Renée of France

Renée was born on 25 October 1510 at the Château de Blois, Blois, Touraine and was the second daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany.[3] Anne, who had always fought fiercely to keep Brittany independent of the French crown, tried to will the duchy to Renée, but Louis prevented this, passing the Duchy to her elder sister, Claude.

Her early education was undertaken by her governess, Michelle de Saubonne, Madame de Soubise. Saubonne was a partisan of Anne of Brittany and opposed to Anne's enemy, Louise of Savoy; so, after the death of Renée's parents, Louise and her son, Francis I of France, had Saubonne sacked. Renée never forgot this, and when she married, she took Saubonne with her.[4]

Renee with her sister and nieces

In return for renouncing her claims to the duchy of Brittany, Renée was granted the duchy of Chartres by Francis. She was considered as a possible bride for King Henry VIII.[5]

She was married in April 1528 to Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara, eldest son of Alfonso I d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia. By this marriage, she became known as Renata di Francia.[6] Renée received from Francis I an ample dowry and annuity. Thus the court that she assembled about her in Ferrara, in the 1530s and 1540s,[6] corresponded to the tradition which the cultivation of science and art implicitly required, including scholars like Bernardo Tasso and Fulvio Pellegrini. Her first child, Anna, born in 1531, was followed by Alfonso, in 1533; Lucrezia, 1535; after these, Eleonora and Luigi; whose education she carefully directed.

On 31 October 1534, her father-in-law died and Ercole succeeded to the throne. Hardly had he rendered his oath of allegiance to Pope Paul III when he turned against the French at his own court, many of whom had been brought by Renee. Both their number and influence displeased him; and, besides, he found them too expensive; so he by direct or indirect means secured their dismissal, including the poet Clément Marot. And while the Curia was urging the duke to put away the French that were suspected of heresy against Roman Catholicism, there came to Ferrara the Protestant theologian John Calvin, whose journey to Italy must have fallen in March and April 1536. Calvin passed several weeks at the court of Renée in the summer of 1536.[6] As a result of Renée's tutelage, Calvin's opus magnum circulated at the court; the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in two Latin editions (1536, 1539).[6] This at a time when the persecution of those who adhered or sympathised with the Protestant faith had already begun in the area. Amongst those, it included a chorister by the name of Jehannet, also one Cornillan, of the attendants of the duchess, together with a cleric of Tournay, Bouchefort, who were also taken prisoners and tried. In a "man of small stature," whom the Inquisition likewise seized as under suspicion, although he made his escape, is to be recognized not Calvin, but Clément Marot.

Heresy trial

Renée de France by François Clouet

Renée was not only in correspondence with a very large number of Protestants abroad, with intellectual sympathizers like Vergerio, Camillo Renato, Giulio di Milano, and Francis Dryander, but also that on two or three occasions, about 1550 or later, she partook of the Eucharist in the Protestant manner together with her daughters and fellow believers. Meanwhile, notwithstanding its external splendor, her life had grown sad. The last of her French guests, the daughter and son-in-law of Madame de Soubise of Pons, had been obliged, in 1543, by the constraint imposed by the duke, to leave the court. The Counter-Reformation, which had been operative in Rome since 1542, led to the introduction of a special court of the Inquisition at Ferrara, in 1545, through which, in 1550 and 1551, death sentences were decreed against Protestant sympathizers (Fannio of Faenza and Giorgio of Sicily), and executed by the secular arm.

Finally Duke Ercole lodged accusation against Renée before her nephew King Henry II of France, and through the Inquisitor Oriz, whom the king charged with this errand, Renée was arrested as a heretic, and declared forfeit of all possessions unless she recanted. She resisted steadfastly for some time, until her two daughters were taken away from her, supposedly forever. As a condition for being reunited with her children, she yielded and made confession on September 23, 1554. Subsequently, however, she refused to attend mass, which for her was a form of blasphemy.

French monarchy
Capetian dynasty, House of Valois (Valois-Orléans branch)
Louis XII
Children Claude of France Renée of France

With Ercole II she had:

• Anna d'Este, 16 November 1531 – 1607, married firstly, Francis, Duke of Guise until 1563, married secondly Jacques de Savoie, 2nd Duc de Nemours
• Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, 22 November 1533 – 1597
• Lucrezia Maria d'Este, 16 December 1535 – 1598, married Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.
• Eleonore d'Este, 1537-1581
• Luigi d'Este, 21 December 1538 – 1586, Bishop of Ferrara and Archbishop of Auch

Renee was widowed in 1559. As a result of being on bad terms with her son, Alfonso, she returned to France in 1560 and settled in Montargis, where she then died on 12 June 1574.

• Knecht, R.J. (1996). Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521578851.
• Matarasso, Pauline Maud (2001). Queen's Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance. Ashgate.
• Previté-Orton, C. W. (1978). Cambridge Medieval History, Shorter: Volume 2, The Twelfth Century to the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press.
• Robin, Diana Maury; Larsen, Anne R.; Levin, Carole (2007). Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1851097722.
• Warnicke, R.M. (1989). The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family politics at the court of Henry VIII. Cambridge University Press.