Ties, Triangles and Tangles: Catherine de Medici as Philip II of Spain’s Mother-in-Law

Abstract

After Catherine de Medici became the mother-in-law of Philip II of Spain in 1559, as a result of her daughter Elisabeth of Valois’ marriage to the Spanish king, she set out to augment and multiply the family ties between the Valois and the Habsburgs by negotiating further marriages. These efforts have been ridiculed by her biographers, who accuse her of a naïve faith in marital bonds. In line with more recent French historiography, this article re-evaluates Catherine’s efforts by placing them in the context of other kinship networks, especially the very dense one connecting the royal houses of Portugal and Spain. Seen in this light, it makes perfect sense for the French queen mother to weave an ever more intricate web of marriage alliances herself. It also means that most kinship relations between members of early modern ruling families were multi-layered and being ‘only’ a mother-in-law to a son-in-law was rare, complicating the conceptualisation of this particular role.

Notes

1 John M. Shlien, ‘Mother-in-Law: A Problem in Kinship Terminology’, ETC: A Review of General Semantics 19 (1962), pp. 161-71, p. 164.

2 Gonzalo Alvarez, Francisco C. Ceballos and Celsa Quinteiro, ‘The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a European Royal Dynasty’, Plos One (2009), doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005174.

3 A few years later, in 1565, Johanna of Austria would marry Francesco I de Medici. Johanna was Philip’s cousin, since their fathers, emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I, were brothers. Francesco was quite a distant kinsman to Catherine: their nearest shared ancestor was Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’ (1449–92). Ferdinand was a son of Cosimo I and Eleanor of Toledo, a Castilian aristocrat. This marriage represented a political tie between the new ducal house of Florence and the Habsburgs, but dynastic ties did not really exist. Ivan Cloulas, Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 1979), genealogical charts pp. 621-7.

4 Katherine Crawford, Perilous Performances. Gender and Regency in Early Modern France (Cambridge MA, 2004), pp. 24-58. One of the most authoritative biographies of the Queen Mother, R.J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (Abingdon/New York, 2014 [1988]), focuses on political and religious developments, excluding family relations.

5 See, fairly recently, Hugo O’Donnel y Duque de Estrada, ‘Felipe II e Isabel de Valois, un matrimonio político del que nació el amor, probado en la felicidad y en la desgracia’, Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 59 (2013), pp. 121-60.

6 M.J. Rodríguez-Salgado, ‘“Una perfecta princesa”. Casa y vida de la reina Isabel de Valois (1559–1568). Primera parte’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna Anejo II (2003), pp. 39-96, and its second part in Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 28 (2003), pp. 71-98.

7 Susan Broomhall, ‘“My Daughter, My Dear”: The Correspondence of Catherine de Médicis and Elisabeth the Valois’, Women’s History Review 24 (2015), pp. 548-69.

8 Markus Reinbold, Jenseits der Konfession. Die frühe Frankreichpolitik Philipps II. von Spanien, 1559–1571 (Ostfildern, 2005); Valentín Vázquez de Prada, Felipe II y Francia (1559–1598). Política, religión y razón de estado (Barañaín, 2004); Miguel Ángel Ochoa Brun, Historia de la diplomacia española. Vol. VI. La diplomacia de Felipe II (Madrid, 2003), pp. 52-96. The latter deals extensively with questions of religion, while devoting only one paragraph to the marriages.

9 Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici, p. 275.

10 Leonie Frieda, Katarina av Medici. En biografi (Stockholm, 2003 [original version: Catherine de Medici (London, 2003]), pp. 243, 213, where the Swedish translation, which I have consulted, states: ‘sin favoritsysselsättning, nämligen att göra upp storstilade äktenskapsplaner för sina barn’. Second quotation: ‘hennes naiva tro på unioner mellan dynastier’.

11 Vázquez de Prada, Felipe II y Francia, p. 163: ‘verdaderamente absurdos’.

12 Cloulas, Catherine de Médicis, p. 241.

13 Cloulas, Catherine de Médicis, p. 161.

14 Matthieu Gellard, Une reine épistolaire. Lettres et pourvoir au temps de Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 2014), pp. 471-2. Gellard briefly touches upon the negotiations in the years 1559–68 (pp. 474-8) but focuses his discussion mostly on the years after that, during which the marriages of Charles IX (1570) and Marguerite (1572) were concluded — when Catherine no longer was Philip II’s mother-in-law.

