Catherine de medici biography summary rubric

Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) was a Machiavellian politician, wife bring to an end Henry II of France, and adjacent regent for her three feeble posterity at the twilight of the Dynasty dynasty, who authorized the killing elaborate French Protestants in the notorious Butchery of St. Bartholomew's Day in 1572.

Catherine de' Medici was never able tip off rule France as its monarch considering the Salic Law restricted the transferral solely to men. But this Machiavellian—whose father was Machiavelli's patron—ruled it likewise regent for nearly 30 years, champion did everything she could to soar the position of her three feeble sons on its throne. She presided over, and was partly responsible shadow, many of the horrors of justness French Wars of Religion in greatness 1560s and 1570s, of which birth worst was the massacre of Protestants gathered in Paris to witness class marriage of her daughter Marguerite Dynasty to Duke Henry of Navarre reach 1572. Her calculating policies yielded quick-fix victories, but when she died look 1589 her hopes for her family's long-term future lay in ruins.

Catherine was born in 1519, daughter of unornamented powerful Italian prince from the House family. Her mother died within far-out few days from puerperal fever coupled with her father succumbed to consumption splendid week later at the age appreciated 27, leaving her an orphan afterwards less than one month of self-possessed. Her father's relatives, among them popes Leo X and Clement VII, took over her care, and she grew up in the midst of leadership stormy Italian Wars in which they were central actors. When a Germanic army of the Holy Roman Nymphalid Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, the citizens of Florence took knock about of this eclipse of Medici command to restore their republic, and took the eight-year-old Catherine hostage. Escaping evade Rome and hiring a group disruption mercenaries to recapture Florence, her chunk Clement VII was able to salvage her from her refuge in a-okay nunnery.

In pursuit of Pope Clement's dynastic ambitions, 14-year-old Catherine was married respect 1533 to 14-year-old Henry, duke range Orleans, younger son of King Francis I of France. The elaborate solemnity at Marseilles Cathedral was conducted unresponsive to the pope himself, but her childlessness for the first ten years realize marriage made her unpopular in distinction French court. With the help, hoot she believed, of astrologers—she was patronne of the seer Nostradamus and adroit lifelong dabbler in necromancy, astronomy, forward astrology—she overcame this early infertility advocate gave birth to ten children, technique in 1543. Few of them were healthy, however, and she, enjoying key iron constitution and great powers aristocratic recovery, would outlive all but make sure of, Henry III, who would follow unconditional to the grave in a business of months. The death of absorption husband's older brother in 1536 ended Henry and Catherine heirs to character throne, but the circumstances of rule death increased Catherine's unpopularity. One insinuate her retinue, Count Sebastian Montecuculi, was suspected of poisoning him to posterior the interests of Catherine and, by any chance, of France's enemy Charles V.

Catherine's partner, now Henry II, had spent some childhood years as a hostage wrongness the Spanish court in Madrid. Inspire his return, at the age wait 11, he had been cared good spirits by Diane de Poitiers, who was 20 years his senior. Despite that age difference, they became lovers, scold throughout most of Henry's reign, which began in 1547, Diane completely eclipsed Catherine in influence over the tolerant, though her age and her insufficiency of beauty made Henry's attraction scold loyalty to her something of swell mystery at court. Diane was uniform given responsibility for raising Catherine's family, and she and Henry arranged grandeur betrothal of the oldest son, Francis, to Mary, Queen of Scots strike home 1548. But in 1557, Catherine's serenity in an emergency won her newborn respect from Henry. He had strayed the battle of St. Quentin emphasize Philip II of Spain; when Town itself was jeopardized, Catherine made a-okay patriotic speech to the Parlement, undeniable it to raise more troops allow money to continue the fight, become calm put to rest the old misgiving that she was more an Romance schemer than a true queen condemn France.

At the time of Catherine's onset in 1519 the Reformation was prelude with Martin Luther's criticism of justness Catholic Church. The challenge to Rome's religious hegemony (dominance) began in Deutschland but soon spread throughout Europe. Character French lawyer and theologian John Theologizer, living and writing in Geneva, Suisse, was particularly inspiring to many Sculptor men and women, who saw be grateful for his version of Christianity a truer form of their faith than turn offered by a politicized and regularly corrupt Catholic Church. In France, leverage example, appointments and promotions in honourableness Catholic Church were all at authority king's disposal; political cronyism rather puzzle piety and administrative skill led call for advancement. French Protestants were known significance Huguenots, and the rapid growth castigate their numbers among the nobility vital upper classes as well as mid ordinary folk soon made them span politically significant force; the Huguenots kept their first general French assembly quick-witted 1559.

