Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne of France, and the History of Female Regency in France*1 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen
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Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2013, vol. 8 Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne of France, and the History of Female Regency in France*1 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen emale regency in France has a long history. Queen Fredegund (d. 597) Fmonitored her young son Chlotar’s succession and reign after the assassination of her husband, Chilperic; Anne of Kiev (d. 1075) acted as co-regent for her son, Philip I; Adèle of Champagne (d. 1206) adminis- tered the kingdom for her son Philip Augustus when he departed on the Third Crusade; Blanche of Castile (1188–1252), mother of St. Louis, watched over her son as a minor king and, later, supervised the realm while he was on Crusade; Isabeau of Bavaria (1370–1435) was appointed guard- ian of the dauphin during the periods of madness of her husband, King Charles VI; Anne of France (1461–1522), along with her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, was named guardian for her younger brother Charles VIII by the dying Louis XI, who wanted to keep his son safe from the influence of his ambitious nephew. These earliest examples represented ad-hoc solutions to urgent situ- ations. Ever since the regency of Louise of Savoy (1476–1531), however, the queen mother came to be the first choice among possible regents, with female regency achieving a quasi-institutional status under Catherine de Médicis (1519–89), Marie de Médicis (1575–1642), and Anne of Austria (1601–66). Scholars tracing the evolution of this phenomenon have argued that it was made possible by the Salic Law, that is, the exclusion in France of women from the throne: the queen mother was a safe regent * The authors would like to thank the anonymous reader at Early Modern Women for the insightful and useful comments. 119 120 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen because she was unable to succeed and, therefore, usurp.1 Equally impor- tant, scholars have noted, prior to the development of the Salic Law, a 1403 ordinance of Charles VI stipulated that the young king would succeed no matter what his age without the aid of a regent, liberating the queen mother from the surveillance of any male governor.2 As guardian of her son, the queen mother could rule through him until he was capable of rul- ing himself. True, the ordinance decreed that the queen would be assisted in her task by a college of advisors, but a strong and competent woman could effectively rule the kingdom under such circumstances. 1 See Fanny Cosandey, “Puissance maternelle et pouvoir politique: La régence des reines mères,” Clio 21 (2005): 69–90; Katherine Crawford, “Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 643–74; and eadem, Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). On female regency in France more generally, see also André Poulet, “Capetian Women and the Regency: The Genesis of a Vocation,” Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 93–116. Although Marie-Luise Heckmann’s Stellvertreter, Mit- und Ersatzherrscher: Regenten, Generalstatthalter, Kurfürsten und Reichsvikare in Regnum und Imperium vom 13. bis zum frühen 15. Jahrhundert, 2 vols. (Warendorf: Fahlbusch Verlag, 2002), deals with male and female regencies in Europe, her work is indispensable for understand- ing regency in France. For the early regencies see Félix Olivier-Martin, Les Régences et la majorité des rois sous les Capétiens directs et les premiers Valois (1060–1375) (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1931), 174–75. 2 The ordinance, promulgated on April 26, 1403, states that if the king dies leaving a minor heir, the kingdom will have no regent. The young king will succeed immediately “without anyone else, no matter how closely related, taking over the care, regency, or gov- ernment of our kingdom, and without any obstacle being put before our oldest son in the natural right that is due to him, through regency or government of our kingdom or for any reason whatsoever.” See Les Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race, ed. Denis-François Secousse, et al, 21 vols. (Paris: L’Imprimerie nationale, 1723–1849), 8: 582. However, in a letter patent of May 7, 1403, the king acknowledged that some recent ordinances may have been damaging to his brother, Louis of Orleans, and rescinded any part of these ordinances that deprived Louis of his power. See the letter patent in François André Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789, 29 vols. (Paris and Belin-Le Prieur: Plon, 1824–57), 7: 59. After the assassination of Louis in November 1407, on December 23 the Royal Council passed an ordinance reinstating the ordinance of 1403. See Ordonnances, 9: 