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September 29, 2020 39 mins

French Queen Catherine de Medici may or may not have introduced the artichoke to France. And yes, she may be at least partly responsible for starting the French Wars of Religion. But were the accusations Catherine was a homicidal poisoner true?

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
when we explore the intersection of history and true crime.
I'm Maria tre Marquis and I'm Holly Fry And in
today's episode, we're going to look at the life of

(00:20):
Catherine de Medici, who became one of the most well
known or maybe just most notorious queens when she became
Queen of France in the hundreds. And unlike some of
our other poisoners who may have been new to you,
you know her name. And that is because Katherine lad
a very big life and there is a lot in
the historical record about her. Really, right, we'll unpack that problem.

(00:47):
Katherine may or may not have introduced the artichoke to France,
and she may have been at least partly responsible for
starting the French Wars of Religion. Nothing big, really, um.
She's also famous for being the mother of three three kings.
Our primary focus though, today is to untangle whether or
not the accusations that Catherine was a homicidal poisoner actually

(01:10):
had any truth to them, or even were at least plausible.
Catherine may have been a Queen of France, but she
was not actually born in France. She was born in Italy,

(01:33):
in Florence in April of fifteen nineteen. Her mother was
Madeline de la Tour du Verne, cousin of Francis, the
first King of France, and her father was Lorenzo de Medici,
who was the ruler of Florence and had several other titles,
but at the end of the day he was the
ruler of Florence. She Kather herself actually was said to

(01:54):
have exhibited the same physical traits as her father and
the rest of the Medici clan um. And we quote
this from a Venetian envoy um right around the time
of Catherine's forty birthday. She was described as her mouth
is too large and her eyes too prominent and colorless
for beauty. I dream that one day someone will write

(02:17):
that about me. Your eyes, Holly, are too colorless. I'm
dead inside. Um. I think that's where it comes from. Right,
She's got the shark, guys. But this is not the
only way that she was described. She was also described
as quote a very distinguished looking woman with a shapely figure,

(02:37):
a beautiful skin, and exquisitely shaped hands. So this is
clearly an eye of the beholder situation, right, I mean yeah,
I mean if you like hands, like she's got the
dead eyes and gorgeous hands. Uh, we'll see. I mean
like hands do come up a little bit later. So, um,
she was she's from a famous political family. The Medicis

(03:01):
were UMU the ruling wealthy class of Tuscany in Italy,
which was they're also known as the House of Medici,
and they came to their wealth and political power long
before Catherine. It was back in the thirteenth century and
um primarily they came to it through banking and commerce.
But if you know the Medicis, but probably banking is

(03:22):
not the first thing to do. No, no, not at all.
It's like a really good interest rates um three point two.
They went on to become patrons of Leonardo da Vinci, Barticelli, Michelangelo,
and Galileo, among other names that you would recognize today.
They were considered the first family of the Italian Renaissance. UM.

(03:46):
But the Catherine herself, her story is it begins tragically.
So she was orphaned when she was less than a
month old. So when she was two weeks old, her
mother died. Her father's death, which was probably the result
of syphilism, happened very quickly after her mother, and she
spent her childhood being cared for and educated in convents,

(04:08):
and then in fifteen thirty three, when she was fourteen,
Catherine's uncle, who happened to be Pope Clement the seventh,
arranged for her to marry the Duke of Orleans, calling
it the greatest match in the world, in the world,
I mean, I like how he builds it, like my
wrestling matches. I thought I was like like w W

(04:30):
E or like like a monster truck race. He's like Sundays,
there's like a monster truck marriage thing that we can
put together. Here, everybody's got a little flag, you know. Um. So,
the duke who would become her husband, he was the
second son of the King of France UM and he
despite being the second son, he did go on to

(04:50):
be crowned um. He was crowned Henry the Second in
March of Fife. So during her first ten years of marriage,
Catherine lived with the fact that Henry the Second had
a mistress, Dianne de Poitiers, who had been his caregiver
during his childhood. That's got some baggage. We're not unpacking today,

