Catherine de Médicis

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

There is around the popular conception of Catherine de M^dicis a sort of aura of wickedness so visible that most readers open a book about her with the unspoken question, "Was she as bad as they say?" and expect the writer will soon betray himself either as an apologete or a prosecutor. The writer of this book hopes this expectation will be disappointed. He is far from any desire to defend the character of Catherine de Medicis and equally far from any interest in attacking it. He only desires to show her as she was, and he leaves the reader to decide about the wickedness. This does not mean that he considers it the duty of a historian to be unconcerned about right and wrong or to assume that they are entirely shifting and relative. Such an attempt at artificial demoralization is never entirely successful, and, ia a writer of biography, it can result only in a picture affected by a bias of wliich the reader has no warning. But he has tried meticulously never to let his sympathies interfere with the full and balanced presentation of fact. He wants to draw a portrait, not to pronoimce a judgment.

There are few great personages of the last four hundred years so many of whose written and spoken words have survived as Catherine de Medicis; and in addition there is a very large number of opinions about her conduct or character recorded by people who kj:ew her. It is on these that this book is based. Of the 2,6S6 citations offered as proofs of its narrative or its rare opinions, 1,059 are from contemporary documents printed in full in collections of documents or appendices to books, .1,013 are from my own transcripts of unprinted mss. in archives, 371 are from histories or memoirs written by contemporaries of Catherine, 137 are vi PREFACE

from contemporary mss. cited by modem authors, and 136 are from the text of modem authors.

I formed the purpose of writing this book fifteen years ago and it has occupied the time, not absorbed by classroom duties, of ten years since. I have been able to spend in European archives one period of twelve months, one period of six months, and four periods of six weeks. Most of this time, too little by half, was spent at the BibHotheque Nationale and at the Archives Nation ales, but I have visited for longer or shorter periods the Vatican Archives, the Archives at Florence, Modena, Mantua, Genoa, Naples, Lucerne, Basle, Beme, Zm-ich, Solothum, Freibourg, and the British Museum. I regret that lack of time kept me from the Archives at Turin, and that the war cut me off from my only chance to visit Venice. A third volume appended to this work contains 484 imprinted letters of Catherine and other documents gathered during these researches. In addition I made about three thousand extracts for my own use from manuscripts, letters, and reports.

We have various reports from the French court during Catherine's life from Spanish, English, Ferrarese Ambassadors, Tuscan Agents, Papal Legates and Nuncios, and Imperial Envoys. They must be used with common sense. Spain became so hated that it was hard for the Spanish Ambassadors to get at the inside of things and they were violently prejudiced, but they give good iaformation about the coimcils of the extreme orthodox party and sometimes report talks with Catherine. The EngHsh Ambassadors, though informed about Huguenot or Politique plans, were prejudiced and often misinformed about other matters. The Ferrarese Ambassadors had close coimections with the family of Guise through the household of the Duchess. The most trustworthy and the least prejudiced are the Venetian Ambassadors, who wrote regularly every two weeks.

I have read practically every book of importance which bears on the life and times of Catherine de Medicis. But the publication of the admirable bibhography of Mr. Henri Hauser covering the history of France during her hfe has

PREFACE vii

made it superfluous to print a separate bibliography. An alphabetical list of archives and books cited is at the end of the book.

The reader may notice the absence from the list of books cited of any life of Catherine de MSdicis. The reason is that no life of her based on first-hand evidence existed while this book was being written. Indeed, before the completion of the edition of her letters by the Counts Hector de la Ferriere and Baguenault de Puchesse (printed by the Ministry of PubHc Instruction in ten volumes, 1880 to 1909), it was hardly feasible to attempt such a life. My book was completed and in the hands of the printers before I heard of the pubHcation of the life of Catherine de Medicis by Mr. Mariejol. I regret that I was not able to be guided in writing it by the results of the labors of that eminent French scholar and distinguished historian.

A list of 167 review articles, all of them consulted and many of them cited, is given at the end of Volume II. I regret that lack of time abroad prevented me from examining as fuUy as I should have liked to do the French provincial reviews.

It is impossible to understand what Catherine de Medicis did and what she was without knowing the pubHc events in which for thirty years she was ravolved, but the attempt has been made to let the reader see them as far as possible from the center of her hfe outward. The absence of due reference to some great social and economic changes which were going on during her lifetime arises from the fact that, so far as we can judge from what she wrote, said, and did, Catherine was so little interested in them as to be practically unaware that they were taking place. As I hope that this book will be read by people who have no scientific training in history, I have avoided hasty reference to things the reader might not understand, preferring the risk of becoming prosy by overmuch explanation to the risk of seeming dull by being obscure. The chronological method of presentation has been used in spite of a certain almost inevitable monotony that haunts it, because, although a larger viii PREFACE use of the topical method might produce a book more agreeable to read, it ran the risk of producing one less true.

