One of history’s most reviled queens was born on April 13, 1519, in Florence, and the question of why Catherine de Medici became known as the Black Queen of France still divides historians more than four centuries after her death.
The woman who would become the most powerful figure in sixteenth-century Europe entered the world as an orphan in waiting. Her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, Countess of Boulogne, died on April 28, 1519, only days after giving birth, likely from puerperal fever or plague. Her father, Lorenzo de Medici, ruler of Florence and Duke of Urbino, followed her to the grave on May 4, 1519, possibly from syphilis.
Catherine was an only child, orphaned within three weeks of her birth, and passed between prominent relations throughout her childhood. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and educated by nuns in Florence and Rome, learning to speak Italian, French, and Latin fluently in preparation for an advantageous marriage.
Her family name carried enormous weight. The Medici had risen to prominence in the 1430s through banking fortunes and by financing European royal families. They ruled Florence for over three hundred years, from 1434 to 1737, promoted the cultural Renaissance, and produced several popes.
That power secured Catherine a marriage that would change European history. On October 28, 1533, at the age of fourteen, she wed Henry, Duke of Orléans, second son of King Francis I of France and the future King Henry II. The wedding in Marseille was an extravagant 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with gift-giving, dancing, feasting, and jousting that continued late into the night.
The union was consummated under the watchful eye of King Francis I, who was determined to see the marriage properly joined. The following morning, Pope Clement VII visited and blessed the couple in their marital bed.
Fortune turned quickly. Pope Clement died on September 25, 1534, and his successor broke off the alliance with France and ceased paying Catherine’s large dowry. King Francis I reportedly lamented the reversal by announcing, “The girl has come to me stark naked.”
Catherine’s position grew more precarious with each passing year. Under Salic law, only males could ascend the French throne, and she faced enormous pressure to produce an heir. In the first ten years of marriage, the couple had no children at all.
The pressure intensified when Henry’s older brother, the Dauphin Francis, died of a fever in 1536. Rumors spread that Catherine or Emperor Charles V had poisoned him. When Henry publicly acknowledged his 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with Philippa Duci and the birth of his daughter Diane in 1537, Catherine became the sole target of blame for the lack of a legitimate heir.
Divorce was discussed. Many clamored for Catherine to be sent back to Italy. In a period when witch hunting was reaching its peak, rumors that she practiced witchcraft began to circulate, feeding the image of her as the Black Queen that persists to this day.
Infertile women were viewed as unnatural and as witches possessing the opposite power of destroying health, life, and fertility. Catherine’s connection with the astrologer Nostradamus and the suspicious Ruggieri brothers, believed to engage in necromancy and the black arts, did little to help her reputation.
After trying every natural and superstitious remedy for inducing pregnancy, including drinking mule’s urine, Catherine finally gave birth to her first son, Francis, on January 19, 1544. She went on to have nine more children, seven of whom survived infancy, providing the dynasty with five boys who could inherit the throne.
The future of the Valois dynasty was secure, but Catherine’s pregnancies did nothing to improve her marriage. Her husband was devoted to his favorite mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who was nineteen years his senior. Catherine’s influence was rooted solely in her motherhood.
The death of King Francis I on March 31, 1547, made Catherine queen consort of France. She was crowned in the Basilica of Saint Denis on June 10, 1549, but enjoyed no political influence beyond nominal power as regent during her husband’s travels abroad.
Henry promoted the influence of his mistress instead. He gave Diane the Château of Chenonceau. The Imperial ambassador reported that Henry would sit on Diane’s lap, discuss politics with her, and stroke her breasts in company.
Diane encouraged Henry to spend time with Catherine and sire more legitimate children.
In 1556, Catherine almost died in childbirth. Royal surgeons saved her life in a terrible exchange for the life of one of her twin girls, Joan, who died in the womb. Victoria survived only seven more weeks.
The king’s physician advised Henry against having more children with Catherine, and he stopped visiting her entirely.
The turning point came on June 30, 1559, during celebrations for the marriage of Catherine’s daughter Elizabeth to King Philip of Spain. Henry took part in a celebratory jousting match, boldly wearing his mistress Diane’s black and white colors. He was victorious against the Duke of Guise and the Duke of Nemours.
