Why Read Historical Fiction Set in Sixteenth Century France? Reason #7

Today's reason almost goes without saying...

Reason #7--FRANCE

France is the most popular travel destination in the world, visited by 89 million foreign tourists in 2018 alone. The country's vineyards 

beaches 

mountains

and vibrant cities 

tug at the hearts and pursestrings of enthusiastic travelers and compilers of bucket lists the world over. Paris tops New York on lists of "Most Visited Cities" and flaunts its undisputed title as the "Most Romantic." Its cultural attractions, like the Musée du Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and Arc de Triomphe, as well as its luxury boutiques, fine restaurants, and outdoor cafés, are a perennial draw. For well-seasoned travelers and armchair dreamers alike, France holds a distinctive and dynamic appeal. 

This fascination with France carries over into literature. A quick search on Amazon turns up 50,000 entries for "France--Fiction and Literature" and 30,000 for "Paris--Fiction and Literature."

Goodreads lists hundreds of books set in France and Paris. Recent bestsellers such as Kristin Hannah's THE NIGHTINGALE, Anthony Doerr's ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, Paula McClain's THE PARIS WIFE, and Nina George's THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP witness to the immense popularity of a French setting. During these locked-down, travel-verboten pandemic days, readers are hungry to read about places they cannot explore.

What is it about France that captures the interest and seals the loyalty of its admirers? It might be the country's varied geography and scenic beauty. It might be its rich history, which encompasses the glory of a medieval kingdom, the quest for liberty and equality during the Revolution, and the Resistance's struggles against the evils of Nazism. It could be France's artistic and literary culture, which has contributed countless masterpieces to the world's canon and produced luminaries like Proust and Hugo and Matisse and Monet. It might very well be the joie-de-vivre that animates daily life and compliments the strong vein of scepticism that characterizes the French spirit. Perhaps, in the end, it is nothing more than bread and cheese and pastries. Elements of all these things create the timeless allure that is France--an allure that historical fiction acknowledges and indulges and prolongs.

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Did you miss Reasons #1-#6? Read them here: ESCAPE, RELEVANCE, DRAMA, EMOTION, GLITZ, HISTORY.

Why Read Historical Fiction Set in Sixteenth Century France? Reason #6

ESCAPE, RELEVANCE, DRAMA, EMOTION, GLITZ are the factors we've examined so far. Now it's time for one that, though obvious, nevertheless deserves attention...

Reason #6--HISTORY

In today's educational landscape, the study of history hardly occupies a prominent position. With so many other subjects clamoring for attention, history often gets shunted aside. Yet the study of history is essential to the healthy functioning of a modern republic. An old aphorism holds that "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." A thorough understanding of history prepares a country to move confidently into the future, equipped to identify challenges and hazards and able to address them without making costly, avoidable mistakes. Familiarity with the past also helps individuals define and select the ideals and aspirations they wish to live by and strive for.

photo credit

Reading historical fiction is an effective way to supplement the formal study of history. Some might object that it would be more valuable to read nonfiction about historical topics instead of novels, but fiction offers some distinct advantages in a non-academic setting. First of all, it is more readily accessible to a wider range of readers. Readers who seek entertainment are more likely to pick up a novel than a history tome that might uncomfortably remind them of schoolwork. As they engage with characters and follow the twists and turns of the plot, however, they absorb the factual information that infuses the story--a real-life example of a spoonful of sugar helping medicine go down! Their encounter with historical events and characters in the novel might pique their curiosity and send them to nonfiction sources to learn more. In any case, the reader has been introduced to historical material they might never have chanced upon otherwise. The historical novel serves as a gateway into deeper knowledge of and appreciation for history.

