Queen consort and queen mother Mother of ten children and the last three Valois kings of France, dauphiness, queen, regent, poet, and patron, Catherine de Medicis was born in Florence, Italy, the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici (II), duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, who was related by her mother Catherine de Bourbon to the royal house of France. She was married at the age of thirteen to Henry II, duc d’Orleans, second son of Francis I who arranged the ceremony to ensure better relationships with Pope Clement VII and prevent the expansion of the empire of Charles V. Unfortunately, the death of the pope ruined the royal hopes. Consequently, Catherine was relegated to a minor role where she remained even when she became dauphiness at the death of her husband’s elder brother. Unable to bear any children for the first ten years, she was in the shadow of her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and the mistress of Francis I, the Duchesse d’Etampes. When Henry II acceded to the throne on 31 March 31 1557, she became queen of France but remained inconspicuous except for a brief period when she acted as regent during Henry’s short campaign in Lorraine.
Her political career really began at the death of Henry II in July 1559. She ruled as regent for her second son, Charles IX, until he reached his majority in 1563, and she continued to dominate him for the duration of his reign. During these years, Catherine devoted
Catherine de Medicis, queen of France and mother of three French kings. Portrait by anonymous French painter. Palazzo Pitti, Florence. (Library of Congress)
Her energy to maintaining a balance between the Protestant group known as the Huguenots, led by the military leader Gaspard de Coligny, and the Roman Catholics, led by the powerful house of Guise. To establish the dominion of the royal family, she maneuvered between those two groups. During the religious civil wars that began in 1562, Catherine, a Roman Catholic, usually supported the Catholics, though sometimes she was close to the Huguenots. Thus she strove to ensure the independence and political self-government of French royalty.
Her political manipulations also affected the personal affairs of her family. In 1560 she arranged for her daughter, Elisabeth ofValois, to become the third wife of the powerful Roman
Catholic king of Spain, Philip II. She married another daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, who later became Henry IV, king of France. Later in 1572, ITight-ened by the growing Huguenot influence over her son, King Charles IX, she hatched a plot to murder the Protestant leader Coligny that led to his death and the deaths of an estimated 50,000 other Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572). When another of her sons, Henry III, came to power, she started to lose her political influence. For twelve years, France was under the control of the Guises, and the relentless warfare against the Huguenots helped to fortify their power. Constantly intriguing, she used all means possible to prolong the rule of the Valois, even saving her son’s honor during the Day of the Barricades (12 May 1588) in the latter’s negotiations with Henri de Guise, whose murder, however, was soon ordered by Henry III. Placing her family and the interests of her children first, she died wondering how the last Valois king would remain in power.
Praising her in his Discours des miseres de ce temps (Discourse on the Miseries of the Times), Ronsard described her as capable of preserving national unity. She attempted to do so when, with the Peace of St. Germain in 1570, she formally declared that the Protestants should gain their own legitimate and independent churches.
Besides her political role, Catherine was also a great patron of the arts. She wrote poetry in Italian and influenced the art and literature of the court through her patronage, particularly of the Pleiade poets. She initiated the construction of a new wing of the Louvre palace, had the Tu-ileries palace built, enriched the Bibliotheque Royale with many rare manuscripts, and built the chateau of Monceau and the Hotel de Sois-sons. She organized the renovation of the castle of Chenonceau. A disciple of Machiavelli, she was a woman of the Renaissance whose main political objective as queen mother was to save her royal children at any cost.
Martine Sauret
See also Art and Women; the subheading Literary Patronage (under Literary Culture and Women); Marguerite de Valois; Poitiers, Diane de; Power, Politics, and Women; Religious Reform and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Work
De la Ferriere, Hector, and Gustave Basguenault de Puchesse, eds. Lettres de Catherine de Medicis. 10 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880-1909.
Secondary Works
Cloulas, Yvan. Catherine de Medicis. Paris: Fayard, 1981.
Folliott, Sheila.‘‘Catherine de’Medici as
Artemisia: Figuring the Powerful Widow.” In
Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, 227-241. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Garrisson, Janine. Catherine de Medicis. L’impossible harmonie. Paris: Payot, 2002.
Vray, Nicole. La guerre des religions dans la France de I’Ouest. Poitou, Aunis, Saintonge 1534-1610. LaCreche: Geste Editions, 1997.
World History
