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Author: Edith Helen Sichel Publisher: Forgotten Books ISBN: 9780265198438 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
Excerpt from The Later Years of Catherine De' Medici HE second half of my study of Catherine de' Medici hardly seems to need any preface, and yet I should like to take the opportunity of once again defining the scope of my work. I can make no claim to figure as an expert historian. My aim has been no more than to paint portraits - to draw the central figure of Catherine as I see her, with such other persons in the drama as were interwoven with her destiny, standing out against a multi-coloured background and throwing strong shadows upon it. I have detected no error in accepted dates I have made no discovery of an actual fact. Yet the research into character may shed fresh light upon old events, may account for the unaccountable, and harmonize what is discordant. And the comments of contemporaries when read for themselves, apart from any larger historical purpose, acquire a new vitality. They sharpen our perception of detail, and give us that more personal aspect of the strange things that happen which often explains them. It is from this point of View alone that I venture to reproduce such famous catastrophes as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, or the murder of Henri, Due de Guise. Charity, which is understanding, is as needful for sound judgment of bygone generations as it is for our judgment of our neighbours. When men appear to us abnormally wicked, it is because we have not grasped closely enough the current standard of their morality. They only show black or white according as they rise or fall below the average line, and if they do not chance to possess some virtue upon which we pride ourselves, we may feel sure that they are rich in some other of which our age knows nothing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Edith Helen Sichel Publisher: Forgotten Books ISBN: 9780265198438 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
Excerpt from The Later Years of Catherine De' Medici HE second half of my study of Catherine de' Medici hardly seems to need any preface, and yet I should like to take the opportunity of once again defining the scope of my work. I can make no claim to figure as an expert historian. My aim has been no more than to paint portraits - to draw the central figure of Catherine as I see her, with such other persons in the drama as were interwoven with her destiny, standing out against a multi-coloured background and throwing strong shadows upon it. I have detected no error in accepted dates I have made no discovery of an actual fact. Yet the research into character may shed fresh light upon old events, may account for the unaccountable, and harmonize what is discordant. And the comments of contemporaries when read for themselves, apart from any larger historical purpose, acquire a new vitality. They sharpen our perception of detail, and give us that more personal aspect of the strange things that happen which often explains them. It is from this point of View alone that I venture to reproduce such famous catastrophes as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, or the murder of Henri, Due de Guise. Charity, which is understanding, is as needful for sound judgment of bygone generations as it is for our judgment of our neighbours. When men appear to us abnormally wicked, it is because we have not grasped closely enough the current standard of their morality. They only show black or white according as they rise or fall below the average line, and if they do not chance to possess some virtue upon which we pride ourselves, we may feel sure that they are rich in some other of which our age knows nothing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: R J Knecht Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317896866 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Catherine de' Medici (1519-89) was the wife of one king of France and the mother of three more - the last, sorry representatives of the Valois, who had ruled France since 1328. She herself is of preeminent importance to French history, and one of the most controversial of all historical figures. Despised until she was powerful enough to be hated, she was, in her own lifetime and since, the subject of a "Black Legend" that has made her a favourite subject of historical novelists (most notably Alexandre Dumas, whose Reine Margot has recently had new currency on film). Yet there is no recent biography of her in English. This new study, by a leading scholar of Renaissance France, is a major event. Catherine, a neglected and insignificant member of the Florentine Medici, entered French history in 1533 when she married the son of Francis I for short-lived political reasons: her uncle was pope Clement VII, who died the following year. Now of no diplomatic value, Catherine was treated with contempt at the French court even after her husband's accession as Henry II in 1547. Even so, she gave him ten children before he was killed in a tournament in 1559. She was left with three young boys, who succeeded to the throne as Francis II (1559-60), Charles IX (1560-74) and Henry III (1574-89). As regent and queen-mother, a woman and with no natural power-base of her own, she faced impossible odds. France was accelerating into chaos, with political faction at court and religious conflict throughout the land. As the country disintegrated, Catherine's overriding concern was for the interests of her children. She was tireless in her efforts to protect her sons' inheritance, and to settle her daughters in advantageous marriages. But France needed more. Catherine herself was both peace-loving and, in an age of frenzied religious hatred, unbigoted. She tried to use the Huguenots to counterbalance the growing power of the ultra-Catholic Guises but extremism on all sides frustrated her. She was drawn into the violence. Her name is ineradicably associated with its culmination, the Massacre of St Bartholomew (24 August 1572), when thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris and elsewhere. To this day no-one knows for certain whether Catherine instigated the massacre or not, but here Robert Knecht explores the probabilities in a notably level-headed fashion. His book is a gripping narrative in its own right. It offers both a lucid exposition of immensely complex events (with their profound imact on the future of France), and also a convincing portrait of its enigmatic central character. In going behind the familiar Black Legend, Professor Knecht does not make the mistake of whitewashing Catherine; but he shows how intractable was her world, and how shifty or intransigent the people with whom she had to deal. For all her flaws, she emerges as a more sympathetic - and, in her pragmatism, more modern - figure than most of her leading contemporaries.
