Lucrezia Borgia, a "Pearl among Women"

Lucrezia Borgia (death of her mother, Vannozza dei Cattanei on 24 November 1518)

Very few women have the kind of notoriety that attaches to the name of Lucrezia Borgia--I remember throwing around her name when I was just a girl and a friend accused me of having been mean to her: "Oh, yeah, I'm Lucrezia Borgia," I snarled. Of course I had no idea who Lucrezia Borgia was--just that she was somehow awful and evil.

A portrait once believed to be of
Lucrezia Borgia, c. 1510,
portrait by Veneziano

But, while she was accused of poisoning her husband and of incest with both father and brother, Cesare, Lucrezia Borgia was probably guilty of neither. 

As the year nears its end and I'm scrambling to include women in the few remaining posts left in my daybook, I've had to explain more frequently about why I've selected to write about certain women on certain dates, and that is the case here as well. So, although we do know the days on which Lucrezia was born and when she died, I am posting about her on the date of her mother's death, 24 November. 

Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI, and his mistress Giovanna dei Cattanei, known as "Vannozza."* Born on 18 April 1480, Lucrezia was raised in Rome, spending much of her girlhood in the household of Adriana del Mila, her father's cousin. 

She was noted for her educational achievements--a contemporary reported that she spoke Spanish, Greek, Italian, French, and Latin and that she could compose poetry in these languages as well. The household was joined by Giulia Farnese, who had married Adriana del Mila's son, Orso Orsini, in 1489; Giulia became Lucrezia's friend and companion, but she also became Rodrigo Borgia's mistress.

A portrait said to represent
Vanozza Cattanei,
mother of Lucrezia Borgia

Rodrigo looked to his native Spain for Lucrezia's future (and his own political needs), arranging her betrothal in 1491 to Don Juan de Centelles, lord of Val D'Agora in Valencia, and then, when the first contract was annulled, to Don Gaspare d'Aversa, who was also living in Valencia. But that betrothal was also broken when, after his election as pope in 1492, her father arranged for her marriage to Giovanni Sforza; their marriage was celebrated on 12 June 1493.

Unsettled by Charles VIII's threatened invasion of Italy and by "Vatican intrigues," the bridegroom left Rome after his marriage and returned, without his bride, to Pesaro for the summer and fall.

But Giovanni returned to Rome in November, no doubt to ensure his receipt of his thirteen-year-old bride's dowry. In 1494 Lucrezia finally left Rome for Pesaro, where she was living when Charles VIII's threatened invasion became a reality. 

She returned to Rome in the autumn of 1495, acting as hostess for her father at the papal court. But in the changed world of Italian politics, Alexander VI no longer had need of a Sforza alliance, and he decided that Lucrezia's marriage should be annulled on the basis of nonconsummation.

Giovanni angrily rejected the annullment, implying as it did his impotence, and appealed to his uncle Ludovico Sforza for aid. Ludovico was in need of papal support as he fought against Charles VIII, and, fearful that he could lose Milan to the French, proposed a test for Giovanni--he could prove the validity of his marriage if he consummated it, publicly, in the presence of members of both the Borgia and Sforza families.

After Giovanni rejected this proposal, Ludovico then suggested that Giovanni prove his virility in front of just one person, but again the proposal was angrily refused. Giovanni, for his part, reminded the pope and his uncle that his first wife, Maddalena Gonzaga, had died in childbirth; under those circumstances, he argued, there could be little question of his ability to consummate a marriage. He charged that Alexander wanted to dissolve the marriage because Alexander wanted his daughter for himself.

Giovanni's angry charge of incest was almost certainly untrue, but it has become an indelible part of the Lucrezia's unsavory reputation nonetheless. It is also interesting to note, here, that accusations of incest form a regular part of attacks on powerful women as a way of discrediting them--Eleanor of Aquitaine was accused of having such a relationship with her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, for example, and Margaret Beaufort's intense emotional connection with her son drew criticism and suspicion as well. Marguerite of Navarre was also accused of incest with her brother, Francis I, again because of their emotional connections. (The frequency of such claims about women made by their political enemies puts such accusations against Anne Boleyn in an interesting context, doesn't it?)

If she failed to show her emotional connection to members of her family, a woman like Lucrezia’s contemporary, Caterina Sforza, could be constructed as an unnatural monster, but intimate and loving demonstrations of affection could also be used against a woman, raising the suggestion of "neurotic" and "obsessive" attachment (in the case of Margaret Beaufort) or, as with Lucrezia Borgia, incest. 

Alexander, instead of expressing outrage at his son-in-law's accusations, replied to Giovanni with concern for the young man's "honorable" reputation: Giovanni could "admit" his impotence, even while everyone acknowledged it was just a temporary condition, perhaps one caused by an evil spell of some sort, or he could agree to an annulment simply by claiming that his marriage was invalid because of Lucrezia's previous betrothals.

Giovanni agreed to have the legality of his marriage examined, but a commission charged with the investigation found no irregularities, despite Alexander VI's obvious desire to have them found. The only remaining argument was nonconsummation, and under pressure from his uncle Ludovico and with financial inducements from the pope, Giovanni Sforza finally agreed. On 18 November 1497 he signed a "confession" of impotence, and on 22 December Lucrezia Borgia's first marriage was formally annulled. She was declared to be intacta, that is, a virgin. (Another good example of "traditional marriage," huh?)

