Henri II: His Court and Times (14 page)

Leo X died in 1521, and Alfonsina Orsini some months
earlier. The latter's daughter Clarice, wife of the banker
Filippo Strozzi, succeeded her as Catherine's guardian, under
the surveillance of the Cardinal de' Medici, who, after the
brief reign of Adrian VI, was elected to the chair of St.
Peter. Catherine's half-brother Alessandro, natural son of
Lorenzo by a Moorish woman,
⁰⁵
and her cousin Ippolito,
son of Giuliano de' Medici, Leo X's younger brother, shared
her house with her. For Ippolito, a handsome, good-natured
boy, some seven years her senior, the child early conceived a
warm affection, but she appears to have entertained a hearty
dislike for the future ruler of Florence, whose pointed nose and
swarthy complexion appealed to her as little as did his ungovernable temper and cruel disposition.

In the summer of 1525, Rome being in a very unsettled
state, Clement VII decided to send Catherine and Alessandro
to Florence, whither Ippolito had already preceded them.
Alessandro, however, did not remain there long, as he went,
in charge of a tutor, to live at the beautiful villa of Poggio a
Cajano, midway between Florence and Pistoja; but Catherine
and Ippolito took up their residence in the Palazzo Medici,
in the Via Larga, under the care of Clarice Strozzi and
Cardinal Silvio Passerini, who had been appointed governor
of Florence.

It was now that the little girl's character began to take
definite shape. Clarice Strozzi was a conscientious woman,
but she appears to have been a harsh guardian, who kept an
unsleeping eye upon her charge and never failed to visit with
severity her childish peccadilloes. Thus, Catherine was often
driven to dissimulation and skilful cajolery as a means of
securing immunity from punishment, and this habit of deception,
once formed, clung to her all her life; the methods which she
employed at the Palazzo Medici she will practise at the Court
of France; she will meet Diane de Poitiers, Guise, and Conde
with exactly the same weapons as those with which she confronted Clarice Strozzi.

And she learned other lessons, too, besides the value of
dissimulation. Some indiscreet words spoken in her presence
very effectually undeceived her as to the intentions of her
relatives in regard to her, and she recognised that, under
colour of her welfare, they sought only the furtherance of
their own ambitions. The impression that the discovery made
on her mind was not a pleasant one; before she was eight
years old her faith in human nature was entirely shattered;
she distrusted every one, and particularly persons of high rank.

Two years passed in peace and obscurity; and then came
the terrors of 1527, when Rome was sacked by the brutal
soldiers of Bourbon, the Pope was in turn a prisoner and
a fugitive, and Florence was a prey to rival factions. For, on
the news of the downfall of Clement, the populace rose against
the hated Medici and proclaimed the re-establishment of the
republic.

At the beginning of the Revolution, Cardinal Passerini
hurried Catherine away to Poggio a Cajano; but the democratic
leaders, although they wished no harm to the "
duchessina
,"
as the little girl was called, considered her too valuable a
hostage to lose; and she was accordingly brought back and
lodged in the Dominican convent of Santa-Lucia. On May 18,
her aunt arrived and took her back to the Palazzo Medici,
where, however, the girl's arrival aroused so much indignation
among the populace, that the same evening Clarice returned
with her to the convent.

From the Convent of Santa-Lucia, Catherine was presently
transferred to another nunnery, that of Santa-Caterina. As
plague had broken out in Florence with fearful
virulence,
⁰⁶
and the convent in question was situated in one of the most
unhealthy quarters of the city, the change of residence was
attended by considerable danger to the unfortunate girl. But
it was not until the beginning of December that, thanks to
representations which the French Ambassador made on her
behalf, she was removed to the Convent of Santa-Annunziata
delle Murate, in the Via Ghibellina, which his Excellency had
himself chosen for her.

The Murate — the name signifies the "walled-up ones" —
had been originally a poor and very austere community, but,
though it still clung to the custom of obliging each novice
who joined it to make her entry through a hole in the outer
wall, made for the occasion, and rebuilt behind her, in
symbolisation of her final separation from the world,
⁰⁷
it was now an easy-going and eminently aristocratic sisterhood, where
many daughters of noble houses were received either as nuns
or pupils, and strongly Medicean in its sympathies. Catherine
therefore was assured of a warm welcome, and, as the letters
written by her in later years prove, she always retained the
most kindly feeling towards those who had sheltered her in
those stormy days.

Catherine learned much from the high-born sisters in the Via
Ghibellina during the two and a half years which she spent
among them. "At the Murate," observes one of her biographers,
"the Catherine of the Wars of Religion was formed."
⁰⁸
They taught her those graceful manners, that ease in conversation,
that exquisite courtesy, which fascinated the diplomatists and
statesmen of her time, and disarmed even the sternest Huguenot
when he was admitted to her presence. They taught her, it is
to be feared, little that makes for godliness, except a certain
respect for the forms and ceremonies of the Church; but, on
the other hand, they encouraged and fostered that love of
deception which was already ingrained in the girl's character,
and taught her that expediency is the only true law and craft
the natural and legitimate weapon of the weak. Thus, when,
in the summer of 1530, while Florence was being closely
besieged by the combined forces of Pope and Emperor, the
Government, having ascertained that the sisters of the Murate
were combining with their orisons a good deal of intriguing
with the Medicean partisans who had remained in the city,
sent commissioners to remove Catherine to the Convent of
Santa-Lucia, the girl suddenly appeared among the nuns in the
dress of their Order, and with her hair cut short, crying out:
"Holy Mother! I am yours! Let us now see what excommunicated
wretch will dare to drag a spouse of Christ from
her monastery!"

