Renee de France

Renee de France , duchess of Chartres and Montargis, born with Blois in October 1510, died with Montargis in June 1575, girl junior by Louis XII, king de France, and of Anne of Brittany. Sister-in-law of François I {{er}}, aunt and great-aunt of four kings de France.

Princess reformed as of the years 1530, settles in France with Montargis, after thirty-two years spent to Italy. Accommodate many Protestant refugees during the wars of religion, and receives the ministers of Geneva in his city.

France in Italy

Youth and marriage

It lost her mother at four years, her father with five, his sister at fourteen years: indeed, Claude of France, which had married in 1514 François of Angouleme, died in 1524. Some affirm that Lefèvre d' Etaples would have governed its intellectual and religious formation. Nothing in truth of it is known. Moreover the young princess was a little older than the royal children whose humanistic one supervised education about 1525. In the same way there remain only some letters of Renee with Marguerite of Valois-Angouleme, duchess of Alençon, then queen of Navarre. It is difficult to deduce from it that with her departure for Italy, Renee was close to the circle evangelic of Meaux and her protective, sister of François Ier.

She married on May 28th 1528, in Paris, Hercules II of Este (1508 † 1559), duke of Ferrare, of Modena and Reggio, and brought to him in dowry the duchy of Chartres, the county of Gisors and the field of Montargis. The whole assembling itself to 12.500 ecus of revenue, is 25.000 books tournaments, at the time of the marriage.

(Note: the value of the book varied with the length of the century, the weight of the currencies also, but in a negligible way. The money of account, delivers it tournaments, was worth about 1570 three ecus of gold sun, but the revenue of Renee did not increase consequently: it was always considered that it was the wording most favorable to the king who was to be taken into account. Maybe, here, the sum in ecus mentioned on the marriage contract.)

This sum was extremely modest for a princess of the blood which should have inherited all or part of the duchy of Brittany, and this more especially as the Crown, since 1530, had taken delay in the payment of the pension.

They eurent :

* Alphonse II of Este (1533 - † 1597), duke of Ferrare, Modena and Reggio

* Louis d' Este (1538 - † 1586), cardinal of Este, bishop of Ferrare, archbishop of Auch

* Anne (1531 - † 1607), lady of Montargis, married

*# with Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer in 1548 with François of Lorraine (1519 - † 1563)

*# with Saint-Maur-of-Ditches in 1566 with Jacques of Savoy (1531 - † 1585), duke of Nemours

* Lucrèce (1535 - † 1598), married in 1570 with François II della Rovere, duke of Urbin (1548 - † 1631)

* Eleonore (1537 - † 1581)

Persecutions in Italy

In Ferrare, it joins together around it a crowd of learned men, of which many Protestants, from Italy, of Germany, of France, of Geneva; it employed as secretaries Lyon Jamet and Clément Marot, protected from many co-religionists continued for their religious ideas: Camillo Renato, Lodovico Domenichi, Isabelle Bressegna, etc It gathered around it, in the Fifties, of the refugees come from whole Europe, without expressing for as much the desire to structure this movement with the manner of the calvinists of Geneva.

The year-hinge of its Italian stay, that where spreads its political commitment and monk is 1536: it accepted in spring Jean Calvin which stopped in Ferrare; it successfully defended a cantor stopped for his remarks blasphématoires with leaving the mass, Thursday of Cène; finally it made release its secretary, Jean Cornillau, imprisoned not to have answered the ducal convocation. François Ier, by the means of its ambassadors in Venice Georges de Selve, bishop of Lavaur and Georges of Armagnac, future cardinal, intervened in his favor and Marguerite de Navarre relayed the noise according to which Hercules II sought to make die despair and of shame its wife. Since 1537, it started to correspond with the reformer of Geneva, Jean Calvin, who signed " Charles d' Espeville" : the last editors of works of Calvin (Droz, March 2006) re-examined the dating of the first letter of the reformer whom one placed until there in 1541. Its accounts books, preserved at Turin, testify to its engagement calvinist, and the purchase of many reformed works.

The year 1554 represents a break in this engagement: admonished by Matthieu Ory, large inquisitor of France sent by Henri II, imprisoned and questioned by the Jean Pelletier Jesuit in the presence of the local inquisitor of Ferrare, Girolamo Papino, isolated in Castello, it agreed to attend the mass, of communier and to be confessed, disavowing thus seemingly its faith. But released, it continued its work more discreetly, with the disappointment of Calvin who would have liked to make " of it; the héroïne" party.

From Italy in France

In the middle of the wars of religion

Of return in France in September 1560, after the death of her husband (October 3rd, 1559), it settled in Montargis. It accommodated there reformed which wanted to take refuge there, in spite of the threats of her son-in-law the duke of Own way and of the Crown. Agrippa of Aubigné evoked the refuge of Montargis where itself was accommodated whereas it was in escape, with its tutor. During the first three wars of religion, it could preserve Montargis thanks to skilful negotiations with the Protestant armies and the royal army ordered as from November 1567 by the duke of Anjou, future Henri III. It imposed the idea that this city, located on a strategic river axis, could remain a pocket of neutrality not accommodating neither a party nor the other. The friendship which it maintained with its neighbors Coligny, as well as the proximity of blood with the royal family, allowed him, in spite of some revolts of the inhabitants, to preserve this place.

Near to her daughter Anne d' Este, Renee was in cold with Jeanne d' Albret which had to seek to sabotage its remarriage with the duke of Nemours. It is not only that on its bed of death, in June 1572 that Jeanne reconciled herself with the two women.