Then Gabriel de Lorges, the Earl of Montgomery, knocked him from his saddle. Insisting on riding out again, Henry’s face was shattered by Montgomery’s lance. Blood poured down his face, and large splinters buried deep in his eye and head.
Catherine, Diane, and the Dauphin Francis reportedly fainted at the terrible sight. After splinters were removed from his eye and brain, the king lingered for ten days, losing his sight, speech, and reason before dying on July 10, 1559, at the age of forty.
From that day, Catherine adopted the broken lance as her emblem, inscribed with the words “Lacrymae hinc illae dolor,” meaning “From this come my tears, my pain.” She wore mourning black for the rest of her life in memory of her husband.
Catherine recognized that image cultivation was an important part of successful kingship. She worked to promote an image of herself as a faithful widow and devoted mother. In 1559, at forty years old, she took her first steps into the political spotlight.
She insisted on being called Queen Mother rather than Dowager, solidifying the image she wanted to project and amplifying her closeness to the next monarch, her son Francis. Francis II became King of France at fifteen, and his coronation was held in Reims on September 21, 1559.
It was said the crown was so heavy that Francis couldn’t hold it up alone and required trusted nobles to help hold it in place. In what has been called a coup d’état, Francis, the Duke of Guise, and his brother Charles Cardinal of Lorraine seized power, moving into the Louvre Palace with the young couple.
Catherine worked with the Guises out of necessity, but she was to wield greater power as the mother of the king than she had done as the wife of the king. King Francis II’s official acts began with “This being the good pleasure of the queen, my lady mother, and I also approving of every opinion that she holdeth.”
Catherine exploited her newfound authority. She forced Diane de Poitiers to hand over the crown jewels and vacate the Château of Chenonceau before undoing all of Diane’s building work there. All those patronized by Diane were quickly replaced.
Religious divisions had grown across Europe as the Protestant Reformation unleashed a complex political and religious storm. The Huguenots, French Protestants following the Calvinist faith, made up almost ten percent of the population and practiced their religion publicly.
Religious violence played out on the streets of France. Lynchings and murders had religious motivations. Churches were sacked, sacred texts destroyed, and the bodies of saints dug up and burned.
The Guise brothers began persecuting Protestants, but Catherine adopted a more moderate stance.
Whether her conciliatory policy was rooted in lack of religious conviction, belief in freedom of worship, desire for peace at any cost, or political acumen, Catherine succeeded in crafting a place for herself in opposition to the Guises. The hardline stance of the Guise brothers fueled the conflict.
With the rise of religious violence, the royal court was moved to the fortified château of Amboise. The Duke of Guise launched a surprise attack on the Huguenots in nearby woods, killing many. As Catherine and her court watched, rebels were slain, drowned in the river, or strung up around the battlements.
Catherine found an ally when Chancellor Michel de l’Hôpital was appointed in June 1560. Together they put their policy of conciliation to an assembly of the Privy Council at Fontainebleau on August 20, 1560. Historians have seen this as an early example of Catherine’s talent for statesmanship.
Meanwhile, the Prince of Condé’s army began attacking towns in southern France. Catherine ordered him to court, had him imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death. His life was saved by the timely death of the king from an ear infection or abscess in his brain.
Showing her astuteness, Catherine recognized her son’s death was imminent and made a pact with Antoine de Bourbon, a Huguenot leader, to benefit her second son, Charles. When Francis II died on December 5, 1560, Catherine was appointed governor of France by the Privy Council.
For the first time, she was to have sweeping powers. After her rise into government, Catherine wrote to her daughter Elizabeth expressing her views about power: “My principal aim is to have the honor of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority, not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom and for the good of all your brothers.”
The coronation of Charles IX saw Catherine’s influence solidified. The nine-year-old king is said to have cried through his coronation. Catherine kept him close, reportedly sleeping in his chamber and presiding over his council, policy making, state business, and patronage.
The Venetian ambassador reported that Charles was an admirable child, though not robust, favoring physical exercises too violent for his health. The frailty of the boy on the throne was compounded by the volatile situation in France. Catherine seized the reins of power, but she never controlled the whole country.
