A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Barbara
BARBARA,
Wife of the emperor Sigismond, was the daughter of Herman, Count of Cilia, in Hungary. Sigismond had been taken by the Hungarians, and placed under the guard of two young gentlemen, whose father he had put to death. While they had him in custody, he persuaded their mother to let him escape. This favour was not granted without a great many excuses for the death of her husband, and numerous promises. He promised, among other things, to marry the daughter of the Count of Cilia, a near relation of the widow; which promise he performed. He had the most extraordinary wife in her that ever was seen. She had no manner of shame for her abandoned life. This is not the thing in which her great singularity consisted; for there are but too many princesses who are above being concerned at any imputations on account of their lewdness. What was extraordinary in her was Atheism, a thing which there is scarce any instance of amongst women. The Bohemians, notwithstanding, gave her a magnificent funeral at Prague, and buried her in the tomb of their kings, as we are assured by Bonfinius in the VII. Book of the III. Decade. Prateolus has not omitted her in his alphabetical catalogue of heretics.