The preceding preface was written in March 1921. Business reasons rendered desirable the postponement of the printing of the book. When it was taken in hand again this year, my engagement in the work of the American University Union in Paris compelled me to correct my proofs across the Atlantic at a distance from my books and notes and to abandon the publication of the third volmne of documents; both because of the expense and for lack of leisure to verify my transcripts.

Paris, September, 1922.

Contents

VOLUME I

PAQB

I. Birth and Childhood 3

Chapter I Bibth And Childhood

Caterina de' Medici was bom in Florence, on the thirteenth April, 1519, in the stately house built by her great-great-great-great-grandfather Coshno de' Medici, seventy-five years before. Cosimo was at his death the greatest man in Florence and one of the most distinguished figures in Italy. He had inherited from his ancestors, merchants in woollen goods and bankers, a large fortune and he had increased it six fold. He had also used his inherited position as leader of the democratic party which has successfully opposed the party of the aristocracy and the rich bourgeoisie, to gain poUtical control of the city. He did not seek office, but he was able, years before his death, to direct elections and through obedient henchmen to command the policy of Florence. His wealth increased his political influence and he never scrupled to use in his business as a banker the knowledge he gained as a politician. His power was regarded as beneficent by hia friends and adherents and at his death he was hailed officially as Pater Patriae.

His son Piero, nicknamed The Gouty, survived him only five yeara and transmitted his wealth and power to his grandsons Giuliano and Lorenzo. The young men shared this power undisturbed for nine years and then the political enemies of the Medici in Florence joined with the family of Pope Sixtus IV, whose plans for conquest were interrupted by the foreign policy of Florence, in a conspiracy to murder them. The Pope, though he knew of the conspiracy, did not approve the murder. Giuliano was killed in church but Lorenzo escaped the murderers; the people rose in his defence and henceforth he ruled the City of Florence with a tyranny scarcely tempered by the fear of assassination.

Foreign ambassadors always consulted him, he controlled the tax list and the laws were seldom able to protect his enemies against his vengeance. He held no ofl&ce and bore no title except that of il Magnifico, but he was regarded to all intents and purposes as Duke of Florence. His fame spread not only beyond the walls of his city but also across the Alps and at his death in 1494 he was the most distinguished statesman in Italy. In addition he had merited his fame as a writer both of prose and verse and the most discriminating patron of literature and the fine arts in the world.

Lorenzo had three sons. For his second son Giovanni he obtained a cardinal's hat, and he left his fortune and his power to his eldest son Piero. But the weakness of Piero and the disturbance caused by the French invasion of Italy in 1494 enabled the new democratic party to banish the Medici and make Florence again a republic. The Medici went to Rome, where they remained for seventeen years, during which Piero was drowned.

In 1512 Pope Julius II formed the Holy League which drove the French from Italy, and a congress of the League decided that as the Florentine Republic had shown a benevolent neutrality toward the French, it should be overthrown and the power of the Medici reestablished. Cardinal Giovanni and his younger brother GiuUano were made masters of then- native city by Spanish soldiers. The next year fortune again smiled on the Medici. Cardinal Giovanni wag elected Pope and took the name of Leo X. The new Pope was not too much engrossed with the duties of his office to look after the fortunes of his family. He put Lorenzo, the twenty-one year old son of Piero, in charge of the Medici power in Florence. He also gave the red hat to Innocenzo Cybo, his sister's son and to his illegitunate cousm Giulio de' Medici. The Pope's younger brother Giuliano was made Captain General of the Church in spite of the fact that his weak health and ways of living made him no&i for war. But as fate would have it, the oflSce preyed no sinecure. Francis I ascended the throne of France in Januaiy, 1515, at once renewed French claims to the Duchy of Milan, crossed the Alps at the head of 35,000 men and 150 guns, perhaps the finest army any King of France had ever led, and beat the hitherto unbeaten Swiss mercenaries at Marignano; a fight so fierce that one of his marshals said none of the other eighteen pitched battles of his life had been more than child's play beside it.

