Restoring Catherine de Medicis' Reputation
Catherine suffers from a bad press but she was not the Lady Macbeth portrayed by some biographers or, as some historians make her out to be, a monster with two heads.
Orphaned at six days old, she never knew a mother’s love. Or father’s. Handed around relatives, she never experienced home life.
Not good enough to marry the Dauphin, heir to the throne of France, she was married off to Henry, the second son of Francis I. For her dowry. France was on its uppers.
The short, pudgy, unattractive, fourteen year old with big, bulging eyes was delighted with her husband. He, besotted by Diane de Poitiers, was completely indifferent to her.
He, like the French Court ignored her. They called her The Banker’s Daughter even though Catherine was half French. Her wealthy mother owned vast tracts of France and was related to Francis I.
Until Henry unexpectedly became the Dauphin, Catherine had no household of her own. She shared with her sisters-in-law. She was only at the French Court to produce children for the House of Valois. After ten years, none were forthcoming so she was almost sent back to Florence.
When (for reasons too graphic to go into) she finally produced a child quickly followed by nine more it made no difference to her status at Court. Her lady-in-waiting, Diane de Poitiers was the de facto Queen of France. Catherine was not on the radar.
Her first son Francis was frail, covered in boils and died aged sixteen. Louis died age nine months. Her son, Charles who had a disfiguring facial birthmark was, to put it bluntly, mad. Her third son Henry was a transvestite. Her youngest son, mis-named Hercules, was born with a deformed spine. His face was pockmarked following a severe attack of smallpox.
Catherine almost lost her life with her last confinement. Twin daughters were stuck in the womb. One was sacrificed to save her twin but died shortly afterwards in Château Amboise.
When her husband Henry died young, Catherine was surprisingly generous to Diane de Poitiers in whose shadow she lived for twenty-six years. She could have taken justifiable revenge but didn’t. Diane left Court and lived happily ever after.
Did Catherine now, at last, age forty hold the strings? No.
When Catherine’s fourteen year old son Francis succeeded to the throne he was too ill to govern. He was more than happy to hand over the reins to his wife’s uncles, the Guise brothers. They ignored Catherine and ruled France through their niece Mary Stuart, Queen of France (and Scotland).
Whereas the ruthless, fanatically Roman Catholic Guise family was hell bent on eliminating French Protestants, Catherine was not. Contrary to common belief she was surprisingly tolerant. She even hinted she was open to learning about their new religion. In turn they found her sympathetic.
When the Court was wintering at Château Blois, the Guise brothers were warned of a Protestant plot to murder them. Needing the might of royal power behind them to save their skins, they told Catherine the plot was to kill the king, her son. This was not true. Protestants were loyal royalists.
Catherine told the Guises it was their fault. She said a softening of their relentless persecution would prevent it. In other words, lay off.
She urged them to issue a declaration of appeasement.
The Guises had no intention of appeasing them. Instead, so accounts say they whisked the royal family from Château Blois to the more easily defended Château Amboise in double quick time.
This is not strictly true. Just as is the case today, certainly with the British royal family, itineraries were meticulously planned and diaries filled a year in advance. The French Royal Family was already booked into Château Amboise.
Two official letters issued from Château Blois exist. One, dated December 2 1559: ‘ …the Court is to spend Lent at Amboise…’. Another dated January 1560: ‘the time was drawing near for the departure of the Court for Amboise, and that twelve or fifteen days would be occupied on the journey with hunting parties at the houses of private gentlemen’.
The only difference was, because of the plot, the royal family moved in two days earlier than intended.
What followed, the brutal massacre of Protestants by the Guise brothers in Amboise on 15 March 1560, is well documented.
After the massacre, Catherine summoned the French clergy and Protestant leaders in an attempt to reach a compromise but she failed to grasp the theology behind their arguments. Protestants laughed at the Catholic belief that during mass, bread and wine transmute into the body and blood of Christ.
There was no compromise.
Catherine and a traumatised Francis issued the Edict of Romorantin to transfer the prosecution of heretics to the ecclesiastical courts, which had no authority to impose the death penalty.
The furious Guise brothers rejected it out of hand.
