Introduction: Renée de France’s Life and Legacy

Abstract

This collection of essays on the life and legacy of Renée de France (1510–1575) addresses the cultural, spiritual, and political influence of the second daughter of King Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne. Orphaned at the age of four, the young princess was raised at the court of King François I, under the maternal influence of both her sister, Queen Claude de France, and the king’s sister, Marguerite de Navarre, both of whom favored internal reform of the Catholic Church and supported like-minded intellectuals and priests. After her 1528 politically motivated marriage to Ercole d’Este, future Duke of Ferrara, Renée spent her adult life in Italy, where she was called Renata or Renea, and continued her associations with heterodox intellectuals. After the death of her husband in 1559, she returned to France to spend her dowager years at her château of Montargis, in the midst of the French Wars of Religion. While Renée has not yet earned the scholarly attention that has been devoted to her mother, Anne de Bretagne, to her sister, Claude de France, or to her cousins, Marguerite de Navarre and Jeanne d’Albret, Peebles and Scarlatta demonstrate that she perpetuates the cultural, intellectual, and moral values of this long line of powerful French royal women, tracing their inspiration back to her godmother, Anne de France, and their influence on to Renée’s own children. After sketching the broad strokes of Renée’s biography, the authors offer an overview of the volume. Contributors from a variety of disciplines, including art history, bibliography and textual studies, literary and cultural studies, history, gender, and religious studies examine Renée’s many roles and flesh out her portrait and legacy as fille de France, Duchess of Ferrara, and Dowager Duchess at Montargis.