Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

photo credit

Never was there a greater need to aid poets than now.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549)

Queen, religious reformer, writer

Letter to Anne de Montmorency, 1536

A New Year's Tradition: Les Étrennes

photo credit: arias.com

It has long been a tradition in France to give gifts on New Year's Day. The word étrennes (as opposed to the more generic cadeaux) refers specifically to these New Year's gifts, now usually given as signs of appreciation to the doorman, the letter carrier, and others who provide service throughout the year.

In the sixteenth century, Christmas was observed as a religious holiday, so gifts were given at the turn of the new year. So popular was the practice that it took on a poetic form. François I's court poet, Clément Marot (1496-1544), sent short, epigrammatic poems to members of the court at the holiday. Although he wrote étrennes throughout his career, in 1541 Marot published a collection of forty-one of them addressed to the ladies of the court. In each poem, he presents a gift to the lady in question.

For example, to Queen Eléonore (François's second wife and sister of his enemy Charles V) he grants accord between her husband and brother:

Au ciel ma Dame je crye,

Et Dieu prie,

Vous faire veoir au printemps

Frere, & mary si contents

Que tout rye.

Madame, I cry to heaven,
And beg God,

That you may see by springtime

Your brother and husband so happy
That everyone laughs.

To the Dauphine, Catherine de Medici, barren for the first decade or so of her marriage, he grants a child:

A Ma Dame la Daulphine

Rien n'assigne:
Elle a ce, qu'il faut avoir,

Mais je la vouldroys bien veoir

En gesine.

To Madame la Daulphine

I prescribe nothing:

She has what she needs,
But I would really like to see her
On the point of giving birth.

To Marguerite de Navarre, the king's sister, who was one of Marot's staunchest supporters:

A la noble Marguerite,

Fleur d'eslite,
Je luy donne aussi grand heur

Que sa grace, & sa grandeur

Le merite.

To the noble Marguerite,

Flower of the elite,
I give the good fortune
That her grace and greatness
Merit.

And to Madame d'Etampes, the king's long-time mistress:

Sans prejudice à personne,

Je vous donne

La pomme d'or de beaulté,

Et de ferme loyaulté
La couronne.

Without wronging anyone,
I give to you

The golden apple of beauty
And the crown
Of firm loyalty.

In these brief and often mordant poems, Marot provides us a snapshot of the personalities and the concerns of the French court in 1539 --a literary version, if you will, of the Clouet's chalk portraits. One wonders if the courtiers played guessing games with the étrennes as they did with the portraits.

Though I'm no Marot, I'll follow his lead and wish you all a healthy, happy new year filled with good fortune of every kind!

[Marot's verse quoted from Gérard Defaux's edition, Classiques Garnier (1993). Translations mine.]
This post originally appeared on Writing the Renaissance on January 1, 2009.

"Each of Us is Bethlehem"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Simon de Chalons (1506-1568)
Adoration des bergers (1548)

Il n'est maintenance difficile à  trouver, car l'on a veu son estoille en Orient, qui tire chascun à le servir et adorer. Assez y a qui savent bien qu'il est né en Bethleen (qui est maison de pain et de réfection) et l'enseignent à ceux qui le demandent, mais n'y vont portant l'adorer. Chascun de nous est Bethleen, car par foy est en nos coeurs le doux Jhesus, qui nous repaist sans desfaillance: "Dominus pascit me et nihil midi deherit, etc." Car il nous a mis en plaine pasture de grace exuberante, de laquelle nul est excluz.

"He is now not difficult to find, for we have seen his star in the East, which draws each one of us to serve and adore him. There are plenty who know well that he was born in Bethlehem (that house of bread and renewal) and teach it to those who ask, yet never go there to worship him. Each of us is Bethlehem, for in our hearts, through faith, is sweet Jesus, who feeds us our fill without fail: "The Lord shepherds me; there is nothing I lack, etc." For he has put us in an open field of exuberant grace, from which no one is excluded."

Guillaume Briçonnet (1472-1534)

Bishop of Meaux, spiritual advisor to Marguerite de Navarre

Letter to Marguerite de Navarre

26 September 1524

May you have a happy and blessed day!

Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

"I have shown your letter to the Demoiselle Marguerite de Lorraine, who, despite her grey habit, has a very vivid remembrance of bygone days. I assure you she acquits herself so well in praying for your prosperity, that if all the other ladies, whose favour you have possessed, did as much, you ought not to regret the past; for their prayers would speedily transport you to Heaven, where, after a long and happy life, she desires to see you."

Marguerite, duchess of Alençon (later Queen of Navarre) to

Baron Anne de Montmorency

Letter, 1523

An Early Modern Ghost Story

In keeping with the Halloween spirit, here is a ghost story from Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron. Enjoy!

Marguerite uses the tale to illustrate how "[love] makes women lose all fear, and torments men to arrive at their ends." Some of the tale's listeners praise the servant girl for "liv[ing] for a long while to her heart's content, by means of her stratagem." Others condemn her, claiming "there is no perfect pleasure unless the conscience is at rest." What do you think?

In any case, stay clear of ghosts, lovelorn or not, tonight!

[Excerpt from The Heptameron of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, published by Gates & Co. in 1877. No translator given. Courtesy of Google Books.]

Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

"Dieu aide toujours aux foux, aux amants et aux ivrognes."

"God always helps madmen, lovers and drunkards."

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549), writer and queen

L'Heptaméron IV, 38 (1558)

Galleries, Redux

Interesting, what I just read in a biography of Marguerite de Navarre. Marguerite had joined her daughter Jeanne, who was recovering from a "strong and furious flux" at Blois. However, at Blois "il n'y avoit pas assez de galleries...pour la faire promener à couvert" (there weren't enough galleries to take Jeanne walking under cover), so she moved her daughter to La Bourdaisière, where, presumably, there were more.

Illustrates yet again the important function galleries played in the lives of Renaissance nobles.

[Source: Pierre Jourda, Marguerite d'Angoulême (Geneva, 1978), I:225]

Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

"Encores ay-je une opinion, dist Parlamente, que jamais homme n'aymera parfaictement Dieu, qu'il n'ait parfaictement aymé quelque creature en ce monde."

"Moreover, I am of the opinion," said Parlamente, "that never will a man love God perfectly unless he has perfectly loved some

creature in this world."

--Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptaméron (1558), 19th Tale

A Novel Enterprise

Although I write novels set in sixteenth century France, the novel, as a genre, was unknown during this period. The Middle Ages had witnessed the flowering of narrative poetry--epics like the Chanson de Roland or Les quatre fils Aymon, romances like Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion--and the development of the historical chronicle, such as those of Froissart, but the form of the novel--a long fictional work of prose depicting characters, settings, and events imagined by the author--would not develop until the seventeenth century.

Of course, people have always told stories, especially in pre-literate times when individuals would gather and tell tales to entertain themselves. During the Renaissance, humanist scholars began to transcribe such tales, often setting them in a mimetic framework. A prime example, which served as the model for countless other works, is Boccaccio's Decameron, composed in the early 1350's in the Italian vernacular. The frame story of the Decameron depicts ten young people taking refuge in the Italian countryside from the plague; each day, for ten days, the characters each recount a tale to while away the hours. The first example of such a structure in French is Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles, or "One Hundred New Tales" compiled by Antoine de la Sale around 1456 at the court of Philippe le Bon. Numerous noblemen contributed tales to the collection, although many are borrowed directly from Boccaccio and other Italian conteurs. These often bawdy tales give tantalizing glimpses into the lives of fifteenth-century noble and middle classes.

While the Cent nouvelles nouvelles lacks a frame story, the importance of the mimetic context grew during the sixteenth century. At mid-century, Noël du Fail, a rural aristocrat from Brittany, penned three collections of tales, Les Propos rustiques (1547), Les Baliverneries d'Eutrapel (1548) and the Contes et propos d'Eutrapel (1585). In these works, the frame story depicts in realistic detail the social milieu of the rural peasantry as well as that of the upper classes. Du Fail focuses on the linguistic habits of each group; his tales have been called "dialogue tales" because they strive to recreate the speech patterns of each social group in a conversational way. In their expanding situational context and attention to realistic detail, Du Fail's tales prefigure the larger narrative and pyschological scope of the novel.

