ABSTRACT
Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV (1553–1610), is one of France’s most admired and most studied monarchs. He is credited with bringing peace to his country after nearly forty years of bloody religious and dynastic wars, and with making France the first state to institutionalize religious tolerance though the Edict of Nantes (1598). 1 Henri’s sister, Catherine de Bourbon (1559–1604), is only rarely mentioned in studies of the period, though she does have her own biographers. 2 She deserves further attention, in her own right, for her political support for her brother during his rise to power, and for her role in working out a solution to the religious strife in their country.
