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 A dowager queen some 60 years outdated, Catherine had been consort to Henri II, after whose sudden demise in 1559 she was pushed apart by the highly effective Guise brothers (duke and cardinal), who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 dying 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 continuously rather than – her younger, sickly and typically negligent kids. In early 1579 it was Henri III who had entrusted Catherine to dealer peace within the south of France, the place many had been failing to watch a royal edict aimed toward ending battle between Protestants and Catholics, a scenario which threatened not solely violence but in addition 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 someday she denied the negotiators a break for meals. Whereas presiding over the talks the dowager queen maintained a continuing 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 ought to be handed on to the sovereign, Catherine suggested one secretary: ‘Whether it is dangerous throw it on the fireplace; 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 beginning in 1519 and raised quietly by relations 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 long run Henri II, however her affect was dwarfed by that of Diane de Poitiers, the mistress to whom Henri would commit 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. An enduring peace with the Habsburgs wouldn’t arrive till the eve of Henri’s dying. Furthermore, whereas these Catholic princes fought amongst themselves their topics clashed with rising ferocity, as Protestants impressed by males similar to Luther and John Calvin fought for non secular liberty and the correct 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 in search of to bolster royal authority, defend her kids 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 concern. In doing so, she provides her voice to those that have already defended Catherine from the ‘Black Legend’ that has lengthy surrounded her title, and which has characterised her variously because the ‘Serpent of Paris’ and ‘the maggot from Italy’s tomb’.
As this closing 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. Typically it was Catholics who denounced her, as she tried to strengthen her household, and France, by negotiating marriages between her kids and highly effective Protestants similar to Navarre and Elizabeth I of England. Probably 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 season 1572 Charles was even on the cusp of being persuaded to ship royal troops to the Low Nations to assist Dutch rebels towards the Spanish crown – a plan masterminded by the Protestant navy chief Gaspard de Coligny. However a failed try to assassinate Coligny and the wedding of Catherine’s daughter to the Protestant Henri of Navarre escalated tensions in Paris, whereas the king’s inside circle seems to have develop 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 best joys of my whole life’. Catherine’s personal response trusted her viewers: to Catholics she described the lifeless as ‘rebels to God’. To Protestants she emphasised their political treachery, having aimed to ascertain ‘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, in line with 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 stop Protestants from inheriting the French throne due to his personal concern of rising Habsburg dominance in Europe. Catherine has been decried for prioritising the power 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).
