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Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2013, vol. 8

Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne of , 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; (d. 1075) acted as co- for her son, Philip I; Adèle of (d. 1206) adminis- tered the kingdom for her son Philip Augustus when he departed on the Third ; (1188–1252), mother of St. Louis, watched over her son as a minor 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; (1461–1522), along with her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, was named guardian for her 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 (1476–1531), however, the came to be the first choice among possible , with female regency achieving a quasi-institutional status under Catherine de Médicis (1519–89), Marie de Médicis (1575–1642), and (1601–66). Scholars tracing the evolution of this phenomenon have argued that it was made possible by the , 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 .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 (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 , 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) (: 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 Andre 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 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 , 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 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 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 (: 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 , although mentioning Adela, wife of Louis VII, as well as Blanche of Castile, Jeanne of Navarre for Philippe IV, and Anne of for Louis XII. René Choppin, Trois livres du domaine de la couronne de France, composez en latin par M. René Choppin . . . et traduicts en langage vulgaire sur la dernière impression de l’an 1605 (Paris: Sonnium, 1613), 403. 5 “[S]he will attend . . . to the government of our finances and to the other serious problems of our realm until such a time as we can take care of them personally.” Louis Claude Douët-d’Arcq, Choix de pièces inédites relatives au règne de Charles VI, 2 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1863), 1: 241. Victim of a tenacious legend until recent years, Isabeau has received little attention from recent historians of regency. For rehabilitations of Isabeau of Bavaria, see Heidrun Kimm, Isabeau de Baviere, reine de France 1370–1435. Beitrag zur Geschichte einer bayerischen Herzogstochter und des französischen Königshauses (Munich: Stadtarchiv, 1969); Yann Grandeau’s many articles, especially “Les qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière,” Bulletin philologique et historique (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1975), 129–239 and “Le Dauphin Jean, duc de Touraine, fils de Charles VI (1398–1417),” Bulletin philologique et historique (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1971), 665–728; R. C. Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI, 1392–1420 (New York: AMS Press, 1986); the studies of Rachel C. Gibbons, including “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Series 6.6. (1996), 51–74; and Tracy Adams, Female Regency in France 123

no treatises by Isabeau’s contemporaries to flesh out her regency, a rich source of information on how her role was understood during her own time is offered by some writings of her champion, . When Christine’s Livre de la cité des dames, the “Epistre a la Royne de France,” both of 1405, and the Livre des trois vertus of 1406 are consid- ered in their historical context, a coup attempt by the king’s cousin, Jean of Burgundy, they must be read as defenses of Isabeau’s regency, defenses that Christine bases upon the guarantee that the queen, in contrast with Jean, presented no threat of usurpation.6 Crawford’s observation that Catherine de Médicis turned “the ties of maternity and her own incapacity for the throne” into a “claim for regency in which the queen mother enjoyed both guardianship and administrative powers” applies first to Christine’s Isabeau.7 The regency claim of Anne of France, who governed in the name of her brother Charles VIII from 1483–1492, is equally central to the his- tory of female regency. Reader of Christine’s defenses of women, Anne sought guardianship of the thirteen-year-old Charles VIII for herself and her husband, Pierre of Beaujeu, later of Bourbon, intending to rule the realm through this position. She could not claim maternal ties, but, profiting from the paradoxical advantage offered by the Salic Law, she represented herself as a less dangerous regent than the new king’s closest male heir, her cousin, Louis of Orleans, later King Louis XII. Although the Estates General confirmed his role as head of the Royal Council, they

The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 6 La città delle (La Cité des dames), ed. and trans. Patrizia Caraffi and E. Jeffrey Richards (Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997); The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life with An Epistle to the Queen of France and Lament on the Evils of the Civil War, ed. and trans. Josette A. Wisman (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1984); and Le Livre des trois vertus, ed. Charity C. Willard and Eric Hicks (Paris: Champion, 1989). On the conflict between Charles VI’s brother, Louis of Orleans, and his cousin, Jean of Burgundy, see Michael Nordberg, Les Ducs et la royauté: étude sur la rivalité des ducs d’Orléans et de Bourgogne, 1392–1407 (Uppsala: Svenska Bokförlaget, 1964); Bertrand Schnerb, Les Armagnacs et les Bourguignons: La maudite guerre (Paris: Perrin, 1988) and Jean sans Peur: le meurtrier (Paris: Payot, 2005); and Adams, Life and Afterlife, 166–92. 7 Crawford, Perilous Performances, 23. 124 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

diplomatically refused his bid for guardianship to the dauphin, and Anne effectively governed the kingdom from 1484 until 1492.8 Although female regency would always be embattled, in confirming the guardianship of Anne and her husband, the Estates General dealt a blow to the tradition of the male regent and further secured the space within which Catherine de Médicis, who ruled by virtue of her position as her son’s guardian, would construct her regency.

The Foundations of Female Regency

To prepare the context within which we examine how Isabeau and Anne constructed their regencies, we consider in this section the closely related social and legal structures that made them possible, as well as the regencies of the later queen mothers. Chief among these, as we have noted, was the principle of female exclusion from the throne sometimes referred to as the Salic Law, which guaranteed that the queen mother was a safer choice for regent than a minor king’s closest male relative.9 Although Ralph E. Giesey and other scholars have shown that the Salic Law was a creation of the 15th century, explaining retrospectively rather than causing female exclusion, it had a long history, traceable to the death of Louis X in 1316.10 During the first three hundred years of Capetian rule, female succession was not an issue. However, when Louis X died, he left a four-year-old daughter, Jeanne, and a pregnant queen. His posthumous son died shortly after birth. Philip, brother of the defunct king, assumed regency, initially promising to revisit succession when Jeanne came of age. But he later negotiated with his niece’s maternal relatives, the dukes of Burgundy, so that she renounced her claim to the throne, and had himself crowned Philip V.11

8 Jean Masselin, Journal des états généraux de France tenus a Tours en 1484 sous le règne de Charles VIII, ed. and trans. [into French] Adhelm Bernier (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1835). 9 See Cosandey, “Puissance maternelle et pouvoir politique,” 72–75. 10 See Ralph E. Giesey, Le rôle méconnu de la loi salique: La succession royale, XIVe- XVIe siècles (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2007). 11 On the exclusion of women from the French throne the fundamental study is Paul Viollet’s “Comment les femmes ont été exclues en France de la succession à la Female Regency in France 125

