French King Research Articles

Italian Bankers in France and Italian Wars

At the last stage of the Italian Wars (1494—1559), the military, political and, most importantly, financial superiority of the Habsburgs over the Valois became quite obvious. The Spanish king could make use of silver which was already coming quite regularly and in large quantities from the mines of the New World. He controlled the old (Augsburg — Ulm) and new (Besançon — Piacenza) centres of banking capital, as well as the commercial and financial heart of the emerging world economic system — Antwerp. But King Henry II of France (1547—1559) launched a series of daring reforms, sometimes far ahead of his time. The king could rely on a more developed bureaucracy than in other countries, on a state system that had reached an advanced level of centralization, and on the economy that was still on the rise, the ‘heart’ of which were the Lyon fairs that acquired international significance. In order to continue an active foreign policy, an unprecedented step was taken — not a royal official, but a Lyon banker of Italian origin, Albizzi Del Bene (Albisse Delbeyne), was appointed to the post of surintendent des finances. Thus, the government was able to use the experience and capability of the banking world for its own purposes. Under the conditions of the war, which was fought at a great distance from the borders of the kingdom, the circulation of money was greatly simplified and became more predictable. The surintendent, closely associated with the most powerful trading and banking house Gadagni (Gadagne) of Lyon, had great weight among Italian bankers who operated not only in Lyon, but also in Venice, Rome, and Tuscany. The reformers’ plans and the progress of reform can be fully appreciated by studying documents from the Lamoignon Collection (Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow). Providing fairly clear guarantees based on the income from the Lyon fairs, the king, with the help of his surintendent and people from his entourage who were responsible for financing French policy in Italy (Constable Anne de Montmorency, royal secretary Jean Duthier), managed to attract huge sums (about 12 million Tours livres) which made it possible to resist a powerful enemy. A flexible combination of bills of exchange, clearing and other mechanisms allowed to transfer this amount of money to Italy. The crowning success of Del Bene was the creation of the Grand Parti de Lyon — a consortium of creditors to the French king. Some researchers claimed that its principles were quite comparable to the achievements of the 19th-century banking system. If there had been peace, the Grand Parti de Lyon could well have contributed to the repayment of the principal amount of borrowings and the dissolution of the accumulated interest debt. But politics had once again interfered with the economy. A new war, in which France was drawn against the will of the royal entourage, a chain of military defeats (the capture of Montmorency, the main patron of Del Bene, in 1557) and, finally, the unexpected death of Henry II shortly after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) put an end to bold economic reforms.

Chronicle of the Arrest of Marguerite de Valois in 1586 (Based on Royal Correspondence from the National Library of Russia)

The article is based on the original letters of the French king Henry III, his mother Catherine de Medicis to the Secretary of State Nicolas de Villeroy in October-November 1586, conserved as part of the collection of Peter Dubrovsky in the Russian National Library. These letters focus on an important episode in the history of the Civil Wars in France, circumstances of the arrest of the king’s rebellious sister, Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, a supporter of the Catholic League, and her itineraries in the fall of 1586 in Auvergne. This subject has not yet fully studied in the works of historians. Thanks to unknown documents, introduced now into scientific circulation, it becomes possible to understand the logic of the adoption, sequence and coordination of royal decisions regarding Marguerite, as well as the choice of couriers, the time and possibilities of delivering these decisions to recipients.

A Letter from Sigismund II Augustus to King Charles IX of France: Trade Struggle in the Baltic under Ivan the Terrible

