The several polemical sources included in the collection offer a sharp contrast. Other sources in the collection extravagantly praise the character and actions of the queen. The letters included here, selected from her many volumes of correspondence, reveal her concerns as a mother and as a political figure.Įxcerpts from Venetian ambassadors' gossipy reports bring to light principal figures of the French court-their character, their motives, and political interests. This rare collection of primary sources translated into English allows readers to become familiar with the sources of such positive and negative assessments of this controversial queen.

She shows that from her husband Henri II’s unexpected death in a gruesome accident through the reigns of her sons, who unfortunately did not inherit their mother’s ability, Catherine displayed “intelligence, courage, and an indefatigable spirit” in exercising political power and acting as an exceptional patron of the arts.įrom her arrival as a fourteen-year-old bride to her death as queen mother fifty-five years later, Catherine de Medici was praised as a devoted wife and mother and able ruler but also condemned as a foreigner, a poisoner, and murderer of Protestants. Leonie Frieda’s biography corrects the “Black Legend” of Catherine and provides a vivid portrait of the complex woman who wielded unprecedented power as queen regent in France, where Salic Law prohibited women from exercising sovereignty in their own right, as did her contemporary Elizabeth I. She was even slanderously accused of murdering another queen by sending her poisoned gloves, in keeping with her “Machiavellian” Italian extraction.

Bartholomew’s Day’s Massacre-the most infamous episode in the decades-long French Wars of Religion. Catherine de Medici has been reviled as an evil and power-hungry queen mother of three French kings, and as the architect of the St.

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