April 21, 2010 • 23 mins
Catherine de' Medici remains the most famous female member of the Medici clan. Orphaned at a young age, Catherine survived struggles with childhood illness and eventually became the Queen consort of France. Tune in and learn what happened next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our Medici
super series isn't all about Italy. In this episode, we're
(00:21):
actually going to follow the most famous female member of
the Medici clan on her journey to France, where this
wealthy bourgeois family finally attains what it hasn't had, which
is royal standing. But it's not all happily ever after.
You have probably heard of Catherine as a poisoner or
(00:41):
an Italian spy, but we're saving that stuff. The Catholic
Huguenot wars for later, and Katherine's Triple regency as well.
For this one, We're going to go back to her roots.
And that's because apparently we're really fascinated by stories about
sad royal children. I was thinking about all the episodes
where we've talked about them, Cleopatra's brood, Harrod's kids, Elizabeth
(01:06):
the first when she was just Lady Elizabeth with kind
of an expendable head. So we're going to move on
to Florence and start with a really sad childhood in
our michel Angelo episode, we talked about a Medici pope,
Pope Leo the ax as our friend Molly from Stuff
Mom Never Told You called him and his various maneuvers
(01:28):
in Florence for power. He assumed the papal throne in
fifteen thirteen and replaced his brother as nominal ruler of
Florence with his nephew, a puppet, Lorenzo the Second Medici,
and don't get him confused with Lorenzo the Magnificent, because
there's nothing like that about it. And Leo arranges an
advantageous match for this young man with Madeline de la
(01:51):
Tour du Verne, who's a sixteen year old orphan and
also a Bourbon heiress. It's a deal struck up between
the Pope and the attack alien territory hungry French King
Francis the First, which suits both of their schemes and
is a nice little union of power in the marriage
is a success. The couple conceives a child within months,
(02:12):
and Katerina de Medici is born on April nineteen, But
the sad thing is she's orphaned within weeks of her
birth because Laurens of the second seems to have had
a pretty bad case of syphilis. Francis and Leo are
of course disappointed that their plan hasn't come to fruition
quite as they were hoping um. But once baby Catherine
(02:34):
gets over in early illness, she's healthy and actually turns
out to be a very valuable pawn to whoever possesses her.
Pope Leo intends to control her himself and refuses to
send her to Francis's court because basically she'd be a
hostage and Francis would be the one who could decide
who to marry her too. And so when Leo receives
baby Catherine in Rome, he says, somewhat ominously, she comes
(02:59):
bearing the calamity is of the Greeks, but he also
says she's a fine and fat little baby, so maybe
things are going to come out okay. Leo puts his
full power behind Catherine and makes her Duchess of Urbino.
He plans to eventually marry her off to an illegitimate
Medici son and set them up as the new puppet
rulers of Florence. But unfortunately things aren't so simple, and
(03:23):
in one Leo dies and the new Pope is Adrian.
The six who's a reformist. We talked about him in
the Michelangelo Episode two. He has little tolerance for all
things Medici and um it's not a good time for
the family. Adrian at first takes Catherine's duchy of Urbino
and gives it back to its original owners. But even
(03:46):
though the family is flailing a bit at this time,
Catherine's doing okay. She's moved back to Florence to live
under her relative, Cardinal Julio's supervision. And you might remember
him from our Popsy Conspiracy podcast. He was the illegiti
it's son of the Giuliano who was murdered in the Duomo.
But Adrian doesn't last long anyways. He dies, possibly being poisoned,
(04:08):
just two years after he comes into power, and so
Catherine's uncle, Cardinal Giulio becomes Pope Clement the seventh, and
with the Medici back on top, back in power, Catherine
becomes good marriage bait again. She's valuable again, and so
Clement outfits her in style in the Medici Palace. You
know she's she's raised like a princess there. But as
(04:31):
we mentioned also in the Michelangelo podcast, Florentines are not
happy under this new form of Medici rule Cardinal Giulio.
