René and Emanuel Filibert

When Charles III died on 17 August 1553, René suddenly found himself the de facto head of Sabaudian government in the lands remaining under ducal control. For a few months, his constant movement across Europe came to a halt; from Vercelli, René ‘took up this office with great zeal’. That this transregional lord with sovereign claims of his own was willing to expend significant political capital in the service of a severely weakened northwestern Italian dynasty seems surprising. Episodes like this one raise questions about how loyalty, honor, self-interest, family identity, and passion intersected to inform this Renaissance noble's actions and caution us against simple assumptions.

As Charles’ body was lying in state, René sent to Emanuel Filibert to warn him about corruption in the Sabaudian government. The death of Charles III, they reported, had set off a raid on the ducal treasury by unscrupulous officials. René seized whatever he could find in Vercelli ‘in the hands of the officials repsonsible for these items, especially the rings’. There was no money for the deceased Duke's funeral. By handling this issue forcefully, Emanuel Filibert would show how committed he was to justice and the protection ‘of your poor subjects’, who would then be more likely to denounce corruption in the future. René pushed for a purge of the ducal bureaucracy, but this did not occur immediately.