Although Philip V’s preventing his niece from succession has been referred to as a fraud perpetrated upon women, it was purely opportunis- tic.12 The Capetian monarchy in 1316 had not been fully theorized: was it a feudal monarchy or something different? When the issue was forced in 1419 by the disinheritance of the dauphin by Charles VI, French jurists determined that the throne was not the king’s to dispense with. But in 1316, the kingdom appears to have been considered a sort of , and, in the absence of any law governing succession, Philip and the deliberating barons looked to feudal law for a way to justify his claim.13 Yet, feudal law concerning female succession varied, though male preference prevailed. Still, in some cases only males could inherit. In others, a woman might inherit in the absence of a male heir. As Giesey notes, “The Libri Feudorum calls for male succession only, but not so all the French coutumiers.” 14 For example, just before his death, King Philip IV had decreed that the apa- nage of his son, Philip, would return to if Philip produced no

Couronne,” Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions 34:2 (1893), 25–78. See also John Milton Potter, “The Development and Significance of the Salic Law of the French,” The English Historical Review 52 (1937): 235–253; Craig Taylor, “The Salic Law and the Valois Succession to the French Crown,” French History 15 (2001): 358–77; idem, “The Salic Law, French Queenship and the Defence of Women in the Late ,” French Historical Studies 29 (2006): 543–64; and Taylor’s introduction to his Debating the Hundred Years War: Pour ce que plusieurs (La Loi Salicque) and A Declaracion of the Trew and Dewe of Henry VIII (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006), where he describes the embarrassment of Jean de Montreuil regarding the use of the Lex Salica as the source of female exclusion. Eliane Viennot’s La France, les femmes et le pouvoir: l’in- vention de la loi salique (Ve-XVIe siècle) (Paris: Perrin, 2006) also describes how the Salic Law developed. 12 Although Sarah Hanley has made the case that the Salic Law was created to deprive women of the throne in France, her point has been refuted by Giesey and others. See Giesey, Le Rôle méconnu, who shows that the young Jeanne was not excluded from the throne for years after Philip V’s accession and that her claim to the throne was always a possibility. The proclamation that women could not succeed was simply a defense of a fait accompli (40) rather than evidence of misogyny. It was not a “question de principe mais de politique” (47). 13 Ralph E. Giesey, “The Juristic Basis of the Dynastic Right to the French Throne,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 51 (1961): 11. 14 Ibid. 126 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen male heir. When his father died, Philip asked his brother, King Louis X, to allow Philip’s daughter to inherit if Philip produced no son, a request that was granted. The Lex Salica, marshaled in the fifteenth century to back the claim that women could not inherit the throne in France, prohibited female of allodial lands, even though it had nothing to say about royal succession, as was sometimes argued. Given the variation, it seems that no widespread sentiment either in favor of or against female exclusion from inheritance existed, and, as Giesey writes, feudal customs being variable, “political and patriotic pressures ultimately tipped the balance in favor of one and not another rule.”15 In any case, the assertion that women could not succeed to the throne was plausible. More important, this tradition solved a pressing problem; it helped delay the succession of an heir who was only a child and avoided the succession threat of the heir’s maternal relatives who represented a league hostile to the royal .16 The idea that a woman could not inherit the throne was also marshaled to solve a later problem: when Philip V died in 1322 leaving only daughters, it assured the succession of his brother, Charles. A variation on the tradition was used in 1328 by supporters of Philip VI of Valois to counter a claim to the French throne by the king of England, Edward III, grandson of Philip IV of France. Although Edward III accepted that women could not rule France, he argued that the right to succession could pass through a woman, in this case through Edward III’s mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. If so, Edward III’s claim was stronger than that of the French claimant, Philip VI, a nephew of Philip IV, that is, son of Philip IV’s brother, Charles of Valois. That an English king could rule France was unacceptable to Philip VI’s followers, and thus it was decided that the right to succession could not pass through a woman. Although female exclusion from the throne first came into exis- tence through opportunistic bids for power, it also offered a way to refute the English claim to the throne. Also, as Raymond Cazelles and others

15 Ibid. 16 Eudes of Burgundy, Jeanne’s maternal uncle, had led the Burgundians against King Louis X as part of the confederation of regional leagues that had risen up first under Philip the Fair. Female Regency in France 127

have noted, if succession through female lineage had been admitted, the pretenders to the throne would have been numerous, for Louis X, Philip V, and Charles IV all left daughters.17 Thus, the seventeenth-century argument that the queen mother was a safe choice and particularly apt to govern for her minor son can be traced to events of the fourteenth century.18 A further structure facilitating the primacy of the queen mother was the conflation of the two offices associ- ated with regency. As Fanny Cosandey has noted, regency consisted of the separable offices of guardianship (sometimes called tutelle) of the dauphin and administration or governance of the realm.19 During certain regencies, the two positions were held by different individuals. During others, like that of Louise of Savoy, who administered in the absence of an adult king, only one element was present. Catherine de Médicis based her regency claim on her conflation of the two offices: she headed the government “in consideration of the great virtues, prudence, and wise conduct . . . and the great affection which she has always demonstrated.”20 Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria, too, held both offices. Moreover, the relative impor- tance that the two offices were perceived to hold varied, as we can see in the struggle for power during the reign of Charles VI. Episodically insane from 1392, Charles VI in 1393 assigned Queen Isabeau tutelle of the dauphin and other children, assisted by the of the blood and various advi- sors, in case the king should die prematurely. At the same time, the king