Now Pope Clement isn't willing to give up his day
job of micromanaging Florence, and the people in the city
aren't happy under this Medici control. And in fifteen twenty six,
(04:53):
when Catherine is just seven years old, Clement joins a
sort of league with France, England, Florence, and ven Us
against the eventual Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Five. But
things do not go well for the League of Kognac,
and soon enough imperial troops are sacking Rome. The Pope
hass to flee, hide and melt down his papal Tierras
(05:14):
to pay his own ransom, and as of course we
learned in a previous podcast, while Rome is being sacked,
the Florentines take the opportunity to try to restore the republic,
and with the help of the Imperial army, they overthrow
the Medici down with the Medici and so this is
obviously scary times for Catherine de Medici hold up in
(05:34):
the Medici Palace and she's there with her guardian and
mother figure Clarice Strokesie, who the two of them are
left to face this angry anti Medici Florentine mob and
eventually they escape to a Medici country house, but an
armed f scort comes to collect Catherine and takes her
off to the Santa Lucia Convent, which is not a
(05:56):
pro Medici convent, but still probably a relatively safe place
to be, and this begins poor Catherine three years of
danger and shuffling about and From Santa Lucia, she's moved
to Santa Katarina of Siena, which is also in Florence,
and it's a plague ridden convent, so not the best
(06:17):
place for a young girl to be living. The French
ambassador insists that she'd be taken out of it, and
the Republic's council agreed for her to move to the
convent of Santa Maria and Nunziata deli Marat, which is
a covert operation. They leave in the dead of night.
Catherine is wearing several veils, and this is in fifteen
twenty seven, just to give you an idea of where
(06:39):
we are in the time. People people sometimes ask for
more dates and ages and um. But this convent is
much nicer than the other two. It's set up to
educate young aristocratic women and they also taken retired noble women,
and since the convent has been well supported by the Medici,
(06:59):
they're very welcoming to Catherine. The abbess is even her godmother,
so it's comparatively nice. She learns a lot from these educated,
aristocratic nuns, and um picks up a lot of the
things that make her eventually so successful in court. You know,
her nice manners, her beautiful bearing, her charm, and one
(07:21):
of the nun's notes that she was so gentle and
pleasant that the sisters did all they could to ease
her sorrows and difficulty. So this is a um, a
calmer time in her imprisonment, essentially, And in the meantime,
Clement and Charles are hammering out a piece. But new
extremists in Florence fear that the Medici will come back
(07:43):
into power. Of course, of clementon Charles are together on this,
so they consider eliminating the main marriage pawn, who of
course is little Catherine, precious to the papacy and the Medici.
And in fine with imperial troops arriving in Florence, these
new extremists meet them with a fierce defense. Um. This
(08:05):
is when Michelangelo is setting up the fortification, designing fortifications
and all that. And these extremists are very anti eleven
year old Catherine, and they have some terrible ideas about
what to do with her. One plan is to lower
her naked in a basket over the city walls, where
her imperial allies might accidentally kill her. Another is to
(08:28):
ditch her in a military brothel so that she's not
a very desirable marriage pond anymore. They don't accomplish any
of these, but regardless, the plan is to take her
out of the Marat convent and the poor nuns have
to give her up. Catherine thinks that the troops are
coming to kill her, so she shaves her head and
puts on a habit and yells, Holy Mother, I am yours.
(08:50):
Let us now see what excommunicated wretch will dare to
drag a spouse of Christ from her monastery and she
will not take her habit off. Yeah. I mean, it's
kind of remarkable though, that she's not harmed when she's
taken from the convent. She's kept safe by her escort,
who behaves quite honorably, but she has to ride through
(09:11):
the city of Florence in her habit on a donkey,
and it's a scary, terrible ride. She can hear that
anti Medici people yelling at her on the street, but
she's not harmed. She's dropped off at Saint Lucia Convent again,
the place where she she started this whole odyssey, and
soon enough Clement has Florence again and Catherine is safe.
(09:35):
So Catherine is shipped off to Rome to live with
her great aunt Lucrazia Salviata, who is Lorenzo the Magnificence daughter.
And with the Medici back on top, it is time
to make a marriage match, perhaps one with France. So
now we're going to take you over to another country
in another sad childhood. So Catherine's intended Henry, is born
(09:58):
two weeks before her, and his mother dies when he's
five years old. But the worst childhood trauma comes a
year later. And to understand that, we're going to have
to go a little bit back into his father's life.
So his father, Francis, was obsessed with Italian conquests as
a young man, and this earned him the hostility of
Charles the First of Spain, who later became our old friend,
(10:22):
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles five and in fifty five,
Francis had a stupendous loss against the imperial troops in Pavia, Italy.
He was overly brave on the field. His nobles were
cut down around him, and he manages to get himself
captured and taken to Barcelona. Francis is treated well by Charles,
(10:42):
but he gets depressed, you know, not being able to
do the things he's used to doing as King of France.
He stops eating, he gets sick, and Charles is terrified
that this priceless captive he has, this bargaining chip, is
going to die on him, and Frances fortunately starts to
get a little better. The two monarchs start to work
out the Treaty of Madrid in and this results in
(11:05):
a huge sacrifices of territory from Francis. A bad deal.
