The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (22 page)

As both Queen Eleonore and the comtesse de Brézé had already been honored by the princes, the rumor passed around the tourney ground that the king’s mistress, Anne de Pisseleu, would be chosen as “the beauty among the beauties,” the final prize of the day. Since the vote was cast in secret, no one was afraid of nominating someone other than the queen. Anne de Pisseleu had no doubt she would be chosen—after all, her sole rival, Diane, comtesse de Brézé, was ten years older. When the heralds advanced and stood in front of the stand, they announced that the votes had been cast equally for Anne de Pisseleu and the comtesse de Brézé. Diane remained silent, but a furious Anne burst into hysterical laughter and stormed off the stand. She would never forgive Diane de Poitiers for the slight she suffered on that day.

Diane had known Anne de Pisseleu for some years in the court of Louise de Savoie, and did not hold too high an opinion of her. Anne was a natural schemer, vicious in her jealousy of anyone who came within range of what she wanted. Her hold on the king would last for twenty-one years. Her malign influence might have been balanced by the restraining good sense of Marguerite de Navarre, but the latter had retired to join her husband at his seat at Béarn, all that was left of his kingdom.

Anne had many followers at court, among them an ambitious poet who was eager for preferment, Clément Marot. Marot had chosen, unwisely, to flirt in verse with the lovely Grande Sénéchale when Diane was about twenty-four. Marot’s rather charming love poem mentioning
her name was published without sanction and greatly offended her honor. She was a respectable married lady: insinuations about her virtue would surely enrage her husband and could endanger her position with the queen. In her anger, Diane de Poitiers denounced Marot to the authorities for eating bacon during Lent, a time of Catholic fasting when only fish was allowed. He was imprisoned on suspicion of heresy—with justification, it was later discovered; breaking the Lenten fast indicated Marot was a Protestant. But the poet was well connected and soon bailed out by a powerful friend and given a place at court. Diane’s rage was to cost her dearly when Marot succeeded his father as
valet de chambre
to the king and became a devoted follower of Anne de Pisseleu.

L
OUIS de Brézé had turned seventy and could not be expected to live much longer. Before his death in 1531, the Grand Sénéchal once again played host to his king at Anet. On this occasion, François did not come solely for the hunt; he wished to consult his friend on the vital political question of his sons’ marriages, which was dividing his council. Brézé was considered the wisest of his courtiers, and his opinion, just as Montmorency’s, was important to the king; it would help him decide whether to ratify or break the Treaty of Cambrai.

François I was still obsessed with Italy—if anything more so since his defeat at Pavia. He had long entertained the thought of continuing the tradition of marrying a member of his royal house to one of the ruling House of Medici, whose half-French heiress happened to be approaching the right age. However, like monarchs throughout history, François believed that kings must marry royal blood as only this distinguished them from their subjects. In spite of her wealth and connections, and even her descent from Louis IX, Catherine de’ Medici was of bourgeois origin, and therefore a commoner. The Medici, no matter how rich and powerful, were considered by Europe’s royal families to be no better than ennobled merchants.

Since François I’s imprisonment in Spain and the recent treason and death of Charles de Bourbon, another strong man had begun to
appear more in the king’s immediate circle. Anne de Montmorency, appointed Grand Master by François I after Pavia, was also a protégé of Louis de Brézé. Now thirty years old, Montmorency had served his diplomatic apprenticeship under Brézé and was ready to take his place as a statesman. The Grand Sénéchal had imbued in him the same principles and political doctrine which he had instilled into his wife. Montmorency believed adamandy in the divine right and authority of anointed kings, and saw it as the duty of François I, as The Most Christian King, to defend the established Faith. But this powerful and influential Grand Master opposed the Medici marriage. He considered it a
mésalliance
and never really shared François’ Italian ambitions. Rather, Montmorency promoted an imperial alliance with the Infanta Maria of Portugal, Queen Eleonore’s daughter and Charles V’s niece.

Louis de Brézé favored the Italian union, and strongly supported a Valois-Medici alliance, essentially for financial reasons. He would also have taken into account the fact that Catherine, through her mother, was his wife’s second cousin. Who better than Diane to guide Catherine in the ways of the court and ease the Brézés nearer the throne? It is unlikely that the king of France would ever have considered a union of the dauphin with a Medici. But Louis de Brézé pointed out that the royal blood of France’s future monarchs would not be diluted in the case of Henri d’Orléans—he was not the heir to the throne. Besides, François I was still “chasing the elusive phantom of Italy,” and the promise of the duchy of Milan was irresistible to a king who had drunk the heady wine of the Renaissance there in his youth. His second son, Henri d’Orléans, must marry the Medici heiress.

The peace treaty with Spain had not solved France’s problems. Henry VIII had not forgotten his meeting with François I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 and had rejoiced in France’s humiliation at the Battle of Pavia. Once again, there were rumblings from across the Channel as the king of England cast about for new allies in order to further humble François I and, at the same time, protect England from a possible threat from the Habsburg emperor. In the Vatican, Pope Clement VII knew that if he was to consolidate his influence among the Italian states, he needed the military strength of a strong Catholic ally, particularly in view of the growing Protestant threat. Whether his new
ally was to be the king of France or the Habsburg emperor was of little concern to him; but to win the support of either, he would have to provide attractive terms and seal the alliance with a dynastic marriage.