17 Raymond Cazelles, La Société politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois (Paris: Librairie d’Argences, 1958), 52. 18 See Dupuy, Traité de la majorité de nos rois, 35–36. 19 Cosandey, “Puissance maternelle et pouvoir politique,” 70–71. See Heckmann, Stellvertreter, 1: 324–27. Medieval and early modern regency did not possess a stable, standard vocabulary. See Elie Berger, “Le Titre de régent dans les actes de la chancellerie royale,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 61 (1900), 412–25. Fanny Cosandey, La Reine de France: Symbole et pouvoir, XVe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 37. 20 Quoted in Crawford, Perilous Performances, 39. See also Elizabeth McCartney, “In the Queen’s Words: Perceptions of Regency Government Gleaned from the Correspondence of Catherine de Médicis,” Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion, ed. Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 207–22. 128 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

assigned administracion du royaume to his brother, Louis of Orleans.21 In 1402, Isabeau was given the power to mediate certain conflicts on behalf of Charles VI, represent him on the Royal Council during his absences, and settle financial issues in the king’s name.22 In 1403, her authority was further augmented, at least potentially, when Charles VI passed an ordi- nance abolishing regency altogether in the case that he should die leaving a minor heir.23 With no one administering the realm, the queen, already guardian of the dauphin, could in effect exercise total regency through her son. However, Louis fought the 1403 ordinance successfully, for in a letter patent of May 7, 1403, the king acknowledged that “certain” recent ordi- nances may have been damaging to his brother and ordered that any part of them that deprived Louis of his power be rescinded.24 The ordinance reappeared in December 1407.25 In November of that year, Jean, duke of Burgundy since the death of his father Philip in 1404, had had Louis assassinated. With the Duke of Orleans dead, regency was once again abolished, that is, the ordinance abolishing regency first pro- mulgated in April 1403 was reinstated. The new ordinance, like its earlier counterpart, proclaimed that royal heirs, no matter what their age, would immediately accede to the throne without the establishment of a regency. When the heirs were minor, the realm would be administered by their authority and in their name by the good advice, deliberation, and counsel of the queen, their mother, if she were living, and by the next of lineage and blood royal, if there were any, and also by the advice, deliberation, and counsel of the constable and chancellor of France and the wise men of the Council.26 It seems clear that the Royal Council promulgated the ordinance to prevent Jean of Burgundy from seizing control of the dauphin

21 See note 2, above. 22 These are printed in Douët-d’Arcq, Choix de pièces inédites, 1: 227–39 and 240–43. 23 Secousse, et al., eds., Ordonnances 8: 577. On the importance of the change see Cosandey, La Reine de France, 37, and Heckmann, Stellvertreter, 2: 816–19. 24 The letter patent is printed in Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois fran- çaises, 7: 59. 25 Secousse, et al., eds., Ordonnances 9: 267–69. 26 Ibid., 9: 268. Female Regency in France 129

and therefore establishing a regency. Nonetheless, Jean prevailed: on December 27, 1409, at a meeting in Vincennes, a royal ordinance announced that because the dauphin was of an age to meet people from all and because Queen Isabeau was often otherwise occupied, guardian- ship of the dauphin would be transferred to Jean.27 Jean thus became de facto ruler of the kingdom. The conflation of guardianship and administration of the realm aided the evolution of female regency, although as we see with the case of Jean of Burgundy, the phenomenon was not useful to queen mothers alone. However, a third structure strengthened the claim of the queen mother in particular. This was her dynastic bond to her son. Beginning with Louise of Savoy, as McCartney has argued, an increased emphasis upon this bond reinforced her claim to rule.28 Still, this emphasis is already present in the insistence on maternal affection that appears in Philip the Fair’s regency ordinances of 1297 and Charles V’s of 1374.29 Charles VI’s regency ordi- nance of 1393 follows the custom established by these forebears, assigning guardianship of the dauphin to the queen mother, assisted by the princes of the blood and other advisors, in the event of the king’s premature death. The ordinance explains the rationale behind the choice: “the mother has

27 The document awarding the tutelle to the Duke of Burgundy is printed in Urbain Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne, 4 vols. (Dijon: Imprimerie de A. de Fay, 1739–1781), 3, no. 261. “In response to the statement of our very dear and much loved companion, the Queen, that by our ordinance she has long watched over and raised our very dear and much loved oldest son, Louis, Duke of , Dauphin of the Viennois, and has had guardianship and government over him, and kept him and raised him and watched over him to the point where he is grown to such an age that it is fitting that from now on he learn to know people of all the estates of the realm, and the tasks and affairs of it, and because our said companion, considering her illness and the problems that she often has and will continue to have, because of the great number of children it has pleased the to send us, and which she carried, as well as the fact that she cannot always from now on be present in the places in which she needs to be for the completion and introduction of our son, and desiring with all her heart the good and advancement. . . .” Once again, it is not certain who was the impetus behind the ordinance. It is doubtful that the intermittently mad Charles VI was ever in a state of mind to make what we would think of as a voluntary decision. 28 See McCartney, “The King’s Mother and Royal Prerogative”, 117–41. 29 See Heckmann, Stellvertreter, 2: 742. 130 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

a greater and more tender love for her children, and with a soft and car- ing heart takes care of and nourishes them more lovingly than any other person, no matter how closely related, and for this reason, she is to be preferred above all others. . . .”30 Although in the 1393 regency ordinances guardianship of the dauphin seems to have been considered less signifi- cant than administration of the realm, reality proved to be different, as we have seen with Jean of Burgundy. Indeed, the potential significance of guardianship had long been recognized. In his ordinance of August 1374, Charles V recognizes the importance of physical possession of the future ruler when he insists that the people are naturally inclined to obey even a minor king, which he illustrates in a story of how Chilperic (although the baby in question could not in fact have been Chilperic but must have been Chlotar) was used to rouse the of France to action.31 The four- month-old Chilperic, held aloft in the arms of his mother the queen, inspired the to win a great victory. Having seen the child, Charles’s ordinance concludes, the nobles were excited and moved to obedience and prompt service. In theory, then, whoever controlled the dauphin potentially could control the kingdom. Although realization of regency was contingent on the circumstances and the personality of the person exercising it, the ordinances of 1403 and 1407 offered a space from which a queen mother theoretically could rule. This was never easy: as Crawford has demonstrated, female regency always was contested. “Performed” in marginal spaces between manifestations of official power, female regency never received formal legal recognition, and, as Crawford makes clear, we should not regard the phenomenon as a prod- uct of a straightforward political or legal evolution alone but as individual creations “of logics and structures of gendered authority through assertion and resistance, acquiescence and contestation. . . .”32

30 Secousse, et al., eds., Ordonnances, 7: 530. 31 Ibid., 6: 26–30. See p. 28 for Chlotar versus Chilperic. 32 Crawford, Perilous Performances, 23. Female Regency in France 131

The City of as Argument for Female Regency

The career of Isabeau of Bavaria has not received wide attention in studies of female regency in France. One aspect of her career, however, is central to the evolution of the phenomenon. The regency ordinance of 1403, how- ever ineffective it may have been at the moment that it was promulgated, was initiated specifically as a way of settling or transcending a destructive power struggle between the king’s male relatives. In three “feminist” writ- ings of about 1405–1406, Christine de Pizan grasps this essential point and elaborates on it to promote the queen’s regency. When Philip of Burgundy died in 1404, succeeded by his son Jean, the rivalry between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy went from bad to worse. With Louis of Orleans controlling the Royal Council, Jean attempt- ed to lay hold of the dauphin, always a crucial pawn in a struggle for power. In August 1405, Jean entered Paris with an army, and, discovering that Louis and Isabeau had already left town with the dauphin, he set off after the boy and forced him to turn back to Paris. In response, Louis called up his men, and for over a month the armed forces faced each other tensely. The danger was great: Louis of Orleans claimed just after Jean’s sei- zure of the dauphin that the Duke of Burgundy would also seize the mad king also and hold him “in custody or in guardianship.”33 Christine’s three defenses of women dating from 1405–6 must be seen as interventions in favor of Isabeau’s regency against the bellicose Jean’s grab for power. These works are not treatises of the sort that begin to appear in the late sixteenth century. Still, they flesh out the sparse descriptions of Isabeau’s role found in the ordinances, and, as we will show, their assumptions about regency derive from feudal law and share the ideology evident in arguments for the queen mother based on her exclusion from succession. Isabeau’s “femi- nine” qualities coupled with her sense for government made her the ideal candidate for the position of regent. Seeing the dukes on the brink of war, Christine promoted a peaceful solution under the guidance of the queen, the solution also promoted by the king in his ordinances.

33 “[E]n bail ou en tutelle” (Douët-d’Arcq, Choix des pièces inédites, 1: 282). 132 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

Christine’s argument for Isabeau emerges logically from the con- struction of gender that she details in her work. Although women are excluded from certain positions by “nature,” a divinely-ordained hierarchy maintained on earth through God’s viceroy, Nature, they are, nonetheless, capable of fulfilling such positions, and, when men are lacking, they can be substituted. Christine tells us that Nature, the figure whom the poet claims as her mother in the Livre de la mutacion de fortune (1402), constrains men and women to different roles in the world, but this does not mean that a woman is not as competent as her male counterpart to fulfill the tasks from which she is excluded by virtue of her sex. Christine explains this allegori- cally, claiming that her father possessed two magnificent precious “stones”: astrological and medical knowledge. He desired a son to whom to pass on these “stones.” But her mother, Nature, to whom God gave “le regiment / Du monde accroistre et maintenir” (the authority to expand and maintain the world) wanted a child who resembled her.34 The result? Christine was born, resembling her father in all things, including “manners,” “body,” and “face” (“façons,” “corps,” “vis”), except her “sexe.” And for this reason alone, she could not inherit her father’s riches. Still, although the role allotted Christine was determined by Nature, she, like other women, stepped in when a male relative was lacking. Later in the same work, she describes herself metamorphosing into a man to take care of her family when her own husband dies.35 In the first of the three works that we believe constitute defenses of Isabeau’s regency, the Livre de la cité des dames, Christine makes her point about gender yet more forcefully. Here she explains that God cre- ated the two sexes as a complementary pair for maximum social efficiency. Responding to Christine’s question of why women are never seen in courts of law, Raison, the first of three allegorical figures who appear to Christine to help her construct a city for ladies, explains:

34 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la mutacion de fortune, ed. Suzanne Solente, 4 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1959–1966), vol. 1. 35 Ibid., 1: 46–53. Female Regency in France 133

Just as a wise and well-organized lord divides his household into different offices to take care of different tasks . . . God wanted that man and woman serve him differently, that they help and support each other mutually, each in his or her way. Therefore God gave the two sexes nature and dispositions necessary to accomplish their tasks. . . .36

However, this does not mean that women are incapable of fulfilling the tasks normally assigned men: “But if certain people want to say that women do not have sufficient understanding to learn the law, the opposite is shown through the proof that is offered and has been offered by many women. . . .”37 Raison proclaims to those who do not believe that women have the natural sense (sens naturel) for government that she will give examples of great female rulers of the past possessing such sense, and, moreover, that she will remind them of women of their own times, who, having been widowed, are conducting the affairs of their dead husbands and who serve as magnificent examples of the proposition that a woman of skill is apt for all roles.38 Although Christine does not specifically evoke feudal law, her numer- ous references to women ruling in the absence of their husbands take such a legal framework for granted. Crucially, the Cité des dames begins and ends by evoking the Virgin Mary, the ultimate exemplar for female regents. The narrative opens with Christine lamenting the slanderous portrayals of women rife among erudite writers. Having spent herself tearfully asking God why He created such a miserable creature as woman, she sits, cheek in hand. Suddenly a ray of light falls across her lap, her “giron.” Her Livre de la cité des dames is conceived, then, through divine intervention, just as Mary herself conceived Jesus. Moreover, the “city of ladies” that Christine helps to construct refers to the body of the Virgin, the City of God. Psalm 87, describing the New Jerusalem, the Civitas Dei, was commonly held to refer to Mary, in whom Jesus “resided” (and the psalm continues to be sung,

36 Christine de Pizan, Cité des dames, ed. Caraffi and Richards, 92. 37 Ibid., 92. 38 Ibid., 94. 134 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

even today, at celebrations of the Virgin). As Prudence Allen has noted, Christine refers explicitly to the psalm in Book 3 of the Cité des dames.39 The figure of Justice, having completed her mission by welcoming the Virgin into the city, proclaims that holy ladies may now live in the city of ladies about which it may be said “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, civitas Dei,”this being the third line of the Psalm 87. 40 The presence of the Virgin in the Cité des dames is further underlined through the figure of the Queen of Sheba, the first of a series of female rulers introduced by Raison. The Empress Nycole (Nicaula), the Queen of Sheba, was often associated with the Virgin Mary, either directly, with her entry into Jerusalem in search of Solomon and his wisdom interpreted as a precursor of Mary’s assumption into heaven, or indirectly as a figure for the Church. The Queen of Sheba was also associated with the Bride of Christ of the “Song of Solomon.”41 Moreover, one sees her portrayed with Solomon, the pair representing Christ and the Virgin in the “Court of Heaven.”42 Just after this figure of the Virgin Mary, Raison introduces women of France who ruled after the deaths of their husbands: “who remained widows and whose excellent government of all their affairs after the death of their husbands shows clearly that a woman with intelligence is suited for any task.”43 They include Fredegund; Blanche of Castile; Jeanne

