98 



CATHARINE. 



Catliarine should have acquired anil retained an ascen- 

 dency over the affections of the king for nearly tweiit y 

 years. The want of male issue, however, proved a 

 source of disquietude to him, and scruples, real or 

 pretended, at length arose in his mind concerning 

 the legality of their union, which were greatly en- 

 forced by a growing jmssion for Anne Boleyn, one 

 of the queers maids of honour. He speedily made 

 application to Rome for a divorce from Catharine. 

 An encouraging answer was returned, and a dispen- 

 sation promised, it being the interest of the pope to 

 fevour the English king. Overawed, however, by 

 the power of the emperor Charles V., Catharine's 

 nephew, the conduct of the pontiff, who depended 

 upon the empire, became embarrassed and hesitating. 

 Catharine, meanwhile, conducted herself with gen- 

 tleness and firmness, and could not in any way be in- 

 duced to consent to an act, which would render her 

 daughter illegitimate, and stain her with the imputa- 

 tion of incest. Being cited before the papal legates, 

 cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, in 1529, she de- 

 clared tliat she would not submit her cause to their 

 judgment, but appealed to the court of Rome ; which 

 declaration was declared contumacious. The sub- 

 terfuges of the pope at length induced the king to 

 deckle the affair for himself ; and the resentment ex- 

 pressed on this occasion, by the court of Rome, pro- 

 voked him to throw off his submission to it, and declare 

 himself head of the English church a result of royal 

 caprice more curious and important than most in his- 

 tory. In 1532, he married Anne Boleyn; upon 

 which Catliarine, no longer considered queen of Eng- 

 land, retired to Ampthili in Bedfordshire. Cranmer, 

 now raised to the primacy, pronounced the sentence 

 of divorce, notwithstanding which, Catharine still 

 persisted in maintaining her claims. She died in 

 January, 1536. Shortly before her death, she wrote 

 a letter to the king, recommending their daughter 

 (afterwards queen Mary) to his protection, praying 

 for the salvation of his soul, and assuring him of her 

 forgiveness and unabated affection. The pathos of 

 this epistle is said to have drawn tears from Henry, 

 who was never backward in acknowledging the vir- 

 tues of his injured wife, who certainly acted with 

 eminent dignity and consistency. Several devotional 

 treatises liave been attributed to Catharine, which 

 belong to queen Catharine Parr. 



CATHARINE DE MEDICI ; wife of Henry II., 

 king of France ; born at Florence in 1519 ; the only 

 daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, duke of Urbino, and 

 the niece of pope Clement VII. Francis I. consented 

 that his son Henry should marry her, only be- 

 cause he did not believe she ever would ascend the 

 throne, and because he was in great want of money, 

 which Lorenzo could furnish him. The marriage 

 was celebrated at Marseilles in 1533. Catharine 

 was equally gifted with beauty and talents, and had 

 cultivated her taste for the fine arts in Florence ; but, 

 at the same time, imbibed the perverted principles of 

 politics then prevailing in Italy, which justified a 

 constant resort to cabal, intrigues, and treachery, 

 and are particularly unsuited to the government of 

 large empires. Catharine's ambition was unbounded. 

 She sacrificed France and her children to the passion 

 for ruling ; but she never aimed steadily at one great 

 end, and had no profound views of policy. The si- 

 tuation in which she was placed, on her arrival at 

 the French court, gave her great opportunity to per- 

 fect herself in the art of dissimulation. She flattered 

 alike the duchess d'Etampes, the mistress of the king, 

 and Diana de Poitiers, the mistress of her own hus- 

 band, though these two ladies hated each other. From 

 her apparent indifference, she might have been sup- 

 posed inclined to shun the tumult of public affairs ; but, 

 when the death of Henry II., in 1559, made her mis- 



ti-c>s of herself, she plunged her children in a whirl 

 of pleasures, partly l<> enervate them by dissipation, 

 partly from a natural inclination towards prodigality ; 

 and, in the midst of these extravagancies, cruel and 

 bloody measures were executed, the memory of which 

 still makes men shudder. Her authority was limited 

 under the reign of Francis II., her eldest son, since 

 tins prince, by his marriage with the unfortunate 

 Mary Stuart, was entirely devoted to the parly of 

 the Guises. Jealous of a power she did not exercise, 

 Catliarine then decided to favour the I'rotesiants. 

 If it had not been for her patronage, by which the 

 ambition of the chiefs of the Huguenots was sti- 

 mulated, tlie conflicting religious opinions in I i 

 never would have caused such lasting civil \ 

 Catliarine felt herself embarrassed, by this indul- 

 gence towards the innovators, when the death <,t" 

 Francis II. placed the reins of government, during 

 the minority of Charles IX., hi her hands. Waver- 

 ing between the Guises on one side, who had put 

 themselves at the head of the Catholics, and Conde 

 and Coligny on the other, who had become very 

 powerful by the aid of the Protestants, she was con- 

 stantly obliged to resort to intrigues, which failed to 

 procure her as much power as she might easily have 

 gained by openness of conduct. Despised by all 

 parties, but consoled if she could deceive them ; 

 taking arms only to treat, and never treating with- 

 out preparing the materials for a new civil war, she 

 brought Charles IX., when he became of age, into 

 a situation in which he must either make the royal 

 authority subordinate to a powerful party, or cause 

 part of his subjects to be massacred, in the hope, at 

 best a doubtful one, of subduing faction. The mas- 

 sacre of St Bartholomew (see Bartholomew, massacre 

 of) was her work. She induced the king to prac- 

 tise a dissimulation foreign to his character; and, as 

 often as he evinced a disposition to free himself from 

 a dependence of which he was asliamed, she knew 

 how to prevent him, by the fear and jealousy which 

 she excited in him by favouring his brother Henry. 

 After the death of Charles IX., Catharine became 

 again regent of the kingdom, till the return of Henry 

 III., then king of Poland. She contributed to the 

 many misfortunes of his reign, by the measures 

 which she had adopted previously to its commence- 

 ment, and by the intrigues in which she was uninter- 

 ruptedly engaged. At her death, in 1589, France 

 was hi a state of complete dismemberment. The 

 religious contests were, in reality, very indifferent to 

 her. The consequences she was not able to con- 

 ceive. She was ready to risk life for the gratifica- 

 tion of her ambition. She was equally artful in unit- 

 ing her adherents, and in promoting dissension among 

 her adversaries. She was extravagant to folly, anil 

 was unable to limit her expenses. To those who di- 

 rected her attention to the prodigal expenditure of 

 the public treasure, she used to say, " One must 

 live." Her example contributed greatly to promote 

 the corruption of morals which prevailed in her 

 time. Her manners, however, were elegant, and 

 she took a lively interest in the sciences and arts. 

 She caused valuable manuscripts to be brought from 

 Greece and Italy, and the Tuilleries, and the Hotel 

 de Soissons to be built. In the provinces, also, se- 

 veral castles were erected by her order, distinguished 

 for the beauty of their architecture, in an age when 

 the principles of the-art were still unknown in France, 

 She had two daughters, Elizabeth, married to Philip 

 II. of Spain in 1559, and Margaretta (q. v.) of Valois, 

 married to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. 

 CATHARINE OF BRAGANZA, wife of Charles 

 II., king of England, and daughter of John IV. king 

 of Portugal, was born in 1638. In 1661, she married 

 Charles II., in whose court she long endured all the 



