Catherine de’ Medici
Mother of King Charles IX of France and regent in his minority. Her daughter’s memoirs, the historian De Thou and English reports of the time all give her a leading part in the decision that led to the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572.
Catherine was the mother of Charles IX of France and had governed as regent during his minority. Her daughter Marguerite, who records this, also describes her arranging Marguerite’s marriage to the Protestant king of Navarre (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 4).
Marguerite, who says that she herself was told nothing at the time, reports that the king was told his mother and his brother Anjou had shared in the attempt on Gaspard de Coligny, that Catherine feared the Huguenots would kill the king and herself in revenge, and that the king then followed her counsel, the killing being resolved on in her apartments (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 4) (Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs letter 5). De Thou writes that the plan to kill the Protestants was approved by the queen (De Thou, History of His Own Time extract in Robinson, Readings, vol. 2, pp. 180–183). An English report of September 1572 names her first among its “inventors” (Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, vol. 10, no. 584). See the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
In the timeline
- 24 August 1572, firm dateThe St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
After the king’s Catholic sister marries the Protestant Henry of Navarre, the Huguenot leader Coligny is shot in Paris. From 24 August 1572 he and thousands of French Protestants are killed there and in other towns. Accounts of who decided it differed from the first.