It is unlikely that a clever girl like Catherine de’ Medici was unaware of her role in matrimonial politics and of the many offers for her hand being placed before her “uncle,” the pope. In October 1530, Clement VII had Catherine brought to him in Rome. He had not seen her for five years. Nor had her cousin, the handsome Ippolito. Slightly older than Alessandro, Ippolito should have been the rightful ruler of Florence, but Clement removed Ippolito from the succession by making him a cardinal. Soon, even the pope could see that Catherine and Ippolito were in love. The Venetian ambassador Antonio Suriano described Ippolito’s face as being “gentle and serious and having the melancholy expression one finds in those destined to a premature death.” Ippolito was a poet, a
musician, and a scholar; he played the lute, the flute, and the organ. He enjoyed hunting parties and tournaments and employed “barbarians” such as “Tartars skilled at drawing the bow, Ethiopians trained to battle Indians, daring divers, Turks to conduct his hunts.…” His ecclesiastical interests were known to be nonexistent—he was “ambitious and loved pomp, was passionate and restless.”

Suriano reported home to Venice that Ippolito intended to renounce his cardinal’s hat and marry Catherine. He had come to appreciate and admire her charm, her character, and her courage. According to comte Hector de la Ferrière, the editor of Catherine’s collected letters, she had made Ippolito her heart’s choice, even while the French marriage negotiations were in progress. With the
duchessina
of Florence as his wife, little would stand in Ippolito’s way to rule Florence—except the pope.

Clement VII promptly sent Cardinal Ippolito to Hungary as a legate with rich benefices. It was thought at the time that Clement may even have planned for the brilliant Ippolito to become another Medici elected to the chair of Saint Peter, and he was not about to let the foolish love of the youngsters get in his way. Titian’s portrait of Ippolito shows him on the eve of his departure, wearing a Hungarian Hussar’s outfit, holding a baton and a sword. Ippolito died the following year, most probably poisoned by his cousin Alessandro, who feared his pretensions to rule Florence. Oddly, Catherine did not grieve when the news reached Fontainebleau. Alessandro was assassinated a few years later.

Ever since Clement VII had placed the crown of Charlemagne on the head of Charles V, he viewed the emperor as his ally, and yet the Italian states thought Charles V was as much a threat on the peninsula as the French king. François I would want to avenge himself on Charles V, that much was certain. The pope hesitated between the French marriage and the emperor’s wish for Catherine to marry the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza. Such a union could force Clement to send arms to support Catherine in Milan. Were Catherine’s husband allied to Spain and opposed to France, this would place Clement in a difficult position. The pope made his decision. The French union had more to offer.

In November 1530, François I sent John Stewart, Duke of Albany—Catherine de’ Medici’s Scottish uncle—as his envoy to the pope to ask for the hand of his “niece” for his second son. At Anet on April 24, in the presence of Louis de Brézé and his wife, Diane, François I signed the document dictating the terms of Henri d’Orléans’ marriage contract to Catherine de’ Medici. This important ceremony was the last great honor that the king would be able to bestow on his Grand Sénéchal of Normandy.

At the age of eleven, Catherine was still too young to consummate the marriage. According to the terms of the original contract, she was therefore to come to live at the French court and bring with her a substantial
dowry. The pope was to create a new duchy for the young couple consisting of Pisa, Livorno, Modena, Parma, and, if they could be taken from Charles V, Genoa and Milan. Ultimately, the pope decided to keep Catherine in Florence until she was of an age to marry. This move also made it possible for him to trim her dowry. With his eye firmly fixed on the benefits to France in Italy of this marriage, François was very eager to have her at his court, so much so that he was willing to give up on some of the “dowry” towns in exchange for money. The final outcome would certainly be to the satisfaction of both king and pope. Only Charles V would be discomforted by these arrangements. But the emperor was so blinded by his own dynastic prejudice that he never thought the Valois king would allow his son to marry into a family whose coat of arms bore the pills of the apothecary or the golden balls of the moneylender.

By the time she was twelve, Catherine was exchanging letters with the king of France, who was, after all, a distant cousin through her mother. François responded by sending envoys to visit Catherine in Rome; they commented favorably on her character and charitable initiatives. During the horrors of the uprising in Florence, Catherine had learned the advantage of self-effacement and invisibility. However, her low profile did not erase her importance; she would not forget that while the rest of Europe was fighting for her hand in marriage, in Florence they had wanted to hang her naked from the battlements. With the blood of the politically astute Medici in her veins, and Machiavelli’s
The Prince
as her guide, the little
duchessina
“breathed in the subtle and corrupt air of politics.” No one during her childhood intimated that Catherine possessed much, if any, spiritual feeling, despite the time she spent in convents or lodging with her cousin in the Vatican. If she had no real love of God, and the love of Ippolito was denied her, then politics would be her master and Machiavelli her teacher. With her sharp intelligence and natural ability to analyze situations, Catherine would have appreciated her position exactly. She was the ace in the pope’s hand, and she knew it. But a marriage to a son of the king of France had been a goal way beyond her expectations because she was not of royal blood, traditionally an essential condition for such a union. It was a thrilling prospect, yet also a daunting one. She had no doubt
the marriage would be seen as a
mésalliance
by the French, and sensed the struggle she would have to face for acceptance.