Of course, the most well-known of the French tale collections is that of Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptaméron, published posthumously in 1558, although it had circulated in manuscript form for years. In this collection of seventy-two tales, the interplay between the tales and the tellers is critical. Following Boccaccio's lead, Marguerite strands a group of travelers in an abbey during a torrential storm; each day, the members of the group tell tales to pass the time until the bridge is rebuilt. However, in Marguerite's collection, the characters' commentary on the tales and the relationships that blossom during the conversations that link the tales together became just as, if not more, important than the tales themselves. Marguerite develops a distinct personality for each of her tellers and manipulates their interaction with great psychological insight. Her attention to the psychology of the characters heralds the birth of the novel, which is traditionally attributed, in the French tradition, to Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678), a novel set, ironically, in the sixteenth century at the end of the reign of Henri II.

I love the fact that the first French novel is an historical one.

The Captive King

Last we saw of King François, he had been taken prisoner by imperial forces at the disastrous Battle of Pavia (24 February 1525). French troops, fighting to recapture the duchy of Milan that François's predecessor Louis XII had lost, were surrounded and roundly defeated by Charles V's army. The King of France's captivity at the hand of the Holy Roman Emperor would last a little over a year and color the two monarchs' relationship for the duration of their reigns.

After the battle, François was taken to the Castle of Pizighettone near Cremona, where he remained for three months in the custody of the Spanish captain. Captured companions accompanied him, including his childhood friend Anne de Montmorency (who would remain François's most trusted counselor and eventually rise to the most powerful political position in France). These men were eventually given safe-conducts that enabled them to travel back and forth between Italy and France to negotiate the king's release. François appointed his mother, Louise de Savoye, regent during his absence. Louise established her court at Lyons, near the Italian border, to facilitate communications with her son and the emperor.

If François and his mother had hoped that Charles would quickly release him for a cash ransom, they were mistaken. Charles presented a long list of demands that included paying Charles's debts to Henry VIII, abandoning French claims to Milan and Genoa, and most importantly, ceding the duchy of Burgundy. The emperor planned to seal the settlement through the marriage of his niece, Mary of Portugal, to the Dauphin. Although François appeared amenable to some of the terms, he refused to negotiate as long as he continued to be held prisoner. He forwarded Charles's terms to Louise, who rejected them outright.

Hoping to cut short negotiations made all the lengthier by the distance separating the two courts, François begged for a face-to-face meeting with Charles. In June, he was taken to Spain on a fleet of galleys decorated in his honor, given a royal welcome in Barcelona, then moved to Valencia. He asked that his sister Marguerite be given safe-conduct to negotiate a peace, that he be moved closer to the site of negotiations for easier consultation, and that a truce be declared while the talks were in progress. Charles agreed to all three requests, yet continued to avoid meeting with François in person.

When the French ambassadors met with Charles in Toledo, the emperor continued to dismiss any discussion of a ransom. He was willing to make some concessions in his original demands, but claimed there could be no lasting peace as long as Burgundy remained in French hands. France, however, refused to consider surrendering the region; in fact, François, now in Madrid, made a secret declaration to the French ambassadors that he would never surrender Burgundy freely and that, if forced to do so, his action would be null and void.

Charles almost lost his opportunity to profit from the situation when François nearly died in September from a combination of acute depression, anorexia and a nasal abscess. The French king ran a fever for twenty-three straight days and lapsed into a semi-coma after Charles did, finally, come to see him. Later in the month, the abscess burst and François unexpectedly recovered. Peace talks resumed, this time facilitated by Marguerite, who had arrived during her brother's illness, but were suspended once again when Charles found the proposals unacceptable.

By the end of the year, the strain of the king's absence was growing too great for the kingdom. Louise de Savoye decided to abandon Burgundy and convinced François to accept Charles's terms. On January 14, 1526, the parties signed the Treaty of Madrid. In return for his freedom, François ceded Burgundy and abandoned his claims to Italy. He also agreed to hand over his two oldest sons as hostages until the terms of the treaty were fulfilled. In return, he demanded the hand of Charles's sister Eléonore in marriage, in order to keep her from marrying Charles de Bourbon, the prince of the blood who had sided with Charles during the war. Charles, swayed by advisors who believed the French king could be trusted, agreed. Little did he know that two days before the French king signed the treaty, he had made another secret declaration nullifying the surrender of Burgundy.