(05:12):
and we're just gonna let that stay where it is. Oh, Henry, right,
Deanne had all of the influence, and Henry actually wore
her colors just sort of a way to symbolize his
his affinity for her rather than his wife Katherine's, which
had to be both just personally upsetting any embarrassing. Can

(05:36):
you even imagine she would be at different various you know,
events that were happening, and there's Henry and like whatever
the Diane wore, you know, and she just had to
sit there and clap, just shove it all down inside
Katherine and I'll be fine. So Henry's mistress actually kept

(05:57):
all of the influence that she had over him through childhood,
it and into adulthood. Um she kept it through until
Henry's death. She was always there. And it took for
Catherine years of living with infertility and some extraordinarily humiliating
treatments for that infertility, often involving urine and animal parts,

(06:18):
before the cause of the problem that they were having
she and Henry conceiving a child was finally uncovered. What
actually was revealed was that the king had a physical
issue called hippospadius, which makes conception really difficult. Oh, I
was gonna say, also, he probably had to have sex
with her like regardless of the fact that he had

(06:41):
a physical issue, you know, I mean, he was doing
it with Diane, so like they needed to be in
the same room as well, So for ten long years
like this is this is crazy. So even though this
was revealed to be a problem of Henry's physiology, Catherine
was still considered to be the and to blame, and
she was often called frigid by the people at court

(07:03):
and the people of the country. Yes, so society was
not nice to her at this time. Um. And So
Henry had one living brother, UM, who was unmarried and childless,
and I can only imagine that that would have made
Catherine feel like the entire fate of that dynasty was
in her hands. Um and so for her to have
that first child was just incredibly important. There are actually

(07:27):
even some accounts of Catherine tearfully pleading with the King,
her father in law, Francis the first before they had
ascended to the throne, to please allow Henry to marry
a woman who could give him an heir. But Francis
the first was not interested in this. He considered their
marriage to be God's will and thus not something that

(07:48):
could be dissolved. Greatest pairing in the world. I think
he was on board with Pope right. The Pope made
it happen, So it's God's will, God's will. Okay, so
ten years. It took ten years of their marriage and
all of his treatment of fertility treatment, societal treatments. Catherine

(08:09):
finally gives birth to her first child with Henry UM
and after that they went on to have a total
of ten children, UM, of whom seven survived into adulthood.
That was four boys lived and and three girls. UM.
Her final pregnancy was just terrible and tragic, and she
was pregnant with twin girls. UM, it wasn't going well.

(08:31):
One of them died in the womb, the other died
shortly after delivery, and Catherine herself almost died giving birth
to them. And that was the last time, um, that
they tried to have children. Uh. Yes, it is not
really within the purview of a poison podcast to discuss it,
but if you ever just in the market for a
really horrifying pregnancy story, look that one up. It's gruesome.

(08:56):
So Before we move on, we're gonna take a little
breather of our own, and when we return, we will
talk about France's teenage kings and why they had no
interest in the throne. Welcome back to Criminalia. We're about
to talk about how much Catherine's life changed about the

(09:19):
time she turned forty. So Catherine is best known for
being the Queen consort of Henry, the second of France.
Consort in this context means that she did not come
from a royal bloodline and that she became a queen
through marriage, but she also ruled as queen regent for
her two sons, Francis and Charles, who came to power

(09:40):
when they were just fourteen and ten, respectively. Um, I
can't imagine any ten year old really being super interested
in ruling France so or prepared. I don't want to
be ruled by a ten year old, thank you so much, right,
I mean, that's just that's just crazy right there. So
m her third son, Henry, also came to power and

(10:03):
she remained He was an adult when he did, but
she remained heavily influential in his court too. So if
you actually add up all of the years that Katherine
was ruling as a regent and was the de facto
ruler of France. It totals two about thirty years, which
is amazing, amazing, Like who gets to say they ruled
France for thirty years and a woman Catherine de Medici.

