The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

A disastrous year

Louis XII might have been expected to leave Italy alone after his last disastrous campaign, particularly as Henry VIII and Maximilian were now threatening his northern frontiers, but he would not accept the loss of Milan. His new treaty with Venice encouraged him to launch another trans-Alpine campaign. He gathered an army 12,000 strong in April 1513 and placed it under the command of Louis de La Trémoïlle, who was assisted by d’Aubigny and Trivulzio. It crossed the Alps in May and captured Alessandria. Four thousand Swiss shut themselves up in Novara. The French, meanwhile, seized Milan with the help of the anti-Sforza faction within the city. Heartened by this success, La Trémoïlle laid siege to Novara. The town was bombarded and its walls breached, but, hearing that a Swiss relief army was approaching, La Trémoïlle withdrew to Trecate. Here he pitched camp and, believing that he was not being pursued, allowed his troops some rest. The Swiss, however, launched a furious attack, taking the French by surprise. The main blow fell on the German mercenaries, the landsknechts, who were nearly all wiped out. One of the few survivors was the future Marshal Florange, who allegedly received forty-six wounds. The gendarmerie was never seriously engaged in the battle. La Trémoïlle, it seems, waited for an attack that never came, allowing his infantry to be cut to pieces. When he realized that all was lost, he ordered his men to retreat. By the end of June they were back in France. After the French débâcle all the towns in the duchy of Milan, except those under Venetian occupation, submitted to Sforza.

The French defeat in Italy coincided with an invasion of northern France. In mid-June a huge English army commanded by the earl of Shrewsbury and the duke of Suffolk landed in Calais. After joining an imperial army, it laid siege to Thérouanne. Louis XII hurriedly sent an army to Artois under the seigneur de Piennes with orders to relieve Thérouanne but to avoid a pitched battle. He managed to get supplies through to the beleaguered garrison, but as his men-at-arms were returning from their mission, they were intercepted near Guinegatte. Obeying orders, they avoided an engagement, but as they retreated they spread confusion among the French reserve. The retreat became a headlong flight, hence the name ‘Battle of the Spurs’ given to the action. Among the captains who fell into English hands were the duc de Longueville and Bayard. Thérouanne surrendered on 23 August, but instead of marching on Amiens and Paris, the English seized Tournai which they kept until 1521.

More misfortunes soon befell Louis XII. Early in September, 20,000 to 30,000 Swiss invaded Burgundy and laid siege to Dijon. The town’s governor, La Trémoïlle, knowing that his men were outnumbered and that no relief could be expected soon, opened talks with the enemy. They were strong enough to bid for high stakes. Under the Treaty of Dijon, which La Trémoïlle signed in his master’s name, Louis gave up all his claims to Milan and Asti. He also promised to buy off the Swiss for 400,000 écus. La Trémoïlle handed over hostages as security for the treaty’s execution, and the Swiss returned to their cantons. Dijon and Burgundy had been saved, but Louis disavowed La Trémoïlle and refused to ratify the treaty. His breach of faith was not soon forgiven by the Swiss.

The winter of 1513 brought no relief to France’s ailing monarch. Anne of Brittany died without giving him the son he had wanted so much. Her claim to Brittany passed to her daughter, Claude. On 18 May 1514 she married François d’Angoulême. The ceremony at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was a simple affair, as the court was still in mourning for the queen. Eyewitnesses, noting Louis’s sickly appearance, did not give him long to live, but he was about to spring a surprise. In January 1514 he drew closer to Pope Leo X by recognizing the Fifth Lateran Council and in March he renewed his truce with Ferdinand of Aragon. His master stroke, however, was to drive a wedge between Henry VIII and Maximilian. An Anglo-French treaty, signed in London in August, was sealed by a marriage between Louis and Henry’s sister Mary. Public opinion was shocked that a girl of eighteen, universally acclaimed for her beauty, should marry a gouty dotard of fifty-three, but she was ready to pay a heavy price to become queen of France. Henry had also promised to allow her to choose her second husband, a likely prospect, given Louis’s age and health.

Louis and Mary were married at Abbeville on 9 October. After the wedding night Louis boasted that he had ‘performed marvels’, but few believed him, least of all François d’Angoulême, who stood most to lose from the king’s remarriage. ‘I am certain,’ he declared, ‘unless I have been told lies, that the king and queen cannot possibly have a child.’ Within a short time, Louis began to show signs of wear and tear. The Basoche put on a play in which he was shown being carried off to Heaven or to Hell by a filly given by the king of England. Soon after Christmas, Louis fell ill at the palace of the Tournelles in Paris. He died on 1 January 1515 and was immediately succeeded on the throne by François d’Angoulême. Soon afterwards Mary Tudor secretly married the duke of Suffolk, whom Henry VIII had sent to France to congratulate François on his accession.