Betrothed by proxy to Eléonore in January, François remained in Madrid until mid-February, possibly for health reasons. Charles arrived, and together they traveled to meet Eléonore. A few days later, Charles set off to Seville to marry Isabella of Portugal, and François began the long journey back to France with his Spanish escort. The heartrending exchange of the monarch for his two young sons, which deserves a post of its own, was set for March 17 on the river Bidassoa.

[Source: The material for this post was condensed from R. J. Knecht's account in Renaissance Warrior and Patron, pp. 216-48.]

Mirror, Mirror

I was doing some research today on mirrors and I came across a wonderful miniature of Marguerite de Navarre in her chemise gazing at herself in a hand-held mirror. It is taken from a prayer book owned by her brother François I. The picture makes reference to the book of religious poetry Marguerite published in 1531, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul). Queen Elizabeth I of England translated and published Marguerite's Miroir as A Godly Meditation of the Soul in 1548. The delightful miniature captures the joyousness of spirit Marguerite shared with her brother, despite her preoccupation with weighty religious questions.

As for mirrors, it was in Venice during the sixteenth century that the process of coating flat plates of glass with thin coatings of reflective metal, usually a mixture of tin and mercury, was developed and closely guarded. The process was extremely time consuming and dangerous for the craftsmen; hence, mirrors were very expensive items. They were housed in frames carved of ivory, wood, or precious metal that were works of art in themselves. Here, for example, is a photograph of a sixteenth century carved walnut mirror frame.

I'll leave you with a painting that is purported to be of Diane de Poitiers, Henri II's mistress, regarding herself in a mirror. The painting dates from about 1590, so if it is of Diane, she's looking pretty good for being all of 109 years old! A jeweled mirror perched on a sculpted base stands to her right.

Bonne année!

It has long been a tradition in France to give gifts on New Year's Day. The word étrennes (as opposed to the more generic cadeaux) refers specifically to these New Year's gifts, now usually given as signs of appreciation to the doorman, the letter carrier, and others who provide service throughout the year.

In the sixteenth century, Christmas was observed as a religious holiday, so gifts were given at the turn of the new year. So popular was the practice that it took on a poetic form. François I's court poet, Clément Marot (1496-1544), sent short, epigrammatic poems to members of the court at the holiday. Although he wrote étrennes throughout his career, in 1541 Marot published a collection of forty-one of them addressed to the ladies of the court. In each poem, he presents a gift to the lady in question.

For example, to Queen Eléonore (François's second wife and sister of his enemy Charles V) he grants accord between her husband and brother:

Au ciel ma Dame je crye,

Et Dieu prie,

Vous faire veoir au printemps

Frere, & mary si contents

Que tout rye.

Madame, I cry to heaven,
And beg God,

That you may see by springtime

Your brother and husband so happy
That everyone laughs.

To the Dauphine, Catherine de Medici, barren for the first decade or so of her marriage, he grants a child:

A Ma Dame la Daulphine

Rien n'assigne:
Elle a ce, qu'il faut avoir,

Mais je la vouldroys bien veoir

En gesine.

To Madame la Daulphine

I prescribe nothing:

She has what she needs,
But I would really like to see her
On the point of giving birth.

To Marguerite de Navarre, the king's sister, who was one of Marot's staunchest supporters:

A la noble Marguerite,

Fleur d'eslite,
Je luy donne aussi grand heur

Que sa grace, & sa grandeur

Le merite.

To the noble Marguerite,

Flower of the elite,
I give the good fortune
That her grace and greatness
Merit.

And to Madame d'Etampes, the king's mistress:

Sans prejudice à personne,

Je vous donne

La pomme d'or de beaulté,

Et de ferme loyaulté
La couronne,

Without wronging anyone,
I give to you

The golden apple of beauty
And the crown
Of firm loyalty. (Referring to the apple Paris bestowed on Venus in the myth and to King François's long affection)

In these brief and often mordant poems, Marot provides us a snapshot of the personalities and the concerns of the French court in 1539 --a literary version, if you will, of the Clouet's chalk portraits. One wonders if the courtiers played guessing games with the étrennes as they did with the portraits.

Though I'm no Marot, I'll follow his lead and wish you all a healthy, happy new year filled with good fortune of every kind!

[Marot's verse quoted from Gérard Defaux's edition, Classiques Garnier (1993). Translations mine.]

