From the start of her life, the orphaned Catherine’s life was marred by politics. First, she was destined to be a figurehead for her great-uncle’s territorial ambitions. Then she was a hostage blamed for the crimes of her family, and next a pawn on the royal marriage market. No one could have guessed that the future had grander things in store for her than just a marriage to some prince…
Transcript
If anyone in history was ever actually cursed from birth, it may have been Catherine de’ Medici. After giving birth to her, her mother Madeliene de La Tour d’Auvergne died less than a week after her birth from complications.
Her father Lorenzo the Younger de’ Medici less than a month later, possibly from a catastrophic combination of syphilis and tuberculosis. When Pope Leo X saw his little great-niece, with a real classicist flare he exclaimed, “She comes bearing the calamities of the Greeks!” Still, Pope Leo quickly warmed up to his great-niece. Called the “Little Duchess” because she inherited her father’s title of Duchess of Urbino, she was put into the care of her grandmother Alfonsina Orsini. After Anfonsina soon died, Catherine lived with her mother Clarice Strozzi. It was there that Catherine finally found her family. Catherine came to consider the Strozzi brood as her true siblings, becoming closer to them than with her alleged half-brother Alessandro. For the rest of her life, even when she became queen of France, Catherine kept in touch with the Strozzi.
Catherine’s governess also came from the family, Maria Salviati, the widow of the mercenary Giovanni of the Black Bands. Still, we know surprisingly little about her education. She did have the appreciation for art that would be expected of any member of the family. And she did learn fluent French and had at least some knowledge of Greek and Latin. However, at first, Leo X had no plans to marry her to any foreign royal, much less a French prince. Instead, he intended to marry Catherine to her cousin Ippolito. By marrying an illegitimate male Medici to the last legitimate male-line descendent of Cosimo de’ Medici, the main Medici line would at least be preserved. More to the point, it would ensure that Urbino would stay in the family. At least, that was the plan, but Urbino would slip back to the della Rovere family after Leo X’s death, and Clement VII would force Ippolito to become a cardinal.
Instead, Catherine was sent back to Florence and put back into the care of her grandmother Alfonsina Orsini. However, she too died less than a year later. The orphan was taken in by her aunt Clarice Strozzi. Raised and educated alongside Clarice’s many children, Catherine thought of them as her siblings and stayed in touch with them for the rest of her life. Whatever comfort and stability Catherine finally found with the Strozzis wasn’t meant to last. Ironically, it was her own foster mother’s actions that would cause Catherine to be dragged away from her own family. Clarice’s confrontation with Cardinal Passerini was the spark that lit the fuse on a new anti-Medici revolution. Since Alessandro and Ippolito had fled Florence, the new regime in Florence decided to keep Catherine as a hostage. To keep her family from whisking her away, Catherine, at only the age of eight, was taken away from her family and placed in the care of the nuns at the Convent of Santa Lucia. Clarice pleaded with the government to restore Catherine to her care, but to no avail.
Whatever trauma Catherine suffered was eased when she was instead moved to another convent, Santa Maria Annunziata della Murate. The convent had a long history of pro-Medici sympathies. In any case, the nuns there doted over Catherine. One of the nuns would later remark that Catherine was “so gentle and pleasant that the sisters did all they could to ease her sorrows and difficulties.” However much the nuns coddled her, it is clear from her remark that Catherine was scathed by her separation from the Strozzi family. Likely enough, she was also aware when Clarice, the only mother she had known, died in May of 1528. The worst was to come during the Siege of Florence, when imperial and Spanish forces surrounded Florence and reduced its citizens to a state of starvation. As the only Medici left in the city, she would risk the wrath of the government over the attempts of her cousin Pope Clement VII to retake control over Florence. Even though at the time Catherine was only eleven years old, radicals in the government proposed having her killed on the walls of Florence before the enemy forces or forcing her to go to a brothel. At the very least, it had been decided to remove her from the convent that had been her home the past three years, in case the nuns tried to secret her out of the city. Such threats reached Catherine, and she took them seriously enough despite her age that she cut off all her hair, declared that she had become a nun, and before a group of Florentine soldiers screamed, “Holy Mother, I am yours! Let us now see what excommunicated wretch will dare to drag a bride of Christ from her monastery.” Unfortunately, the soldiers did take her, and she was led through the streets of Florence in the garments of a nun, while angry, starving Florentines jeered at her and pelted her with mud and trash. Even so, she was not physically harmed. Instead, the government decided to return her to the convent of St. Lucia, where the loyalty of the nuns there to the current regime was more assured. When we read about historical figures, I think many of us have a tendency to just assume people in the past were made of sterner stuff or glide over what it must have been like to suffer certain horrors, especially if we know in hindsight that the person in question will be more or less okay later on. However, I think here it’s worth taking a moment to think about what this must have been like for Catherine. She was eight years old, a third grader in American terms, when she was separated suddenly and without warning from the only family she had known. She did find some love and normalcy again with the nuns at Santa Maria Annunziata, only to once again be ripped from a warm and caring home. No wonder Catherine’s biographer Leonie Frieda speculates that she may have had what we’d today call post-traumatic stress disorder.