(10:24):
That's who Catherine gets too. She doesn't need anybody to
wear her colors. She's got her own colors. So her
life actually really begins to take shape around this time
when she's forty years old. Um, she's got teenagers, she's
got a four year old. Um, she has a husband
who um it was in an accident. Uh So Henry
was killed um in a crazy sounding um and certainly

(10:48):
painful sounding jousting incident. Yeah, this is another one. If
you're squeamish, maybe like la la la for the next
ten seconds. So Amazingly, after he took a aunts in
the eye and into his brain, Henry the Second did
not immediately die. He in fact went on to live
for ten we're imagining very long days. So Henry did die, um,

(11:14):
and when he did, his eldest son, Francis, who was fourteen,
was proclaimed king. So, just in case you're wondering, why
didn't Catherine ascend to the throne. She was never able
to rule his queen because women were excluded from succession
to the throne under Sala law in France. So then
let's take a moment and talk about Francis. Francis was

(11:38):
always considered weak. He was young, and by week I
mean physically weak. Um, and he was never particularly interested
in being the King of France or in charge of
anything or royalty. I kind of imagined him as a
kid who liked to sit in his room and play
video games with his friends. Uh, they didn't have Xbox.
Then think of how history would change if they had. Um, well,

(12:03):
we wouldn't have ten year old kings. Even though he
was a ten year old, he was a husband. He
had been married to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scott's, when
he was just four years old, and at that time
Mary was six, so sugar an older woman. It sounds
off putting and really strange to modern ears. Obviously it is,

(12:25):
But this sort of thing happened often when it came
to arrange marriages among royal families as kind of a
whole uh you know, political move These marriages were meant
to be alliances, and in this case, an alliance between
France and Scotland. It had nothing to do with love, right,
I mean thinking it more like a business transaction that
involved her children as ponds. Um. Not that that's much better,

(12:50):
but it would at least let us get away from
any of the romantic notions that we today hold with marriage. Right.
And history suggests that it was actually Mary who ran
things instead of Francis, much to Catherine's displeasure. And since
he was only a teenager, it was Catherine who was
technically in charge as Queen Regent and not Mary. So

(13:12):
it's not surprising to discover there was constant friction. Can
you even imagine? So? Um, it didn't actually go on
for very long. Francis only ruled for less than a year. Um.
And he too died reportedly from something fairly minor like
an ear infection um or you know, I kept coming
across ear infection, uh, something small that today we would

(13:34):
just have drops to take care of. Uh. He's always
described as having a weak constitution. Um. And soon after
Francis died, Katherine made sure that Mary had a one
way to get back to Scotland. Thank you for your service.
We're done now. Pink slipped so Henry and Catherine's second
son at this point, Charles, was crowned King Charles the

(13:56):
Ninth at age ten. Because of his age and his
lack of interest in being king again, I don't want
to be ruled by a ten year old. Uh. Catherine
once again acted as Queen Regent throughout his reign, which
was also fairly short, though not nearly as short as
his brother's. Charles died at age twenty four, so fourteen

(14:16):
years right, right, and um, I actually don't think that
she ever really gave up her ruling during his reign.
I don't think he ever turned onto it. I don't
think you ever got interested. I imagine when you've grown
up with all of the benefits and doing none of
the work, even when your age changes over to adulthood,
you're like this, this arrangement is still working for me
so exactly, Like I'm a team now and I've got

(14:38):
plenty of time to go look at the other royal
ladies while he ruled for me. Mom, you're doing a
great job, mom keeping up well, I'm sure Katherine was like, yep,
go out, I'm my god, I'm on it. Thanks, Thanks,
got your homework right here. Yep doing it. It's rumored

