Friday, July 24, 2015

A Heretic Who Was A True Prophet



1) A Heretic Who Was A True Prophet, 2) Of Course, "True Prophet" in One Sense, Not Another

There is a great article about Bloody Mary and her reputation over centuries.

Here:

The Truth About "Bloody Mary"
Sunday, July 19, 2015 By Nancy Bilyeau
on Tudorscribe: Writing Fiction & Nonfiction About the 16th Century
nancybilyeau.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-truth-about-bloody-mary.html


Here is however one paragraph or one and a half which interest me:

The succession crisis over James, Duke of York, directly led to the vilification of Mary Tudor. Fear that James, who converted to Catholicism, would succeed his brother, Charles II, gripped much of England. Should a Catholic become king, one politician warned, the kingdom would see persecutions as “bloody or bloodier than the ones in Mary’s reign.” An anonymous ballad in 1674 declared that after Edward VI died “Then Bloody Mary did begin/in England for to tyrannize.” She was used as a threatening memory of tyranny and death and slavish devotion to the Pope. This was the genesis of Bloody Mary.

The revolution of 1688 put a Protestant on the throne and the Act of Union in 1707 ensured that a Catholic could never rule England. But paranoia about Jacobite risings led to more and more denunciations of Mary I. ...


The politician, obviously Protestant, was in a sense right. Not that James II emulated the 284 killings of Protestants by burning, but rather that Protestants ensured bloodier persecutions of Catholics than the reverse had been effected by Mary Tudor./HGL

No comments: