Christina of Denmark
Christina of Denmark (* 1521 in Nyborg or Copenhagen , † 1590 in Alessandria or Tortona ) was a Danish princess who was Duchess of Milan through her first marriage from 1533 to 1535 and Duchess of Lorraine through her second marriage between 1541 and 1559 was.
family
Christina was born in 1521 as the youngest of six children of Christian II of Denmark and Isabellas of Austria . Nyborg and Copenhagen are possible birthplaces. Your exact date of birth is controversial. November 1521 and December 5th of the same year come into consideration for this.
Through her mother, she was a niece of the Habsburg emperor Charles V. This relationship was to have a significant impact on Christina's life, because as a member of the Habsburg dynasty, she was very popular as a potential wife. Her uncle married her twice out of purely political interests in order to preserve his power over France through the resulting connections with European noble families.
Life
childhood
Christina was two years old when her father Christian II was deposed as King of Denmark in 1523. The entire family then fled to Flanders and then resided in Lier . After the death of their mother in 1526, Christian II gave his children to their great-aunt Margaret of Austria , governor of the Habsburg Netherlands . He wanted to try to regain the Danish throne for himself and traveled back to Scandinavia in 1531. Christina was never to see her father again, because he died there after many years of imprisonment without ever having returned to Flanders.
Together with her brother Johann and her sister Dorothea , Christina received a Catholic, comprehensive upbringing. In addition to French, she spoke Italian and German. After Margaret of Austria's death in 1530, Christina's aunt Maria of Austria, as the new governor of the Habsburg Netherlands , took care of the further upbringing of the children. She tried hard to enable the children of her deceased sister to have a carefree childhood. The always cheerful Christina was an ideal hunting companion for her aunt, who was an excellent rider and knew perfectly from a young age how to hunt successfully with a trained falcon.
First marriage
When Christina was just eleven years old, she was married to Francesco II Sforza , the Duke of Milan. Maria, her aunt, with reference to the child's age of the bride tried to dissuade her brother Charles V from his marriage plans for the niece; but in vain. Negotiations with the Duke of Milan had long since begun and he had sent Count Stampa to seal the marriage. The wedding took place in August 1533 by procurationem in Brussels, where the Milanese envoy Maria Massimiliano Stampa acted as the bridegroom's deputy. Half a year after the wedding, Christina traveled to Milan and was welcomed there on May 3, 1534 by an enthusiastic crowd. The ecclesiastical marriage in Milan Cathedral followed the very next day .
Francesco, who was paralyzed on one side, turned out to be a loving and attentive interlocutor who refrained from marrying the child. He introduced her to the most important artists of his time and pampered her with delicious dishes, sumptuous clothes and theater performances that were specially arranged for her. The ailing duke died in October 1535 and widowed Christina at the age of only 13, with no offspring born to the couple. Christina was filled with real sadness, having long since got used to her cultivated husband and life at the Milanese court. Now she returned to Brussels in 1537.
First widowhood
After the death of his third wife Jane Seymour, the English King Henry VIII was looking for a bride again and also considered the young Dowager of Milan for a fourth marriage. The king had received the offer to marry Christina from Emperor Charles V himself, who was looking for allies in his war against France at the time. Heinrich's envoy at the Brussels court described Christina as "very sober, very clever and pious". He also raved about the fact that she was "of appropriate beauty, very tall, of gentle speech and pleasant demeanor". Henry VIII sent his court painter Hans Holbein the Younger to Brussels to have a portrait of Christina made. On March 12, 1538, she sat as a model for Holbein for three hours. The painting is now in the National Gallery of London and shows the 16-year-old still in mourning clothes more than two years after the death of her husband, although the regulations of the time only required six months.
What Christina thought about the remarriage plans for her is not known. Her refusal to marry, often cited in the form of an alleged quote, is still unproven. Alluding to the fact that Henry VIII had his second wife beheaded on false accusations, she is said to have said that she only had one head. If she had two of them, one of them would be at Heinrich's disposal. The fact is, however, that this saying attributed to Christina appears for the first time in publications of the 17th century.
The marriage with the English king did not materialize, because after the peace treaty of Nice , in which Charles V and the French king Francis I had agreed a 10-year armistice, Henry VIII was no longer an ally for the emperor against France of interest.
Duchess of Lorraine
Christina married Francis I , the eldest son of Duke Anton the Good, Duke of Lorraine on July 10, 1541 in Brussels . Although this connection was only made on the basis of political considerations, the couple had a happy marriage with three children:
- Charles III , Duke of Lorraine (February 15, 1543 - May 14, 1608), named after his imperial great-uncle Charles V .; ⚭ Claudia von Valois , daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine of Medici
- Renée (born April 20, 1544; † May 22, 1602), named after her paternal grandmother, Renée de Bourbon-Montpensier (1494–1539); ⚭ Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria
- Dorothée (born August 20, 1545; † June 2, 1621); ⚭ 1) Duke Erich II of Braunschweig-Kalenberg , 2) Marc de Rye de la Palud, Marquis de Varabon and Count de la Roche et Villersexel
Francis I, who had succeeded his father as Duke of Lorraine in 1544, died in 1545; even before the birth of his third child. Christina and her brother-in-law Nicolas de Lorraine-Mercœur took over for their two-year-old son Karl III. the reign in the duchy. In November 1545, however, the Lorraine nobility assembly decided that Christina should henceforth rule alone.
Due to her kinship with the Habsburgs, Christina pursued a friendly policy towards Spain and was thus able to assert herself against the French royal family for a long time. At the same time, however, she tried to maintain Lorraine's neutrality in the struggle between France and the Holy Roman Empire. After the Treaty of Chambord, however, the French King Henry II had Lorraine and the three imperial cities and bishoprics (→ Trois-Évêchés ) Metz, Toul and Verdun occupied on March 13, 1552 , thus causing a renewed flare-up of the armed conflicts between Emperor Charles V. and France. Christina was removed from her office as regent on April 15, 1552 and expelled from the duchy. Their eleven-year-old son Karl III. they were brought to Paris to the French royal court; the reign of Lorraine went to Nicolas de Lorraine-Mercoeur.
Exile in Flanders and return to Lorraine
Christina and her two daughters first fled to their estates in Blâmont and Denœvre and then went to Flanders after a stay in Heidelberg . There she spent six years in exile before returning to France for the first time in May 1558 to see her son Karl again.
After his marriage to Claudia von Valois , the daughter of the French king, Christina of Denmark brokered a peace treaty between Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain , which was concluded on April 3, 1559 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis . The Spanish king even thought of appointing her as the successor to Emanuel Philibert of Savoy as governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, especially since Christina was favored for this post by the majority of Flemish aristocrats, but Philip's choice was ultimately in favor of his half-sister Margarethe von Parma . In November 1559 Christina went back to Nancy to help her son rule his duchy.
The last few years
In 1578/79 Christina retired to Italy and spent her last years at her widow's residence in Tortona , Milan , which she had acquired through her first marriage to Francesco II Sforza. Her exact place of death is not yet known. She died in Tortona or Alessandria in 1590 . Both August 10th and September 10th of the same year are given as the date of death in the literature. She was buried next to her second husband in the crypt of the ducal chapel in the Église des Cordeliers in Nancy.
Claims to the throne
During his imprisonment in 1549, Christina's father officially dropped the claims to the Danish throne for himself and his descendants and thus implicitly renounced the throne of Norway and Sweden. Christina never recognized her father's renunciation. After Christian II of Denmark died in 1559 and her older sister Dorothea did not claim the throne, she claimed the Danish throne for herself. In the period from 1563 to 1569 Christina signed official documents with the addition "Queen of Denmark", although she never tried to enforce this claim militarily.
literature
- Julia Cartwright: Christina of Denmark. Duchess of Milan and Lorraine 1522-1590 . Reprint of the 1913 edition. AMS Press, New York 1973 ( digitized version of the 1913 edition ).
- Hilarion de Coste: Christine ou Chrestienne de Dannemarc, duchesse de Lorraine he de Milan . In: Les Eloges et les vies des reynes, des princesses, et des dames illustres en pieté, en Courage & en Doctrine, qui ont fleury de nostre temps, & du temps de nos Peres . Volume 1, 2nd edition. Sébastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, Paris 1647, pages 406-417 ( online ).
- Carole Levin: Extraordinary women of the Medieval and Renaissance world. A biographical dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport 2000, ISBN 0-313-30659-1 , pages 37-39.
- Maike Vogt-Lüerssen : Women in the Renaissance. 30 individual fates . 1st edition. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-6567-0 , pages 254-269.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Sigrid-Maria Großering : Karl V ruler between the ages and his European family . Amalthea Signum, Vienna 2008, ISBN 3-85002-927-1 .
- ↑ a b M. Vogt-Lüerssen: Women in the Renaissance , page 260.
- ^ Retha M. Warnicke: The Marrying of Anne of Cleves . University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-521-77037-8 , page 47.
- ^ René Wiener: Recueil de documents sur l'histoire de Lorraine . Nancy 1891, p. 156.
- ^ H. de Coste: Les Eloges et les vies des reynes ... , page 414.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Christina of Denmark |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Christina of Milan; Christina of Lorraine |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, Princess of Denmark |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 1521 or December 5, 1521 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nyborg or Copenhagen |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1590 |
| Place of death | Alessandria or Tortona |