on July 17, 1385. Charles VI had fallen in love with her
at their fi rst meeting on July 14 and married her without
a marriage contract or dowry. Their relationship was
troubled by his schizophrenia, which caused him to have
an ambivalent attitude toward her. Isabeau was adept at
politics, and on July 1, 1402, Charles empowered her to
deal with government business in his absence, aided by
the dukes and whichever counselors she wished, but her
prerogative was tempered in April 1403, when a group
of royal ordinances attempted to achieve a balance of
power among the royal relatives.
In 1405, Isabeau’s court was accused of moral cor-
ruption and the queen herself was rebuked for instigating
extravagant fashions by Jacques Legrand, an Augus-
tinian friar. Until recently, historians have considered
her frivolous and, more signifi cantly, involved in an
adulterous relationship with her brother-in-law, Louis
of Orléans. The accusation of adultery fi rst appeared in
the anti-dauphin Paris of 1422–29, as part of an effort to
throw doubts on the paternity of Charles VII. The myth
found expression in the Pastoralet, a poem composed
at that time to glorify John the Fearless of Burgundy,
recently murdered at the dauphin’s command.
Politically, Isabeau was quite unsupportive of Louis
of Orléans until late 1404 or 1405, and she opposed
John the Fearless until he rescued her from the exile
imposed by the Armagnacs (Orléanist party) in 1417.
Her objective from 1409 until that time had been to set
up her eldest son as a replacement for the king during
his periods of illness and thus keep the power to govern
within the immediate royal family and away from the
warring dukes. In January 1418, viewing the king and
dauphin as prisoners of the Armagnacs in Paris, Isabeau
formed a rival government with John the Fearless in
Troyes. The Burgundian invasion of Paris in May 1418
produced a rapprochement between the king and queen
but caused the departure of the dauphin, breaking the
familial link that was essential to save the independence
of the monarchy. Isabeau played an important role in
the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Troyes (1420),
and her policy of this period, aimed at protecting the
monarchy, was long misinterpreted by historians as
anti-French. Isabeau died at the Hôtel Saint-Pol in Paris
in 1435.
See also Charles VI
Further Reading
Famiglietti, R.C. Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles
VI 1392–1420. New York: AMS, 1986.
Grandeau, Yann. “Les dernières années d’Isabeau de Bavière.”
Cercle Archéologique et Historique de Valenciennes 9 (1976):
411–28.
——. “Isabeau de Bavière, ou l’amour conjugal.” Actes du 102e
Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Limoges 1977 ,
Section de Philologie et d’Histoire jusqu’à 1610 (1979):
117–48.
Kimm, Heidrun. Isabeau de Bavière, reine de France, 1370–1435.
Munich: Stadtarchiv München, 1969.
Thibault, Marcel. Isabeau de Bavière, reine de France: la jeunesse
1370–1405. Paris: Perrin, 1903.
Richard C. FamigliettiISIDORE OF SEVILLE, SAINT
(ca. 560-636)
Isidore, born in the 560s, was the younger brother of
Leander, bishop of Seville from 576, who met Pope
Gregory I the Great at Constantinople about 580 and
subsequently played a central part in the offi cial conver-
sion of the Visigothic state from Arianism to Catholicism
(589). The southern fringe of the Iberian Peninsula was
under Byzantine infl uence after 552, and Isidore’s fam-
ily, from Cartagena, may have been of Greek descent.
He was probably born in Seville. There was a sister,
Florentina, and an intermediate brother, Fulgentius.
The Catholic conversion offered a potent prospect of
achieving religious and political unity, in which Isidore
was the single most infl uential intellectual fi gure. He
succeeded to the bishopric about 601, and presided over
the infl uential Second Council of Seville (619) and the
seminal Fourth Council of Toledo (633), which, among
other things, threatened excommunication for opponents
of the king, at a time when kings had come to feel the
need for episcopal legitimization.
Isidore died on 4 April 636. His main professional
aim had been to consolidate the doctrinal, political, and
intellectual triumphs of Catholicism, and he succeeded
in inspiring what is sometimes called the “Visigothic
Renaissance”; the realm was not as united, educated,
and Catholic as subsequent myth came to suggest, but
it was the most educated part of western Europe, and
Isidore deserves large credit for that. His personality is
largely indecipherable, although Díaz y Díaz decided
that he was shy, lacking in confi dence, eager to please,
and obsessively hardworking. Braulio of Zaragoza, his
biographer, said that his eloquence would move any
kind of hearer.
Isidore’s intellectual education was largely in the
hands of Leander, who built up the episcopal library
(with the works of Augustine, Gregory, African gram-
marians, etc.). Isidore’s 633 council required all bish-
ops to run schools, and he felt a didactic need to raise
educational levels; part of his success was that Spanish
Christian education and culture remained in his tradi-
tion for another fi ve centuries. After his death he slowly
metamorphosed from intellectual into saint; his body
was translated to León in 1063 as part of Fernando I’s
affi rmation of links with the glorious Gothic past, 4
April was given a special offi ce bearing his name, and,ISABEAU OF BAVARIA