomed footing." 

She then undertook negotiations resulting in the treaty of Madrid, which Francis signed on 14 January 1526. The terms of this agreement were punishing, however: Francis was to renounce all his claims to Italy, his two sons were to be held as hostages by the emperor to guarantee Francis's fulfillment of the terms of the treaty; and, finally, he was to marry Isabel of Portugal, Charles V's widowed sister. 

The French king was finally released from his captivity in March--on the 17th of that month Francis was exchanged for his two sons, the dauphin Francis and his younger brother Henry. With her son's return, Louise's second regency ended.

But, although his sons were hostages to ensure his compliance with the terms of the treaty of Madrid, Francis did not honor his agreement. While negotiating the treaty, Louise had decided that accepting the terms offered was better than the king's continued absence, but once the king had returned to his kingdom, she is said to have advised him "not to observe promises made under duress." 

Peace between Francis I and Charles V was not achieved until 3 August 1529 when the treaty of Cambrai, the so-called Ladies' Peace, was negotiated by the king of France's mother, Louise of Savoy, and the Holy Roman Emperor's aunt, Margaret of Austria. 

A nineteenth-century sculpture of
Louise of Savoy,
now in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

The two women were more than representatives of their male relatives, however.

They had spent years together as children, both raised by Anne of France; Louise had been sent to the regent by her father in 1483, the same year Margaret had arrived to be raised and educated as "queen" of France.

They were together until 1491, when Margaret was rejected as a wife by Charles VIII. Margaret had ultimately married the son and heir of Isabella and Ferdinand, Juan of Castile and Aragon, but after his early death, she had then married Philibert of Savoy, Louise of Savoy's brother. 

Thus the two women who met to negotiate an end of hostilities knew each other well; each had much to bargain for, and they bargained hard, but the regent of the Netherlands was in the stronger position.

By the terms of the treaty the two women devised, Francis agreed to give up his claims in Italy, to pay a heavy ransom for his sons, and to marry the emperor's sister, whom he had agreed to marry in 1526.

Although the terms were difficult, the treaty of Cambrai was the last political achievement of a determined woman. In a final personal achievement, aging, ill, and increasingly weak, Louise of Savoy traveled to meet the grandchildren whose release she had negotiated, a journey made against the advice of her physicians. The children arrived in France on 1 July 1530, and by Christmas the king was writing that his mother, with "her gout and colics added to her pains of the stomach," was nearing death. She died the next year, on 22 September 1531.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.

Margaret of York and the "Marriage of the Century"

Margaret of York (duchess of Burgundy, from 9 July 1468)

Born on 3 May 1446, Margaret of York was the daughter of Cecily Neville, whom we have met before, and Richard, duke of York--Margaret was the sister of both Edward IV and Richard III of England.*  In 1468, in what her recent biographer, Margaret Weightman, has called "the marriage of the century," Margaret of York became the third wife of Charles the Bold, whose lands included, besides Burgundy, a "vast agglomeration" of French fiefs, imperial territories, and several imperial cities and states in the "Pays d' Embas," or Low Countries. 

Margaret of York, c. 1477

The extent and complexity of Burgundy are indicated by the titles Margaret acquired after her marriage: she became duchess of Burgundy, of Lotharingia, of Brabant, of Limbourg, of Luxembourg, and of Guelders; countess of Flanders, of Artois, of Hainault, of Holland, of Zeeland, of Namur, of Zutphen, and of Burgundy (Franche Comté); and the lady of Friesland, of Salins, and of Malines [Mechelen], among others.

Although she failed to provide a male heir for Charles, as duchess of Burgundy Margaret of York functioned superlatively as a political adviser and diplomat for the duke and as a mother for his daughter and heir Mary.

After her marriage to the duke, Margaret of York also developed a strong relationship with her husband's mother. The dowager duchess, Isabel of Portugal, was the daughter of Philippa of Lancaster and João of Portugal, the granddaughter John of Gaunt.

Although Philippa's direct family members were Lancastrian, she was also an English relative of the Yorkist Margaret. Like Margaret, Isabel of Portugal was descended from Edward III of England. Although she was nearly seventy years old when Margaret arrived in Burgundy, the dowager duchess was still politically active, "well able," as Weightman notes, "to take charge of the marriage negotiations and to receive important diplomatic embassies on behalf of her son."

In Burgundy, Margaret of York played an important role not only in court life but also in politics and government. Just as Charles's mother, for example, had acted as regent of Burgundy, had functioned in the administration of the duchy, had negotiated treaties, and had helped to formulate policy, by 1472 Margaret herself was involved in the administration of Burgundy.

