page_title: Catherine of Bosnia
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Catherine of Bosnia / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: A crop of the image uploaded by Alessandro57, depicting the tomb of the Bosnian queen Katarina Kosača in the Roman church Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.
context_page_description: Catherine of Bosnia was Queen of Bosnia as the wife of King Thomas, the penultimate Bosnian sovereign. She was born into the powerful House of Kosača, staunch supporters of the Bosnian Church. Her marriage in 1446 was arranged to bring peace between the King and her father, Stjepan Vukčić. The queenship of Catherine, who at that point converted to Roman Catholicism, was marked with an energetic construction of churches throughout the country.
  Following her husband's death in 1461, Catherine's role receded to that of queen dowager at the court of her stepson, King Stephen Tomašević. Two years later, forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Mehmed the Conqueror invaded Bosnia and put an end to the independent kingdom. Catherine's stepson was executed, while Sigismund and Catherine, her son and daughter by Thomas, were captured and taken to Constantinople, where they converted to Islam. Queen Catherine escaped, taking refuge in Dubrovnik and eventually settling in Rome, where she received a pension from the papacy. From Rome she strove to be reunited with her children. Her efforts to negotiate and offer a ransom proved futile.
context_section_description: Along with the 12th-century Ban Kulin, Queen Catherine is one of the two princely personages who entered Bosnian folk tradition. As such, she is traditionally referred to as "the last Queen of Bosnia" – erroneously, as her stepdaughter-in-law both replaced her as queen and outlived her. The cult of Queen Catherine, who was first mentioned as beatified in the Paris-published Martyrologium franciscanum in 1638, originated in the Franciscan province of Bosna Argentina during the Ottoman rule. Following the Ottoman conquest, a majority of Bosnians converted to Orthodoxy or Islam, and the Franciscans started promoting Catherine as a symbol of Bosnia's statehood and of its pre-Ottoman Catholic identity. This is particularly evident in Central Bosnia, where folk tradition concerning Catherine is most vivid.
  The life of Queen Catherine has been one of the most popular themes in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, attracting the attention of scholars from the neighbouring countries of Croatia and Serbia as well. With the rise of ethnic nationalism, historians attempted to ascribe to her a particular national identity – Croat, Serb or Bosniak, which is completely anachronistic to medieval times.
  Due to her association with both of its eponymous historical regions, as well as her personal and close familial ties to Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Bosnian Christianity and Islam, Queen Catherine is increasingly becoming an important state symbol in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The anniversary of her death attracts more attention each year and is now marked with a "Mass for the Homeland". Schools, community centers, institutions and various associations are being named after the Queen. An official delegation of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina laid a wreath at her tomb for the first time in 2014. Moreover, Catherine is becoming a transethnic symbol, although mainly between Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks. Both groups tend to claim her as exclusively their own, as is the case with the rest of Bosnian medieval history. The political and religious leaders of the third group, Orthodox Serbs, also tend to claim Bosnian medieval history as exclusively their own but have not yet shown significant interest in Catherine herself.
caption: Catherine's tombstone on the wall of Ara Coeli
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