Posted on 10/13/2007 7:53:43 AM PDT by Frank Sheed
lol....you act like that's all a personal affront against you...
News Flash: They've all been dead for centuries. Who cares who was screwing who back then?
That’s nice. It looks like he’s thinking about barbecuing the kids, though.
Mrs. Tax, your comment and your tag-line indicate you need another vacation!
;-o)
Sure it is, all the time, particularly by Irish Catholics. And the Irish did their share of killing as well. But most Irish do speak English today, not Gaelic, and nobody is forcing them to speak English. And the Irish usually overlook the fact that most of the people responsible for what is called the Irish Renaissance were Anglican/Church of Ireland, not Roman Catholic.
Somehow the vile way that England govered Ireland as a colonial master is never brought to the foreground.
Elizabeth persued a middle way between Catholic extremists and Protestant extremists. This Elizabethan settlement saved many lives.
Learn from Mary? Yes, she learned that it was counterproductive to kill a lot of people. And by not marrying, she kept a lot of men under her control. This is called wise and moderate rule.
Most English Catholics give her credit for having avoid the horrors of relgious war, as in France, and of the tyranny of Protestant zealots as in Scotland.
Again, this demonstrates her wisdom and moderation as sovereign of England. In addition, the arts flourished under her reign, particularly literature; hence the term the Elizabethan Renaissance.
Nobody is whitewashing anything. What some Catholics cannot acknowledge is that Elizabeth steered a middle course that avoided religious war and mass execution by extremists on either the Catholic or Protestant sides. She achieved remarkable success in both domestic and foreign policy. After a long reign of 45 years, she left England a strong and prosperous country, master of the seas, and a legacy of the arts called the Elizabethan Renaissance.
Now, if you have an ungenerous spirit and want to debunk English history like the typical multiculturalist/counterculturalist on any college campus today, go right ahead.
The Irish outside the Pale did indeed speak Gaelic until well into the 19th Century, and . yes. they did their share of killing from time to time, when they had the means to do so. But the Irish were a conquered race and subject to English law and landlords. Like the Scots and the the Welsh, the Irish do enjoy the blessings of the English language, but “choice.” is not the right word to describe the way they learned this tonque.
Tha mi tuigsinn.
Elizabeth managed to kill quite a few people, put them into prison, subject them to fine, and drive them into exile—standard means among the rulers of the times for enforcing religious conformity. The strongly Protestant were never,as they were in Scotland, dominant in the Church. Unlike Scotland, Calvinism never took hold, and certainly up until the second decade of Elizabeth’s reign, the majority of the people outside the urban centers were still Catholic in sentiment. The Church catered to this by preserving many Catholic forms in worship, although they quickly eliminated the popular religion of the people. In any case, there is no clash between Catholics and Calvinists as there was in France. Even the Catholic nobles in England were linked by interest with the Tudor dynasty, and for many years Elizabeth held out hope that she might—out of expediency—turn Catholic herself.
Most of the history of Europe is the story of one people conquering another people. Where is Gaulish spoken in France today? The Celtic Gauls were conquered by the Latins. The Gauls gave up Gaulish and adopted Latin, the language of the upper, ruling classes. Later the Germanic Franks invaded France (giving their Germanic name to the country) and the upper class Germans give up their Frankish language for that of the lower classes that they ruled, a form of Latin called French today.
Are you also going to lament the loss of either Gaulish or Frankish?
But when the Celtic Gauls invaded France about 1000 B.C., they did a pretty good job of killing off most of the pre-Indo-European people who lived there. All that is left are a few Basque in the south of France and north of Spain. The Celts practiced human sacrifice and liked to post the chopped off heads on poles. Is that how they got rid of these people?
So what happened to those pre-Indo-Europeans peoples of Britain and Ireland? Did the Welsh and Scots and Irish slaughter them like their Celtic cousins in France? Where is the language of those people who built Stonehenge? Or for that matter, where is the language that these pre-Ino-Europeans spoke in Ireland? And where are there pre-Indo-Europeans in Ireland? Were they killed off, or did they blend in with the Irish, being forced to give up their native language?
And for what its worth, history tells us in no uncertain terms of the Churchs' efforts to suppress the likes of DaVinci and Copernicus.
The Protestant Reformation happened for a reason - the history of the Borgia Popes had something to do with that, did they not? Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly contains an excellent account of the Borgias' folly and its consequences.
And as for you spiral-eyed fanatics, my take on the the Catholic Churh is that for a quite some time, it was the sole repository of knowledge and even civilization during the Dark and Midaeval Ages. But the Churches' inability to reign in its own corruption coupled with its loss of its monopoly on knowledge, commerce and education did much to end its primacy in European affairs.
On a personal note, I don't have much use for religions that trade in fear and guilt. Whatever else you may think God might be, I don't believe in a Supreme being that loads the dice even before you are born. So there's a poke in the eye for Calvinists as well. Deal with it.
Perhaps including Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, Will In The World.
I saw the movie today and liked it. Cate Blanchett is very good, very regal, albeit on the verge of a nervous breakdown in that she knows she can never have Walter Raleigh and that Armada is on the way.
Perhaps a bit of dramatic license, but her rallying her forces in armor borrows from Henry V prior to Agincourt and is pretty good drama.
Except for being somewhat stagy it was a nice way to spend an afternoon.
The Armada sequences are really good.
I have read a bit on this period of English history, and I have never heard that before. But whatever her personal wishes were, it didn't matter. She did what she thought would be good for England, so she avoided as much bloodshed as possible. She was raised a Protestant, and she remained a Protestant.
If the English are so “good” and the Spanish so “evil”, why is it that the Indian populations survived in large numbers in the Spanish Empire, while they were almost entirely wiped out in English North America? Oh, and which country was it that abolished the ownership of American Indians? If you said “The United Kingdom” you would be wrong!
I’m still waiting for ANOTHER movie about Oliver Cromwell. Maybe it will inspire the Brits to do to the House of Hanover/Saxe Coburg what O.C. did to Charles I. SIC SEMPER TYRANNUS!
But then, they were cannibals, and deserved to be wiped out.
I do suspect I'll agree with you, though I am not Catholic and therefore perhaps not so disposed to take offense. This is the story of ONE sovereign, in ONE situation. It needn't express all points of view. Throughout history rulers have used religion to promote their own lust for power and expansion. The earlier film didn't exactly make all English Protestants look perfect. If Catholics don't like it, let them go out and make another movie of their own.
So I am a “spiral eyed fanatic” because I refuse to give a pass to Queen Elizabeth I on her suppression of the Catholic religion and lack of religious tolerance in England, or because I don’t see the Renaissance as having damaged the Church in her fundamental teachings? The Church can and has thrived in many different socio-political-intellectual milieux. The medieval model is not the only one. Please also document how the Church “suppressed” Da Vinci or Copernicus. I believe the latter received commendation from the Church. Galileo was of course a different matter.
“Steering a middle course” sounds like whitewashing to me. Moderation would mean religious toleration for both Catholics and Puritans. As it was, she outlawed the Catholic religion, while allowing Protestant dissenters to practice their faith so long as they showed up at the established church for the requisite services. That is not “moderate” nor is it commendable, regardless of whatever other alleged merits she might have had in other areas. The fact is, starting from Henry VIII onwards, a new religion was imposed on the people of England without their ever having been given a choice in the matter.
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