Abstract
Beginning with both textual and visual representations of the Estates General in Orléans that took place in late 1560 and early 1561 soon after Renée’s return to France, Kelly Digby Peebles’s chapter examines how Renée exploited the figurative “platform,” so to speak, of her royal status in order to shape her public image on the physical platform created for that assembly. Renée’s conspicuous image in depictions of this event signals her importance on the stage of European politics. Peebles analyzes Renée’s strategy of epistolary diplomacy in her correspondence with Jean Calvin and English ambassador to the French court, Nicholas Throckmorton, to highlight how she exploited affective relationships, religious affinities, and socio-political status in order to influence public policy. At a time of increasingly violent conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions, Renée leveraged her image and relationships, including her rapport with her son-in-law, François de Guise, in order to advocate for change and protect the loyalties that formed the core of her personal and public identity: her royal roots, her alliance with the Este, and her religious convictions, all of which were intricately intertwined, yet potentially at odds with one another.
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Notes
- 1.
Théodore de Bèze, Histoire ecclesiastique des églises reformees au royaume de France, tome II (Anvers: Jean Remy, 1580), 463. Translations throughout are my own.
- 2.
In the mid-sixteenth century, the rival houses of Lorraine and Montmorency were at the forefront of the political scene of the French court. François de Guise and Cardinal Charles de Lorraine were at the head of the former, while the Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency, and his nephews, the brothers Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, and François d’Andelot, led the latter. The families’ associations with opposing religious factions further added to the rivalry. See Histoire et dictionnaire des guerres de religion, ed. Arlette Jouanna, Jacqueline Boucher, Dominique Biloghi, and Guy le Thiec (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1998), 17. See also contemporary historian Jacques de Thou, who concedes that Guise was respected by all despite the polarizing nature of his persona: “ce fut de l’aveu même de ses ennemis, le plus grand homme de son siécle, digne de toutes sortes de loüange” (even his enemies admitted that he was the greatest man of his century, worthy of all sorts of praise). Histoire universelle de Jacque Auguste de Thou, depuis 1543, jusqu’en 1607. Traduite sur l’édition latine de Londres, Tome Quatrieme, 1560–1564 (London: n.p., 1734), 518. Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, offers another contemporary account of Guise, describing him as “bon et genereux” (good and generous) and highlighting his unflagging confidence: “[…] il garda tousjours sa preheminance et ce qu’il luy apartenoit, sans s’estonner de rien” (he always maintained his rank and what was due to him, without ever becoming flustered). Recueil des Dames, poésies et tombeaux, ed. Étienne Vaucheret (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 44, 40.
- 3.
Bèze, Histoire ecclesiastique, 463.
- 4.
Throughout this chapter, I rely on the admittedly imprecise term of Protestant in order to speak more broadly about European heterodox movements, including not only those in France, but also in England and Geneva. Although Théodore de Bèze and Jean Calvin tend to use the term “of the religion” to refer to their followers, often adding the adjective “true,” the terms “Huguenot” and “Lutheran” appear in print and manuscript texts from the time. On the origin and use of the term “Huguenot,” see Hugues Daussy, Le Parti Huguenot, chronique d’une désillusion (1557–1572) (Geneva: Droz, 2015), 9–15. See also Jouanna et al., Histoire et dictionnaire, 68–69.
- 5.
Letter dated May 10, 1563, in Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, Volumen XX, ed. Edouard Cunitz, Johann-Wilhelm Baum, and Eduard Wilhelm Eugen Reuss (Brunsvigae: Schwetschke et filium, 1879), 16.
- 6.
Undated letter, Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XX, 246. On Guise’s involvement in the Massacre of Wassy, which Calvin implicitly identifies in this letter, see Daussy, Le Parti Huguenot, 283–286.
- 7.
On depictions of Renée’s loyalties in literary works by Antoine Couillard and Théodore de Bèze, see Kelly D. Peebles, “Embodied Devotion: The Dynastic and Religious Loyalty of Renée de France (1510–1575),” in Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty, ed. Caroline Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 123–137.
- 8.
Tracy Adams, “Rivals or Friends? Anne de Bourbon and Anne de Bretagne,” Women in French Studies Special Issue 3 (2010): 46–61. On Anne de Bretagne’s influence on Renée, see Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, chapter two in this volume. See also Cyril Cvetkovic, chapter twelve.
- 9.
Adams, “Rivals or Friends,” 51.
- 10.