The message of the Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke Sigismund II Augustus to the French king Charles IX of France from July 28, 1568, highlights the problem of Polish-French trade controversies, which arose due to the policy of Jagiellon against Russian-French commerce in Narva in the 1560s. Believing that French traders were enriching themselves by supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia, the Polish monarch, in the crisis in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, took measures to cut off trade in Narva and blockade it completely. As a result, French merchant ships sailing to or from Narva were seized by the Polish privateers. It aroused the indignation of Charles IX who, with the help of Charles de Danzay, his ambassador in Denmark, defended the freedom of trade and navigation on the Baltic Sea. The text of the letter appeals to the feelings of the French monarch within the framework of Christian morality, while at the same time trying to show the power and the importance of the Polish king and his state to the Respublica Christiana, and the legitimacy of the tough stance he took on the “Narva navigation”. All this makes the letter from Sigismund II Augustus to Charles IX a valuable historical source whose importance is revealed in through diplomatic correspondence in the Baltic wars of the 1560s. Published for the first time, it comes from the collection of P. P. Dubrovsky (62, № 61), Russian National Library (St Petersburg). The article publishes the text of the letter in Latin as well as a translation into Russian.

Novelty, Disinformation and Discrimination in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1559) and Sixteenth-Century French News Culture

Abstract This chapter explores the intersection between two different kinds of nouvelle: on the one hand, a piece of news; and on the other, a literary genre, the novella. Both senses were current in the early sixteenth century when Marguerite de Navarre, the sister of the French king François I, wrote the collection of novellas now known as the Heptameron. Developing its model, Boccaccio’s Decameron, the Heptameron includes an elaborate frame narrative in which the storytellers debate each story after they hear it. From these discussions, and the stories themselves, emerges a concern with the underlying principles of storytelling: truth, authority, witness and interpretation. These are concerns, this chapter argues, that were also current in sixteenth-century news culture, and in particular the short sensational news pamphlets that became popular during the religious wars of the second half of the century. The chapter examines the claims made in both the Heptameron and in news publications and argues that the Heptameron aspires to provide the analytical tools required to assess any account that claims to be truthful; an aspiration that anticipates later critiques of sensationalist and partisan news. It does this through a practice of discrimination, a careful parsing of a story and its underlying motivations.

The Theater of Death of the XVII–XVIII Centuries:
 The Kings of Western Europe and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthon the Threshold of Eternity

The perception of death in the Early Modern Time was largely based on ancient traditions. The process of death was a form of public communication and required the presence of spectators.The agony of kings was a kind of caesure between the past and the future, when the subjects were demonstrated the status of the state and its ruler, and at the same time, personal and state interests were clashed and resolved.
 In contrast to the solemn departure to the other world of West Europe sovereigns, a vivid example of which was the death of the French king Louis XIV,
 the last minutes of the the Polish kings’lives, in particular, Jan Sobieski and Augustus the Strong, were more likely a personal and deeply religious act, rather than a national event. To a large extent it was facilitated by the state system of
 thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealthas a gentry republic with an elected king. The «theater of death» of the French king was in the service of Majesty until the last minute, while the «first among equals» in Poland could die like an ordinary person and get only a «theater after death» – a magnificent funeral ceremony.
 The public process of the demise of the monarchs in the Early Modern Time was largely determined not only by the sovereign’s personality, but also by the geopolitical position and state structure of the territory he controlled.

Semiotization of power in the French kings’ ceremonial portraits: linguophilosophical approach

The purpose of the present article is to prove that the royal gala portrait makes a semiotic space, the signs of which form the image of supreme power. External symbols of monarchical power serve as the means of power semiotization in the ceremonial royal portrait. The linguophilosophical approach to the power allowed us to identify and describe the semantic characteristic of the symbolic side of power. The sword, the scepter, the Hand of Justice, and the crown symbolize three branches of power that the king received from God, particularly, religious, political, and judicial power. The methodological basis of the work is a systematic approach, which includes interdisciplinary research as well as linguo-cultural and historiographic analysis. By interpreting the signs presented in the J. Clouet’s portrait of François I, in the T. de Leu’s engraving of Henry IV, king of France and Navarre, and in the G. Rigo’s portrait of Louis XIV in the coronation costume, the authors reveal the pragmatic dimension of the semiosis of power and the court culture. The research results in the emphasis of the idea that the state destination of the symbolic representation of the monarch is to visualize the power institution.

"ЧЕРНАЯ ЛЕГЕНДА" О ВАЛЕНТИНЕ ВИСКОНТИ В ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЕ ФРАНЦИИ НА РУБЕЖЕ XIV–XV ВВ.