Author: Nancy Goldstone Publisher: Little, Brown ISBN: 0316409677 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 518
Book Description
The riveting true story of mother-and-daughter queens Catherine de' Medici and Marguerite de Valois, whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the shape of their tempestuous and dangerous century. Set in magnificent Renaissance France, this is the story of two remarkable women, a mother and daughter driven into opposition by a terrible betrayal that threatened to destroy the realm. Catherine de' Medici was a ruthless pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for thirty years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous "Queen Margot," was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control. When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his followers to their deaths, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family. Rich in detail and vivid prose, Goldstone's narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, international espionage, and adultery form the background to a story that includes such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus. The Rival Queens is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.
Author: Jean Plaidy Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 145168620X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 399
Book Description
A fictional account of Catherine de' Medici, the fourteen-year-old reluctant Italian bride to the second son of the King of France, Henry, during the sixteenth-century.
Author: Una McIlvenna Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131705931X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici explores Catherine de Medici's 'flying squadron', the legendary ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who were alleged to have been ordered to seduce politically influential men for their mistress's own Machiavellian purposes. Branded a 'cabal of cuckoldry' by a contemporary critic, these women were involved in scandals that have encouraged a perception, which continues in much academic literature, of the late Valois court as debauched and corrupt. Rather than trying to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused, Una McIlvenna here focuses on representations of the scandals in popular culture and print, and on the collective portrayal of the women in the libelous and often pornographic literature that circulated information about the court. She traces the origins of this material to the all-male intellectual elite of the parlementaires: lawyers and magistrates who expressed their disapproval of Catherine's political and religious decisions through misogynist pamphlets and verse that targeted the women of her entourage. Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici reveals accusations of poisoning and incest to be literary tropes within a tradition of female defamation dating to classical times that encouraged a collective and universalizing notion of women as sexually voracious, duplicitous and, ultimately, dangerous. In its focus on manuscript and early print culture, and on the transition from a world of orality to one dominated by literacy and textuality, this study has relevance for scholars of literary history, particularly those interested in pamphlet and libel culture.
Author: Leonie Frieda Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0063235919 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
The inspiration for the STARZ original series, The Serpent Queen, premiering September 11. “A beautifully written portrait of a ruthless, subtle and fearless woman fighting for survival and power in a world of gangsterish brutality, routine assassination and religious mania. . . . Frieda has brought a largely forgotten heroine-villainess and a whole sumptuously vicious era back to life. . . . This is The Godfather meets Elizabeth.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen of France to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds. Based on comprehensive research including thousands of Catherine’s own letters, Frieda unfurls Catherine’s story from her troubled childhood in Florence to her tumultuous marriage to Henry II of France; her transformation of French culture to her reign as a queen who would use brutality to ensure her children’s royal birthright. Brilliantly executed, this enthralling biography goes beyond myth to paint a very human portrait of this remarkable figure.
Author: Meredith Martin Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674059476 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
In a lively narrative that spans more than two centuries, Meredith Martin tells the story of a royal and aristocratic building type that has been largely forgotten today: the pleasure dairy of early modern France. These garden structures—most famously the faux-rustic, white marble dairy built for Marie-Antoinette’s Hameau at Versailles—have long been dismissed as the trifling follies of a reckless elite. Martin challenges such assumptions and reveals the pivotal role that pleasure dairies played in cultural and political life, especially with respect to polarizing debates about nobility, femininity, and domesticity. Together with other forms of pastoral architecture such as model farms and hermitages, pleasure dairies were crucial arenas for elite women to exercise and experiment with identity and power. Opening with Catherine de’ Medici’s lavish dairy at Fontainebleau (c. 1560), Martin’s book explores how French queens and noblewomen used pleasure dairies to naturalize their status, display their cultivated tastes, and proclaim their virtue as nurturing mothers and capable estate managers. Pleasure dairies also provided women with a site to promote good health, by spending time in salubrious gardens and consuming fresh milk. Illustrated with a dazzling array of images and photographs, Dairy Queens sheds new light on architecture, self, and society in the ancien régime.
Author: Carolyn Meyer Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780152066208 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
While her tyrannical family is out of favor in Italy, young Catherine de Medici is raised in convents, then in 1533, when she is fourteen, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arranges for her marriage to prince Henri of France, who is destined to become king.
Author: Susan Broomhall Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004461817 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
An innovative analysis of the representational strategies that constructed Catherine de’ Medici and sought to explain her behaviour and motivations.
Author: Edith Helen Sichel
Author: Edith Helen Sichel
Author: R J Knecht
Author: Nancy Goldstone
Author: Jean Plaidy
Author: Una McIlvenna
Author: Leonie Frieda
Author: Meredith Martin
Author: Carolyn Meyer
Author: Susan Broomhall
Author: