Femininity and Foreignness in Reformation France
The image of the Italian Catherine de Medici has been a subject of controversy ever since she married into the French royal family in 1533 and continues to be a source of historical debate to this day. Catherine ruled France during an era of tremendous political and religious turmoil, and many of her actions resulted in harmful and sometimes disastrous consequences for the country, leading to the formation of legends dubbing her the “Sinister Queen” or “The Wicked Italian.”[1] However, further research into the motives behind her decisions reveal political skill and dedication to the French monarchy that could redeem her unfavourable reputation as a malevolent villain.
Catherine, the only legitimate child of Lorenzo II de Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, was born on April 13, 1519, and was orphaned a mere three weeks later. At the age of fourteen, Pope Clement VII, Catherine’s Medici uncle, made arrangements with the French King Francis I for Catherine to marry Francis’ second son, Henri of Orléans, and the two were wed in 1533. This marriage was opposed by many in France who believed that a “foreign” daughter from the Italian merchant class was not worthy of marriage into their royal family, despite the fact that Pope Clement’s arrangement with Francis I included an alliance against the Holy Roman Emperor as well as the acquisition of his niece and that Catherine was indeed half-French through her mother’s side.[2] The xenophobia surrounding Catherine’s Italian background had her stamped with the stigma of a foreigner from the beginning of her life in the French court.
Catherine captured the attention of her father-in-law Francis with her intelligence and good manners, if not her beauty, and she was soon a favourite among the social circles of the King. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said her husband, who preferred the company of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, over that of his wife. Catherine’s life was made even more difficult in 1536 when Henri’s elder brother Francis suddenly died of mysterious causes. The Dauphin’s cupbearer, an Italian from Catherine’s entourage, was accused of having poisoned him and was executed, spawning rumours that Catherine had been involved with him in an imperial plot for the crown.[3]
Along with Catherine’s new position as wife to the dauphin came the pressure to produce a male heir. Salic Law explicitly barred females from inheriting the French throne, and went so far as to be classed a “fundamental law”—unalterable even by the king. France was the only country in the west of Europe to enforce this law so rigidly, making Catherine’s necessity for children that much greater. To her and the country’s dismay, Catherine remained childless for the first ten years of her marriage.
While Catherine had won the favour of King Francis I with her intelligence and good manners, if not for her beauty, the same can not be said for her husband, Henri. Henri much preferred the company of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, whose beauty and influence over Henri have brought her to fame in her own right.[4] Despite his indifference toward her, Catherine was very much in love with her husband, and she endured the humiliation Diane’s precedence over her with wifely composure out of affection for Henri.[5]
A widely discussed story that history has as of yet been unable to confirm tells that rumours had circulated around the court that Henri should put his sterile, unattractive wife aside and marry again. Catherine, so the story goes, presented herself to Francis I tearfully offered to step aside herself and enter a convent should that be of the greatest benefit to the kingdom. Francis, who was very fond of his daughter-in-law, refused to send her away and insisted that she remain. Should the story be true, Katherine Crawford suggests that this episode would mark Catherine’s first exertion of power. While the expectations on Catherine’s role as a female created problems for her, her display of feminine deference and loyalty to her country were admirable in the eyes of the King, and his word ensured that Henri could not get rid of her even if he wanted to.[6]
Henri’s coronation in 1547 elevated Catherine’s rank from dauphine to Queen Consort, and she had by this time fulfilled her duty to France and provided the Crown with two living children with five more to come in the future. Unfortunately, while motherhood improved her image among the people, it did nothing to increase her personal power or her influence over the king. Instead, Henri leant his ear to the Guise brothers from the House of Lorraine, the Constable Anne de Montmorency, and of course, his beloved mistress Diane.
Things would change for Catherine in 1552, when Henri’s military endeavours were at their height. While his troops were fighting the Hapsburg-Valois war in Italy, Henri himself was in the Netherlands battling Charles V. In his absence, Henri appointed Catherine as his regent, allowing her to exercise power and judgement on the realm for the first time.[7] The ambiguity surrounding the extent of her authority as Regent somewhat undermined her power, but Catherine used this opportunity to gain valuable ruling experience that she would need later in life.[8]
Five years later, the French forces suffered a devastating loss at St. Quentin. This was a terrible blow to French morale, and the shock sent France reeling to the brink of despair.[9] Henri would need money if he was going to pull France through the rest of the war, and he sent Catherine to Paris to ask the Parlement for the necessary subsidies. Catherine appeared before the Parlement and presented her case with an eloquence and earnestness that made her the talk of the town.[10] In succeeding to obtain the money Henri needed, Catherine succeeded also in winning the good opinion of her subjects. Her success earned for her approval in a domestic sense, as well. From this point on, Henri paid closer attention to his politically able wife, seeking her opinions and visiting her every night.[11]
This happy time was not to last for Catherine, as France was entering one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Henri was working hard for peace in France out of fear not only of financial difficulties, but of insurrection by the rising force of Protestantism. The worldview of Early Modern Catholic France can be represented by the traditional tenet of un roi, un loi, un foi, which maintains that the country will live in peace provided that it remains united under a common faith. The potential for religious division with the rise of French Protestants, who called themselves the Huguenots, was seen as threatening to the political stability of the realm.
In the summer of 1559, the royal court was celebrating the marriage of Catherine’s eldest daughter Elisabeth to Philip II of Spain. In effort to impress the Spanish, the celebrations included an elaborate collection of festivities, the last of which consisted of a jousting tournament in which Henri was participating. During his joust, the lance of Henri’s opponent splintered and pierced him through the eye.[1] Henri II died of his injuries on the 10th of July. Since Salic Law prevented Catherine from governing France on her own, Henri’s crown passed to his sixteen-year-old son, François, on September 18th of that year.
The death of the husband she had loved so dearly would alter Catherine’s life forever. She retreated from public life for the forty days appropriate for the wife of the deceased king, and she embraced widowhood as a significant marker of her new identity as Queen Mother.[2] From this point on, Catherine’s whole life would be dedicated to the fulfillment of her late husband’s wishes: the continuation of his lineage on the throne and a France strong in greatness and religious unity, which was, at the time, equated with stability.[3]
King François II had no adult male relatives, but the uncles of his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, were quick to assume the positions of his chief advisors. The Duc de Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, immensely powerful individuals as well as leaders of the Catholic faction in French politics, now held primary influence over the throne; however, François respected his mother’s political abilities so much that he had the following formula added to all state documents, “This being the good pleasure of the Queen my Lady Mother, and I also approving of the things which are in accord with her advice, I am content and I command that...”[4] Clearly, the Queen Mother was not surrendering her place in the affairs of the realm.
Protestants in France were split into two camps: the religious Huguenots and the political. The religious sought the right to practice their religion freely and without persecution by the Catholics. The political Huguenots, in addition to their religious goals, opposed what they saw as the “Guise usurpation of power,” believing that power belonged in the hands of Antoine de Navarre and Louis de Condé.[5] These Princes of the Blood were also the leaders of the Huguenots, and Condé in particular nursed a personal desire to claim the throne of France for himself. The official position of the Huguenot forces declared their commitment to the integrity of the governmental institutions of their country. Thus, their goal was to invalidate the rule of the Guises and the children of Henri’s “illegitimate” line in favour of rule by the Princes of the Blood, resulting in what has come to be known as the Tumult of Amboise.[6]
The Tumult of Amboise was a minor conspiracy against the Crown led by Louis de Condé in March, 1560. The plan was for Huguenot troops to seize François II and his family from Blois, where the court was staying, remove the Guise brothers from power, and call a States-General, at which the king would be deposed if he did not convert to Calvinism. Fortunately for the king, news of the plot reached the Guises in time to move the court to the security of Amboise. The insurrection was a failure.[7] Condé’s puppet leader, la Renaudie, was drawn and quartered, and hundreds of their followers were killed in the retaliation. Fifty-seven Huguenot leaders were publicly executed and their bodies put on gruesome display.[8] These bloody executions made Catherine hated in Protestant eyes, but an armed insurrection against the king was a serious offense, and it is not difficult to understand her need to deal with the threat with equal severity.
