Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France [Hardcover]

Leonie Frieda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2005

Catherine de Medici was half French, half Italian. Orphaned in infancy, she was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident Catherine became queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son. When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne. She nursed dynastic ambitions, but was continually drawn into political and religious intrigues. It had always been said that she was implicated in the notorious Saint Barthlomew’s Day Massacre, together with the king and her third son who succeeded to the throne in 1574, but was murdered – left standing with his assassin’s dagger in one hand, and his own entrails in the other. Her political influence waned, but she survived long enough to ensure the succession of her son-in-law who had married her daughter Margaret. Léonie Frieda has returned to original sources and re-read the thousands of letters left by Catherine. There has not been a biography in English of Catherine for many years and she believes that the time has come to show her as one of the most influential women in c16th Europe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1533, 14-year-old Catherine de Medici arrived in France to marry the future king Henri II; over the next 16 years, she endured the dominance of Henri's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and the disdain of courtiers for her family's merchant background. The sudden death of Henri launched Catherine into three decades as regent and chief adviser to three sons who ruled in succession. Frieda navigates the twists and turns of the French royal court and family with particular attention to the formation of Catherine's political skills. From her lonely childhood as a tool in the diplomacy of her powerful uncles to her carefully cultivated relationship with her father-in-law and maneuvering through shifting family alliances, the queen learned self-possession, deception and strategy. While Catherine has been maligned for her role in France's wars of religion and in particular the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Frieda argues that Catherine attempted to reach compromise in the religious strife of her adopted country. While trying to flesh out Catherine, Frieda occasionally paints others with a too-broad brush. At times, her descriptions of Catherine's actions as emotionally or politically motivated seem arbitrary. But Frieda's portrait of Catherine is multifaceted, and her presentation of the complicated narrative of five tumultuous reigns is compelling.
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From Booklist

The sixteenth century was an exceptionally dramatic period in European history. A series of colorful kings and queens performed as power players, rendering those decades not only a bloody battleground but also an exciting pageant of dynastic intrigue. One of the most (in)famous royal players of the time was Queen Catherine de Medici of France, the Italian-born consort of the exciting and effective Henry II and the power behind the throne for her three weak king sons. The author of this revealing biography achieves remarkable balance as she freshly interprets Catherine, whose hands have usually seemed to historians to be forever stained by the religious wars that sent France into frenzies during her watch. Frieda, resisting the easy picture of Catherine--one of despicable complicity in those horrors--puts Catherine's involvement in the episodes into context; what emerges is a woman of "intelligence, courage and indefatigable spirit who did her best for her beloved if adopted country." Not a whitewash but a carefully nuanced portrait. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First American Edition edition (January 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060744928
• ISBN-13: 978-0060744922
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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53 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars REVIEW OF LEONIE FRIEDA'S CATHERINE DE MEDICI BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 3, 2006

By 

John W. Chuckman (Citylights, Ontario) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catherine De Medici (Hardcover)

This book is an interesting failure. It is well worth reading and contains many interesting passages, but Ms. Frieda fails in her stated aim of creating a more sympathetic understanding of Catherine de Medici and the difficulties under which she labored.

Catherine is widely seen as a talented, scheming and ruthless power-behind-the-throne figure, doing almost anything to promote and protect her children which included two Kings of France. Catherine's era overlaps that of a truly great queen, England's Elizabeth I, so her story includes figures such as Mary Queen of Scots and Philip II of Spain and includes the great waves of violence that crashed across Europe following the Reformation. You just can't come up with better historical material.

Ms. Frieda does a creditable job of telling her story, at times rising to gripping narrative as when she describes events around the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an orgy of killing in which something on the order of ten to twenty thousand Huguenots were slaughtered, many having their throats cut in their beds.

Ms. Frieda's explanation of Catherine's role in the Massacre is that she only wanted to have a small group of leaders killed while conveniently gathered for the wedding of Henri of Navarre, a Protestant of Valois blood, and Catherine's daughter, Margot. Ms. Frieda's thesis is that what was to be a small "surgical operation" got completely out of hand with Paris mobs taking to killing anyone even suspected of being a Protestant, as though killing a group of guests at a royal wedding, had it gone no further, would have been just fine.

Ms. Frieda is not the first to put the thesis forward, but it fails utterly to soften our view of Catherine. There is little proof supporting Frieda's interpretation, but, in ordinary common law, if you commit a crime that generates a still bigger crime, you are not free of guilt. Beyond that, no one knew better than Catherine, after all her terrible experience with French Catholic-Protestant relations, what a seething place Catholic Paris was. To have Admiral Coligny, a much-admired Huguenot, and other high officials assassinated at that time in that place was criminally stupid, apart from all considerations of ethics and proper statecraft.

She wheedled her mentally-unbalanced son, Charles IX, into agreeing to the vicious plan, in part out of her sick jealousy over Coligny's friendship and influence with the King. When Charles, in one of his maniacal rages, finally roared his infamous "Kill them all" order, shouldn't the supposedly careful and subtle Catherine have understood how the words could be misinterpreted?

One can't avoid seeing Catherine as the classic over-protective, hot-house mother, willing to forgive her bloody awful darlings anything, willing to do almost anything for them. Such people always do a great deal of harm in ordinary life and even more when they are in high places. This sick trait of Catherine was compounded by the fact that there was raging madness in her Valois-de Medici brood. Charles IX, Henri III, and her daughter Margot, who married the future king, Henri of Navarre, were simply mad, unfit to rule even in ordinary times, but these were not ordinary times. There was Catherine working feverishly for their interests, effectively against the interests of France as a whole.

Other unsavory aspects of Catherine's character come through even in this book. Her horrible execution, many years later, of the Count de Montgomery, the man who accidentally killed her husband, Henri II, in a jousting entertainment, is just one. Henri, who had insisted on another joust, had publicly forgiven the man as he lay dying. Catherine waited for many years to take her bloody revenge. Frieda says this is one of the only examples of her taking vengeance, but that statement comes after having dismissed many convenient deaths, widely suspected at the time to have been poisonings.

Read this book and others - it contains an excellent bibliography - to decide for yourself how best to interpret Catherine's work. You will, in any event, be exposed to interesting times, and you will be glad you aren't living in them.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great and precise account of a decisive woman, June 30, 2006

By 

Jorge I. Villanueva (Phoenix,Az) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (Paperback)

When i picked up this book my expectations were not that high but from the moment i started reading i was captivated by the authors way of telling the story.The author does a very good job in describing Catherine and her struggles from an early childhood until she became the Queen of France. The author's style is flawless and goes straight to the point in describing all the plots and treaties that happened in that time and their importance towards Italy,France and Spain.This is a great book that not only highlights Catherine struggles to keep the dinasty afloat but also because she makes us undestand all the main characters and their problems.Excellent work!!

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An informative read for Renaissance history buffs, December 18, 2006

By 

pyramidcvv "pyramidcvv" (Western US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book to people who want to know more about the Medici family and its illustrious member who became the Queen of France.

Catherine de Medici had 10 children: three became French kings, one became Queen of Spain (as wife of Philip II). Her youngest son was a serious candidate to wed England's Queen Elizabeth.

The Queen Mother was a lavish spender who insisted on mounting extravagant "magnificences" in total disregard for France's precarious financial state. She would even impose taxes on the ever-suffering populace to finance her exercises of excess. She formed her own company of scantily clad dancing girls ("the flying squadron") which proved quite popular.

Catherine was not a hardcore religious type (like Spain's Philip II) but attended Mass regularly. She was not threatened by the rise of Protestantism and sought to meet their demands by peaceful means. She was superstitious: when a seer predicted the death of her husband King Henry II at a tournament, she begged him not to compete (he did anyway and was killed in an accident).

She presided over eight Wars of Religion: civil wars between Protestants fighting for their right to worship freely, and Catholics trying to keep the country from splitting apart. The author discusses Catherine's many diplomatic efforts to resolve the difficulties peacefully. But treacherous behavior among hardcore Huguenots eventually hardened her attitude, culminating in the disastrous Massacre of St Bartholomew of 1572, which killed as many as 30,000 men, women, and children all over France.

Catherine loved architecture, ate heartily (she was fat), and was an enthusiastic horseback rider. She adored her husband Henry II even though he preferred to spend his time with a mistress. She worshipped her son King Henri III, a transvestite who frequently ignored his royal duties to spend time with his young male companions ("mignons").

Catherine was not what contemporary thinkers would call a "good mother." While she worshipped Henri, she ignored her other children. At the outset of the Massacre of 1572, she put her daughter Margot in mortal danger by allowing her to stay at the Louvre, even though the building was about to be overrun by assassins. Years later, Catherine even proposed "eliminating" Margot in order to allow her husband Henri of Navarre to marry a woman who was more capable of bearing children.

I would not call this a "sympathetic" biography. While the author emphasizes Catherine's diplomatic efforts, the Queen Mother clearly lived up to the Medicis' darker reputation by approving numerous political assassinations.

This book is full of interesting information, and also contains several full-color illustrations.