Catherine summoned church leaders from both sides of the religious divide to solve their doctrinal differences. Despite her optimism, the Colloquy of Poissy failed and dissolved itself on October 13, 1561, without her permission. Politics had blinded Catherine to reality.
She had failed to understand the religious divides impeding political power. She believed getting religious leaders to agree would resolve everything and completely underestimated the strength of religious convictions. In an attempt to make her conciliation policy succeed, she issued the Edict of Saint-Germain in January 1562.
The Edict aimed to promote tolerance between religious groups and pacify the Protestants. However, the Massacre of Vassy on March 1, 1562, undid all her efforts. The Duke of Guise and his men attacked worshipping Huguenots in a barn, killing seventy-four and wounding one hundred four.
Guise was treated as a hero by the Parisian population. The Huguenots called for revenge. For the next thirty years, France flitted between states of outright civil war and uneasy truce.
Within a month of the massacre, Huguenots raised an army of eighteen hundred and formed an alliance with England.
Catherine met with Admiral Coligny to find a compromise, but talks reached a stalemate and she resorted to meeting violence with violence. The royal army laid siege to Huguenot-held Rouen. Catherine visited the field herself against the warnings of her advisors.
The Catholic triumph was short-lived. On February 18, 1563, a spy named Poltrot de Meré killed the Duke of Guise with an arquebus at the siege of Orléans, triggering a blood feud among aristocratic families on either side of the religious divide.
Catherine was delighted at Guise’s death as his hand was removed from her son’s government. She reportedly told the Venetian ambassador that if Monsieur de Guise had perished sooner, peace would have been achieved more quickly. The war ended on March 19, 1563, with the Edict of Amboise.
But France’s problems were not over as the English retained a power base on the French coast. Catherine rallied both Huguenot and Catholic forces to retake Le Havre. These successes did not change the fundamental fact that Catherine’s power was not her own.
On August 17, 1563, it was declared at the Parliament of Rouen that Charles IX had reached majority age and could rule alone. But Charles continued to show little interest in the technicalities of ruling, and Catherine continued to steer him.
Intent on reviving loyalty to the crown, Catherine took a long tour of France with Charles from January 1564 to May 1565. She aimed to bolster the Edict of Amboise and promote unity. Her attempts at unity were not received with praise from everyone.
When visiting her daughter Elizabeth, her son-in-law, the devoutly Catholic Philip of Spain, refused to see her and instead sent the Duke of Alba to tell her to tackle heresy more brutally, advice which Catherine ignored. Her conciliatory policies were failing.
On September 27, 1567, the Huguenots attempted to ambush the king in an event known as the Surprise of Meaux. The French court fled to Paris. Bloodshed continued well after another peace settlement, the Peace of Longjumeau, was agreed in March 1568.
The Surprise of Meaux marked a turning point. Catherine finally abandoned her policy of compromise for one of repression once the Huguenots had targeted the king. In June 1568, she told the Venetian ambassador that the Huguenots were traitors and praised the Duke of Alba’s reign of terror in the Netherlands.
The royalist army forced the Huguenots to retreat to La Rochelle, where Jeanne d’Albret and her fifteen-year-old son, Henry of Navarre, joined them. Jeanne wrote to Catherine expressing her desire to die rather than abandon her God and religion.
Catherine, who had always underestimated the religious conviction of the Huguenots, decried Jeanne as the most shameless woman in the world. She saw Jeanne’s decision to rebel as a deliberate dynastic threat rather than a move fueled by religious conviction.
On August 8, 1570, the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed because the royal army had run out of money. Despite Catherine’s decision to pursue a more hardline policy, this latest peace conceded wider toleration to the Huguenots than ever before.
With temporary peace in place, Catherine sought to bolster Valois interests through grand dynastic marriages. In 1570, King Charles IX married Elizabeth of Austria. Catherine also sought a match between one of her sons and England’s Elizabeth I, but the idea never took off.
She planned to marry her youngest daughter, Margaret, to Philip of Spain and also sought a union between Margaret and Henry of Navarre to combine Valois and Bourbon interests. However, Margaret was secretly involved with Henry of Guise, resulting in a beating from her mother and brother when they found out.
