← Not Just the Tudors
Not Just the Tudors
Catherine de' Medici, Serpent Queen
00:39:58
Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Mary Hollingsworth about one of history's most remarkable women.
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- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward/subscribe
- [00:35]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:15]
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- [01:47]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Hold on one second.
- [01:51]
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- [02:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely Also the Tudors. Queen consort of France and mother to three successive kings, Catherine de Medici's legacy could be one of intelligence, fortitude, artistic patronage and religious moderation. Instead, as with so many women in positions of power, Catherine's life and actions have been almost entirely vilified, not least for her part in the increasingly bloody Free French wars of religion. Deemed a witch and a callous spendthrift, she's perhaps best remembered for her contested part in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 as a dangerous instigator of extreme violence. But what do we really know of the woman known as the Serpent Queen? How did her actions shape the political and cultural landscape of France during one of its most critical turning points? Returning to not just the tudors today is Dr. Mary Hollingsworth, historian and author, whose previous work on the Borgias and the Medici has explored some of the most enduring myths of the Italian Renaissance. Today we'll discuss her new book, Catherine de Medici, the Life and Times of the Serpent Queen, and the complex and compelling story it tells of one of history's most remarkable women. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and you are listening to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Mary. Welcome back to the podcast.
- [04:20]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Thank you for having me.
- [04:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, I suppose we should begin at the beginning. Let's think about the world in which Catherine de Medici found herself growing up.
- [04:30]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
The first few weeks of her life were fairly dramatic. Her parents had married the year before, her mother had got pregnant without any difficulty, and they'd been married in France. They'd arrived in Florence, been there for a few months, and Catherine was born. And then 10 days after she was born, her mother died of puerperal fever. And then a week or so later, her father then died, debatably of syphilis, possibly, but probably tuberculosis. So suddenly she was an orphan. And she was brought up initially by an elderly grandmother who then also died before she was a year old. Where she was actually brought up is slightly debatable, but it's almost certain that she was brought up with her cousins, with her aunt, C.L. medici de Medici. Her husband was Filippo Strozzi, a papal banker, very, very wealthy and lived in Rome. So she was brought up with her Strozzi cousins in Rome when she was very young and her cousin, Clement VII was elected Pope. She was very definitely a pawn in the marriage market, if you like. But the difficulty with her background is that not only was she a Medici, she was also the daughter of a princess of France, a royal princess of the blood and so Francis I was very reluctant to have her, any old person. I mean, he wanted a say because whoever she married, she would be bringing her own possessions, which included areas of central France around Clermont Ferrand. So he had an interest as well. So she was quite, from a really very early age, she was a pawn between the two men who had complicated political relationship as well. So that's her sort of nun background. She was Florentine in the sense that she was born in Florence and she was baptized in the baptistery, like all normal Florentines, but she wasn't really Florentine by upbringing, first in Rome and then when the situation got a little complicated, she was then put into a convent in Florence, the Morati, which is a walled convent. So it was completely secluded from the world. This wasn't because they wanted her to become a nun. This was a bit like sending her to boarding school. That's the only equivalent I can think of. It's what upper class families did with their daughters when they were an age when they could be educated, when they could learn not only reading and writing, but a little bit more than that, but also the skills like sewing and sorts of things. And she spent quite a fair amount of time there. She was also there during the siege of Florence. And then, of course, she was then a pawn in the hands not only of the Medici and the French, but also the Florentine Republic. So she had a sort of three way pawn. And she was very aware of this. I mean, she was not stupid at a very early age. She knew what she wanted and she understood the necessity, in her eyes, the necessity of getting on with Francis I, because she clearly identified him as the man who would be the most effective protector.
- [07:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we have her cousin, the Pope, Clement vii, who people will know as the Pope who's managing the divorce crisis in England at an earlier stage. And we've got the French king, Francis I, and here we have this young girl who, as you say, is being moved around the marital chessboard and has political benefit to the French royalty in being a Medici and in what she brings. What precisely is the political benefit of marrying Catherine into the French royal family?