A Harrowing Journey, à la Sixteenth Century

Welcome to all those traveling today on the rounds of Angela Nickerson's Blogapolooza! Angela asked the thirty or so bloggers participating to recount a strange or scary travel journey. Try as I might, I could think of no harrowing journey of my own to share, so I decided to borrow one from Marguerite de Navarre . This is the opening to Marguerite's book of tales, The Heptameron (published in 1558, although composed during the 1540's). Flooded inns, washed-out bridges, drowned companions, lame horses, murderous bandits, hungry bears: it's enough to make one more than grateful for the comforts and relative safety of modern travel.

"On the 1st of September, when the baths of the Pyrenees begin to have efficacy, several persons from France, Spain and other countries were assembled at those of Cauterets, some to drink the waters, some to bathe in them, and others to be treated with mud; remedies so marvelous, that patients given over by physicians go home cured from Cauterets. [...] [A]s they were preparing to return home, there fell such excessive and extraordinary rains, that it seemed as though God had forgotten his promise to Noah that he would never again destroy the world with water. The houses of Cauterets were so flooded that it was impossible to abide in them. [...] [T]he French lords and ladies, thinking to return to Tarbes as easily as they had come from it, found the rivulets so swollen as to be scarcely fordable; and when they came to the Béarnese Gave, which was not two feet deep when they crossed it on their way to the baths, they found it so enlarged and so impetuous that they were forced to turn out of their direct course and look for bridges. These, however, being only of wood, had been carried away by the violence of the current. Some attempted to break its force by crossing it several together in one body; but they were swept away with such rapidity that the rest had no mind to follow them. They separated, therefore, either to look for another route, or because they were not of the same way of thinking...

"[A] widow of long experience, named Oisille, resolved to banish from her mind the fear of bad roads, and repair to Notre Dame de Serrance. [...] She met with no end of difficulties; but at last she arrived, after having passed through places almost impracticable, and so difficult to climb and descend, that notwithstanding her age and her weight, she was compelled to perform the greater part of the journey on foot. But the most piteous thing was that most of her servants and horses died on the way, and that she arrived with one man and one woman only at Serrance, where she was charitably received by the monks.

"There were also among the French two gentlemen who had gone to the baths rather to accompany the ladies they loved than for any need they themselves had to use the waters. These gentlemen, seeing that the company was breaking up, and that the husbands of their mistresses were taking them away, thought proper to follow them at a distance, without acquainting any one with their purpose. The two married gentlemen and their wives arrived one evening at the house of a man who was more a bandit than a peasant. The two young gentlemen lodged at a cottage hard by, and hearing a great noise about midnight they rose with their varlets, and inquired of their host what was all that tumult. The poor man, who was in a great fright, told them it was some bad lads who were come to share the booty that was in the house of their comrade the bandit. The gentlemen instantly seized their arms and hastened with their varlets to the aid of the ladies, holding it a far happier fate to die with them than to live without them. On reaching the bandit's house they found the first gate broken open and the two gentlemen and their servants defending themselves valorously; but as they were outnumbered by the bandits, and the married gentlemen were much wounded, they were beginning to give way, having already lost a great number of their servants. The two gentlemen, looking in at the windows, saw the two ladies weeping and crying so hard, that their hearts swelled with pity and love, and falling on the bandits like two enraged bears from the mountains, they laid about them with such fury, that a great number of the bandits fell, and the rest fled for safety to a place well known to them. The gentlemen having defeated these villains, the owner of the house being among the slain, and having learned that the wife was still worse than himself, despatched her after him with a sword-thrust. They then entered a room on the basement, where they found one of the married gentlemen breathing his last. The other had not been hurt, only his clothes had been pierced and his sword broken; and seeing the aid which the two had rendered him, he embraced and thanked them, and begged they would continue to stand by him, to which they assented with great good-will. After having seen the deceased buried, and consoled the wife as well as they could, they departed under the guidance of Providence, not knowing whither they were going.

