Before having a discussion about Queen Mary's affiliation with persecuted Protestants one must understand and take to heart the following axiom: you cannot apply modern morality concepts to historical situations. Different societies have different values even today. In 16th century England, one critical value of society was uniformity between church and state. There can only be one national religion—there was no such thing as religious toleration in England or even across Europe in the 16th century. Nearly three-quarters of a century earlier, Spain was persecuting Muslims and Jews during the infamous Spanish Inquisition. Simultaneously in France, from the 16th to 18th century, French persecution of the Huguenots was carried out on and off. [87] Duffy makes the point of religious unity in a nation-sate very clear when he asserts, "No sixteenth-century European state willingly accepted or could easily imagine the peaceful coexistence of differing religious confessions [...Applying] moral hindsight, attained this side of the Enlightenment, and, strictly speaking, is hardly a historical judgment at all." [88] I.E. it is unwise to apply our notion of religious freedom to the Middle Ages.
Once one's instinct to apply modern morals to past situations is understood, only then can one comprehend why Mary allowed persecution under her reign. Some historians, like A.G. Dickens, David Loathes, and Andrew Pettegree, argue that the Marian regime did not properly defend the persecutions. In reality, that is false. One of the major ways in which Pole's propaganda and persecutions coincided is through the redefinition of what a martyr really was.
An anonymous pamphlet published in the summer of 1555 entitled, A Plaine and Godlye Treatise Concerning the Masse, for the Instructyon of the Simple and Unlearned People, defended the persecutions and the Catholic doctrine of the mass among other things. The pamphlet justified the campaign of repression and equated the victims of the burnings to criminals rather than martyrs. The pamphlet set out to define what a true martyr really was. A martyr was not courageous, but loyal to the truth. [89] As an example, another work was published by Nicholas Harpsfield entitled, Life and Death of Sr Thomas Moore, putting forth Thomas More as the ideal example of a true martyr.
(The story of Thomas More, with a little background into Henry VIII, as told by the Historic Royal Palaces.)
Thomas More's loyalty to the truth cost him his life under King Henry VIII's reign. There is reason to believe that Pole supported Harpsfield's work. Thomas More was depicted in the opening pages of the work as being a "model citizen of London." [90] This coincided with Pole's own treatise De Unitate, in which he puts forth More as the "protomartyr of all the laytie [laity] for the preservation of the unitie [unity] of Christ's Church." [91] Duffy upholds Harpsfield's Life and Death of Sr Thomas Moore as the "masterpiece of the Marian martyrdom controversies.... Harpsfield provided a sophisticated reply to Protestant martyrological claims, not in ridicule and contempt, but by holding up the image of a 'true' Catholic martyr." [92]
The goal of persecution isn't to kill for pleasure. The goal is to ward out extremists who violate divine or human laws. This is explicitly seen in Cardinal Pole's efforts to convert people back to Catholicism rather than to see victims burned as Protestant heretics. Pole personally believed that a heretic would suffer from the fires of Hell for all eternity. In 1555, Pole wrote a letter to Thomas Cranmer, who was nearing the point of his own burning, urging Cranmer to convert rather than to hold out. Pole writes:
"Whereof doith follow the moste horrible sentence of condempnation [condemnation] both of your bodie and soule, both your temporall death and eternall, which is to me so greate an horrour to here [hear], that if there were ony [one] way, or mean, or fashion, that I might fynd [find] to remove you from errour [error], bryngeng [bringing] yow to the knowledge of the treuthe [truth], for your salvation: This I testifie to you afore [before] God, apon [upon] the salvation of myne owne sowle [soul], that I would rather chuse [choose] to be that meane that yow might receive this benefyt by me, than to receive the greatest benefyt for my selfe that can be geven [given] under heaven in this world: I esteem so moche [much] the salvation of one sowle. [93]
Pole's goal was saving the heretics, and heretics met their salvation, he saw, through conversion rather than through a stubborn death. Although Cranmer did eventually recant his Protestant faith, Mary directly oversaw his death for the personal troubles he had caused her throughout her life. Cranmer's death was personal for Mary. However, not every victim was double-crossed like Cranmer. In fact, the first to die as a heretic was an open rebel against Mary's Catholic regime.
John Rogers was the first person to feed the fires of the Marian persecution. He was a London preacher and biblical transporter who was a disciple of Bishop Ridley, another one of Mary's later victims. As soon as Mary took to the throne, Rogers lead an open resistance against her reign fostering a rebellion against Catholicism at Paul's Cross, the sight of the famous Paul's Cross Riots of August 13, 1553, in which Rogers himself was present at. [94]
Mary is also charged with overseeing the persecution of Bishop Ridley and Bishop Latimer. Their deaths showed that poor heretics were not the only ones being persecuted, but that persecution stretched across multiple classes—even those on the episcopal (church) level. In fact, bishops were held more accountable because the masses depended on church leaders for knowledge of the Catholic faith. When the bishops and priests began to betray the Catholic faith, that's when Protestantism began to strengthen as a result of evil teachings. [95] Pole notes that the masses depended on the bishops when he writes:
"Fynding the busshopes [bishops] opinion such as seamith to be more conformable to their reason, which thei [they] make iudge [judge] both of the bysshopes [bishops] opinion and of all other, and for that cause thei cleave unto the bushops opinion, wych is their owne opinion, wherein thei shewe [show] them selfes both to have hereticall opinions and to be heretiques in deade [deed], most worthie to be condemned, depryving by this meanes themselfe of all kynde of iust [just] defence." [96]
It was through seeing such high authority figures being persecuted alongside lower class heretics that the masses were moved to convert out of fear. The answer to the question 'why persecute' involves the general effect it has on people. Although it may not completely shut down underground sects of Protestantism, it does "frighten most members of the movement into outward conformity, and had created disarray in the relatively few Tudor communities in which Protestantism had established a significant presence." [97] In fact, persecution was a popular form of conforming people to a particular ideology. Even the beloved Queen Elizabeth persecuted Catholics who did not wish to convert to Protestantism. Although she did not adopt Mary's method of burning heretics, Elizabeth did strangle, disembowel and dismember over 200 Catholics. [98] Yet Elizabeth keeps her image as the perfect and pure Queen.
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The Real "Bloody Mary" ✓
Non-Fiction"Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary." She's held responsible for the burning of nearly 300 protestants, granting her the infamous title little girls chant today in dark mirrors. But do you know her true story? The story of how her father bastardi...
