The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King by HRH Princess Michael of Kent

most astonishing treasure of wit, wisdom, common sense and satire that the world has ever seen.”
    Rabelais also wrote erotic verse, very much to the taste of François I and his licentious court. Some of the stories told about the king’s womanizingseem hard to believe. Contemporary sources claim that François had an incestuous relationship with his sister, Marguerite, and enjoyed a mistress from the age of ten. If he was capable of such precocity, one must remember that his mother, Louise de Savoie, married at the age of eleven and no one thought that too young. François’ love of women was legendary; even Queen Claude’s stepmother, Mary Tudor, had complained of his forced attentions. Nonetheless, the French court was the envy of all others in Europe and was viewed as the most scintillating on earth.
     
     
     
     
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    1 . In winter, the ermine has a white pelt, its tail ending in a black tip; its fur was the most prized in Europe.
    2 . Official mistress.
    3 . This château is now a museum about twenty miles northwest of Paris.
    4 . In a journal entry by Antonio de’ Beatis, dated October 10, 1517, he states that Leonardo was overcome by a certain paralysis of his right hand and “one can no longer expect fine things of him.… Messer Leonardo can no longer paint with the sweetness of style that he used to have, and he can only make drawings and teach others.” As the Cardinal Luigi of Aragon’s secretary, it is likely that Beatis was an accurate observer. The famous painting by Ingres of Leonardo’s death in the arms of François is apocryphal.
    5 . Three-pronged forks, known at the Italian courts, only came into use at the French court with the reign of Henri III, grandson of François I.
    6 . François never went farther south than Pavia or farther east than Bologna.
    7 . Il Rosso suffered at the hands of the imperial forces during the Sack of Rome, and a later fall from a roof affected his head and probably his brain. After a quarrel with a friend, he fatally poisoned himself.
    8 . Until that time, mirrors in France were made of polished metal.
    9 . Cellini’s saltcellar, almost unanimously considered the most beautiful small work of all Renaissance art, was stolen in 2003 from the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna.
    10 . Now in the Louvre. A replica has replaced the original at Anet.
    11 . The Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, commonly referred to as the Sorbonne.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Treachery and Treason
    A fter his triumph at Marignano, François I soon learned that winning northern Italy was one thing, but holding on to it was quite another. The French king needed Pope Leo X’s cooperation on the peninsula as there was a real danger of the Habsburg forces joining with Henry VIII and attacking France. The king also had his eye on the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and for that Pope Leo X’s endorsement of the imperial crown was essential. There were other territorial gains that an alliance with the pope would help facilitate. As the feudal suzerain of the Kingdom of Naples, the crown was in his gift, and as the senior Medici, the duchy of Florence was also his to bestow.
    On December 8, 1515, pope and king met in Bologna and signed a concordat of friendship. François I ensured the Vatican’s authority over the Catholic Church in France, and Leo X promised to support François’ claims to the Kingdom of Naples. The usual manner of cementing such an arrangement was a wedding. In 1518, the king of France offered the hand of his cousin Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergneto the pope’s nephew, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino and head of the Florentine republic. 1
    For the Medici to marry into the royal house of France was a gigantic elevation, and the family was suitably awed. The origin of the Medicis is unclear. According to legend, they began their rise with a certain Alverado, a knight of Charlemagne. Other sources claim the family’s origins rest with two unidentified