"[...] They were in the saddle all day, and towards evening they descried a belfry, to which they made the best of their way, not without toil and trouble, and were humanely welcomed by the abbot and the monks. The abbey is called St. Savin's. The abbot, who was of a very good house, lodged them honorably, and on the way to their lodgings begged them to acquaint him with their adventures. After they had recounted them, he told them they were not the only persons who had been unfortunate, for there were in another room two ladies who had escaped as great a danger, or worse, inasmuch as they had encountered not men but beasts; for these poor ladies met a bear from the mountain half a league this side of Peyrchite, and fled from it with such speed that their horses dropped dead under them as they entered the abbey gates; and two of their women, who arrived long after them, reported that the bear had killed all their men-servants. The two ladies and the three gentlemen then went into the ladies' chamber, where they found them in tears, and saw they were Nomerfide and Ennasuite. They all embraced, and after mutually recounting their adventures, they began to be comforted through the sage exhortations of the abbot, counting it a great consolation to have so happily met again; and next day they heard mass with much devotion, and gave thanks to God for that he had delivered them out of such perils." (Excerpted from Walter Kelly's online English translation)

Several other of the original companions at the baths show up at the abbey, after having endured similar adventures; while waiting the twelve days necessary to construct a new bridge, the group amuses itself by telling and discussing tales of love--a most excellent activity for those inevitable dead hours that occur on every trip. If you're not one for telling tales yourself, you can read Marguerite's next time you're stuck in an airport somewhere. I assure you, lost luggage or a cancelled flight will no longer seem like a "harrowing travel adventure" when you're through.

A big thank you to Angela for inviting me to take part in her Blogapalooza. Be sure to visit her fabulous travel and book blog, Just Go!, and register for one of the three marvelous goodie bags she's giving away. You'll also find links to all the other blogs participating in the party. Please visit as many as you can and comment. I'm sure you'll be adding several of them to your blog roll.

Bon voyage!

A Second Unrealized Tudor Match

As I revealed in my last post, François's sister Marguerite d'Angoulême was offered as a child bride to the young Henry VIII of England. Fortunately for her, perhaps, she was rejected. Another match between the Tudors and the Valois--this one between François's second son, Henri, and Henry VIII's first daughter, Princess Mary--came much closer to fruition.

Mary was three years older than Henri, and discussions regarding the union of the two royal children grew serious around 1530, while the young prince was being held hostage by Charles V in Spain [subject for a post of its own]. The Peace of Cambrai (1529), which secured the ransom of François's sons, included a clause affirming the French-English marriage. But in October 1530, negotiations with England stalled, for two reasons: François suspected Henry VIII intended to use Henri as security for the debt François owed him, and secondly, questions over Mary's legitimacy were beginning to cloud the issue. Henry VIII was by this time seeking an annulment of his marriage with Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, and François feared marrying his son to a bastard. Negotiations did continue until 1532, but once the outcome of Henry VIII's suit became evident, François abandoned the match. Instead, he wed Henri in 1533 to Caterina Maria de Medici, the cousin (often called the niece) of Pope Clement VII. 

How would the match between Henri and Mary, had it occurred, have changed history? It's interesting to speculate. It doesn't seem as though it would have derailed Henry VIII from his quest to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon, since he continued with his suit even as he negotiated with France. What is interesting is what would have happened once Henri became Dauphin. At the time of the negotiations, he was only second in line to the French throne. However, his older brother François died in 1536. The couple would eventually have ruled both France and England. This surely would have had great repercussions on the playing out of the religious question in the two countries.

[Source: Henry II, King of France 1547-1559 by Frederic Baumgartner (Duke UP, 1988)]

A Pearl among Pearls: Marguerite de Navarre

Two posts ago, I told you about Louise de Savoy, the mother who concentrated all her energy and sacrificed her physical and personal freedom to ensure her son François became king. A third, equally devoted individual complimented this mother-son pair: François's older sister, Marguerite, the eventual Queen of Navarre. François and Marguerite maintained throughout their lives the close affectional bond nurtured during the childhood years they passed as virtual prisoners with their mother. Playing upon one of the meanings of her name, the king fondly--and proudly, given his sister's accomplishments--referred to her as "La Marguerite des marguerites," a pearl among pearls.

Marguerite was born in 1492, two years before François. Raised in enforced seclusion by their mother after their father died and François became the heir presumptive to the throne, Marguerite shared in the expansive humanist education Louise provided for her son. Tutored by the finest of scholars, she learned to read Latin and to speak Italian fluently. Her love of letters and learning remained constant throughout her life. As princess and queen, she supported writers and poets and animated literary circles at court. She herself wrote poems and plays and authored the Heptaméron,  a collection of tales and debates about love modeled after Boccacio's Decameron. The Heptaméron, one of the earliest works of prose fiction written in French, first appeared in print in 1558, although it circulated in manuscript form well before that.