39 Prudence Allen, The Concept of Women: The Early Humanist Reformation (1250–1500) (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1997), 641. Depending upon which numbering system is used, Masoretic or Septuagint, the number of the psalm referred to here may be 86 or 87. 40 Christine de Pizan, Cité des dames, 496. 41 This is manifested in the south portal of the west façade, the portal of the Mère de Dieu, of Amiens Cathedral. Here Solomon and the Queen of Sheba reflect Christ and Mary. Like the Virgin, the Queen of Sheba — often depicted with the Christ-figure Solomon, whose wisdom she tried to prove through riddles — was associated with Ecclesia and the Bride of Christ. See Marcia R. Rickard, “The Iconography of the Virgin Portal at Amiens,” Gesta 22 (1983): 153; Vera K. Ostoia, “Two Riddles of the Queen of Sheba,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 6 (1972), 78–79; and Paul F. Watson, “The Queen of Sheba in Christian Tradition,” Solomon and Sheba, ed. James B. Pritchard (London: Phaidon Press, 1974), 115–45. 42 Watson, “The Queen of Sheba,” 117. 43 Christine de Pizan, Cité des dames, 94. Female Regency in France 135

of Evreux; Blanche of Orleans; Bonne of , wife of Jean le Bon; Marie of , Countess of ; and Catherine, Countess of la Marche and Vendôme.44 Women rulers of mythology and literature are next intro- duced, among them the widows, daughters, or sisters who took up rule in the absence of a male leader: Semiramis, Zenobia, Artemisia, Lilia, Berenice, Dido, and Lavinia. As she introduces these female regents, Raison assures women that God and Nature have been kind to them in making them physically weak, because for this reason they have not been required to engage in the sort of violence for which men have been responsible through the centuries.45 Droiture (rectitude), second of the allegorical figures of the Cité des dames, reiterates the point in her description of Isabeau of Bavaria at the end of Book 2. Isabeau, of course, does not appear along with the widows of Book 1; she is not a widow at the time that Christine writes, but she appears with the and ladies of France at present living. In an implicit contrast with the Duke of Burgundy, Droiture explains that in Isabeau there is no “cruelty, extortion, or any vice whatsoever, but rather great love and kindness towards her subjects.”46 In Book 3 of the work the Virgin Mary arrives in the Cité des dames to become its leader. It is significant that Cité des dames finishes as it had begun, by evoking female regents, espe- cially the Virgin Mary, she who “has and administration over all things after her son whom she carried and conceived through the Holy Spirit, and who is the son of God the Father.”47 The female regents of the city, working to preserve their family’s , are glorified by comparison to the Virgin, second to none except her son, but incapable of usurping his position. The regents cannot be seen as arguments for independent female rule. Rather, as women fit for

44 On this group of women as a sort of ideal Royal Council, see E. Jeffrey Richards, “Political Thought as Improvisation: Female Regency and Mariology in Late Medieval French Thought,” Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800, ed. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green (Berlin and New York: Springer, 2007), 12–13. 45 Christine de Pizan, Cité des dames, 104. 46 Ibid., 422. 47 Ibid., 430. 136 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

all tasks but limited by a divinely inspired gender hierarchy, they are argu- ments for female regency. In the second of the defenses of Isabeau’s regency, the “Epistre a la Royne de France” dated October 5, 1405, Christine draws on the examples of the Virgin Mary and Blanche of Castile in making her case for the queen. This work is linked yet more precisely than the Cité des dames with Jean of Burgundy’s coup attempt, for its purpose is to enhance Isabeau’s authority as an arbitrator between the dukes to bring an end to their standoff and restore peace to the kingdom. Several of Charles VI’s regency ordinances command his unruly male relatives to present themselves for arbitration before the queen when the king is sick. The need to repeat the command suggests that Isabeau’s authority was not readily accepted. Christine’s epistle, preceding by one week an ordinance threatening the dukes with bodily harm if they do not submit themselves to the queen’s arbitration, insists upon Isabeau’s stature.48 Christine was a reader of the Grandes Chroniques de France, which tells the story of Blanche of Castile and the child Louis IX harassed by the barons of the realm. The chronicle recounts that the barons did not believe that Blanche, a woman, was fit to rule a kingdom.49 Hearing that the bar- ons were planning to seize the young king, “la royne sa mere” asked the powerful men of Paris to come to her aid. She then sent letters throughout the kingdom asking for further support. A great army assembled at Paris to deliver the young king from his enemies. In the epistle, Christine draws a parallel between Blanche and Isabeau, both harassed by unruly lords. Christine means to rally the people of Paris behind Isabeau, just as they once came to the defense of Blanche. In the epistle, Christine describes how Blanche takes the child Louis in her arms. Extending him towards the quarreling barons, she commands that they look at their king, remind- ing them that he will one day be old enough to do something about their unruliness.50 The episode cannot help but recall for the reader that Isabeau

48 Ibid., 12: 222–23. 49 Les Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. Jules Viard, 10 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1920–1953), 7: 38–39. 50 Christine de Pizan, “Epistle to the Queen of France,” ed. and trans. Wisman, 76. Female Regency in France 137 had responded to Jean’s recent entry into Paris with an army by calling the dauphin to join her in Melun, although the boy was stopped along the road by Jean and forced to return to Paris. Christine returns to quarreling barons in the Livre des trois vertus. Describing the burdens that a widowed must face, Christine explains that the job of keeping the barons in line will fall to her if her son is too young to take charge. If there is war between the barons over the government, the princess will depend upon her wisdom to guide them to peace.51 Foreign enemies are not nearly as dangerous as internal ones for the minor heir, she adds. In the Trois vertus, Christine takes for granted that the widowed mother will act as guardian for her child. This point had broad application. Still, the nature of her advice to the female guardian seems so pertinent to the discord between the dukes that it must be seen as a comment on the situation. Besides the risk that barons might go to war against each other over government, Christine adds that even the debates surrounding such struggles were dangerous. Thus the wise will maintain the peace between the warring lords:

[T]he wise lady will be such an excellent arbitrator between them with her prudent composure and knowledge — thinking of the evil that could come of their disputes, given the youth of her child — that she will be able to appease them. To do this, she will seek the most appropriate means possible, treating them with gentleness, and making sure that all is done according to good and loyal advice.52

It is clear to whom and what Christine refers. Isabeau’s regency has attracted little serious study for a number of reasons.53 First, her regency was not successful. However, this may

51 Christine de Pizan, Trois Vertus, 84. See full citation in note 6. 52 Ibid., 85. 53 The exception is the PhD dissertation of Rachel C. Gibbons, “The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1392–1417,” University of Reading, 1997. See also her article, “Isabeau de Bavière: reine de France ou ‘lieutenant-général’ du royaume?” 138 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

be attributable more to circumstance than to her lack of skill. She was working in the middle of a deadly feud, and modern scholarship has dem- onstrated just how difficult cycles of violence are to halt. Her hope was that the dauphin, Louis of Guyenne, would unite the factions, but when he died suddenly at age eighteen, that hope was dashed. Had he lived to force the Armagnacs and Burgundians to reconcile, Isabeau today would be considered a model queen mother. A further reason for this neglect is that scholars who have studied the queen are not agreed upon exactly the extent of her political role. Straightforward readings of the documents describing her role suggest a less active one than other evidence shows to have been the case: Isabeau worked very much behind the scenes. Finally, modern historical periodization may have played a role, with medievalists and scholars remaining on separate sides of the sixteenth- century divide.

The Regency of Anne of France

Anne of France’s case reinforces Crawford’s point that female regency was recreated anew each time to conform to the conditions at hand. Had Charles VI’s ordinances abolishing regency in favor of a college headed by the queen mother, both for guardianship of the dauphin and administra- tion of the realm, been taken as precedent, the regent for the young King Charles VIII after the death of King Louis XI in August 1483 would have been the queen mother, Charlotte of Savoy.54 On his deathbed, Louis XI stipulated that the “government and principal handling of the person and the affairs of Charles” be awarded to his daughter Anne and her husband Pierre of Beaujeu, later . The king acknowledged no prec- edent here, passing over the two most likely candidates for regent, at least according to tradition: the queen mother and the closest male relation to

Femmes de pouvoir, femmes politiques durant les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge et au cours de la première Renaissance, ed. Eric Bousmar, Jonathan Dumont, Alain Marchandisse, and Bertrand Schnerb (Bruxelles: De Boeck, 2012). 54 Jean de Saint-Gelais, Histoire de Louis XII (Paris: Abraham Pacard, 1622), 43, and Paul Pélicier, Essai sur le gouvernement de la Dame de Beaujeu 1483–1491 (: Imprimerie Edouard Garnier, 1882), 44–45. Female Regency in France 139

the king, Louis of Orleans, to the throne (and grandson of the Duke of Orleans assassinated by Jean of Burgundy in 1407). But a wide historical consensus holds that the king respected his intelligent daughter over all others and that while cultivating her to become regent he chose a husband for her whom he and she could control. Thus, he seems to have intended France to be ruled by this politically astute woman work- ing through the young king rather than by an ambitious male relative.55 In fact, the king seems to have worried that his lack of precedent in assign- ing regency would be contested. He is said to have ordered Pierre to go immediately upon his death to where the new king was residing, to take “complete charge and government of the said king” and not to let anyone go near him.56 Also, shortly before his death he asked the thirteen- year-old Charles to obey Pierre just as if he were the king himself. The queen mother Charlotte made a counter-claim for regency, backed by Louis of Orleans. When she died in November, 1483, Louis of Orleans, backed by a coalition of powerful lords, including many of the princes of the blood, stepped in, claiming the regency for himself. To settle the question, an assembly of the Estates General was called in Tours in January 1484. Whose idea this was is moot. It may have been Anne, seeing the assembly as her only possibility for legitimizing her claim; on the other hand, some scholars argue that she was an unlikely proponent because recent cases submitted by the royalty before such assemblies had finished badly. Marie of Burgundy, submitting to the Estates of , had been forced to cede Burgundy to Louis XI in 1477, and in England the parliament had excluded the children of Edward IV and from succession. But whatever her role in the process, on October 24, Anne accepted the convocation of the Estates General, despite her precarious position. She was under attack by Louis of Orleans and his followers over the regency issue. Further, they and others were still angry about the royal policies to consolidate power carried out by the recently

55 See Pélicier, Essai, 44–45. 56 Claude de Seyssel, cited Ibid., 44–45. 140 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

departed Louis XI.57 She thus needed to win over the delegates by demon- strating that she would rectify some of what many of the great lords felt to be her father’s brutal transgressions. Moreover, she had to persuade them that she was better suited than the rash Louis to safeguard the realm while molding the young Charles into a worthy king. Requesting three months to prepare for the Estates General, she put the time to good use, touring the territories of Louis of Orleans with the young king by her side to con- vince the people of her good will and lack of menace. 58 As she accompanied her brother during his entries at Blois, Beaugency, Cléry, Mehun-sur Yèvre, and Amboise, she discerned the attitudes of the people.59 In her careful acts of reconciliation, she seems to have followed the advice of Christine de Pizan: she listened to good counsel, “guarding and defending boldly her right by reason, without condescending to anyone, and thus she will give her reason or have it given courteously to all, but she will hold on to her right.” 60 On January 7, 1484, the delegates to the Estates General began to descend on the castle in Tours. Anne kept herself discreetly out of view, observing the activity in the cour d’honneur from a hiding spot.61 On January 14, Charles made his entry into the town. The next day he mounted the estrade to greet the crowd, led by Pierre, then seated himself on his throne “fleurdelisé.” To his right sat the Duke of Bourbon, elder brother of Pierre of Beaujeu but a strong ally of and second in command behind Louis of Orleans; to the left sat the family in order of rank: his cousin Louis, the

57 See Jean-François Lassalmonie, “Discours à trois voix sur le pouvoir: le roi et les états généraux 1484,” Penser le pouvoir au Moyen Âge (VIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. Dominique Boutet and Jacques Verger (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2000), 128. More generally on Anne, see Lassalmonie’s “Anne de France, dame de Beaujeu: Un modèle féminin d’exercice du pouvoir dans la France de la fin du Moyen Âge,” Femmes de pouvoir, ed. Bousmar, et al., 129–46. 58 Marc Chombart de Lauwe, Anne de Beaujeu ou la passion du pouvoir (Paris: Tallandier, 1980), 88. 59 Pélicier, Essai, 63–64. 60 Christine de Pizan, Trois vertus, 84. 61 Chombart de Lauwe, Anne de Beaujeu, 92. Female Regency in France 141

