Catherine de’ Medici This report is on pages 115 through 299 out of 475 from Jean Heritier’s Catherine de’ Medici. This section begins with Part II. The Accession and ends with Part III Ch.II, Machiavellism and Maternal Love. When the last part ended, Catherine’s eldest son Francois II had just died, kicking the Guises, who had been controlling him through their niece, his wife, out of power. With no heirs, Francois was replaced by his younger brother Charles IX, who was only nine at the time. Catherine was made Governess of France, essentially ruling in Charles’ place until he was old enough to rule. During her reign, tension was high between the Catholics and the Huguenots. Catherine had attempted to stay neutral and allow for freedom of worship, but this led to many rumors spreading about the young king and his mother, saying that they had converted to protestantism, and were supporting the Huguenots.These were incorrect, as Catherine was very Catholic, but she did not care that opposing religions advanced if they remained loyal subjects, and this angered both Catholics and some Protestants. She was first and foremost a Politician, then a Catholic. On March 1, 1562, the Duke of Guise and other extreme Catholics attacked worshiping Protestants, causing a catalyst for the first French War of Religion. Louis de Bourbon and Gaspard de Coligny, prominent Huguenot leaders, gathered troops to fight for the protestant cause. Catherine herself went to meet Coligny, but he refused to back down, so she gathered her own army. Later in the wars, her neutral policy changed. The Surprise of Meaux was an attempt to attack the King in 1567. This deeply upset the Queen Mother, and she began to actively fight against the Huguenots. In the middle of all the warfare, She began to further the impact of the Valois dynasty by marrying off her children. She married Charles IX to Elizabeth of Austria, a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, and attempted to
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They both caused conflict in the government and tension between common people, but France did not fall after a new religion was introduced, and Rome did. I viewed the Guises as similar to the Roman Officials who persecuted Christians, basically just big bullies. The protestant leaders who eventually gained enough power to raise an army against the French government reminded me of Emperor Constantine, because they both were catalysts to the spread of a new religion. These similarities allowed me to look at Rome’s fall in a different way. Previously I had assumed that Christianity could not have persisted in Rome without the empire collapsing, but if France could survive a split in faith and the tedious wars that followed, maybe Rome could have survived as a Christian Empire. Studying Rome and how Christianity affected its downfall also let me appreciate how Catherine de’ Medici kept her country together. She could easily have chosen a side from the beginning and caused warfare even more destructive that what occurred when she remained neutral. However, she held her position until the Huguenots directly attacked her son, which she could not stand for. If the Roman emperors had been more tolerant of the new religion and remained neutral, maybe they would have had a chance of
They both caused conflict in the government and tension between common people, but France did not fall after a new religion was introduced, and Rome did. I viewed the Guises as similar to the Roman Officials who persecuted Christians, basically just big bullies. The protestant leaders who eventually gained enough power to raise an army against the French government reminded me of Emperor Constantine, because they both were catalysts to the spread of a new religion. These similarities allowed me to look at Rome’s fall in a different way. Previously I had assumed that Christianity could not have persisted in Rome without the empire collapsing, but if France could survive a split in faith and the tedious wars that followed, maybe Rome could have survived as a Christian Empire. Studying Rome and how Christianity affected its downfall also let me appreciate how Catherine de’ Medici kept her country together. She could easily have chosen a side from the beginning and caused warfare even more destructive that what occurred when she remained neutral. However, she held her position until the Huguenots directly attacked her son, which she could not stand for. If the Roman emperors had been more tolerant of the new religion and remained neutral, maybe they would have had a chance of