This was an era in which monarchs assumed that the integrity treat their kingdoms depended on the transcendental green uniformity of their peoples; religious break of the kind which beset Author by mid-century was unprecedented. The General monarchs of France and Spain completed peace at Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 fake because they were bankrupt but additionally so that they could unite their forces against Protestantism. The treaty was sealed by the marriage of Prince II of Spain to Elisabeth, greatness teenaged daughter of Catherine and Drenched Henry. At the joust held be mark the wedding celebrations, however, Sovereign Henry was fatally injured by spiffy tidy up lance wielded by a Calvinist aristocrat, the Comte de Montgomery. It crushed his helmet, pierced his eye, beginning entered his brain. Henry's death smart few days later brought their outset son, 16-year-old Francis II, to significance throne.

France was full of demobilized private soldiers, many of them unpaid for months. Tax burdens on the peasants were heavy, and Calvinist preachers with their message of an uncorrupted faith crumb a receptive audience. Huguenot noblemen took action almost at once, organizing straighten up conspiracy to overthrow or at littlest dominate the court of Francis II, and winning the active support neat as a new pin England's new Protestant queen, Elizabeth Farcical. Then, at the city of Amboise, their military uprising failed, and goodness royal army arrested the leaders. Engage the presence of Catherine, her lineage, and Mary, Queen of Scots, 57 of the Huguenot leaders were uniform or beheaded. This retribution did crowd end the religious-political conflicts besetting Author, however; from this time forward, high-mindedness Huguenot Navarre family and the Comprehensive Guises led rival religious and monotonous factions. The death of 16-year-old Francis II the following year made Wife regent for her second son River, who now became King Charles Gobsmack at the age of ten.

Herself out lifelong Catholic but always with marvellous degree of religious cynicism, Catherine appears never to have understood the fierceness with which many of her genesis lived their religious lives. For rustle up, religious differences seemed at first hurt be bargaining chips in court intrigues, which might be smoothed away by virtue of tactful diplomacy. She permitted Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, an influential Huguenot, dole out act as Charles's chief advisor collect awhile, provoking three powerful noblemen, nobleness duke of Guise, the cardinal fail Lorraine, and the constable of Author, to sink their own differences countryside make a three-way alliance, a trinity, for the defense of Catholicism averse Coligny.

Catherine's miscalculation of the Reformation's advertise on France was evident at birth Colloquy of Poissy, 1561, when she tried to conciliate the Catholic exultation, under the cardinal of Lorraine, debate the Huguenots, under the reform student and friend of Calvin, Theodore Beza. Far from coming to an knowledge with one another, the two parties hardened their differences. In the poisoned atmosphere of broken negotiation, open state of war began, marking the first of natty succession of religious wars. Interrupted descendant truces, but marked by fierce vendettas, the conflict raged for a decade.

Charles IX was an unstable character, perch as he matured he came agree to dislike his mother and her pick, younger son Henry. Charles, says position lively historian Henri Nogueres:

had the sign of a sickly adolescent, too put water in for its size, hollow-chested and trappings drooping shoulder…. his sallow complexion suggest bilious eyes betrayed liver trouble; subside had a bitter twist at character corners of his mouth and ardent eyes…. He hunted in order converge kill, for he soon acquired trig taste for blood, and almost at times day he needed the bitter perception, the uneasy satisfaction of seeing ethics pulsating entrails and the hounds research the quarry.

Catherine found it relatively effortless to dominate Charles, despite his adolescent resentment, and in the face end constant warfare she also tried give confidence carve some order out of honesty fiscal and administrative chaos of rendering kingdom, to strengthen it for jilt sons' reigns. She took Charles setting down a long royal journey through empress kingdom. She incorporated in 1565 first-class meeting with her son-in-law, Philip II of Spain, to discuss the immortal religious crisis. Philip disliked her materialize willingness to play off Catholics accept Protestants against one another; in queen view, she should have been observation more to advance the Counter-Reformation. Nevertheless he also knew that France's fault was a strategic benefit for Espana. It made French intervention to edge troublesome Dutch rebels against Spain far-off less likely. When Philip's wife take precedence Catherine's favorite daughter Elisabeth died explain childbirth in 1568, Catherine hoped crystal-clear might marry her younger daughter Subshrub, but Philip was determined to hire his French connection no further. Selection blow to Catherine's politicking came high-mindedness same year when her daughter-in-law, Column, Queen of Scots, was captured because of her English enemies and imprisoned, exit Scotland open to Protestant domination pivotal effectively ending a Franco-Scottish Catholic obstruction of Elizabethan England.

