SYMHC Classics: Catherine de' Medici, Italian Orphan

Today we're revisiting a 2010 episode from Katie and Sarah about Catherine de' Medici, who 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. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody, and welcome to twenty eighteens last Saturday
Classic after the new year, we have an episode coming
out that is going to reference Katherine de Medici and
back in previous hosts Sarah and Katie did what they
called a super series. It was a multi part series
that played out over several weeks and it touched on
multiple members of the Medici family in the world that

(00:23):
they lived in. Two of the installments were on Katherine
de Medici, and since she is coming up again in
early en we are rereleasing those two episodes from the
super series. One of the things that they talk about
today is Katherine's marriage at the age of fourteen, including
some of the more intimate details of that marriage. If
you're interested in hearing the other episodes that are referenced

(00:44):
in today's show, we will have a link to all
the Medici episodes, both from the super series and ones
from later on in the show notes for today's episode.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

(01:09):
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and our Medici
Super Series isn't all about Italy. In this episode, we're
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.

(01:33):
You have probably heard of Catherine as a poisoner or
an Italian spy, but we're saving that stuff the Catholic
Huguenot wars for later, and Catherine'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

(01:56):
where we've talked about them, Cleopatra's brood, here Rid's kids,
Elizabeth 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 the

(02:18):
Stuff Mom Never Told You called him and his various
maneuvers 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
de Medici, and don't get him confused with Lorenzo the Magnificent,
because there's nothing like that about. And Leo arranges an

(02:43):
advantageous match for this young man with Madeleine de la
Tour d'Auvergne, who's a sixteen year old orphan and also
a Bourbon heiress. It's a deal struck up between the
pope and the Italian 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.

(03:04):
The couple conceives a child within months, and Katerina de
Medici is born on April nineteen. But the sad thing
is she's orphaned within weeks of her birth because Laurenzo
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

(03:27):
hoping um But once baby Catherine 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. Francis would be
the one who could decide who to marry her too,

(03:47):
And so when Leo receives baby Catherine in Rome, he
says somewhat ominously, she comes bearing the calamities 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

(04:08):
an illegitimate Medici son and set them up as the
new puppet rulers of Florence. But unfortunately things aren't so simple,
and in one Leo dies and the new Pope is
Adrian the Sixth, who's a reformist. We talked about him
in the Michelangelo episode two. He has little tolerance for

(04:29):
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 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 Giulio's supervision. And you might remember

(04:51):
him from our Popsy Conspiracy podcast. He was the illegitimate
son of the Giuliano who was murdered in the Duomo.
But Adrian doesn't last long anyways, he dies, possibly being poisoned,
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

(05:15):
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
we mentioned also in the Michelangelo podcast, Florentines are not
happy under this new form of Medici rule. Cardinal Giulio,

(05:36):
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,
when Catherine is just seven years old, Clement joins a
sort of league with France, England, Florence and Venice against
the eventual Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Five. But things

(05:59):
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 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,

(06:19):
and with the help of the imperial army, they overthrow
the Medici down with the Medici, and so this is
obviously scary times for Katherine. The Medici hold up in
the Medici palace and she's there with her guardian and
mother figure Clarice Strotsie, who the two of them are
left to face this angry anti Medici Florentine mob and

(06:41):
eventually they escape to a Medici country house, but an
armed escort comes to collect Catherine and takes her off
to the Santa Lucia Convent, which is not a pro
Medici convent, but still probably a relatively safe place to be,
and this begins poor Catherine's three years of danger and
shuffling about and from Santa Lucia, she's moved to Santa

(07:05):
Katarina of Siena, which is also in Florence, and it's
a plague ridden convent, so not the best 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 Morat, which is a covert operation.

(07:27):
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 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

(07:47):
women and they also taken retired noble women. And since
the convent has been well supported by the Medici, 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 uh picks up a lot of the
things that make her eventually so successful in court. You know,

(08:11):
her nice manners, her beautiful bearing, her charm. And one
of the nuns 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

(08:35):
extremists in Florence fear that the Medici will come back
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

(08:56):
new extremists meet them with a fierce defense. Um. This
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

(09:18):
her imperial allies might accidentally kill her. Another is to
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 Murat Convent and the poor nuns have
to give her up. Catherine thinks that the troops are

(09:39):
coming to kill her, so she shaves her head and
puts on a habit and yells, Holy Mother, I am yours.
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 co event. She's kept safe by her escort,

(10:02):
who behaves quite honorably. But she has to ride through
the city of Florence in her habit on a donkey,
and it's a scary, terrible ride. She can hear the
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

(10:25):
soon enough Clement has Florence again and Catherine is safe.
So Catherine is shipped off to Rome to live with
her great aunt Lucrezia Salviata, who is Lorenzo the Magnificence daughter.