15 Denis Crouzet, Le haut coeur de Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 2005).

16 Crouzet, ‘Catherine de Médicis’; Katherine Crawford, ‘Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood’, Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000), pp. 643-73, pp. 666, 672. Crawford also points out that this rhetoric could be used against her: if she failed to achieve her political goals, this might be construed as a failure of motherhood, Ibid., pp. 667-9.

17 Manuel I of Portugal married no fewer than three Trastámara/Habsburg brides in succession between 1497 and 1518. The first two brides were daughters of Isabella the Catholic, who was herself the daughter of a Portuguese princess. Between 1525 and 1543 the Aviz and the Habsburgs further embarked on two sets of double marriages: John III of Portugal and Catherine of Austria (1525), and Charles V and Isabella of Portugal (1526), and a generation later Philip II and Maria of Portugal (1543), and Juana of Austria and Prince John Manuel (1552). Before the spate of marriages between the two Habsburg branches from the late-sixteenth century onwards, these connections arguably represent the densest marriage web in Europe. See for instance, María José Rodríguez-Salgado, ‘Karel V en de dynastie’, in Hugo Soly (ed.), Karel V 1500–1558. De keizer en zijn tijd (Antwerp, 1999), pp. 27-111, pp. 55, 60, 64, 76.

18 Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven, 2018), pp. 61-79; Manuel Rivero Rodríguez, ‘“De todo di aviso a Vuestra Señoría por cartas”: centro, periferia y poder en la corte de Felipe II’, in: J. Bravo (ed.), Espacios de poder: cortes, ciudades y villas (s. XVI–XVIII) (Madrid, 2001), pp. 267-90; J.L. Rodríguez de Diego, ‘Archivos del poder, archivos de la administración, archivos de la historia (s. XVI–XVII)’, in J.J. Generelo and A. Moreno López (eds), Historia de los archivos y de la archivística en España (Valladolid, 1998), pp. 29-42.

19 Catherine’s prowess as a letter writer and her use of emotions have been noted most recently by Broomhall, ‘“My Daughter, My Dear”’, and Denis Crouzet, ‘Catherine de Médicis Tested by the Virtue of Charity (1533–1559). Discourse and Metadiscourse’, in: Susan Broomhall (ed.), Women and Power at the French Court, 1483–1563 (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 357-76, pp. 364-5.

20 Sheila ffoliott, ‘Make Love not War: Imaging Peace through Marriage in Renaissance France’, in: Diane Wolfthal (ed.), Peace and Negotiation. Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 213-27; Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici.

21 Carlota Fernández Travieso, ‘La cultura emblemática en la entrada en Toledo de Isabel de Valois’, in: Anthony Close (ed.), Edad de Oro Cantabrigense. Actas del VII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional del Siglo de Oro (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 245-54, which points out the dominance of the peace theme during Elisabeth’s entrance in Toledo, Spain’s court city at the time.

22 Philip Benedict (ed.), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–1585 (Amsterdam, 1999).

23 Crouzet, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, p. 364-5.

24 Hector de La Ferrière (ed.), Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, 11 vols (Paris, 1880–1946) [hereafter LCM], vol. I, p. 583: Catherine de Medici to Sébastien de l’Aubespine, bishop of Limoges, 3 March 1561: ‘je sentz et me payse comme le mal de l’enfant faict à la mère’.

25 LCM, vol. I, p. 303: Catherine to Philip II, May 1562: ‘come se s’étoyt l’Inpératrise propre que le vous dist’, ‘si ayle [elle] aytoit en vye’.

26 LCM, vol. I, pp. 306-7: Catherine to Limoges, 7 May 1562.

27 Many examples throughout LCM, vols I, II and III.

28 LCM, vol. I, p. 572: Catherine to Limoges, 16 January 1561: ‘Nostre parfaicte mutuelle amytie effacera toutes les calomnyes et passions d’aultruy, et l’integrité de noz réciprocques actions et bons offices, l’un vers l’autre, fera croistre, si Dieu plaist, mostre sincère intelligence.’

29 LCM, vol. III, p. 206: Catherine to Raimond de Beccarie de Pavie, baron of Fourquevaulx, 14 November 1568: ‘[N]’ayant aultre alliance que la soeur du feu empereur Charles, il [Francis] ne laisse d’estre toutte sa vie en guerre avec lui [Charles].’ See also ffoliott, ‘Make Love not War’, pp. 224-5.

30 LCM, vol. I, p. 582: Catherine to Ruy Gómez de Silva, prince of Eboli, 3 March 1561: ‘pour faire perpétuelle durer le bien et l’heur qu’il en fault espérer entre ces deux grandes maisons en par conséquent à toute la Crestienté’. She sent a little diamond to Limoges to give to Eboli’s wife, to further underline her confidence in Eboli’s positive attitude towards France. LCM, vol. I, p. 585: Catherine to Limoges, 3 March 1561. In a similar formulation some years later(LCM, vol. II, p. 327: Catherine to Fourquevaux, 28 November 1565), Catherine wrote that she had ‘mis la chose [marriage] en avant pour le bien commun de ces deux grands princes [Charles IX and Philip II], mes enfans, et perpétuation de l’amitié et alliance qui est entre eux’.

31 Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, trans. Lester K. Born (New York, 1936/1963), p. 243; John Watkins, ‘Peacemaking, Interdynastic Marriage, and the Rise of the French Novel’, Common Knowledge 22 (2016), pp. 256-76, p. 257, quoting Richelieu’s Testament politique. See also Heinz Duchhard, ‘The Dynastic Marriage’, in: European History Online (EGO), published by the Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz, 2011-08-04. URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/duchhardth-2010-en [accessed 16 March 2020].

32 LCM, vol. I, p. 576: Catherine to Elisabeth, end of January 1561.

33 LCM, vol. I, p. 145: Catherine to Limoges, August 1560, mentioning marriage between Princess Marguerite and Don Carlos.

34 LCM, vol. I, p. 570: Catherine to Limoges, 19 December 1560. The Guise clan wanted to strengthen Mary’s position in Scotland, which was under threat from a group of Protestants known as the Lords of the Congregation. A marriage with the Habsburgs would ensure Spanish support against the rebellious lords. Ochoa Brun, Diplomacia española, vol. VI, p. 55.

35 LCM, vol. I, p. 572: Catherine to Limoges, 16 January 1561; p. 589: Catherine to Elisabeth, 4 March 1561.

36 Parker, Imprudent King, pp. 156-63. 

37 LCM, vol. I, p. 577: Catherine to Elisabeth, end of January 1561: ‘vous l’aymé tant que, en quelque fason que ce souit, vous désirés qu’ele souyt vostre seur’.

38 Which Catherine intended to prevent since she felt that Mary was an instrument of the Guise clan. Gellard, Une reine épistolaire, p. 473.

39 LCM, vol. I p. 576: Catherine to Elisabeth, end of January 1561.

40 LCM, vol. I, p. 593-4: Catherine to Elisabeth, April 1561: ‘pour l’amytié que vous luy portés, et sele que vous conésés qu’elle vous porte, que vous désirés qu’ele souyt la pluls grande qu’ele pourayst aystre, et avoyr quant et quant set byen d’estre toutte vos vyes ensemble.’ That such arguments might work on Juana was corroborated by Fourquevaulx some years later, when a marriage between her and the duke of Orléans was mentioned. The French ambassador then stated that Juana would not be persuaded to accept such a marriage — only a marriage with Charles IX himself might do, ‘tellement elle a le cueur hault’. But most courtiers doubted that Juana could be persuaded to remarry at all. Célestin Douais (ed.), Dépêches de M. de Fourquevaux, ambassadeur du roi Charles IX en Espagne, 1565–1572, 3 vols (Paris, 1896–1904) [hereafter DdF], vol. I, pp. 21, 26: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 25 December 1565.

41 Crouzet, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, p. 365.

42 LCM, vol. I, p. 319: Catherine to Limoges, 16 May 1562: ‘si petite qu’il s’est abandonné’.

43 LCM, vol. I, p. 319: Catherine to Limoges, 16 May 1562.

44 LCM, vol. I, p. 319: Catherine to Limoges, 16 May 1562: ‘mais c’est pour négliger pas le fruict qui en peult sortir et continuer et fortifier nostre amitié et alliance de plus en plus.’

45 LCM, vol. I, p. 336: Catherine to Limoges and St Sulpice, 22 June 1562; LCM, vol. I, p. 347: Catherine to Philip, July 1562, congratulating him on Don Carlos’ return to health.

46 Rubén González Cuerva, ‘The German Nephews: The Offspring of Maximilian II and Maria of Austria at the Service of the Spanish King’, in: Liesbeth Geevers and Harald Gustafsson (eds), Dynasties and State Formation in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming Amsterdam, 2021).

47 DdF, vol. I, p. 25: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 25 December 1565: ‘Votre Majesté desire et souhaicte, de pouvoir veoir en votre vie l’union de telz trois si grandz Princes ester faicte à votre pourchas, pour debvoir estre conjointz et unys inseparablement en ung cueur et vouloir.’

48 Crouzet, ‘Catherine de Médicis’, p. 364.

49 LCM, vol. I, p. 203: Catherine to Bernardin Bochetel (or Bouchelet), bishop of Rennes, 6 June 1561. The negotiations regarding Elisabeth, who would end up marrying Charles IX in 1571, have been extensively dealt with by Joseph F. Patrouch, Queens Apprentice: Archduchess Elizabeth, Empress María, the Habsburgs, and the Holy Roman Empire, 1554–1569 (Leiden/Boston, 2010), pp. 133-244.

50 LCM, vol. I, p. 448: Catherine to Rennes, 15 December 1562.

51 LCM, vol. I, p. 481: Catherine to Rennes, 23 January 1563.

52 LCM, vol. I, p. 543: Catherine to Rennes, 26 March 1563.

53 LCM, vol. II, p. 20: Catherine to Rennes, 20 April 1563; also vol. II, p 70: Catherine to Rennes, 13 July 1563: ‘il y a de la différence de l’une a l’aultre’. In this letter she also thanked her ambassador for his effort regarding the Cleves marriage for her second son.

54 Erwin Mayer-Löwenschwerdt, ‘Der Aufenthalt der Erzherzöge Rudolf und Ernst in Spanien, 1564–1571’, Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien 206, no 5 (1927), pp. 3-64.

55 LCM, vol. II, p 127: Catherine to Rennes, 29 December 1563.

56 LCM, vol. II, p. 107: Catherine to Rennes, 20 October 1563.

57 LCM, vol. II, p. 165: Catherine to Rennes, 17 March 1564.

58 Parker, Imprudent King, p. 183.

59 Ochoa Brun, Diplomacia española, vol. VI, 58-64.

60 LCM, vol. II, p. 188: Catherine to Rennes, 7 June 1564. Fourquevaulx believed that Chantonnay was working to bring about the marriages of Maximilian’s daughters with the Prince of Spain and King Sebastian of Portugal, all of them cousins. DdF, vol. I, p. 36: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 25 December 1565.

61 LCM, vol. II, p. 200: Catherine to Rennes, 27 June 1564.

62 Frieda, Katarina av Medici, p. 214; Cloulas, Catherine de Médicis, pp. 209-10. On the meeting in Bayonne: Jean-Michel Ribera, ‘L’Entrevue royale de Bayonne (1565), d’après la correspondance de Jean Ébrard de Saint-Sulpice, ambassadeur du roi de France à Madrid’, Annales du Midi: revue archéologique, historique et philologique de la France méridionale 118 (2006), pp. 181-201.

63 DdF, vol. I, p. 6: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 3 November 1565: ‘qu’on ne s’en pourroit retirer sans offencer injurieusement l’Empereur.’

64 DdF, vol. I, p. 6: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 3 November 1565: ‘aussi bien est cested. princesse fille de l’Empereur et tient aultant du sang d’Espaigne comme son aisnée.’

65 DdF, vol. I, pp. 30, 33: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 25 December 1565.

66 LCM, vol. II, p. 337: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 3 December 1565.

67 LCM, vol. II, p. 351: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 23 February 1566: ‘pourra bien avoir moyen de sçavoir’. Fourquevaulx, however, later remarked that it was nearly impossible to figure out what Philip wrote to his cousin, since he wrote all those letters in his own hand. DdF, vol. I, p. 99: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 20 July 1566.

68 DdF, vol. I, pp. 57-7: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 18 February 1566.

69 LCM, vol. II, p. 356: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 17 March 1566: ‘si grand prince qu’il ne peut qu’il n’ayt tousjours à choisir en toute la Chrestienté, quelque empeschement que l’on y pense donner’.

70 L. J. Andrew Villalon, ‘Putting Don Carlos Together Again: Treatment of a Head Injury in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), pp. 347-65.

71 Parker, Imprudent King, p. 184.

72 Parker, Imprudent King, p. 184. See also, DdF, vol. I, p. 200: Fourquevaulx to Charles IX, 15 April 1567: ‘vue qu’il [don Carlos] est ung peu desobeissant à son père, l’on veult cependant, au moyen de ceste suspension, atendre si lad. Dame [Elisabeth] portera filz ou fille, et selon celle prendre Nouvelles deliberations, traces et dessains, à cause du peu de fiance et seureté dud. Prince, son filz, pour le debvoir laisser roy et Heritier de tant d’estatz.’ In the same letter, Fourquevaulx writes that Luis Vanegas was to inform Maximilian of Don Carlos’ situation.

73 Parker, Imprudent King, pp. 175-91, discusses the life of Don Carlos and Philip’s attitude towards him.

74 Fourquevaulx was in touch with a Portuguese intermediary, Almeyda, who offered to broker a marriage between Marguerite and Sebastian. The marriage was concluded and the ambassador of Portugal in Madrid apprised Philip and Juana, the groom’s mother, who both reacted furiously. DdF, vol. I, p. 128: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 27 September 1566; and p. 143: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 29 November 1566. Juana’s intervention probably made the Portuguese retreat, because we hear no more of the marriage. In April 1567, Fourquevaulx reported that a Spanish envoy was about to depart for Vienna to conclude the marriages of Maximilian’s daughters with Don Carlos (Anna) and Sebastian (Elisabeth). The latter marriage was pushed particularly by Maria, against her husband’s wishes. DdF, vol. I, p. 199: Fourquevaulx to Charles IX, 15 April 1567.

75 DdF, vol. I, p. 225-6, ‘Advis secret au Roy’, 30 June 1567, a report on a meeting between Fourquevaulx and Ruy Gómez de Silva, prince of Eboli, who was the prince’s mayordomo mayor. Fourquevaulx reiterated the point in a later letter, in which he also said that Philip waited to see if Elisabeth would give birth to a son, and also that Philip feared that if Don Carlos married, he would be pestering him for money endlessly and would even demand Milan, Naples or Flanders for his maintenance. DdF, vol. I, pp. 257-8: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 24 August 1567.

76 DdF, vol. I, p. 315: Fourquevaulx to Catherine, 19 January 1568. The direct reason might have been that Don Carlos had intended to flee the court and travel to Vienna to claim Anna’s hand. But for this he needed the help of his uncle Don Juan who had been appointed commander of the fleet. When Don Carlos told Don Juan of the plan, the admiral immediately informed Philip. Don Carlos learned of this and planned to murder his uncle, but as he drew his knife, he was constrained by courtiers. Later that evening, Philip placed him under arrest. Parker, Imprudent King, p. 187.

77 LCM, vol. III, pp. 128-9: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 1 March 1568.

78 In September 1568, Catherine reported to her ambassador that not even the Spanish ambassador in Paris could tell her whether or not the rumours about Don Carlos’ death were true. LCM, vol. III, p. 179: Catherine to Fouruqevaulx, 8 September 1568. Don Carlos had in fact already died in late July.

79 LCM, vol. III, p. 148: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 13 June 1567.

80 LCM, vol. III, p. 189: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 30 September 1568.

81 LCM, vol. III, p. 198: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 28 October 1568. Elisabeth had died on 3 October.

82 LCM, vol. III, p. 204: Catherine to Philip, 13 November 1568.

83 LCM, vol. III, p. 204: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 14 November 1568: ‘qui seront un ferme lien pour contenir ces deux Roys en l’union que je désire’.

84 LCM, vol. III, p. 206: Catherine to Fourquevaulx, 15 November 1568.

85 Both examples taken from LCM, vol. III, pp. 44-45: Catherine to Philip, 4 July 1567.

86 For a recent example, see Silvia Z. Mitchell, Queen, Mother, and Stateswoman. Mariana of Austria and the Government of Spain (University Park, PA, 2019).

87 Crawford, ‘Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood’, p. 644.

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Liesbeth Geevers

Liesbeth Geevers

Liesbeth Geevers is a researcher at Lund University (Sweden). She works mostly on Habsburg dynastic history, as leader of the research project ‘Re-thinking Dynastic Rule: Dynasties and State Formation in the Habsburg and Oldenburg Monarchies, 1500–1700’, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. She is currently preparing a manuscript provisionally titled The Spanish Habsburgs and Dynastic Rule, 1500–1700. She is co-editor of The Court Historian.