- [07:58]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
For Francis I, the benefit is very great. The idea was that with Catherine married to one of his sons, it would be an alliance between Francis and the Pope and Clement vii, who would then be able to counter the massive power of Charles V, who is the major figure in the background to the divorce crisis in England that Clement was dealing with. It was a very difficult situation. Francis wanted at least Equality, but preferably more than that. He wanted some influence in Italy, and that was what he was aiming for. He was quite keen on for that reason, as well as the reason of keeping some of Catherine's possessions in the country. For Clement vii, the issue was a little bit more difficult to define, but he very badly wanted a counterbalance to Charles V's demands on him, and he wanted to be able to be in the middle, on the fence, whereas Charles V had so much power and physical and military power in Italy that he'd forced the Pope out of Rome at one point, his armies sacked the city. So he wanted Catherine in France as a balance. But unfortunately, very shortly after the marriage, he died. 1533 is the marriage, and he died in 1534, and that was the end of that. It was unfortunate from Francis I, who got no benefit from the marriage. He didn't even get all the dowry because the papal funds were locked up effectively, and Clement didn't have a chance to really benefit from it having been made. And divorce, as we know, was a complicated issue in the 16th century, so it wasn't going to happen. But there she was in France, suddenly friendless in some ways.
- [09:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So friendless, you say, at the age of 14, married to Henry, Duke d', Orleans, who, of course, was one of the boys who had spent time imprisoned in Spain because of his father's negotiations with Charles V in the past. And I always think a kind of slightly damaged individual as a result of that.
- [10:01]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
He certainly was damaged.
- [10:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
How did Catherine adapt to marriage and to court life?
- [10:06]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Well, funnily enough, I think she adapted to court life more easily than to marriage. The complication with the marriage was that Henry was not remotely interested in her. I mean, he was quite young to start with, but he had a mistress who was substantially older than him, which is possibly one of the results of the damage caused by being locked up, imprisoned in Madrid. But he was really much more interested in his mistress than he was in his wife. It's very unlikely that he hardly ever slept with her. The moment he actually did start sleeping with her, she had babies, one after the other, you know, without any difficulty at all. But that was quite a long time after the marriage took place. I think she adapted to court life much more easily, because, actually, although she wasn't an elegant, pretty woman, she was a robust person and she was clever, she was educated, she liked learning, she was Italian, and, of course, Francis I really liked Italians. But above all, she liked the sort of things he liked. She liked games and particularly she liked hunting she was astonishingly brave rider. Regularly ambassador's reports mention the fact that she was out riding, out hunting. And Venetian ambassador complained she rides dangerously fast through thickets and has to duck her head to get under branches. You know, she has accidents. But she's the kind of robust person that Francis I liked and he enjoyed her company. And it's perfectly clear that he was her defender. I mean, he was her champion. And it took a lot of time. Henry's mistress and Francis I mistress didn't get on. It just gets murkier and murkier. The factional squabbling that goes on at the French court is quite staggering. But the other thing that's important about Catherine is that because of the time that she'd spent in the Morati, which is a woman only environment and largely run by women, it was women effectively running their own lives. There were masculine elements, people coming in like confessors and that kind of thing. But by and large, decisions were taken by women for women. So she was very used to the company of quantities of women and doing her sewing and talking and, you know, learning together and singing and playing games and that kind of thing. And so my view is that she adapted quite well to court life at Francis I's court. I'm not sure she'd have adapted to all of the courts in Europe quite so easily, but she enjoyed it.
- [12:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And you said with confidence that it's unlikely that Henry was going to her bed in those years. But of course, at the time, the lack of immediate issue, even though, you know, they marry when she's quite young, but the lack of issue over the succeeding years would have been blamed on Catherine. It must have been a very difficult environment to be in with no heirs coming from them.
- [12:49]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
It was. And the difficulty was initially it didn't matter because initially Henry was the second son and so there was a perfectly good dauphin and, you know, young and healthy and everything. But the dauphin died very unexpectedly in 1536, apparently after drinking a glass of water, after playing a game of tennis. I mean, one imagines he had some heart defect or something. I mean, I have no idea. But something, whatever it was, he suddenly, Henry and Catherine were the dauphin and dauphine. And then it did matter that she didn't have any children and Henry refused to sleep with her, as I say, for quite some time after that, but did in the end. And she couldn't have had any difficulty getting pregnant because she got pregnant after the first child. She had eight children. I mean, this is not somebody who you can really blame. And the other thing is that it's perfectly clear that Francis, I didn't blame her because he would have been much more public about it, I think. And also she did belong very much to his circle of women. The woman she got on with, she was particularly close to was Frances's sister, Marguerite of Angouleme, who was a really close, older sort of confidant, if you like, a mentor to Catherine. I think if Francis had been angry with her, he wouldn't have behaved the way he did. So I think it was known very early on that Henry was not doing his duty in the marital bed.
- [14:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's amazing when we start to think about this world and the connections between it. Marguerite d', Angouleme, also known as Marguerite de Navarre, this great writer who of course many people think influenced Anne Boleyn. If we just fast forward a little bit now to the time when. Now Dauphine. So when Francis I died, her husband becomes the king of France, 1547. What political power did she gain? Or was she still being kind of stifled by the presence of Diane de Pothier, Henry's long term mistress?
- [14:38]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
She is Queen in name and she takes the Queen's place in royal processions and big formal public occasions. You know, presumably she walked in, in the Queen's position to the dining room on a daily basis. I mean, within the court she had a ceremony role and that was it. She had absolutely no political role at all. She hardly talked to her husband. I mean, she always insisted on absolute loyalty to him and never ever spoke out against him at any point. But the most tragic thing is the way that she had to give up her children. That was a fairly normal thing. She would give them to the care of the governor and the governess of the children of France. They've got a sort of special formal name, you know, they had their own apartments and all that kind of thing. But Catherine wasn't allowed really to even make any decisions about them, just down to sort of basic things about where the children played or where they slept or what they ate. Their health, for example. It was Diane de Poitier who brought in, you know, the doctors. And it is one of the most extraordinary things because she didn't see them. She got hold of an artist, drew pencil portraits of these children and she specifies that she wants the portraits drawn as they looked, you know, not beautiful, but just quick, she wanted to see what they look like. And it's so sad. She writes to the governor and the governor saying after her first daughter was taken away from her and says, I suppose by now my daughter will have arrived with you. Please could you send me details of how she is and how she's settling in? And you think, gosh, that's sad. And the moment there's a row or a difference of opinion between Catherine and Diane de Poitier, Catherine immediately backs down. She automatically defers to Henry through, as it were, Diane. But that must have been tough.
- [16:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
How did this change during the siege of Metz in 1552?
- [16:28]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
That's something that is part of her ceremonial role. The Queen would head the committee of the King's Council, the Royal Council. She was effectively the sort of figurehead. Diane de Poitier couldn't do that. But she didn't actually have any power or very, very little. And her decisions and anything were all controlled by people close to Henry, who had been specifically appointed to bear in mind. There are hints at this point that she might have an independent view and mind about things, but she deals rather more with really quite banal things. It's not big politics at all. It's things like making sure that the supplies arrive, there's food and that the supply lines are behind the front line, that they're working properly and, you know, they're sort of letters about making sure that loads of cannonballs and this kind of thing are all travelling. There are little suggestions that she has a bigger opinion about what needs to be to be done. She writes to Henry to tell him the decisions that have been taken in the Royal Council. And she makes suggestions, but she always says, I defer to your better judgment. It's you, not it's you that makes the decision. Obviously it's him, but, you know, she's very subservient, which she knows. It's the way that you behave as a loyal wife.
- [17:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So Catherine has 12 years as queen of France, queen consort. But then, of course, we've got the sudden death of Henry in 1559 and their eldest son, Francis Francois II, is taking the throne and he's old enough to rule without a regency. That feels yet nevertheless like a moment in which Catherine is able to throw off the dreaded Diane de Potier. But do we see her rise to the sort of power we associate with Catherine de Medici, really beginning when we have the succession of her second son less than two years later?
