January 26, 1477. At the death of her father in September 1488, she became duchess of
Brittany, the heiress of a strategic territory and much sought after as a bride. The
autonomy of her duchy was severely threatened, and she finally married Charles VIII of
France in December 1491, seven weeks before her fifteenth birthday. Between the ages
of sixteen and twenty-two, the young queen experienced repeated pregnancies, but no
child lived more than a few years and none survived Charles VIII, who died in 1498.
Charles was succeeded by Louis XII, his father’s second cousin and an old acquaintance
of Anne’s, although fifteen years her senior. She married Louis in January 1499 and bore
him four children, of whom two daughters survived. The older one, Claude, was married
to Francis, duke of Angoulême, who succeeded Louis as king in 1515. Their son, Henry
II, inherited Brittany from Claude and finally brought the duchy under the direct rule of
the French crown. Anne of Brittany, beloved as the last ruler of independent Brittany,
died at Blois in January 1514, so did not live to see her daughter reign as queen of
France.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: BRITTANY (genealogical table); CHARLES VIII; FRANÇOIS II]
Gabory, Émile. Anne de Bretagne: duchesse et reine. Paris: Plon, 1941.
Labande-Mailfert, Yvonne. Charles VIII et son milieu (1470–1498). Paris: Klincksieck, 1975.
Le Boterf, Hervé. Anne de Bretagne. Paris: France-Empire, 1976.
Le Roux de Lincy, Antoine. Vie de la reine Anne de Bretagne. 4 vols. Paris: Curmer, 1860–61.
ANNE OF KIEV
(fl. 11th c.). Queen of France. In 1051, after marrying one or possibly two short-lived
German princesses, Henry I (1031–1060) married Anne, daughter of Grandduke Jaroslav
of Kiev. She was the mother of Henry’s children and the regent for his son Philip I. A
year after Henry’s death, she married Raoul of Valois.
Constance B.Bouchard
Caix de Saint-Aymour, Amédée de. Anne de Russie, reine de France et comtesse de Valois. 2nd ed.
Paris: Champion, 1896.
Dhondt, Jean. “Sept femmes et un trio de rois.” Contributions à l’histoire économique et sociale
3(1964–65):35–70.
Facinger, Marion F. “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 987–1237.” Studies in
Medieval and Renaissance History 5(1968):3–47.
ANONYMOUS 4
(fl. second half of the 13th century). The English author or compiler of an unattributed
treatise on music that probably dates from the 1280s is designated Anonymous 4 after the
ordering of anonymi in the first volume of Coussemaker’s Scriptorum de musica medii
The Encyclopedia 83