Catherine of Mecklenburg

 Catherine of Mecklenburg was born in 1487. She was the daughter of Duke Magnus II of Mecklenburg and his second wife, Sophie of Pomerania-Stettin.

In 1512, she married Duke Henry, the Pious of Saxony, in Freiberg. Catherine sympathised with Martin Luther’s teachings early on, despite her husband doing everything he could to suppress the Reformation out of fear of his brother, the reigning Duke, George the Bearded.

When Duke George pressured his sister-in-law to abandon not only her beliefs but to stop encouraging the Reformation, she told the envoy, "Thou canst bestow upon me the greatest of boons by leaving Freiberg right now."

In 1539, after the death of her brother-in-law, George, her husband inherited his titles, and the couple moved to Dresden, where she influenced the spread of the Reformation.

Together, they had six surviving children:
Sybille, Emilie, Sidonie, Maurice, Severinus, and Augustus.

Duke Henry died on August 18, 1541; Catherine outlived him by twenty years. In 1560, less than a year before her death, she published a book on etiquette for ladies.

Portrait attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder of the Duchess Catherine.

Sources:
Gallery of the Saxon princesses. Biographical sketches of all the ancestress of the royal house of Saxony, Franz Otto Stichart

Female characters and women's sway in the House of Wettin, John Meyer