Catherine succeeded in luring Jeanne to court and convinced her to agree to a marriage between Margaret and Jeanne’s son Henry, with the caveat that Henry be permitted to remain a Huguenot. The wedding took place on August 18, 1572, at Notre Dame, Paris.
The wedding was overshadowed by the recent death of Jeanne, who was taken ill upon her arrival in Paris. It was said that Catherine had murdered her with poisoned gloves. The rumor that Catherine had killed Jeanne d’Albret was not the most damaging rumor circulating that summer.
Catherine’s reputation was to be stained by the events of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which began only days after her daughter Margaret’s wedding. On August 21, 1572, Admiral Coligny was shot while walking home from the Louvre.
A smoking arquebus was discovered in a window, but the culprit escaped.
Coligny was treated by surgeon Ambroise Paré, who removed the bullet from his elbow and amputated a damaged finger with scissors. Catherine made a tearful visit to Coligny despite apparently receiving the news without any display of emotion and promised revenge on his attacker.
Several historians have blamed Catherine for the attack on Coligny. Others have pointed to the Guise family or to a Spanish papal plot to end Coligny’s influence on the king. Whatever the truth, the bloodbath that followed grew quickly out of control.
Two days later, on August 23, 1572, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre broke out. Roman Catholic mobs murdered Protestant Huguenots en masse.
Innocents were targeted, including children, the elderly, and pregnant women. Bodies were thrown into the River Seine and corpses hung in the streets.
Paintings of the carnage show unimaginable horrors, and often, such as the painting by Protestant painter François Dubois, the black-clad figure of Catherine looks coldly upon the violence. It was said that Catherine was party to Charles IX’s decision to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them all.
The slaughter lasted for a week and spread outward from Paris across much of France, where it lasted into the autumn, becoming a season of slaughter, as historian Jules Michelet put it. In total, approximately three thousand Protestants were killed in Paris and a further seventy thousand across France.
After the bloodshed finally abated, Catherine’s reputation was in tatters. But she was not downcast. Her son-in-law, Henry of Navarre, knelt at an altar as a Roman Catholic on September 29, having converted to avoid death.
As ambassadors reported, Catherine laughed triumphantly at the sight.
The legend of the wicked Italian, the Black Queen, spread from this moment. She was accused of being a disciple of Machiavelli, of using the tactics of his treatise The Prince to remove all of her enemies in one deadly blow. It was a well-targeted criticism, given that Machiavelli had dedicated The Prince to Catherine’s father, Lorenzo.
The Huguenots responded to the massacre with propaganda, a tactic made doubly effective by their mastery of the relatively new art of printing with a printing press. Within weeks, propaganda papers were produced and distributed en masse, and Catherine was their natural target.
In 1575, a particularly influential manuscript by an anonymous author titled Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et déportements de Catherine de Médicis blamed Catherine for the massacre and denounced her as the epitome of female evil. The manuscript became a best-seller.
It triggered an avalanche of propaganda and accusations. Her reputation as a devoted queen mother was permanently blackened, and old prejudices against her as a duplicitous Florentine and power-hungry Medici resurfaced. The black clothes she wore as a sign of loyalty to her late husband were turned into the costume of an angel of death.
The document had achieved its aim of preventing Catherine from consolidating her power after the death of her second son, Charles IX. Some even called for her to be put on trial for the murder of the Huguenots. The debate over her level of responsibility is still ongoing.
Some historians have argued that Catherine perhaps ordered the assassination of several Protestant leaders while they were together in Paris for the wedding, but that the scale and unpredictability of the mob’s actions could not have been ordered or controlled by anyone.
Yet Catherine had almost always opted for a conciliatory path. She wanted unity and peace for the sake of political stability and the longevity of the Valois dynasty. She had organized the wedding between her own daughter and Henry of Navarre and invited prominent Huguenots to the celebrations.
It seems unlikely that she would then set out to ruin this opportunity for unity, which she herself had created, by calling forth a violent mob to massacre the Huguenots. She continued to act in line with her policy of conciliation well after the massacre and its aftermath.