The forces which the Pope and his vassals had been able to put in the field had been commanded, not by the titular Captain General of the Church, but by the young Lorenzo, and Leo profited by the alliance he was forced to make with the French King to push Lorenzo's fortune. He conquered for him the Duchy of Urbino, at an expense so great that it began the bankruptcy of the papal treasury which two years later gave one of the occasions for the schism of Teutonic Christendom from the Universal Church. There were indeed grounds for the sentence which condemned the Duke of Urbino to lose his Duchy as an unfaithful vassal. He had been secretly allied with the French and had refused to march at the command of his overlord. Nevertheless, the chief cause of Leo's war against Urbino was not the offenses of the Duke but the ambition of his sister-in-law who wanted to see a ducal coronet on her son's head. The transaction has about it something "very hateful and disgusting." It makes the impression (on a modem Roman Catholic historian as on contemporary chroniclers) that the Pope's action "was less concerned with giving free course to justice than with providing a state for his nephew to rule." ^

After conquering a Duchy for his nephew, Leo sent him to France to win an heiress, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, and she became the mother of Caterina de' Medici.

To Caterina's father therefore the election of his uncle as Pope brought a duchy, a rich bride and the control of Florence. He received because he was the secular head of

•Paator, IV, 103.

the family of Medici other advantages which were the inherited returns for the patient and intelligent patronage given to literature and the fine arts by the members of his house from Cosimo to Leo. Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici did not in his brief life accomplish the smallest thing worthy of commemoration, but few men have had a more striking monument than either of the two dedicated to him. Michel Angelo made him inamortal as the figure of Thought in the Medicean Chapel. MachiaveUi dedicated to him the Prmce and in the last chapter called upon him to be a "new Moses to redeem Italy from the barbarians and prove that the ancient valour is not yet dead in Italian hearts."

Caterina de' Medici was therefore at her birth a favorite of fortune. True this distinguished inheritance brought to the child some disadvantages. The name of Medici was known throughout the world but, north of the Alps; a family whose wealth came from trade and banking, rather than from inherited feudal estates, whose ancestors had not been warriors, but merchants who had gained power only by ecclesiastical influence and municipal politics, would be looked on askance as somewhat second rate, not at aU equal to the collateral branches of a royal house: not even on a par with the great or the ancient families of the feudal nobility. Nevertheless this heiress of the "Eredita di Cosimo de' Medici il Magnifico," this "little Duchess" of Urbino, this "nipota" of Leo X, was too valuable a pawn in the game of international pohtics to fail of many distinguished suitors for her hand. The child was bom to great expectations, but the most sagacious political prophet could not have foreseen that she would become queen and regent of one of the greatest nations of the world; the mother of three kings, two queens, a sovereign duke, and a reigning duchess.^

At Caterina's birth her father was so ill that he had scarcely left his bed for five months. The baby was immediately carried to him and, in spite of some disappointment that his first bom was not a boy, he showed great pleasure. Three days later she was baptized under the name of Caterina, Maria, Romola. In her later life she used only the first of these names perhaps because it had been borne by her mother. Twelve days after the ceremony the mother died of puerperal fever. In a letter which was dictated to the Ambassador of France asking him to tell the King this news Lorenzo wrote "I am in bed with a little fever, catarrh and many other bad symptoms and for my evil fortune there has come upon me in addition this sad blow to lose my most beloved wife." Six days later he died. So far as we can judge from the record of his symptoms which has survived in the letters of his secretary, the cause of his death was galloping consumption to whose contagion he was probably rendered more susceptible by the licentious life which he had led in common with most young Italian princes of his day.^

The tendency to short life noticeable among the males of the House of Medici since the days of Cosimo had thus brou^t it to the verge of extinction. Ariosto struck by this spectacle of a cradle between two coflSns represents the City of Florence as saying "Only a branch shows a little green in its leaves and I am divided between fear and hope whether the winter will leave it to me or kill it." The fears of the poet were nearly realized a few months later, for the orphan became so critically ill that her great uncle received word in Rome that she could not live. The grandmother carried the infant to Rome when she was well enough to travel and soon after her arrival the Pope told the Venetian Ambassador that this "child of sorrow" as he called her "with tears in his eyes," was "a pretty, plump, little thing." The child remained in Rome for nearly six years but we know nothing of her life there except that her great uncle Leo X, before she was two years old, thought seriously of marrying her in the future to her illegitimate cousin Hippolito who was then seven."

•Corsini refutes older storiee. *Baschet, von Reumont, pntd. 263, 264.

