ENIGMA OF THE AGES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 19

ENIGMA OF THE AGES

CATHERINE 5e MEDICIS

AN ILLUMINATING HISTOKY,

Catherine de Modicis, like her daugh-ter-in-law, Mary of Scots, is an enigma of the ages. She cast her glamour over the Professor of History at Princeton University, in the United States, Mr. Paul Van Dyke, who, after five years of meditation, devoted the spare time of another ten-years in preparing and writing this life, writes the "Daily Telegraph" reviewer. The book is in two volumes, published by John Murray. It involved the inspection and weighing up of thousands of original documents in the Vatican archives in Florence, Paris, London, and a dozen other important cities of Europe, and we may say at once that as the result we have a flood of illumination thrown upon the beginnings of modern history. It is a period which gives rise to a crowd of suggestive speculations and unprofitable "ifs" as to the course of history if Charles VIII. of France had not been seized with the infatuation of invadin"Italy; if only Katherine of Arragon had borne .a son; if Mary Stuart's French husband had lived, or she had been united to the English Prince; if Elizabeth had married the Due d'Alencon, and the like.

Professor Van. Dyke is no mere recorder of facts and dates; he shows the how and why and whither; and, above all, he is not of the school of Dryasdust His invaluable volumes abound in human touches such as this upon the child Mary from Scotland. She was only six years old, and the Venetian Ambassador is quoted as saying • "The Dauphin loves her Most Serene' Highness, the little Queen of Scotland, vfry much. _ She is a very pretty little girl. Sometimes it happens that, with her arms around each other, they go away into a corner of the apartments so that no one can hear their childish secrets." Or the pathetic story of Mile, de Piennes, one of Catherine's maids of honour, clever and beautiful, and good. She loved and was beloved by Francis de Montmorency, who after years of war captivity, solemnly renewed his troth in the Abbey Church of Vaululsant. But his father, the Constable of France, had planued his marriage with the King's bastard daughter Diana and a brilliant future. Catherine championed the young people, but the lady was shut up in a convent, and Francfs had to give way. Rome released him from his promises, and his letter was read to Mile, de Piennes by a Royal Commission of five. This was her spiritedl reply : "I see very well that M. de Montmorency would rather be a. rich than an honest man. . . If he were the son of the King 1 would not marry him after that letter. And since you have seen me in tears I beg you to tell him that it is not for any regret for him. '

THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW BLUNDER.

Of the great crime and great blunder with which Catherine's name is for ever linked. Professor Van Dyke gives a careful and dispassionate account. He scouts the theory that it was a longplanned plot 1 of Cardinals and Pope, though it is true that the latter, when he received the fateful news, assembled the Cardinals and chanted a To Deum. He had medals struck and brought a great Florentine artist to Rome to decorate the walls of the Vatican with pictures recording it. "Traces of these pictures still remain upon the walls, and in the words of a, modern Roman Catholic historian, for 'three centuries they insulted every Pontiff who went into the Sistine Chapel." The event struck France's own Ambassadors ail over Europe with astonishment and dismay. Lie after lie, each contradictory of the others, was sent out by .Catherine, and sometimes, as here in England, they arrived simultaneously. The Council which decided upon the deed included Catherine and three other Italians, with the young King, Charles IX. ; his brother, the Due d'Anjou; the Duo de Guise, also only 22, who all three had been under the influence of their Italian •mothers. It is doubtful if more than one full-blooded Frenchman—the Marshall Tavannes—was present. The higher clerics and the French nobilityhad little part in the crime, and in its inception religion had little, if anything, to do with it. Two days before, at the instigation oE the young Do Guise, in revenge for his father, and with the connivance of Catherine, the great Admiral de Coligny had been shot down by an assassin. It was a grim accompaniment to the wedding festivities of Henry of Navarre and the Queen's daughter Margaret. If the Admiral had been shot dead Professor Van Dyke is inclined to believe that the massacre would never have happened. Catherine had a complex character, perhaps unfathomable. Such things as these, recorded by our author, throw a lurid light upon her. When Paris was running in blood she wrote one of her calm letters asking Italian patronage for a favourite. When the noble Count de Montgomerie, after splendid endurance of torture, was executed she watched the execution from her window. When, shortly after St. Bartholomew, Henry of Navarre received the sacred bread at the Mass, she loudly laughed. That laugh was premature and mistaken.

A WOMAN OF THE ESNAISSANCE.

As to Catherine herself, Professor Van Dyke accounts her to be neither the devils incarnate of the romanticists and of her enemiea who wrote after the Massacre, nor the angel of light of her white-washers. He looks upon her— and his judgment seems correct enough —as a sen-moral Renaissance woman with a passionate' devotion to her husband and children, who played patiently and incessantly for power, ror her own and for theirs. In pursuance of that single object there was hardly any infamy to which she would not descend. Consider who she was—the daughter of Jfacehiavelli's "Prince," the niece of Pope Leo X., and granddaughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico, unexpectedly coming to the French throne, and at that Court having to fight for her own -hand. Her husband, Henry 11,. by the Treaty of Vaucelles gained for France—wnat a heritage!—the cities of Mets and Toul and Verdon, and a little later on, by his own stroke of genius, though the Due do Gui3e obtained the credit, he had the supreme happiness of capturing Calais. Catherine, corTect enough in her own conduct, was generally tolerant of the King's mistress,' Diane de Poitiers, beautiful, but twenty years older than himself—though indeed, as a. curiously-preserved account reveals, Catherine once plotted to have Diane's beauty spoiled by the throwing of acid. But when, among other 3 favoured of the King, came, in the train of Mary Stuav'o a Lady Fleming, "a very pretty little woman/ who captivated him and bore him a child, Royal wife and Royal mist.ress joined forces to rend her.