But the Protestants and anyone tired of Catherine’s moderate policies remained convinced she was to blame. As with the painting by François Dubois and the anonymous manuscript, criticism of Catherine would play out loudly on the public stage and in the realm of the arts. Catherine would not take it lying down.
Catherine believed, as many Renaissance princes and scholars did, that power depended as much on cultural display as on force. She inherited the Medici family’s taste for fine art and became a patroness of the arts, bolstering French culture as her family had in Florence.
In an age of declining loyalty to the monarchy, she used the arts to increase the prestige of the Valois dynasty, launching an artistic patronage program which lasted for three decades. She invited resident portrait artists to the French court and commissioned thousands of portraits of her family.
Although she spent enormous sums on the arts, there was little permanent legacy. The festivals and entertainments she arranged and the school of artists she patronized did not live on after she was gone. Only her love for architecture left a lasting mark.
Two years after the massacre, another dynastic crisis threatened to unseat Catherine and the Valois line. King Charles IX died at twenty-three of tuberculosis, apparently calling out Catherine’s name with his last dying breath. Leaving no heir, Charles was succeeded by his brother Henry, Duke of Anjou.
Henry was recalled from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he had been elected king the year before. Abandoning this throne for the crown of France, Henry came to the throne as an experienced and grown man. It was said that Henry was Catherine’s favorite son.
Catherine was grieved by Charles’s death, writing to Henry that she was grief-stricken to have witnessed such a scene. She added that her only consolation was to see him soon, and in good health. “For if I were to lose you, I would have myself buried alive with you.”
Despite the advantages of experience, maturity, and health, Henry proved equally fitful as his brothers when it came to displaying interest in government. His disinterest was perhaps rooted in religious devotion. He showed more interest in piety, pilgrimage, and flagellation than in politics.
Just as Francis and Charles had, Henry relied heavily on Catherine for the practicalities of ruling. Even though Catherine did not have the formal powers of a regent, she continued to hold huge power and influence over the government.
Henry’s coronation was held at Reims Cathedral on February 13, 1575, and two days later he married Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont, thwarting Catherine’s plans for a political marriage to a foreign princess. This marriage was childless, which had deep consequences for Catherine’s family.
Henry III’s heir was his younger brother, Francis, Duke of Alençon. But instead of fulfilling his duties as Dauphin, Francis exploited the anarchy of the civil wars to his own advantage. Despite Catherine summoning him for a six-hour telling-off, Francis would not be stopped.
Francis allied with the Protestant princes against the crown and his brother, and besieged Paris in the spring of 1576. The resulting Peace of Monsieur and Edict of Beaulieu, granted by Catherine on May 6, 1576, represented a huge concession to Huguenot demands.
Protestants were now permitted to worship in public, build their own churches, and were guaranteed representation in the strongly Catholic Parliament. There was also to be compensation for families of the victims of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Many Catholics were extremely opposed to these concessions and formed their own political organization called the Catholic League in protest. As well as deepening religious grievances, the peace treaty also failed to bring an end to Francis’s dangerous behavior.
Francis’s army launched a disastrous intervention in the low countries in mid-1584, but in June of that year, Francis died of consumption. Despite their differences, Catherine wrote, “I am so wretched to live long enough to see so many people die before me.”
The death of her youngest son was a dynastic calamity. She had no more living sons to inherit the throne, and any surviving daughters were not eligible to rule due to their gender. The Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre now became heir presumptive to the French crown.
Although Catherine had wisely married her youngest daughter Margaret to Henry of Navarre, she could rely on Margaret little more than she could rely on her troublesome son Francis. Margaret had returned to the French court without her husband in 1582, and Catherine was overheard berating her daughter for taking lovers.
After being sent back to her husband, Margaret fled again in 1585, retreated to her property at Agen, and begged her mother for money. Catherine sent only enough for food in an attempt to force Margaret to return home, but Margaret moved on to the fortress of Carla and took another lover.
Catherine demanded that Henry of Navarre act to resolve his marital difficulties before shame was brought upon them all. In October 1586, he locked Margaret up in the Château du Sauve. Her lover was executed.
Catherine cut Margaret out of her will and never saw her again.
Catherine’s control over the crown had reduced since the reign of her elder two sons, but she still functioned as Henry’s chief executive of government and as a traveling diplomat. She traveled widely across the kingdom enforcing his authority and trying to head off war.
In 1578, at the age of fifty-nine, she embarked on an eighteen-month journey around the south of France to meet Huguenot leaders. Her efforts won Catherine new respect from the French people, and on her return to Paris in 1579, she was greeted outside the city by the parliament and large crowds.
The Venetian ambassador Girolamo Lippomano wrote of Catherine, “She is an indefatigable princess born to tame and govern a people as unruly as the French. They now recognize her merits, her concern for unity, and are sorry not to have appreciated her sooner.”
Catherine herself, however, was under no illusions about the desperate situation facing the Valois dynasty. On November 25, 1579, she wrote to the king, “You are on the eve of a general revolt. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar.”
As Catherine had predicted, many leading Roman Catholics were appalled by her attempts to appease the Huguenots and in particular by the Edict of Beaulieu, which had furthered Protestant rights. Local Catholic Leagues were formed to protect the Catholic religion and Catholic privileges.
After the death of Francis the Dauphin in 1584, the Duke of Guise assumed leadership of the Catholic League to block the succession of Huguenot Henry of Navarre and put Henry’s Catholic uncle Cardinal Charles de Bourbon on the throne instead.
Guise recruited powerful Catholic princes, nobles, and bishops, formed a union with Spain under the Treaty of Joinville, and readied for war against the heretics. By 1585, King Henry III had to face the reality of war against the Catholic League, who were stirring up civil war once more.
Catherine counseled Henry on the delicate nature of the situation but also warned him that peace is carried on a stick. She wrote to her favorite son to “Take care, especially about your person. There is so much treachery about that I die of fear.”
Trapped in a difficult situation, Henry was unable to fight both the Catholics and the Protestants at the same time, both of whom had larger and better-resourced armies. Henry decided to seek peace with the Catholics and on July 7, 1585, signed the Treaty of Nemours.
Driven by his religious convictions, Henry retreated into hiding to fast and pray, taking with him his personal bodyguard, a loyal force known as the 45, and leaving Catherine to find a resolution to what was quickly becoming a constitutional crisis. The Valois monarchy had lost control of the country.
To make matters worse, a Europe-wide Catholic backlash against the Protestants was on the rise in 1587. The instability in France forced Henry III and Catherine to refuse assistance to England after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots on February 8, 1587, caused fury amongst the Catholic world.
Recognizing the vulnerability of royal power in France, the Spanish ambassador apparently told King Philip II of Spain that the abscess was about to burst. The Catholic League honored their treaty with the Spanish and seized control of much of northern France to allow the Spanish Armada access to French ports.
With his rule completely undermined, Henry made several mistakes. Seeing that Paris was vulnerable, he hired Swiss troops to help defend the city. But the Parisians took it upon themselves to defend the city and built barricades in the streets on May 12, 1588.
They refused to take orders from Henry and announced they would take orders only from the Duke of Guise. Catherine reportedly forced her way through the barricades to mass, the people acquiescing to her passing, and then, as chronicler L’Estoile reported, cried all through lunch.
She later wrote to statesman Pomponne de Bellièvre, “Never have I seen myself in such trouble or with so little light by which to escape.” Acting on his mother’s sage advice, Henry fled Paris just in time and signed the Act of Union on June 15, 1588, giving in to the League’s demands.
Then Henry made his second mistake. On September 8, 1588, he dismissed all of his ministers without warning as the French court gathered for a meeting of the Estates. Atypically, he had not conferred with Catherine about this decision, and she was kept in the dark while suffering from a lung infection.
At the meeting of the Estates, Henry thanked Catherine for everything she had done, calling her mother of the king and mother of the state. Then, on December 23, 1588, Henry invited the Duke of Guise to visit him at the Château de Blois.
Again, without conferring with Catherine, Henry acted to resolve all of the problems facing him and made his third great mistake. As Guise entered the king’s chamber, the 45 stabbed Guise to death symbolically at the foot of the king’s bed.