- [18:14]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Well, I think there are two issues here. It's worth bearing in mind that Francis II is married to Mary Queen of Scots, and Mary Queen of Scots is the niece of the two Guise brothers, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, and they are powerful and very influential figures at court and they rather take over the reins of government with Francis ii. Francis II is quite a needful person. He may not have been of an age where he needed a regent, but certainly psychologically, he wasn't really up to governing. But also he was ill. He got very ill within, I think, something 18 months or something of the accession. And he then died of the ear infection that he caught that couldn't be controlled. And his younger brother took over Catherine, because she was the Queen, or the Queen Mother, I think we call her, she was still a member of the Royal Council. So the Guise were very devious, as they turn out, that one begins to recognise. I mean, they made sure that every single edict that they issued was always signed by her, as if she had issued them. And they specify so that if they're unpopular, then she's the one that gets the blame, which seems a bit mean. But she must have been unaware at the beginning about what was going on, because I think she was really devastated when her husband died. She didn't lock herself up completely, she didn't at all. She carried on going, but she was obviously devastated by grief and it was too late by the time she started to recover, to seize control back from the Guise, who'd established themselves with a majority in the Privy council. But when Francis II dies and there's a young Charles, who is only 10, is the next king, he needs a regent. And at that point, you realize that Catherine has picked up a lot of techniques of how to act, and she is actually much more political than she's appeared to be because she effectively outmanoeuvring the Guise isn't particularly difficult. But outmaneuvering the King of Navarre at the same time, who is the senior prince of the blood and therefore, technically he has a right to be in charge of the regency council. But Catherine basically outmanoeuvres him and becomes the regent herself, with him behind her. And it's probably quite a sensible decision, actually, because it could have been a nightmare. He was also not quite up to ruling. I don't know what would have happened. It's a very interesting what if question. If she hadn't done it, what would have happened? But she did do it, and so she was then regent and she did
- [20:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
do it, and she continued to develop that position, or at least to maintain a vital role within the court over the coming decades. How does she continue to do it?
- [20:52]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Well, I don't know. Again, as Dowager Queen, she's on the Privy Council. So she is part of the decision making process. This is a consultative committee, it's not an executive committee. And she's got three years as regent. She knows she's not Queen, she's not pretending to be Queen. She issues medals and coins which specify, you know, absolutely specify that she's acting in the name of her son. And then she gives him his majority slightly early for technical reasons and then sets out on a tour around the country. Because by this stage the religious wars have started and the hatred between Catholics and Protestants is beginning to really get out of control, beginning to be a major problem. And they've had one religious war which she's managed to negotiate an end to. The hopes were that this Grand Tour of France would be something that would enable French people to see she their King. They did very grand official entries at the entrance to every single decent sized town. And she was not part of this. This was the king plus sometimes his brothers, plus sometimes the royal princes, princesses and cousins. I mean Henry of Navarre, who by this stage was about to be the senior royal in reserve, the senior prince of the blood. So she wasn't pretending to be in charge. She was very much in the background, but she was definitely the person with the ideas. I mean, the Grand Tour was easily her idea and she knew how to do presentation. She was quite good at spin and she really understood how you stage an event to make the King look good, this kind of thing. And also, of course, she had to make a point of being Catholic. Every single place they went to first, she would go to church and hear Mass in the Catholic Church, but equally in every place she would talk to Protestants, she would receive delegations of Protestants. But her son was too young even at this stage really to be more than a figurehead. So she was the political power. People at court must have known that. But she wasn't trying to deprive her son. She wanted to help him, I think, possibly trying a bit too hard. Bit helicopter motherish.
- [22:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. And you've mentioned a sort of all important issue, issue of the 1560s in France, which is the growing church of the Calvinists, the Huguenots as we call them now, Protestants, and the sort of reaction to them by the Catholics, including people like the Guise. And there's this sense that Catherine at first is trying for something completely unfashionable in the 16th century, which is toleration and reconciliation.
- [23:27]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
And I think she really believed in that. She clearly really believed, and for the practical reason that the kingdom wouldn't stay together, unless you could get Catholics and Protestants to live together peacefully. Because increasingly, the south of France was becoming increasingly Protestant. It's a bit more complicated than that. Southeast and the Northeast was increasingly hardline Catholic. But if they couldn't live together and tolerate each other, then the country would split in half and, you know, the size of the kingdom. She was very desperate to keep the kingdom together.
- [24:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But for various reasons in the 1560s, I mean, not least the sort of economic, you know, even the meteorological conditions, there are real challenges to that working. And I suppose we could say any attempts at peace really come to an end in 1572 with the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. What is Catherine's involvement in this and why is her part in it still so contested?
