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Katherine Parr: the Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

William P. Haugaard
William P. Haugaard*
Affiliation:
Seminario Episcopal Del Caribe
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Extract

Among the wives of Henry VIII, only his first and last, Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr, possessed both the education and the intelligence to exemplify the Renaissance ideal for a woman born to gentle life. Both Katherines took their religion seriously, and in spite of the papal loyalties of the one and the Protestant proclivities of the other, they belonged to the same tradition of Renaissance religion which J. K. McConica has most recently traced in his study of English humanists. If Katherine of Aragon far surpassed her English namesake by the thoroughness of her education in the Spanish humanism of Isabella's court, Katherine Parr actually wrote and had published two books which proved surprisingly popular. If the breadth of the first Katherine's patronage of Renaissance writers was far more extensive than that of the second, the patronage of the second was more closely related to the course of English religion and politics.

A few years ago Conyers Read wrote that Katherine Parr's Lamentation of a Sinner merited more attention than it had received, and the comment could be justly extended to the Queen's religious convictions in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Winter 1969 , pp. 346 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1969

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References

1 English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford, 1965).

2 For a description of die education of Katherine of Aragon, see Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (New York, i960), pp. 7-11. Although sixteenth-century usage was indifferent to the spelling of the name Katherine with a ‘ C or a ‘K,’ I have used the ‘K’ consistently for the name since this seems to be the form preferred by Katherine Parr.

3 Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London, 1955), p. 40.

4 English Humanists, p. 216.

5 Documents relating to the incident are found in Samuel, Haynes, A Collection of State Papers… left by LordBurghley (London, 1740), pp. 82–109.Google Scholar

6 Patrick Fraser, Tytler, England under the Reigns of Edward Vl and Mary (London, 1839), I, 70.Google Scholar

7 This translation was published in April 1548 under the title A Godly Medytacyon of the Christen Soule (STC No. 17320); its editor John Bale gave the book a far more distinctly Protestant flavor in his introduction and concluding words. In Frederick Chamberlin's erratically unreliable, but occasionally useful volume, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1922), the complications of Elizabedi's MS copy and its dedicatory epistle are neatly untangled (pp. 288-290).

8 Agnes Strickland describes the volume in The Life of Queen Elizabeth (Everyman ed., London, 1906), p. 15. Once again Frederick Chamberlain traces the confusion of the MS with a fictitious Italian notebook ﹛Private Character, p. 287).

9 The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles (London, 1864-65), 1, pt. 1, lvi and 160; Lawrence V., Ryan, Roger Ascham (Stanford, 1963), p. 103.Google Scholar

10 Edward, Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England (Oxford, 1839), 1, 9 Google Scholar; 13; 181; and 186; The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrases of Erasmus upon the Newe Testamente, ed. Nicholas Udall (Edward Whitchurche, London, January 31, 1548; STC No. 2854); Katherine's patronage and the work of the translators is described in the section ‘To the Reader’ and in the dedicatory prefaces to Mark, Luke, and John.

11 The Second Tome … (Edward Whitchurche, London, August 16, 1549).

12 Agnes, Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest (London, 1864, rev. ed.), II, 413 Google Scholar; see also Prescott, H. F. M., Mary Tudor (New York, 1962), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

13 The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Stephen Reed Cattley (London, 1839), 8 vols., v, 553-554-

14 English Humanists, p. 215.

15 Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, A Portrait (London, 1962), p. 60.

16 Strickland, Queens, n, 461; The Zurich Letters, ed. Hastings Robinson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1842-43), 1, 257, Parkhurst to Bullinger, August 10, 1571.

17 DNB, see under John Parkhurst.

18 Remains of Miles Coverdale, ed. George Pearson (Cambridge, 1846), p. 526, Coverdale to Calvin, March 26, 1548; according to Strickland, Coverdale was identified as almoner in an account of Katherine's funeral from a MS in the College of Arms, London, entitled ‘A Book of Buryalls of Trew Noble Persons,’ No. 1-15, pp. 98-99 (Queens, II, 462-463).

19 Allen G., Chester, Hugh Latimer, Apostle to the English (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 156 Google Scholar; Harold S., Darby, Hugh Latimer (London, 1953)Google Scholar, passim.

20 Sermons of Hugh Latimer, ed. George Elwes Corrie (Cambridge, 1844), p. 228, April 19, 1549.

21 For the relationship of Latimer to the Duchess of Suffolk, see Read, Catherine, pp. 53-57, and Chester, Latimer, pp. 185-187.

22 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v, 553-554.

23 See note 18.

24 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v, 553-560.

25 William, Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963), p. 117.Google Scholar

26 Acts and Monuments, v, 554.

27 English Humanists, p. 224.

28 Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. John Edmund Cox (Cambridge, 1846), pp. 414-415, Cranmer to Paget, January 20, minute prepared for Henry to send to Cranmer, and Cranmer to Henry, January 24, 1546; notes from Foxc.

29 Queens, u, 390.

30 Remains, pp. 525-526, March 26, 1548.

31 This is the form of the title in the 1546 edition to which subsequent folio numbers refer (STC No. 4820; University Microfilms No. 876); abbreviations and contractions have been expanded and modern typographical conventions followed.

32 STC Nos. 4818-24, 4824a.

33 STC No. 4825.

34 STC Nos. 4826 and 3009-13; of these various editions, I have examined microfilm prints of STC Nos. 4819-20, and 4822-24 (University Microfilms Nos. 875-879).

35 This title is taken from the second edition printed on March 28, 1548, by Edward Whitchurche (STC No. 4828; University Microfilms No. 881); all subsequent citations refer to this edition. The first edition of November 5,1547, has a similar title page, varying only in spelling and arrangement (STC No. 4827 and University Microfilms No. 880).

36 Ascham, Works, 1, pt. 1, li and 157-158, Ascham to Cecil, January 5, 1548.

37 The third edition was printed by J. Aide in 1563 (STC No. 4829).

38 Cranmer, Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 147-148.

39 Remains, p. 11.

40 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127, speech at Edward's coronation.