Tea at Trianon: Catherine de Medici and François I

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Catherine de Medici and François I

Since I am going to be reviewing C.W. Gortner's The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, I was delighted to find this essay by the author on the blog of Renaissance scholar Julianne Douglas. It concerns Catherine's relationship with her father-in-law François I. As Mr. Gortner says:

Among the many misconceptions about Catherine de Medici, surely one of the saddest is that she was an amoral woman without a heart, who ruthlessly eliminated anyone who stood in her way. Some even went so far as to say, she did not know how to love.

However, it is not too surprising, given her background and the unfortunate circumstances in which she rose to power. In truth, Catherine has been the target of a smear campaign that began in her lifetime; of Italian birth, she came to France while a teenager to wed King François I’s second son, who later became Henri II. (Read More.)

tubbs said...: Whig history (read fiction) will always paint Catherine as the mastermind of the St Bart's Day murders. Her celluloid portrayals have always been so bad they border on camp/satire.(re the monstrously painted Verna Lisi in 'Queen Margot', the fat witch in MasterpieceTheatre's 'Elizabeth R', and the best (read worst) ever - D. W. Griffith's Catherine in 'Intolerance', where she's trapsing and gloating over the corpses in the streets of Paris.; June 16, 2010 at 1:00:00 PM EDT
tubbs said...: I think we must remember too, how the older contemporary families viewed the Medicis. They were considered upstarts; unbelievably wealthy and powerful, but really just gangster hustlers whose pawn-broker arms revealed their base origins. But Medici women came with huge dowries - something irresistible to even the lofty French royal house. The new Bourbon dynasty saw that, as Henry IV married Catherine's kinswoman Marie. Now Medici blood is in nearly all European royal bloodlines, including Britain's young Princes, William and Harry.; June 16, 2010 at 1:28:00 PM EDT