- [24:27]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Gosh, I spent weeks trying to work out how you got through this conundrum. So we have some evidence, but not enough and not all the key evidence of what actually happened over the weekend of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. So attempt was made to assassinate colony on the Friday, the Protestant leader colony, and he was wounded but not killed. And then the next day, there were a lot of meetings in the Louvre. The Council. At one point, the mayor of Paris turns up to be given orders to close all the gates. And there's a real fear generally, because all the Protestants are in Paris along with all the Catholics, you know, the sort of leaders are all in Paris for the wedding of Catherine's daughter and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, who is now the King of Navarre. And there are armies as well involved. I mean, there are armies around Paris on both sides. And there's a lot of fear that the Protestants will launch some kind of attack in retaliation for the attempted assassination. Because clearly within the context, it was obvious that it was going to have been a Catholic that tried to assassinate the Protestant leader. So at some point the decision was taken to kill all the Protestant leaders. Now, that was certainly a decision taken in the Privy Council, and Catherine must unquestionably have known that the decision had been taken. What we don't know is whether it was her idea, which is how it is portrayed later, but it seems extremely unlikely to me. But on the other hand, other people have different views. And what is clear is it was not universally acceptable. And it was the hardline Catholics that led these squads of soldiers to the houses of each of the Protestant leaders were staying. So it's people like Henry of Guise that were doing the killing. And at that stage, problem would have been contained. But at some point, somebody, probably this all happened early On Sunday morning, technically 4 o' clock in the morning, but it was summer, so it was light. I mean, they were seen particularly killing Coligny and they thought all Protestants were about to be massacred, so they thought Catholics decided to join in and went around houses trying to kill Protestants. One of the extraordinary things that comes out of it is that quite a lot of the Catholic nobles actually offered sanctuary to Protestants that were fleeing. We think it's black and white, but it's actually quite ambiguous the way that people survive and get looked after. We're not talking the baker here, we're talking the younger son of one of the Protestant leaders, for example, gets saved by one of the leading Catholic nobles. That isn't what you'd expect, but obviously that's to do with blood ties as much as anything else, because of course, aristocrats are all related. But after the massacre, the King went straight away to Parliament and announced that he had called for their assassination of the Protestant leadership, but that not for the massacre. The massacre and the assassination of the Protestant leadership are two separate things. I don't think anybody can blame Catherine for the murders that took place afterwards, but there's no evidence at all in any of her actions. After all, this was a wedding between a leading Protestant, I mean, her own daughter, a royal princess, and the leading Protestant prince of the blood that she had negotiated at great length and great complication. So then the massacre takes place. And then three weeks after the massacre, Charles's wife, Elizabeth of Austria, is pregnant. The baby's due in October, but this is August, and shortly after the massacre, she writes to her ambassador in England, England, to suggest that the ambassador should ask Elizabeth, Protestant queen, if she would like to be godmother to the child that hasn't yet been born. And Elizabeth does in the end, agree to do this. But by Christmas, Catherine is back negotiating peace between the two factions. By this stage, she's not negotiating with Henry of Navarre. Navarre and the other Protestant aristocratic leaders have been forced to convert back to Catholicism and are being kept under sort of house arrest in the palace, in the Louvre. But she goes out to talk to people, to talk to the second in command to do the sort of negotiations. She just doesn't behave as if she's done it and been pleased with the result. It seems a very drastic thing to do and then to negate everything you've achieved. Gregory xiii, the Pope by this stage really was hugely excited, as was Philip II of Spain, when they heard that the Protestants had been massacred. And GRE wrote a letter to Catherine to say, you know, this is fantastic. It was absolutely wonderful and has it painted on the wall. But then, you know, three weeks later, she insists that the Nuncio that Gregory XIII is sending to France, he's not allowed into Paris, he's kept away from court. I mean, if you're. It doesn't match up to me the accusation that she masterminded the massacre and then suddenly went, well, actually, I'm pro Protestant. You know, after all that fuss and all that blood. I mean, she's just not like that.
- [29:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We're halfway through our conversation, but there's so much more to discuss. We have to take a little break now, but do please stay with us.
- [29:40]
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- [31:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Just two years after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1574, we see the death of Charles and Catherine and Henry's fourth son becomes King of France. This is now Henry iii. This is a position he holds up until actually the year that Catherine Will Die, 1589. What was her role under the new king?
