Catherine de’ Medici

Hollingsworth, Mary

£30.00

Catherine de’ Medici lived her life at the storm centre of European and French politics in an age of religious conflict. Born to Lorenzo II, the Medici ruler of Florence, and married to a French prince by papal connivance at the age of fourteen, Catherine was successively queen consort of France and mother to three French kings (Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III) who reigned in an era of almost continuous civil and religious strife. A spendthrift promoter of the arts, Catherine patronised poets, painters and sculptors, lavished ruinous sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, and masterminded spectacular entertainments and tournaments that prefigure the splendour and ritual of the court of Versailles. Posterity has anathematised her as the epitome of the scheming royal matriarch, her reputation tainted forever by her role in instigating the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants.

In stock

Publish Date: 06/06/2024
ISBN: 9781800244764 Category: Tag:

Description

A new biography of Catherine de’ Medici, the most powerful woman in sixteenth-century Europe, whose author uses neglected primary sources to recreate the life and times of a remarkable – and remarkably traduced – woman.

History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings during that country’s long sequence of sectarian wars in the second half of the sixteenth century. Thanks to the malign efforts of propagandists motivated by religious hatred, history tends to remember Catherine as a schemer who used witchcraft and poison to eradicate her rivals, as a spendthrift dilettante who wasted ruinous sums of money on building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, and most sinister of all, as instigator of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, in which thousands of innocent Protestants were slaughtered by Catholic mobs.

Mary Hollingsworth delves into contemporary archives to discover deeper truths behind these persistent myths. The correspondence of diplomats and Catherine’s own letters reveal a woman who worked tirelessly to find a way for Catholics and Protestants to coexist in peace (a goal for which she continued to strive until the end of her life), who was well-informed on both literary and scientific matters, and whose patronage of the arts helped bring into being glorious châteaux and gardens, priceless work of art, and magnificent festivities combining theatre, music and ballet, which display the grandeur of the French court.

Additional information

Weight 734 g
Dimensions 234 × 153 × 42 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Hardback

Pages

464

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

944.028092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K