Catherine of Austria – The unhappy Queen of Poland

Catherine of Austria was born on 15 September 1533 in Vienna as the daughter of the future Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary. She was their seventh child and fifth daughter. She was baptised the following day with the papal nuncio as one of her godparents.¹

The sisters were educated by Countess von Thurn, a woman “of rare intellect and solid piety.” ² She was just nine years old when she was betrothed to Francesco III Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Marquess of Montferrat, who was ten years old. It wasn’t until 22 October 1549 that Catherine, accompanied by her brother Ferdinand, arrived in Mantua for the actual wedding celebrations. The marriage did not last long – just four months, the young Duke fell into a lake during a hunting trip, and he caught pneumonia. He died on 21 February 1550.

Ferdinand ordered his daughter to return to Vienna the following June. She was soon offered another suitor, but this match fell through. However, Sigismund August, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, who had previously been married to Catherine’s elder sister, Elisabeth, had been widowed again following the death of his second wife, Barbara Radziwiłł. Although her father remembered Elisabeth’s horrible treatment in Poland, he began negotiations “for the good of Christendom and to ward off the Turks.”³

On 23 June 1553, Catherine married her sister’s widower by proxy. Łukasz Górnicki wrote, “After the banquet, there was dancing. King Ferdinand was dancing himself, and rather a lot. After dancing, they went to the bedroom. There, the King told the Voivode of Vilnius to lie down, saying: ‘The usual custom has to be observed in our House.’ And when the Voivode of Vilnius lay down as he was dressed, the King ordered his daughter to lie down beside him, but she was too embarrassed to do it. So her father caught her by the shoulders and said to his son: ‘Maximilian, help me.’ Maximilian caught her legs, and they put her next to the Voivode. Immediately afterwards, the Queen leapt out of bed, not without help, and the Voivode as well. There were other ceremonies too, but not accompanied by grand speeches as in our country.” ⁴

Catherine was no fair maiden, although the Habsburgs claimed that her first marriage had not been consummated, so this episode can be attributed to the trepidation she felt about marrying a man who notoriously neglected her sister in favour of his mistress. Her dowry was set at 100,000 Austrian florins, which was the usual amount for women from the house of Habsburg.⁵ Her trousseau consisted of family heirlooms, such as “four older harnesses of purple silk with letters F and R interlacing each other and gilded” ⁶ and “an ermine with a golden head in which there are ten rubies and new diamonds with twelve pearls, and two pear-shaped pearls hanging from its ears, and it has an enamelled chain attached with twenty-four pearls, its feet are made of enamelled gold.” ⁷

Catherine left for Poland on 13 July, accompanied by her brother Maximilian. Problems between husband and wife soon arose, as he wanted her to learn Polish as quickly as possible and refused to authorise the arrival of her three German-speaking ladies-in-waiting. It also became clear that, like her sister before her, Catherine likely suffered from epilepsy.⁸

Catherine fell pregnant in the spring of 1554. She was apparently quite unwell, and her husband wrote, “Today, Her Highness the Queen, our wife, let us know of her very bad health, and for that reason, we sent our doctor Baża to her royal Highness, but today, this very hour we have received letters from doctors of the dangerous state of her royal highness’ health, and finally from the Queen herself, in which she asks us with great urgency to come as soon as possible. So tomorrow, we will go to Her Royal Highness early in the morning, leaving all our matters behind. And having spent Sunday there, we will go to Lublin on Monday on our business.” ⁹ A few days later, he wrote that Catherine, “is in good health, not even anxious, and she is constantly feeling the baby in her womb.”¹⁰

However, it appears the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage not much later. Sigismund August wrote, “The Queen Her Highness, our wife, had some post hunc fluxum sanguinis [bleeding afterwards], and is not entirely well, especially since she feels the metum foetus [anxiety of the foetus], the further along Her Highness is, the more ill she feels. And because women better understand these things than anyone else, even doctors, and your lordship deigned to mention Ms Kozicka, who in hoc artis genere est bene probata [is proficient in this kind of skill], we demand that your lordship sends her without delay to Parczów so that she may see what is happening.”¹¹

Sigismund August’s thoughts turned to securing a divorce, but there were no valid grounds for one. When Catherine fell ill in 1558, her Austrian relatives believed she had been poisoned. She survived her ordeal and remained in Poland, although she and her husband mainly lived apart. In 1566, she was allowed to travel to Austria and wrote to her husband often. These letters made him mad and only intensified his wish for a divorce. As there was no possible resolution, Catherine resolved to remain in Austria and settled in Linz. At her castle in Linz, she devoted her time to horticulture.

Catherine died in Linz on 29 February 1572 at the age of 39. She had been ill for a while, although it is unclear what kind of illness she said. She had directed her will three weeks earlier. In it, she asked her “most beloved lord and husband” that if she “ever did, acted and began anything in his will and pleasure”, he should “forgive and pardon her for the sake of God.” She also forgave him “from the bottom of her heart.” She bequeathed him all the jewellery he had ever given her. Other jewellery, clothes and accessories were to be divided among her sisters.¹² Her wish to be buried at the feet of her parents’ tomb in Prague was not fulfilled, and she was buried at the Castle Chapel in Linz. She was moved to the St. Florian Monastery many years later.

Her husband followed her in death just five months later.

1. Zur herrschaft geboren by Sabine Weiss p.176
2. Königin Magdalena von Österreich by Ludwig Rapp p.18
3. Zur herrschaft geboren by Sabine Weiss p.185
4. Ł. Górnicki, Dzieie w Koronie Polskiey za Zygmunta I y Zygmunta Augusta aż do śmierci iego z przytoczeniem niektorych postronnych Ciekawości od Roku 1538 aż do Roku 1572 (Warsaw: Drukarnia J.K.M. y Rzeczypospolited Collegium XX Scholarum, 1754), p. 56.
5. Kosior, K. (2019) Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe. [edition unavailable]. Springer International Publishing. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3490953/becoming-a-queen-in-early-modern-europe-east-and-west-pdf (Accessed: 15 April 2024).p
6. The Princes Czartoryski Library, MS 68, p. 321.
7. The Princes Czartoryski Library, MS 68, p. 299.
8. Zur herrschaft geboren by Sabine Weiss p.185
9. S. A. Lachowicz (ed.), Listy orginalne Zygmunta Augusta do Mikołaja Radziwiłła Czarnego (Vilnius: T. Glücksberg, 1842), p. 78
10. Listy orginalne Zygmunta Augusta, p. 78
11. Listy orginalne Zygmunta Augusta, p. 78
12. Königin Katharina von Polen in Linz by Walter Pillich p.189