Catherine’s policy with regards to religious division was one of moderation. While the Crown’s traditional reaction to heresy had always been to stamp it out decisively, Catherine argued at a Council at Fontainebleau that two thirds of France’s subjects were Protestant and the Crown could not execute them all.[9] Instead, Catherine would try to keep all of the people as content as possible in order to maintain peace. Though Catholic herself, it appears that Catherine had few qualms over Protestants worshipping on their own provided it did not cause harm. Catherine first enacted this policy after the Amboise conspiracy when she advised François to draw up an edict releasing all prisoners arrest because of their faith and allowing Protestants private worship.[10]
Francis II died of an illness in December of 1560, making way for his younger brother Charles to take the crown. Since Charles was only nine years old at the time, and the Guises were no longer connected to the throne through the marriage of their niece, the Orléans assembly requested that Antoine de Navarre become Regent for Charles. Catherine arranged a meeting with Navarre and argued that his plots against the Throne made him unfit to be Regent. She offered him the post of Lieutenant-General as well as the release of his brother Condé from prison in exchange for the regency.[11] Navarre accepted the offer, and Catherine’s skilful powers of negotiation brought her to a position of power stronger than the one she had held with either her husband or eldest son. Henri II, an adult male monarch in his own right, had previously dictated the terms of her regency. No other monarchs were there to limit Catherine in that way again, nor was she expected to withdraw into mourning as she had at the ascendency of Francis II.[12]
One of Catherine’s greatest demonstrations of her policy of moderation was her planning for an assembly to settle the question of religion tearing her country apart. Genevan Calvinists, German Lutherans, French Huguenots, and Catholic ministers and theologians all gathered at the Council of Poissy in 1561, where Catherine hoped the factions could agree on a plan for Church reform as well as a common definition of the Eucharist. Never before had a European monarch attempted a similar feat.[13] A new party, a Triumvirate composed of three prominent Frenchmen, including the Duc de Guise, had formed with the mission to defend Catholicism even, if necessary, against the King, made Catherine all the more desperate for the Council to succeed. It was not to be. While various ecclesiastical practices would be universally recognized as in need of reform, it was impossible to reconcile the differences in religious dogma, particularly in relation to transubstantiation and Communion. The Council disbanded with the various parties even more at odds than when they had first met, for now they had each argued themselves into logically defensible positions.
Unable to get the opposing parties to settle their differences, Catherine’s next strategy at avoiding civil war was to make them live with their differences in peace with her first edict of toleration. The Edict of St. Germain gave Protestant nobles freedom of worship and the right to protect Protestant congregations on their own rural lands, while, for the first time, Protestants could worship freely in the country provided they did so peacefully and during the day. While the concessions of the Edict were still limited (practice was still forbidden in towns and at night, as was the raising of arms), the significance was that Huguenots were now given legal recognition.[14] Catherine, acting as Regent, encountered difficulties with her edict that she would not have faced had she been a male ruling in her own right. Parlement refused to register the edict as the law required. Instead, they formally objected to the edict by letter, arguing that permitting division in the country would lead to its ruin, and implying the illegality of a woman defying the religion of her deceased husband. The edict was finally adopted officially in March, 1562, on the condition that it be temporary pending the majority of the king. [15]
At the same time that Catherine’s edict was being approved by the Parlement, events were unfolding that would lead to the civil war Catherine was so desperately trying to avoid. Upon investigating a Huguenot prêche at Vassy, the Duc de Guise was suddenly involved in a conflict between his men and the Huguenot congregation that left thirty dead and a hundred wounded.[16] His alleged attack and breach of the Edict of St. Germain was “a Godsend to Huguenot propaganda,” and France was decidedly split into two when the Protestants called on the Prince de Condé to raise troops and protect them from the Triumvirate.[17]
The hostilities provoked by the Massacre at Vassy resulted in the outbreak of France’s first war of religion. The war resulted in the deaths of both Antoine de Navarre and the Duc de Guise, while Constable de Montmorency and Condé were taken prisoner, granting some independence to Catherine. Catherine tried once again to stop the violence with a new edict drawn up with Condé and Montmorency known as the Peace of Amboise, in March, 1563, which repeated the essentials of the Edict of St. Germain on a somewhat less tolerant scale and, like St. Germain, remained under limited application until the majority of the king.