Among Margaret's responsibilities as duchess were regular progresses around the Low Countries; while her husband visited his possessions and campaigned to extend his territory, Margaret also traveled, her progresses an important means of representation of Charles's ducal position. During the first seven years of her marriage, she spent, by Weightman's calculations, only about a year with her husband; between 1475 and Charles's death in 1477, they did not meet at all.

Margaret of Burgundy and her stepdaughter traveled and lived together. Mary of Burgundy's early education had been supervised by her father's half-sister Anne, but after 1468 it became Margaret of York's task to guide, support, and educate Charles's heir. 

Charles of Burgundy died in battle in 1477, and Margaret of York was forced to move quickly and forcefully to protect Mary. In the crisis that followed the duke's death, the thirty-one-year-old Margaret, experienced in government, advised her twenty-year-old stepdaughter and negotiated on her behalf. To guard against further French encroachment--Louis XI claimed a woman could not inherit the duchy of Burgundy--Margaret of York and Mary of Burgundy turned to Maximilian, then archduke of Austria and eventually Holy Roman Emperor, offering him, as the dowager duchess wrote, "the word of a princess" in support of a marital alliance with Mary of Burgundy.

The original marriage contract, as Weightman reports, "cut Maximilian out of the succession, leaving all the Burgundian lands to the children of the marriage and specifying that all Burgundian possessions must be under Burgundian rule."

Margaret of York before the risen Christ,
from a book commissioned by
the duchess of Burgundy,
shortly after her marriage in 1468

Later, in an act signed by Margaret, her stepdaughter Mary, and Maximilian--and only one Burgundian official--this provision was eliminated, and Mary's inheritance was left to Maximilian in the event of her death. This decision proved to be critical. After five short years--and the births of two children--the young duchess of Burgundy, pregnant with her third child, died in a hunting accident.

When Mary died in 1482, Margaret of York was to have assumed the role of guardian of her stepdaughter's heirs, Philip, then four years old and Margaret, age two. But the Estates General of Flanders refused to turn the children over to Maximilian and the dowager duchess.

While Margaret prepared troops to gain possession of them, the Estates signed a treaty with Louis XI, sending the infant Margaret of Austria to the French court, while still refusing to relinquish the heir to the dowager duchess or to his father. Maximilian eventually regained control of Philip in 1484; he then entrusted Margaret of York with the boy's guardianship and education. Margaret established her court in the city of Mechelen, in Brabant, one of her dower possessions; during her stepgrandson's minority, her court there became the de facto ducal palace.

The relationship between Maximilian and the dowager duchess was complementary: Margaret of York needed the support of Maximilian in order to retain control of her dower properties, but Maximilian needed Margaret of York's experience and administrative capabilities. Throughout Philip's minority, Margaret remained Charles's "most loyal subject": "her support and advice were an invaluable asset to Maximilian in his government of the Low Countries."

Margaret was forty-eight years old when her stepgrandson Philip of Austria came of age in 1494, inheriting his mother's titles and possessions. Upon his accession, he confirmed the dowager duchess's possessions, in recognition, as he proclaimed, 

[of her] good and honest conduct towards our late lord and grandfather, and the great love that she clearly bore towards our late sovereign lady mother and to all her lands and lordships both before and after her marriage, and equally towards our lord and father, and towards us in our minority, how after the death of our late lady mother, she behaved towards us as if she was our real mother . . . and moreover because she has suffered inestimable damange rather than abandon us . . . and because of many other great reasons and considerations.

Although Margaret of York never gave birth to a child of her own, she staunchly and faithfully defended the inheritance of her stepdaughter and her stepdaughter's children. She was to serve the next generation as well, for Madame la Grande, as she was known, retained her considerable influence during her stepgrandson's rule, welcoming foreign visitors to his court (including his bride, Juana of Castile), selecting administrators and counselors for him, and presiding over many ceremonies, including the christening of Philip and Juana's first two children, Eleanor and Charles. 

Margaret of York's spectacular crown,
now in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury

Margaret of York played an important role in the life of Margaret of Austria, her step granddaughter, though the younger Margaret spent relatively little of her childhood with the older Margaret. Nevertheless, as Weightman notes, the younger Margaret "inherited much from her step-grandmother, acquiring both her personal treasures and her public servants"; but "the young woman seems to have inherited much more than material goods and servants from her namesake."

Under the influence of her female role models--Margaret of York, as well as Anne of France and Isabella of Castile, about whom I'll post later this year--Margaret of Austria was to become one of the most accomplished rulers of the early modern period. She was to serve as regent of the Netherlands for twenty years, at the same time shaping another generation of women whom she trained at her court and for whom she herself was to provide an influential model of female sovereignty.

Christine Weightman's Margaret of York: Duchess of Burgundy, 1446-1503, originally published in 1989, was republished in 2009 with a horrible title, Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess. Why? Not why the republication, but why the obviously tabloidization of the title?

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).