CATHARINE DE' MEDICI 



1227 



CATHEDRAL 



On the death of Augustus III of Poland she 

 caused one of her favorites to be placed on 

 the throne, and by this she profited in suc- 

 cessive partitions of that country. By the 

 war with the Turks, which occupied a con- 

 siderable part of her reign, she conquered the 

 Crimea and opened the Black Sea to the 

 Russian navy. Her dream, however, of driving 

 the Turks from Europe and restoring the 

 Byzantine Empire was not to be fulfilled. She 

 improved the administration of justice, and 

 the condition of the serfs, constructed canals, 

 founded the Russian Academy and in a variety 

 of ways contributed to the enlightenment and 

 prosperity of the country. Her enthusiasm for 

 reform, however, was checked by the events 

 of the French Revolution, for she felt that 

 that great upheaval was caused by giving the 

 common people too exalted an idea of liberty. 

 Yet with all her faults, Catharine II was one 

 of the most remarkable sovereigns of modern 

 times. M.S. 



CATHARINE DE' MEDICI, kath'erin day 

 may'deche (1514-1589), one of the most un- 

 scrupulous queens in history, the wife of Henry 

 II of France and mother of three French 

 kings. The daughter of Duke Lorenzo, one 

 of the famous Italian family of the Medici, 

 she came to France schooled in the selfish 

 political principles of sixteenth-century Italy, 

 and her whole course was directed by her un- 

 bounded personal ambitions. Catharine began 

 to interfere in state affairs in the reign of her 

 son Francis II, and on his death in 1560 she 

 took the entire government into her hands, 

 for the new king, Charles IX, was only a boy 

 of ten. 



She deliberately encouraged the hostility be- 

 tween Roman Catholics and Protestants, play- 

 ing off one party against the other and taking 

 care that neither should' obtain the balance of 

 power. Alarmed by the growing strength of 

 the Protestant faction, led by the Prince of 

 Conde and Admiral Coligny, she planned the 

 Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day (August 

 24, 1572), to which she persuaded her weak 

 son Charles IX to give his consent. Her course 

 of intrigue continued through the reign of her 

 son Henry III, and she died with scarcely a 

 friend to mourn her loss. See SAINT BAR- 

 THOLOMEW'S DAY, MASSACRE OF. 



CATHARINE OF ARAGON, air 'agon (1485- 

 1536), the first queen of Henry VIII of Eng- 

 land, who quite without any fault of her own 

 figured in a famous divorce suit that played 

 an important part in the English Reformation. 



Catharine was the daughter of Ferdinand and 

 Isabella, the Spanish monarchs who started 

 Columbus on his voyage to the New World in 

 1492. At the age of sixteen she became the 

 wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of Henry 

 VII of England. Five months after the mar- 

 riage Arthur died, and the king, because he 

 wished to keep Catharine's dowry, arranged 

 for her a marriage with his second son, Henry, 

 then a boy of twelve (see HENRY VIII). As 

 the two were already so closely related by her 

 first marriage, a dispensation from the Pope 

 had to be obtained to make this marriage legal. 



Henry and Catharine were married in 1509, 

 immediately after he came to the throne, and 

 lived together for twenty years. Five children 

 were born to them, only one of whom, a 

 daughter named Mary, lived. Henry's disap- 

 pointment in not having a son to succeed him 

 was bitter, and he pretended to see in this a 

 sign of Heaven's displeasure because he had 

 married his brother's widow. His love for Anne 

 Boleyn, the queen's beautiful maid of honor, 

 fixed him in his determination to have the first 

 marriage annulled, and he accordingly obtained 

 a divorce from Catharine, and married Anne. 

 This course of action brought about a separa- 

 tion of the English Church from the Church 

 of Rome, and was the beginning of the Refor- 

 mation in England. 



Catharine lived in retirement after her di- 

 vorce, and though persecuted by agents of the 

 king, refused to the last to sign away her 

 rights or those of her daughter Mary. 



CATHAY, a name formerly applied to China, 

 but now used only in poetical allusions to that 

 country. The northern provinces of China 

 were conquered about A. D. 907 by the hordes 

 of "Khitai," and Marco Polo, in writing about 

 the country, called it by their name. Tennyson 

 in Locksley Hall writes, "Better fifty years of 

 Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 



CATHEDRAL, kathe'dral. To almost any- 

 one this word brings an immediate and a vivid 

 picture the view of a great, gray stone build- 

 ing with towers pointing skyward, with pointed 

 arches and elaborately-carved rose windows. 

 It is not a new building, this picture cathedral, 

 but has century-old legends clustering about 

 it as thickly as the ivy which shrouds it. 

 All of these picturesque details, however, are 

 not essential to the idea of a cathedral, which 

 , may be but a tiny church if it have one 

 important thing beneath its roof. This is the 

 chair or throne of the bishop, for cathedra 

 means scat, and any church structure which 