Catherine’s attempts at pacification could never stabilize France in the harmonious toleration that she envisioned. Universal appeasement was impossible; the more concessions Catherine made to either Catholic or Protestant side, the more the fears of the opposing side escalated.[18] The settlement of religious differences would not placate the political Huguenots from carrying out individual agendas under the guise of religion, while the genuinely religious would continue fighting for their freedoms regardless of which nobles ruled or whose personal vendettas were realized. Catherine hoped that the concept of the monarchy would be strengthened with a decisive ruler on the throne, and so Charles declared his majority in 1563 at the age of thirteen years. Charles IX reserved his mother’s power to govern and confirmed a version of the Edict of Amboise at this time.[19]
Since she had yet to achieve her dream of Valois stability in a united France through religious policy, Catherine commendably set forth with the court on a two-year progress of the country in spring of 1564 with the goals of restoring the monarchy’s public image, reinforcing the Edict of Amboise, and pacifying the potentially detrimental reactions of Catholic Spain.[20]
Recognizing the potential for Henry of Navarre to one day inherit the throne, Catherine arranged for her daughter Margot to marry him in 1572, thus keeping the throne in the family, albeit through the female line, while simultaneously strengthening the edicts of toleration by allying the Catholic monarchy with the Protestant Navarre.[21] The controversy over this marriage resulted in insufferably high tensions within the city, as crowds of Protestants were packed into predominantly Catholic Paris for the wedding festivities. A mysterious assassination attempt on the Huguenot leader, Admiral de Coligny, drove the royal family into a fear of Huguenot retaliation. The Duke of Guise finished off the assassination the following day, commencing a veritable slaughter of Protestants by Parisian Catholics and vice versa known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. The precise roles of the instigators of the massacre largely remain a mystery, yet accounts of the massacre generally agree that Charles, most likely pressured by Catherine and his council, initially sanctioned the killings before attempting to call them off as the violence grew out of hand.[22] By that point, there was no hope of stemming the senseless bloodbath, which was spreading to cities beyond Paris and would last for months to come. Catherine herself has been widely accused as the conspirator behind the Coligny assassination out of jealousy of his influence and opposition to his desire to wage war with Spain. The resulting Protestant propaganda highlighting Catherine’s wickedness would spread to England and provide the foundation for the legends of her malevolence in years to come. Catherine’s lifetime mission toward religious pacification and the inevitable conflict that would arise from such an assassination render the truth behind this accusation is unlikely.
Domestic conflicts further complicated the state of the Crown as Catherine’s youngest son, François of Alençon, grew hungry for the throne, attempted numerous assassinations of Charles IX, and converted to Protestantism in 1576. When Henri of Anjou, King of Poland, succeeded to the French throne upon Charles IX’s death in 1574, Catherine firmly protected his position for him as Regent until he could return to France to claim his birthright. [23]
Catherine had longed for the strength and stability that an adult, experienced, legitimate French King would provide, and the country seemed to have found that king in Henri III. While Catherine retained some of the influence she was used to exerting over the Crown, Henri was less interested in her than his brothers had been, and she stepped into a new role in the background. As Catherine aged and grew ill, she had less and less control over the affairs of the state now being directed by Henri III. However, despite the discomfort and difficulties of old age, Catherine never ceased working toward her dream of a strong, stable France by spending the last years of her life travelling the country and attempting to hold off war of any kind by reinforcing Henri’s authority. His authority and power began to steeply decline when he signed the Catholic League’s Edict of the Union. Catherine, the “Eternal Negotiator,” continued her efforts until practically her dying day, on January 5, 1589, 42 years after her tenure as Queen Consort and two weeks after her son’s assassination of the Duc de Guise.[24]
While it is undeniable that the years of Catherine de Medici’s power in France were years of turmoil and instability, Catherine herself had tried to steer her country through the religious and political storms with policies of co-existence and harmony impossibly ahead of her time. The concept of toleration was as of yet unheard of, and her attempts at pacification only drove the opposing forces to greater tensions as each tenaciously struggled to dominate the other. While violence erupted as a result of her policies, that clash of interests was inevitable, and Catherine’s altruistic motives can free her from accusations of wickedness and bloodlust.