Renée writes in French to her son, Alphonse, on October 1, 1559, indicating the seriousness of his father’s illness and urging him to return home from France, where he and his sister were well connected socially and politically. Two days later, she writes again, this time in Italian, informing him of Ercole’s death. See Odette Turias, Renée de France, Duchesse de Ferrare, témoin de son temps: 1510–1575, Tome I (PhD diss, Université de Tours, 2005), 285–287. On May 6, 1560, Renée informs the French ambassador to Venice, François de Noailles, of her preparations to return to France, and on September 3, 1560, she announces to Alphonse that she has arrived in Modena, indicating the beginning of her journey. Additional letters follow until her arrival in Orléans. See Turias, 331–341. On Anne d’Este’s position at court, see Una McIlvenna, Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici (New York: Routledge, 2016), especially chapters five and six.
- 11.
Catherine writes: “[…] je conoysès que vostre présance feut nésésére ysi que aytes preste à y venir, chause qui nous sera tousjour très agréable et que vostre présanse nous sera à grent contentement et hauneur; […] vous suplirions croyre que c’est cet que désirons le plus que de vous voyr haurdinérment en sete compaignie […]” (I knew that your presence here was necessary and that you are ready to come here, which will always be very agreeable to us, and your presence will be a great pleasure and honor to us; […] we entreat you to believe that it is this that we desire the most, that is, to regularly see you in our company). Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, Tome Premier. 1533–1563, ed. Hector de la Ferrière (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888), 131.
- 12.
Tracey A. Sowerby elucidates Throckmorton’s central role in facilitating the flow of information between the English court and those of France, where he was Elizabeth I’s first resident ambassador, and Spain, where Sir Thomas Chaloner was stationed. See “Elizabethan Diplomatic Networks and the Spread of News,” in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, ed. Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 305–327. See also Sebastian Walsh, “Most Trusty and Beloved,” History Today 55, no. 9 (September 2005): 39–45. Walsh explains that Throckmorton’s “object was for the English to maintain the balance between Protestant and Catholic factions […],” and his “ability to speak frankly to Elizabeth, to frame proposals around her priorities, and to extract commitments from her, made him a formidable actor within the circle concerned with English foreign policy,” 41–42.
- 13.
“Elizabeth: August 1560, 21–25,” in Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 3, 1560–1561, 253. Hereafter referred to as CSP, Vol. 3.
- 14.
Turias, Renée de France, 341. Throckmorton also confirms Renée’s arrival at court. See CSP, Vol. 3, 395.
- 15.
Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur de Brantôme, Recueil des Dames, poésies et tombeaux, ed. Étienne Vaucheret (Paris: Gallimard, 1991): “[…] la vis arriver. Le Roy et toute la Court estant allez au devant, et receue aveq’ ung très-grand honneur, comme il luy apartenoit” ([I] saw her arrive. The King and all the court had ridden out ahead and received her with the greatest honor, just as was befitting her rank), 176.
- 16.
Antoine de Bourbon, who was King of Navarre through his marriage to Jeanne d’Albret, and his younger brother, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, were Princes of the Blood (princes du sang) through their father, Charles IV de Bourbon. As such, they were of comparable royal status to Renée, but as male descendants through the male line, they were also first in line to the throne after Catherine de Médicis’s children. François de Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, were the children of the Bourbon brother’s paternal aunt, Antoinette de Bourbon, but as they were descended through the female line, they did not have the same claim to the throne.
- 17.
The Guise brothers suspected Throckmorton of colluding with Condé and other reformers in the Amboise Conspiracy. For that reason, “he [Throckmorton] returned to France in 1560, as a persona non grata […] his prior departure for London being to inform Elizabeth [about the plot]. Such was their rage that Throckmorton feared for his life.” Walsh, “Most Trusty,” 41–42.
- 18.
Brantôme, Recueil des Dames, 176.
- 19.
On Catherine’s consolidation of power in the days after François II’s death, see Katherine Crawford, “Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 31, no. 3 (2000): 643–673. Hugues Daussy also discusses the challenges that Catherine faced during the Estates General in Orléans, Le Parti Huguenot, 189–197.
- 20.
Crawford, “Catherine de Médicis,” 653.
- 21.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XX, 279.
- 22.
See Philip Benedict, “L’assemblée des trois Estats, tenus à Orléans au mois de Janvier 1561,” in Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 251–254.
- 23.
For the precise date of the Estates General in Orléans, December 17, 1560, see Collection des Procès-verbaux des assemblées-générales du Clergé de France Depuis l’Année 1560, jusqu’à présent (Paris: Guillaume Desprez, 1767), 4. On the location, which was destroyed just two years later, see François le Maire, Histoire et Antiquitez de la ville et duché d’Orléans, “à la prise de la ville d’Orléans par le Prince de Condé en Avril 1562, les Huguenots ayans fait dresser dans le Convent un Arsenal et mis leurs munitions et poudres, le feu s’y prit qui brusla le Convent et l’Eglise” (Orléans: Maria Paris, 1648), 104–105. I thank Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier for her assistance with this image.
- 24.
Graphic History, 180. Benedict also discusses a prefatory address to the reader where the engravers define their overarching goal. In his assessment, “at best, the Quarante Tableaux represent the efforts of a group of people working in Geneva to imagine what events at which they were not present might have looked like and to develop effective strategies of visual representation to narrate what they were able to learn about them,” 123.
- 25.
La Description du plant du theatre faict à Orléans, pour l’assemblée des trois Estatz: avec un brief discours de la seance des tenans & representans lesdictz Estatz (Lyon: Anthoine du Rosne, 1561), A2r.
- 26.
La Description, A2r–A2v.
- 27.
While neither the prose description nor the Quarante Tableaux explains Renée’s perceived role in this assembly, the Protestant background of the engravers and of the collection’s readership could possibly account for her apparent prominence in the woodcut. By the time of its publication (1569), two central figures in the French Calvinist movement had already published dedicatory epistles to her in their works. See Théodore de Bèze, Receuil des opuscules. C’est à dire. Petits Traictez de M. Jean Calvin. Les uns reveus et corrigez sur le Latin, les autres translatez. Nouvellement de Latin en Français (Geneva: Baptiste Pinereul, 1566), *2r–*5r, and Pierre Viret, De l’Estat, de la conférence, de l’authorité, puissance, prescription & succession tant de la vraye que de la fausse Église, depuis le commencement du monde, & des Ministres d’icelles & de leurs vocations & degrez (Lyon: Claude Senneton, 1565), *iir–*viiiv.
- 28.
See also Mimi Yiu, Architectural Involutions: Writing, Staging, and Building Space, c. 1435–1560 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015): “the term platform already suggests a conceptual slippage between architecture and theatre in this period: as a flat (plat) structure, a platform in early modern usage indicates a stage, scaffold, or draftsman’s sketch. A platform thus switches—with the blink of a mind’s eye—from a static drawing into a vibrant piece of theatre, subsuming the bones of architecture into something rich and strange,” 4.
- 29.
Although this letter is undated, Cunitz, Baum, and Reuss place it just prior to Renée’s arrival in France, Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, Volumen XVIII (Brunsvigae: Schwetschke et filium, 1863), 315.
- 30.
Ellen Welch, A Theater of Diplomacy. International Relations and the Performing Arts in Early Modern France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2017), 3.
- 31.
Welch , A Theater of Diplomacy, 8. This broad issue is developed at length from a French point of view in the work of Monique Chatenet. See, for example, La Cour de France au XVIe siècle. Vie sociale et architecture (Paris: Picard, 2002) and Le prince, la princesse et leurs logis. Manières d’habiter dans l’élite artistocratique européenne (1400–1700), ed. Monique Châtenet and Krista de Jonge (Paris: Picard, 2014). Thanks to Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier for this reference.
- 32.
Charmarie Jenkins Blaisdell, “Calvin’s Letters to Women: the Courting of Ladies in High Places,” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 13, no. 3 (1982): 67.
- 33.
Hugues Daussy, “L’action diplomatique de Calvin en faveur des Églises reformées de France (1557–1564),” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français (1903–2015) 156 (avril–mai–juin 2010): 197.
- 34.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XVIII, 147–148.
- 35.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XVIII, 147–148.
- 36.
Blaisdell, “Calvin’s Letters to Women,” 70.
- 37.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 38.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 39.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 40.
Cunitz et al., 147.
- 41.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 42.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 43.
Cunitz et al., 148.
- 44.
Daussy observes a similar strategy in Calvin’s letter to François d’Andelot, written during his imprisonment in 1558. “L’action diplomatique,” 207–208. For the letter Daussy discusses, see Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, Volumen XVII (Brunsvigae: C. A. Schwetschke, 1863), 192–193.
- 45.
Blaisdell considers letters to other noblewomen and underscores Calvin’s consistent “exhortation to remain firm in their newly acquired faith no matter what adverse circumstances they might face. His sympathy for their enduring persecution was overshadowed by his demand for their consistent and public adherence to ‘the Cause.’” Blaisdell, “Calvin’s Letters to Women,” 72.
- 46.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XX, 16.
- 47.