Simultaneously, Henry’s men captured eight members of the Guise family, including the Duke of Guise’s brother, the Cardinal of Guise, Louis II, who was later hacked to death in the palace dungeons. Once the murders were complete, Henry finally shared his decisions with Catherine and begged her forgiveness.
Although Catherine’s initial reaction cannot be known, her son’s actions had certainly not reflected her own cautious and shrewd diplomacy. On Christmas Day, she prayed with a friar and lamented, “Oh wretched man, what has he done? Pray for him.
I see him rushing towards his ruin.”
When she visited her old friend Cardinal de Bourbon on January 1, 1589, her promise that he would be freed soon was met with the cardinal’s derision as he responded, “Your words, madam, have led us all to this butchery.”
Catherine died only a few days later on January 5, 1589, at the age of sixty-nine. It is likely that she died from pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs, the condition which had kept her bedridden in December and which had perhaps encouraged her son to move against the Duke of Guise without conferring with her first.
It was generally believed that Catherine’s life had been shortened by the stress and by her anger at her son’s rash actions. As Paris was still held by enemies of the crown, Catherine could not be buried there with her husband. She was initially buried at the Saint-Sauveur de Blois Church.
Her body was later moved to the Basilica Cathedral of Saint-Denis in northern Paris, the traditional resting place for French monarchs, and placed next to her husband, Henry II. This re-interment was arranged by Henry II’s illegitimate daughter with Philippa Duci, Diane de France, Duchess of Angouleme.
The tomb of Henry and Catherine, an elaborate temple-like structure with four statues representing the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, was desecrated during the French Revolution in October 1793, like those of many other kings and queens of France.
However, the tomb was saved by archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir and preserved at the Museum of French Monuments. During the second Bourbon Restoration between 1815 and 1830, the tomb was returned to the Basilica of Saint Denis.
Catherine was not outlived by her son for very long. Henry III was stabbed to death by Jacques Clement eight months after Catherine’s initial burial. When he was killed, Henry had been besieging Paris with Henry of Navarre, who went on to succeed him as King Henry IV of France.
The death of Catherine’s last son represented the end of almost three centuries of Valois rule and brought the House of Bourbon to power. Catherine had outlived all of her children except Henry, who died only months later, and Margaret, who she had disowned.
King Henry IV later said of Catherine, his mother-in-law and enemy, “What could a woman do left by the death of her husband with five little children on her arms and two families of France who were thinking of grasping the crown, our own and the Guises? Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other in order to guard, as she did, her sons who successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman? I am surprised that she never did worse.”
Catherine had risen to become the most powerful woman in sixteenth-century Europe. Born into the prominent Medici family, then the rulers of Florence and famous patrons of the arts, she rose to become Queen of France by marriage to King Henry II and wielded immense power as the Queen Mother of three French kings.
But her legacy has been mired by attitudes towards powerful women and foreigners and by the controversies which coincided with her time as the power behind the French crown. The complexity of the civil and religious wars which her three sons ruled through make assessing her difficult.
Catherine’s influence over her sons, their governments, and their policy making made her an easy target for blame. The blame she carried, whether justly or not, for the persecutions carried out under her sons’ rule, and especially the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, tainted her memory.
Catherine has been remembered as the Black Queen, as a follower of Machiavelli’s cutthroat political theories, rather than as a queen mother who pursued policies of conciliation, patronized the arts, and above all, worked to save the Valois dynasty.
Although Catherine’s ruthlessness is not a fabrication of historians, as it comes through clearly in her letters and in the words of those who knew her, there is much more to her story. Like many female rulers before and after her, she has been flattened out by history, made into a two-dimensional character.
Her authority was hugely limited by the effects of the civil wars, and in the context of the political and religious turmoil, her policies appear to simply be desperate measures to keep the Valois monarchy on the throne. From her policy of conciliation with the Huguenots to her patronage of the arts, she fought to preserve her family’s power.
Without Catherine, it seems unlikely that her sons would have held onto the throne in their lifetimes. The question of whether she was the black queen that history has remembered her as, or the devoted mother and politically astute woman she hoped to be remembered as, remains open for debate.