(14:59):
that Catherine had a favorite child, and I asked all
of my friends if favorite favorite child, and they all
lie and tell me that they don't. But I know
that it's true and that you all do. UM. When
Catherine's son Charles died, her son Alexander Edouard was next
in line to take a spin at being the king UM.
But he was an adult at the time. He was
twenty two when he came to the throne as King

(15:20):
Henry the Third. And one thing that we know for
certain about Catherine de Medici is that she wrote extensively,
both to her children and also to her European political peers.
And while she was not technically serving as regent for
Henry the Third, since he was an adult, she was
hugely influential in his life and his reign. In this way,

(15:41):
she really was UM. In fact, she wrote to advise him,
for example, UM that when contemplating going to war, which
you know comes up a lot when you're a king, UH,
that he should remember that quote. Pieces carried on a stick.
Big stick diplomacy is often attributed to US President Theodore Zavelt,
whose foreign policy was speak softly and carry a big stick,

(16:04):
you will go far. And and didn't Tony Stark say
that peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.
I think they both stole the idea from Catherine. I
think so too, uh so Off the battlefield though, UM Catherine,
like her Medici relatives, UM, was also a huge patron

(16:24):
of the arts. Indeed, this is the part of her
I love, because she was known to commission drawings and paintings.
She had extensive architectural projects carried out UM and her
court was known for its extravagant entertainment UM and she
featured everything from plays, ballet and other types of dance, UM, jousting,
and she also had fireworks displays. Yes, she's considered to

(16:48):
have introduced the concept of ballet to France, and then
France kind of took it over for themselves. So Italian
born Katherine is also often credited with introducing a lot
of food innovations to France, something that France is known
for now. And really some of those seeds are with
Katherine's reign. She was sometimes called in in history books.

(17:08):
She sometimes referred to as the foodie Queen, which I
actually didn't know. I thought this was particularly great about
her um. She is said to have introduced the fork
to the French table at a time when using a
fork was seen as pretentious, and she was also don't
use that, how I put it down, I love the
idea of someone like picking up a fork, and so

(17:30):
would be like, what are you the pope? We don't
want to be pretentious, but she She also introduced foods
to France that I think of today as being French,
like quint essentially French, like the puff pastry. Yeah, Catherine,
it gets a lot of things attributed to her. It
is also said that she introduced underwear to France. That's

(17:52):
a bunch more complicated topic and the truth is really
kind of less exciting than that makes it seem. In
addition to her love and of the arts, she was
also really curious about science. But remember that like science
at the time is a little bit different than science
and modern times. So like many of her peers, she
was known to regularly consult astrologers and it's with an L,

(18:13):
not astronomers, because they were able to predict or they
at least they claimed they were able to predict the
future by the position of the stars um and this
was all considered just as important as art, literature and
all other studies at the time, you know, as one
does during the Renaissance. Astrology and astronomy very tightly linked
during this period, and Catherine also became an admirer of Nostradamus,

(18:35):
who was her contemporary. But then her story starts to
take a turn and and in a strange way. Okay,
so um, so let me describe this Catherine. Um. It
was believed among some in French society that Catherine had
commissioned an amulet from Nostradamus um, and she wanted it

(18:57):
made from a mixture of metal and blood. Um. That
would be human and goat blood if we're going to
really get into the guts of this amulate. But it
may or may not have happened, right uh. And another
one of her contemporaries, the philosopher Jean Bodine, claimed in
his fifteen eighty book on Witchcraft, that Catherine invented the
black mass invented. That's that is a statement right there, right.