It's a very bad deal, but of course he's not
in a position to bargain here he's held prisoner um. Also,
it's gonna result in a royal marriage. The widower Francis
is going to marry Charles's widowed sister. But to be
sure that, Francis goes out and actually fills these territory
(11:28):
handovers and and keeps up his end of the deal,
Charles was gonna need a little collateral, and so they
work out a deal where in Francis instead, Charles will
hold the Dauphin Francois and Henry, eight and six year
old boys. Yeah, kids for collaterals. That's a that's very nice.
(11:50):
The boys are brought by their grandmother to the borderlands
and the exchange takes place on a raft in a river,
which is very strange. It's like two rafts coming from
the boat coming out to the raft, and then there's
the switch um And as a note, this will come
up a bit later. One woman in the boy's departing
group is twenty five year old Dian de Poitier, who
(12:11):
gives Henry a kiss and later she becomes his mistress
for the rest of his life and kind of the
bane of Catherine de Medici's existence. So Francis is really
upset at the handoff. He's sad to be giving his
sons up as prisoners. He promises them that he'll try
to bring them home soon, but really he has no
intention of fulfilling the terms of this treaty. So the
(12:34):
likelihood that the boys are going to come home anytime
soon is slim to none. Their initial captivity is fine.
They're staying with their future stepmother Eleanor and they have
this large French household. But as Francis becomes more rebellious
you know, starting the league with Kognac for instance, the
kids are basically put on lockdown and moved deeper and
(12:56):
deeper into Spain. And just to compare this again to
Catherine's childhood, since it is so interesting that this future
couple is in captivity at the same time. This is
around the same time that Imperial forces are sacking Rome
and Catherine's hiding in the convent. But by fift twenty nine,
things have gotten worse for the prisoners and a French
(13:16):
spy is found near where they're being kept, so they're
moved even deeper into Spain to Padraza, and the only
member of their once enormous suite of tutors and maids
and valets and friends that's left is a single French
dwarf who's there to entertain them. Ultimately, they're moved to
(13:37):
a cell with ten foot thick walls, bars, and straw mattresses.
They have no companions, no education, and no exercise. But
in the meantime, the years of war have made France
and Spain very ready for peace, even if their actual
rulers are not, and the ladies have to be brought
(13:57):
in to work it out since Francis Charles can't seem
to do it. So La Pexi dey Dome, with Francis's
mom and Charles's aunt, secures the boy's release for quite
a bit of money instead of territory, and Francis sets
to raising it and getting his boys back, and surprisingly,
the boys are in pretty good shape considering the severity
(14:20):
of their final time in prison. Henry's eleven now the
Daufines twelve. But they're different kids. They're not these happy
go lucky French princes that left their gloomy Spanish kids
who have grown up in prison, and to make matters worse,
their father doesn't even like them very much anymore, and
(14:43):
he definitely favors his younger son, who has gotten to
still have his happy French prince childhood. He says that
the mark of a Frenchman was to be always gay
and lively, and he also says that he has no
time for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children. I just want to
be like France. They've been in prison for four and
a half years. Yeah, but it's time to start looking
(15:07):
for a bribe for Henry, regardless of his dreamy sullenness.
A match with Mary Tudor falls through, so Francis goes
to his friend Clement the Pope and enter Catherine in
Henry's life. And this is to be a triumphant marriage
for for Clement and for Francis, who have both been
pretty disgraced recently. This is their chance to show the
(15:30):
world that they're back on top and they're making this
great alliance. And the marriage between these two prison raised
kids is going to be pretty impressive too. Isabella Destay
helps prepare Catherine. Just to get an idea of her trousseau.
Isabella requires three pounds of gold, two pounds of silver,
(15:51):
two pounds of silk. All of that is just for gowns.
She also gets pearls, and these pearls turn out to
be pretty notable because um Catherine gives them to her
future daughter in law, Mary Stewart, who, when she's beheaded
Elizabeth the First, ends up with them. Apparently that's that's
how you get pearls. She also has a crystal casket,
(16:14):
enormous diamonds, emeralds, rubies. Catherine is set as far as
Trousseau go and she starts her journey to Marseille in
fifteen thirty three. There of course very elaborate marriage festivities
that go on for days and days, but they're finally
married by contract October fifteen thirty three and they have
(16:35):
their religious ceremony the next day. Catherine is dressed in
gold brocade with a velvet corsage covered in gems and
edged in ermine. She has jewels in her hair and
a crown on her head, so quite the lovely bride
and the Pope in Frances really want to make sure
that these two fourteen year olds consummate their marriage, and
(16:57):
consequently they're really creepy about it. They might even stay
in the room to make sure that everything happens as
it should. Um. But after that's done, everybody is free
to go home and they exchange some parting gifts and um.
