#Brantôme

[grahamfiles]

The Abbey of Brantôme 2024

[francepittoresque]

PATRIMOINE | Château de Bourdeilles : oeuvre Renaissance d’une femme architecte ➽ https://bit.ly/3Ljw5xe En Périgord vert, Jacquette de Montbron, belle-soeur du célèbre Brantôme et femme de caractère, est l’une des rarissimes architecte de la Renaissance : à côté du vieux château féodal de Bourdeilles, qui surplombe de plus de dix mètres la Dronne, au coeur de la Dordogne, elle a dessiné son château

[viajero2000]

Perigord Verde (Dordogne)

Brantôme

[fuad-ramses-73]

Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme : Vies des dames galantes (1935)

art : Edmond Malassis

[isadomna]

The English ambassador, Francis Bryan, sent a detailed description of the relations between Francis and Eleanor to Henry VIII. They were not a happy couple because “being both in one house, they lie not together once in four nights” and the French King “speaks very seldom unto her openly”. He also spent hours on end in his mother’s chambers and rushed to his mistress whenever he pleased. Two years later the King’s sister told the Duke of Norfolk that no man could be less satisfied with his wife than her brother, who failed to have sexual relations with his wife for seven months. When the stunned duke asked why, Margaret replied that it was “because he does not find her pleasing to his appetite”. Eleanor, Margaret continued unabashed, “is very hot in bed and desired to be too much embraced”, causing Francis to shun her company. Perhaps one of the reasons for Francis’s distaste was Eleanor’s appearance. Brantôme wrote that he heard rumours that “when she was dressed, she seemed a very beautiful princess of rich and beautiful height, but when she was undressed, the height of her body appeared so long one would have believed that she was a giant, but so short were her legs and thighs, she made one think of a dwarf”. Whatever she looked like, the new Queen of France found life at court difficult. Her relationship with Francis turned sour, she had to compete for his affection with his mother and mistress and even his erudite sister, who seemed kind and approachable, favoured Anne de Pisseleu, with whom she shared similar interests in literature and religion. Margaret, it seemed, preferred the company of her mother and Francis’s mistress to that of Eleanor’s.

Sylvia Barbara Soberton, Golden Age Ladies: Women Who Shaped the Courts of Henry VIII and Francis I

[scotianostra]

24th April 1558 saw Mary Queen of Scots marry the French Dauphin, François de Valois, at Notre Dame in Paris.

In 1548 five-year-old Mary was sent to her grandmother Antoinette of Guise in France, where her Scottish entourage was considered appallingly barbarous and swiftly got rid of, she was then brought up as a Catholic Frenchwoman.

French became her first language, she always called herself Marie Stuart and she loved dancing and hunting. She grew up delightfully charming, graceful and attractive, the French fell in love with her and Henry II of France resolved to marry her to his son and heir, the sickly dauphin Francis.

A marriage treaty was signed with the Scots, which provided that Scotland and France should eventually be united under Mary and Francis as one kingdom. There were also secret agreements, which the youthful and inexperienced Mary signed, that would have made Scotland a mere adjunct of France.

Mary was fifteen and Francis fourteen when they were married on this day in 1558, with spectacular pageantry and magnificence in the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, by the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, in the presence of Henry II, Queen Catherine de’ Medici, the princes and princesses of the blood and a glittering throng of cardinals and nobles.

The Duke of Guise was master of ceremonies. Mary in a white dress with a long train borne by two young girls, a diamond necklace and a golden coronet studded with jewels, was described by the courtier Pierre de Brantôme as ‘"a hundred times more beautiful than a goddess of heaven … her person alone was worth a kingdom.’ The wedding was followed by a procession past excited crowds in the Paris streets to a grand banquet in the Palais de Justice with dancing far into the night.

Mary became Queen of France when Henry II died the following year, but Francis died prematurely in 1560. Whether the marriage was ever consummated is uncertain. Mary’s mother also died in 1560 and it suited the French to send her back to Scotland and claim that she was the rightful queen of England as well.

She would eventually meet political and romantic disaster in Scotland, enduring years of imprisonment in England where, too dangerous a threat to Elizabeth’s throne, Mary was executed in 1587, at the age of forty-six.

[mich-bois]

FLORAISON.

Brantôme.

[thetudorslovers]

"Anne was particularly admired for her exquisite taste and the elegance of her dress, earning her the praise of Pierre de Brantôme, a seasoned courtier, who noted that all the fashionable ladies at court tried to emulate her style, but that she possessed a ‘gracefulness that rivalled Venus’. She was, he concluded, ‘the fairest and most bewitching of all the lovely dames of the French court.’ By the time that Anne returned to England in 1522, she had blossomed into an attractive young woman. Her slim, petite stature gave her an appealing fragility, and she had luscious dark brown hair, which she grew very long. Her most striking features, though, were her eyes, which were exceptionally dark and seductive, ‘inviting conversation."

[anneboleynqueen]

Anne was particularly admired for her exquisite taste and the elegance of her dress, earning her the praise of Pierre de Brantôme, a seasoned courtier, who noted that all the fashionable ladies at court tried to emulate her style, but that she possessed a 'gracefulness that rivalled Venus'. She was, he concluded, 'the fairest and most bewitching of all the lovely dames of the French court'.

Tracy Borman in The Private Lives of the Tudors, quoting from Strickland, A., Lives of the Queens of England (London, 1851), Vol. II, p.572

[mothmiso]

Brantôme (2) (3) by ROCHET ERIC

[grahamfiles]

Brantôme, France 2024

[g4rden0f3den]

'Brantôme en Périgord'

Bridge in Brantome, France

[ladycordeliaa]

Brantôme France

by Morio60 on flickr

[viajero2000]

La Dordoña/Dordogne.               El  Perigord Verde

Yo conozco Brantôme. Una magnífica y antigua Abadía, rodeada de canales. 

[fuad-ramses-73]

Pierre de Bourdeille Brantôme : Vies des dames galantes (1935)

art : Edmond Malassis

[isadomna]

The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of August 1572 is often viewed as the darkest hour of early modern France. The slaughter of thousands of Huguenots in Paris, and then thousands more in Rouen and other parts of France, undermined Charles IX’s and Catherine’s reputations both inside and outside the kingdom. Meanwhile, Elisabeth’s image remained untarnished. Brantôme related that ‘she knew nothing, nor even had she seen it coming, went to bed as usual, and woke up in the morning and was told of what had happened’, whereupon her first reaction was to ask if her husband knew about the massacre. Charles’s councillors told her that he had ordered it, and she screamed, ‘My God, I beg you and require of you that you forgive him.’ The notion that she was too good for Charles persisted for centuries. Du Bern de Boislandry explained that the king ‘appreciated in his wife all the merits he did not possess himself’ and concealed his plans for the massacre from her. He claimed that Elisabeth fell to ‘her knees, bursting into tears, and implored divine mercy to forgive the murderer whom she loved’

Estelle Paranque, Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe