Francis’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, was equally enthusiastic and talented and gathered about her a notable group of writers. Her affection for her brother was extraordinarily tender. After his death she wrote the following poem, translated in Longfellow’s “Poetry of Europe.”
’Tis done, a father, mother gone,
A sister, brother torn away,
My hope is now in God alone,
Whom heaven and earth alike obey.
Above, beneath, to Him is known—
The world’s wide compass is his own.
I love—but in the world no more,
Nor in gay hall or festal bower;
Not the fair forms I prized before—
But Him, all beauty, wisdom, power,
My Savior, who has cast a chain
On sin and ill and woe and pain!
I from my memory have effaced
All former joys, all kindred, friends;
All honors that my station graced
I hold but snares that fortune sends;
Hence! joys by Christ at distance cast,
That we may be his own at last!
Francis founded the College of France in Paris for the study of classical languages, testimony to the influence that had seized the country after the southern expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII. Francis’s establishment provided merely for the maintenance of a faculty, and it was not until the next reign that the question of housing separate from any of the existing schools came up. It was not until the time of Marie de Medicis that the building really was provided. Since that time the college has been rebuilt twice, restored and enlarged until it is now an imposing pile rising on the Mont Sainte Geneviève near the Sorbonne. Its lectures which are intended for adults are free, and the institution is not a part of the University but is under the Minister of Education.
Francis established a government printing office and permitted the use of private presses though the books that issued from them were censored. There was a time, indeed, when it became evident that men were thinking for themselves and that untoward happenings were the result, when all printing of books was forbidden. Étienne Dolet, scholar, writer and printer, was one of those who suffered from the king’s inconstant mind. He was charged with heresy, tortured, hung and finally burned with his writings on the spot where his statue now stands in the Place Maubert.
This square is on the left bank, but the usual place for executions was the Grève in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Near the Halles was a pillory which Francis rebuilt a quarter of a century after the people had destroyed it. It was an open octagonal tower and the victims inside were placed on a revolving platform so that they might be exposed to the crowd below.
The gorgeous scene that was enacted when Francis made his formal entry into Paris after the death of Louis XII was indicative of the brilliance and extravagance of his whole reign. It was his superior magnificence that lost him the partisanship of Henry VIII of England whose eyes he over-dazzled at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was indeed well that he fell heir to Louis XII’s savings! The procession, according to the Austrian “special envoy,” was both “beautiful and gorgeous,” and Francis, arrayed in glistening armor, played to the gallery by making his handsome horse, white-and-silver decked, rear and prance so that his royal rider might display his horsemanship.
In the course of Francis’s prolonged contest with Charles V—a struggle in which he was even imprisoned at Madrid—he had many opportunities to see in Italy and Spain the art of a former time and the work of contemporary painters and sculptors as well. Not only did he send home many examples which were given him or which he captured or bought, but he invited to France Leonardo da Vinci, then an old man, Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto Cellini. To the latter he gave a lodging in the Hôtel de Nesle, that left bank palace of which the Tour de Nesle was a part, on condition that he secured possession of it himself, as the king had previously made a present of it to the provost. Cellini armed his helpers and servants and defended his gift with such ferocity that the provost left him alone.
The king’s influence weighed heavily on the side of the humanist reaction against the austerities of art and life which had developed under the influence of an all-dominant church. The pendulum swung back and painters and sculptors chose less ascetic themes for brush and chisel. From Francis’s time on there was also a keen interest in portraiture.