Duke of Alençon and Angoulême, and finally his brother-in-law Pierre. There was no sign of Anne.62 The tone of the actors and the reactions they solicited are not always easy to discern, which has resulted in varied interpretations of the pro- ceedings. However, it seems clear that Louis of Orleans, by intimidating the delegates with a veiled menace, which contrasted unfavorably with the Beaujeus’ strategy of appeasement, stumbled early in the bid for guardian- ship. At the end of January, Pierre de Luxembourg, bishop of Mans, in the name of Louis and his allies warned the assembly to choose the members of the Royal Council carefully, because those who had been chosen most recently — that is, those selected by Anne — were maliciously oppressing the people. The princes, he added, were powerful enough to back up the delegates’ choices.63 This has been seen by some historians as an attempt on Louis’s part to threaten the assembly by intimating that he and the princes would not hesitate to resort to violence if Louis’s will was thwarted, some- thing the delegates hoped to avoid. But the plan backfired: the assembly preferred Anne’s apparent gentleness.64 For his part, the young Charles VIII aided his sister’s cause by reinforcing the royal family’s commitment to leaving the delegates alone to deliberate. He repeated several times that they should do their work in peace — he did not want to bother them. The Beaujeus and the king were on their way to reassuring the assembly of their good will. The discourse by Philip Pot on behalf of Anne and Pierre is espe- cially illuminating for the study of female regency.65 of La Roche and Thorey-sur-Ouche and formerly the Grand Seneschal of Burgundy, Pot had been solicited by Louis XI, who made him his first counselor after the demise of in 1477. Anne, recognizing in him an important ally, had cultivated him in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates General.66 Pot’s harangue, mirroring the Beaujeu

62 Masselin, Journal, 5–8. 63 Ibid., 80–83. 64 See Chombart de Lauwe, Anne de Beaujeu, 96. 65 Masselin, Journal, 140–157. 66 See Pélicier, Essai, 73–74, n. 3. 142 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

position, represented one strain of contemporary thought about who by right should hold guardianship. Some believed that assigning rule of the realm to the minor king’s closest relatives and guardianship to the heir presumptive was normal practice. Pot, however, claimed that this would be dangerous, saying, in effect, this is not how you keep the young king safe from conspiracies and great dangers (“Ast ne sic quidem pupillum a machi- nationibus, et maximis periculis liberas. . .”).67 Moreover, he demanded, where was it written that the closest relatives should occupy these posts? Nowhere. Indeed, the fact that the Duke of Orleans did not at the moment enjoy sovereignty over the government was enough to prove that no such laws existed. For if they had existed, the Duke of Orleans would hardly have stood by while his rights were denied!68 No such laws existed, then. This curious insistence upon the rights of the closest male relative in the absence of any such law suggests that female regency, emerging from the abolition of regency in the ordinance of 1403, was facilitated by its unofficial status: it was proclaimed to be an “anomaly” even though it was not. The notion that female regency was somehow exceptional or marginal would work to Anne’s advantage. “Who should decide the crucial question of guardianship?” Pot asked. His answer was that the authority lay with the Estates General. Although he did not dare articulate this, Pot must have hoped that the delegates would remember the chaotic reign of Charles VI and opt against putting the young Charles VIII in the hands of a male relative. The delegates may also have remembered the contemporary English case of Edward IV’s son, declared illegitimate in June 1483 just before mysteriously vanishing, a grim reminder that male relatives were sometimes ill-willed. Still, the assembly received Pot’s claim nervously, hesitant to accept responsibility for deciding a matter of such importance: this would have brought the wrath of Louis and the princes upon them. Instead, the delegates cautiously announced that they saw no reason to change the status quo, i.e., that Charles should remain where he was, in the care of Anne and Pierre. Thus they avoided

67 Masselin, Journal, 142. 68 Although the claim was rhetorical, this was precisely Louis’s belief. See Saint- Gelais, Histoire de Louis XII, 44–45. Female Regency in France 143

making a radical decision, choosing instead to demur. This was what Anne and Pierre wanted. The conclusion seemed all the more reasonable given that Jean de Reli, a notary, explained that the king was mature enough to compose all letters patents, rules and ordinances.69 There was no compel- ling reason for change. To insist, as Louis did, on his right to guardianship, made him appear self-interested. In a slightly different interpretation Cosandey notes that the Estates General’s decision resolved the issue so as to exclude neither the Beaujeus nor the party of the Duke of Orleans.70 She then explains that Anne in reality was able to monopolize power, despite the apparent division of power between her as guardian and Louis as head of the Royal Council. We would like to emphasize that in Louis’s eyes the solution of the Estates General was already unacceptable from the very beginning; although the assembly pretended to be deciding two weighty issues, regency at that point meant guardianship, which, in turn, meant rule of the realm. The Duke of Orleans understood exactly what it meant to possess the physical person of the king. Furious, he finally tried at least to save face, demanding that the articles explaining the situation be amended such that the terms (“termini”) used to describe the dauphin’s guardianship not damage his, Louis’s, dignity.71 By this he meant removing any words related to guard- ianship. But manipulating the language of regency did not alter the real- ity. The victorious Beaujeus, only too happy to acquiesce, had the article amended to read that “Dominus et domina de Beaujeu sint circa regis personam sicut hactenus fuerunt, et quemadmodum per regem et reginam defunctos ordinatum fuit” (the Lord and Lady of Beaujeu would be beside the person of the king as they had been thus far, and in the way that had been decreed by the late king and queen).72 The Estates General’s demurral of 1484 conformed to the general principle submitted by Charles VI, supported by Christine de Pizan, and