Several new alliances were immediately suggested for her, including one with Ottaviano Sforza, Caterina Sorza's son. But on 29 June 1498 she was married by proxy to Alfonso of Aragon, the illegitimate son of Alfonso II, king of Naples, who made his son duke of Bisceglie. The formal ceremony took place in Rome in July. When Alexander VI and his son allied themselves with the French, who planned to invade Naples, Alfonso left Rome without his wife. Shortly thereafter, Alexander VI appointed his daughter governor of Spoleto and Foligno.

Just nineteen years old, Lucrezia took on the administrative tasks her new role demanded. Apparently reassured of his father-in-law's intentions, Alfonso reclaimed his wife, and the two returned to Rome, where Lucrezia gave birth to a son, whom she named Rodrigo after her father. In July of 1500 Alfonso was attacked by assassins in Rome. As he did not die (Lucrezia's ministrations are credited with his recovery), on 18 August he was strangled in his bed, probably under Cesare Borgia's orders. Lucrezia was dismissed from Rome, her letters from this period signed La Infelicissima--"the most unhappy of ladies."

By July of 1501 Louis XII of France and Ferdinand of Aragon had defeated Naples. While her father campaigned in Italy, Lucrezia returned to Rome to administer his affairs. But Lucrezia's remarriage could provide her father another political ally, and so a third husband was found for her, Alfonso d'Este, Isabella d'Este's brother, son and heir to the duke of Ferrara. After initially opposing the alliance, the duke was compelled to agree. Lucrezia and Alfonso d'Este were married on 30 December 1501. 

Lucrezia Borgia, 1518,
portrait by Dossi Dossi

Contemporary accounts of Lucrezia, just twenty-one years old at the time of her third marriage, counter the more salacious and vicious gossip that still surrounds her name. Her new sister-in-law viewed Lucrezia with suspicion; nevertheless, Isabella d'Este's agent reported to her that Lucrezia was "full of charm and grace," and one of Isabella's ladies-in-waiting, too, grudgingly admitted that if Lucrezia "is not noticeably beautiful, she stands out thanks to the sweetness of her expression." A chronicler in Ferrara reported, "She is full of tact, prudent, intelligent, animated, pleasing, very amiable. . . . Her quick mind makes her eyes sparkle."

Despite d'Este fears and Isabella's suspicions, Lucrezia proved to be an excellent wife--she promptly bore her husband four children, including his son and heir Ercole, who succeeded his father as duke of Ferrara in 1534. 

After Alexander VI's death, Lucrezia no longer played a political role in Italy, but she established numerous charitable foundations in Ferrara and, like her sister-in-law's court at Mantua, Ferrara became a center for artists and intellectuals. 

Lucrezia Borgia died on 24 June 1519, just ten days after giving birth to a stillborn daughter. Lucrezia was thirty-nine years old.

There is a great deal about Lucrezia Borgia in popular culture, from historical dramas like The Borgias to novels. But there are good biographies as well. Although it was originally published in Italian in 1939, I still like Maria Bellonci's The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, trans. Bernard and Barbara Wall; it's out of print, but it has been reprinted so many times that there are lots of used copies available. I also recommend Sarah Bradford's 2004 Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy.

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

Madeleine de Scudéry, "the Incomparable Sappho"

Madeleine de Scudéry (born 15 November 1607)

Ridiculed and satirized by many of her male contemporaries, Madeleine de Scudéry was, despite her critics, a wildly successful novelist whose works were quickly translated and published in England, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Madeleine de Scudéry

The daughter of a minor aristocratic family, Scudéry was orphaned at the age of six. She was raised by an uncle who provided her with an extraordinary education: in addition to reading, writing, painting, dancing, and music, he exposed her to the study of agriculture, medicine, and "domestic economy." On her own, seemingly, she learned Spanish and Italian and developed an interest in philosophy.

After her uncle's death in 1637, Scudéry left Normandy for Paris, where she joined her brother, the playwright Georges de Scudéry, who introduced her into the vibrant salon life of the city. Her "pretensions" in becoming a regular figure in the salons--and then in establishing one of her own--are what seems to be the source of the ridicule directed at her.

Or at least one source. She also dared to write, at first using her brother's name as her pseudonym. Her first two works, the historical novel Ibrahim, ou l'illustre Bassa (Ibrahim or the Ilustrious Basa,1641) and the series of angry orations delivered by famous women, Les femmes illustres, ou Les harangues héroïques (Illustrious Women or Heroic Harangues, 1642), were both published under Georges de Scudéry's name.

Her Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (Artamène or the Great Cyrus), published in ten volumes (over two million words!!!) between 1648 and 1653 brought her fame and acclaim (and the subsequent ridicule).* The historical romance was set in ancient Assyria and featured fictionalized versions of her contemporaries, with Scudéry writing herself as Sappho. 

After 1653, the Scudéry siblings moved to the Marais, where Madeleine established her Saturday salon, which she called her "Société du samedi." There the group discussed many literary works, including those of Marguerite de Navarre. Among those who regularly attended was a writer whom we have met before, Madame de la Fayette. (Her work was also appreciated and praised by another woman we've met, Madame de Sévigné.)

She continued to publish fiction, both multi-volume novels and novellas, but Scudéry also published philosophical dialogues (such as Conversations sur divers sujets, [Conversations upon Several Subjects, 1680] and Conversations morales [Moral Conversations, 1686) and epistolary fictions, following the model of Ovid's Heroides, in her Lettres amoureuses de divers autheurs de ce temps (Amorous Letters from Various Contemporary Authors, 1641).

