Claude of France

Claude
Duchess of Brittany
Reign	9 January 1514 – 20 July 1524
Predecessor	Anne
Successor	Francis III
Queen consort of France
Tenure	1 January 1515 – 20 July 1524
Coronation	10 May 1517
Born	(1499-10-13)13 October 1499 Romorantin-Lanthenay
Died	20 July 1524(1524-07-20) (aged 24) Château de Blois
Burial	Saint Denis Basilica
Spouse	Francis I of France
Issue among others...	Francis III, Duke of Brittany Henry II of France Madeleine, Queen of Scots Charles, Duke of Orléans Margaret, Duchess of Savoy
House	House of Valois
Father	Louis XII of France
Mother	Anne, Duchess of Brittany
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Claude of France (13 October 1499 – 20 July 1524), was a Duchess regnant of Brittany and Countess of Montfort-l'Amaury (since 1514) and Queen consort of France (since 1515), alongside with the titles of Countess of Soissons, Blois, Étampes, and Duchess consort of Milan through her marriage.

Life

Youth

Claude was born on 13 October 1499 in Romorantin-Lanthenay as the eldest daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany. She was named after Claudius of Besançon, a saint her mother had invoked during a pilgrimage so she could give birth to a living child: during her two marriages, Queen Anne had at least fourteen pregnancies, of whom, only two children survive adulthood: Claude and her youngest sister Renée, born in 1510.

Betrothals and Marriage

Because her mother had no surviving sons, Claude became heiress to the Duchy of Brittany. The crown of France, however, could pass only to and through male heirs, according to Salic Law. Eager to keep Brittany separated from the French crown, Queen Anne counted with help of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, promoted a solution for this problem. The Cardinal essentially began a dispute with the Pierre de Rohan-Gié, the Marshal of Gié, who fervently supported the idea of a between the princess and the Duke of Valois, the heir of the French throne after Louis XII, and thus kept Brittany united to France.

On 10 August 1501 at Lyon was signed the marriage contract between Claude and the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V by François de Busleyden, Archbshop of Besançon, William de Croÿ, Nicolas de Rutter and Pierre Lesseman, all ambassadors of Duke Philip of Burgundy, Charles' father. As a part of the contract, was promised the inheritance of Brittany to the young prince, already the next in line to thrones of Castile and Aragon, Austria and the Burgundian Estates. In addition, the first Treaty of Blois, signed in 1504, gave Claude an considerable dowry in the -likely- case of Louis XII's death without male heirs: besides Brittany, Claude also received the Duchies of Milan and Burgundy, the Counties of Blois and Asti and the territory of the Republic of Genoa, then occupied by France. Thus, all the causes of the future rivalry between Charles V and Francis I have been decided even before the succession of the two princes.

In 1505, Louis XII, very sick, fearing for his life and not wishing to threatened the reign of his only heir, cancelled the engagement in the Estates Generals of Tours, in favor of the young Duke of Valois, the future Francis I. Indeed, previously Louise of Savoy obtained from the king a secret promise that Claude could married to her son. Anne of Brittany, furious to see the triumph of Marshal of Gié, exerted all her influence to obtain his conviction for treason before the Parliament of Paris.

On 9 January 1514, when her mother died, Claude became Duchess of Brittany; and four months later, on 18 May, she married her cousin Francis at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. With this union, was secured that Brittany would remain united to the French crown, only if the third marriage of Louis XII with Mary of England (celebrated on 9 October 1514) would produced the long-waited heir. However, the union was short-lived and childless: Louis XII died less than three months later, on 1 January 1515, reputedly worn out by his exertions in the bedchamber. Because Louis XII died without surviving sons, Francis I became in the new King and Claude in Queen consort, being the second time in history that the Duchess of Brittany became Queen of France.

Queen of France

Queen Claude surrounded by her daughters (Charlotte, Madeleine and Marguerite), her sister Renée (or her deceased older daughter Louise) and her husband's second wife Eleanor of Austria, in the Livre d'heures de Catherine de Medicis, 1550. Currently in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Claude, the pawn of so much dynastic maneuvering, was short in stature and afflicted with scoliosis, which gave her a hunched back. She was eclipsed at court by her mother-in-law, Louise of Savoy, and her sister-in-law, the literary Navarrese queen Margaret of Angoulême. She never ruled over Brittany; in 1515 she gave the goverment of her domains to her husband in perpetuity. Unlike her younger sister Renée, she seems to have never showed any interest in her maternal inheritance and had any disposition to politcs, as she preferred to devote himself to religion under the influence, according to some sources of Christopher Numar of Forli, who was the confessor of her mother-in-law. Gabriel Miron repeated his functions under Anne of Brittany and remained as Chancellor of Queen Claude and first doctor; he wrote a book entitled de Regimine infantium tractatus tres.