Secondly, reading historical fiction allows readers to discover the eras, events, and individuals that truly interest them. Historical fiction covers a wide range of countries and time periods. Readers can benefit from this plethora of options by sampling different combinations of settings, eras, and narrative techniques. Some readers like biographical fiction, which dramatizes the life of a prominent historical personnage; others prefer to read about fictional characters acting in a historical setting defined by historical events. Battle fiction interests one type of reader; novels told from the perspective of women or the marginalized speak to another. Nonfiction history books are often quite specific and compartmentalized, making it difficult for non-academic readers to locate general interest books about a certain era. Reading historical fiction provides a quicker entry into the historical scene. Readers can enjoy a novel whether or not they they come to it with previous knowledge of the time period, and will most likely leave it knowing more about the era or person than they did before. 

Finally, and most importantly, historical fiction offers readers something that non-fiction cannot--access to the thoughts and emotions of historical characters. Whereas history teaches facts--names, dates, ideologies, and events, historical fiction allows readers to explore people's relationship to those facts. It gives a human face to history by imagining how people caught up in historical events might have reacted to them. How did a galley slave preserve his sanity during endless days of forced rowing? What might cause one neighbor to denounce another who embraced the reformed religion? How might a skilled female artist or poet in the Renaissance flourish, despite the disdain of male practicioners? Historians are discouraged from postulating the thoughts and emotions of the subjects they write about; the novelist, on the other hand, builds a story out of the very things the historian is forced to omit. In a novel, the historical context provides a challenge, a set of boundaries and conditions, which characters must confront and overcome in historically appropriate ways. The historical element that lovers of historical fiction prize is not an end in itself, but serves to highlight the resilience and breadth of the human spirit. In a historical novel, the history is not the story; how the characters both shape and are shaped by that history is.

Why Read Historical Fiction Set in Sixteenth Century France? Reason #3

Still looking for reasons to read or write historical fiction set in Renaissance France? Here's one sure to convince you.

Reason #3: DRAMA

There's something about Renaissance dynasty dramas that strongly appeals to modern television audiences. From 2007-2010, THE TUDORS ruled.

Then, from 2011-2013, THE BORGIAS stole the limelight.

 

Even the Medici have had their day (2016-2019).

Now it's time for THE VALOIS, the dynasty that ruled France throughout the sixteenth century. 

The Valois (or more properly, the Valois-Angoulêmes) ruled France from 1515-1589. François I assumed the throne in 1515 and ruled for 32 years, until dying of illness in 1547. His son, Henri II, wed to Catherine de Medici, ruled from 1547-1559. Three of Henri's sons, François II (1559-60), Charles IX (1560-74), and Henri III (1574-1589), ruled in quick succession after him, all with the aid of their shrewd and crafty mother. The reigns of any of these rulers provides plenty of dramatic fodder for novels and film.

François I was only three years younger than England's infamous Henry VIII. The two kings were rivals their entire lives and even died the same year. Thanks to his obsessive wife-swapping, Henry is better known to modern audiences, but drama of all types riddled François's long reign. Highlights include: 

meeting with Henry VIII at the lavish event known as the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, where each monarch strove to out-dazzle the other with magnificent tents, clothes, feasts, jousts and games; 

being captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by the troops of his archenemy Charles V of Spain, who held him prisoner at Madrid for a year until François surrendered Milan, agreed to marry Charles's sister, and handed over his two young sons, François and Henri, in exchange for his freedom;

inviting Leonardo DaVinci, Rosso Fiorentino, Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Primaticcio and innumerable other Italian artists to France to transform the kingdom's crumbling fortresses into glittering palaces brimming with art;

enjoying the attentions of beautiful women willing to risk the wrath of his official mistress, the Duchesse d'Étampes, who schemed her way into François's heart, bed, and council chamber;

and forging an alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Empire at the expense of his ties with the Holy Roman Empire.