The article deals with the analysis of the origins and features of the formation of the “black legend” about Valentina Visconti, the wife of Duke Louis of Orleans and the sister-in-law of Charles VI. The author studies in detail all the sources of the turn of the 14th–15th centuries, which retold rumors that the Duchess was a witch who brought a spell on the French king, and disputes the point of view prevailing in historiography, according to which the creator of that “black legend” was one and the only person – the Hennegau chronicler Jean Froissart. According to the author of the article, rumors about Valentina Visconti arose much earlier than Froissart took up the compilation of his “Chronicles”, they were initially oral in nature and were primarily associated with the political propaganda of the Dukes of Burgundy, who were trying to gain full power in the French Kingdom

The Rebellion of the Alpujarras, Virgil, and the Fall of the Giants by Petrus Firens Cover Art for Historia de las Guerras Civiles de Granada

This paper is an analysis of the engraving made by Petrus Firens for the cover page of Historia de las Guerras Civiles de Granada (Gines Perez de Hita, Paris, 1606?). The artwork makes use of a particular iconography, portraying a battle against Islam as a Gigantomachy in which references to texts by Virgil are employed to link the victories of Philip II over Islam to the victories of Roman Emperors. What makes this edition particularly noteworthy is its publication in France by a Spanish spy in the service of the French king which leads us to reconsider its political purpose.

Polyethnicity of a Medieval city and the Formation of Ethno-National Identity in France (on the Example of Paris in the 14th – 15th Centuries)

The author focuses on the role of Paris, an important center of the social and political life of the French kingdom in the period of the 14th — 15th centuries, in the formation of the collective identity of the French. The Hundred Years War became a catalyst for the formation of national states both in France and in England. It accelerated the development of people's national self-identification, supported by the unifying policy of the French kings, who sought to extend their power over the entire territory of the kingdom through the granting of citizenship and the development of a national idea. The multi-ethnicity of Paris, associated with the role of the city as an important commercial, political and cultural center, contributed to this policy, equalizing its inhabitants and providing migrants and foreigners with opportunities for adaptation and assimilation without identifying them by ethnicity, forming a new collective identity that sometimes came into conflict with the interests of the crown, but in the end objectively contributed to the formation of the French community.

The French Court Historical Writing as a Form of Manifestation of the Royal Power (Late 16th — First Half of 17th Century)

The present paper argues that the French historical writing in the late sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century became a form of manifestation of the French royal power. The integrated scientific approach chosen in this research permits the author to draw several new conclusions concerning the multiplicity of forms of publicity of the French absolute monarchy. Three main aspects are in question: the institutional (or socio-political) one, the aspect of publishing specific in early modern Europe, and the substantial aspect of the historical discourse of the epoch. The existence of the court office of the royal historiographer (historiographe du roi) itself was a form of manifestation of the French royal power as it symbolized the special assignment of historical knowledge to the crown. Another visible form of manifestation of the French royal power connected with the historical writing of the epoch was the form of existence of works consecrated to historical subjects, i.e. the peculiarities of design of the editions of historical writings. Finally, the subject area of historical works in question were also related to the manifestation of the strengthening absolute monarchy. The court historical writing in early modern France evolved in tight connection with the erudite intellectual movement. Thus, however diverse the erudite movement had been, its massive current was deeply connected with the crown and its different ambitions — from uniting territories and gaining fidelity of its subjects to glorifying the French kings and controlling all the spheres of political and cultural life in the kingdom.