(19:24):
This would have actually been about nine years before her
death when he wrote this. But there is no record
of Katherine acknowledging or commenting on this claim. You know,
one of the things that I really like about Catherine
Um as we were learning about her for this episode,
was that she doesn't really seem to read the comments,
you know what I mean, Like she she knows that

(19:46):
they're out there, she knows that they're happening. If they're
not right in her face, she just sort of seems
to go on. She she doesn't put out any statement.
She has no PR department that is really worried about
whether or not she invented the Black Mass. She just
kind of nods along and does everything. I just I
thought that was great. I have a sneaking suspicion that
there's also an element of fine, let him think I

(20:07):
can do witchcraft, absolutely right, I mean, if you were
in charge of France when she wanted people to think
that she were a sorceress. Although I mean it's actually
highly unlikely she was a sorceress. Um. It's highly unlikely
that there's any truth to either of these allegations about
the Black Mass or the amulet Um. But the real press, Yeah,
it's the no no press is bad press ideology of

(20:27):
ruling exactly exactly. But what is worth noting is that
in France at this time, um Italians in general. Uh,
and most definitely Italian women. Um. They were very often
suspected of being poisoners or at least regarded as being
the murderous type, regardless of whether or not they actually were,

(20:49):
or whether they were in Italy or France. The French
just pointed and said poisoner, right, Uh, it was. It
was pretty well established truth and we got to use
the air quotes there in French society at the time
that Catherine ordered the poisoning of probably a handful of people.
She was credited with being involved with the poisonings of

(21:11):
Jeanne Deaubray, who was the Queen of Navarre, as well
as the Cardinal of Lauren, Cosse, a Marshal of France,
and the Duke Donjou. It's also important to remember that
during this period in history, poison wasn't really well understood.
It was really hard for authority to determine whether or
not it was the cause of a person's death. Um.

(21:33):
And consequently, you can imagine that there were people accused
of being poisoners willy nilly, who weren't actually poisoners, as
well as people who poisoned and totally got away with it. Right.
Remember this is a time when astronomy and astrology are
both considered equal sciences. What are it saying? So this

(21:53):
is another good moment where we're going to laugh ourselves
into a little break. But when we return, we're going
to talk about Katherine's alleged epic stash of poison. Welcome

(22:13):
back to criminal Lea, where we're about to talk about
the accusations that Catherine poisoned people with a pair of gloves.
The massive Chateau de Blois has been home to many
notable members of the French aristocracy, including seven kings and
ten queens of France, and that includes Catherine. It was
known for its beautiful three story external spiral staircase, and

(22:38):
for its gargoyle downspouts, and it's five hundred plus rooms,
and and and the list goes. You know, it's it's
a real tert stream to show. Really, there's one room
in particular in this home that is famously part of
Catherine's legend because it was believed by many in her

(23:00):
at her time that she kept her stash of poisons
and a tiny apothecary style cabinet tree work that was
in the woodwork um of one of this particular room,
and it had as many as two hundred and thirties
seven individual drawers. It was interesting about this particular piece
of her story is that there is a story written
by the writer Alexander Dumont about a character named Queen

(23:22):
margot Um and that is Catherine's daughter Margaret, and she
was married to a Hugueno leader in a shrewd political
move as if there are any other types of right,
So this story, which was written by Alexandra duma Pair,
is based on real characters and events. But don't get
it twisted. That does not mean it is historical record. Right.

(23:45):
Not only do historians agree that Dumont took a very
wide artistic license in his work, he most certainly also
engaged in spreading a bit of propaganda about Catherine as
well as other influential figures. And he appears to be
the original source of this wall of poison's account, which
I love the idea of a wall of poisons? Are
you kidding me? But like, but he comes from this

(24:07):
like vaguely fictional, vaguely, very untruthful account of semiistory. Right,
it's just truthful enough that people believed the rest of it.
That was made up and as cool as a wall
of poison sounds. Historians believe that this was really more
likely a place where Catherine kept small objects or perhaps

(24:30):
confidential letters in all of those teeny tiny woodwork to drawers.
But regardless, like the French still could not give up
on the fact that they wanted Catherine to be a poisoner,
and this was just an idea that they kept harping on. Allegedly,
they believed one of Catherine's favorite methods for committing homicide
with poison was with poisoned gloves. So Italy in the