FIVE The church in crisis (#ulink_7aea9b01-eaea-5366-9d82-0547aae49b46)

The French or Gallican church faced a serious crisis at the end of the Middle Ages, which was constitutional as well as moral. The papacy had become an absolute monarchy: it controlled appointments to ecclesiastical benefices by means of ‘provisions’ and ‘reservations’ and it taxed the clergy by means of annates, tenths, and so on. All this caused much discontent among the clergy. Cathedral and monastic chapters resented the loss of their traditional right to elect their bishops and abbots; the clergy begrudged paying taxes to the papal Curia. The demand arose for the reform of the church in its head and its members. But who was to carry out that reform? Could the papacy be trusted to reform itself?

During the fourteenth century some churchmen began to argue that the responsibility for reform lay not with the papacy but with a General Council. The Dominican John of Paris put forward the theory that a council, since it represented the whole church, was superior in authority to the pope and might depose him if he misused his power. Marsilio of Padua, in his Defensor Pacis, denied Christ’s institution of the papal primacy and argued in favour of the superiority of a council since it represented the people. Supporters of the conciliar theory were able to put it into practice following a disputed election to the papacy in 1378. The only way of solving the problem of two rival popes seemed to be to call a General Council. This offered a chance, not merely of healing the Great Schism, but also of bringing about reform through a limitation of papal authority. The Council of Constance (1414–18) managed to heal the schism, but otherwise was a disappointment. It issued two decrees: one laid down that a General Council derived its authority directly from Christ; the other provided that such a council should meet at regular intervals. Both decrees represented a victory for the conciliar party, but not a decisive one. It was difficult to see how a General Council, meeting occasionally, could assert its authority over a permanent and powerful papacy. The traditional concept of the papacy remained intact, and the new pope, Martin V, did not confirm the decrees of the council. By banning appeals from the pope to another tribunal, he implicitly rejected the doctrine of conciliar supremacy.

This, however, was not the end of attempts to put a General Council above the pope. The decisive battle between the pope and the conciliarists was fought at the Council of Basle (1431–49). In May 1439 it declared as a dogma of the Christian faith that ‘the General Council is above the pope’. It deposed Pope Eugenius IV, replacing him with Felix V; it abolished annates and reservations; and it passed a decree providing for regular provincial and diocesan synods. Yet it failed to defeat the pope for two reasons. First, the radicalism of the council alienated some of its best members; many bishops withdrew when they saw representatives of the lower clergy and universities gaining the ascendancy. Secondly, the princes of Europe failed to give the council their full support, knowing that they could secure more political advantages from the pope than from a council. A few European states, including France, adopted some of the reform decrees of the Council of Basle without even considering the papacy.

Representatives of the Gallican church, meeting at Bourges in 1438, drew up a constitution called the Pragmatic Sanction, which King Charles VII promulgated in July. It declared a General Council to be superior in authority to the pope, abolished annates, forbade appeals to Rome before intermediate jurisdictions had been exhausted, abolished papal reservations, except in respect of benefices vacated at the Curia, and restored the election by chapters of bishops, abbots and priors. The papacy was allowed to collate to a small proportion of benefices, but all expectatives were banned save in respect of university teachers and students. The Pragmatic Sanction guaranteed the latter a third of all prebends while regulating their rights. It also tried, albeit more timidly, to protect the church from royal interference in its affairs: the king was asked to avoid imperious recommendations and to desist from violence in supporting his protégés. Yet he was allowed to present ‘benign solicitations’ from time to time on behalf of candidates showing zeal for the public good.

The Pragmatic Sanction, however, was not strictly applied after 1438. The French crown used it to check papal pretensions without showing respect for the liberties it enshrined. The king commonly disposed of benefices as he wished, his ‘benign solicitations’ all too often being brutal commands. Louis XI abolished or restored the Pragmatic for his own political ends. A delegate at the Estates-General of 1484, after the accession of Charles VIII, complained that under the late king the church had declined: elections had been annulled, unworthy people had been appointed to benefices, and holy persons had been relegated to a ‘vile and ignominious’ condition. The deputies demanded the restoration of the Pragmatic Sanction, but the government of the Beaujeus was unwilling to renounce Louis XI’s authoritarian ways. Equally opposed to the Pragmatic were the bishops who owed their sees to royal favour. In May 1484 the Beaujeus sent a delegation to Rome with the aim of securing a Concordat. The pope, however, insisted on a formal condemnation of the Pragmatic Sanction; and in November 1487, Innocent VIII demanded its abolition. The French crown was unwilling to give way – the Pragmatic was potentially useful against the papacy without seriously threatening royal authority – and the talks with the Holy See accordingly foundered. In the absence of an agreement, the crown did as it wished, sometimes allowing the Pragmatic to operate, sometimes conniving with the papacy at its violation.

