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The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History pp 151–169Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Sterility and Sovereignty: The Succession Crisis of the Late Valois Monarchy

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Abstract

Bodily metaphors of disease and mutilation were used extensively during the French religious wars of the late sixteenth century, while the physical reality of successive monarchs’ failure to produce legitimate heirs seemed to confirm the sterility of the times. This chapter explores debates on the infertility of the last Valois monarchs of France and the lengths to which they and their wives were prepared to go to deflect criticism and to resolve the issue. It will discuss how their inability to provide legitimate heirs at a time of civil strife not only caused a succession crisis, but also undermined their authority and the stability of the kingdom. Sterility was all too easily interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure and punishment for individual and collective sin. Thus, it ultimately contributed to the justification for rebellion and regicide.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Penny Roberts, ‘The Kingdom’s Two Bodies? Corporeal Rhetoric and Royal Authority during the Religious Wars’, French History, 21 (2007), p. 149 and n. 10.

  2. 2.

    Eudore Soulié and Edouard de Barthélemy (eds), Journal de Jean Héroard sur l’enfance et la jeunesse de Louis XIII (1601–1628), 2 vols (Paris, 1868).

  3. 3.

    Susan Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work in Early Modern France (Manchester, 2004), pp. 188–9.

  4. 4.

    Claude’s sister Renée was married to the Duke of Ferrara, and Francis I’s sister Marguerite to the King of Navarre. Coincidentally, both would be key supporters of the French Protestant movement.

  5. 5.

    Mark Hansen, The Royal Facts of Life: Biology and Politics in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London, 1980), p. 108; Robert Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (London and New York, 1998), p. 30; on Diane de Poitier’s role, see Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work, pp. 192–3.

  6. 6.

    In a typically colourful and judgemental statement, in his study of the biological shortcomings of the monarchs of the sixteenth century, Mark Hansen describes the Valois kings as ‘an abomination’ and claims that ‘their undeniable strangeness served to confirm Catherine’s unnatural road to maternity’: Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, pp. 85, 109.

  7. 7.

    Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, p. 112.

  8. 8.

    Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, p. 278.

  9. 9.

    Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, p. 2.

  10. 10.

    Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, pp. 115–16, also supports the view that Charles IX was mentally unstable, describing him, rather sensationally, as ‘deranged’ and ‘truly warped’.

  11. 11.

    Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, pp. 122–3, 203.

  12. 12.

    Robert Knecht, Hero or Tyrant? Henry III, King of France, 1574–89 (Farnham, 2014), pp. 137–9.

  13. 13.

    For this and the following quotation, see Guilielmus Baum and Eduardus Cunitz (eds.), Histoire Ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, reprint of 3-volume Paris edn of 1883–89 (Nieuwkoop, 1974), vol. 1, p. 279.

  14. 14.

    Legend claimed that the seventeenth-century serial killer Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Hungary bathed in her young victims’ blood so as to retain her own youth.

  15. 15.

    Cathy McClive, ‘The Hidden Truths of the Belly: The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe’, Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002).

  16. 16.

    For a discussion of infant and child mortality rates in early modern Europe, see Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 23–6.

  17. 17.

    Valerie Worth-Stylianou (ed.), Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) [François Rousset, Jean Liebault, Jacques Guillemeau, Jacques Duval and Louis de Serres] (Toronto, 2013), pp. xxiii and 296 (from de Serres).

  18. 18.

    Lianne McTavish, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 31–2; Worth-Stylianou (ed.), Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France.

  19. 19.

    Jean Liebault, Trois Livres appartenant aux infirmitez et maladies des femmes (Paris, 1582) and Louis de Serres, Discours de la Nature, causes, signes, & curation des empeschemens de la conception, & de la Sterilité des femmes (Lyon, 1625), both discussed in Worth-Stylianou (ed.), Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France.

  20. 20.

    de Serres, Discours de la Nature, in Worth-Stylianou (ed.), Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France, pp. 324–5, 304.

  21. 21.

    Katherine Crawford, The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance (Cambridge, 2010), p. 184, discusses the contrast between medical texts, which promoted the idea that a penis neither too small nor too large was best for procreation, and contemporary poetry which advocated, in Crawford’s phrase, ‘bigger is better’.

  22. 22.

    Worth-Stylianou (ed.), Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France, p. 347.

  23. 23.

    Joseph-François Malgaigne (ed.), Ambroise Paré, Oeuvres Complètes (Geneva, 1970), vol. 2, 18th bk, De la generation de l’homme, recueilli des anciens et modernes, pp. 633–741.

  24. 24.

    Paré, Oeuvres Complètes, chapters 1–2, 4–5, pp. 633–44.

  25. 25.

    Paré, Oeuvres Complètes,chapter 37, pp. 713–16.

  26. 26.

    Paré, Oeuvres Complètes, chapter 44, ‘De la sterilité ou fecondité des femmes’, pp. 733–5.

  27. 27.