(24:53):
sixteenth centuries, you recall, where she is from, was a
well perfumed country, and since we're used on your skin
as well as on your clothing. And it may sound
a little bit nutty today, but during the sixteenth and
seventeen centuries, perfumed gloves were all the rage across Europe.
They were the must have accessory, and Catherine was said

(25:14):
to have introduced them to the French court. So this
was the time when people didn't bathe as frequently as
we do today, and so perfect gloves, which were called
and I love the name of the perfect gloves, sweet gloves. Uh,
we're used to mask odors, and the accessory became really
popular and it was a pretty easy murder weapon to

(25:35):
use during the Renaissance as well. Right, everybody's got everybody
had gloves. Yeah, so let's get into how the French
thought Katherine was using these sweet gloves to her advantage.
So in fifteen seventy two, Catherine's daughter Margaret referenced earlier
also as Margot was engaged to marry Henry of Bourbon,
who would later become Henry the fourth of France. Henry's

(25:56):
mother was a woman named Jean Dubray, and the story
knows the john had been reluctant for her son to
marry Katherine's daughter, who we also mentioned earlier. Um, suspicions
were raised about Katherine when Joan died suddenly just two
months before her son's wedding, because maybe she wanted her
son to marry for love. No nobody wanted that at

(26:19):
this phase of the game. Um, maybe she just didn't
like Katherine and found her to be kind of mean.
She may have just not wanted any kind of alliance
with Catherine de Medici. That's totally plausible. I read a
lot about how she just really did think that Katherine
never said anything nice to her, was always mean. Um,
she probably didn't like being around her, So naturally, rumors
started to swirl the June's death was actually the result

(26:43):
of poisoning. And even though there was little love between
these two women, and that was well known throughout France,
many people just assumed that Katherine sent a pair of
sweet gloves to June as a pre wedding gift. In
society at the time, it actually would have been considered
kind of rude if she hadn't done so. Naturally, um,

(27:06):
it was believed, of course that Catherine did it. Uh,
she had allegedly gifted her with a pair of perfumed
and possibly poisoned leather gloves shortly before the event happened.
If if she did kill Jean with sweet gloves, the
idea was actually kind of brilliant. Um. And if she didn't,
they were the perfect weapon for the rumor mill. But

(27:29):
the sweet gloves tainted with poison would have, you know,
changes it a little bit. These gloves were a really
common gift of the royal court. Um. They were valued
for their symbolism and gifted gloves, especially gloves that came
from a queen conveyed with them a certain sentiment of
affection and loyalty. So she may have been trying to

(27:50):
be like, look, I know we don't always get along,
but you're marrying I love gloves made love gloves too,
like sweet gloves all around. So as an example of
another time when something like this was done, to give
you an idea of how common and important it was,
the Queen of Portugal in awarded the winning jousters of

(28:14):
her court each with a pair of perfumed gloves. They
were again perfumed, but not poisoned. It was actually it
wasn't really the easiest thing in the world to make
a pair of sweet poisoned gloves. It was kind of
time consuming. Um. They were most commonly scented with herbs, spices,
flowers like a jasmine, violet, and orange blossom. I would

(28:34):
love to smell like orange blossom all day long. Um right. So,
like for clarity, as you're about to hear, this is
not a case or someone got a pair of gloves
and then infused them somehow with scent like they are
from the beginning of the process of making them infused.
So the scents that were chosen were mixed with animal

(28:55):
fat or another oil and then boiled. And then a
pair of gloves, usually leather but exclusively so was then
dipped into the fragrant liquid and then left to dry.
And then, depending on the material of the gloves and
the strength of the scent that was desired, this process
could be repeated several times so that you infused the
whole thing with the yummy, yummy scents. It wasn't just