Meanwhile, the idea of a General Council lived on. During the second half of the fifteenth century people in many European countries demanded one. The appeal to a council in France came mainly from two directions: first, from the Gallican church whenever the king for political reasons violated the Pragmatic Sanction or threatened to replace it by a Concordat with the papacy; secondly, from the crown itself, whenever it wanted to put pressure on Rome. This had unfortunate consequences: the more the conciliar idea was exploited for political ends, the less the papacy felt inclined to call a council, fearing that it would revive the old question of authority in the church. In 1460, Pius II forbade any future appeal to a council in the bull Execrabilis.

On 12 November 1493, King Charles VIII summoned a reform commission to Tours. The members, who were drawn from abbeys and university colleges where discipline had been maintained or restored, called for the enforcement of the Pragmatic Sanction, but failed to get the support of high-ranking churchmen who had a vested interest in the old order. In 1494 the Gallican church was as sick as it had been at the end of Louis XI’s reign. The pope and the king continued to dispose of benefices without regard for the rights of chapters or patrons. While rival candidates for benefices fought each other in the parlements, the benefices themselves were sometimes left vacant for years. Bishops, who were often primarily courtiers, soldiers and diplomats, enriched themselves by accumulating benefices, including monasteries which they could hold in commendam.

Charles VIII wrote to the French bishops from Italy on 29 October 1494: ‘We hope to go to Rome and be there around Christmas. Our aim is to negotiate over the Gallican church with a view to restoring its ancient liberties and to achieving more if we can.’ In Florence he met Savonarola, who urged him to rescue Christendom from its current distress, and in Rome he was pressed by Cardinal della Rovere to depose Pope Alexander VI and call a General Council. But the king’s position in Italy was too precarious to allow him to tackle church reform seriously. Louis XII was also hamstrung at the start of his reign. He needed the pope to obtain the annulment of his marriage to Jeanne de France, and was therefore obliged to give up the idea of a General Council at least for the time being. He was also unwilling to allow free elections to church benefices or to abstain from imposing his own candidates on chapters. His chief minister, Georges d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen, belonged to one of those rich bourgeois families which were accustomed to securing the finest abbeys and wealthiest bishoprics for their members. He was devoted to the king’s person and opposed any reduction of his authority.

In March 1499 an Assembly of Notables, meeting at Blois, was asked by Louis to look into ways of improving the administration of justice; but the ordinance that resulted from its deliberations failed to address the questions of burning concern to church reformers. While proclaiming the king’s determination to uphold ‘the fine constitutions contained in the sacred decrees of Basle and the Pragmatic Sanction’, it made no mention of elections, reservations, expectatives and commends. When the parlement registered the ordinance, the university, whose objections had been disregarded, went on strike. The chancellor ordered the strike to be lifted unconditionally and the parlement imposed sanctions on the university, which appealed directly to the king without success. In the end the university capitulated and the sanctions were lifted.

A matter of serious concern to Gallicans was the authority conferred on Georges d’Amboise as papal legate. The parlement registered his powers in December 1501, provided he undertook in writing not to prejudice the king’s rights and prerogatives. In February 1502 the legate made a speech in the parlement in which he declared his commitment to monastic reform. By so doing he may have hoped to gain support for his candidature to the papacy following the death of Alexander VI; but he was unable to rally enough support within the Sacred College. After the brief pontificate of Pius III, Giuliano della Rovere became Pope Julius II. As a consolation prize, Amboise asked for more than a limited extension of his legateship. Julius duly obliged by extending it indefinitely, thereby conferring on Amboise an almost absolute authority over the Gallican church.

On 19 March 1504 the university opposed registration of the legate’s new powers by the parlement and pressed the court to foil any attempt by Amboise and other prelates to give benefices to their own protégés. The parlement refused to extend the legate’s powers beyond the limit previously set by Alexander VI and demanded his written consent to the limitations previously imposed on him. But Louis XII insisted on the papal bull being registered without further discussion or delay. On 20 April the parlement confirmed the legate’s powers, but made them depend on the king’s pleasure. Amboise was asked for a written undertaking that he would respect the Gallican liberties and the Pragmatic Sanction. During the last six years of his life he carefully avoided offending Gallican feelings. His powers, however, were merely tolerated and the old animosities of the French clergy towards the Holy See continued to feed on the same grievances as before.

Meanwhile, agitation for a new council continued, forcing the popes to take evasive action. They developed the idea of a council of selected prelates under papal control in Rome. The popes could not ignore the demand for a council. Even within the college of cardinals there was a strong movement of opposition to papal absolutism. In 1511, as we have seen, a group of mainly French cardinals summoned a General Council to Pisa and, after proclaiming its own superior authority, suspended Julius II. But the pope took the wind out of its sails by calling a council of his own at the Lateran. The question was no longer ‘council or no council?’ but ‘which council?’ The majority of Christendom declared in favour of the Lateran council, and the council of Pisa petered out.

The Pre-Reformation

At the Estates-General of 1484, Jean de Rely, who spoke for the Parisian clergy, painted a grim picture of the contemporary French church. ‘Everyone knows’, he declared, ‘that among the monks of Cîteaux, St Benedict and St Augustine, as among the rest, there is no longer any rule, devotion or religious discipline.’ Among the secular clergy, he went on, pastoral duties were generally neglected. The clergy ought to be setting an example to the laity, yet the roles were now reversed.

The disorderly state of the Gallican church was exemplified in Paris, where the chapter of Notre-Dame claimed exemption from all episcopal jurisdiction. When Tristan de Salazar, metropolitan archbishop of Sens, tried to assert his authority, he was violently attacked by the canons. As he left the cathedral on 2 February 1492, after celebrating mass in the king’s presence, two canons seized the processional cross. In the ensuing scuffle the cross was damaged, the archbishop butted in the stomach and his mitre torn to shreds. The incident prompted a lawsuit in the parlement which lasted thirteen years. In 1504 the archbishop’s right to officiate at Notre-Dame was recognized and the canons were ordered to restore the damaged cross.

The authority of the bishop of Paris, though less feeble than that of his metropolitan, was none the less weak. His jurisdiction was undermined by appeals to Rome or to the parlement and by the judicial activities of the cathedral chapter. His right to nominate to benefices in and around Paris was strictly limited. The chapter and most religious houses were exempt from his jurisdiction. In 1492 the canons refused to accept the king’s nominee, Jean de Rely, as bishop. They elected Gérard Gobaille, who was himself challenged by Jean Simon. As the two rivals fought over the episcopal revenues, their quarrel came before the parlement. When Gobaille died in September 1494 the pope, acting at the king’s request, confirmed Simon as bishop, but the chapter set about electing a new bishop. Only Simon’s willingness to stand as candidate averted a major confrontation between the crown and the chapter. Even after he had won, however, some canons refused to obey him.

There was also much disorder among the parish clergy of the diocese. Within Paris itself priests seemed more interested in their revenues than in the discharge of their spiritual duties. These they habitually unloaded on vicars whose disorderly conduct was a matter of continual concern to the bishop’s official. Rural parishes were even worse off. Their incumbents tended to reside in the capital, leaving indigent clergy to perform their duties. As yet there were no seminaries for the training of rural clergy. They picked up the rudiments of Christian dogma haphazardly while retaining the manners and tastes of their social background. The upper clergy despised them for their ignorance and uncouth ways.

Deficient as it was, the secular clergy was far superior to the regular one. Yet Paris and its suburbs had some of the wealthiest abbeys in the kingdom. During the Hundred Years War suburban monasteries and the rural estates of the great Parisian abbeys had been ravaged by passing armies. Though some had managed to repair their losses, many monasteries and convents in the countryside around Paris were ruinous and poverty-stricken. Even in Paris, except among the Cordeliers and Jacobins, the number of regular clergy had declined, and the monastic rule was no longer being generally observed. At Saint-Martin des Champs, a reform commission in 1501 noted that life in common had vanished: the monks owned property without regard for their rule. The same was true of Benedictine houses. There was disorder too among the Cordeliers and in 1502 the Jacobins claimed the right to seek refreshment outside the cloister. A similar state of affairs existed among the Carmelites and the Augustinians. Everywhere monks deserted the dormitory and refectory: each had his own room where he entertained friends. Apostolic poverty and the common ownership of goods were memories; everyone had his own purse. Monks roamed the streets mingling with boatmen and jugglers.

How far could the French crown be relied upon to assume responsibility for church reform in the absence of a serious papal initiative? King Charles VIII, unlike his father, was interested in reform. He sponsored the Synod of Sens (July – August 1485), which produced a comprehensive programme of reform covering worship, monastic discipline, fiscal abuses and disorder among the secular clergy, but a renewal of political troubles in France between 1485 and 1491 prevented that programme from being implemented. In November 1493 a reform commission met at Tours. It proposed a number of sensible practical remedies for the church’s ailments. Avoiding doctrine or worship, it concentrated on clerical discipline and the results were not insignificant. The French government sent the proposals to the pope with a demand that he should back the reform movement. In July 1494, Alexander VI empowered three abbots to visit and reform the Benedictine houses in France. Charles VIII’s interest in church reform could not be sustained once he had decided to invade Italy, yet the impetus he had provided was not lost: in many parts of France reformist activity continued till the end of the reign. Although no concerted action was taken by heads of the Gallican church, a number of bishops did reform their dioceses. At Langres, Chartres, Nantes and Troyes, they called synods and drew up or renewed episcopal statutes.

One of the loudest voices for reform in late fifteenth-century Paris was that of Olivier Maillard, a Franciscan friar, whose brutal frankness in the pulpit earned him enormous popularity. He poured scorn on unworthy priests and bewailed the decline of the church. Other champions of reform were Jean Raulin, principal of the collège de Navarre, Jean Quentin, penitentiary of Notre-Dame, and Jean Standonck. All three had come under the influence of Francis of Paola, an Italian hermit who had been invited to France in 1482 by Louis XI. He had founded in Italy a new order of friars, called Minims, who, in addition to the normal vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, promised to observe a perpetual Lent. In 1491, Charles VIII built a monastery for Francis at Montils-lès-Tours and another at Amboise. In the same year two Minims were allowed to set up a house in Paris. Francis was canonized in 1519, only twelve years after his death.

While preachers in Paris demanded reform, a slow movement of renewal was taking place in provincial monasteries. At Cluny in 1481, the abbot Jacques d’Amboise, brother of the cardinal, continued reforms that had been undertaken some twenty years earlier by his predecessor, Jean de Bourbon. Cluny’s example was followed by the nuns of Fontevrault where a reform programme initiated in 1458 by the abbess, Mary of Brittany, was continued by her successors and extended to other houses in 1475. In 1483, Charles VIII gave the convent of the Filles-Dieu in Paris to the abbess Anne d’Orléans, the sister of duke Louis. Benedictine reform also reached Marmoutier, near Tours, and Chezal-Benoist in Berry. Among the Cistercians a revival was also under way: in 1487, Innocent VIII commissioned Jean de Cirey, abbot of Cîteaux, to reform the order. He reorganized studies at the Cistercian college in Paris in August 1493, and laid down new rules for all the order’s houses at a general chapter in February 1494.

Reform among the mendicant orders was weaker. The Franciscans were bitterly divided between the Observants and Conventuals and the ferocity with which they fought each other in the courts seriously damaged their moral authority. Among the Dominicans reform was imported from the Low Countries. The Dutch Dominicans attached less importance to theological speculation than to mystical contemplation. In this respect they differed from the Jacobins, who adhered to the scholastic tradition. The missionary activities of the Dutch Dominicans tended to be excessively militant and consequently encountered stiff opposition.

In 1496, Standonck visited the canons regular of Windesheim, who practised the ideals of the Brethren of the Common Life. Following his visit, six brothers from Windesheim led by Jean Mombaer went to Château-Landon. They encountered resistance but, with the support of powerful patrons, they gained the upper hand, Mombaer becoming prior. In March 1497, Jean Simon, bishop of Paris, looked to Windesheim as he tried to reform the abbey of Saint-Victor. Writing to the general chapter of his order, Mombaer underlined the importance of the task in hand: ‘It is not simply a matter of reforming a once famous abbey,’ he said, ‘but eventually the entire Gallican church.’ In October, Windesheim sent seven brothers to Saint-Victor and two others visited the Augustinian house at Livry. Their rule gradually penetrated the French kingdom, although they suffered some serious setbacks under Louis XII: at Saint-Victor they made themselves so unpopular by their tactlessness that they had to leave.

Louis XII appreciated the urgent need to reform the French church. To bring this about he relied on Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, who, as papal legate, was empowered to visit religious houses, to depose and replace delinquent heads and to impose discipline on the monks. Although the reform programme of November 1493 had envisaged a reform of the whole Gallican church, Amboise concentrated his efforts on the regular clergy. With the help of energetic men like Maillard, reform of religious houses in Paris was carried out promptly, often in the face of stiff resistance. This was particularly strong among the Jacobins and Cordeliers. Sometimes the legate had to impose order by armed force. As for the nunneries, where reform had marked time in the face of countless difficulties, they too were visited, reformed and repaired. The famous abbey of Fontevrault received special attention. Under Amboise, communal life was restored, visitors sent out to daughter houses and reformed nuns introduced where necessary. New rules recently adopted at Fontevrault were extended to daughter houses between 1502 and 1507. Among other important abbeys reformed at this time were Chelles, Montmartre and Roye. In 1506 it was the turn of the great abbey of Poissy. Finally, the legate fought against the isolation of monasteries. They were grouped together and placed under the control of large and wholesome ones. In 1508, for example, the Jacobins of Paris, Rouen, Blois, Compiègne and Argenton were linked to the Dutch congregation.

Thus much was done to improve conditions in the Gallican church under Charles VIII and Louis XII. Although both kings backed reform, the initiative was mainly taken by individual churchmen, including some prelates. Georges d’Amboise, in his dual capacity of royal minister and papal legate, was a powerful force. In a large number of monasteries discipline was restored. Yet the results, as many contemporaries complained, did not go far enough. Only the surface wounds of the church had been bandaged; the real sickness within the body remained to be cured. The main cause of trouble was the government of the church itself. Although the Renaissance popes paid lip-service to the cause of church reform, they were generally far more interested in advancing their family or princely interests. The Fifth Lateran Council, which Julius II had called, was too unrepresentative of the church as a whole to be an effective vehicle of reform. It produced only half-measures aimed at reducing, not extirpating, abuses. Once the council had been dissolved, its decisions were quickly forgotten.

Reform in France was strongly resisted and frequently overturned. Monks and nuns took refuge in endless lawsuits, piling appeal upon appeal, in defence of their exemptions. In many places they rose against the reformers, driving them out by force. At every turn, episcopal agents were obstructed, threatened or subjected to physical abuse. Among the mendicants a positive state of war existed between the Conventuals and the Observants – they fought each other in the courts, with their fists or by means of censures and pamphlets. In 1506, Julius II tried to reconcile the two branches of the Franciscan order. No sooner had this been accomplished than the effort had to begin afresh. In 1511 the convent of Saint-Pierre in Lyon was reformed by the grand prior of Cluny; two years later, royal officials noted that the abbess and the nuns had destroyed the walls, scrapped the new rules and sued the archbishop and his officials. Only by deporting the nuns could order be restored. At Saint-Sansom in Orléans, in 1514, the monks refused to live in common. Only after five years of quarrels, lawsuits and revolts was reform imposed by royal decree in January 1519. Almost everywhere reform had to fight every inch of the way. Even where it struck root, it often needed to be replanted.

In the past the church had put its own house in order. Now the reformers were frequently obliged to seek the assistance of the secular authorities. Municipal bodies were sometimes asked to help, but they seldom wanted to be drawn into a situation likely to trigger off public disturbances. They were particularly cautious regarding the mendicants, who, even in their unreformed state, had much popular support. Nor could the parlements be depended upon to assist reform. They were traditionally suspicious of any interference by Rome, as they showed by challenging the powers of legates. They also denied bishops freedom of action. In 1486 the avocat du roi Le Maistre denied that bishops could exercise any jurisdiction over exempt churches. The parlement claimed the right to judge all suits involving privileged monasteries. In 1483 it demanded the reinstatement of the Conventual friars who had been expelled from Tours by Maillard and the Observants. In 1501 it received an appeal from the monks of Saint-Victor against the bishop of Paris who was trying to reform them. All too often, reform of the French church degenerated into a kind of police operation. By placing too much reliance on force and not enough on conversion, it created a large body of discontent among regular clergy who were forced to accept a life-style with which they had grown unfamiliar or be thrown out of their monasteries and convents.

By 1515, therefore, much still remained to be done. The constitutional argument between conciliarism and papalism was unresolved. The Pragmatic Sanction, though still in force, was often disregarded by the king. Disputes over appointments to benefices were still coming before the parlement with undue frequency. Abuses among the clergy were still rife, offering much scope to popular satirists like Pierre Gringore. His Folles Entreprises (1505) and Abus du monde (1509) attacked the debauchery and avarice of the secular clergy, the ambition of prelates and the corruption of monks. He even accused reformers of hypocrisy. As for the theologians, they remained divided into two broad camps: the schoolmen and the humanists. While the former dispensed the dry subtleties of Scotus and Ockham, the latter tried to build a new faith on a basis of sound scriptural studies. At the same time a wave of mysticism, reaching back to Thomas à Kempis, Cusa, Lull and beyond, caused many Christians to turn away from the formal observances of the church in favour of private prayer and ecstasy. It was this partially reformed, often rebellious and ideologically divided Gallican church which was soon to be faced by the Protestant challenge.

SIX Francis I: The first decade(1515–25) (#ulink_992db628-bf71-5966-9757-bf225c39248f)

‘Kingship is the dignity, not the property, of the prince.’ These words spoken by a deputy at the Estates-General of 1484 embody the theory of royal succession which prevailed in late mediaeval France. The king, however absolute he might deem himself to be, was not free to dispose of the crown; he had to be succeeded by his nearest male kinsman. It was in accordance with this principle that François duc de Valois and comte d’Angoulême, Louis XII’s cousin, succeeded to the throne on 1 January 1515 at the age of twenty-one. His right to do so was unimpeachable, for it was a clearly established principle that ‘the king never dies’; he was to be followed immediately by his lawful successor. There was no possibility of an interregnum.

