Fenland Woman: Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda
Claire reviews a biography of Catherine de Medici, the Italian wife of Henry II of France, who spent her life pitting her wits against powerful noblemen who wanted to control the young kings and decide religious policy at a time when the country was violently split between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Catherine de Medici, the Italian wife of Henry II of France, has a very dark shadow hanging over her historical reputation. She has often been described as a Machiavellian figure who did not scruple to use murder, particularly poison, to secure political control. In popular memory she is perhaps most associated with the St. Bartholomew day’s massacre in 1572, when thousands of French Protestants died at the hands of French Catholics.
In her biography of the woman who ruled France on the behalf of her sons for two decades, Leonie Frieda tells us that Catherine’s enemies variously described her as “The Maggot from Italy’s Tomb,” “The Black Queen,” and “Madame La Serpente.”
Like those writers who defend Richard III of England, Frieda wishes to separate Catherine from her blackened name. The result is a 456 page narrative history, titled “Catherine de Medici,” which begins with the marriage of her parents and finishes with the end of France’s Valois dynasty in 1589.
Frieda succeeds in painting a balanced picture of a ruler who was neither good nor bad, but simply a pragmatic woman placed in a difficult situation. When Henry II died in a jousting accident in 1559, Catherine was left to protect the throne for a succession of sickly sons who died one after the other. As Henry IV apparently later said in her defence:
“What could the poor woman do, with five children in her arms, after the death of her husband, and with two families in France – ours and the Guise – attempting to encroach on the Crown? Was she not forced to play strange parts to deceive the one and other and yet, as she did, to protect her children, who reigned in succession by the wisdom of a woman so able? I wonder that she did not do worse!”
Catherine spent her life pitting her wits against powerful noblemen who wanted to control the young kings and decide religious policy at a time when France was violently split between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Frieda explains that Catherine’s chief concern was always to safeguard the crown and the succession for her sons and to marry her children and grandchildren into Europe’s most important families.
One of her greatest failures, according to Frieda, was the lack of imagination that prevented her from recognising the religious feeling that stopped Protestants and Catholics from coming to an understanding.
“Catherine de Medici” is an enjoyable read because it balances political with personal history. Frieda takes in subjects as diverse as Catherine’s rivalry with Henry II’s mistress Diane de Poitiers, Henry III’s personal life, diplomatic manoeuvrings with other European nations and the politics of display at the royal court.