More recently, Scudéry's philosophical achievements have come to be recognized. In the introduction to his entry on Scudéry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Conley notes,

A prominent novelist, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) composed a series of dialogues dealing with philosophical issues. Primarily ethical in focus, her dialogues examine the virtues and vices proper to the aristocratic society of the period. They also explore questions of moral psychology, in particular the interplay between temperament and free will. In the area of epistemology, Scudéry analyzes the problem of certitude and self-knowledge. Theologically, she defends cosmological arguments demonstrating God's existence. Her aesthetic theory endorses the mimetic thesis concerning art as the imitation of nature but the individuality of artistic perception also receives attention. In her philosophical speculation, Scudéry stresses questions of gender; the relationship of philosophical theories to the condition of women receives substantial analysis.

Long framed by her critics as a pedantic précieuse, Scudéry has only recently attracted the interest of professional philosophers. . . . In the recent feminist expansion of the canon of humanities . . . the philosophical significance of her writings has emerged. Her literary corpus presents a novel version of the ancient philosophical method of dialogue; it also expresses original, sophisticated theories concerning the ethical, aesthetic, and theological disputes of early modernity.

For a wonderful introduction to Scudéry's diverse work, Jane Donawerth's Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues offers an excellent sampling. And if you're not up to tackling the two million words of Scudéry's Artamène, Karen Newman's The Story of Sapho offers a "self-contained section" of the historical romance:

The Story tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations like those that took place in Scudéry's own salon in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing, and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or harangue, of Scudéry's in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

Madeleine de Scudéry died on 2 June 1701, at the age of ninety-three. To her friends, she was "the incomparable Sappho." (When they are not being described as a "tenth muse," women seem to be identified as a new Sappho . . . )

*When I was in graduate school, my professors went on and on about Samuel Richard's Clarissa, estimated to be 984,870 words long. Ha!!!!! Less than half as long as Artamène!

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). 

Marguerite d'Angoulême, Queen of Navarre: Princess, Politician, Poet

Marguerite d'Angoulême, queen of Navarre (born 11 April 1492)

The daughter of Louise of Savoy, a woman we have met before, Marguerite d'Angoulême was married (her second marriage) to Henry II, king of Navarre, thus gaining the title by which she is most well-known. She is the mother of Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, whom we met in January. And, along with Louise of Savoy, Marguerite is one of the women who negotiated the "Ladies Peace" with Margaret of Austria in 1529.

Marguerite in a portrait from c. 1530

The sister of a king (Francis I), the wife of a king, and the mother of a queen, Marguerite d'Angoulême, most often referred to now as Marguerite de Navarre, is notable for  more than these royal connections. Extraordinarily well educated, Marguerite was an important patron of artists and writers, as well as a supporter of religious reform. 

In addition, she is remembered as a writer. Among her more important religious works is The Mirror of the Sinful Soul (Miroir de l’âme pécheress, 1531), later translated into English by Elizabeth Tudor as A Godly Meditation of the Soul. Marguerite also wrote Prayer to Our Lord Jesus Christ (Oraison à notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ) and the two-volume Pearls from the Pearl of Princesses (Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses), published in 1547. In addition to these poems and prayers, she wrote four religious plays.

But she wrote secular work as well, including plays like the Comedy of Four Women (Comédie des quatre femmes) and Too Much, Much, Little, Less (Trop, Prou, Peu, Moins). 

Undoubtedly her most well-known work is the unfinished Heptameron (L’Heptaméron), a frame-tale narrative modeled on Boccaccio's Decameron. Isolated by a flood that confines them in a monastery, Marguerite's characters, a group ten aristocrats, five men and five women, tell stories, debate, and react to one another's "artistic" efforts. Their topics include love and marriage, faithfulness and infidelity, and the conflict between faith and religion.

For an excellent biographical essay, click here. If you're in the mood for a scholarly biography, I recommend Patricia Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian's Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549): Mother of the Renaissance. There is a Penguin paperback edition of The Heptameron, and for a wider selection of her work, there is Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp's Marguerite de Navarre: Selected Writings, a Bilingual Edition.

Margaret of Austria: A Formidable Politician and Peacemaker

Margaret of Austria (born 10 January 1480)

Margaret of Austria,
about 1490

In an age of politically powerful women, Margaret of Austria is among the most adept, experienced, and influential--though she remains surprisingly little known.* An accomplished ruler--she was regent of the Netherlands for some twenty years--she also nurtured and shaped a generation of younger women whom she trained at her court and for whom she herself was to provide a model of female sovereignty. 

Named after her step-grandmother, Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy, the younger Margaret was born on 10 January 1480. When her mother, Mary of Burgundy, died on 27 March 1482, at the age of just twenty-seven, her daughter was just two years old. Three days before her death, Mary had signed a will naming her children as her heirs and appointing her husband, Maximilian of Austria, as "guardian, governor, and regent" of Burgundy and of her two children: her son and heir, Philip, and her daughter, Margaret.

But when the Estates General of Flanders met the following month, instead of recognizing Maximilian as guardian and regent, they pursued a course of reconciliation with France. In an effort to settle his on-going conflict with Burgundy, the French king, Louis XI, offered the Estates a treaty of peace which included a proposed marriage between Margaret of Austria and his son and heir, Charles. Despite the vigorous opposition of both Maximilian and Margaret of York, the Estates agreed to the offer, and by the time Margaret of Austria was three years old, she had been sent off to the French court. On 2 June 1483, at Amboise, she was betrothed to the dauphin Charles, then aged thirteen; they were "married" the following day. 

