This year France celebrates the life and times of one of its greatest monarchs, Francis I (1494 -1547). Here is a short introduction with recommended readings.

Europe at the beginning of the 16^th century was peopled with a number of kings, who by all measures were “larger than life” – Henry VIII with his six wives, Charles V who as king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor ruled a vast and sprawling empire reaching from the Far East to the Americas, Christian II, who was ruler of all Scandinavia and the Baltic and Francis I, one of the greatest French monarchs. To this panoply should be added the Muslim sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent.

The Cultural Background

Uniting these towering figures – and many of their lesser minions – was more than anything the cultural climate, in which they grew up. To begin with this panoply was peopled – to name but a few – by intellectual giants like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther and not least, Niccolò Machiavelli. However, Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Holbein, Cranach, Raphael and Titian deserve to be mentioned since they played such important roles in the overall framing of the lives and times of these Renaissance princes.

This story has been told in very many ways since Jacob Burchardt established himself as the progenitor of the budding field of cultural history in 1860 by publishing his magnum opus on “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy”. This is definitely still worth reading and should be on your list.

However, a fine – and generally up-to-date introduction to all this is the recently updated third edition of “The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy” by Peter Burke, professor emeritus of Cultural history at the University of Cambridge. This is heartily recommended. Another more general introduction is “The Renaissance in Europe” by Margaret L. King. A fourth general introduction is the collection of introductions edited by Keith Whitlock: The Renaissance in Europe. It is heavily recommended to begin with these introductions.

The Machiavellian Moment

From 1494 to 1559 Italy was ravaged by what was later named “The Great Italian Wars” but is known primarily as the Italian Wars. Involved were most of the city-states of Italy, the papal state as well as the major European “players” at that time: France, Spain, The Holy-Roman Empire, England and Scotland. An accompanying conflict was the religious wars, which played out in Europe North of the Alps from 1546 and which did not end until 1648.

Keen observer of the initial dismemberment of Italy in the wake of the warring between The Holy Roman Emperors and the French Kings was Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 -1527), who took part in the government of Florence after the fall of Savonarola in 1498. However, in 1512 this government fell and the Medici’s returned to power. At this point Machiavelli was imprisoned, tortured and later banished from the city. This lead to a sojourn in his family home at   where he wrote one on the most enduring treatises on political theory: the Prince. Although not printed until 1532, five years after his death, manuscripts circulated amongst European intellectuals as well as princes.

The treatise was written as if it was a traditional “Mirror of Princes”. In fact, however, it was more of a political analysis of how powerful politics were played out than an exposé of how it should be done. As Machiavelli wrote: He, who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation”. Incidentally the book came to inspire people pursuing power – then as now. Whether it was meant as a satire or a disillusioned political analysis is a matter for the professionals. We, the mere mortals, will read it because it so enlightening when trying to understand the business of these renaissance kings, and how their politics came to be treated as a science apart from religion and morality. At what point Francis I came to read the book is not known precisely, but as it contained a biographical sketch of his predecessor we may be pretty sure it must at some time have become part of his personal royal library, where it accidentally joined up with other treatises on the correct way to behave as a prince. Mentioned might for instance be the manuscript written by Guillaume Budé : De l’institution du prince which was presented to him in 1519 and Desiderius Erasmus’: The Education of a Christian Prince from 1516. Or the bestseller of them all: Castiglione’s The Courtier, which in an early version was claimed by the author to have been inspired by Francis I, whom he met in 1515.

Roi-Chevalier

Francis was born in 1494 as the son of Charles d’Orléans, Count of Angoulême. His father died early on and his extensive education was supervised by his mother, Louise of Savoy. Due to Louis XII’s lack of heirs he became next in line to the French throne. In 1506 he was betrothed to the daughter of the king, Claude de France, and in 1508 he took up residence at the court, where he began as apprentice to the king. It was while fulfilling this role, his cousin the ruling king Louis XII exclaimed that “This Big Boy will ruin everything”. On January 1^st he was proclaimed king of France.

This was an expansionary time, when princes constantly had to police their borders while at the same time be seen to uphold the territorial claims of their ancestors. Those of Francis’ included districts and cities bordering on the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire plus the Kingdom of Naples, Southern Italy and Sicily and the Duchy of Milan. All-in-all he spent 20 of his 32 years as king going to war. At first he was quite successful routing the Old Swiss Confederacy at Marignano and thus pawing the way for French reclamation of the Duchy of Milan. Nevertheless, in 1525 this was followed by the disaster at Pavia in 1525, when Francis I was captured by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The next year was spent in custody in Madrid, while the conditions for a release were negotiated. It stands to reason these were harsh and when the king finally returned to France he renegaded even though his two eldest sons had been exchanged for the king. The two boys, 8 and 7 spent the next four and a half years in Madrid until he had payed his way and seceded Burgundy.

