Catherine De' Medici's Court Festivals

Catherine de' Medici's court festivals were a series of lavish and spectacular entertainments, sometimes called magnificences, laid on by Catherine de' Medici, the queen consort of France from 1547 to 1559 and queen mother from 1559 until her death in 1589. As queen consort of Henry II of France, Catherine showed interest in the arts and theatre, but it was not until she attained real political and financial power as queen mother that she began the series of tournaments and entertainments that dazzled her contemporaries and continue to fascinate scholars. Biographer Leonie Frieda suggests that "Catherine, more than anyone, inaugurated the fantastic entertainments for which later French monarchs also became renowned".Frieda, 225.

For Catherine, these entertainments served a political purpose that made them worth their colossal expense. She presided over the royal government at a time when the French monarchy was in steep decline. With three of her sons on the throne in succession and the country torn by religious civil war, Catherine set out to show not only the French people but foreign courts that the Valois monarchy was as prestigious and magnificent as it had been during the reigns of Francis I and her husband Henry II.Strong, 99. At the same time, she believed these elaborate entertainments and sumptuous court rituals, which incorporated martial sports and tournaments of many kinds, would occupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting against each other to the detriment of the country and the royal authority.Yates, 51–52.

It is clear, however, that Catherine regarded these festivals as more than political and pragmatic exercises: she revelled in them as a vehicle for her creative gifts. A highly talented and artistic woman, Catherine took the lead in devising and planning her own musical-mythological shows. Though they were ephemeral, her "magnificences"—as the contemporary commentator Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, called them—are studied by modern scholars as works of art. Historian Frances Yates has called Catherine "a great creative artist in festivals".Yates, 68. She employed the leading artists and architects of the day to create the necessary dramas, music, and scenic effects for these events, which were usually dedicated to the ideal of peace and based on mythological themes.

It is difficult for scholars to piece together the exact form of the entertainments, but clues have been gleaned from the written accounts, scripts, artworks, and tapestries that derived from these famous occasions. Though such sources must be treated with caution, since they contain demonstrable inaccuracies and contradictions, they provide evidence of the richness and scale of Catherine de' Medici's court festivals.

Entertainments

Catherine de' Medici's investment in magnificent entertainments was part of a conscious political programme. She recalled the belief of her father-in-law, King Francis I, that the court needed to be physically active and constantly entertained. She also declared her intention to imitate the Roman emperors, who kept their subjects from mischief by occupying them with games and amusements. She therefore adopted a policy of distracting her nobles from fighting among themselves by laying on irresistible entertainments and sports for them at court.

Catherine also maintained about eighty alluring ladies-in-waiting at court, whom she allegedly used as tools to seduce courtiers for political ends. These women became known as her "flying squadron" (''L'Escadron volant'' ( fr).Knecht, 235. Catherine did not hesitate to use the charms of her ladies as an attraction of the court. In 1577 she threw a banquet at which the food was served by topless women.Knecht, 236. In 1572, the Huguenot Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, wrote from the court to warn her son Henry that Catherine presided over a "vicious and corrupt" atmosphere, in which the women made the sexual advances and not the men. In fact, Charlotte de Sauve, one of the most notorious members of the "flying squadron", first seduced and then became a mistress of Henry of Navarre on Catherine's orders. On the other hand, Brantôme, in his ''Memoirs'', praised Catherine's court as "a school of all honesty and virtue".

In the tradition of sixteenth-century royal festivals, Catherine de' Medici's magnificences took place over several days, with a different entertainment each day. Often individual nobles or members of the royal family were responsible for preparing one particular entertainment. Spectators and participants, including those involved in martial sports, would dress up in costumes representing mythological or romantic themes. Catherine gradually introduced changes to the traditional form of these entertainments. She forbade heavy tilting of the sort that led to the death of her husband in 1559; and she developed and increased the prominence of dance in the shows that climaxed each series of entertainments. As a result, the ''ballet de cour'', a distinctive new art form, emerged from the creative advances in court entertainment devised by Catherine de' Medici.

Fontainebleau

In January 1564, Catherine and the young Charles IX embarked on a royal progress that was to last nearly two and a half years. They were accompanied by what has been described as a city on the move,Frieda, 210. including the King's Council and foreign ambassadors who Catherine hoped would report to their governments on the splendour of the train, offsetting any idea that the French monarchy was on the verge of bankruptcy. The royal household included Catherine's courtiers and "flying squadron", as well as her musicians and nine essential dwarves who travelled in their own miniature coaches. The party carried with it all the equipment and paraphernalia required for the festivals, feasts, masques, and '' joyeuses entrées'' planned to take place along the route. These included portable triumphal arches and the royal barges.

Catherine had ordered that at the Château de Fontainebleau, each important noble should host a ball. She herself held a banquet in a meadow at the château's dairy, where her courtiers dressed as shepherds and shepherdesses. That evening, the court watched a comedy in the great ballroom, which was followed by a ball where 300 "beauties dressed in gold and silver cloth" performed a choreographed dance.

At Fontainebleau, Catherine arranged entertainments that lasted for several days, including fancy-dress jousting and chivalrous events in allegorical settings. On Mardi Gras, the day after the banquet in the meadow, knights dressed as Greeks and Trojans fought over scantily clad damsels trapped by a giant and a dwarf in a tower on an enchanted island. The fighting climaxed with the tower losing its magical properties and bursting into flames. In another spectacle, singing sirens swam past the king, and Neptune floated by in a chariot drawn by seahorses.

Bayonne

As the high point of the royal progress, Catherine scheduled a meeting with her daughter Elisabeth, the third wife of Philip II of Spain. Catherine was so determined to make a magnificent impression on the Spanish court that she indulged in a spending spree that was extravagant even by her own standards. To help pay for the planned pageantry and entertainments, she borrowed 700,000 écus from the Gondi bank. Catherine had assumed she would also be meeting King Philip himself, but early in the tour, he sent word that he would not be attending. He was outraged that Catherine, whom he called "Madame La Serpente", had received an embassy from the Sultan of Turkey. He also objected to her Edict of Amboise (1563), which had offered concessions to the Huguenots. In short, French religious policy disgusted him. In his place he sent "the severe and ferocious" Duke of Alba, with orders to convince Catherine that persecuting, imprisoning, and torturing Huguenots was the way to deal with heretics, not making treaties with them. In the event, Catherine left Alba befuddled by her darting mind. He found her far more interested in discussing marriage alliances and in showing him what the French court could lay on in the way of fabulous entertainments.

Elisabeth and her Spanish entourage had arrived at the Bidasoa river on the Spanish border with a huge escort of French Catholic nobles on 14 June 1565. She then rode into Saint-Jean de Luz