After Louis XI died on 31 August 1483, his son Charles became king of France and, as his "wife," Margaret of Austria, just three years old, became la petite reine, "the little queen." Throughout her childhood and adolescence, her education and training were supervised by Anne of France, then governing France as regent on behalf of her brother, Charles.

But by 1491, French political interests had changed, the alliance with Burgundy was put aside, and la petite reine was replaced. The eleven-year-old Margaret discovered that her "husband" would marry another little princess, Anne of Brittany, on 6 December 1491. For more than eight years Margaret of Austria had been Charles's "wife," raised to be and treated as the queen of France; suddenly, at age eleven, she was no longer a French queen, but neither was she sent home. She could no longer remain in the royal residence of Amboise, but she was not returned to Burgundy either. Instead, she was sent to the castle of Melun where she remained a hostage in France for two years. 

When Charles VIII decided to pursue his conquests in Italy, he needed peace with Maximilian. By the terms of the treaty of Senlis, signed in May 1493, Margaret of Austria was returned to her father. Margaret of York awaited her and greeted her upon her arrival in the Flemish city of Cambrai. The two returned to the dowager duchess's court at Mechelen, where the younger Margaret would remain for the next four years. 

While his daughter had been in France, Maximilian had regained control of all of his Austrian possessions and of late his wife's duchy of Burgundy and possessions in the Netherlands; as his daughter Margaret returned from France, he had been elected Holy Roman Emperor following his own father's death. In 1494, when Charles VIII invaded Italy, the new emperor allied himself with the pope, Spain, Venice, and Milan in the "Holy League" against the French. In that year, to strengthen his Spanish alliance, Maximilian arranged for the marriage of his son (Margaret's brother), Philip of Burgundy, to Juana of Castile, while his daughter Margaret of Austria, one-time "queen" of France, would marry the son and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Philip's marriage to Juana took place first; the ships that brought the Spanish princess to Flanders would, on their return voyage, take Margaret of Austria to Spain. But before she left Mechelen, a ceremonial marriage by proxy was celebrated. On 5 November 1496, Margaret of Austria was married to the Spanish infante, Prince Juan. She was sixteen years old.

When she arrived in Spain in March, she was greeted by Ferdinand and her new husband, Prince Juan. "If you could see her," the Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr wrote, "you would believe that you were contemplating Venus herself." Together they traveled to the city of Burgos, where Margaret of Austria met her new mother-in-law, Isabella of Castile. Her formal wedding with Juan took place on 3 April 1497. Just as Maximilian had arranged the marriage to secure his allies and to further his dynastic pursuit, Isabella and Ferdinand hoped, by this marriage, to expand their own power: Castile and Aragon were now doubly linked to the Holy Roman Empire.

Margaret of Austria as a widow

Margaret of Austria proved to be much healthier than her Spanish prince. By 9 October, just six months after his marriage, Prince Juan was dead, and Margaret of Austria was a widow. She was also pregnant for what turned out to be the first and only time in her life. Late in 1497 or early in 1498, she gave birth to a daughter, stillborn.

Margaret of Austria had been forced to remain in France after her first marriage was dissolved, a discarded "wife" but a valuable hostage. She remained in Spain after Prince Juan's death as well, perhaps as a treasured "daughter," perhaps as, yet again, a political hostage.

Whatever the circumstances of her life in Castile after Juan's death, Margaret spent her time profitably, both teaching and learning. She tutored her sister-in-law Catalina of Aragon, betrothed to Prince Arthur of England, in English, while she herself learned practical lessons in politics and government from her "mother," the queen of Castile.

Eventually, though, Margaret of Austria was returned to Burgundy. She arrived in the Netherlands in September 1499, spending much of the next two years once more with Margaret of York at Mechelen. Already her father was planning to use her again to further his political ambitions. Many candidates for her remarriage were proposed: with Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan; with the king of Scotland; with Arthur, Prince of Wales (who was already been betrothed to her sister-in-law Catalina of Aragon); and with the king of Hungary, among others. 

While Maximilian deliberated, his son Philip of Burgundy decided the matter. With the death of Prince Juan of Castile, Philip's wife Juana had become the heir to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, and Philip was interested in having himself recognized as the future ruler of Spain. To this end, he wanted peace with France. He suggested yet another double marriage: his son and heir Charles would be married to Claude, infant daughter of the French king, while his sister Margaret would be married to Philibert of Savoy, the French king's nephew. The duchy of Savoy, bordering France and Milan, was strategically located. (Louise of Savoy, who had been one of Margaret's childhood companion during her days as "queen" of France, was Philibert's sister.)

On 26 September 1501, Margaret of Austria again left Flanders. She set off for a proxy marriage, accompanied once more by Margaret of York. The ceremony took place late on 28 November, the marriage with Philibert taking place shortly thereafter, on 4 December. 

After her arrival in Savoy, Margaret recognized that her husband, the duke, had no interest in government and no political influence. Having had the best of models in Margaret of York, Anne of France, and Isabella of Castile, Margaret of Austria for the first time became more than a wife and political pawn. 