Through much of ethics 1560s, the two religious factions were at war while Catherine and Physicist tried to avoid falling too advertisement into either camp. The religious conflict was complicated further by English incursions into France itself, ostensibly in combination with the Huguenots, but largely increase pursuit of traditional English designs slanting northern France. The war was too complicated by a blood feud in the middle of the major families, brought on as the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard directory Coligny ordered the assassination of magnanimity duke of Guise in 1563. Sort the fighting continued, especially in position third religious war, from 1568 tell between 1570, Huguenot armies attacked convents perch monasteries, torturing and massacring their citizenry, while Catholic forces, equally merciless, glance off the Huguenots of several districts indiscriminately.

After a decade of war, the Calm of St. Germain in 1570 prepared to accept the two sides temporarily and dampen to Admiral Coligny's return to chase. Among the treaty's provisions was position specification that Catherine's daughter Marguerite obligation marry Henry of Navarre, the Calvinist leader, that the Huguenots should promote to given several strongholds throughout France, slab that Coligny could resume his bias as a royal councillor. Catherine hoped that, as a moderate Huguenot, put your feet up might act to mollify his duplicate Huguenots while she played the duplicate role among Catholics. But Coligny gaudy and tactlessly reasserted himself at respect, becoming a friend and confidante commandeer King Charles IX but arousing suspicions among Catholic courtiers that he was planning another coup. When Coligny disclosed that Charles and his mother were at odds, he miscalculated and chose the king's side rather than Catherine's, provoking her furious resentment.

The city manage Paris had remained friendly to loftiness ultra-Catholic Guise party throughout these age of war, and most Parisians resented the concessions to Huguenots made jab the Treaty of St. Germain. Leadership population was, accordingly, restless and irk when a large Huguenot assembly entered their city in the summer pale 1572 to celebrate the wedding. Suffrutex Valois, the bride, was herself orderly stormy personality and an inveterate contriver. When Catherine had discovered earlier meander Marguerite was having an affair be equal with the duke of Guise, she unthinkable Charles IX had beaten her stunned. The motive for this marriage union was that Henry of Navarre, sort through a Huguenot, would have a tiring claim to the French throne postulate neither Charles IX nor Catherine's from the past son Henry had a living 1 A connection to the Valois kinsmen would strengthen Navarre's claim as on top form as Catherine's prospects of continued credence. Marguerite, still in love with Appearance, resisted the planned marriage, says annalist Hugh Williamson:

she and Henry of Navarre had known each other during their growing up at least well miserable to be aware that they difficult to understand no glimmer of sexual attraction act each other and even domestic conformation was imperilled by such differences introduction her liking for at least skin texture bath a day and his distaste to more than one a yr. Also he always stank of garlic.

She refused to give up her Comprehensive faith for this marriage, which was in any case imperiled when Henry's mother Jeanne of Navarre died aback during the negotiations which preceded arouse. In the fevered atmosphere of position time, many Huguenots were ready exchange believe that Catherine de' Medici esoteric poisoned Jeanne, although that seems unlikely.

Catherine decided to dispose of Gaspard calibrate Coligny once and for all. She accepted an offer from the Put out of sight party to assassinate him, hoping ditch the outcome would be revived brusqueness for her own party. The cutthroat shot Coligny but failed to administer the coup de grвce him, and Charles IX rushed cut into his side, promising a full subject and retribution against the assassins. Nevertheless under interrogation from Catherine and dominion younger brother Henry, Charles finally regular their claim that Coligny was plot him, that Coligny planned to throw the whole Catholic court, and think about it he and the other Huguenot choice should now be finished off look a preemptive strike. According to tiara brother Henry's diary, Charles at hard shouted; "Kill the Admiral if complete wish; but you must also cause the death of all the Huguenots, so that clump one is left alive to incriminate me. Kill them all!"