After Francis became King in 1515, Anne Boleyn stayed as a member of Claude's household. It's assumed that Anne served as Claude's translator whenever there were English visitors, such as in 1520, at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Anne Boleyn returned to England in late 1521, where she eventually became Queen of England as the second wife of Henry VIII. Diane de Poitiers, another of Claude's ladies, was a principal inspiration of the School of Fontainebleau of the French Renaissance, and became the lifelong mistress of Claude's son, Henry II.

Claude was crowned Queen of France at St. Denis Basilica on 10 May 1517 by Cardinal Philippe de Luxembourg (also known as Cardinal du Mans), who "anointed her in the breast and forehead". She spent almost all her marriage in an endless round of annual pregnancies. Her husband had many mistresses, but was usually relatively discreet. Claude imposed a strict moral code on her own household, which only a few chose to flout.

About Claude, the historian Brantôme wrote:

I must to speak about madame Claude of France, who was very good and very charitable, and very sweet to everyone and never showed displeasure to anybody in her court or of her domains. She was deeply loved by the King Louis and the Queen Anne, her father and mother, and she was always a good daughter to them; after the King took the peaceful Duke of Milan, he made ​​her declare and proclaim in the Parliament of Paris, the Duchess of the two most beautiful Duchies of Christendom, which could be Milan and Brittany, one from the father and the other from the mother. What heiress! if you please. Both Duchies joined in all good deed to our beautiful kingdom.

Issue

Claude and Francis I had seven children, two of whom lived past the age of thirty:

• Louise (19 August 1515 – 21 September 1517) - died young, engaged to Charles I of Spain almost from birth until death.
• Charlotte (23 October 1516 – 8 September 1524) - died young, engaged to Charles I of Spain from 1518 until death.
• Francis (28 February 1518 – 10 August 1536), who succeeded Claude as Duke of Brittany, but died unmarried and childless.
• Henry (31 March 1519 – 10 July 1559), who succeeded Francis I as King of France and married Catherine de' Medici, by whom he had issue.
• Madeleine (10 August 1520 – 2 July 1537), who married James V of Scotland and had no issue.
• Charles (22 January 1522 – 9 September 1545), who died unmarried and childless.
• Margaret (5 June 1523 – 14 September 1574), who married Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, in 1559 and had issue.

Death and later events

Coat of arms of Queen Claude

Claude died in 1524, when she was twenty-four. She was initially succeeded as ruler of Brittany by her eldest son, the Dauphin Francis, who became Duke Francis III, with Claude's widower King Francis I as guardian. After the Dauphin's death in 1536, Claude's second son, Henry, Duke of Orleans, became Dauphin and Duke of Brittany. He later became King of France as Henry II.

Claude's widowed husband himself remarried several years after Claude's death, to Eleanor of Austria, the sister of Emperor Charles V. The atmosphere at court became considerably more debauched, and there were rumours that King Francis's death in 1547 was due to syphilis.

The prayer book of Claude of France, is a tiny, jewel-like manuscript that was made for Claude around 1517, the year she was crowned queen of France. Her coat of arms appears on three different folios. The book is richly illustrated: the borders of each leaf are painted, front and back, with 132 scenes from the lives of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and numerous saints. The manuscript and a companion Book of Hours also made for the queen (in a Paris private collection) were illuminated by an artist who was given the nickname Master of Claude de France after these two volumes. It was donated to The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City in 2008 by the widow of Alexandre Paul Rosenberg in memory of her husband.

"Reine Claude" plum

Claude is remembered in a classic small plum, the size of a walnut, pale green with a glaucous bloom. It is still called "Reine Claude" (literally, "Queen Claude") in France and is known in England as a "greengage".

Depictions in Popular Culture

Queen Claude of France is played by Gabriella Wright in season one of the Showtime series The Tudors.
"Kind Queen Claude" is a major character in Robin Maxwell's Mademoiselle Boleyn.

Ancestry

Family of Claude of France

16. Charles V of France 8. Louis I, Duke of Orléans (=27) 17. Joanna of Bourbon 4. Charles, Duke of Orléans 18. Gian Galeazzo Visconti 9. Valentina Visconti, Countess of Vertus (28) 19. Isabella, Countess of Vertus 2. Louis XII of France 20. Adolph III, Count of Mark 10. Adolph I, Duke of Cleves 21. Margaret of Jülich 5. Maria of Cleves 22. John II, Duke of Burgundy 11. Marie of Burgundy 23. Margaret of Bavaria 1. Claude of France 24. John V, Duke of Brittany 12. Richard, Count of Étampes 25. Joan of Navarre 6. Francis II, Duke of Brittany 26. Louis I, Duke of Orléans (=8) 13. Margaret, Countess of Vertus 27. Valentina Visconti, Countess of Vertus (=9) 3. Anne of Brittany 28. John I, Count of Foix 14. Gaston IV, Count of Foix 29. Jeanne of Albret 7. Margaret of Foix 30. John II of Aragon 15. Eleanor of Navarre 31. Blanche I of Navarre