Catherine de' Medici

• 1. Florentine Orphan And Hostage

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  Catherine de' Medici was born on the 13th of April 1519 in Florence, Republic of Florence. Her parents were Lorenzo de' Medici and Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne. Both died within a month of her birth. Madeleine passed away on the 28th of April from puerperal fever. Lorenzo followed him to death on the 4th of May. Pope Leo X refused to let King Francis I raise Catherine at the French court. He claimed she should marry Ippolito de' Medici instead. The Florentine people called her duchessina or little duchess. In 1527, a faction overthrew the Medici regime in Florence. They took ten-year-old Catherine hostage and placed her in convents. She lived three years in the Convent of Saint Clare. Mark Strage described these years as the happiest of her entire life. Voices called for killing the child during the siege of Florence. Some suggested handing her to troops to be raped. The city surrendered on the 12th of August 1530. Clement summoned her to Rome where he greeted her with tears.

• 2. Marriage And Mistress Shadow

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  Clement VII arranged the marriage between fourteen-year-old Catherine and Henry Duke of Orléans. The wedding took place in Marseille on the 28th of October 1533. Prince Henry danced and jousted for his bride. The couple left their wedding ball at midnight to perform nuptial duties. King Francis stayed until the marriage was consummated. For the first ten years of the marriage, the royal couple failed to produce any children together. Henry openly took mistresses including Philippa Duci who gave birth to a daughter named Diane de France. About 1538, Henry had taken as his mistress the thirty-eight-year-old Diane de Poitiers whom he adored for the rest of his life. Henry allowed Catherine almost no political influence as queen. He even gave the Château de Chenonceau to Diane instead of Catherine. The imperial ambassador reported that Henry would sit on Diane's lap and play the guitar while chatting about politics. When Henry died on the 10th of July 1559, Catherine took a broken lance as her emblem inscribed with lacrymae hinc hinc dolor meaning from this come my tears and my pain.

• 3. Regent And Religious Wars

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  Francis II became king at age fifteen but died on the 5th of December 1560 after only one year of reign. Catherine became regent for her ten-year-old son Charles IX. She wrote to her daughter Elisabeth stating her principal aim was to have the honour of God before her eyes in all things. In January 1562, Catherine issued the tolerant Edict of Saint-Germain. This edict effectively recognized Protestant churches and permitted their worship outside city walls. On the 1st of March 1562, the Duke of Guise attacked worshipping Huguenots in a barn at Vassy killing seventy-four people. The massacre lit the fuse that sparked the French Wars of Religion which lasted thirty years. Catherine met Admiral Gaspard de Coligny who refused to back down. She told him since you rely on your forces we will show you ours. The royal army struck back quickly and laid siege to Huguenot-held Rouen. Catherine visited the deathbed of Antoine de Bourbon King of Navarre after he was fatally wounded by an arquebus shot. She insisted on visiting the field herself and laughed saying My courage is as great as yours.

• 4. Massacre And Political Repression

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  Three days after the wedding of Margaret and Henry of Navarre on the 18th of August 1572, Admiral Coligny walked back to his rooms from the Louvre when a shot rang out. He was wounded in the hand and arm. A smoking arquebus was discovered in a window but the culprit escaped. Catherine made a tearful visit to Coligny and promised to punish his attacker. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre began two days later and stained her reputation ever since. There is reason to believe she was party to the decision when Charles IX ordered Then kill them all. The slaughter in Paris lasted for almost a week and spread to many parts of France where it persisted into autumn. On the 29th of September, when Navarre knelt before the altar as a Roman Catholic having converted to avoid being killed, Catherine turned to the ambassadors and laughed. From this time dates the legend of the wicked Italian queen. Huguenot writers branded Catherine a scheming Italian who had acted on Machiavelli's principles to kill all enemies in one blow. Historians have suggested that Catherine and her advisers expected a Huguenot uprising to avenge the attack on Coligny.

• 5. Crown And Catholic League

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  Henry III became King of France after Charles IX died at age twenty-three on the 30th of May 1574. His dying words were oh my mother. Henry married Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont in February 1575 which thwarted Catherine's plans for a political marriage. Rumours of Henry's inability to produce children were by that time in wide circulation. In 1584, Francis Duke of Alençon died of consumption leaving the Huguenot Henry of Navarre as heir presumptive to the French crown. By 1585, Henry III had no choice but to go to war against the Catholic League led by the Duke of Guise. The League took control of much of northern France to secure French ports for Philip II's armada. On the 12th of May 1588, Parisians set up barricades in the streets refusing to take orders from anyone except the Duke of Guise. This event known as The Day of the Barricades reduced the authority and prestige of the monarchy to its lowest ebb for a century and a half. When Catherine tried to go to Mass she found her way barred though she was allowed through the barricades. The chronicler L'Estoile reported that she cried all through her lunch that day.

• 6. Arts And Architecture Legacy

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  Catherine believed in the humanist ideal of the learned Renaissance prince whose authority depended on letters as well as arms. She launched a programme of artistic patronage that lasted for three decades. An inventory drawn up at the Hôtel de la Reine after her death listed tapestries hand-drawn maps sculptures rich fabrics ebony furniture inlaid with ivory sets of china and Limoges pottery. Many portraits in her collection were by Jean Clouet and his son François Clouet who drew and painted portraits of all Catherine's family and many members of the court. A distinctive new art form the ballet de cour emerged from these creative advances. The production of the Ballet Comique de la Reine in 1581 is regarded by scholars as the first authentic ballet. Catherine built two new palaces in Paris: the Tuileries and the Hôtel de la Reine. She commissioned a magnificent tomb for Henry II at the basilica of Saint Denis designed by Francesco Primaticcio with sculpture by Germain Pilon. Art historian Henri Zerner has called this monument the last and most brilliant of the royal tombs of the Renaissance. Catherine also commissioned Germain Pilon to carve the marble sculpture that contains Henry II's heart.

• 7. Myths And Occult Rumors

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  The legend that Catherine introduced Italian culinary innovation to France is discredited by food historians Barbara Ketcham Wheaton and Stephen Mennell. They point out that King Francis I had dined at some of Italy's most élite tables during the king's Italian campaigns. An earlier generation had done so during King Charles VIII's invasion of 1494. A vast Italian entourage had visited France for the wedding of Catherine's father to her French-born mother. Nevertheless popular culture frequently attributes Italian culinary influence and forks in France to Catherine. The earliest known reference to Catherine as the popularizer of Italian culinary innovation is the entry for cuisine in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie published in 1754. Catherine herself had been educated by Cosimo Ruggeri in astrology and astronomy which were closely linked in her day. It has been suggested that Catherine educated her son Henry III in the dark arts though there is little to prove this aside from Jean Bodin's account in his book De la démonomanie des sorciers. Catherine was never formally accused or prosecuted despite the fact that her reign experienced the greatest number of prosecutions for witchcraft in Italy.