Illuminated by Fire: the Hundred Years’ War in the Works of Professor M. N. Petrov of Kharkiv University (1826-1887)

The article examines the contribution of Professor M. N. Petrov, Kharkiv University’s leading medievalist during the third quarter of the 19th century, to the study of key events and personalities of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Contextually, Petrov considered some of the events of the final stage of the war in his master’s dissertation “On the Nature of the Statesmanship of Louis XI” (1850). He was able to show that, in the war against the English, the French royal house was forced to make concessions to the great feudal lords of the realm in exchange for military support. Among the concessions made by Charles VII for the sake of victory over England, Petrov rightly singles out the anti-English Treaty of Arras (1435) between the French king and Duke Philip III of Burgundy. Nevertheless, the end of the Hundred Years’ War, development of the French national consciousness, and decline of feudal chivalry all objectively contributed to the strengthening of royal power. It is shown that Petrov became the first scholar at Kharkiv University and in the Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire to publish a work entirely devoted to the Hundred Years’ War – “Jeanne d’Arc (Historical and Psychological Experience)” (1867). Petrov distinguished between the objective and subjective causes of the turn in the Hundred Years’ War and explained the success of the Maid of Orléans by the sympathy and support of the broad masses of the population. It is stressed that, in contrast to the French scholar J. Michelet, for whom Jeanne d’Arc was a messenger of Heaven, child of the Church, and servant of God, Petrov in his essay represented her actions as a manifestation of the French people’s growing self-awareness, rather than of the will of Providence. The author notes that such assessment of the role of the common people in the historical process was characteristic of the liberal medieval studies of the first post-reform years in the Russian Empire. A summary of the main events of the Hundred Years’ War was presented in the posthumous edition of Petrov’s Lectures in World History (1888). This was the first university textbook in this discipline in the Russian Empire. It is emphasized that Petrov’s treatment of the events of the Hundred Years’ War contributed to the popularization of medieval history, and that the objectivity of his interpretations stemmed primarily from the critical study of historical sources, including the Memoirs of Philippe de Commines, and adherence to the norms of positivism.

Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Knowledge Revisited

Abstract In the Sixteenth Century, the Italian humanist Giulio Camillo built a ‘Theatre of Knowledge’ for the French King Francis I. Previous scholarship has debated whether this theatre was a physical place, a mental (mnemonic) space, or both. New archival evidence that has been overlooked in previous scholarship on Camillo, and his theatre, unequivocally proves for the first time that Camillo’s theatre had in fact been built in Paris. This invites a reconsideration of past reconstructions of the theatre and allows for the formulation of a new one. In this article, I have explored the hypothesis that Camillo’s theatre resembled an anatomy theatre. I have used 3D modelling and virtual reality in order to reconstruct some of the spatial features of Camillo’s theatre and explore how these insights further our understanding of his theatre in terms of historical and current practices surrounding the presentation of information and the invention of new knowledge.

위그노 난민과 계몽주의의 전파. 17~18세기 브란덴부르크-프로이센을 중심으로

Louis XIV persecuted the “pagan” Huguenots, considering the unification of the church as one of the important elements necessary to establish absolutism, and France had to pay a considerable price for it. For neighboring countries, this mistake of French king became an opportunity. The trials that Huguenots had to face as a religious minority led them to the Enlightenment, which advocated rationality and reason. They were able to overcome the state of mental isolation that they could never get out of under the Absolute Monarchy of France through emigration into protestant countries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, when the modern era was in full bloom, the Huguenots migration played a role in spreading new ideas and technology in Europe. In this paper, focusing on the case of Prussia (Brandenburg) in the 17th and 19th centuries, I would like to examine the spiritual effects of the Huguenots emigration. In this regard, first, I would like to pay attention to the courts that were influenced by Calvinism and Enlightenment. Here it will focus on the 17th century Brandenburg elector Friedrich Wilhelm and the 18th century Prussian King Friedrich II. The second theme is the French influence on Prussian culture, including science. To this end, I would like to look into the process of Prussian, geographically far from Western Europe, accepting new ideas and trends through Huguenots refugees and encountering Western Europe.

Eine habsburgische Quelle im Kampf gegen Frankreich: Vollmacht Kaiser Friedrichs III. an König Maximilian, 1493

A Habsburg Source in the Struggle against France: The Power of Attorney of Emperor Frederick III to King Maximilian, 1493This paper deals with a medieval source that has received little attention in research so far: the power of attorney of Emperor Frederick III to King Maximilian of 1493. This historical document, which calls for the punishment of the French king, is marked by years of conflict between Maximilian I and Charles VIII of France. The source provides a crucial insight into the propaganda of Frederick III and Maximilian I.