Much of Marguerite's work is religious in nature, as she was a strong supporter of the burgeoning Protestant faith. Although she herself never broke with the Catholic church, she supported the early evangelicals Guillaume Briçonnet and Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, humanists who called for reform from within the church itself. She protected writers such as Clément Marot and Bonaventure Des Périers when they got into trouble with religious authorities. She invited Guillaume Farel to preach at her court in Nérac and corresponded with Jean Calvin. Several of her own works came under censure by the Sorbonne for their unorthodox religious content, although her proximity to the king protected her from punishment. It was primarily through her influence that François remained tolerant of the new faith for as long as he did.

When Marguerite was eleven, her mother had tried to marry her to Henry VIII, but was refused. Marguerite's one true love, Gaston de Foix, died a hero in the Italian wars in 1512. At seventeen, Marguerite was married to Charles d'Alençon in a political match; after he died a few years later, she wed Henri II, King of Navarre. She bore Henri a daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, in 1528; her only son, born when she was 38, died in infancy. Sister to one king, Marguerite became the grandmother of another: her daughter Jeanne's son Henri became King of France (as Henri IV) in 1589.

In addition to her learning and openness to new ideas, Marguerite de Navarre was known for her great charity and kindness. In her later years, she devoted herself to good works and provided education for poor children in her kingdom. Born two years before her beloved brother, she died two years after he did, in 1549. This "pearl among pearls" was indeed one of the most influential women of the Renaissance. Her poems, plays and prose allow us to witness the evolution of evangelical thought in France and provides us a vivid example of the curious mingling of the earthly with the divine that characterizes Renaissance culture.

If you'd like to read some of Marguerite's tales, you can find an English translation of the Heptaméron here.

Two by Two

The important women in François I's life seem to come in pairs. The king spent the first two decades of his life in close relationship with his mother and sister. As an adult, he married twice and had two official mistresses. Even his daughters followed the pattern: of the four he fathered, two died extremely young and two lived long enough to marry off. Over the next few weeks, I'll briefly sketch these pairs for you and try to give you a glimpse of what life as a women in the French court was like.

François's mother, Louise de Savoye, devoted her life to seeing her son, whom she called her "César," named king. François's father, Charles d'Angoulême, died when François was only two, leaving his nineteen year old wife, Louise, a widow with two small children (François and his sister Marguerite). The Angoulêmes were a minor branch of the House of Valois, but, unless the aging reigning monarch, Louis XII, produced a male heir, François was next in line for the throne. Louis allowed the widowed Louise to retain custody of her children, but only if she agreed not to remarry and to live under conditions imposed by him. Louise accepted the terms and lived with François and Marguerite as virtual house prisoners under the tight surveillance of Pierre de Rohan, seigneur de Gié, for years. During this time, Louise provided her children a broad humanist education, laying the foundation for the love of learning and the arts that would inspire François throughout his reign. Louis, meanwhile, fathered two daughters, Claude and Renée; his only son was stillborn in 1502. In 1506, Louis finally affianced Claude to François; the marriage took place in 1514 and François ascended to the throne the following year.

Louise never did remarry, even after her son became king. She remained active in politics during the early years of his reign and served as regent in 1515 and in 1524 when François went to war. Her influence in foreign affairs was great. Wolsey referred to Louise as "the mother and nourisher of peace." An English ambassador in 1521 described her influence over the king:

I have seen in divers things since I came hither, that when the French king would stick at some points, and speak very great words, yet my Lady would qualify the matter; and sometimes when the king is not contented he will say nay, and then my Lady must require him, and at her request he will be contented; for he is so obeissant to her that he will refuse nothing that she requireth him to do, and if it had not been for her he would have done wonders. [Quoted in Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron 113]

Louise was one of the principal negotiators of the Treaty of Cambrai, known as the "Paix des dames" ("Peace of the ladies") in 1529, which put an end to the second Italian war between François and the head of the Hapsburg dynasty, Charles V. She died in September, 1531 at the age of fifty-five. François was not with her when she died, but gave her a magnificent funeral. Her body was taken to he abbey at Saint-Maur-des-Fossées, where her wax effigy was displayed. After a funeral service at Notre Dame in Paris, she was buried at the abbey of Saint-Denis, where French royals were customarily laid to rest. With her passing, François lost one of his greatest supports and the woman who had formed him as man and king.

