Finally, the the role and importance of woman during the French Renaissance [c.1483 to c.1594] has begun to receive the attention it deserves. In recent years historians and novelists writing in English have begun to give these women the attention that had been reserved for those in Tudor England and the Italian city states during the period. And deservedly so. Although women were legally barred from the throne, de facto, Anne de Beaujeu, Anne de Bretagne, Louise de Savoie and Catherine de Medici came close to ruling during this period. Marguerite de Navarre, King François’s sister, and her daughter Queen Jeanne de Navarre both played important roles in the French reform movement. And I have mentioned only the royal women.
The Renaissance, also called the Early Modern Era, was originally used to denote an artistic and cultural “rebirth.” But our understanding of the changes during the period have expanded. In Europe, where the term applies, a spirit of political, cultural, artistic, technological, and scientific inquiry exploded. Religious unrest and theological Biblical scrutiny erupted into the splintering of the ‘Universal’ church and vicious wars of religion.
A Cultural Revolution in France
The Italian wars between France and the Hapsburg Empire [1494 to 1559] led to a cultural revolution in France. Successive French kings returned from Italy with a new appreciation of elegance, social codes, standards of etiquette and patterns of discourse. They brought with them droves of Italian scholars, artists, sculptors, architects, landscape gardeners and craftsmen to recreate this world back in France. These pioneers led the transformation of printing, architecture, painting, sculpture, music, literature, and the sciences.
The chateaux of the Loire valley are monuments to the impact of this renaissance, reshaping ancient castles built for war into comfortable palaces designed for leisure.
Gardens, too, transformed. Designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, they became an extension of the chateaux they surrounded. Characterized by symmetry, geometric planting beds, and parterres, they featured plants in pots, gravel and sand paths, terraces, stairways and ramps. Moving water in canals, cascades and monumental fountains added charm. Sculptors added statues of mythological figures. And through artificial grottos and labyrinths, landscape architects created mystery and privacy, so hard to find in the crowded palaces.
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The New Learning
In France, “the new learning” developed with a Christian focus rather than the more eclectic humanism of Italy. The universities expanded their curricula to include the study of ancients, the Bible, the gospels and the Church fathers in their original languages of Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. Many of the teachers of these languages fled in front of the expanding Ottoman empire, bringing new cultural inputs. This study brought with it a new historical and textual methods. The translation of recently discovered documents into modern [vernacular] languages coupled with the invention of the printing press created a demand for religious texts and literature in the native tongue of each country. This, along with criticism of clerical abuses, led to spiritual unrest, religious discord, the splintering of the Roman Catholic Church and the wars of religion.
Three of Queen Catherine’s daughters played significant parts in the events of the day. In an attempt to bridge the divide between the Huguenots and the Catholics, Marguerite de Valois married Huguenot Henry of Navarre. Instead the wedding became the catalyst for the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Catherine married another daughter, Claude to the ultra-catholic Duke de Lorraine, placing her daughters on opposite sides of the great religious divide. This tragedy struck not only the royal family but split families up and down the social hierarchy.
Her sister, Elizabeth de France, married King Philip II of Spain to heal the rift between the two countries. Pretty and popular at the Spanish court, she disappointed her mother with her new loyalties. and then died young in childbirth, leaving behind two young daughters.
The Changing Role of Women
Women’s role rose and declined during the Renaissance rather like a Bell curve. At first, very few women held a place at court and the queen’s court was small. With Duchess Anne de Beaujeu, the change began. Under Queen Anne, Duchess of Brittany, numbers exploded. Experts in the field, Caroline zum Kolk and Kathleen Wilson-Chevelier, provide details. Over the century, noble girls and women came to court where they learned the gracious arts. When they married and went to their new homes, they brought these skills and expectations with them. Literacy and numeracy among women expanded.
It became expected that royal, noble and merchant girls and women would be educated to read, write, and cypher. Often. women were the literate members of families. As the reform movement grew stronger, so did the demand to read. Also, as upper-class men fought in the religious wars, women ran the household. Their skills and literacy contributed to the reform.
Women Writers
For centuries people equated French Renaissance literature with Rabelais, Ronsard, Montesquieu and a few more. Recently the contribution of women poets and writers is being recognized and their works are being discovered and studies. Queen Marguerite de Navarre, for example, is famous for her writing. There is much to be learned from Colette Winn whose work has opened up the field.The works of some of these women are available digitized on the internet. A great site for classic books is the Digital Book Index. Charlotte Duplessis-Mornay‘s Memoirs are available, for example.
Women in the French Renaissance: Selected Books and Articles
Fanny Cosandey, La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, (Gallimard, Collection, Bibliothèque des histoires, 2000)
Pauline Matarasso, Queen’s Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance (Ashgate Publishing Company, Vt., 2001)
Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: England, France & England. Ed. Diane Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin (ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2007)
Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France. (Yale University Press, 2013).
Jane Stevenson, “Women and Latin in Renaissance France” in Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century Ed. Jane Stevenson (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Colette H. Winn, ed. Teaching French Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Options for Teaching 31. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011.