He is not considered to have been a military genius but he did succeed in skillfully negotiating diplomatic relations with his allies and enemies while at the same time projecting an image of his royal power in a wider European context. This was partly the result of his near-continuous alliances with the heretic Henry VIII as well as the Ottoman Sultan. Thus he succeeded in holding the holy Roman Emperor at bay. But war was a defining characteristic of the politics of that time (as Machiavelli did explain) and Francis was personally engaged in both traditional war-games like jousting and hunting as well as present at the various battlefields.

Royal Prestige

Primarily, though, he is remembered for his personal charisma and his support of art, architecture, literature and history. In this he was aided and abetted with his childhood friend Anne de Montmorency.

At the centre of this effort were his building projects – not least the castles at Blois, Chambord and Fontainebleau. Here he housed his steadily growing collections of books and manuscripts as well as his art collection. He also had a collection of natural oddities kept in a cabinet. During his lifetime his agents scoured the Italian peninsula in order to discover pieces of art (much in the same manner as medieval kings had worked to amass collections of relics). Classical sculptures, beautiful manuscripts and famous paintings still grace the national collections of France witnessing to this mania.

Francis is also known for his seemingly innumerable lovers and his 205 (?) poems, which some scholars have found bland and insipid, while others have characterised them as filled with haunting emotive inspiration. Recently his more personal letters have been characterised as examples of poetic prose. A full evaluation, though, is hampered by the lack of proper and full editions of his letters, official as well as private. Some of his poems were later set to music, but it is not believed he personally composed this.

VISIT IN 2015:

Francis I King of France 1515 – 2015
Exhibition in Paris and general presentation of the anniversary

The Century of Francis I
Exhibition at Domaine de Chantilly
07.09.2015 – 07.12.2015

Royal Treasures of Francis I of France’s library
Château de Blois
04.07.2015 – 18.10.2015

READ MORE:

General Introductions:

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
By Jacob Burkhardt
Countless editions since 1860 with the first English translation in 1878.
Penguin edition 1990. (Penguin Classics) ISBN 0-14-044534-X
Electronically available at archive.org

 

 

 

 

The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy
By Peter Burke
Third edition and with a new preface by the author
Princeton University press 2014
ISBN: 9780691162409

 

 

 

 

The Renaissance in Europe
by Margaret King
latest reissue by Laurence King Publishers 2013
ISBN-10: 0072836261
ISBN-13: 978-0072836264

 

 

 

The Renaissance in Europe: A Reader
Edited by Keith Whitlock
Yale University Press 2000
382 p., 7 1/2 x 9 3/4
ISBN: 9780300082234

 

 

 

 

 

The Prince
by Nicolo Machiavelli
Translated by W. K. Marriott 1903

The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli
By John M. Najemy
‪Cambridge University Press 2010
ISBN: 9780521678469

 

 

The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483-1610
Robert J. Knecht
Wiley-Blackwell: 2 edition 2002
ISBN-10: 0631227296
ISBN-13: 978-0631227298

 

 

 

 

‪Renaissance France at War: Armies, Culture and Sociey c. 1480 – 1560.
By D. Potter
Boydell Press 2008
ISBN-10: 1843834057
ISBN-13: 978-1843834052

 

 

 

 

The French Renaissance Court
By R. J. Knecht
Publisher: Yale University Press (June 30, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0300118511
ISBN-13: 978-0300118513

 

 

 

 

Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France
By Kathleen Wellman
Yale University Press 2013
ISBN: 9780300178852

 

 

 

 

 

Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V
By G. J. Richardson
Bloomsbury Academic 2002
ISBN-10: 0340731435
ISBN-13: 978-0340731437

 

 

 

 

‪Renaissance Warrior and Patron: ‪The Reign of Francis I
By R. J. Knecht
Cambridge University Press 1994
ISBN-10: 052157885X
ISBN-13: 978-0521578851

 

 

 

 

French Renaissance Monarchy: ‪Francis I & Henry II
By R. J. Knecht
Routledge 2008
ISBN-10: 0582287073
ISBN-13: 978-0582287075

 

 

 

 

 

François Ier. Pouvoir et Image.
Ed by Bruno Petey-Girard and Magali Vène together with d’Estelle Boeuf-Belilita and Lucile Trunel
BnF 2015
ISBN: 978-2-7177-2622-0
ISBN: 9782717726220

 

 

 

 

François Ier, Roi de France, Roi-Chevalier, Prince de la Renaissance française
By Max Gallo
XO Editions 2014
ISBN-10: 2845636814
ISBN-13: 978-2845636811

 

 

 

 

François Ier, roi de chimeres
By Franck Ferrand
Flammarion 2014

FEATURED PHOTO:

Buste de François Ier © Château Royal de Blois – photo F. Lauginie