Good Evening To Everyone,

Catherine de Medici was born as the only child of Lorenzo de Medici (II), the Duke of Urbino, and his wife, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, who was the daughter of Jean I de la Tour , Comte d'Auvergne et de Lauraguais, and his wife, Jeanne de Bourbon, who was related to the royal house of France.

Catherine was born on April 13, 1519, in Florence, Italy, christened as Caterina Maria Romola di Lorenzo de'Medici. Her parents had married on May 2, 1518, at Amboise. Then their darling Catherine, or Caterina, was born. It is said that Madeleine died just twelve days after Catherine was born. Then Lorenzo died on May 4, 1519. (Some reports say that he died six days after Madeleine, but that supposition cannot be true if she died twelve days after Catherine's birth). At any rate, baby Catherine was an orphan just three weeks after her birth, and her cradle was in between her parents' coffins in a cathedral in Florence, Italy. Catherine was christened at her parents' funeral service.

Catherine was shuffled between convents until she reached the tender age of fourteen when she was married to King Henri II of France, on October 27, 1533, in Marseilles. This was an arranged marriage through her uncle, Pope Clement VII, who negotiated the agreement with Henry's father, Francis I of France.

During this marriage, Henry kept a mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who remained in his favour the entire time of the marriage. In the early part of their marriage, Catherine did seem to have trouble conceiving children, but finally produced ten children for her husband.

On the accession of Henry II, on March 31, 1547, Catherine became Queen of France, but she still remained inconspicuous, except during Henry's short campagn in Lorraine, when she acted as regent, and even then showed her political abilities.

Catherine unwittingly had a vast influence on fashion for the next 350 years when she enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550's. For nearly 350 years, women's primary means of support was the corset, with laces and stays made of whalebone or metal. They forcefully shrank women's waists from their natural dimensions to as little as 43, 38, oor even fewer centimeters (17, 15, or fewer inches).

When her son Francis II of France died on December 5, 1560, Catherine became regent during the minority of her second son, Charles IX of France, and found before her a career worthy of the most soaring ambition. She was then forty-one years old, but although she was the mother of ten children, she was still vigorous and active. She retained her influence for more than twenty years in teh troubled period of the French Wars of Religion. At first she listened to the moderate counsels of l'Hopital to avoid siding definintely with either party, but her character and the habits of policy to which she had been accustomed tended to be at odds with this tance. She was zealous in the interests of her children, especially of her favourite third son, the Duke of Anjou.

Like many of that time, she looked upon statesmanship in particulaar as a career in which finesse, lying, and assassination were the most admirable traits. By habit a Catholic, but above all fond of power, she was determined to prevent the Protestants from getting the upper hand and almost equally resolved not to allow them to be utter,y crushed, in order to use them as a counterpoise to the Guises. The trimming policy met with little success: rage, and suspicion, so possessed men's minds that she could not long control the opposing parties and one civil war followed another towards the end of her life. In 1567, after the Enterprise of Meaux, she dismissed l'Hopital, and joined the Catholic party. Having failed to crush the Protestant rebellion by arms, she resumed, in 1570, the policy of peace and negotiation. She conceived the project of marrying her favourite son, the Duke of Anjou, to Queen Elizabeth I of England, but that did not come about.

She was successful in marrying her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to King Philip II of Spain, and then her third daughter, Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre. To this end, she temporarily reconciled with the Protestants, and allowed Coligny to return to court and to re-enter the Council. Of this step she quickly repented: Charles IX conceived a great affection for the admiral and showed signs of taking up an independent attitude. Catherine, thinking her influence was menaced, sought to regain it, first by the murder of Coligny, and after that failed, by the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. However, although Catherine is blamed for the start of that war, in fact she was not the initiator. After the death of Charles in 1574 and the succession of her son, Henri III, Catherine pursued her old policy of compromise and concessions, but as her influence was nothign compared to her son's, so itt is unnecessary to dwell upon it.

In her taste for art and her love of magnificence and luxury, Catherine was a true Medici. Her banquets at the Royal Palace of Fontainebleau in 1564, were famous for their sumtuousness. She had brought many of her chefs from Italy, and they comforted her with the delicacies of her homeland - sorbets, macaroons, frangipane tarts, and zabaglione. They introduced vegetables never before seen in France - broccolli, green beans, peas, truffles, artichokes, melons. Guinea hens, as well as veal made an appearance. And most importantly, these Italian cooks taught the French how to move past he medieval preferences for meats prepared with dry rubs of strong spices, but instead how to employ delicate sauces.

Catherine also brought nicety to the table in the ara of manners - she brought along the fork and table etiquette. In this, the French were a bit slower to adopt the fashion - not for another hundred years would the fork take hold, and table manners would be scoffed at as effeminate until the reign of the Sun King (Louis XIV).

Catherine would later gane fame as the wife of the king and the mother to three others. As queen dowager she would be known as Madame Snake, with secret hideaways for poison rings and daggers. She would gain infamy in her role in the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre, and praise for her role in brining ballet to France in 1581 with her sponsored production of Ballet Comique de la Reine.

Her cousin, Marie de Medici, would also marry into the French royal family in 1600, and continued the tradition of bringing culinary innovation with her. Her contribution was the puff-pastry - or more accurately, the method of making a puff pastry that would rise greatly while maintaining an exquisite flakinesss. It is this method (which depends on treating the fat in the dough as layers themselves) that led to the development of the croissant, and the fruit pastries so associated with France today.

History has been unkind to Catherine, and perhaps with reason. A woman with a penchant for poisoning is unlikely to be praised for her culinary and cultural contributions as well. But the Culinary Institute of America does her honor by naming one of their restaurants for her. The Caterina de Medici Castronimcal Society, a culinary group in the US, praise her for bringing Italian cooking, the most sophisticated of the time, to France.

Apart from her political role, Catherine was a patron of the arts. Her interest in architecture was demonstrated in the building of a new wing of the Louvre Museum, in initiating construction of the Tuileries gardens, and in building the chateau of Monceau. Her personal libary, containing numerous rare manuscripts, was renowened in Renaissance France.

Catherine died on January 5, 1589, at the Royal Chateau Blois, France, a short time before the assassination of Henry and the end of the House of Valois. Today, visitors to the castle can see her poison cabinets. She was interred with her husband in a cadaver tomb in the Saint Denis Basilica.


(Courtesy of "Catherine de Medici - Wikipedia", Three Pages).

(Courtesy of "Who Was Catherine de Medici?, Essortment Article, Three Pages).

(Courtesy of "Black Magic Woman - Catherine de Medici, Published by Degenerate Magazine, Four Pages.)

(Courtesy of "Distinguished Women of Past and Present: Catherine de Medici, One Page.)

(Courtesy of "Catherine de Medici", From The Catholic Encyclopedia, Five Pages.)