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WALDMAN, MILTON Biography of a Family: Catherine de Medici and Her Children: First Edition
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1936. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 1936 FIRST EDITION HARDCOVER. Same date on both copyright and title pages. Cover edge wear, moderate shelf wear, pages toned, ink on inside of front cover & front free-end paper. "Catherine de' Medici (April 13, 1519 - January 5, 1589) was born in Florence, Italy, as Caterina Maria Romola di Lorenzo de' Medici, the daughter of Lorenzo II de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, countess of Boulogne. She was queen consort of France from 1547 to 1559 as the wife of King Henry II of France. In 1533, Catherine was married at the age of fourteen to Henry, the second son of King Francis I of France, to further the interests of her uncle, Pope Clement VII. When Prince François, the dauphin, died after a game of tennis in 1536, Henry replaced him as heir to the throne and Catherine became the dauphine. Henry ascended the throne as Henry II in 1547, but throughout his reign he excluded Catherine from influence and instead showered favours on his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. On Henry's death from a jousting injury in 1559, Catherine found herself thrust into the political arena as queen mother of the frail fifteen-year-old King Francis II, after whose own death in 1560, she was appointed regent for her ten-year-old son King Charles IX and granted sweeping powers. After Charles too died, in 1574, Catherine remained a significant force in the government of the third of her sons to become king, Henry III, though he dispensed with her advice in the last months of her life with disastrous consequences. Catherine proved a tireless and resilient defender of the crown, but her three weak sons had the misfortune to reign during an age of almost constant civil and religious war in France, the origins of which were beyond the control of the monarchy and would have daunted even a mature king. At first, Catherine sought compromise through limited concessions to the Huguenots; she failed, however, to grasp the theological issues underpinning their movement, for which no concession short of freedom of worship would ever have been enough. Later, as anarchy set in, Catherine abandoned conciliation and resorted to hard-line policies towards religious rebels.[1] As a result, she was personally blamed for the worst atrocities of the government, in particular for the notorious Massacre of St. Bartholomew of 1572, in which thousands of Huguenots were butchered in Paris and throughout France. Catherine's subsequent vilification in contemporary pamphlets gave birth to "the black legend", which branded her for posterity as the epitome of the Machiavellian Renaissance prince, servicing an overweening lust for power with dark political crimes, serial poisonings, and even witchcraft. By the nineteenth century, this tradition had hardened to the point where the great historian Jules Michelet could refer to Catherine as that "maggot which came out of Italy's tomb". Some recent historians have attempted to rehabilitate Catherine, excusing her from the worst excesses and reappraising her as a diligent ruler facing extraordinary and insoluble difficulties.[3] R.J.Knecht, however, cautions against taking revisionism too far, since explicit documentary proof of Catherine's lack of scruple remains, not least in her own letters. He also warns against overstating the degree of Catherine's power: far from bestriding France, she fought a losing battle for control as the kingdom descended into anarchy around her. Her policies, therefore, may be seen not as a calculated tyranny but as an opportunistic series of rearguard actions designed to keep the Valois monarchy afloat at all costs.[4] It is arguable that without Catherine's custodianship, the regime of her sons would never have survived as long as it did." -- Wikipedia.
Offered for US$ 12.00 by: Yesterday's Muse Books - Book number: 063470