Catherine de Medici, Mary Hollingsworth
Catherine de Medici, Mary Hollingsworth
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Catherine de' Medici
The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen

Author: Mary Hollingsworth

Narrator: Rachel Bavidge

Unabridged: 15 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/27/2024

Synopsis

During an age of heightened religious conflict, Catherine de' Medici lived her life at the center of sixteenth-century European and French politics. Daughter of Lorenzo II, the Medici ruler of Florence—and then wedded to a French prince by papal decree at the age of fourteen—Catherine first became queen consort of France and then mother to three French kings (Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III) who reigned in an era of almost continuous civil and religious strife.

A lavish promoter of the arts, Catherine patronized poets, painters, and sculptors; lavished ruinous sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces; and masterminded spectacular entertainments and tournaments that prefigure the splendor and ritual of the court of Versailles. Catherine maintained eighty ladies-in-waiting at court; it was rumored she used these women as bait to seduce courtiers for her political ends. Her admiration for the seer Nostradamus fueled claims of her love for the occult and the dark arts. Posterity has condemned her as the epitome of the scheming royal matriarch, her reputation tainted forever by her role in instigating the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants in 1572. Catherine de' Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen is Mary Hollingsworth's evocative, authoritative biography of the most extraordinary woman of the sixteenth-century.

About Mary Hollingsworth

Mary Hollingsworth is a scholar of the Italian Renaissance. She is the author of The Cardinal's Hat; The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty; and Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century. She divides her time between Italy and England.

Reviews

Goodreads review by River

This is the 2nd biography of Catherine de' Medici that I read, the first is Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda. I found that book a lot more interesting than this one. The Frieda biography discusses the people surrounding Catherine in much more detail, especially her da......more

Goodreads review by Joann

What a volatile time, with a huge cast of characters to keep straight and all sorts of intrigues. Hollingsworth gives a favorable depiction of Catherine who was left with much responsibility when her husband died. Above all, Catherine worked mightily to bring peace to the religious factions with som......more

Goodreads review by Kayiris

Really liked a lot. Very well written with opposing views about Catherine presented. Well researched. The view that Catherine was a Serpent seems not to have been true. The other interesting aspect of this book is it talked about how the spread of Protestantism and the Catholic opposition to it play......more

Goodreads review by Charles

Pity poor Catherine de Medici. Caught in the middle of France's religious wars of the 16th century, she was smeared by both sides. Mary Hollingsworth tries to give a much more balanced account of a remarkable woman. Married to the future Henry II of France, in a marriage arrange by her uncle, the po......more

Goodreads review by Northumberland

History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de' Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings during that country's long sequence of sectarian wars in the second half of the sixtee......more

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