In the words of the English chronicler Edward Hall, Francis I was ‘a goodly prince, stately of countenance, merry of chere, brown coloured, great eyes, high nosed, big lipped, fair breasted and shoulders, small legs and long feet’. Ellis Griffith, a Welsh soldier in the service of Henry VIII, who was able to observe the French king closely at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, tells us that he was six feet tall. His head was rightly proportioned for his height, the nape of his neck was unusually broad, his hair brown, smooth and neatly combed, his beard of three months’ growth darker in colour, his nose long, his eyes hazel and bloodshot, and his complexion the colour of watered-down milk. He had muscular buttocks and thighs, but his legs below the knees were thin and bandy, while his feet were long, slender and completely flat. He had an agreeable voice and, in conversation, an animated expression marred only by the unkingly habit of continually rolling up his eyes.

Contemporaries often remarked on Francis’s eloquence and charm. He would talk easily on almost any subject, though sometimes with more self-assurance than knowledge; he could also write well. The letters he wrote to his mother during his first Italian campaign are spontaneous and vivid; his verses display emotional sincerity. But Francis was first and foremost a man of action: he delighted in hunting, jousting and dancing. Dangerously realistic mock battles capable of inflicting serious injuries were a stock entertainment at his court. In hunting, as in war, Francis showed outstanding courage. During celebrations at Amboise in June 1515 he had to be dissuaded from engaging a wild boar in single combat.

Francis has gone down in history as a great lover. Women certainly loomed large in his life, though many stories about his amours are pure fantasy. That is not to say that his morals were irreproachable. He was dissolute and had probably contracted syphilis before 1524. About the time of his accession he was having an affair with the wife of Jacques Disomme, a distinguished parlementaire. Truth, however, is not easily distilled from gossip. Even the king’s first official mistress, Françoise de Foix, comtesse de Châteaubriant, is a shadowy figure. She seems to have had little or no political influence.

Three women were pre-eminent at Francis I’s court in the early part of his reign: his mother, his sister and his wife. Louise of Savoy, being a widow in her early forties, was free to devote herself to her son’s service. She was given a powerful voice in government and her influence was felt especially in foreign affairs. The king’s sister Marguerite was intelligent, vivacious, and quite attractive. In 1509 she married Charles duc d’Alençon, but the match proved unhappy. Marguerite found consolation in pious meditation and good works. She became attracted to the ideas of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, leader of an evangelical group known as the Cercle de Meaux, and wrote religious poems which offended the narrowly orthodox ‘Sorbonne’, as the Paris Faculty of Theology is commonly known. Marguerite shared her mother’s interest in public affairs; foreign ambassadors often mentioned her in their dispatches. As for Queen Claude, she was widely renowned for her sweet, charitable and pious nature. Over a period of nine years she bore the king three sons and four daughters.

The new administration

The funeral of Louis XII took place at the abbey of Saint-Denis on 12 January 1515. Francis meanwhile organized his administration. Though not bound by the obligations of his predecessor, he chose to confirm many existing office-holders and privileges. On 2 January, for example, he confirmed members of the Parlement of Paris. Among members of Louis XII’s administration who were kept in office was Florimond Robertet, ‘the father of the secretaries of state’. The new reign also brought new blood into the administration. Antoine Duprat became Chancellor of France. The son of a merchant of Issoire, he had entered the law and had risen from the Parlement of Toulouse to that of Paris, becoming its First President. He gained the favour of Anne of Brittany and, after her death, joined the service of Louise of Savoy. It was doubtless with her support that he became chancellor. Duprat was hard-working and shrewd, but also ruthless and grasping. He became almost universally unpopular. Another great office that had fallen vacant was the constableship of France. Charles III duc de Bourbon, the king’s most powerful vassal, was now given the office. He had a distinguished war record, having fought bravely at Agnadello in 1509 and against the Swiss in 1513. Bourbon was also governor of Languedoc and Grand chambrier de France. The marshals of France, though subordinate to the constable, were on a par with dukes and peers. At Francis’s accession they numbered only two: Stuart d’Aubigny and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Francis created two more: Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec, and Jacques de Chabannes, seigneur de Lapalice. On becoming marshal, Lapalice relinquished the office of Grand Master of France (Grand maître de France), which was given to Francis’s erstwhile governor, Artus Gouffier, seigneur de Boisy.

