The marriage of Margaret of Valois and Henry of Navarre was one of history’s most politically charged and tragically consequential unions. It started with a massacre, and ended in an annulment. Celebrated in Paris in August, 1572, the marriage was intended to reconcile France’s bitterly divided Catholic and Protestant factions. Instead, it became inseparably linked to the French Wars of Religion and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
A Marriage Intended to Reconcile Catholics and Protestants
Margaret of Valois, often called Margot, was a French queen who got a bad rap for licentiousness. She was also the first woman in history to pen her memoirs, which vividly depicted France’s turbulence during her lifetime. She was made even more famous, or perhaps infamous, by her depiction in Alexander Dumas’ historical novel, Queen Margot. Margot was as embedded in French royalty as it is possible to get. She was the daughter of King Henry II of France and his formidable wife, Catherine de Medici. Margot was the sister of three successive French kings, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. She was also the wife of another French king, Henry IV. Intelligent, politically astute, and highly educated, Margot was a prized dynastic asset.
Growing up, Margot was quite close to her brother Henry, the future King Henry III, last of the Valois kings. So close that rumors spread of an incestuous relationship. Closeness turned into lifelong hatred, however, because of an affair she had with an aristocrat, Henry of Guise. It ended in 1570 with Margaret’s mother and her brother, King Charles IX, beating up Guise and banishing him from court. By the early 1570s, France had been torn apart by a decade of intermittent civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. To ease the tensions, Catherine de Medici sought a dramatic gesture of reconciliation. She would broker a marriage that would bring the Catholic Valois closer to their Bourbon relatives, a Huguenot (Protestant) branch of the French royal family.
The Inauspicious Wedding of Margaret of Valois and Henry of Navarre
Catherine de Medici arranged for her daughter, Margot, to wed her Bourbon relative, the Protestant Henry of Navarre. It was intended to symbolize national unity, and bind the Huguenots to the crown. The wedding was to be held in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on August 18th, 1572. Paris was overwhelmingly Catholic and anti-Protestant, yet thousands of Huguenot nobles traveled to the city to attend the celebrations. Tensions ran high. Things went wrong from the start. The pope refused to grant a dispensation for the wedding, and the Protestant groom could not enter the Catholic cathedral. So Henry stayed outside during the wedding, while his place inside Notre Dame was taken by Margot’s brother.
Things got worse for religious reconciliation five days later, when the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre began on August 24th. In a violent eruption, thousands of Protestants who had travelled to Paris for the wedding were murdered by Catholic mobs. Tens of thousands more Protestants were massacred across France in the following days. That irrevocably shattered any illusion that the marriage had brought peace. Henry was forced to convert to Catholicism under threat of death. He remained effectively a prisoner at court for several years, until he managed to escape in 1576. Margaret had nothing to do with the killings, and did much to save her husband’s life. However, between the massacre and four years of captivity, Henry of Navarre was understandably not too fond of Catholics, including his wife, by the time he escaped.
“Paris is Worth a Mass”
Soon as he regained his freedom, Henry of Navarre renounced Catholicism and joined the Protestant military forces. When Margot’s brother Charles IX died, he was succeeded by her other brother, Henry, now crowned Henry III. That made her husband next in the line for the throne, as Henry III had no male heirs. The fact that Henry of Navarre was a Protestant made things awkward, however. It led to a three-way contest that became known as the War of the Three Henrys.
Margot’s brother King Henry III, her husband, Henry of Navarre, and her former lover, Henry of Guise, all vied for the throne. Henry III had Henry of Guise assassinated, along with a brother who was a cardinal, in 1588. That horrified the public, and led to a collapse of the king’s authority across much of France. Henry III in turn met a violent the following year, when he was assassinated by a monk in 1589. With her brother and former lover both dead, Margaret of Valois’ husband Henry of Navarre became King Henry IV.
The Parisians would not accept a Protestant king, however, and barred him from the city. To secure the throne, he converted to Catholicism, this time willingly, with the cynical remark that “Paris is worth a Mass”. One of his first acts as king was to arrange an annulment of his marriage to Margot. That allowed him remarry and produce an heir. Margaret of Valois spent her later years as a patron of arts and letters. She also cultivated a reputation as a sharp observer of court politics. Her marriage, conceived as a grand act of reconciliation, ultimately symbolized the deep mistrust and violence of the age.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Encyclopedia Britannica – Margaret of Valois, Queen Consort of Navarre
Greengrass, Mark – France in the Age of Henri IV: The Struggle for Stability (1984)
History Halls – The Medieval French Royal Mistress Who Started a Bare Boob Fashion Fad
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