Prince of the Renaissance: The Life of Francois I

Biographies of this great French king are few and far between. To the Anglo-Saxon mind he's overshadowed in the Renaissance by his contemporary in England, Henry VIII, and among French Kings he doesn't cut quite the figure of Louis XIV. But historically, Francis I, was as important as either of them. As a contemporary friend and rival of Henry VIII, Charles V of Austria (the Holy Roman Empire) and Spain, and Suleiman the Magnificent of Turkey, as well as the Medici Pope Leo X, he brought the Renaissance to continental Europe, and created the circumstances which allowed it to become something wholly continental and not simply Byzantine. It is he who is responsible for some of the world's most magnificent architecture, the Chateaux of the Loire river, and he was patron to some of the greatest artists of the era, including Leonardo Da Vinci, and Benvenuto Cellini, as well as to the great poet Clement Marot. Seward gives interesting insight into Francis 1's relationship with the women in his life, his controlling mother, Louise of Savoy, his devoted sister Marguerite of Navarre, his wives, Queen Claude of France, and Eleanor of Austria (sister of Charles V of Spain), his mistress Madame D'Estampes, and his daughter-in-law, Catherine De Medici. Seward also shows in specific detail Francis' military strengths and weaknesses, his famous victory at Marignano, and more decisive failure at Pavia which finally lost the French control over the duchy of Milan. He also provides a good look at how Francis contributed to and was affected by the controversies surrounding the Reformation in a time when nothing, religiously above all, was certain. Surprisingly, Calvin even dedicated some works to Francis. What emerges is the portrait of a quintessentially French king who not only laid the groundwork for the absolute political power of the monarchy in France, but for many ideals of culture, literature, education and diplomacy which survive in Occidental Civilization to this day.