On Renée’s experience with Dr. Ory, see Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Renée de France, duchesse de Ferrare (Paris: Ollendorff, 1896), 237–252. See also the manuscript instructions sent by Henri II: “Instruction au Docteur Oriz allant devers Madame la duchesse de Ferrare pour le faict de la Religion” (Instructions given to Dr. Oriz, traveling to Madame the Duchess of Ferrara due to religious matters). Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français Dupuy 322, ff. 74r–75r.
- 48.
Turias, Renée de France, 213–214.
- 49.
Turias, Renée de France, 213–214.
- 50.
Renée engages in this same strategy in 1529, when the Paix de Cambrai threatens the diplomatic alliance that François Ier had sought to create between France and Ferrara through her marriage. See Kelly D. Peebles, “Renée de France’s and Clément Marot’s Voyages: Political Exile to Spiritual Liberation,” Women in French Studies, Special Issue Volume 7 (2018), 40–42. Odette Turias discusses Renée’s use of this strategy thirty years later, stating: “la fonction de Renée de France dans les rapports avec la Cour est essentielle puisque c’est elle qui incarne le lien d’alliance entre Este et les Valois” (Renée de France’s function in relations with the court is essential because it is she who embodies the alliance between the Este and Valois families), 97. “Hercule d’Este et Renée de France: un rêve de mediation à la fin du règne de Charles Quint (1548–1555),” in La Diplomatie au temps de Brantôme, Cahiers Brantôme no. 3 (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2007), 87–100.
- 51.
CSP, Vol. 3, 489–490.
- 52.
CSP, Vol. 3, 489–490.
- 53.
CSP, Vol. 3, 489–490.
- 54.
CSP, Vol. 3, 489–490.
- 55.
See also Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, chapter two in this volume.
- 56.
Turias, Renée de France, 345.
- 57.
“Elizabeth: March 1563, 11–15,” in Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 6, 1563, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1869), 204. British History Online, accessed August 9, 2019, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/foreign/vol6/pp198-205. Hereafter referred to as CSP, Vol. 6.
- 58.
M. Anne Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformation c. 1535–c. 1585 (New York: Routledge, 2016), 78–80.
- 59.
CSP, Vol. 6, 204.
- 60.
On Guise’s assassination, see Nicola M. Sutherland, “The Assassination of François Duc de Guise, February 1563,” The Historical Journal 24, no. 2 (1981): 289–295.
- 61.
Despatches of Michele Suriano and Marc’ Antonio Barbaro, Venetian Ambassadors at the Court of France, 1560–1563, ed. Sir Austen Henry Layard (Lymington: The Huguenot Society of London, 1891), 83.
- 62.
CSP, Vol. 6, 543.
- 63.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XX, 244–245. Though the letter is undated, the editors cite intertextual evidence pointing to early 1564.
- 64.
Cunitz et al., 246. Cunitz, Baum, and Reuss suggest that the fire Calvin refers to is the Massacre of Wassy. Tortorel’s and Perissin’s collection also suggests this, as their woodcut depicting the Massacre of Wassy highlights Guise’s involvement.
- 65.
Jouanna et al. explain Antoine de Bourbon’s religious ambivalence in the early days of Charles IX’s reign: “son indétermination est l’une des conditions de la tolérance civile. S’il choisit l’un des camps, celui-ci aura à la fois la force et la légitimité” (his indetermination is one of the conditions of civil tolerance. If he were to choose one of the factions, it would give it both power and legitimacy). Histoire et dictionnaire des guerres de religion, 105. It was not until after the Edict of January, a decree of tolerance in early 1562, that he openly opted for Catholicism, 109. Daussy also explains the pressure Antoine de Bourbon felt from Philip II of Spain, whose ambassador insisted on distancing Jeanne d’Albret, Coligny, and Châtillon from the French court in order to limit their Calvinist influence. Le Parti Huguenot, 278–280.
- 66.
Turias, Renée de France, 372.
- 67.
Dictionnaire du moyen français, s.v. “race,” accessed August 4, 2019, http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/.
- 68.
Turias, Renée de France, 148. For the original French manuscript, see Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Clairambault 346, f. 172.
- 69.
Turias, Renée de France, 359.
- 70.
Turias, Renée de France, 359.
- 71.
Jouanna et al., Histoire ecclésiastique, 52.
- 72.
Benedict, “To the Reader/Au Lecteur.” Graphic History, 217–218. See also Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. “admire,” accessed August 4, 2019, https://www.etymonline.com.
- 73.
Cunitz et al., Ioannis Calvini, Vol. XX, 231.
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Peebles, K.D. (2021). Renée de France as Dowager Duchess and Epistolary Diplomat. In: Peebles, K.D., Scarlatta, G. (eds) Representing the Life and Legacy of Renée de France. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69121-9_11
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