267–69. Translations throughout are our own. Female Regency in France 121 These later queen mothers have been well studied. However, the two female regents immediately preceding them have attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Marie-Luise Heckmann’s chapter on Charles VI focus- es primarily on the struggle for control among Charles VI’s male relatives. The substance of Katherine Crawford’s analysis begins with Catherine de Médicis. Although Fanny Cosandey focuses on the importance of the ordinance of 1403 abolishing a separate regent to the advantage of the queen mother and notes that the regency of 1483 was determined by the Estates General, she does not mention Isabeau of Bavaria and spends little time on Anne of France, beginning her detailed analysis with Catherine de Médicis; and Elizabeth McCartney sees the regency of Louise of Savoy as different from that of Isabeau of Bavaria, which was not supported by “dynastic notions of lineages and blood ties found in feudal law codes.” 3 And yet, the regencies of Isabeau and Anne, like those of the later queen mothers, were constructed explicitly on their exclusion from the throne and their ability to rule through the king. True, their careers received none of the theorizing of their later counterparts, who, challenged by opposition factions, inspired numerous treatises during their lifetimes both for and against female regency.4 Different from her later counterparts, 3 See Elizabeth McCartney, “The King’s Mother and Royal Prerogative in Early- Sixteenth-Century France,” Medieval Queenship, ed. Parsons, 117–141. 4 Pierre Dupuy reproduces the substance of the royal ordinances appointing Isabeau guardian of the dauphin and the journal of the Estates General approving Anne of France’s guardianship in his Traité de la majorité de nos rois et des régences du royaume, avec les preuves tirées tant du Trésor des chartes du roy que des registres du parlement et autres lieux; ensemble un traité des prééminences du parlement de Paris (Paris: Du Puis et E. Martin, 1655). However, in the case of Isabeau, he misinterprets the ordinances. For example, he reports that in 1392 Charles VI awarded the queen, his spouse, regency, along with his uncles, using the terms “tutele, garde et gouvernement du Dauphin” (16), and left administration of the realm to his brother, Louis of Orleans. It is true that the queen exercised guardianship; however, Louis, awarded administration of the realm, was under- stood to be the regent; that is, he ruled the realm during the king’s periods of insanity. This was the root cause of the conflict between the Orleanists (or later Armagnacs) that devastated France and led to the occupation by the English. See the pertinent ordinances in Secousse, et al., eds., Ordonnnances, 7: 530–35 and 535–38. Dupuy is more accurate in his description of the ordinances abolishing regency of April 16, 1403, reporting that Charles VI named the queen his wife “tutrice” along with his uncles. However, he misses 122 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen Isabeau was the queen of a mad king rather than his widow, but she was charged with overseeing the important business of the kingdom during her husband’s episodes of insanity in a series of ordinances passed between 1402 and 1409 (including that of 1403, referenced above).5 But if we have the significance of the ordinance by leaving out or, sometimes, misunderstanding the context (16–17; again 20–21, 37, and 88–94, where he incorrectly reports that Louis of Orleans was so strongly opposed by the other dukes that he retreated from the regency in 1403). Although Dupuy correctly reports that the Estates General confirmed Anne’s guardianship of her brother, once again, he gives no idea of the significance of this move to the situation overall (21–22; again 34, 38, and 94–104). On Dupuy’s political context see Harriet Lightman, “Political Power and the Queen of France: Pierre Dupuy’s Treatise on Regency Government,” Canadian Journal of History 21 (1986): 299–312. In contrast with Dupuy, other theoreticians of regency pay these regencies little heed. Jean du Tillet, attempting to determine the age of majority in the context of Catherine de Médicis’s claim of regency, notes only that Isabeau was poorly provisioned during her last years. See Jean du Tillet, Pour l’Entiere majorité du roy treschrestien, contre le legitime conseil malicieusement inventé par les rebelles (Paris: Guillaume Morel, 1560) and Les Mémoires et recherches de Jean du Tillet (Rouen: Philippe de Tours 1578), 125–26. On the activity of this legal historian, see Donald R. Kelley, “Jean du Tillet, Archivist and Antiquary,” The Journal of Modern History 38 (1966): 337–35. Likewise, René Choppin omits Isabeau and Anne from his list of regents, although mentioning Adela, wife of Louis VII, as well as Blanche of Castile, Jeanne of Navarre for Philippe IV, and Anne of Brittany for Louis XII.