As she began her political career, interested not only in domestic affairs but in foreign policy, Margaret of Austria had a distinct advantage over the rulers who were her "colleagues." Although young and as yet unpracticed, she was neither sheltered nor inexperienced: her marriages and her travel had brought her into contact with all the European powers. Her father was archduke of Austria and the Holy Roman emperor. Her brother was duke of Burgundy and was married to Juana, heir to the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. She had spent eight years in France, and knew Louis XII, Anne of Brittany, and Anne of France. Louise of Savoy, by then the mother of the heir-presumptive to Louis' French throne, had been her childhood companion while Margaret was at the French court and now was her sister-in-law. And Margaret had spent three years in Spain with Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon.

Although Margaret's tenure in Savoy was to be brief, it was to be important for her future career. She would never again be a wife, but she would be a ruler. In Savoy, having identified and appointed trustworthy advisors and assistants, many of whom would serve her throughout her life, she began to apply the lessons of politics and government she had learned in France and Spain. But by September of 1504 Philibert was dead.

Margaret's first reaction to the loss of her husband was to try to throw herself out a window. Her attempt at suicide thwarted, she threw herself into passionate grieving instead, refusing to be separated from Philibert's body. Although she was eventually convinced to bury her husband, she had his heart embalmed so she could keep it with her. She withdrew from society and, six months later, began the construction of a mausoleum for Philibert's interment. 

Margaret remained in Savoy for two years after Philibert's death, conducting affairs for Philibert's brother and successor, still a minor, and struggling to obtain her dower income. For a time it looked as if she might once again be a marital pawn in her father's hands, a match arranged for her with the recently widowed Henvy VII of England, but this time Margaret's refusal was determined. But before Maximilian could try to persuade his daughter into a fourth marriage, fortune intervened. On 25 September, just a day after Maximilian wrote to Henry VII, Margaret's brother Philip of Burgundy died. His death meant that Margaret was once more on her way back to the Netherlands 

In 1506 Margaret of Austria was twenty-six years old; she had been married three times, repudiated once and widowed twice. Although Philip's wife Juana would survive her husband by nearly fifty years, she was not to act as guardian for the four children she had left behind in the Netherlands--Eleanor, Charles, Isabel, and Mary--nor was she to serve as regent for her son. Instead Maximilian looked to his daughter to act as regent for Charles, Philip's heir in Burgundy (and Juana's heir in Spain). Margaret left Savoy on 29 October 1506, and on 18 March 1507, her father signed a document naming Margaret of Austria as regent of the Netherlands. 

She would serve as regent for nearly twenty years. Her first appointment extended from 1507 to 1515, her second from 1519 to 1530. As regent, she acted as guardian for Philip's children and arranged for their education. More importantly, she would manage the government of the Netherlands for the six-year-old Charles until he came of age: Margaret set up her court at Mechelen, where her step-grandmother Margaret of York, who had died in 1505, had established her own ducal establishment. One of Margaret's first decisions as regent was to travel with the young Charles throughout the provinces of the Low Countries. 

Although she had rejected Henry VII's offer of marriage, she negotiated new trade relations with him quite successfully. Less successfully, she was forced into the "Gelderland war," which she managed to settle in October of 1508 with the assistance of Louis XII, once her youthful companion and now the French king. The next month, in November, she traveled to Cambrai, where she represented both her father Maximilian and her former father-in-law, Ferdinand of Aragon, in a series of international negotiations.

Maximilian did not seem to have complete faith in his daughter, warning her that she could be duped--but, despite her father's hesitancy, Margaret proved herself an able negotiator; "Madam Margaret," one chronicler reported, "has seen and experienced more at her youthful age . . . than any lady on record, however long her life." Another noted, "This princess had a man's talent for managing business; in fact she was more capable than most men, for she added to her talents the fascination of her sex, brought up as she had been to hide her own feelings, conciliate her opponents, and persuade all parties that she was acting blindly in their interests." Still another, noting how well she dealt with one powerful representative, commented that she was "so successful in charming him that he could refuse her nothing." 

The treaty was concluded on 10 December 1508. Publicly, peace was declared between Maximilian and Louis XII, and Louis was invested with the duchy of Milan. But a secret treaty was also negotiated, one that united Maximilian, Louis XII, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Pope Julius II against Venice; the kings England and Hungary were also invited to join the League of Cambrai. While each of the men who were parties to the agreement had territorial and personal ambitions, Margaret had her own as well, for she aimed to secure peace in the Netherlands. 

Throughout the years of war that resulted, Margaret maintained peace in the Low Countries. Working with a council that included advisors who had accompanied her to Mechelen from Savoy, she assured the continued success of trade. She supervised the education of the children in her care. She also pursued her "womanly" responsibilities, spinning, weaving, and sewing, modelling herself, it seems, upon Isabella of Castile. She sent her father "good linen shirts"; "I have received by this bearer some beautiful shirts . . . which you have helped to make with your own hand," Maximilian wrote, "for with which I am delighted." She sent him recipes and remedies for his health, for which he was thankful, but also some political advice, carefully constructing her role as a woman and his "one and only daughter" rather than as his equal and an experienced politician in her own right. Maximilian was less pleased by her political "prescriptions" than her advice about his health. 

She also prepared for the future by arranging political marriages for her nieces. This "trade in princesses" began when a Portuguese match was suggested for Eleanor, Isabel, or Mary. Nothing was settled with Portugal, but a match was arranged for Isabel with Christian II, king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, who had a rather frightening reputation as the "Nero of the North." A double alliance would be made with Bohemia and Hungary as well; Mary of Austria would marry Louis, the crown prince of Bohemia and Hungary, while Ferdinand of Austria would marry Louis' sister Anne. Eleanor was to be reserved for a match with France or England. 