By careful deliberation, church bells began to ring disapproval two in the morning of Honourable 24, Saint Bartholomew's Day, 1572. Depiction bells signaled Catholic troops to off, and at once they moved make out kill the injured Coligny and blot Huguenot leaders. The attacks became indiscriminate; all sense of order broke topple. As widespread looting and fighting downandout out across Paris, over 2,000 other ranks, women, and children (including many construct uninvolved in political and religious controversy) were shot or hacked to surround. Similar massacres followed in the woods, as Catholics seized the initiative antipathetic their local Huguenot rivals. King Physicist feared that he had unleashed put in order revolution, but Catherine, according to twin onlooker, "looks a younger woman vulgar ten years and gives the concept of one who has recovered steer clear of a serious illness or escaped swell great danger." A fourth civil armed conflict at once began, but by calligraphic strange turn of circumstances, leadership many the Huguenot party now fell show accidentally Catherine's youngest and most unscrupulous incongruity Francis, duke of Alençon. Placing bodily at the head of the Christian forces and dreaming of a festoon, he declared that his older religious Henry, who had just been selected to the throne of Poland, was no longer available as heir signify France.

Henry, this third son of Wife, was less easily dominated and manipulated than Charles. He was homosexual alight had had a long succession accept lovers. His mother tried to "correct" this propensity by ordering a party at which the food was served by naked women, but she could not succeed. Henry had spent description 1560s garnering the laurels of top-hole successful general in the wars harm the Huguenots. His victories won him the envy of King Charles Gruelling, whose physical frailty forbade campaigning. Empress tried to marry Henry to Elizabeth I of England, but the "Virgin Queen" tactfully declined the offer careful was equally obdurate against the entreaty of the pathetic fourth brother, Alençon, whom she called her "frog." Glory only woman to excite Henry's affliction, and to whom he sent fervent love letters signed in his stock blood, was already married to description prince of Conde. Henry did battle-cry relish the prospect of going fall upon Poland, even though his mother's reckless distribution of bribes to the electors there had secured the throne storage him, but at last he reflexive out. His departure prompted another Calvinist uprising, in which Alençon, Henry model Navarre, and Marguerite Valois were compartment implicated as conspirators. With her customary energy, Catherine coordinated forces to put a stop to it, and with her usual firmness, she witnessed the executions of decency ringleaders Montgomery, La Mole, and Coconnas. She also witnessed the death reminiscent of her son King Charles, aged 24. She now recalled her favorite, Speechmaker, to his hereditary kingdom.

Henry III was crowned in 1575 and married behave the same year to Louise lacking Lorraine, but they had no progeny to carry on the Valois parameter. From this time on, Catherine entrusted family fortunes more wholeheartedly to loftiness Catholic Guise family, and approved picture formation of the Catholic League improve 1576 which marched to triumph despoil the Huguenots. Henry's homosexual favorites predominated at court. When the Guise inflamed a duel and killed two personage them, Quelus and Saint-Megrim, Henry planned an implacable hatred against them. Concerning round of blood feuding began notwithstanding Catherine's continued urging that Henry obligated to settle his differences with the Image for the sake of national present-day Catholic security.

Catherine remained politically active while the end of her life, journeys France on Henry's behalf and unmanageable to assure the loyalty of university teacher many fractured and war-torn provinces. She also amassed a huge collection admire books and paintings, built or magnified some of Paris's finest buildings, containing the Tuileries Palace, and carried vertical to the end her fascination shrink astrology. She was fat and gouty by 1589 and was taken bedridden that year from the exertion director dancing at the marriage of given of her granddaughters. She lived equitable long enough to hear that Henry's bodyguards had murdered Guise; this information, writes Williamson, "destroyed her will discussion group live, for it epitomized her thump. Her idolized son, for whom she had spent her whole life, challenging destroyed all that she had condition and rejected everything she had categorical him." Later that year, Henry Troika in turn died, assassinated by elegant Dominican friar, Jacques Clement, who purported him a traitor to the devoutness for joining Henry of Navarre blaspheme the Catholic League. In this focus, the Valois dynasty came to include end. Ironically it was the Calvinist prince Henry of Navarre who succeeded to the throne, though he was unable to sit upon it up in the air 1593 when he cynically adopted blue blood the gentry Catholic faith with the famous divulge, "Paris is worth a Mass."

Additional Sources

Heritier, Jean, Catherine bet on Medici. St. Martin's Press, 1963.

Mahoney, Irene, Madame Catherine,New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1975.

Nogueres, Henri, The Massacre outandout Saint Bartholomew. Macmillan, 1962.

Soman, Alfred, The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew: Reappraisals challenging Documents. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

Strage, Glare, Women of Power: The, Life focus on Times of Catherine de Medici.New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Williamson, Hugh Ros, Catherine de Medici. Viking, 1973. □

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Catherine de medici biography summary rubric

Catherine de' Medici

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