(10:46):
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
two weeks before her, and his mother dies when he's
five years old, but the worst childhood trauma comes a

(11:08):
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,
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles five. And in fifty five

(11:29):
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 take him to Barcelona. Francis is treated well
by Charles, 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

(11:52):
Charles is terrified that this priceless captive he has, this
bargaining chip, is going to die on him, and dances
fortunately starts to get a little better. The two monarchs
start to work out the Treaty of Madrid in and
this results in a huge sacrifices of territory from Francis deal.
It's a very bad deal, but of course he's not

(12:14):
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
handovers and and keeps up his end of the deal,
Charles is gonna need a little collateral, and so they

(12:38):
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 collateral. That's a that's very nice.
The boys are brought by their grandmother to the borderlands
and the exchange takes place on a raft in a river,

(12:59):
which is very strange. It's like two rafts coming from
the 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 gives
Henry a kiss and later she becomes his mistress for
the rest of his life and kind of the bane

(13:20):
of Catherine de Medici's existence. So Francis is really upset
at the hand off. He's sad to be giving his
sons up his 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
likelihood that the boys are going to come home anytime
soon is slim to none. Their initial captivity is fine.

(13:44):
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 of Kognac, for instance, the
kids are basically put on lockdown and moved deeper and
deeper into Spain. And just to compare this again to
Catherine's childhood, since it is so interesting that this future

(14:06):
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 spy is found near where they're being kept, so
they're moved even deeper into Spain to Padraza, and the

(14:26):
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 a cell with ten foot thick walls, bars, and
straw mattresses. They have no companions, no education, and no exercise.

(14:49):
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 in to work it out since Francis and Charles
can't seem to do it, so La Pex des Dame,
with Francis's mom and Charles's aunt, secures the boy's release

(15:11):
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 of their final time in prison. Henry's eleven
now the Dauphin is twelve. But they're different kids. They're
not these happy go lucky French princes that left their

(15:34):
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 he definitely favors his younger son,
who's 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

(15:57):
he has no time for dreamy, sullence weepy children. I
just want to be like France. They've been in prison
for four and a half years, my darling. Yeah, but
it's time to start looking for a bride for Henry,
regardless of his dreamy sullenness. A match with Mary Tudor
falls through, so Francis goes to his friend Clement the

(16:18):
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 world that they're back on top
and they're making this great alliance. The marriage between these

(16:46):
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, two pounds of silk. All of that
is just for gowns. She also gets pearls, and these

(17:07):
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, enormous diamonds, emeralds, rubies. Catherine is set

(17:28):
as far as trousseau go, and she starts her journey
to Marseille in fifteen thirty three. There are, of course
very elaborate marriage festivities that go on for days and days,
but they're finally married by contract October thirty three, and
they have their religious ceremony the next day. Catherine is

(17:48):
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 consequently they're really creepy about it. They might even

(18:10):
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 because it is, of course actually a normal tusk,

(18:34):
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 medic
cheese have their have their reputations. But regardless, she is

(18:57):
a duchess now and it seems like things are going
to be pretty great for her, except that the first
major blow to her to 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 King Francis, and so consequently Francis

(19:18):
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 an embarrassing way to go.

(19:39):
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 ally her father in law.

(20:02):
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 Dionne through a hole drilled on the floor to
see what they're doing, maybe find out if she's doing
something wrong, although apparently she's so sad watching this that

(20:24):
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 me, but
they're regardless. They're given some instruction. It seems to work
because she's soon pregnant and she has a boy, Francis,

(20:44):
followed by nine more children, so whatever they learn certainly
works for them, and an important note for our next episode.
Catherine is a two parter. The survivors except for one,
are sickly children. They've got week long. The boys have
sores and fits of dementia that may have been from
congenital syphilis, so file that one away. But while marriage

(21:08):
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 her family life, although she had

(21:30):
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 regencies several times when he's away on campaigns um.

(21:51):
But still 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

(22:11):
marked by two royal marriages. And to celebrate, Henry is
going to host festivities. He his 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

(22:32):
there's going to be trouble and no Stredamas has predicted disaster.
She's dreamed of blood and gore. There is no good
that will come out of this particular jousting 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

(22:57):
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. Thank

(23:22):
you so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
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(23:45):
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