One of the special gifts the Pope gives the King
is a unicorn tusk, which Katie was really excited about
(17:21):
because it is, of course actually a normal tusk and
anyone at hell stuff works in the editorial department, I
think knows how obsessed with them I am. I wrote
an article if you want to go, look for it
on our homepage. So Catherine's a duchess now. She's gone
from this sort of derogatory term a merchant's daughter. She's
clearly no merchant's daughter. But you know, the medicies have
(17:43):
their have their reputations. But regardless, she is a duchess now,
and it seems like things are going to be pretty
great for her, except that the first major blow to
her her married life comes less than a year after
the wedding, when Clement dies and he hasn't fully paid
her dowry, and he hasn't fulfilled all his promises to
(18:05):
King Francis, and so consequently Francis feels like he's gotten
a pretty bum deal with marrying his son to to Catherine,
and he says that the girl has come to me
stark naked. Another big problem is that Catherine can't seem
to conceive, and this is a major issue when Henry's brother,
the Dauphin, dies apparently after an exhausting game of tennis
(18:28):
an embarrassing way to goo it really is seventeen year old.
Henry has a daughter by an Italian woman, so it
seems that the problem isn't him, and he's urged to
repudiate Catherine, but Francis likes her a lot. She's smart,
she's sporting, she may have brought side saddle to France
in fact, and she can handle his body jokes. She's
a good match for him, and so he becomes her
(18:51):
ally her father in law. So Catherine steps up her
attempts to conceive a notch and she gets these weird medicines,
tries all sorts of strange potions out and um. She
watches Henry and his mistress Dione through a whole drilled
on the floor to see what they're doing, maybe find
out if she's doing something wrong, although apparently she's so
(19:13):
sad watching this that the tears blur her vision. Eventually,
the couple gets a medical examination, which shows that both
of them are slightly abnormal, which we have to wonder
what happened detailed, but they're regardless. They're given some instruction.
It seems to work because she's soon pregnant and she
(19:33):
has a boy. Francis, followed by nine more children, so
whatever they learn certainly works. For them, and an important
note for our next episode, Catherine has a two parter.
The survivors except for one are sickly children. They've got
weak lungs. The boys have stres and fits of dementia
that may have been from congenital syphilis. So file that
(19:56):
one away. But while marriage isn't easy, neither is jousting,
and at twenty eight Henry and Catherine become King and
Queen of France. When Francis dies, Catherine sincerely mourned the
old king. He taught her a lot about regal style
and helped inspire her love of architecture and art, and
for the next decade or so she absorbed herself in
(20:19):
her family life, although she had to contend with a
very pushy third party in her marriage, Dionda Poitier. But
the King grows to respect his wife more and more
to pay more attention to her, probably because he is
grateful she's born him so many children um, and he
starts to trust her too. He gives her the regency
several times when he's away on campaigns um, but still
(20:43):
her role is mostly being a mother and being a
lady of the court. By the time she's forty life
seems to be going fairly well after all these years
of expensive wars with um France and Spain over Italy.
There's gonna be peace finally, and it's going to be
marked by two royal marriages, and to celebrate, Henry is
(21:06):
going to host festivities. He has sons and his court
will joust despite Catherine's fears and her foreboding sense of doom,
and she thinks she has a second sight, so this
is a big deal. Her astrologers have warned her that
there's going to be trouble and Nostradamas has predicted disaster.
(21:26):
She's dreamed of blood and gore. There is no good
that will come out of this particular jousting a tournament,
and so on Friday June fifty nine, after several successful runs,
Henry the Second is struck down with a lance through
the eye and brain. It takes him ten agonizing days
(21:47):
to die, and he leaves his fifteen year old son Francis,
who is weak in mind and body, as King of
France and the grieving widow Catherine turns out to be
willing to do anything to protect her children's birthright. But
that's going to be the subject for our next episode,
which will also be our exciting conclusion of the Medici
(22:11):
super series. So leaving you with that, we will now
go to listener mail, which is about the Medici. Appropriately enough,
this message is from Jeremy and Juno Beach, Florida. He
wrote to us, I've been listening to these podcasts and
found it all very familiar. This is in regard to
(22:32):
the Pozzy conspiracy. By the way, the game Assassin's Creed
Too takes place in Renaissance Italy and a portion of
the story includes the Medici and Pozzy takeover. The game
used some of the history for the story and it's
pretty accurate with your podcast. There's also a downloadable addition
to the game named Bonfire of the Vanity. I haven't
played it yet, but it's about a religious zealot that
(22:54):
takes over Florence and starts burning books. Like the podcast
on Savonarola, nothing spectacular by any stretch, but figured you'd
be interested in the history aspect of the game, and
we are. Indeed. We'd also like to remind you that
we get a lot of suggestions on both our Facebook
fan page and on our Twitter feed and missed in history,
(23:16):
so you should come and find us, and if you'd
like to check out my article on our walls because
you know you want to, you can find it on
our home page at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
out the stuff you missed in history Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our Medici
super series isn't all about Italy. In this episode, we're
(00:21):
actually going to follow the most famous female member of
the Medici clan on her journey to France, where this
wealthy bourgeois family finally attains what it hasn't had, which
is royal standing. But it's not all happily ever after.
