Catherine of Hungary, Duchess of Świdnica

Catherine of Hungary, who died in 1355, was a Hungarian princess of the House of Anjou-Sicily. She was a daughter of King Charles I Robert of Hungary, although the identity of her mother is not recorded with certainty. Possible mothers include Maria of Bytom, Charles’s first wife, and Elizabeth of Poland, his third wife. Catherine’s maternal ancestry therefore remains uncertain. Her father, Charles I Robert, was the son of Charles Martel of Hungary and his wife, Clemence of Habsburg. If Maria of Bytom was Catherine’s mother, her maternal grandparents were Duke Casimir of Bytom and his wife, Helena. Maria died, after which Charles presumably married Beatrice of Luxembourg in September 1318. Beatrice was a daughter of Emperor Henry VII and the sister of King John of Bohemia. She died in childbirth the following year, however. Charles then married Elizabeth of Poland. Some accounts suggest that Elizabeth, rather than Maria, was Catherine’s mother. In that case, Catherine would have been of partly Polish descent and would have descended through her mother from King Władysław I and Hedwig of Kalisz. Catherine had a sister, Elizabeth of Hungary, who is said to have married Bolko II of Opole on 8 February 1348. Her brother was therefore Louis I of Hungary, who later also became king of Poland. These family connections linked Catherine to the ruling houses of Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and Silesia, making her an important figure in the marriage politics of late medieval Europe. Around 1 June 1338, Catherine married Henry II of Schweidnitz, a son of Bernard of Schweidnitz and his wife, Kunigunde of Poland. The marriage produced one daughter, Anna of Schweidnitz. She later became the wife of Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the mother of Wenceslaus of Luxembourg and Elizabeth of Bohemia. After her husband’s death, which occurred between 1343 and 1345, Catherine took responsibility for raising her daughter. She lived with Anna in Visegrád, Hungary, where she oversaw her education. When Anna was eleven, she was betrothed to Wenceslaus, the son and presumed heir of Charles IV, who had been born on 17 January 1350. The young Wenceslaus died on 28 December 1351. His mother, Anne of the Palatinate, also died on 2 February 1353. Charles IV, by then a widowed emperor, subsequently decided to marry Anna himself. These marital alliances formed part of a political strategy pursued by Charles IV and his late father, John of Bohemia. They were intended to help control the Piast rulers of the Silesian duchies, territories regarded as neighboring lands of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Catherine’s brother Louis also supported this policy: in order to win the support of the Silesian princes, he had relinquished his claims to Schweidnitz in favor of the House of Luxembourg. Nothing certain is known about Catherine’s later life after these events. She died in 1355, about ten years after her husband. Her daughter Anna died in childbirth in 1362. Catherine’s grandson, Wenceslaus of Luxembourg, died childless in 1419. With his death, the line descended from Catherine came to an end.