The Edict of July made further concessions. It reaffirmed the Edict of Romarantin and removed the penalty of corporal punishment for heresy.
The furious Guise brothers rejected it out of hand.
When Francis II died, he was succeeded by his nine year old brother.
Catherine's time had at last come. She made herself Regent and governed in his name. She ousted Mary, Queen of Scots, her hated daughter in law from France and ousted Mary’s uncles the Guise brothers from Court.
She admitted the Protestant leader, Admiral de Coligny, into the king's council.
Catholics were enraged.
In July 1561 Catherine issued The Edict of July. It granted pardon for all religious offences since the reign of Henry II and a reaffirmation of the removal of the death penalty for heresy cases.
in January 1562 Catherine issued the Edict of January allowing limited toleration to Protestants.
This was immediately denounced by the Duke of Guise, who in March oversaw the killing of Protestant worshippers in the Massacre of Vassy,
The Edict of Amboise was signed at Château of Amboise on 19 March 1563 by Catherine. It guaranteed Protestants religious privileges and freedoms.
It was rejected by Catholics.
March 1568 Edict of Longjumeau granted freedom of worship in two towns and confirmed privileges granted in The Edict of Amboise.
On 8 August 1570 came the Peace of Saint-Germain in which Catherine beseeched her people to live peacefully with one another.
Catholics refused to accept it.
In a last ditch attempt to unite Catholics and Protestants Catherine married her Catholic daughter Margaret of Valois to a Protestant leader, Henry of Navarre. It went down like a lead balloon by Catholics. To quote another cliché, Catherine shot herself in the foot.
The impending marriage led to the gathering of over a thousand Protestants in staunchly Roman Catholic Paris. French Catholics slaughtered thousands of French Protestants on the eve of the feast day of Saint Bartholomew.
Catherine was horrified that her well meaning plan resulted in a bloodbath.
Until fairly recently Catherine was made the scapegoat but some of today’s historians take a different view, that it was a Guise conspiracy, meticulously planned well in advance with the possible collusion of Catherine’s advisers in the royal council who recommended the execution of fifty Protestant leaders.
Another interesting fact about Catherine is, made out to be heartless, she was capable of deep love. Although it was painful and unrequited she dearly loved her husband Henry II.
She also adored her daughters Elisabeth and Claude and was bereft when they had to leave her to get married. She loved their children too.
Claude’s husband, who was brought up in the royal nursery with Catherine’s children, was very fond of his mother in law.
Catherine wrote long loving supportive letters to Elisabeth and Claude almost daily and travelled many miles to the borders of France and Spain to see Elisabeth again.
She also loved Diane of France, her husband’s illegitimate daughter and young Charles, the illegitimate son of her son Charles IX.
The saddest fact of Catherine’s mainly sad life is her death.
The Guise brothers hated her son Henry III and barred him from his own capital, Paris.
In December 1588, he called an urgent meeting of The Estates General in Château Blois. Although ill with pleurisy, Catherine travelled from her home in Paris to attend. On arrival, near death’s door, she took to her bed.
It turned out to be The Meeting That Never Was.
Instead, Henry had the Duke of Guise and his brother, Cardinal of Guise murdered.
When Henry told his mother that he personally ordered the brutal assassination, a shocked Catherine, predicting more bloodshed, deteriorated rapidly.
She dictated her will on the morning of her death, 5 January 1589. She was sixty-nine.
Parisians who hero worshipped the murdered brothers refused to allow Catherine to be buried in St. Denis, the royal mausoleum. They said they would throw her corpse in the Seine.
Henry buried his mother in St. Saveur, Blois in an unmarked grave.
There she lay out of sight and out of mind for twenty-one years until 1610 when Diane of France, Henry’s illegitimate daughter, arranged for her to be re-interred in The Valois Memorial in St Denis Basilica.
What took her so long? As a member of the hated royal family, Diane absented herself from Paris for many years only returning in 1609.
Post by Pamela Shields BA History of Art.
Read more about Catherine in these blog posts:
Read more about Catherine, Mary and the other women of Royal Chateau Amboise.
Out of the Shadows
The Ladies of Royal Chateau Amboise
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