Catherine II von Anhalt-Zerbst, Empress of Russia

CATHERINE II VON ANHALT-ZERBST, Empress of Russia. - B. at Stettin on 2 May 1729, d. at Petersburg on 6 Nov. 1796; she reigned from 1762 to 1796. Educated in Protestantism in her homeland, she later passed over to Russian "Orthodoxy" when she went to marry the future emperor Peter III (1762), only to abandon herself later to that certain deism taken from the French Encyclopédie. In her time the doctrine of the omnipotence of the State reached its culmination in Russia. She definitively entrusted to the State the administration of all the goods of the Russian Church; she divided the bishoprics and monasteries into three categories and reorganized the administration of the dioceses according to the manner of the Protestant consistories. A reluctant bishop was arrested; but in general the Russian Church bowed to these intrusions. With the partial annexation of Poland many Catholics of the Latin and Ruthenian rites found themselves under C.'s regime. The Latin bishop Stanislao Bohusz-Siestrzeniewicz willingly accepted all her decrees even though they were canonically inadmissible. As a consequence of this and in order to avoid the worst, the pontifical legate Archetti erected in 1783 the archbishopric of Mohilev for all the Catholics of the Latin rite residing in Russia. C. granted in principle full freedom to the Catholics of the Ruthenian rite; soon, however, she sought to weaken their union by means of administrative measures, as though it were a simply "Polish" question. The not very firm Eracilio Lissowski was appointed archbishop of Polotzk (1784), and he carried out C.'s absolutist measures without opposition. Entire crowds of Catholics of the Ruthenian rite were, against their will, incorporated into the State Church, especially after the dissolution of the metropolis of Kiev. Nevertheless, after C.'s death many of these returned to unity.

C. did not permit in her empire the canonical promulgation of the brief of Clement XIV that dissolved the Society of Jesus, which, therefore, was able to continue its activity for several more years.

Alberto M. Ammann