Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France

(9)
Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France image
ISBN-10:

0060744928

ISBN-13:

9780060744922

Author(s): FRIEDA, Leonie
Edition: First Edition
Released: Jan 18, 2005
Publisher: Harper
Format: Hardcover, 464 pages

Description:

Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the stain on the name of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen of France to reveal a skilled ruler battling against extraordinary political and personal odds.

Orphaned in infancy, imprisoned in childhood, heiress to an ancient name and vast fortune, Catherine de Medici was brought up in Florence, a city dominated by her ruling family. At age fourteen, the Italian-born young woman became a French princess in a magnificent alliance arranged by her uncle the pope to Henry, son of King Francis I of France. She suffered cruelly as her new husband became bewitched by the superbly elegant Diane de Poitiers. Henry's influential and lifelong mistress wisely sent her lover to sleep with Catherine, and after an agonizingly childless decade when she saw popular resentment build against her, she conceived the first of ten children. Slowly Catherine made the court her own: she transformed the cultural life of France, importing much of what we now think of as typically French -- cuisine, art, music, fashion -- from Italy, cradle of the Renaissance.

In a freak jousting accident in 1559, a wooden splinter fatally pierced Henry's eye. Hitherto sidelined, Catherine found herself suddenly thrust into the maelstrom of French power politics, for which she soon discovered she had inherited a natural gift.

A contemporary and sometime ally of Elizabeth I of England, Catherine learned to become both a superb strategist and ruthless conspirator. During the rise of Protestantism, her attempts at religious tolerance were constantly foiled, and France was riven by endemic civil wars. Although history has always laid the blame for the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by a Catholic mob of thousands of French Protestants at Catherine's door, Leonie Frieda presents a powerful case for Catherine's defense.

This courageous queen's fatal flaw was a blind devotion to her sickly and corrupt children, three of whom would become kings of France. Despite their weaknesses, Catherine's indomitable fight to protect the throne and their birthright ensured the survival of the French monarchy for a further two hundred years after her death, until it was swept away by the French Revolution.

Leonie Frieda has returned to original sources and reread the thousands of letters left by Catherine, and she has reinvested this protean figure with humanity. The first biography of Catherine in decades, it reveals her to be one of the most influential women ever to wear a crown.

Best prices to buy, sell, or rent ISBN 9780060744922




Related Books

Frequently Asked Questions about Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France

You can buy the Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France book at one of 20+ online bookstores with BookScouter, the website that helps find the best deal across the web. Currently, the best offer comes from and is $ for the .

The price for the book starts from $10.98 on Amazon and is available from 23 sellers at the moment.

At BookScouter, the prices for the book start at $15.00. Feel free to explore the offers for the book in used or new condition from various booksellers, aggregated on our website.

If you’re interested in selling back the Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France book, you can always look up BookScouter for the best deal. BookScouter checks 30+ buyback vendors with a single search and gives you actual information on buyback pricing instantly.

As for the Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France book, the best buyback offer comes from and is $ for the book in good condition.

The Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France book is in very low demand now as the rank for the book is 720,127 at the moment. It's a very low rank, and the book has minimal sales on Amazon.

The highest price to sell back the Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France book within the last three months was on September 26 and it was $3.07.