In early 1579 the 25-year-old Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre and future king of France, was in talks with a seasoned negotiator. It was neither a authorities minister nor a monarch, however the French king’s mom and Navarre’s personal mother-in-law: Catherine de’ Medici. A dowager queen some 60 years outdated, Catherine had been consort to Henri II, after whose sudden demise in 1559 she was pushed apart by the highly effective Guise brothers (duke and cardinal), who briefly ruled France on behalf of her teenage son François II. However François’ sudden demise in 1560 returned Catherine to prominence. As regent for Charles IX, her second son, after which adviser to his brother and successor Henri III, she labored with – and regularly instead of – her younger, sickly and typically negligent youngsters. In early 1579 it was Henri III who had entrusted Catherine to dealer peace within the south of France, the place many have been failing to watch a royal edict geared toward ending battle between Protestants and Catholics, a state of affairs which threatened not solely violence but additionally the authority of the Crown. Worse nonetheless, the Protestant Navarre, governor within the area, was at loggerheads together with his Catholic lieutenant-general, the Baron of Biron. To interrupt the impasse, Catherine delayed and dragged out conferences; on at some point she denied the negotiators a break for meals. Whereas presiding over the talks the dowager queen maintained a relentless correspondence with the royal court docket, soliciting information from trusted ministers and secretaries and relaying particulars of her personal progress. Taking a shrewd line on the knowledge that must be handed on to the sovereign, Catherine suggested one secretary: ‘Whether it is dangerous throw it on the hearth; whether it is good present it to the king.’
Catherine de’ Medici was not essentially destined for a place of nice affect. Although a member of a cadet department of the Medici household, and the relative and ward of two popes, she was orphaned inside a month of her delivery in 1519 and raised quietly by kin and nuns. Earlier than she had reached her eighth birthday, the Medici had been overthrown as rulers of Florence and the authority of her papal uncles, Leo X after which Clement VII, gravely threatened, as Martin Luther’s protests catalysed the rejection of papal authority throughout Europe. Catherine’s prospects improved in 1533 when she married the longer term Henri II, however her affect was dwarfed by that of Diane de Poitiers, the mistress to whom Henri would dedicate himself. The king’s place was removed from steady: he inherited a bellicose rivalry with the Habsburgs who had prolonged their affect throughout the continent (and globe) through the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. A long-lasting peace with the Habsburgs wouldn’t arrive till the eve of Henri’s demise. Furthermore, whereas these Catholic princes fought amongst themselves their topics clashed with rising ferocity, as Protestants impressed by males comparable to Luther and John Calvin fought for non secular liberty and the precise to worship, whereas Catholics sought to exterminate the heresies of those so-called ‘reformers’.
Mary Hollingsworth’s biography weaves Catherine’s life into this continental story. That is an intimate image of a queen, spouse and mom looking for to bolster royal authority, defend her youngsters and safe peace inside a divided and corrupt – if extremely cultured – court docket. Hollingsworth presents Catherine as an astute determine who promoted tolerance and compromise within the face of zealotry and worry. In doing so, she provides her voice to those that have already defended Catherine from the ‘Black Legend’ that has lengthy surrounded her identify, and which has characterised her variously because the ‘Serpent of Paris’ and ‘the maggot from Italy’s tomb’.
As this ultimate epithet suggests, a lot prejudice in direction of Catherine was rooted in anti-Italian sentiment. Many in France noticed her because the inheritor of a morally and politically bankrupt tradition. Generally it was Catholics who denounced her, as she tried to strengthen her household, and France, by negotiating marriages between her youngsters and highly effective Protestants comparable to Navarre and Elizabeth I of England. Essentially the most enduring condemnations got here after the homicide of round 10,000 Protestants through the St Bartholomew’s Day Bloodbath of 1572. Catherine and her son, Charles IX, had promoted a coverage of tolerance within the hope of sustaining peace. In summer time 1572 Charles was even on the cusp of being persuaded to ship royal troops to the Low International locations to assist Dutch rebels towards the Spanish crown – a plan masterminded by the Protestant navy chief Gaspard de Coligny. However a failed try and assassinate Coligny and the wedding of Catherine’s daughter to the Protestant Henri of Navarre escalated tensions in Paris, whereas the king’s internal circle seems to have turn into satisfied of the necessity of violence to suppress a Protestant plot to kidnap the royal household. Within the bloodbath’s aftermath Catherine was congratulated by her son-in-law, Philip II, who declared it ‘one of many biggest joys of my total life’. Catherine’s personal response relied on her viewers: to Catholics she described the lifeless as ‘rebels to God’. To Protestants she emphasised their political treachery, having aimed to determine ‘a second king’ in France.
After a Dominican friar assassinated her solely remaining son, the childless Henri III, in 1589, the French crown handed (with extra bloodshed) to Henri of Navarre. In 1593 Navarre transformed to Catholicism to safe his royal authority – a triumphant technique which, based on Hollingsworth, owed a lot to Catherine’s personal promotion of compromise. Pragmatism formed the early fashionable interval greater than many conventional narratives recommend: Pope Gregory XIII shunned supporting Philip II’s efforts to forestall Protestants from inheriting the French throne due to his personal worry of rising Habsburg dominance in Europe. Catherine has been decried for prioritising the energy of France over a myopic devotion to the Catholic trigger, however even popes needed to weigh up the pursuit of ideological purity towards its political ramifications.
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Catherine de’ Medici: The Life and Occasions of the Serpent Queen
Mary Hollingsworth
Apollo, 480pp, £30
Purchase from bookshop.org (affiliate hyperlink)
Jessica Wärnberg is creator of Metropolis of Echoes: A New Historical past of Rome, its Popes and its Folks (Icon, 2023).