You have probably heard of Catherine as a poisoner or
(00:41):
an Italian spy, but we're saving that stuff. The Catholic
Huguenot wars for later, and Katherine's Triple regency as well.
For this one, We're going to go back to her roots.
And that's because apparently we're really fascinated by stories about
sad royal children. I was thinking about all the episodes
where we've talked about them, Cleopatra's brood, Harrod's kids, Elizabeth
(01:06):
the first when she was just Lady Elizabeth with kind
of an expendable head. So we're going to move on
to Florence and start with a really sad childhood in
our michel Angelo episode, we talked about a Medici pope,
Pope Leo the ax as our friend Molly from Stuff
Mom Never Told You called him and his various maneuvers
(01:28):
in Florence for power. He assumed the papal throne in
fifteen thirteen and replaced his brother as nominal ruler of
Florence with his nephew, a puppet, Lorenzo the Second Medici,
and don't get him confused with Lorenzo the Magnificent, because
there's nothing like that about it. And Leo arranges an
advantageous match for this young man with Madeline de la
(01:51):
Tour du Verne, who's a sixteen year old orphan and
also a Bourbon heiress. It's a deal struck up between
the Pope and the attack alien territory hungry French King
Francis the First, which suits both of their schemes and
is a nice little union of power in the marriage
is a success. The couple conceives a child within months,
(02:12):
and Katerina de Medici is born on April nineteen, But
the sad thing is she's orphaned within weeks of her
birth because Laurens of the second seems to have had
a pretty bad case of syphilis. Francis and Leo are
of course disappointed that their plan hasn't come to fruition
quite as they were hoping um. But once baby Catherine
(02:34):
gets over in early illness, she's healthy and actually turns
out to be a very valuable pawn to whoever possesses her.
Pope Leo intends to control her himself and refuses to
send her to Francis's court because basically she'd be a
hostage and Francis would be the one who could decide
who to marry her too. And so when Leo receives
baby Catherine in Rome, he says, somewhat ominously, she comes
(02:59):
bearing the calamity is of the Greeks, but he also
says she's a fine and fat little baby, so maybe
things are going to come out okay. Leo puts his
full power behind Catherine and makes her Duchess of Urbino.
He plans to eventually marry her off to an illegitimate
Medici son and set them up as the new puppet
rulers of Florence. But unfortunately things aren't so simple, and
(03:23):
in one Leo dies and the new Pope is Adrian.
The six who's a reformist. We talked about him in
the Michelangelo Episode two. He has little tolerance for all
things Medici and um it's not a good time for
the family. Adrian at first takes Catherine's duchy of Urbino
and gives it back to its original owners. But even
(03:46):
though the family is flailing a bit at this time,
Catherine's doing okay. She's moved back to Florence to live
under her relative, Cardinal Julio's supervision. And you might remember
him from our Popsy Conspiracy podcast. He was the illegiti
it's son of the Giuliano who was murdered in the Duomo.
But Adrian doesn't last long anyways. He dies, possibly being poisoned,
(04:08):
just two years after he comes into power, and so
Catherine's uncle, Cardinal Giulio becomes Pope Clement the seventh, and
with the Medici back on top, back in power, Catherine
becomes good marriage bait again. She's valuable again, and so
Clement outfits her in style in the Medici Palace. You
know she's she's raised like a princess there. But as
(04:31):
we mentioned also in the Michelangelo podcast, Florentines are not
happy under this new form of Medici rule Cardinal Giulio.
Now Pope Clement isn't willing to give up his day
job of micromanaging Florence, and the people in the city
aren't happy under this Medici control. And in fifteen twenty six,
(04:53):
when Catherine is just seven years old, Clement joins a
sort of league with France, England, Florence, and ven Us
against the eventual Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Five. But
things do not go well for the League of Kognac,
and soon enough imperial troops are sacking Rome. The Pope
hass to flee, hide and melt down his papal Tierras
(05:14):
to pay his own ransom, and as of course we
learned in a previous podcast, while Rome is being sacked,
the Florentines take the opportunity to try to restore the republic,
and with the help of the Imperial army, they overthrow
the Medici down with the Medici and so this is
obviously scary times for Catherine de Medici hold up in
(05:34):
the Medici Palace and she's there with her guardian and
mother figure Clarice Strokesie, who the two of them are
left to face this angry anti Medici Florentine mob and
eventually they escape to a Medici country house, but an
armed f scort comes to collect Catherine and takes her
off to the Santa Lucia Convent, which is not a
(05:56):
pro Medici convent, but still probably a relatively safe place
to be, and this begins poor Catherine three years of
danger and shuffling about and From Santa Lucia, she's moved
to Santa Katarina of Siena, which is also in Florence,
and it's a plague ridden convent, so not the best
(06:17):
place for a young girl to be living. The French
ambassador insists that she'd be taken out of it, and
the Republic's council agreed for her to move to the
convent of Santa Maria and Nunziata deli Marat, which is
a covert operation. They leave in the dead of night.
Catherine is wearing several veils, and this is in fifteen
twenty seven, just to give you an idea of where
(06:39):
we are in the time. People people sometimes ask for
more dates and ages and um. But this convent is
much nicer than the other two. It's set up to
educate young aristocratic women and they also taken retired noble women,
and since the convent has been well supported by the Medici,
(06:59):
they're very welcoming to Catherine. The abbess is even her godmother,
so it's comparatively nice. She learns a lot from these educated,
aristocratic nuns, and um picks up a lot of the
things that make her eventually so successful in court. You know,
her nice manners, her beautiful bearing, her charm, and one
(07:21):
of the nun's notes that she was so gentle and
pleasant that the sisters did all they could to ease
her sorrows and difficulty. So this is a um, a
calmer time in her imprisonment, essentially, And in the meantime,
Clement and Charles are hammering out a piece. But new
extremists in Florence fear that the Medici will come back
(07:43):
into power. Of course, of clementon Charles are together on this,
so they consider eliminating the main marriage pawn, who of
course is little Catherine, precious to the papacy and the Medici.
And in fine with imperial troops arriving in Florence, these
new extremists meet them with a fierce defense. Um. This
(08:05):
is when Michelangelo is setting up the fortification, designing fortifications
and all that. And these extremists are very anti eleven
year old Catherine, and they have some terrible ideas about
what to do with her. One plan is to lower
her naked in a basket over the city walls, where
her imperial allies might accidentally kill her. Another is to
(08:28):
ditch her in a military brothel so that she's not
a very desirable marriage pond anymore. They don't accomplish any
of these, but regardless, the plan is to take her
out of the Marat convent and the poor nuns have
to give her up. Catherine thinks that the troops are
coming to kill her, so she shaves her head and
puts on a habit and yells, Holy Mother, I am yours.
(08:50):
Let us now see what excommunicated wretch will dare to
drag a spouse of Christ from her monastery and she
will not take her habit off. Yeah. I mean, it's
kind of remarkable though, that she's not harmed when she's
taken from the convent. She's kept safe by her escort,
who behaves quite honorably, but she has to ride through
(09:11):
the city of Florence in her habit on a donkey,
and it's a scary, terrible ride. She can hear that
anti Medici people yelling at her on the street, but
she's not harmed. She's dropped off at Saint Lucia Convent again,
the place where she she started this whole odyssey, and
soon enough Clement has Florence again and Catherine is safe.
(09:35):
So Catherine is shipped off to Rome to live with
her great aunt Lucrazia Salviata, who is Lorenzo the Magnificence daughter.
And with the Medici back on top, it is time
to make a marriage match, perhaps one with France. So
now we're going to take you over to another country
in another sad childhood. So Catherine's intended Henry, is born
(09:58):
two weeks before her, and his mother dies when he's
five years old. But the worst childhood trauma comes a
year later. And to understand that, we're going to have
to go a little bit back into his father's life.
So his father, Francis, was obsessed with Italian conquests as
a young man, and this earned him the hostility of
Charles the First of Spain, who later became our old friend,
(10:22):
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles five and in fifty five,
Francis had a stupendous loss against the imperial troops in Pavia, Italy.
He was overly brave on the field. His nobles were
cut down around him, and he manages to get himself
captured and taken to Barcelona. Francis is treated well by Charles,
(10:42):
but he gets depressed, you know, not being able to
do the things he's used to doing as King of France.
He stops eating, he gets sick, and Charles is terrified
that this priceless captive he has, this bargaining chip, is
going to die on him, and Frances fortunately starts to
get a little better. The two monarchs start to work
out the Treaty of Madrid in and this results in
(11:05):
a huge sacrifices of territory from Francis. A bad deal.
It's a very bad deal, but of course he's not
in a position to bargain here he's held prisoner um. Also,
it's gonna result in a royal marriage. The widower Francis
is going to marry Charles's widowed sister. But to be
sure that, Francis goes out and actually fills these territory
(11:28):
handovers and and keeps up his end of the deal,
Charles was gonna need a little collateral, and so they
work out a deal where in Francis instead, Charles will
hold the Dauphin Francois and Henry, eight and six year
old boys. Yeah, kids for collaterals. That's a that's very nice.
