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…

Sophia Dorothea of Celle, A Forced Marriage, Then an Imprisonment

Sophia Dorothea of Celle, princess of Hanover (born 15 September 1666) 

Sophia Dorothea of Celle's life is a tragic one--and her story is like that of many other inconvenient royal and aristocratic women who were judged to be "immoral," "crazy," "barren," or otherwise "dangerous" to the powerful men (and, to be fair, women) in their lives.

Sophia Dorothea was married at age sixteen much against her will. The marriage was arranged between her father, George William, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Celle, and his sister-in-law, Sophia of the Palatinate, electress of Hanover and, under the settlement act of 1701, heir presumptive to the English throne (she was a daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, who herself was the daughter of King James I of England)--for the English succession, German Hanoverian Protestants who had never lived in England were preferred to any English Stuart heirs suspected of being Catholic or of having Catholic sympathies.

Sophia Dorothea of Celle,
c. 1686

For Sophia of Hanover, the motivations for her son's marriage were financial--according to Sophia Dorothea's biographer, the young woman was "the richest heiress in Germany."

But, even as she maneuvered to arrange the marriage of her son, George Louis, to Sophia Dorothea, the princess palatinate despised her brother-in-law George William, his wife (Eleonore d'Esmier d'Olbreuse, an exiled French Protestant aristocrat, who had been George William's mistress before she became his wife, ten years after Sophia Dorothea's birth), and her son's bride-to-be, Sophia Dorothea.

As for Sophia Dorothea herself, on hearing the announcement of the planned match, she "shouted, sobbed, stormed, smashed to smithereens the portrait of George Louis, set in in diamonds, that her future mother-in-law had brought for her," and insisted that she would not marry him, professing that she would never leave her mother and would prefer dying at Celle than marrying her father's choice. When first introduced to Sophia of Hanover, Sophia Dorothea is reported to have fainted. 

For his part, George Louis was impressed by what his mother called "a tidy sum to pocket," if not the bride herself. By the terms of the marriage contract, Sophia Dorothea's wealth became his. (All of this offering one more great example of traditional marriage.)

The two were married on 21 November 1682. Sophia Dorothea produced the requisite children--a son, George Augustus (who would become King George II of England), and a daughter, Sophia Dorothea (the younger Sophia Dorothea became queen of Prussia, but her marriage to Frederick William, king of Prussia, was also very unhappy).

While George Louis had a long-time mistress, Ehrengard von der Schulenburg, one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting (this relationship produced two daughters), the mere rumor in 1692 that Sophia Dorothea had a lover (the Swedish count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck) resulted in her banishment and imprisonment. (Königsmarck disappeared in 1694, his death probably arranged by George Louis.) George Louis divorced his wife as well--or, rather, he had his marriage "dissolved" on the basis that his wife had abandoned him.

From 1694 until her death on 13 November 1726, thirty-three years later, Sophia Dorothea was held captive, imprisoned in Ahlden House, on the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Although George Louis became king of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 August 1714, his British subjects did not know his wife was alive. Ehrengard von der Schulenburg moved to England with George Louis, now George I. There she was heaped with titles: on 18 July 1716 she was created duchess of Munster, marchioness of Dungannon, countess of Dungannon, and baroness Dundalk (Irish titles). On 19 March 1719 she was created duchess of Kendal, countess of Feversham, and baroness Glastonbury (English titles). In 1723, the Holy Roman Emperor created her princess of Eberstein, which some historians have regarded as evidence that she and King George had married in secret. (His relationship with Ehrengard did not keep George I from having other mistresses, however.)

I began this post by referring to other royal or aristocratic women who became "inconvenient" and were simply removed from the scene. Here are just a few: 

• Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England (c. 1122-1203): imprisoned by King Henry II of England between 1173 and 1189, though, unlike most of the women on this list, she made it out alive; 
• Joan of England, queen of Sicily (1165-1195): Eleanor of Aquitaine's daughter, she was imprisoned after her husband's death in 1189 by his successor, Tancred, but ultimately freed by her brother, King Richard, who took time off during his trip to the Holy Land to secure her release in 1190;
• Isabel, countess of Gloucester (c. 1173-1217): discarded after ten years' of marriage by her husband John shortly after he became king of England, she was deprived of title and possessions and closely held in Winchester and then Sherborn for fourteen years until 1213, when John, needing money, sold her off to a new "husband" for what historian Dan Jones calls an "astronomical" sum;
• Eleanor of Brittany (c. 1184-10 August 1241): the granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the sole heir of her brother Arthur (the son of Geoffrey, the fourth son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine), Eleanor had a potential claim to the English throne (as well as to Brittany and vast holdings throughout England, Anjou, and Aquitaine) that threatened her uncle, King John of England (the fifth son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine); John had Eleanor imprisoned in 1202, and she remained a prisoner after John's death, when his son, Henry III, succeeded him; she died, still a caprive, on 10 August 1241;
• Elizabeth de Burgh, queen of Scotland (c. 1284-1327): the second wife of Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, she was imprisoned after her husband's defeat at the battle of Methven in 1306, sent to Edward II, king of England, and imprisoned in a variety of locations from October 1306 until 1314, when she was finally returned to Scotland;
• Christina Bruce (c. 1278-1357): Robert the Bruce's sister, she was sent to the convent of Sixhills after her brother's defeat at the battle of Methven, but released, marrying in 1326;
• Mary Bruce (c. 1282-1323): Robert the Bruce's sister, she was betrayed after her brother's 1306 defeat, imprisoned in a stone and iron cage, and then hung out of doors for public display at Roxborough Castle; her imprisonment in these harsh outdoor cages lasted from 1306 until 1310 when she was moved to a different confinement, her release coming after the battle of Bannockburn in 1314;
• Isabella MacDuff, countess of Buchan (d. c. 1313?): supporter of Robert the Bruce, she was imprisoned in a stone and iron cage and then hung out of doors for public display at Berwick Castle from 1306 until 1310, then transferred to a different confinement, and transferred again in 1313, after which her fate is unknown; 
• Marjorie Bruce (c. 1296-1316): Robert the Bruce's daughter, she was transferred to Watton Priory after her father's defeat at the battle of Methven in 1306 and held in solitary confinement until 1314, after the battle of Bannockburn--King Edward I had originally planned to build a cage for Marjorie, like the ones in which he imprisoned her aunts, and display her at the Tower of London, but he ultimately decided on the convent instead
  (Note: for all of these women, their imprisonments outlasted Edward I, who died in 1307, and were continued by his son, Edward II);
• Margaret of Burgundy (1290-1315) and her sister-in-law Blanche of Burgundy (c. 1296-c. 1326) definitely proved themselves "inconvenient" when they were accused of having committed adultery with two brothers, who admitted having sexual relationships with the women (though it is likely that the accusations were true, both men were hideously tortured in order to extract their testimony); both women were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment, underground, at Château Gaillard in Normandy (Margaret of Burgundy became nominal queen of France when her husband became Louis X, but she died a short time after his accession, perhaps murdered so he could remarry; Blanche was also nominally queen of France when her husband became Charles IV in 1322, after which he had their marriage annulled);
• Maria of Portugal (c. 1310-1350s): abandoned and imprisoned by her husband Alfonso XI of Castile;
• Blanche of Bourbon (1338-1361): repudiated by Pedro of Castile in 1352, the day after their marriage, and imprisoned until her death; 
• Leanor Teles (c. 1350s-1386): wife of Ferdinand I of Portugal, regent for her daughter, Beatrice, but overthrown, exiled to Castile, and imprisoned; 
• Beatrice of Castile (1353-1368): the eldest daughter of Pedro I of Castile, forced out of her claim to the throne of Castile and into a convent; 
• Blanche of Navarre (1424-64): repudiated by her husband, Enrique of Castile after thirteen years of marriage and send back to Navarre, where she was imprisoned and deprived of her claim to the throne; 
• Jeanne d'Harcourt (c. 1451-1488): repudiated by her husband René II of Anjou after fourteen years of marriage because of her "sterility," returned to her father's chateau at Tancarville where she lived under guard; 
• Enrique of Castile's daughter Juana of Castile (1462-1530), la Beltraneja: her legitimacy disputed, her title of queen of Castile lost (she lost it to Isabella of Castile), and consigned to a convent from 1480 until her death; 
• Juana I of Castile and Aragon, Isabella of Castile's daughter, la Loca: who inherited the titles of her mother and father, but whose husband, father, and son decided she was crazy and who was imprisoned for nearly fifty years, from 1507 until her death in 1555;
• Jeanne of France (1464-1505): the younger sister of Anne of France, repudiated by her husband, Louis XI after twenty-two years of marriage on the grounds, he claimed, of non-consummation, but really so he could marry Anne of Brittany (Jeanne entered into a convent and ultimately became a saint);
• Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536): repudiated by Henry VIII after more than twenty years of marriage, and banished after 1531; 
• Margaret Douglas (1515-78): the daughter of Henry VIII's older sister, Margaret Tudor, she was imprisoned in the Tower from 1536 until 1537 by Henry VIII for having engaged herself secretly to Thomas Howard and branded as "illegitimate," then imprisoned again by Henry in 1540 and by Queen Elizabeth in 1566 and again in 1576; 
• Mary, queen of Scots (1542-1587): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth of England from 1568 until she was executed in 1587; 
• Catherine Grey (1540-68): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth from 1561 until 1563 after a clandestine marriage, her marriage annulled, her children declared illegitimate, and forcibly removed to a series of confinements, dying in Suffolk at the age of twenty-seven;
• Mary Grey (c. 1545-1578): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth from 1565 until 1572, after a clandestine marriage, and while ultimately released and "rehabilitated," she died in 1578 at the age of thirty-three;
• Arbella Stuart (1575-1615): to all intents and purposes imprisoned by her grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, to keep her safe and prepare her to inherit the English throne after Queen Elizabeth's death, then imprisoned by King James I from 1610 to 1615 after a clandestine marriage and labelled as insane, dying in the Tower while imprisoned, probably from refusing to eat; 
• Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel (1627-1686): divorced unilaterally by her husband, Charles Louis of the Palatinate, who bigamously married his mistress but maintained control of his "ex" wife in his palace; after nine years, she was allowed to return to her home in Hesse-Kassel; 
• Caroline Matilda of Great Britain (1751-75): arrested in 1772 by her husband, King Christian II of Denmark and Norway, interrogated and pressured to admit an affair, her marriage dissolved and then deported to Celle, where she was imprisoned and died at the age of twenty-three.

And these are just the names that come immediately to mind . . .

Paul Morand's Sophia Dorothea of Celle: The Captive Princess is the only biography I know of--it's a very bad English translation of Morand's French original, but used copies are usually available.