Once the Medici returned to power, Catherine’s life naturally improved. It was also time for a marriage to be arranged for her. It was rumored that Ippolito planned to give up being a cardinal and marry Catherine, just as Leo originally intended. Indeed, Catherine seems to have been closer to Ippolito than she was with her supposed half-brother Alessandro, and the two might have had some kind of mild dalliance. However, if Ippolito seriously planned to ask for Catherine’s hand in marriage, Pope Clement squashed such plans. Unlike Leo, Clement was determined to put Catherine up on the international marriage market along with the other royal and great noble families of Europe. Among her suitors were the great Italian noble dynasties – the Gonzagas of Mantua, the delle Roveres of Rome and Urbino, and the Este of Ferrara. Outside Italy, Catherine was a possible match for several other royals. Her potential husbands included the Prince Rene of Orange, King Henry VIII of England’s illegitimate son and potential heir Henry of Richmond, and King James V of Scotland. It’s fun to wonder what would have happened if Catherine ended up queen of England or Scotland instead, but the Scottish match at least didn’t make it far. Apparently Pope Clement was worried about the expense of postage from sending letters to Scotland during the negotiations.
As the daughter of a family seen as parvenus and merchants, of course, Catherine had a handicap on the European marriage market. Another problem was that Catherine just didn’t match the standards of beauty of her own time. A Venetian ambassador rather bluntly described her as “small of stature, and thin, and without delicate features, but having the protruding eyes peculiar to the Medici family.” Another observer described a portrait of her like this: “The face is at least agreeable, with features which, though strongly marked, are not irregular.” No one could be as casually brutal in describing a woman’s appearance as a Renaissance era ambassador.
At least during this time we get a rare glimpse into what Catherine was like an adolescent. During the negotiations for her marriage, an artist was commissioned to paint her portrait, supposedly to provide a painting that could be sent to foreign courts. While the artist was away to take a lunch break, Catherine and her friends snuck into his room and painted bright colors into the painting. In case you’re wondering, I’m honestly not sure if this painting survived. Still, it is an interesting and rather unexpected glimpse into Catherine’s personality. The queen who’d become known for her alleged ruthlessness did, in fact, act like a normal teenager.
However, her uncle’s endless chess game with Emperor Charles V and King Francois I sealed her fate. While Charles V pressured Clement to marry Catherine to his lackey, Duke Francesco II of Milan, Clement was secretly writing to Francois, who had agreed to marry his younger son Henri to Catherine. Francois even kept up the charade by publicly scoffing before one of Charles V’s ambassadors that he would never let any of his sons marry a merchant’s daughter. Possibly this wouldn’t have even been an option if Catherine wasn’t through her mother descended from high French nobility and distantly related to the royal family. But the real reason for the marriage was, naturally, political. Clement would stay connected to Francois I without becoming completely dependent on Charles V, and Francois would get papal blessings if he ever fulfilled his obsession of conquering Milan. The deal was struck. Charles V was of course furious, but there was nothing he could do.
On October 23, 1533, Catherine arrived at Marseilles to meet her groom for the first time. It was a lavish affair hosted by the Pope, who no doubt was trying to compensate for the Medici’s lowly background in the eyes of the French royals. Catherine herself was dressed in gold and silver silk. Before her stood her prince, a shy and awkward young man, but also tall, handsome, and well-built. I like to think that early on Catherine and Henri stole some moments to themselves and talked, and Catherine discovered that like her, her new husband had also been ripped away from his home and family, when his father Francois gave him up as a hostage to Charles V in Spain.
Whether it was just Henri’s looks, the fact that they at least had traumas in common, or some combination of the two, Catherine did something women in arranged marriages in that era were not really supposed to do. In fact, many guidebooks on marriage at the time recommended against it, warning that it would only cause strife and actually be an obstacle to forming a beneficial union. And that thing Catherine did was fall in love with her husband.
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