Catherine’s ability to preserve the French Crown through her sons’ three successive reigns of conflict is a testament to her abilities as a skilled diplomat and politician. While her influence in the rule of her sons provided some continuity for the policies she attempted to maintain, one can not reflect upon Catherine’s reign without wondering whether consequences would have been different had she been able to rule as a female in her own right. Cultural expectations of female deference rendered Catherine nearly powerless during her own tenure as Queen Consort excepting her brief stints at a regency whose terms were dictated by her husband. As her own monarch, Catherine would never have had to battle for her policies to be approved among the myriad other nobles jockeying for influence over the king. Her Edicts of Toleration would not have been challenged by Parliament as they were, and she could have imposed them more strongly as indisputable law instead of temporary measures pending the majority of yet another underage king.
Catherine had to prove herself against social and political constraints targeting her gender and ethnicity, making each of her triumphs shine brighter for the effort and skill they required. For indeed, there were triumphs. While her policies of pacification never did bring about the national unity and religious tolerance she envisioned in her lifetime, Catherine’s tireless negotiation and brilliant gift of statesmanship allowed her to preserve the concept of the monarchy among the French long enough for Henri IV to ascend the throne and end the religious warfare with the Edict of Nantes in 1598.[25] As a mother seeking the well-being of her children, a wife executing her husband’s wishes, a politician negotiating for power and policy, and a monarch safeguarding the Crown of her country, Catherine de Medici, this great woman whose character merged the best of royal French diplomacy and Italian bourgeois cunning, not only fulfilled the traditional expectations society handed to her, but created new roles for herself and surpassed them as a talented sixteenth-century woman in ways that no man could have.
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Catherine de' Medici Attributed to François Clouet c. 1555 |
[1] Williamson, 82.
[2] Crawford, 656.
[3] Williamson, 89.
[4] Ibid, 94.
[5] Mahoney, 58.
[6] Sichel, 59.
[7] Etienne Pasquier, Lettres Historiques Pour Les Années 1556-1594, pub. D. Thickett (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966), 41.
[8] Williamson, 100.
[9] Sichel, 111.
[10] Williamson, 98.
[11] Sichel, 116.
[12] Crawford, 653.
[13] Williamson, 119.
[14] Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629, (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 47.
[15] Ibid, 48.
[16] Williamson, 128.
[17] Holt, 49.
[18] Nancy Roelker, One King, One Faith, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 276.
[19] Crawford, 669.
[20] Williamson, 150.
[21] Sutherland, 39.
[22] Barbara B. Diefendorf, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 21.
[23] Sutherland, 44-45.
[24] Mahoney, 318.
[25] Roelker, 276.
[1] N.M. Sutherland, Princes, Politics and Religion, 1547-1589 (London: Hambledon Press, 1984), 237.
[2] Katherine Crawford. “Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 643.
[3] Hugh Ross Williamson, Catherine de’ Medici (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), 43.
[4] Irene Mahoney, Madame Catherine (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), 30.
[5] Sutherland, 32.
[6] Crawford, 644.
[7] Mahoney, 39.
[8] Crawford, 652.
[9] Mahoney, 42.
[10] Williamson, 68.
[11] Edith Sichel, Catherine de’ Medici and the French Reformation (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 16.
