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…
Claude Corneille de Lyon’s portrait of Catherine de’ Medici as a young woman, circa 1540. Source: Polesden Lacey, Surrey. The piazza of the church and convent of Santa Maria Annunziata, where Catherine spent perhaps the happiest years of her childhood. Source: Museo Galileo, Erik Franchi.
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.
While Pope Leo works with the artist Raphael toward the preservation of Roman antiquities and tries to steer Italy between the deadly rocks of France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, a little problem crops up to demand his attention. And that little problem had a name: Martin Luther.
Michelangelo’s engravings with the tomb of Lorenzo “the Younger” in the New Sacristy at the Church of San Lorenzo, depicting Dusk and Dawn. Source: Romain Rolland, The Life of Michael Angelo (1912). Michelangelo’s engravings with the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the New Sacristy at the Church of San Lorenzo, depicting Day and Night. Source: Romain Rolland, The Life of Michael Angelo (1912). A contemporaneous portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Date: 1528. Source: Coburg Fortress Gallery.
Transcript
So with that, let’s go back to the year 1505, on a July afternoon…
A university student was returning home after visiting his parents. He found himself caught in the middle of a sudden thunderstorm. Lightning struck the ground near him. On the spot, Luther prayed to Saint Anne, vowing he would give up his studies in law and become a monk if he survived the thunderstorm. The young student did indeed survive and joined an Augustinian monastery. And that university student was Martin Luther.
Pope Leo X goes through his own “annus mirabilis.” Meanwhile the next generation of Medici men come into their own: the wannabe aristocrat, Lorenzo “the Younger”, and the juvenile delinquent turned freelance mercenary, Giovanni of the Black Bands.
A portrait of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, by Raphael (1518). Note the ostentatious dress in the style of a French nobleman in contrast to the more modest patrician clothing worn by his grandfather Lorenzo the Magnificent and his uncle Giuliano. Source: Private collection. A portrait depicting Giovanni “of the Black Bands” painted after his death by Francesco de’ Rossi (1548). Source: Soprintendenza Speciale Per Il Polo Museale Fiorentino.
Transcript
1516 was a very bad year for Leo X. To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth II of England centuries later, 1516 was Leo’s annus mirabilis. His brother Giuliano died in March, which was not only a personal loss but a political one for the family, since he seems he might have been the most politically talented and popular member of the family since his father Lorenzo the Magnificent. Then, that summer, a monk named Bonaventura had declared himself the true, “Angelic Pope”, excommunicated the Pope and all his cardinals, and warned that the Ottoman Turks would invade Italy before converting to Christianity thanks to the King of France.
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