Catherine Jagellon - Queen Consort

Queen Consort

Catherine and John were released in 1568. In 1569, she was crowned Queen of Sweden after her husband deposed Eric and usurped his throne. Queen Catherine had political influence and did much to influence her husband on behalf of the cause of Catholicism and the Counter-Reformation, just as her successor as queen, her husband's later wife Gunilla Bielke, would try to influence him on behalf of Protestantism. John launched a new church order called "The Red Book". This was a form of mix between Protestantism and Catholicism that reintroduced numerous Catholic customs in the ceremonial life of the Swedish church. It even used Latin, which aroused a great deal of opposition. Catherine had her own Catholic staff, among them several Catholic monks and priests, which shocked the Protestants. In 1572, she contacted Cardinal Hosius about re-Catholicising Sweden. In 1573, the son of the deposed King Eric and Karin Månsdotter were sent to the Jesuits in Poland. In 1575, a ban left over from the Reformation period to accept new novices in the remaining Catholic convents in Sweden was lifted. In 1576, she sent her son to be educated by the Jesuits in Braunsberg. From Rome came the Norwegian Jesuit Laurentius Nicolai, whom she housed in an old Franciscan monastery that had been closed during the Reformation. She allowed Nicolai to open a Catholic school there, but the Protestants stormed the school, and it was closed in 1583. A new shrine was made for the relics of King Eric the Saint in the cathedral of Uppsala. Queen Catherine strongly supported the old Vadstena Abbey, where the last nuns still lived, and often visited it. The first version of the later famous royal palace of Drottningholm (The Queen's Islet) was founded for and named after her. In her final years, Catherine suffered from gout. She died in Stockholm on 16 September 1583 and was buried in the royal crypt of the Uppsala Cathedral.