(29:17):
a casual drop of lavender oil on these clubs. It's
like a process, right, So regardless of how long it
took or how popular speak gloves were, even when they
were not poisoned, the French still always just always had
a great distress for Catherine, and June's untimely death only

(29:37):
added fuel to that fire for them. So part of
it was the Jean, who was a Hugueno, was considered
a spiritual and political leader of the French Huguenot movement,
and her death came at a time when the Catholics
and Huguenots were negotiating a peace treaty, and that possibly
ignited the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the Huguenos. Just
a few weeks later, the whole theory of death by

(29:59):
poi and gloves Um. It's since been discredited by modern historians,
and it's most likely that she died of tuberculosis, not
of poisoned accessories. Um. Yet the suspicion still remains on
Katherine today. Even if you do your own independent research
on her, you'll you'll find that she is accused of
this poison in many places. What's sensational, which means clicks

(30:23):
um exactly. So. The other thing is that there were
three other rumored victims on Catherine's alleged hit lists, Holly,
were they poisoned? No, they were not. Look, I'm not
saying she was above poison a zero evidence. It was
Cardinal of Lauren died as a result of surgery, which

(30:45):
was a whole other dicey proposition at this point because
they didn't have germ theory was not in the picture.
Can you even imagine, like, there is absolutely no concrete
record of the death of Cossey Immercial of France, but
there's also no reason to expect that he was poisoned.
And the Duke donje you once again that player in

(31:06):
a lot of historical deaths tuberculosis right, so um, Although
the intrigue of this myth continues to have legs, and
it's really fun to talk about somebody poisoning somebody else
with a pair of leather gloves. Um. What is certain
is that Catherine, at the very least um is likely
the one who popularized perfumed gloves in France, but without poison.

(31:29):
Sometimes the real story is a boring story, sometimes like
she just likes made successory really popular. You guys, Uh,
But isn't it interesting how we are all? I mean,
it's part of human nature. And I'm not judging anybody
who wants to believe the more salacious version, but we
all want to believe a rumor rather than a boring reality.

(31:49):
You know, it's more fun to think she was a witch,
a sorceress. She'll kill you, she'll kill you dead. And
it's especially apparently especially fun if you were French in
the NID. Listen, they didn't have television yet, the kids
didn't have video games. They had to become kings and
dad like life was hard. It's hard. But while it

(32:21):
is unlikely she committed these sweet love poisonings, it is
not really outside the realm of possibility that Catherine did
or may have known how to dabble in poisons. That
tendency did. It turns out, running her family. They dabbled
in everything. You can't love science without a little poison

(32:42):
in sixteenth century Italy. She she had she had many
relatives who dabbled in poisons. But we have a few
that we pulled out. Costumo de Medici. He was the
grand Duke of Tuscany and a contemporary of Catherine's, which
is why I thought he was interesting. Um. He was
no and to use poison as a tool for solving
his political problems. His son, too, was also a widely

(33:06):
suspected poisoner um, and he likely used arsenic as his
weapon of choice. Um. The Medaici poisoners go really far
back into their family history, and homicidal poisonings were fairly
commonplace in France and throughout all of Europe, frankly during
this time, so much so that if you just fell ill,
you wouldn't automatically think like, oh, I'm coming down with

(33:27):
the flu or I have a little cold. You would
naturally lean right into the idea that someone had what
you should have thought, that you had tuberculosis. Um. But
the popularity of poisons spread through Europe like crazy at
this time. So when it spread from Italy into France,
France practitioners became collectively known as the French School of Poisoners.