- [32:23]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
That's an interesting point. When he gets made king, when he inherits the throne, he's actually in Poland because he's been elected King of Poland thanks to one of Catherine's particularly clever move. But he's got to come all the way. And given the circumstances and the fact that one of the many wars has only just come to a close, peace has only just been declared. It's simmering below the surface. The situation is not particularly positive. Catherine is clearly and with reason worried that actually it's going to be difficult for him to inherit the throne peacefully. So she does, at that point dictate what goes on. In my book, she's still not after her own power because the moment he arrives in Lyon, she does what he asks her to do. She has a much less success if she's aiming for it. She does much less in Henry III's government than she does in Charles X. Because I think, to be fair, he was older, he had his own views, he had his own particularly independent views about things like the most obvious thing was his choice of bride. Catherine wanted her children to make political matches just like she had been, and that was the norm in 16th century Europe. But he decided to marry a daughter of a cadet branch of the Lorraine, you know, an aristocrat, but not in any way noble. And he seems to love her. You know, everybody says she was very beautiful and very quiet and very gentle and perhaps that's what he wanted. Although they couldn't have children, I think they're probably quite good medical reasons for that. They were obviously quite happy. They were quite a unit, the two of them. And he didn't really need Catherine. I mean, what he did use Catherine for extensively was the negotiating peace between the warring factions. And so, you know, at one point, she spends nearly a year traveling around southern France talking to people, I mean, in terrible weather, traveling in a coach and, you know, with discomfort. And by this stage she's getting elderly, she's not a young woman any longer. And she's got gout. Although she does pretend that it's not gout. She insists it's only sciatica, is what she says in her letters. But it's obviously gout. She's not totally immobile, but it's quite a big demand. But she's clearly needed at court because Henry iii, he was a religious obsessive. They were desperate for a child and they just couldn't. Couldn't conceive. And it's quite possible that she had had a miscarriage at some point at the beginning of their marriage. There is some slight evidence that doctors dug around and just didn't do things properly, something like that. Or it may be that he was impotent. I don't think he had a mistress, so there's no way of proving it. For example, he quite often goes off on pilgrimages to the various shrines that would help for childbirth in France. You know, he does things like walk to Chartres from Paris in bare feet and dressed in sackcloth, you know, in the. And all this kind of thing. And then wonders why he gets a bad cold. And also he keeps scuttling away from court with his favorites and locking himself up at St. Germain because he doesn't really like court life. And that's another thing which is quite interesting in terms of etiquette, as he increases the etiquette around the royal person. So in particular, a physical barrier around his dining table to stop people coming and talking to him. I mean, you know, that actually he's just so unlike his grandfather, Francis I, who was this bluff, hearty somebody who would love talking, loved people. Not everybody's like that. It's for certain. Henry III wasn't. So Catherine kept being obliged to take charge. And she had an army of secretaries, fortunately, have a lot of letters from the secretaries which explain the more mechanical details. Catherine was ill. And so one of the secretaries writes to another that, you know, she was ill and she's not at all well, but she insists on. Even though she can't get out of bed, she won't stop writing letters. And I was there sitting at the end of her bed until midnight, you know, this kind of thing, working really hard. And she took her job very seriously and did what she could for her son. Although she was in some ways excluded, she did actually have to do quite a lot.
- [36:19]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One thing I'd like to ask you about, because it's something that's often ignored, and we've been doing a series on the Medici, and it feels like this might be something that's a product of her Medici heritage, in part at least, is about her impact on the cultural and artistic landscape of France.
- [36:36]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
That was huge. That was absolutely huge. The French Revolution has resulted in a lot of it being destroyed, but just little things that you can see, like Chenonceau, which is a chateau in the Loire. She built a gallery on a bridge over a lake. It's exquisite. It always was and it still is. What's really important about her is, although she's Italian and it's worth bearing this in mind, she didn't introduce Italian style. Francis I was much more pro actual Italian. The decoration of the Grand Gallery at Fontainebleau is almost exclusively by Italians and some French underlings kind of thing. But the key figures were Italian. But Catherine doesn't really import Italian artists. But she develops, under her patronage and I think, quite actively involved in the. It develops a very French version of the Italian style. So it is Renaissance and inverted commas, but it's not Italian Renaissance. It's very distinctly French. And there's also. This is a movement that is part of the artistic and cultural life of the country. She's quite happy to lead it, but the academies of poets and musicians and this kind of thing, each developing their own new French style. Music, poetry. As I say, all the things that she develops are an amalgam of French traditions and Italian ideas. And she did an awful lot. She collected vast amounts of stuff. We have the inventory of the palace after she died. The range of stuff and the richness and the sort of beauty of the stuff is absolutely amazing. Hundreds of paintings, but interestingly, none of them are identified by authority, so we don't really know exactly what she did. She had an impressive, very impressive library of books and manuscripts. She collected the curios that all kings and aristocratic rulers in Europe, they always had a Wunderkammer or a cabinet of curiosities of some sort. Hers is particularly impressive and she spent liberally and her enemies didn't like the fact that she spent. But on the other hand, that was what a king did. Her children didn't spend in quite the same way Henry III did, but the others didn't. And she did it for them. It was the royal image she was promoting, not hers. It was the French style, not her. Catherine.
