Romancing the Renaissance:
the Feminization of Early Modern Culture in
Twentieth Century Mass Media
English 339
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Henri
III
King Henri III of France was born either September 19th or 20th, 1551. He was, by some accounts, his mother's favorite. Certainly it seems he was the least sickly of Catherine de Medici's three sons.
While the second son, Charles IX, reigned, Henri, then duc d'Anjou, helped his mother plan one of the central events of the Wars of Religion. August 24, 1572, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew Day changed the tone of the tensions between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots.
It didn't seem to hurt Henri at the time. Elected King of Poland in 1573, he left that country to take France's crown in June 1574. By 1576, King Henri III, who had distinguished himself as the duc d'Anjou with his part in the Wars of Religion against Huguenots, had made peace with those same Protestants.
He ruled for fifteen years over a country torn by these Wars of Religion. He made a practice of religious tolerance, but he was far from a popular monarch. The people viewed him as a hypocrite, as he often varied between sudden bouts of intense religious piety and periods of dedication to vices.
Led by the powerful Guise family, the extreme Roman Catholics formed the Catholic, or Holy League during his reign in protest of his "concessions" to the Huguenots. In 1585, the League had made him ban Protestantism again and tried to keep Protestant Henry Navarre from the succession. They still did not trust Henri, however, and so in 1588 they started an uprising that forced him to leave Paris. He then arranged the assassinations of Henri duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Guise, two leaders of the League. When the League and the Pope pronounced him deposed of his throne, he joined with Navarre and marched on Paris. On his way there though, he was stabbed to death by a Catholic fanatic, a monk named Jaques Clemen.
He was the last of the Valois Kings of France, and though most accounts of him are unfavorable and unflattering, he was the most effective of Catherine de Medici and Henri II's reigning sons.
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