L’histoire des rois de France dans la “Fleur des histoires” de Jean Mansel. Archéologie d’une compilation bourguignonne du xve siècle

It has generally been assumed that Burgundian compiler Jean Mansel borrowed the history of the kings of France included in his Fleur des histoires from the Grandes Chroniques de France, the most widely circulated French historiographical work at the time. The present paper challenges this assumption, focusing the attention on a particular segment of Mansel’s Fleur in its short redaction. Extant in five manuscripts, this section covers the history of the French kings from Charlemagne to Charles VI. A comparison of Mansel’s text with that of the Chronique de France jusque 1380 discloses the striking similarities of the two works in their recounting of the history of the kings of France. It appears that both authors are not dependent on the Grande Chroniques as much as they are indebted to an already reworked and rewritten redaction of this work. Indeed, Jean Mansel and the author of the Chronique jusque 1380 provide a history of the French sovereigns which comes from the Abrégé Paulin Paris. Lexical and stylistic resemblance between Mansel’s Fleur and the Chronique jusque 1380 indicates both authors mined an intermediate, unidentified text based on the Abrégé; chronology in the composition of the two works and divergent choices in the selection of episodes recounted assure that the authors worked independently from one another.

Review: Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe

Review: <i>Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe</i>

Textual Spaces: French Renaissance Writings on the Italian Voyage. Richard E. Keatley. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Pp. x+233.

<i>Textual Spaces: French Renaissance Writings on the Italian Voyage</i>. Richard E. Keatley. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Pp. x+233.

The French King and the Ostrich: Reflections on the Date of the Medieval Vercelli Map of the World

ABSTRACT The Vercelli map has never been accorded its due place in the mappaemundi canon. Faced with problems of illegibility, few scholars have dared to research it. The availability of multispectral imaging (MSI), however, has provoked closer investigation. In this short note, attention is limited to the question of its date. Attempting to discover the genesis of a medieval map remains largely a matter of reasoned guesswork in stages. In this article, based on new assessments, a process of evolution is suggested that may enable us to reconcile the dating proposed more than hundred years ago by Carlo Errerà (1270–1285), half a century ago by Carlo Felice Capello (1191–1218) and, more recently, by Dan Terkla (1217). It is hoped that further MSI will challenge scholars to detect additional layers in the map.