(11:50):
The boys are brought by their grandmother to the borderlands
and the exchange takes place on a raft in a river,
which is very strange. It's like two rafts coming from
the boat coming out to the raft, and then there's
the switch um And as a note, this will come
up a bit later. One woman in the boy's departing
group is twenty five year old Dian de Poitier, who
(12:11):
gives Henry a kiss and later she becomes his mistress
for the rest of his life and kind of the
bane of Catherine de Medici's existence. So Francis is really
upset at the handoff. He's sad to be giving his
sons up as prisoners. He promises them that he'll try
to bring them home soon, but really he has no
intention of fulfilling the terms of this treaty. So the
(12:34):
likelihood that the boys are going to come home anytime
soon is slim to none. Their initial captivity is fine.
They're staying with their future stepmother Eleanor and they have
this large French household. But as Francis becomes more rebellious
you know, starting the league with Kognac for instance, the
kids are basically put on lockdown and moved deeper and
(12:56):
deeper into Spain. And just to compare this again to
Catherine's childhood, since it is so interesting that this future
couple is in captivity at the same time. This is
around the same time that Imperial forces are sacking Rome
and Catherine's hiding in the convent. But by fift twenty nine,
things have gotten worse for the prisoners and a French
(13:16):
spy is found near where they're being kept, so they're
moved even deeper into Spain to Padraza, and the only
member of their once enormous suite of tutors and maids
and valets and friends that's left is a single French
dwarf who's there to entertain them. Ultimately, they're moved to
(13:37):
a cell with ten foot thick walls, bars, and straw mattresses.
They have no companions, no education, and no exercise. But
in the meantime, the years of war have made France
and Spain very ready for peace, even if their actual
rulers are not, and the ladies have to be brought
(13:57):
in to work it out since Francis Charles can't seem
to do it. So La Pexi dey Dome, with Francis's
mom and Charles's aunt, secures the boy's release for quite
a bit of money instead of territory, and Francis sets
to raising it and getting his boys back, and surprisingly,
the boys are in pretty good shape considering the severity
(14:20):
of their final time in prison. Henry's eleven now the
Daufines twelve. But they're different kids. They're not these happy
go lucky French princes that left their gloomy Spanish kids
who have grown up in prison, and to make matters worse,
their father doesn't even like them very much anymore, and
(14:43):
he definitely favors his younger son, who has gotten to
still have his happy French prince childhood. He says that
the mark of a Frenchman was to be always gay
and lively, and he also says that he has no
time for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children. I just want to
be like France. They've been in prison for four and
a half years. Yeah, but it's time to start looking
(15:07):
for a bribe for Henry, regardless of his dreamy sullenness.
A match with Mary Tudor falls through, so Francis goes
to his friend Clement the Pope and enter Catherine in
Henry's life. And this is to be a triumphant marriage
for for Clement and for Francis, who have both been
pretty disgraced recently. This is their chance to show the
(15:30):
world that they're back on top and they're making this
great alliance. And the marriage between these two prison raised
kids is going to be pretty impressive too. Isabella Destay
helps prepare Catherine. Just to get an idea of her trousseau.
Isabella requires three pounds of gold, two pounds of silver,
(15:51):
two pounds of silk. All of that is just for gowns.
She also gets pearls, and these pearls turn out to
be pretty notable because um Catherine gives them to her
future daughter in law, Mary Stewart, who, when she's beheaded
Elizabeth the First, ends up with them. Apparently that's that's
how you get pearls. She also has a crystal casket,
(16:14):
enormous diamonds, emeralds, rubies. Catherine is set as far as
Trousseau go and she starts her journey to Marseille in
fifteen thirty three. There of course very elaborate marriage festivities
that go on for days and days, but they're finally
married by contract October fifteen thirty three and they have
(16:35):
their religious ceremony the next day. Catherine is dressed in
gold brocade with a velvet corsage covered in gems and
edged in ermine. She has jewels in her hair and
a crown on her head, so quite the lovely bride
and the Pope in Frances really want to make sure
that these two fourteen year olds consummate their marriage, and
(16:57):
consequently they're really creepy about it. They might even stay
in the room to make sure that everything happens as
it should. Um. But after that's done, everybody is free
to go home and they exchange some parting gifts and um.