In her seventh year, when her grandfather's cousin Clement VII had succeeded her uncle Leo X as Pope, Caterina was taken back to Florence. Writing about this time to the senate, the Venetian Ambassador says, "I will not remind your magnificences of the genealogy of the family of the Medici . . . but I will point out the fact that the said family is extinct in the legitimate male line because today there are only natural sons, i. e., Pope Clement, natural son of Giuliano (the murdered brother of Lorenzo); Cardinal Hippolito, natural son of Giuliano (younger son of Lorenzo) ; and Alessandro (illegitimate half brother of Catherine). There are indeed two legitimate women, Lucrezia, sister of Leo X, now wife of Jacopo Salviati, and the little Duchess Caterina." ^

In thus suggesting the danger that the name of Medici might disappear because the family consisted of women and three bastards, two of whom were priests, the writer entirely forgot the existence of the little Cosimo, who was in the end to restore the fortunes of the family name at Florence and become the founder of the line of Medici grand-dukes of Tuscany. Cosimo was the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, a descendant in the third generation of a younger brother of old Cosimo. Giovanni was, when he was killed by a cannon ball in his 27th year, the only Medici who had ever won distinction in arms and the most famous Italian soldier of his day. Aretino, who witnessed his death and wrote a celebrated letter to describe it, regarded him as the possible pohtical Messias, the longed for "Prince" of Machiavelli who was to banish and liberate his countr3mien and "make of Italy now a slave— a queen." It was natural enough that the Venetian Ambassador should overlook the existence of little Cosimo, the son of thb hero, for the manager of the Medici affairs, Clement VII, persisted in doing so: perhaps because, bemg himself in illegitimate descent from the older line, he was afraid of seeming to suggest in any way that a legitimate descendant of a cadet had any place at all in the family.*

At all events, whatever his motive was, Clement VII did concentrate his attentions on the little girl and the two illegitimate little boys. Caterina lived in Florence undCT the care of her father's sister, the wife of Filippo Strozzi, one of the wealthiest of the Florentine nobles. Caterina always kept a very grateful memory of her aimt, though she lost her when she was still a small child, and showed that gratitude in her later years by the favor she granted to her cousins the Strozzi when they fled to France as refugees. Hippolito, now fourteen, had been sent to Florence some months before Caterina and he was in training to succeed her father as Magnifico, the title given by the Medici themselves to that one of their family who as head of the house exercised their hereditary power in Florence. Caterina's illegitimate half-brother, Alessandro, a few years older than herself, had gone with her to Florence and probably at first all three lived together in the Medici palace. But about a year later we know that Caterina was living in a villa near the city, and her great protector had renewed in his own mind the project of Leo X to marry her to Hippolito. Caterina was heiress to half the fortune of the Medici. Leo X had left the other half to Clement VII, who now thought of giving it to Hippolito and thus reestablishing the name, wealth and power of the Medici in Florence,^

But in this plan he reckoned without the people of Florence. They resented the fact that a child had been sent to them as untitled ruler of their city. In addition ike boy and his mentor, the Cardinal of Cortona, had not the tact to cloak their dominion. When the councils of the city met to choose magistrates the Cardinal of Cortona used to send the list of candidates to Rome, where Clement VII struck off the names he did not like and the election was

•SeePastor, Vn, Bk. 1.

•Arch. Hor. Stroariane X, f. 31, 66; Rel. 11, 3, p. 129.

made out of the rest. Hippolito also lacked that distinguished courtesy for which his ancestors had once been famous. He insisted upon preceding every one, claimed the most obsequious sort of greetings and, in general, took upon himself the airs of a lord and ruler. The Florentines were a very proud and keen-witted people; even those who were content with the loss of liberty clung very hard to the last shows of it and they deeply resented the boy'a incapacity, his tactlessness and his bad manners. ^

In April, 1527, a sudden rising took place against the House of Medici. A crowd gathwed in the streets crying "The People, The People, Liberty, Liberty." They soon increased to six hundred armed men, including many of the leading citizens of Florence. They seized the palace of the government, threatened to attack the Medici palace and met with such success that the Ambassador of Venice felt that the power of the Medici was almost finished. But the Cardinal of Cortona was finally able by the use of his troops to overawe the revolters, and, on condition of a free pardon to aU concerned, the demonstration was quieted.'

A month later the policy of Clement VII, who had been trying to keep a middle position between Erance and Spain, brought upon Rome one of the most terrible disasters of history. The Spanish army stormed the walls of the city and began a sack whose horrors sent a thrill of disgust through the entire world. Clement VII took refuge in the Castle of Saint Angelo from whose impregnable walls he watched the agony of the holy city. As soon aa this news reached Florence the revolution broke out again and from the very first the Cardinal of Cortona seems to have recognized that he would not be able to resist it. He began to send out of the city by night, the most precious possessions of the family, and he finally concluded an agreement with the representatives of the new government that the Medici would surrender to the people the government of Florence, on condition that no financial accounting diould be aaked of them and that they could remain in the city aa private citizens with all their privileges confirmed. In spite of this agreement and only the day after it was made, the Cardinal of Cortona and Hippolito were so strongly advised by their friends to leave the city that they went to Lucca.^

A few months later Niccolo Capponi, the chief magistrate of Florence, proposed in fuU council that Jesus Christ should be elected perpetual King of the Florentiae people. The motion was carried all but unanimously and the government coined ducats which had on one side the lily of Florence and on the other the cross surmoimted by a crown of thorns and surrounded with the motto "Jesua Rex Noster et Deus Noster."