Through the arguments of one of the commissioners,
Silvestro Aldobrandini, the father of him who became Pope,
more than sixty years later, under the title of Clement VIII,
she was eventually persuaded to obey the order for her removal,
though she obstinately refused to resume her ordinary dress,
being determined, we are told, that all the world should see
that she was a nun taken forcibly from her cloister. And so,
still in conventual attire, she mounted the horse that Aldobrandini
had brought and rode through the streets to Santa-Lucia, with a number of gentlemen marching on either side,
to protect her from the fury of the starving populace, who had
demanded that she should be suspended in a basket from the
walls and exposed to the fire of the besiegers, or thrown as a
prey to the soldiers.

The firmness of Aldobrandini, however, saved both her life
and her honour, and she reached Santa-Lucia in safety.
⁰⁹
Here, on August 12th, she learned of the surrender of the city,
and lost no time in returning to her friends at the Murate, with
whom she remained until the middle of September, when
Clement VII sent Ottaviano de' Medici to bring her to Rome.

It was a very different Catherine who returned to the Eternal
City from the one who had quitted it five years before. In years
and appearance she was still almost a child, "small in stature,
thin, and with a countenance which possessed no interesting
feature," says that close observer, the Venetian Ambassador,
Antonio Soriano, "but having the large eyes peculiar to the
Medici family."
¹⁰
Intellectually, however, she was already a
woman, shrewd, calculating, unscrupulous, with a nice appreciation
of her own capabilities, and the fullest determination
to profit by the experience she had acquired in so hard a school.

No sooner had his "niece" been restored to him than the
question of her establishment in life began to engage very
seriously the attention of the restless Pontiff. With a
considerable dowry and her pretensions to the duchy of Urbino, the
young lady had, of course, no lack of aspirants to her hand;
indeed, during the past four years quite a number of matrimonial
propositions had already been made to Clement from
various quarters of Europe. Thus, as early as February 1527,
we find Sir John Russell, the English Ambassador to the
Vatican,
¹¹
writing to
Henry VIII:

"The saying is here, that Monsieur de Vaudemont's
¹²
commyng hither was to have the Pope's nyce, and that the
Duke of Albany laboreth as much as he can, that the King of
Scottes [James V] shuld have her,
¹³
and the Duke of Ferrara in likewise laboreth for his son."

And he goes on to say that he has sounded one of the Papal
Ministers on the subject of a marriage between Catherine and
Henry VIII's natural son, the Duke of Richmond,
¹⁴
"that might spend as much as too (
sic
) of the best of them," and
that the Minister in question had expressed the opinion that "the
Pope's Holines wold be very wel contentyd to have suche
alliaunce."
¹⁵

However, nothing came of these and several other proposals,
for Clement, who regarded Catherine's hand as his most
valuable political asset, was resolved not to bestow it except in
a quarter whence he himself might derive substantial advantages;
nor was it until a few weeks before the girl's return to
Rome that he received a proposition which appeared to
promise him all that he could reasonably hope for.

This proposition came from François I, who, having
decided that a marriage between his second son and the titular
Duchess of Urbino presented the best means of binding
Clement to his interests — that is to say, so far as any one could
ever hope to bind that shifty personage — and of regaining a
footing in Italy, sent the Cardinal de Gramont and the Seigneur
Francisque to Rome, to broach the subject to his Holiness.
The French envoys found the Pontiff very much on his guard,
but, after some difficulty, they succeeded in extracting a
promise from him that he would not give his niece in marriage
without the consent of the King of France.

Having been charged by his Majesty to visit his prospective
daughter-in-law as soon as she arrived in Rome and communicate
to him their impressions, they lost no time in doing
so, and Francisque writes:

"The Duchess of Urbino, the Pope's niece, has arrived in
this town. She is tall, handsome, and plump (
embonpoint
), and
gives promise of being very intelligent. . . . The Pope loves
her very much."
¹⁶
And,
in a subsequent letter, he adds that she is "graceful and
portée à plaire
, and shows a need to be
caressed and loved."

P
OPE
C
LEMENT
VII (G
UILIO DE
M
EDICI
)
FROM THE PAINTING BY BRONZINO IN THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE

Throughout the autumn of 1530 negotiations for the
marriage were going on, though they made but little progress,
for Clement's path in this direction was far from clear before
him, it being above all things essential for him to avoid giving
umbrage to the Emperor. Charles had a candidate of his own
for Catherine's hand, in the person of Francesco Sforza, Duke of
Milan. On every ground the French match was to be preferred
to the Milanese, for Sforza, with his health so shattered that he
already looked like an old man,
¹⁷
with his resources hopelessly
crippled by the immense sum he was compelled to raise every
year from his ruined country as the price of the Imperial
protection, and with no political influence worth mentioning, was
a very mediocre
parti
, whether from Clement's or his
kinswoman's point of view. But the same overwhelming dread of
a General Council which had induced the Pontiff to stomach
the many mortifications he had received at Charles's hands
made him hesitate to take a step which might precipitate the
calamity which he was seeking to escape. He was, besides,
more than a little suspicious of the good faith of the Most
Christian King. The first proposal had been that Catherine
should proceed to France so soon as the betrothal had taken
place, and that the marriage should be celebrated when
she had reached a marriageable age. To this Clement refused
to consent, "lest she should become, as it were, a hostage in
the hands of the King of France, who, having by that means
made sure of the Pope, might then invade Italy for the
conquest of the duchy of Milan."
¹⁸
Nor did he forget that many fiancées had been sent back,
among them the Emperor's aunt, Margaret of Austria, in the time
of Louis XII, and he considered that it was not improbable that, after his young
kinswoman had served François's purpose, the King might find
some pretext for breaking off the marriage.