(33:47):
There was also an Italian School of Poisoners at this time.
It wasn't really a school. It was you know, where
you went and had textbooks and things. But like, but
it was a group of poisoners who helped each other, uh,
you know, work out recipes, you know, maybe sharing some
things with each other. They inspired at that time as
many as thirty thousand poisoners in France alone by seventy two,

(34:11):
which is more than a decade before Katherine died. So
it was it was in the middle of her life.
Poisoning in France wasn't trivial. It was just part of
what you did. I like thinking about the School of
Poisoner's coursework. What's the syllabus? Right? So, I mean, we
all really like this twee idea of Katherine using a

(34:32):
pair of tainted sweet gloves to make a power play.
But sadly, nothing in her story is really there that
makes her any more power hungry or bloodthirsty or poison
prone than any other leader who was contemporary to her,
as we've seen with many powerful female leaders. Um, whether
we've talked about them yet in in this season, whether
there to come, whether we're not going to address them

(34:53):
at all, it doesn't really matter. But there's a lot
of criticism that women received based on the sexist notions
in the society that they happened to be living in.
And in Catherine's case, to put on top of the
fact that she was a woman, she was a foreign
woman in a xenophobic culture, and so there are bound
to be stories about her, and not good ones. So
the French never really came around to Italian born Catherine,

(35:16):
and they always viewed her as a manipulative foreigner with
a ponchain for poison and for forks. And because Catherine
believed in and supported the sciences UH in particular, she
was very interested in astronomy and astrology, again astrology being
considered a science at this point in history, this was
enough to accuse her of occultism. The way that we

(35:38):
have seen accordingly being accused of occultism matches up with
the accusation that she had invented or at least participated
in Black mass. UH accusations of witchcraft have long been
used to delegitimize women who had any sort of power.
Catherine died in January nine. She was sixty nine at
this point. She died from natural causes, most likely related

(36:01):
to floracy. Today she is buried next to her husband
in the Sandinis Basilica in Paris. She was really influential
during a period of really intense religious and civil conflict
in France. Um she had been Had she been a
man in the society that she lived in, Um, I
can imagine that she would very possibly have gone on

(36:22):
to be remembered as one of Europe's greatest leaders during
the Renaissance. She was, she had a steady hand. She
was apparently empowered for thirty plus years. But you know,
the men weren't necessarily playing by the rules either. But
instead she remains an object in history as the Italian woman,
or Madame Salon, or Queen Jezebon, and maybe our favorite,

(36:47):
the woman who eats little children. What is your poison
this week? If you look up cocktails related to Catherine
de mitt Geese name, you will discover a whole lot
of them. Um. There are a lot of bartenders around
the world that have come up with some interesting ones. Um.

(37:08):
I landed on one that's a fairly simple affair. That is,
I believe from an Australian site Koolatos. And this is
a really simple recipe it is. I amended it a little.
There's this like they go by Miller leaders uh, and
I'm too lazy for that, so I just did roughly
one part od vie, so that's also like a white brandy,

(37:31):
and then two parts champagne and you basically pour the
vie into a chilled champagne flute and then you pour
the champagne on top. I think that sounds like a
great Catherine de Medici, or just a Medici in general
house of Medici drink. Well, it's certainly tastes like poison.
Oh no, really does give it this nice fruitiness. Um,

(37:56):
but it's just a little bitey for me. I like
a very um like sweet, you know, very um juicy
kind of drink usually, so I kind of like to
be kicked in the head by it, so I'll have
to make it. Well, bravo, you should be drinking earthquakes,
I think. Um. But yeah, so that's the that's the
Catherine de Medici. There are a million more. If you're

(38:16):
feeling adventurous and you want to have some online time
mixing cocktails. But that is the one that I selected
for this one. It does seem kind of perfectly appropriate
for her. The ingredients seemed pretty great. Um, did you
notice that, like a lot of her her inspired drinks
had a lot of Champagne's or anything in particular in them,
or they tons of Champagne's. None of it is like, oh,

(38:38):
you want to sip twelve of these while you sit
by a beach all day long. It's all like you
want to drink one maybe two. Yeah, So that's that.
So thank you for joining us. Criminalia is a production
of Shonda land Audio in partnership with iHeart Radio. For

(38:58):
more podcasts from the land Audio, please visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. M HM
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