Château Amboise: Cradle of the National Library of France

Château Amboise in the time of Charlotte of Savoy. 1463

The library of Queen Charlotte of Savoy who lived in Château Amboise until she died there in 1483 was the cradle of what is now the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF).

In 1431 when her father-in-law, Charles VII, took the Château for the Crown in one of the old buildings* was something very remarkable for the time. A library. A very good one.

When his son Louis XI turned the Château Royal d'Amboise into a comfortable home for Charlotte, no-one could have been more delighted than bookworm Charlotte.

Charlotte was a home bird. She enjoyed chess, needlework, music and reading. Despite her meagre allowance, she somehow managed to keep a bookseller on her staff and collected manuscripts, psalters, books of hours, lives of the saints, histories and classics by Cicero and Boccaccio. When she died, Charlotte left very few clothes, jewels or precious objects. Her most treasured possessions were religious relics. And books.

Those in charge of taking the Inventory after her death were puzzled as to why her belongings were stored in travelling chests. Charlotte didn’t travel. One contained bookshelves on wheels. Another contained her books. Why were they not in the Library?

More is known of Charlotte’s death than her life because her grieving son Charles VIII stipulated that every detail be recorded. He had that in common with his father, Louis XI. Both men were fond of their mothers. He ordered a state funeral. Charlotte received full honours which was unprecedented. She was the first queen of France to have an effigy in full regalia representing the Queen in majesty.

It was Charles who conceived the idea of establishing a King’s Library ** when he returned from Italy with the king of Naples library (spoils of war). He added it to that of his mother and to that built up by successive family members The House of Amboise***.

This was the second King’s Library.

The first, housed in the Louvre by Charles V in 1368, included 917 rare manuscripts. When his son Charles VI handed his crown to Henry V most of the contents were shipped to England (spoils of war). The exiled Court of the king’s son Charles VII was so impoverished he sold what remained of the collection to John of Lancaster, Henry V ’s brother. When John of Lancaster died in1435, the contents of the library at his ancestral home, Woburn Abbey in Bedford, was sold off.

Charles successor, his cousin, Louis XII, added the library he inherited from his father, the poet Charles of Orléans and the Sforza library from Milan (spoils of war).

Marguerite of Angoulème

We know the library was still there in 1509 because Marguerite of Angoulème asked for certain books from the ‘library in Amboise’ be sent to her in Normandy.

A bookworm and a blue stocking, she and her brother Francis I was brought up in the Château by her mother, Louise of Savoy, a very well read, very intelligent and highly educated woman.

Louise tracked down the most highly respected scholars open to new ideas to give her children the best education possible. They studied Socrates, Juvenal, Cicero, and Virgil. They read Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante translated into French.

The Crown acquired Brittany through marriage. It now had its eyes on Normandy so when Marguerite was seventeen she was married off to the duke of Alençon who owned most of it. When she moved into Château Alençon she was upset to find it had no library. Life in the dark cold medieval castle was dull, dull, dull after the joy and luxury of Château Amboise. Her mother-in-law was a religious maniac (beatified 1921) her husband was virtually illiterate

Louis XII transferred the library from Château Amboise. He had a special gallery built to house it in Château Blois.

His successor, his second cousin, Francis I, added his own considerable collection to the library including rare manuscripts inherited from his father. He later moved it to his Château at Fontainebleau.

When he died, the library moved to Paris***.

* The location of the library is lost in the mists of time

** The family took its name from the town

*** After the French Revolution, The King’s Library became The National Library, now Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF)

Post by Pamela, photography by Mark.