François's son, Henri II, ruled for twelve years after his father's and his older brother's deaths. Having spent four years (from the ages of 7 to 11) in captivity in Spain as a hostage in his father's place, he suffered psychological trauma that caused plenty of drama in his later life. At fourteen, Henri married Catherine de Medici, daughter of a leading family in Florence, who would eventually become a powerful figure in her own right. After worrisome years of no issue, Henri and Catherine eventually had ten children, three of whom took the throne of France. Drama during Henri's life includes:

carrying on a lifelong romantic affair with Diane de Poitiers, 20 years his senior, a relationship that turned physical when he was only 15;

allowing Diane and the powerful Grand Constable, Anne de Montmorency, to estrange him ever further from his father and factionalize the court;

weathering the power struggles between Catherine, Diane, and François's mistress, the Duchesse d'Étampes;

dying unexpectedly at the age of 40 in a jousting accident, when a lance splinter penetrated his eye and lodged in his brain.

François II, Henri's eldest son, ruled for only one year before dying in 1560. He was married to Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been raised at the French court and returned to Scotland upon François's death. (Mary's time in France was the subject of the TV series REIGN, which aired from 2013-2017 and was geared to a Young Adult audience.) François's short reign was marked by power struggles between his mother, the powerful Catholic Guise family, and the rising Huguenot faction, headed by the Prince de Condé.

Charles IX was only ten when he took the throne after François II passed. Because of his young age, Catherine de Medici served as regent. She wielded sweeping powers, especially during the early portion of Charles's 14-year reign, although she continued to influence his decisions throughout. Charles's reign provided plenty of political and personal drama, including

a two-year grand tour of France;

the outbreak of religious war between Catholics and Protestants in 1562, a struggle that would continue until the end of the century;

and the massacre of Protestants gathered for the wedding of Charles's sister Marguerite to the Huguenot King of Navarre in August 1572, known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Henri III was the last ruler of the Valois-Angoulême dynasty. Ruling Poland when his brother Charles died of tuberculosis, he returned to take the French throne in 1574. Henri's reign was a complicated one, with continuing religious war compounded by a war of succession, once it became clear that he would die without an heir. 

Courtiers and mistresses jockeyed for favor at his magnificent, highly stylized court.

He was, for a time, considered as a possible husband for Elizabeth I of England.

He was assassinated by a fanatical, knife-wielding Dominican friar who killed him while pretending to deliver important papers. Henri III's untimely death ended the rule of the Valois dynasty. The throne passed to another Henri, the Protestant King of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism and reigned as the first of the Bourbon kings.

Drama defined the course of eight decades of Valois-Angoulême hegemony: imprisonment, massacres, mistresses, murders, glory, vice, and war--and this only includes what happened at court. Take any decade of the sixteenth century in France and you'll find intrigue to rival that of the Tudors, the Borgias, and the Medici--intrigue sure to keep readers turning pages and viewers glued to their streams. It's time to let the Valois take the stage.

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So far, we've examined three reasons to champion sixteenth century historical fiction: ESCAPE, RELEVANCE, and DRAMA. We'll break our examination tomorrow and Wednesday for a book review and an author interview, then pick up the thread on Friday. Happy reading!

Theft of a Queen's Heart

On Friday, April 13, 2018, a reliquary containing the heart of Anne de Bretagne, queen consort of France, was stolen from the Dobrée Museum in Nantes. Four masked intruders forced their way into the museum, smashed the glass case with an ax, and absconded with the suspended golden reliquary, dating from 1514, along with a statue and dozens of gold coins. Thankfully, only a week later, several of the perpetrators were apprehended and the items recovered in good condition. The reliquary, worth millions of Euros, holds inestimable sentimental and historical importance not only to the citizens of the Nantais region, but to the entire nation.

Anne de Bretagne (1477-1514) is the only woman to have been queen consort of France twice. As heir to the duchy of Brittany, she spent her entire life fighting to preserve the western duchy's independence from the territorial aspirations of the kingdom of France. Forced to marry King Charles VIII of France in 1491 after defeat in battle, her marriage contract expressly stated that the marriage was concluded to ensure peace between the two regions. After Charles died of an accident in 1498, Anne took personal charge of the administration of Brittany. Pressured to marry Charles's successor Louis XII, who was already married, Anne agreed on the unlikely condition that Louis receive an annulment from Rome within one year. Unfortunately for her, the Pope came through, and Anne wed Louis in 1499. Unlike Charles, however, Louis respected Anne's rights as sovereign Duchess and issued decisions in her name. For the rest of her life, Anne strove vigorously to maintain Brittany's independence, for which she earned the love and devotion of the Breton people. Despite her valiant efforts, the duchy passed permanently into French hands when Anne and Louis's eldest daughter, Claude, married Louis's successor, François I, in 1515, the year after Anne's death.

Anne died of a kidney-stone attack at the age of thirty-seven (following sixteen pregnancies between her two husbands). Royal funerary customs of the time called for the partition of the body, allowing the heart, entrails, and bones to be buried in multiple locations. Though her body was to be entombed in the royal necropolis at Saint-Denis, Anne stipulated in her will that her heart be transported to Nantes, her beloved Breton birthplace, and deposited in her parents' tomb. A hinged reliquary was fashioned of fine gold to contain it. The inscription visible in the photograph above reads:

         Ce cueur fut si tres hault 
         Que de la terre aux cieux
         Sa vertu liberalle 
         Acroissoit mieux et mieux.
         Mais Dieu en a reprins
         Sa portion meilleure
         Et ceste part terrestre
         En grand deuil nous demeure.

         This heart was so exalted
         That from Earth to the heavens
         Its bountiful virtue
         Only increased.
         But God took back
         Its best portion
         And this terrestrial part
         Remains with us, in great sorrow.
                    (Translation mine)

The reliquary was delivered to Nantes in March 1514, where it remained until 1792, when it was emptied and sent to Paris to be melted down to fund the Revolution. Miraculously, it escaped this fate, and was returned to Nantes in 1819. It has been housed at the Dobrée Museum, currently undergoing extensive renovation, since 1886.


Fearful that last week's thieves, ignorant of the reliquary's significance, would melt it down for its monetary value, police moved quickly. Using surveillance tapes, they captured two of the four suspects and recovered the reliquary intact. Great is the relief surrounding this quick resolution, for the reliquary is an irreplaceable piece of France's cultural heritage. Anne de Bretagne was not only an astute politician dedicated to preserving the rights of the Breton people, but a generous patron of the arts. She supported writers, including Jean LeMaire de Belges and Jean Marot; musicians like Johannes Ockeghem and Jean Mouton; illuminators like Jean Bourdichon; and tapestry makers, including the weaver of the famous unicorn panels now on display at The Cloisters. Anne's descendants ruled France until 1589. How tragically ironic it would have been if her reliquary, having escaped the melting pot during the republican upheavals of 1789, had succumbed to it now, only to line the pockets of thieves who had little idea of what they had stolen.

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You can read more about the theft at The Telegraph (in English) and Franceinfo and Le Point (in French). Wikipedia and Pinterest have a variety of information and images of Anne de Bretagne.

Operating a Renaissance Printing Press

Renaissance era printing presses required a team of skilled workers for operation. Each press was manned by two journeymen, aided by an apprentice. One journeyman would fit a forme of type set by the compositor into the press bed and ink the forme with sheepskin dabbers. A second journeyman would attach a sheet of damp paper to a frame that folded over the inked forme, slide the tray under the screw, and yank the bar to lower a heavy plate onto the paper, pressing it against the inked type. Once the puller raised the plate, the apprentice would remove the wet page and hang it to dry, allowing the journeymen to begin the process anew. A seasoned team could pull upwards of three thousand pages a day. An average sized printing shop had three presses in operation; a large enterprise, five to six.

Compositors, or typesetters, sat before staggered bins of type filling the formes for each press. As soon as the initial page was drawn from a new forme, a proofreader would read and correct it. Following the proofreader's marks, the compositors would remove and replace erroneous letters before the final draw. The duties of both compositor and proofreader demanded a thorough familiarity with classical languages and literatures. Noted scholars often served a "guest stint" as corrector at a printing house. The contribution of their expertise to the production of texts elevated the shop's reputation.

