In blogs and in historical articles, you can often find a story about how Margarita Navarra, the wife of the future king of France Henry IV, kept the severed head of her lover. We decided to check how true this story is.
The mention of the episode with the head of La Mol, executed in 1574, is found in almost every article dedicated to the biography of Queen Margo. For example, it is on site The Magazine Magazine: "de la Muli, on the Parisian Grevskaya Square, was chopped off the head, which, according to rumors, Margarita kept in a captain." In different types, this story comes across Livejournal And in "VKontakte": One writethat Margarita bought the head of La Mol at the executioner and buried her, other - that she later kept the embalmed head at her.
Two main sources that affect the spread of this story are artistic. Firstly, this is Streaml’s novel “Red and Black” (1830). The lover of the main character is called Matilda de la Mol, and in her family the memory of the ancestor executed in 1574 is honored. Streaml has this episode stated so: “Queen Margarita Navarra, secretly hiding in some house in Grevskaya Square, dared to send a messenger to the executioner and demand from him the dead head of her lover. And when midnight came, she took this head, sat in her carriage and went to the chapel, which was at the foot of the Montmartre hill, and there she buried it with her own. ”
The second fiction source is the novel by Alexander Dumas "Queen Margot"(1845). According to the plot, after the execution, La Mol Margarita bought the head of her lover from the executioner: “Margarita put in a bag embroidered with pearls and puffed out by the thinnest spirits, the head of La Molla, which seemed even more beautiful in this frame of velvet and gold. And this beauty was supposed to be preserved due to the special composition, which was used in that era for the embalming of the royal blood. ”
La Mol really existed. True, he was not Huguenot, but to believers Catholic. In addition, Dumas rejuvenated him: at the time of the events described, he was the fifth dozen. Mentions him in his memoirs And Margarita herself - however, is very concise: "La Mol and Count de Coconnas paid their lives."
But neither Margarita nor most of her contemporaries have not a word about the head of La Mol, whom the queen allegedly kept (or buried after the execution). Pierre de Burdeil, Senor de Brant, who left the detailed Essay The life of Margarita is also not mentioned by La Molla.
Nevertheless, during the life of Margarita, a text came out in which this episode is. This is the Hugueno pamphlet Le Divorce Satyrique (Satirical divorce), entirely dedicated to the Queen's love adventures. He went out in 1607 - by that time, Henry IV had already divorced Margarita, unable to have children, and married Maria Medici. This pamphlet, Mistaken attributed to the poet and writer Agrippe d'obigne, in a rather rude manner paints the adventures of a person of royal blood, endowing it with dozens of lovers.
In particular, there is an episode with the head of La Molla. In the pamphlet tellsThat the heads of La Mol and Kokonas had to put on public display, but at night Margarita took the head of La Molly and buried her in the chapel of Saint-Martin at the foot of Montmartre, and then mourned her lover bitterly. Everything is like Dumas. This allows you to determine where the authors of two famous novels got this story. But this pamphlet is hardly possible to consider this pamphlet. He was written by the enemies of the Margarita, who despised her for political intrigues and for the inability to give children to Henry IV, and the text itself is filled with sloping rumors-for example, about Viscount Turenne, who allegedly fell out of disgrace of Margarita due to the "disproportionate size of some parts of the body."
Thus, the story of the head of the lover, which Margarita allegedly kept, does not cause confidence. It was published by the enemies of the queen in a satirical pamphlet, and then the authors of art works used.
Photo on the cover: Alexander Fragonar. The scene in the bedroom of Margarita Valois on Bartholomew’s night. 1836 / Wikimedia Commons
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