CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI'S tears were a significant part of diplomatic interactions and the subject of intense study by foreign political agents at court. In courtly receptions and formal audiences, both words and gesture were considered vital aspects of the political messages being conveyed. These presentations were complemented by other sources of information and observation gathered by diplomats in the courtly environment in order to understand the character, corporeal and affective behaviour, and thus meanings of the performances, of their French hosts. Moreover, as I will explore, diplomatic political agents considered the emotional and social, as well as political, implications of Catherine's tears for them. Their perceptions were founded upon understandings about the power of female tears to permeate their own bodies in complex ways.

From the early 1560s to her death in 1589, Catherine de’ Medici (1519– 1589) occupied roles of significant power as a regent for her son Charles IX (1550– 1574), and as informal advisor to his brother Henri III (1551– 1589). Broadly speaking, her political behaviour tended towards the protection and propagation of the House of Valois, safeguarding the integrity of France from international interests and seeking peace among France's divergent religious groups and political factions. Scholars of art and architecture have long highlighted the importance of tears as part of a concerted visual and material grief programme that Catherine introduced after the untimely death of Henri II (1519– 1559), who had been fatally injured in a jousting accident in July 1559. Tears were one component of a conventional visual scheme for mourning employed by other contemporaries. However, for Catherine de’ Medici, they were also integral to her identity as a political protagonist protecting the Valois dynastic legacy of her husband and sons. Catherine's corporeal and emotional experiences as a grieving widow were performed as visual and material presentations through which both the gendered body and political agency were simultaneously produced. At her husband's death, Catherine replaced her device of the rainbow, with one understood by contemporaries to be