    Louise Bourgeois, Observations diverses sur la sterilité perte de fruict foecondité accouchements et Maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz, in Wendy Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois (Exeter, 1996), pp. 31, 37–9, 41–5.

  28. 28.

    Bourgeois, Observations diverses. See chapter 1, ‘Pourquoy plusieurs femmes ne peuvent porter enfans’, pp. 1–4. Rhubarb was generally seen as medicinally beneficial at this time, as mentioned in the journal of Pierre de L’Estoile: see Madeleine Lazard and Gilbert Schrenck (eds), Pierre de L’Estoile, Registre-Journal du règne de Henri III, 6 vols (Geneva, 1992–2003) [hereafter L’Estoile, Registre-Journal], vol. 3, pp. 102–3 (June 1580).

  29. 29.

    Bourgeois, Observations diverses, chapter 1, pp. 5–10, and chapters 2 and 3.

  30. 30.

    McClive, ‘Hidden Truths of the Belly’.

  31. 31.

    Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work, p. 215.

  32. 32.

    For a fuller discussion of this, see Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work, pp. 214–29; Susan Broomhall, ‘“Women’s Little Secrets”: Defining the Boundaries of Reproduction in Sixteenth-Century France’, Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002); compare to the discussion of this and later royal correspondence on this topic in Cathy McClive, Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France (Farnham, 2015), pp. 116–20, and Brian Sandberg, ‘“All the Many and Varied Remedies and Secrets”: Sexual Practices and Reproductive Knowledge in the Renaissance’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5 (2010).

  33. 33.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, p. 22.

  34. 34.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, pp. 200–1; and also on Henry III’s protracted efforts in this regard, pp. 227–8.

  35. 35.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, pp. 46–8. Hansen, Royal Facts of Life, p. 120, also comments on Henry’s ‘additional twist of perversion’.

  36. 36.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, pp. 69–70, 102–6.

  37. 37.

    Knecht, Hero or Tyrant?, pp. 120–2; David Potter, ‘Kingship in the Wars of Religion: The Reputation of Henri III of France’, European History Quarterly, 25 (1995), p. 493.

  38. 38.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, p. 218; L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 2, p. 202.

  39. 39.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, pp. 228, 212.

  40. 40.

    On its role, see Brendan Dooley (ed.), A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2014).

  41. 41.

    Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici, pp. 220–1.

  42. 42.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, pp. 14–15.

  43. 43.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, pp. 109–10 and notes 83 and 91.

  44. 44.

    L’ Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, p. 114.

  45. 45.

    L’ Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 3, p. 135 and n. 1; vol. 4, p. 19 (April 1582). See also Hector de La Ferrière and Baguenault de Puchesse (eds), Lettres de Catherine des Médicis, 10 vols (Paris, 1880–1943) [hereafter LCM], vol. 7, p. 341, n. 1.

  46. 46.

    L’ Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 4, pp. 12, 19, 26.

  47. 47.

    LCM, vol. 8, p. 55 and n. 63; see also her letters of 25 June 1583, p. 108, 9 September 1583, p. 142, and 19 October 1584, p. 224, making reference to how well the royal couple looked, which made her hopeful of a future pregnancy.

  48. 48.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 4, pp. 47–8.

  49. 49.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 4, pp. 65, 88 and n. 50.

  50. 50.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 4, p. 93 and n. 58.

  51. 51.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 4, pp. 134–5.

  52. 52.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 5, p. 182.

  53. 53.

    LCM, vol. 8, p. 228.

  54. 54.

    LCM, vol. 9, 4 December 1586, p. 108.

  55. 55.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, p. 197.

  56. 56.

    Laurent Bourquin (ed.), Mémoires de Claude Haton, 4 vols (Paris, 2001–07), vol. 4, pp. 444–5.

  57. 57.

    Mémoires de Claude Haton, vol. 4, pp. 476–8.

  58. 58.

    Mémoires de Claude Haton, vol. 4, pp. 476–8.

  59. 59.

    L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, vol. 2, pp. 206–7 (November 1575), on dogs; vol. 3, pp. 117–18 (November 1580), on nuns; vol. 4, pp. 45–6 (1582), on mignons.

  60. 60.

    See especially Keith Cameron, Henry III: A Maligned or Malignant King? (Exeter, 1978).

  61. 61.

    Kathleen Long, Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe (London, 2006), pp. 189–213; Michael Wintroub, ‘Words, Deeds and a Womanly King’, French Historical Studies, 28 (2005); Roberts, ‘The Kingdom’s Two Bodies?’, pp. 150, 153.

  62. 62.

    On Henry IV’s public display of masculinity, see Katherine Crawford, ‘The Politics of Promiscuity: Masculinity and Heroic Representation at the Court of Henry IV’, French Historical Studies, 26 (2003).

  63. 63.

    Crawford, Sexual Culture, p. 248.

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  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Penny Roberts

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  1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gayle Davis

  2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

    Tracey Loughran

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Roberts, P. (2017). Sterility and Sovereignty: The Succession Crisis of the Late Valois Monarchy. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_9

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