By 1515, Charles of Ghent, son and heir of Philip of Austria and Juana of Castile, was fifteen years old. He was declared of age by Maximilian, who apparently did not consult with Margaret before he made his decision. In letter to the estates of Flanders the young man announced his "emancipation." He also received a letter from Maximilian who reminded the newly "emancipated" young man "to remember the way [your aunt and regent] laboured during your minority in the administration of your country" and advised him to "communicate your chief and most arduous business to her, and . . . take and use her good advice and council," noting that from her the young Charles could count on "more comfort, help, and support than from any other." He concluded his letter with a touching reminder to Charles: "you are her whole heart, hope, and heir." 

But Charles's new counselors were eager to raise the young man's suspicions against his aunt, and there is little doubt that during her tenure as regent she had angered many--like her male contemporaries, she had not hesitated to use her power and authority, sometimes arbitrarily. She had at times insulted members of the Estates, on one notable occasion angering the nobles of the powerful Order of the Golden Fleece: "Ah, Messeigneurs! if I were such a man as I am a woman, I would make you bring your statutes to me and make you sing out passages from them!" 

Her nephew wisely reconsidered, dismissing the suspicions that had been raised about Margaret's regency. When his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon died on 23 January 1516, Charles became king of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, and regent of Castile for his "mad" mother, Juana. Before he left for Spain to claim his inheritance and his titles, he needed to appoint a regent, and Maximilian advised him to turn to Margaret of Austria once more. In a letter to Charles Maximilian reminded his grandson that he, his daughter, and Charles were "one and the same thing corresponding to one and the same desire," and in February 1517 he travelled to the Netherlands to make sure that his daughter and his grandson were reconciled. It was agreed among them that Margaret of Austria would once more become regent of the Netherlands. 

Charles confirmed Margaret in her regency and on 8 September, accompanied by his sister Eleanor, he departed for Spain. On his arrival, one of his first duties was to visit his mother in Tordesillas--once there, he attempted to remove his youngest sister, Catalina, but witnessing his mother's grief, he left her there. On 24 July 1519, from Saragossa, he issued an edict giving Margaret the authority to act in the Netherlands in his name. 

While Charles was in Spain, the Emperor Maximilian's health began to fail. In August 1518 he called together the electors of Rome to secure the imperial title for his grandson. But on 12 January 1519, before he could complete his task, he died, and it was left to Margaret of Austria to ensure her nephew's election. Her campaign on behalf of her nephew was vigorous, even brutal--and ultimately successful. On 28 June 1519, the seven electors named Charles of Austria and Burgundy, King of Spain, Naples, and Sicily as Holy Roman Emperor.

On 1 July 1519, in Barcelona, Charles praised the "great, inestimable, and praiseworthy" service of the "very dear lady and aunt, Lady Margaret." For the last ten years of her life, until her death on 1 December 1530, Margaret of Austria would continue to serve her nephew as regent of the Netherlands. During her second tenure, under constant threats of war with the French and in spite of economic pressures, she extended Habsburg territories in the Low Countries: by 1524, Friesland had been brought under control and Gelders had been subdued; by 1528, she had annexed the bishop of Utrecht's lands. 

But if she is known at all, the achievement for which Margaret of Austria is most remembered is the so-called "Ladies' Peace" of 1529, which settled years of strife. On 24 February 1525, while he campaigned against the Emperor Charles in Italy, Francis I, who had succeeded Louis XII as king of France, was captured at the battle of Pavia. He was sent to Spain. During his imprisonment, his mother Louise of Savoy became regent of France. In August she wrote to her childhood companion and former sister-in-law, Margaret of Austria, for a truce so that she could negotiate for her son's release, a request to which Margaret agreed, though she earned an angry reaction from Charles, whom she had not consulted. Francis's release was finally negotiated by the treaty of Madrid; among its other provisions, the agreement aimed at securing the peace between Charles and the French king by a double marriage. Charles's sister, the recently widowed Eleanor, would marry Francis, whose first wife, Claude, had also just died. Eleanor's infant daughter Maria of Portugal would marry Francis's son and heir, the French dauphin, another Francis. The French king was released from captivity on 17 March 1526. 

But he had no intention of keeping to the terms of his treaty which, besides his marriage to Eleanor, had committed him to serious territorial loss and had sent his two sons to Spain as hostages. Once back in France, he renewed his war with Charles; on 22 May 1526 Francis allied himself with Venice, Milan, England, and the pope. The League of Cognac aimed at Charles, targeting his Italian possessions. War broke out once more. It dragged on for two more years, until May of 1528, when Margaret of Austria, in what would be one of her last acts as regent of the Netherlands, conceived of a plan to end it. 

In 1529, three women--Margaret of Austria, Louise of Savoy, and Louise's daughter Marguerite of Angoulême--planned to meet at the neutral city of Cambrai. Before she left, Margaret was warned not to go because the French king would take her hostage, as her nephew had taken him hostage. But Margaret rejected such an idea, saying "she had no mistrust or fear of any sort as regarded Madame Louise or the king, and that if any of her councillors or courtiers were afraid, they might go home."

The regent arrived in Cambrai on 5 July at three o'clock in the afternoon; Louise and her daughter arrived two hours later. The two older women, although they had been sisters-in-law, had not met since Margaret had begun her journey to Savoy for her wedding with Philibert. On a personal level, the terms of the agreement they reached arranged for the ransom of Louise's grandsons from their captivity in Spain, and Francis agreed to celebrate his marriage to Margaret's niece, the widowed queen of Portugal. Further, the agreement they reached confirmed most of the territorial advantages the treaty of Madrid had awarded to the empire. Margaret of Austria once again proved her skills as a negotiator--and her willingness to use whatever means necessary, including bribery, to get the terms she wanted. The "Ladies' Peace" was formally concluded on 5 August. But the two "ladies" had agreed that they would continue their negotiations, securing their peace still more firmly by arranging double marriages between Louise's grandchildren and Charles's children. They never completed their plans, however. 

Back in the Netherlands, Margaret grew increasingly ill. She knew she was dying, and she wrote to her nephew Charles on 30 November 1530: "I have no regrets whatever, save for the privation of your presence, and that I can neither see nor speak with you once more before my death. . . . I turn back to you the government of [your lands], in which I believe I have loyally acquitted myself. . . . I particularly commend to you peace . . . ."

She died the next day, 1 December 1530. She was buried in Savoy, next to her third husband Philibert. Although she did not have any children, she would prove to be a formative influence on long and successful line of political "daughters."  

Margaret's tomb at the Royal Monastery of Brou,
Bourg-en-Bresse

For a biography of Margaret of Austria, see Jane de Iongh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, trans. M. D. Herter Norton (1953), a clear and readable narrative, if undocumented and somewhat romanticized (the book is out of print, but used copies are readily available). Eleanor E. Tremayne's 1908 The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria is an excellent and carefully documented work focusing principally on Margaret's later years as regent; reprint copies are available on Amazon. Both biographies are also available through the Internet Archive (click here).

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

Jeanne d'Albret, a Queen in the Age of Queens

Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre (born 7 January 1528)

Jeanne d'Albret, future queen of Navarre, was born in November of 1528, the daughter of Marguerite d'Angoulême, the granddaughter of Louise of Savoy, two women whom we will meet in this blog later in the year.*

Little is certain about the early life and education of the future queen of Navarre but as the granddaughter of a woman whose motto was libris et liberis, "for books and for children," and as the daughter of a woman who was an important patron for humanist scholars and who was herself a writer, Jeanne seems likely to have received the best of educations.

Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre,
about 1570

In 1537 the young princess of Navarre became the source of conflict between her father, Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, and her uncle, Francis I of France, over potential marriage alliances for Jeanne. Her father hoped to to marry his daughter to Philip of Spain, while Francis negotiated for her marriage to William de la Marck, duke of Cleves. 

Ultimately, the French king prevailed, signing a contract for the marriage of his niece and duke William on 16 July 1540 and announcing his plans to the girl and her mother at Fountainebleu. 

The marriage went forward a year later, despite the fact that Jeanne did not walk to the altar--she had to be carried. After the ceremony, the duke and the new duchess performed a ritual consummation of their match, and the groom returned to Cleves. 

Jeanne, however, remained at the French court; by 1545, the Cleves marriage was no longer so politically desirable for the French king, and it was formally annulled.

Jeanne was once again an available pawn to be played by the king of Navarre and the king of France. But by 1547, when her marriage was again a source of conflict between kings, Francis I had been succeeded by his son Henry II. The new French king arranged a marriage for his cousin with Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, while her father continued to try to arrange an imperial alliance for her. The king of France prevailed once more, this time with the complete agreement of Jeanne. Her marriage with the duke of Vendôme was celebrated on 20 October 1548. In September of 1551 Jeanne of Navarre gave birth to a son whom she named Henry, after her father. 

The young prince died in August of 1553, not quite two years old. By early June Jeanne was pregnant again; a second Henry, the future king of Navarre and of France, was born on 14 December. When her father died in May 1555, Jeanne d'Albret became queen regnant of Navarre, sovereign of Béarn, Soule, and Basse Navarre. She also held a score of French fiefdoms; to those inherited from her mother she added Foix and Albret, among others, from her father.  

After her father's death, Jeanne and her husband continued her father's efforts to regain lost Navarrese territories. In 1559, she gave birth to a daughter, Catherine of Bourbon. In 1560, while in Paris for the marriage of Mary Stuart and the dauphin Francis, son of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici, Jeanne attended a Calvinist service. It was a life-changing experience: Jeanne underwent a conversion on Christmas Day 1560. In the memoirs she later commanded to be written for her, the so-called Memoirs of Jeanne d'Albret (Mémoires de Jeanne d'Albret), her conversion and her subsequent "differences" with her husband are described in a first-person account: 

Since 1560 everyone knows that it pleased God by His grace to rescue me from idolatry, to which I had been too long given, and to receive me in His church. Since then, by the same grace, He has allowed me to persevere. . . . Even during the lifetime of my husband, the late King (who, withdrawing from his first zeal, put a thorn not in my foot but in my heart . . . ) neither favor nor hardship turned me to the right or to the left. . . . I have always followed the straight path.

She spent the twelve years of her life between her conversion in 1560 and her death in 1572 defending herself, her faith, her kingdom, and her son. Throughout these years, she would be singled out as an enemy by the most powerful movement in Europe, the Counter Reformation. The Papacy, Philip of Spain, and the powerful Guise family challenged her title and threatened her domains and at times her person; the French crown exploited her difficulties. 