A discrete end-of-life, in practice reformed

Present at the weddings of Henri de Navarre and the princess Marguerite, in 1572, its hotel was, seems it, protected by the guards from sound beautiful son the duke from Nemours, at the time of the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Quiet, the duchess left Paris under the protection of a royal escort and guisarde, undoubtedly. Followed one period of relative discretion (epistolary at least) until its death, three years later. It seems that until the end, she continued her work of protection of reformed, collecting the persecuted ministers, wandering them, in its castle of Montargis, until maintaining, known as Brantôme, several hundreds of refugees at the same time.

At the end of its life, she was concerned with succession of the Duché of Ferrare, seeking to persuade her son junior, Louis, cardinal of Este, to give up the ecclesiastical state to take the continuation of her brother Alphonse II, who died without descent. In vain. With her request, his/her oldest daughter, run to her death, made it bury without pump in the enclosure of the castle, one does not know where. It is besides Anne d' Este which accepted Montargis that, since its lawsuit with the Crown, regulated in 1571, Renee held in usufruct.

Research on Renee de France

Bibliography with accompanying notes

Scholars of the XIXe century

The best sum of indications on Renee de France remains the work of Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Renee de France, protective of the Reform in Italy and France . The Library of the Company of the History of French Protestantism (BSHPF), at Paris, preserves the handwritten notes of this author. Bartolomeo Fontana, at the same time, published in Italy a Renata di Francia, duchessa di Ferrara , enriched by transcriptions of many manuscripts (Rome, 1889-1899) in three volumes. These two works, invaluable, were used as a basis of study for all the posterior historians, while at the same time first is of Protestant orientation and the second catholic.

contemporary Historian-biographers

A biography pleasant to read, quite informed though a little sentimentalist, is that of Anne Puaux, the huguenote Renee de France .

Historians of art

In a more iconographic order, one finds the portrait of young Renee de France by Jean Clouet, painted about 1524 (such as it is presented forward of this Wikipédia page), in Clouet de Catherine de Médicis, chiefs of work graphic of the museum Condé , catalogs exposure prepared by Alexandra Svereva.

State of research

The character has been the subject of new research for a few years. The Anglo-Saxon school, behind Charmarie Jenkins Webb, wondered about the religious feeling of the duchess of Ferrare, regarding it as definitively calvinist, a tearing Calvinism which brought a conflict of honesty with the Crown.

A recent thesis, Renee de France, duchess of Ferrare, witness of her time , Odette Turias (Turns, 2004), presented the edition of the letters of the duchess, who was a princess of blood pushed by a powerful desire of reform, and which, about 1540 or even front, moves towards the Protestant religion, and more precisely towards the Calvinism. Renee de France follows nevertheless several ways at the same time since its correspondence and its life show a practice full with beliefs " hétéro-calviniennes" in Italy, and a " position" average, between catholic party protesting and, lasting the wars of religion.

The Italian school is interested in material civilization of the courses ferraraises, and the Court of Renee de France, through precise and enthralling work of Chiara Franceschini.

Key tracks, problems and words

- educational principles, material elements of the education of the princesses of blood (sources: accounts books of the duchess of Ferrare, Renee de France, Files of State of Turin)

- freedom of conscience and freedom of worship; " nicodémites" with the " moyenneurs" (Mario Turchetti, Concordia O tolleranza? )

- Renee de France between Italian Reform and French Reform (calvinist)

- the emergence of reformed martyrologes; the lawsuit of enquiry of 1554, or inquisitorial procedure adapted to a princess of blood; the place of Renee de France in the History seen by the Protestants

Epistolary documents

Renee de France in the text: some outstanding passages of its letters… which are mainly preserved at the National library of France and the Files of State of Modena (Italy). One finds with the Library of Geneva (in the past Public library and Academic) some letters of Calvin to the duchess, and a letter (at least) of Renee with Calvin.

its knight of honor, Antoine de Pons, July 1539: " Indicator that Nostre Seigneur led touttes things if such an amount of felicement for you, and will still make for the future, rented soict it eternally. Cant it makes more graces garlics his, it is in the Eure which this is necessary more to humiliate, and to request it that we do not lose his grace. And that this dous face of father begnin who showed you does not turn in fureur."

even, '' ibid ''. , on the newborn of Antoine de Pons: " But I assure you who resamble completely mainly of the mouth and the manton just like you. I it in ay kissed deulx or three good times but it have moreover unne softness to the face and this manton so large that chescun preant pleasure to look at it. Y does not mine as made the aultres, it plicé any time its mouth which samble which nor entroit not a gren of coriandre, but it is so much doucetement like small the Cagnol " puppy

[[Marguerite de France (1553-1615)|Marguerite de Navarre]], spring 1536, evoking the inquisitor of Ferrare which stopped its servants: " Did not keep auculne form of justice in its way of proceeding, not having glance with God with the duty, but with the appetite only of ceulx in which it wanted to take pleasure. So that as long as such auctority will demourera between hands of ung if dengereulx man, beaucop people of of course who it with the tooth will not be able to live in paix"

[[Jean Calvin|Calvin], March 21st, 1564]: " Mr Calvin, I am marrye that you do not sçavez like half of the world controls yourselves in this royaulme, and adulations, envyes which reigns there, and jusques with exorter simple the femmellettes to say that their hands they voudroient to kill and estrangler. It is poinct the reigle only Jesus Christ and its apostres has us baillee, and I it diz with all grant it regret of my cuor, for the affection which I carry to the Religion and those which bear from there the name, of which I do not speak about all but about large a partye of those which I there congnoys".

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