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Although concerns over international relations and discord between religious factions
would involve both mother and son, their approach to each of these matters differed due to
unique circumstances characterizing the separate reigns. Scholars have established that the
greatest issues affecting Maria de’ Medici’s reign were the queen’s foreign standing and inferior
female rank, which required constant reassertion of the legitimacy of power. Upon securing this
power, the queen was reluctant to relinquish it to her son, spending her remaining time in France
trying to regain it. Furthermore, her Roman Catholic faith made it difficult for her to sympathize
with the rights of the Gallican Church. Louis XIII, on the other hand, found that his need for his
subjects’ loyalty to the state played the greatest role during his reign. This desire had several
origins: his mother’s deceptive policies at the end of the regency, concern with dissident
religious groups seeking to undermine his authority, and increasing fears of Habsburg expansion.
Each of these factors would be the king’s foremost concern at different times during his reign,
leading to alternative solutions for each case. Understanding the special circumstances arising
during each reign and the manner in which the monarch dealt with the issues will help to
illuminate the reasons that Maria and Louis chose to support churches as a means of expressing
their political goals.
While scholars almost always portray Maria de’ Medici as an ambitious but stubborn
regent seeking to legitimize her rule, divisions are found between French and Italian historians.
Scholars of early modern France display a nationalistic bias by calling into question the queen’s
intellect and French patriotism. More importantly, they emphasize the queen’s allegiances to
Catholic interests and the Habsburg Empire by concentrating on Maria’s Italian connections and
Spanish heritage. 71 The one exception to this approach is A. Lloyd Moote, who presents the
queen mother’s actions throughout the king’s life in a nuanced way, providing a moderated
assessment of the Catholic and Spanish devotion. 72 The more limited Italian scholarship devoted
to the queen steers away from her personal interests and instead focuses on governmental
policies enacted during her tenure. 73 The scholarship stressing the religious and political context
of the queen’s reign is conceptually valid with my argument, which emphasizes Maria’s Catholic
and Spanish interests in addition to the need for legitimacy.
Upon becoming regent, Maria de’ Medici found she had to prove that she had the right as
regent and queen mother to exercise power. Henri IV had officially legitimized her right to rule
by naming her regent and crowning her at Saint-Denis, but the queen had to fight contemporary
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