69 Masselin, Journal, 146. 70 Fanny Cosandey, “De Lance en quenouille: la reine dans l’état modernel,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 52 (1997): 799–820, 817. 71 Masselin, Journal, 226. 72 Ibid., 230. 144 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

eventually put into practice by the great female regents: the queen mother, or, in the case of Anne, the female relative closest to the king, should occupy the position of regent by virtue of her familial relationship to the king. The position was at once innocuous, in perfect conformity with gen- der expectations, and powerful. Rather than awarding guardianship to the nearest male relative, the Estates General concluded that simply allowing Anne and her husband to remain with the king better served the kingdom and its conception of monarchy. The late king had believed this because he was concerned to preserve the primacy of his lineage. The Estates General’s resolution evinces a general acceptance of the principles on which the later female regents based their claims, although the controversy leading up to the resolution demonstrates that the institution was by no means fixed. Much of Anne’s effectiveness can be attributed to her self-representa- tion as non-threatening.73 It has been posited that Anne studied the works of Christine de Pizan, where she would have found ample instruction on how to wield power discreetly. She had access to several of Christine’s man- uscripts, including at least two copies each of the Cité des dames and the Trois vertus that she inherited through her bibliophile mother and her hus- band.74 Additionally, tapestries illustrating the Cité des dames were owned

73 A number of biographies recount Anne’s accession to power and unofficial regency. See Jean Cluzel, Anne de France: fille de Louis XI, duchesse de Bourbon (Paris: Fayard, 2002); Pierre Pradel, Anne de France 1461–1522 (Paris: Editions Publisud, 1986); Chombart de Lauwe, Anne de Beaujeu ou la passion du pouvoir; Jean-Charles Varennes, Anne de Bourbon, roi de France (Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1978). But the most significant history of her regency remains that of Pélicier, Essai sur le gouverne- ment de la Dame de Beaujeu. 74 See Charity Cannon Willard, “Anne de France, Reader of Christine de Pizan,” The Reception of Christine de Pizan from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries: Visitors to the City (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 59–70 and, also by the same author, “The Manuscript Tradition of the Livre des trois vertus and Christine de Pisan’s Literary Audience,” Journal of the History of Ideas 27 (1966): 433–44. The inventory of Anne’s library at Moulins is printed in Chazaud’s edition of the Enseignements, Les Enseignements d’Anne de France, duchesse de Bourbonnais et d’Auvergne, à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon, ed. A-M Chazaud (Moulins: Desroziers, 1878). Not only does the Enseignements bear striking similarities to Christine’s Trois vertus, but several copies of the latter figure in the inventory of Anne’s library at Moulins. Female Regency in France 145

by a series of powerful women including Queen Elizabeth of England, Margaret of Austria, and , suggesting that the writer’s works remained well-known and meaningful for several generations after her death; her ideas circulated widely.75 What Anne offers in her conduct book for her daughter Suzanne, written around the time of the girl’s mar- riage at the age of fourteen in 1504, is strikingly similar in substance to the lessons of the Trois vertus, showing how a woman might exercise power without drawing attention to what she was doing.76 Like Christine, Anne promotes piety and docility as primary virtues, and, like Christine, she pro- motes these not as ends in themselves but rather as part of the psychology of wielding influence from a position of disadvantage. Anne mastered the art of ruling from such a position, incorporating her disadvantage into her self-representation. As she herself proclaimed, a princess without children or right to the throne cannot have any serious reason to lay hold of the government.77 Charters from the years of her reign prove that she, not Pierre, was in charge. Modern historians have demonstrated that by masking her opera- tions behind other figures of authority, like Pierre, she was able to govern while conforming to norms of feminine comportment.78 The description of Anne as “virago” by Benedictine monk Nicolas Barthélemy of (b. 1478) reveals the impression that she created as a persona that pos- sessed the qualities of a man and yet aroused only admiration: “‘Virago sane supra muliebrem sexum et consulta et animosa, quae nec viris consilio nec audacia cederet” (“A women truly surpassing the female sex and skilled

75 See Susan Groag Bell, The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan’s Renaissance Legacy (Berkeley; University of Press, 2004) for all that is known about the no longer extant tapestries. 76 On the circulation of the Trois vertus see Willard, “The Manuscript Tradition.” 77 Pradel, Anne de France, 73. 78 Pélicier, Essai, writes that while her contemporaries perceived Anne to exercise genuine regency power during her brother’s adolescence, overt signs of her work were few (198). See also vol. 1, “Reign of Charles VIII, Regency of Anne of Beaujeu” of John S. C. Bridge’s A from the Death of Louis XI, 5 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921–36). 146 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Tracy Adams and Glenn Rechtschaffen

and brave, who did not cede to the resolution or daring of a man”).79 In her conduct she was also compared to Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians, whose praises Christine de Pizan sang in the Cité des dames.80 Anne’s very marginality to power, the advantage that she used to rule, was the means by which she gained regency in the first place. The confirmation by the Estates General of the guardianship already being exercised by Anne did not please Louis of Orleans, who subse- quently led a coalition against the Beaujeus in what became known as the Folle Guerre or the War of Public Weal, lasting from 1485 until 1488. The duke’s outraged reaction draws attention to the importance of guardian- ship; by exercising it, Anne effectively, although not officially, ruled the kingdom until the king assumed power for himself.

Conclusion

With Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria the history of female regency in France takes a turn of the greatest importance, moving towards a concep- tion of regency as a proxy reign for the king exercised ideally by the queen mother. This conception of regency is furthered by Anne of France, who was never even officially named as guardian, let alone granted adminis- tration of the realm. Rather, her authority was confirmed quietly by the Estates General, who simply agreed that she should continue to occupy the position that she already held. Although Louise of Savoy, Catherine de Médicis, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria were queen mothers who supported their child’s dynastic claim by drawing upon their mater- nity and, implicitly or explicitly, female exclusion and who can reasonably be regarded as a unit, Isabeau and Anne stand at the head of their line. Isabeau and Anne, even though the latter could not claim maternal ties, also turned their incapacity for the throne into a regency claim that encom- passed both guardianship and governance of the realm. Female regency

79 Cited in Pélicier, Essai, 54, n. 1. 80 Octavien de Saint-Gelais describes Anne’s subduing the French kingdom, “comme autre Semyramis ou comme nouvelle royne des amazones. . .” (like another Semiramis or a new queen of the Amazons). Cited in Jehanne d’Orliac, Anne de Beaujeu, Roi de France (Paris: Plon, 1926), 105. Female Regency in France 147 was not formally theorized until the late sixteenth century when factional fighting instigated by religious division and a succession of minor incited the proliferation of legal writings on the powers of the French and the mode of succession. Still, in the regencies of these two women, unofficial though they were, we see the characteristics of their later counterparts.