Free Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe by Stuart Carroll Page A

displays Claude’s firmness in ordering a summary execution after the battle. But the context of Wassy was very different from that at Saverne. We should not presume that the son was impersonating the father. As we have seen, François de Guise did not evince the same moral certitude as his father, or justify himself in the same manner, although many ultra-Catholics wished him to do so, and he would later go out of his way to explain the massacre away and even apologize for it.
    We should be wary of oversimplifying the religious sentiments of the Guise and of accepting ultra-Catholicism as an overriding imperative of family strategy. Marie de Guise, for example, was educated at Pont-à-Mousson under the tutelage of Philippa of Guelders and immersed in the ascetic life of a Poor Clare: cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Despite her experience there and the formidable influence that her grandmother exercised over her family, throughout her regency in Scotland she would display extraordinary tolerance towards her Protestant subjects. In France, there were many powerful vested interests which opposed not only heresy but also reform from within the Catholic Church, most notably the Sorbonne, still considered then to be the pre-eminent university in Europe. Against them were ranged those associated with the new learning, who wished to base worship and liturgy more closely on the Gospels, which had been translated into French from the Greek in the 1520s. Like many families, the Guise were divided on these issues. It would be wrong to assume that they were united as representatives of a backward-looking aesthetic resistant to change. Philippa had entrusted the education of her sons for eleven years to a theologian, Nicolas le Clerc, a man so conservative that he would be lampooned by Rabelais as one of the ignorant Sorbonagres and imprisoned in 1533 by the king for attacking his sister, the leading supporter of the evangelical movement.
    But the career of Philippa’s third son, Jean, shows that an ultra-orthodox upbringing did not necessarily forge ultra-orthodox minds.
    Born in Bar in 1498, Jean was the founder of the Guise ecclesiastical empire and, as such, no less important in the founding of the family fortune than his elder brother. He was an utterly different personality from the dour Claude. He was much happier at court, perhaps because he had the natural charm of a diplomat, but also because he had an eye for the ladies. It was said that whenever a new girl or lady arrived at court he would inspect them and offer ‘to break them in’. 20 There was a playful side to this behaviour too. When the Duchess of Savoy haughtily offered her hand for him to kiss, instead of presenting her cheek, he grabbed her and planted one on her lips.
    But even a commentator favourable to the Guise could not conceal the fact that ‘there was hardly a girl or lady resident at court or recently arrived who had not been debauched or ensnared by the money and largesse of the cardinal’. Jean’s penchant for dressing up as a woman, though common in the macho world of the Renaissance court, was hardly becoming of a prince of the Church and is indicative of how far life in Francis’s entourage differed from that at Joinville.
    He was also handy at tennis, falconry, and lucky at the gaming table, winning £46 12s 6d from Henry VIII at a summit in Boulogne in 1532. 21 This sort of behaviour made him a boon companion of Francis I.
    Apart from feeling at home in the bar-room atmosphere of court, Jean was also known for his generosity to the poor. Every morning without fail his valet filled a bag with several hundred crowns, which would be dispersed to the poor that day. Jean could easily afford such ostentatious liberality. He was the richest prelate in France. At the age of only 3, he had been named coadjutor of the bishopric of Metz and by 20 he was a cardinal. Even by the standards of his time, his accumulation of benefices was astonishing,