In distributing favours Francis did not forget his relatives and friends. He allegedly handed over to his mother all the revenues accruing from the confirmation of existing office-holders. Her county of Angoulême was raised to ducal status and she was also given the duchy of Anjou, the counties of Maine and Beaufort-en-Vallée and the barony of Amboise. Her half-brother René, ‘the great bastard of Savoy’, was appointed Grand sénéchal and governor of Provence. Francis’s brother-in-law, Charles d’Alençon, officially recognized as ‘the second person of the kingdom’, was made governor of Normandy. The house of Bourbon was also honoured: the vicomté of Châtellerault, which belonged to François, the constable’s brother, was turned into a duchy. The county of Vendôme, belonging to a second brother called Charles, was likewise elevated in status. Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, one of Francis’s childhood companions at Amboise, was appointed Admiral of France, though at this time the office did not imply service at sea.

On 25 January, Francis was crowned in Reims cathedral. Though no longer regarded as essential to the exercise of kingship, the coronation or sacre remained an important symbol of the monarchy’s supernatural quality and close alliance with the church. From Reims, Francis went first to the shrine of Saint-Marcoul at the priory of Corbeny, a pilgrimage closely connected with his thaumaturgical powers, then to the shrine of the Black Virgin at Notre-Dame de Liesse. At Saint-Denis, burial place of his royal predecessors, he confirmed the abbey’s privileges and underwent another, less elaborate, coronation. Finally, on 15 February, he made his joyful entry (entrée joyeuse) into Paris.

Marignano (13–14 September 1515)

By January 1515, France had lost all her Italian conquests. The house of Sforza held Milan in the person of Massimiliano Sforza, Genoa was an independent republic, and the kingdom of Naples belonged to Aragon. Francis I was expected to regain the ground lost by his immediate predecessors and to avenge the defeats recently suffered by French arms. Veterans of the Italian wars whose reputations had been dented and young noblemen anxious to show their valour looked to him for satisfaction. His youth and powerful physique seemed perfectly suited to the part they expected him to play. But before he could launch a new Italian campaign, Francis needed to neutralize his more powerful neighbours. Charles of Habsburg, a shy and unprepossessing youth of fifteen, was the son of Archduke Philip the Fair and the grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon. On his father’s death in 1506 he had inherited the territories of the house of Burgundy (Franche-Comté, Luxemburg, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainault and Artois) as well as a claim to the duchy of Burgundy, which France had annexed in 1477. A Burgundian by birth and upbringing, Charles longed to rebuild his mutilated inheritance, hoping eventually to be buried in Dijon cathedral. He was encouraged by his aunt Margaret of Savoy, who ruled the Low Countries in his name. Shortly after Francis’s coronation, ambassadors from Charles came to Compiègne with their master’s homage for Flanders and other fiefs. An alliance soon followed: under the Treaty of Paris (24 March 1515), Charles was promised the hand of Louis XII’s infant daughter Renée.

Henry VIII, king of England, a robust young man of twenty-four, was anxious not to be outshone by the new king of France, yet did not wish to pick a quarrel with him at this stage. Having recently tasted victory on the Continent, he was content to enjoy himself at home and leave policy-making to his chief minister, Thomas Wolsey. On 5 April the Anglo-French Treaty of London was given a new lease of life, Francis promising to honour his predecessor’s debt to England of one million gold écus over ten years.

In Italy, Francis’s diplomacy was less successful. The Venetians agreed to help him militarily in return for assistance against the emperor, and the Genoese reverted to their allegiance to France in exchange for local concessions, but other powers proved less co-operative. The Swiss, in particular, had not forgotten Louis XII’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Dijon; nor were they prepared to surrender territories in Lombardy which Sforza had ceded to them or the pension they received from him in return for their armed protection. Sforza was also supported by Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo X. Ferdinand did not wish to see any change in the Italian situation which might endanger his hold on Naples, while Leo was anxious to avoid a repetition of the events of 1494 which had led to the overthrow of his Medici kinsmen in Florence. He was also keen to retain the towns of Parma and Piacenza which Sforza had ceded to him. As for the emperor, being at war with the Venetians, he was not prepared to treat with their ally the king of France.

The most urgent military task facing Francis I in 1515 was to raise enough infantry. France had the largest standing army in Christendom, but it consisted almost entirely of cavalry. By the early sixteenth century wars could no longer be won by cavalry alone, as had been demonstrated by the victories of the Swiss infantry over the Burgundians in the late fifteenth century. But infantry of good fighting quality was not easily raised. The king could rely to some extent on native volunteers, called aventuriers, but the best infantry were foreign mercenaries. Until 1510, France had been able to hire the Swiss, but, as they were now employed by the enemy, he had to look elsewhere. In 1515 he raised 23,000 German landsknechts, who were less disciplined than the Swiss.