Catherine De Medici (1519-1589) was queen consort of Henri II (1547-1559), and mother of François II (r. 1559-1560), Charles IX (r. 1560-1574), and Henri III (r. 1574-1589). De Medici played an influential role in the reigns of her three children, first as guardian of François II after the death of her husband and then as regent for Charles IX and advisor to Henri III. Her religious policy was initally one of moderation. She appointed key Protestants, including Navarre and Coligny, to positions of command within the central government, and attempted to resolve the religious dispute at two meetings of the Estates-General in 1560 and 1561. When this failed she called a colloquy of clergy and reformed pastors at Poissy in 1561 (even inviting John Calvin and his lieutenant Theodore Beza) in an attempt to find some form of compromise. While the colloquy was a failure, Catherine did enact an edict of limited toleration and freedom of worship in January 1562, known as the Edict of St-Germain or the Edict of January, which was the first to allow the co-existence of differing confessions side by side. This was followed by the Peace of Amboise at the end of the first war (March 1563), which guaranteed freedom of worship regulated in accordance with social status. De Medici grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of resolution to the religious conflict in France, and was widely credited by Protestants as ordering the massacre in Paris, or bullying her young son into ordering it. As Robert Kingdon has shown, an array of propagandistic tracts came out in the wake of the massacres that propagated a 'black legend' around De Medici and blamed her for the ruin of France, most notably in Henry Estienne's Discours Merveilleux de la Vie, Actions et Deportemens de Catherine de Medicis, or the 'Marvellous Discourse on the Life, Actions and Misconducts of Catherine de Medicis' (published across Europe in at least 10 editions in 1575-6). This poem is Melville's contribution to that process. For more details, see Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew's Day Massacres 1572-1576 (Cambridge, MA/London, 1988), pp. 200-13; Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion 1562-1629 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 52-61, 64-70, 82-5, 90, 96-7, 104-6, 116-17; N. M. Sutherland, Catherine de Medici and the Ancien Régime (London, 1968). Metre: elegiac couplets.
Vipera Thusca, cum catulis (c.1573)
[p111]
Vipera Thusca, cum catulis
1Aegra seges Medicaea truci medicata veneno 1
(nam prius hoc arvum putre jacebat iners)
extulit hos tristes sub iniquo sidere fœtus,
unguine plus medico semine quam patrio.
5Stirps sata, stirps nata haec, atque alta atque aucta veneno
miscuit, ah, vitae fontibus arma necis: 2
et dextrae fideique dolum et perjuria fraude
fœderibus: paci praelia, tela togae;
flammeoli velo taedisque jugalibus Orci 3
10pullatas vestes funereasque faces: 4
Iunoni superae infernam, Veneri Libitinam; 5
et laetis luctus, et thalamis tumulos.
Ergo tulit colubros serpens: et spargere virus
addidit: et vivit vipera mater adhuc?
15Vivit adhuc! Spargit viva cum prole venena 6
effera: nec potis est vipera fœta mori.
Heu catuli infames! Vos rupta matris ab alvo, 7
18vos latere effosso, non potuisse mori?
[p111]
The Tuscan viper, with her whelps
The diseased Medicean fields, treated with a wicked potion (for previously this crop was lying barren and withered) produced these unhappy fruits under an unfavourable star, more by means of a doctorly ointment than by fatherly seed. a This offspring planted, born, and both grown and nourished by poison, blended, alas, the arms of death with the sources of life: b and in deceit mixed a show of faith and false articulation of friendship to its covenants: blended war with peace, and weapons with the toga; and joined the gloomy mourning-dresses of Orcus and the funereal flamboys to the flame-coloured wedding veil and the nuptial wedding torches; c joined hell to heavenly Juno, Libitina to Venus; d and mixed lamentation with rejoicing, and graves with wedding beds. Thus the serpent has brought forth new snakes: and has instructed them to spread the poison: and does the mother viper still live? She does still live! For she spreads about her dire potions with her living children: neither can the often-pregnant viper die. Alas, notorious whelps! You, torn from the womb of your mother, from her gouged-out flank, could you not die? e
Notes:
Original
1: cf. Virgil, Aeneid III.142
2: cf. Statius, Thebaid I.219
3: 'Quam thalamo taedisque jugalibus / invida mors rapuit': Ausonius, Parentalia XXV.5-6
4: Virgil, Aeneid VII.337
5: 'infernam': textual problem for 'infernum'? cf. Virgil, Aeneid VI.138, where the adjective is conditioning Juno and thus referring to Proserpina.
6: cf. Cicero, In Catilinam I.2: '...hic tamen vivit. Vivit?'
7: Virgil, Aeneid VII.484
Translation
a: The medicinal help taken by Catherine to aid conception is here framed in language which suggests a form of witchcraft. We have rendered the Latin 'medico' as 'doctorly', thus retaining the strong opposition of 'medico' and 'patrio', which Melville uses to undermine the legitimacy of the conception (be it natural or paternal). 'medico' also carries the semantic force of 'magical', which allows Melville to extend the witch/magic metaphor.
b: The Latin verb 'miscuit', 'has blended/mixed/enjoined/combined', now regulates a long series of clauses. Because of the difficulty English has in maintaining grammatical cohesion in long clauses, we have repeated the verb at certain points (and also gave expression to its full semantic range) to provide clarity and continuity. The verb also continues the metaphor of mixing deadly potions in the manner of a witch.
c: Standard classical images of drab mourning clothes and funeral lights are juxtaposed with their positivist opposites of bright wedding apparel and wedding torches.
d: The first half of the line alludes to the myth of Proserpina; the second half is metonymic: joining 'death to love' (a continuation of the marriage/funeral motif from above).
e: The sense of 'latere effosso' here is ambiguous. Given the child-bearing metaphors of the preceding lines it would seem to imply that it is Catherine who has been gouged, suggesting that Melville believed (wrongly) that she had underwent a Caesarian section to give birth. He could possibly be using this as a metaphor for the deaths of her children Francis II and Charles IX.