The new government thought it better to hold the little Caterina as a hostage. Accordingly they sent Bernardo Rinuccini, a very distinguished citizen, with a band of soldiers to bring the child into the city from the nearby villa of Poggia Cajano, where she had been taken for refuge. By the orders of the government he confided her to the care of the Dominican nuns at the convent of Santa Lucia. The child's aunt resented this seizure of her niece, went to the convent, took her away from the nuns and brought her to the Medici palace. But apparently fearing that the palace might be attacked in some riot, she soon carried her back again to the keeping of the nuns. A few months later, by orders of the government she was transferred to the convent of Santa Caterina of Siena. That convent being in some danger of infection from the plague, the Ambassador of France induced the government to transfer the young daughter of Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne to the convent of the Santissima Annunziata delle Murate. Five months later. May 1528, her aunt died and the little girl was left alone in a city filled with the enemies of her house. The nuns must have been very kind to the friendless child, because in this instance also, Catherine retained grateful memories of her childhood's friends. Later in life she bestowed a great many favors upon the convent of the Murate and in the private diary of one of the sisters, of which a fragment has survived, it is recorded that the nuns were fond of the little duchess because of her friendly and gracious manners.^

A diligent search among the papers of these convents preserved in the archives at Florence, reveals no traces of the life of Caterina in them. That she was kept in gentle confinement as a prisoner, or rather as a hostage, under the kindly guardianship of the nuns, we know from other sources. The Venetian Ambassador, writing home on the 17th of September 1529, records "the council has been discussing the message brought from Rome by a gentleman of Monsignor de Tarbes to the effect that the Pope has no quarrel with them and does not want anythiag except that they should be obedient to the church and restore to His Holin^s the property which belongs to him, replace his arms and surrender to him the little duchess, the daughter of the late Senor Lorenzo, who is under guard in a monastery of this city. But at the suggestion of this gentleman the government has decided to send two ambassadors to the Pope to discuss these matters with him," ^

This negotiation came to nothing and it is doubtful whether Clement VII expected that it would come to anything except to gain time and, perhaps, to recover from the hands of his enemies, the little duchess. At the end of June, he had made a treaty with the Emperor Charles V by which it was agreed that the Emperor's illegitimate daughter Margaret, married to the illegitimate half brother of Caterina, should receive as a marriage portion the City of Florence. Part of the same imperial army which two years before had stormed and sacked the City of Rome, now invested Florence. The inhabitants defended them-

'Baschet, von Reumont, ctd. 126. •Bel. II, 1, p. 217.

selves with great courage for a year and then, forced by hunger which in the end brought about the sale in the open market of rats and cats at high prices, they opened their gates.

During this time of heroic endurance the old partisans of the Medici were naturally regarded in Florence with the greatest suspicion; large numbers of them were arrested and thrown into prison, and one of them who was accused of having acted as a spy for the besiegers, was hanged one morning from the balcony of the governmental palace. In this suspicion and hatred of all friends or adherents of the House of Medici, the little Caterina became involved. Many of the nuns of the convent in which she was held as a hostage, were secretly adherents of the Medici. They were in the habit of sending baskets containing food to those in prison and it was discovered that on the bottom of these baskets there was formed, either in the baskets themselves or by means of flowers, the representation of the Medici arms which had been erased from all public buildings in the city. This discovery came like oil upon flame and the matter was at once reported with much excitement to the governing committee of the city. Already some of the more extreme opponents of the Medici had made the most terrible suggestions in regard to what ought to be done with little Caterina. One proposal was to expose her to associations which would infallibly corrupt her morals, with the hope of so ruining her reputation that the Pope could never marry her to anyone who might attempt to conquer the city in her interest. This new incident brought up another suggestion, that she and other relatives and chief adherents of the Medici should be tied to the walls in places exposed to the cannon of the besiegers. But such terrific outbursts of that intense partisan hatred which in the past had brought upon Italy all her worst political misfortunes, were not even considered by the council. The emly step th^ took was to send a distinguished citizeai,