Next up, François's sister, Marguerite de Navarre. But as my next post will be my hundredth, she'll have to wait until the festivities have ended!

So Close and Yet (Fortunately?) So Far

Tudormania is all the rage these days. It seems that every other historical novel published features another of Henry VIII's unfortunate wives. None of these women were French, although one Frenchwoman did come precariously close to wedding Henry: none other than François I's own sister, Marguerite d'Angoulême.

Marguerite (generally known as Marguerite de Navarre) was two years older than François and his only sibling. Like François, she was attractive, intelligent, and extremely well-educated. François's predecessor, his cousin Louis XII, tried to marry young Marguerite off to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and later to Arthur's younger brother, the future Henry VIII. But at the time of Louis's proposal, François's accession to the throne of France was not certain; there remained a chance that the elderly Louis, married to a younger queen, might still produce a son who would inherit the throne before his cousin. Because of this uncertainty, the proposal did not entice the English king, Henry VII, who turned it down. Henry did eventually change his mind and ask for Marguerite's hand either for himself or for his son Henry, but by that time it was Louis who was not interested in a match with England. Marguerite herself hoped for a French match, and in 1509 she married her first husband, the duc d'Alençon. Widowed, she later married Henri d'Albret and became Queen of Navarre. (R. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron, p. 113-114)

How might history have been different had Marguerite and Henry VIII married? Marguerite, though she never outwardly embraced Calvinism, showed herself to be open to reform of the Catholic Church from within and protected many censured theologians at her court in Navarre. Would she and Henry have introduced reform into the Church in England without severing ties with Rome? Would Henry, who had been quite loyal to Rome as a young man, ever have become embroiled in theological disputes if he had married Marguerite and produced a male heir? The questions are many, the answers unknown.

One can only be happy that Marguerite did not wind up as one of Henry's discarded wives. A woman of great accomplishment, she not only wrote poetry and prose at a time when women's voices were seldom heard, but she became an accomplished diplomat and an arbiter of learning and culture at both her brother's and her husband's courts. I often wonder what Marguerite felt as she witnessed the tragic destinies of the women who shared Henry's throne and bed.

The Answers You've All Been Waiting For

Congratulations to Rachel and Nadezhda, who tried their hand at the first Renaissance quiz. I'm hoping others of you read the questions and thought about the choices, even if you didn't make a formal response. Here are the correct answers:

1. B François I.

I've said plenty about him already!

2. D All of the above.

Marguerite d'Angoulême, François's only sibling, was an accomplished author who wrote L'Heptaméron and numerous works of poetry. After her first husband died, she married Henri d'Albret and became Queen of Navarre in 1527. She was very sympathetic to the new religious ideas of the time and welcomed reformers like Calvin and Farel to her court at Nérac. She had one daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who gave birth to King Henri IV of France. (Marguerite de Navarre is not to be confused with the Reine Margot of Alexandre Dumas's novel. That Margot was François's granddaughter and married Henri IV in 1572.)

3. A Michelangelo

Although François did invite Michelangelo to France, the artist never accepted. Leonardo, however, lived in France for three years at the end of his life and died at an estate near the château d'Amboise in 1519. Andrea del Sarto worked in France for a year in 1518 before he absconded to Florence with money François had given him to buy artwork. Cellini worked in France for a period in the early 1540's, during which time he fashioned his famous saltcellar.

4. B Lyon

Lyon was the second largest city in France after Paris during the sixteenth century, boasting a population of nearly 60,000. At the crossroad of several routes to Italy, Lyon became a center of banking, silk working, and literature. The city hosted trade fairs several times a year that attracted merchants, bankers and peddlers from throughout Europe. My novel The Measure of Silence is set in Lyon.

5. A gargantuan

Rabelais named his main character Gargantua. This character was a giant whose name has persisted through the centuries in the adjectival form gargantuan.

Did you get many correct? Rachel got three right; Nadezhda all five. Bravo, ladies! Thanks so much for participating. We'll try another quiz again sometime.