A series of civil wars engulfed France, one after the other, between 1562 and 1589; Jeanne was to witness three of them. The first commenced in April 1562, and during this conflict, she focused on her own possessions, strengthening her control of them, and furthering her religious reforms. 

In the four years of that followed the first civil war, Jeanne dedicated herself to ensuring the autonomy of her kingdom of Navarre and her son's future. A papal attack on the Protestant queen of Navarre was launched by Pius IV in 1563. In response to a letter of "friendly advice" that threatened condemnation and suggested she was ruining her son, she wrote, "As to the reformation . . . in religion, which I have begun . . . , I am earnestly resolved, by the grace of God, to continue . . . throughout my land of Béarn." 

As for her son, "instead of lessening" his "heritage," she insisted that she would "increase it by the means appropriate to a true Christian." Her reply did not convince the pope, who on 28 September condemned her for heresy and summoned her to Rome to appear before the Inquisition. If she failed, she faced excommunication. 

Catherine de' Medici came to Jeanne's defense on this occasion, though in December of 1563 Pius IV carried through on his threat to excommunicate Jeanne. Faced with rebellion in Navarre, an imperial plot against her, and Catherine's pressure on her, Jeanne was forced to leave Béarn to join the French court, then on a tour of the kingdom. She met up with the traveling court in June of 1564. From the moment of her arrival she sought permission to return to her own territories with her son; instead, she was ordered to take up residence in Vendôme, a fief of France rather than an independent principality, where she was a duchess, not a queen regnant. Her son remained behind. 

When the French court finally returned to Paris in May 1566 after its two-year progress throughout the country, Jeanne traveled to court once more. She spent the next eight months there until, arguing that her thirteen-year-old son needed to be introduced to his subjects and his future domain, she secured permission for him to accompany her back to Navarre. 

She left Paris in January 1567, but her return to Navarre was not not an easy one. Against the backdrop of the second and third religious wars in France, the queen of Navarre faced three organized rebellions in quick succession, between the spring of 1567 and the summer of 1569, all of them sparked by resistance to her "religious program." Despite resistance, she remained dedicated to religious reform. She was, as well, determined to assure the independence of her kingdom, defending it against both France and Spain in order to preserve it for her son. 

By the fall of 1569, efforts were underway in France to end the third religious war; peace was concluded in August of 1570. To secure the fragile peace between Protestants and Catholics, Catherine de' Medici proposed a marriage between her daughter, the Catholic Marguerite of Valois, and Jeanne of Navarre's son, the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Jeanne delayed, first by putting off a decision, then by putting off Catherine's summons to court. But when the Queen Mother produced the "ultimate weapon"--a charge that Jeanne's first marriage to William of Cleves invalidated her later marriage to Antoine of Bourbon, and that her son Henry was thus illegitimate--Jeanne prepared once more to travel to the French court. 

However unwilling, the queen of Navarre ultimately agreed to the marriage proposed by Catherine de' Medici. The two queens met first in February 1572. After weeks of negotiating, the marriage contract was finally agreed to and signed on 11 April. On 4 June, waiting for her son to join her in Paris, Jeanne of Navarre fell ill. She did not live to see her son renounce her faith, convert to Catholicism, and become king of France. She died five days later, on 9 June. 

Like so many other powerful women, the queen of Navarre was widely criticized by her contemporaries. Vilified by Catholics and excommunicated by the pope, she was described by the Florentine ambassador as having a "temper" that was "very eccentric" (molto fantastico). It required "both skill and patience to reach her and to pin her down." "She changes often and eludes you every minute," he complained, continuing, "In the end, she hopes to manage everything her own way." 

In her defense, the Huguenot historian Agrippa d'Aubigny provided a more positive judgment of the queen, but even in his defense we see how Jeanne challenged conventional notions of female behavior. While praising her, d'Aubugny wrote that she had "of woman, only the sex, with a soul given to things that rather became men"--that is, "an intelligence at home in great affairs, and a courage invincible in adversity."

Jeanne seems not only to have faced squarely the difficulties of a woman in her position but to have dismissed them as difficulties. In the memoirs of her life she had written for her, "she" addressed the supposed "imbecility" of women in general and herself in particular: "I will not stoop to refute [the argument that women are imbeciles]," she was presented as having said, "but if I wished to undertake the defense of my sex, I could find plenty of examples." The passage in the Memoirs concluded, "[T]hese people [who say so] deserve only pity . . . for their ignorance."

Jeanne ruled Navarre as queen from 1555 until her death in 1572, a unique moment in history, for--much to John Knox's dismay--a great deal of western Europe was in one way or another under the "monstrous regiment" of women. Among Jeanne's contemporaries were Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland and her mother Marie of Guise, regent of Scotland. England was ruled by two queen regnants in succession, Mary and then Elizabeth Tudor. In Spain Juana of Castile died in the very year of Jeanne's accession, but Juana's niece Margaret of Parma followed Juana's daughter Mary of Austria as regent of the Netherlands. And in France, Jeanne's great adversary and advocate Catherine de' Medici was regent of France.

The one modern, full-length biography of Jeanne d'Albret in English is Nancy Roelker's Queen of Navarre: Jeanne d'Albret, 1528-1572, published in 1968. You can usually find a used copy, if you're interested--it's an excellent book.

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