CATERINA II von Anhalt-Zerbst, empress of RUSSIA. — Born in Stettin on 2 May 1729, died in Petersburg on 6 November 1796; she reigned from 1762 to 1796. Educated in Protestantism in her homeland, she later converted to Russian «Orthodoxy» when she married the future Emperor Pietro III (1762), only to give herself later over to that particular deism derived from the French Encyclopédie. In her time the doctrine of the omnipotence of the State in Russia reached its culmination. She definitively entrusted the administration of all the property of the Russian Church to the State; she divided the bishoprics and monasteries into three categories and reorganized the administration of the dioceses according to the model of Protestant consistories. A reluctant bishop was arrested; but in general the Russian Church submitted to these intrusions. With the partial annexation of Poland, many Catholics of the Latin and Ruthenian rites found themselves under the regime of C. The Latin bishop Stanislao Bohusz-Siestrzeniewicz willingly accepted all her decrees, even when canonically inadmissible. Consequently, and in order to avoid worse, the papal legate Archetti established in 1783 the archbishopric of Mohilev for all Catholics of the Latin rite residing in Russia. C. at first granted full freedom to Catholics of the Ruthenian rite; soon, however, she sought to weaken their union through administrative measures, as though it were simply a «Polish» question. The not particularly resolute Eracilio Lissowski was appointed archbishop of Polotzk (1784), and carried out C.’s absolutist measures without opposition. Entire multitudes of Catholics of the Ruthenian rite were incorporated against their will into the state Church, especially after the dissolution of the metropolitan see of Kiev. Nevertheless, after C.’s death many of them returned to unity.
C. did not permit the canonical promulgation in her empire of the brief of Clement XIV dissolving the Society of Jesus, which was therefore able to continue its activity for several more years.