One of the special gifts the Pope gives the King
is a unicorn tusk, which Katie was really excited about
(17:21):
because it is, of course actually a normal tusk and
anyone at hell stuff works in the editorial department, I
think knows how obsessed with them I am. I wrote
an article if you want to go, look for it
on our homepage. So Catherine's a duchess now. She's gone
from this sort of derogatory term a merchant's daughter. She's
clearly no merchant's daughter. But you know, the medicies have
(17:43):
their have their reputations. But regardless, she is a duchess now,
and it seems like things are going to be pretty
great for her, except that the first major blow to
her her married life comes less than a year after
the wedding, when Clement dies and he hasn't fully paid
her dowry, and he hasn't fulfilled all his promises to
(18:05):
King Francis, and so consequently Francis feels like he's gotten
a pretty bum deal with marrying his son to to Catherine,
and he says that the girl has come to me
stark naked. Another big problem is that Catherine can't seem
to conceive, and this is a major issue when Henry's brother,
the Dauphin, dies apparently after an exhausting game of tennis
(18:28):
an embarrassing way to goo it really is seventeen year old.
Henry has a daughter by an Italian woman, so it
seems that the problem isn't him, and he's urged to
repudiate Catherine, but Francis likes her a lot. She's smart,
she's sporting, she may have brought side saddle to France
in fact, and she can handle his body jokes. She's
a good match for him, and so he becomes her
(18:51):
ally her father in law. So Catherine steps up her
attempts to conceive a notch and she gets these weird medicines,
tries all sorts of strange potions out and um. She
watches Henry and his mistress Dione through a whole drilled
on the floor to see what they're doing, maybe find
out if she's doing something wrong, although apparently she's so
(19:13):
sad watching this that the tears blur her vision. Eventually,
the couple gets a medical examination, which shows that both
of them are slightly abnormal, which we have to wonder
what happened detailed, but they're regardless. They're given some instruction.
It seems to work because she's soon pregnant and she
(19:33):
has a boy. Francis, followed by nine more children, so
whatever they learn certainly works. For them, and an important
note for our next episode, Catherine has a two parter.
The survivors except for one are sickly children. They've got
weak lungs. The boys have stres and fits of dementia
that may have been from congenital syphilis. So file that
(19:56):
one away. But while marriage isn't easy, neither is jousting,
and at twenty eight Henry and Catherine become King and
Queen of France. When Francis dies, Catherine sincerely mourned the
old king. He taught her a lot about regal style
and helped inspire her love of architecture and art, and
for the next decade or so she absorbed herself in
(20:19):
her family life, although she had to contend with a
very pushy third party in her marriage, Dionda Poitier. But
the King grows to respect his wife more and more
to pay more attention to her, probably because he is
grateful she's born him so many children um, and he
starts to trust her too. He gives her the regency
several times when he's away on campaigns um, but still
(20:43):
her role is mostly being a mother and being a
lady of the court. By the time she's forty life
seems to be going fairly well after all these years
of expensive wars with um France and Spain over Italy.
There's gonna be peace finally, and it's going to be
marked by two royal marriages, and to celebrate, Henry is
(21:06):
going to host festivities. He has sons and his court
will joust despite Catherine's fears and her foreboding sense of doom,
and she thinks she has a second sight, so this
is a big deal. Her astrologers have warned her that
there's going to be trouble and Nostradamas has predicted disaster.
(21:26):
She's dreamed of blood and gore. There is no good
that will come out of this particular jousting a tournament,
and so on Friday June fifty nine, after several successful runs,
Henry the Second is struck down with a lance through
the eye and brain. It takes him ten agonizing days
(21:47):
to die, and he leaves his fifteen year old son Francis,
who is weak in mind and body, as King of
France and the grieving widow Catherine turns out to be
willing to do anything to protect her children's birthright. But
that's going to be the subject for our next episode,
which will also be our exciting conclusion of the Medici
(22:11):
super series. So leaving you with that, we will now
go to listener mail, which is about the Medici. Appropriately enough,
this message is from Jeremy and Juno Beach, Florida. He
wrote to us, I've been listening to these podcasts and
found it all very familiar. This is in regard to
(22:32):
the Pozzy conspiracy. By the way, the game Assassin's Creed
Too takes place in Renaissance Italy and a portion of
the story includes the Medici and Pozzy takeover. The game
used some of the history for the story and it's
pretty accurate with your podcast. There's also a downloadable addition
to the game named Bonfire of the Vanity. I haven't
played it yet, but it's about a religious zealot that
(22:54):
takes over Florence and starts burning books. Like the podcast
on Savonarola, nothing spectacular by any stretch, but figured you'd
be interested in the history aspect of the game, and
we are. Indeed. We'd also like to remind you that
we get a lot of suggestions on both our Facebook
fan page and on our Twitter feed and missed in history,
(23:16):
so you should come and find us, and if you'd
like to check out my article on our walls because
you know you want to, you can find it on
our home page at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
out the stuff you missed in history Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page
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