Opera, War, and the Politics of Effeminacy under Queen Anne

Opera, War, and the Politics of Effeminacy under Queen Anne Amy Dunagin (bio) When Italian opera first came to the English public stage in 1705, its reputation as a frivolous, luxurious, and potentially effeminizing entertainment preceded it.1 Five years before its debut, the dramatist John Dennis preemptively sowed the ground with salt.2 In the prologue to his play Iphigenia in 1700, he has the genius of England "rise to a warlike symphony" and relate the muse of Tragedy's exclamation: "Oh is my Brittain faln to that degree, / As for effeminate Arts t' abandon me? / I left the enslav'd Italian with disdain, / And servile Gallia, and dejected Spain: / Grew proud to be confin'd to Brittain's shore / Where godlike Liberty had fix'd before."3 Fearing a growing public taste for "those arts … that soften'd foreign braves, / And sunk the Southern nations into slaves," Dennis attempted to shame audiences by asking how England's past kings might have reacted "to see a bearded more than female throng / Dissolved and dying by an eunuchs song."4 In issuing this warning about the dangers of opera, Dennis capitalized on a longstanding set of beliefs about the genre's birthplace. The association of Italy with various sorts of what was considered sexual degeneracy, including lust, effeminacy, and sodomy, was by this time well established in English sources.5 To take just one example, in the same year, 1700, Daniel Defoe, in his well-known poem The True-Born Englishman, identified Italy as a "torrid zone," "where blood ferments in rapes and sodomy" and "nature ever [End Page 127] burns with hot desires, / Fanned with luxuriant air from subterranean fires."6 It is no surprise, then, that the trope of Italian licentiousness informed the public's reception of Italy's premier musico-dramatic export. From its first introduction in London theaters at the start of the eighteenth century, Italian opera provoked scathing responses from some English critics, who perceived a threat to their nation's masculinity.7 Critics of the opera argued that the spectacle and sensuality of Italian opera and the ambiguously sexed, or de-sexed, bodies of some of its star performers, the castrati, could have an effeminizing effect on individual British men and, even more troublingly, on British culture.8 Musicologists have noted that this gendering of Italian opera as feminine was completed in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—around the same time Italian opera was being introduced—and that it had to do not merely with the characteristics of opera itself, which had not been gendered in the same way in Italy, but also with opera's association with a place that the British were invested in viewing as feminine.9 These critiques of Italian opera as dangerously sensual and potentially effeminizing would be deployed against the genre for decades—in fact, centuries—to come. While some contemporaneous Continental opera criticism linked opera with effeminacy, early eighteenth-century English critics emphasized opera's supposed effeminizing, enervating effects with a unique intensity and alarm. Why should these characterizations of Italian opera have been particularly pronounced in England?10 This article argues that an important facet of the explanation for the gendering of Italian opera in England was early opera criticism's relationship to the fierce partisan debate over England's (after 1707, Britain's) involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession.11 Italian opera arrived in England at a particularly fraught time. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, Britons contended with an era of hyper-partisanship during which Whigs and Tories vied for power, and partisan invective flowed from the pens of the era's most celebrated literary figures. In this hot political climate, the War of the Spanish Succession was the litmus test issue that most galvanized the two parties. In 1700, Whigs and Tories alike lamented the deathbed decision of the childless Spanish King Charles II to bequeath his throne to his grandnephew Philip, Duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. Both parties feared, not unreasonably, that this succession could tip the balance of power irrevocably in the French king's favor, and England consequently joined...

Historical Research and Directions of French Royal Expansion in 16th — 17th Centuries

In the seventeenth century, the search for the “forgotten” rights of the king were an important aid in organizing French expansion, mainly in the eastern and northeastern directions. At the sovereign courts of Lorraine, Alsace and Franche-Comté “chambers of annexations” (chambres d’annexion) were created in 1680 to organize search for archival documents supporting royal claims to neighboring lands. The idea of creating special institutions engaged in the search for documents revealing the precedents of relations with other countries and forgotten rights, that French king had supposedly enjoyed in those parts, was expressed back during the reign of Henry II. In 1556, Raoul Spifame, a lawyer at the Paris Parliament, published a book consisting of fictitious royal decrees, of which many would be implemented in the future. Among other things he ordered, on behalf of the king, the creation of thirty chambers, each specializing in the search for documents in the “treasury of charters” relating to a particular province. He had determined the composition of these chambers, the procedure for work and the form of reporting, — all this in order to arm the king with knowledge of his forgotten rights and the content of antique treaties and agreements. The nomenclature of “provincial chambers” is especially interesting, from the Chambers of Scotland and England to the Chamber of Tunisia and Africa, as well as the Chamber of Portugal and the New Lands. Much more attention was attracted by those lands to which a century later the French expansion would be directed: Franche-Comté, Artois and Flanders, Lorraine, the Duchy of Cleves. But more than half of chambers specialized in the Italian lands. This is not surprising, since in the 1550s France was entering the climax of the Italian Wars. Under Henry II (1547—1559) one of the four secretaries of state, Jean du Thier, was the person responsible for the southwestern direction of French policy. There is reason to believe that Spifame was associated with du Thier or with other members of the king’s “reform headquarters”. The large-scale transformations already at work were interrupted by the unexpected death of Henry II and the subsequent Wars of Religion. But continuity was inherent in the “spirit of the laws” of the Ancien Régime, so Spifame was able to predict future developments, including the creation of “chambers of annexation”.