Much of my novel takes place in a printing shop in Lyon, a center of the French book trade. Jollande Carlet, a spirited young widow who dreams of publishing her own poems, proofreads at the Sign of the Fountain, the small but esteemed establishment owned by her godfather. When Gabriel Orland, a court poet commissioned by the queen to investigate the Fountain's rumored role in the distribution of banned books, arrives to assume Jollande's position, sparks fly. Good thing the paper's damp, because these two spar over far more than spelling.

A Church, Two Palaces, and a Generous Heart

Question: What do excavations at Luxor, Egypt and Athens, Greece; the cathedral of Reims in France; the library of the Imperial University in Tokyo; Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming; the Cloisters museum in New York City; and the historical restoration of colonial Williamsburg have in common with the château de Fontainebleau?

Answer: Like Fontainebleau, they all received crucial funding from American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960).

During his lifetime, Rockefeller, wielder of the Standard Oil Company family fortune, donated approximately $537 million to social, religious and cultural causes. He was particularly struck by the devastation German bombing and wartime neglect had wrought on France's historic sites. In 1924 he offered the French government several million dollars to restore three of them: the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Reims, the palace of Versailles, and the palace of Fontainebleau.

Fire and shelling had damaged and destroyed large portions of the cathedral at Reims, the traditional site of a French king's coronation. According to the cathedral's website, architect Henri Deneux had begun restoration work in 1919, but had difficulty finding the funds, materials, and manpower to support the effort. Rockefeller's generous grants in 1924 and 1927 allowed Deneux to reconstruct the church's nave, roof, and angel bell tower. The cathedral fully reopened to the public in 1938.

The château de Versailles had not been damaged by fighting during the first World War, but by neglect and the redirection of funds. According to a thesis on the uses of Versailles in the twentieth century, the condition of the site was alarming and conservation measures at the palace had come to a standstill, despite the Hall of Mirrors having witnessed the signing of the treaty that ended the war. Rockefeller earmarked seventy-six percent of his donation for Versailles. The money was used to restore the main palace buildings, the grounds, and the two Trianons. Without Rockeller's gift,  the palace as we know it today might not have survived.

The palace of Fontainebleau foundered in similar decrepitude. As at the two other sites, Rockefeller's grant repaired Fontainebleau's roofs, walls, woodwork, ironwork, and masonry--projects which ensured the safety and solidity of the structure itself, as this article in the 1925 Revue des deux mondes emphasizes. All of the windows and doors were replaced and railings reinforced. On the grounds, leaky basins and fountains were repaired, staircases restored, the canal and carp pond renewed. The theater's roof and attics, damaged by a fire in 1887, were rebuilt. Rockefeller's timely gift saved Fontainebleau from a disintegration that worsened daily.

photo by Trizek

In thanks for his dedication to the preservation of her treasured historic sites, France awarded John D. Rockefeller, Jr. its highest prize, the Grande Croix of the Légion d'honneur, in 1936. A celebration was held at the newly renovated palace of Versailles to honor its benefactor. (Watch a short newsreel of the event here.) Francophiles the world over are forever grateful that national boundaries could not  constrain the American philanthropist's foresight and generosity.

"François I: le Rois des rois"

I just watched and want to share with you "François I: le Roi des rois," an episode of France 2's television series Secrets d'histoire. First aired in August 2011, the episode is available for viewing on the internet. It boasts beautiful photography of François I's châteaux, interesting anecdotes about his life and relationships, and critical insights into his reign by leading French historians and writers. Definitely worth watching, even if you don't speak French. You can find it, divided into three parts, on Dailymotion: part 1, part 2, and part 3. I was greatly pleased to see that Monique Chatenet, an historian who has written definitive works on Fontainebleau and the sociological role of architecture in the establishment of François's kingship, contributed to the show.

Check out the official Secrets d'histoire website for other episodes of interest, posted in their entirety.