- [38:58]
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- [40:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So, sort of two pronged question to finish then with Catherine. By the time she dies in 1589, she has maintained not only her position but her relevance to the French court for over 30 years. So I'm interested in how you would characterize her impact, but also given that we've been thinking about the Medici over the course of this month, the way that they established strong financial roots, the way that they were patrons of art and innovation, the way that they were the rulers of Florence and the founders of the Medici bank, they, the heads of the Catholic Church, they've had all manner of political power. How much do you think we see that kind of Medici strand in the way that Catherine lived?
- [41:16]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Well, I mean, one of the things that we don't have is the buildings and the contents themselves because of what was destroyed in the French Revolution, the mausoleum that she built for herself for her husband, their royal mausoleum was mostly destroyed in the revolution and the bodies were just thrown into a pit. So much of it has been destroyed. But we have a lot of information about her. So we do know how much she did as a patron. And, I mean, Italian academics are very keen to see the links between the Italian Medici and her. But I would insist that she was more French royal than Medici heiress. I think she was with the Medici for such a short period of time and in such a Sort of negative way. I mean, she was tiny. I mean, she was very young, young to start with. And the plans to marry her into France were well established by the time she was growing up, and they were established quite long before it actually happened. In particular, the links with Francis I. I think she felt it was her duty. She was the mother of the kings of France rather than a Medici. Her political ties are quite important because her cousins, the Strozzes, she looked after them even when they fell out with the other branch of the Medici, which then took over to rule in Florence. And there aren't any really strong links between her and the Medici in Florence. I mean, she keeps in touch with the abbess of the Morati convent where she was confined. And it's to her that she asked to sort of pray for Henry III to have children, have a son. And she writes official formal letters to Cosimo I, because he is another ruler. But then, having said all that, the final bit is that she marries her granddaughter, Christina of Lorraine. She marries Christine to Cosimo I's son, who is a cardinal who has to resign his seat to become Duke Ferdinando. And it is very much thanks to Ferdinando's support, ex cardinal and Catholic, who supports the Protestant Henry of Navarre to convert back to Catholicism. And Paris is the famous. Paris is worth a Mass and take over as king of France, inherit the throne. So in a way, she does go back to Florence. From a blood point of view, it is important, the links. But from a cultural point of view, I think above all, she was a French royal, so she didn't want to be Italian. That's my feeling. She does have links with Italy, obviously, and also she's international. That's the other thing that's very important to remember. You know, like all the ruling houses, they are international figures. They're not local, homegrown. They have. Have quite strong links everywhere.
- [43:51]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I suppose, in the end, what it says about the Medici is that when men hold power, they hold it in their existing state. But the thing about being a woman in a powerful family is you get sent out, you get sent away from your home country and then your opportunity is to make the most of the situation in which you find yourself. And I think we can say that Katherine definitely did that. Well, thank you so much. For those who want to get to know more about this incredible woman, we've scratched the surface of her remarkable life in the course of our time together. But Mary Hollingsworth's book, Catherine de Medici, the Life and Times of the Serpent Queen is available now. And if you've been interested in hearing about Catherine de Medici and want to know more about her forebears on the Italian side, at least you can listen back to our previous podcasts on the rise of the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Medici Popes. Mary, thank you so much for joining me today.
- [44:50]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Thank you very much indeed.
- [44:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thanks for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors and also to my researcher Alice Smith, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Ella Blacksill, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects for we can cover. So do drop us a line at notjusthetudorshistoryhit.com or on xjusttutors. Remember that you can also listen to all of these podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe it's well worth it. And as a special gift, you can also get 50 off your first three months when you use the Code Tudors at checkout. That's historyhit.com subscribe with the code Tudors and if you'd be so good as to follow not just the Tudors on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you'll get each new episode as soon as it's released.
- [46:00]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Foreign.
- [46:10]
Hayden
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- [47:01]
Dr. Mary Hollingsworth
Hey.
- [47:01]
Hayden
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.