Prince Philip, the Queen's "liege man of life and limb", RIP

I was sad to hear about the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, mostly because I empathize with Queen Elizabeth II, as I am a widow too. Since the man who had been her stay and support is gone, as is mine, I feel for her. 

Also my mother and she share the same birthday, April 21--we always joked about whose turn it was the make the official birthday greeting call.

And I am not a royalist. If I was a royalist, I would have to be a Jacobite and regard the current occupant of the throne as the usurper of the Catholic Stuart line, descendants of King James II and VI, the Old Pretender, and the Young Pretender, since there aren't any descendants of the Cardinal Pretender! So I'm not posting this because of burning interest in the House of Windsor. By the way, my parents lived on WINDSOR Street in their own little palace.

No, my interests are mostly because of the issue of Catholicism and/or religion in England, and secondarily just because of the human interests of family and history.

Prince Philip was born on the island of Corfu as the Greek ruling family was going to exile. He was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, which probably means that he received all three Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Chrismation (Confirmation), and Holy Communion as an infant. 

He certainly endured and survived a confusing and disrupted childhood in the early to mid twentieth century. Yet I recall reading a review in the Wall Street Journal of a recent biography last year (I can't access the full review now) that he never revealed much about that childhood and youth. His biographer stated that “For him duty is at the center of everything. It is not a choice.” so he just did his duty and didn't talk about it that much. That's probably one reason his death is receiving so much attention now: that almost unheard of sense of duty and reserve when self-promotion is the norm combined with self-proclaimed victim-hood.

His family separated after their exile from Greece in the throes of the Greco-Turkish war and World War I; Philip studied on the Continent and in England and fought for England in World War II (in the Royal Navy); his four sisters had married Germans and Philip's brothers-in-law fought for Germany and some joined the Nazi Party. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, resided in the south of France and Monaco; his mother, Princess Alice of Battenburg (known as Princess Andrew in Greece after her marriage), who was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was congenitally deaf and was committed to an asylum in Switzerland for a time.

Alice had joined the Anglican Church, but when she and Prince Andrew were married, their ceremonies were first Civil, then Lutheran AND Greek Orthodox. She later became Greek Orthodox, while her son Philip joined the Anglican Church. I don't know if his Orthodoxy (if he had remained a member of the Greek Orthodox Church) would have been any impediment to his marriage to the then Princess Elizabeth, but Geoffrey Fisher, then the Archbishop of Canterbury received him into the Church of England in October 1947 before their wedding on November 20 that year. Prince Philip's surviving sisters could not attend the wedding (nor Elizabeth's coronation in 1953) because of their Nazi connections.

His mother is the person who fascinates me most: she is known as a "Righteous Among the Nations" because of her aid to the Jews in Greece during World War II. She followed the example of her relative, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, becoming a religious sister in the Orthodox (Greek) Church while Elizabeth became a nun in the Russian Orthodox Church. She died in England but is buried in the same church as Elizabeth, the Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane in Jerusalem. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna has been canonized a saint in the Russia Orthodox Church and is honored as a martyr at Westminster Abbey!

Since Prince Philip died on the Friday of the Octave of Easter, and Gospel readings for the Masses of the Catholic Church have been filled with references to St. Mary Magdalen, I've chosen a painting of St. Mary Magdalen with the Resurrected Jesus to illustrate this post: Appearance of Jesus Christ to Maria Magdalena (1835) by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov, a Russian painter (1808-1858).

In the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection of the Dead, may Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, rest in the peace of Christ.

Leanda de Lisle Provides Context for the Reign of Charles I

Leanda de Lisle writes brilliantly in an article for History Today about the reign of Charles I, particularly its religious context:

Charles’ reign began during the Thirty Years War. This was the world of Charles’ sister, the Winter Queen, of Protestant churches in flames and the advance of the Counter-Reformation, of a Spanish empire on which the sun never set and the new Puritan colonies of the Americas, a London of fast-moving media reporting on politics from Parliament as well as on the conflict in Europe. England – Britain – is part of this wider world.

Henry VIII’s nationalised form of Anglo-Catholicism did not survive him. From the reign of Edward VI, English Protestants saw the Church of England as part of international Reform Protestantism – a stripped-down Protestantism that would later be labelled Calvinism – just as Scottish Protestants did their Presbyterian kirk. The fate of British Protestantism was linked to what happened to their fellow Calvinists in Europe; there, Protestantism was in retreat. In the 1590s, Protestants held half the land area in Europe. A century later they would hold only a fifth.

Anxiety over Calvinist survival on the continent gave an edge to concerns at home about the half-reformed nature of the Church of England, with its episcopate (government by bishops) and other pre-Reformation hangovers. There was mistrust of Stuart enthusiasm for Elizabethan compromises, particularly among those labelled Puritans.

Protestantism had only survived where it had been imposed or permitted by rulers. To defend themselves, British Protestants had therefore developed ‘resistance’ theories, arguing that kings took their authority from the people, who had the right to overthrow any monarch of the ‘wrong’ religion, which included being the ‘wrong’ kind of Protestant. ‘Popery’ was the term applied to those who sought to spread Counter-Reformation; it was also applied to any reversal of Calvinism.

James had confronted resistance theory by arguing that kings, like bishops, drew their authority from God and that only God could punish them. Divine Right Kingship was not some mere expression of megalomania: it was a defence against religious extremists, both Protestant and Catholic. Charles grew up aware that resistance theory had cost his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, her throne (at Protestant hands); it had justified kidnap and murder attempts against his father (at Protestant and Catholic hands); and it lay behind the assassination of his wife’s father (at Catholic hands – a reminder that a monarch faced threats even from those of their own religion). He embraced his father’s writings and his accession revealed a dynamic monarch.

In the first weeks of his reign, in 1625, he ended his father’s ‘long corrupted peace’ and took his kingdoms into the Thirty Years War, fighting for the interests of the Stuarts and the Protestant cause. At home he created a theatre of ceremony, ritual and beauty, designed to shape a deferential and hierarchical society appropriate to divine right monarchy.

The informality and hard drinking habits of James’ court were brought to an end. Charles asked that nobles not ‘enter his apartments in confusion as heretofore’. Each rank was to have its appointed place. In religion, Charles sought a move away from Calvinist sermons and extempore prayers to rituals and ceremonies, with pre-Reformation origins, but which were nevertheless Protestant and set in buildings fit for purpose. His reforms would have a lasting influence on the Church of England, which still mark it – and English culture – today.

Please read the rest there. She wants us to have a more measured and balanced view of Charles I, to strip away the accumulated easy mythology of the man, his marriage, and his reign. I haven't read the book, but it seems to me that she makes a compelling case in the articles I've read about it.

I wonder if she will write a biography of James II!

Image credit: "Charles depicted as a victorious and chivalrous Saint George in an English landscape by Rubens, 1629–30."

Limited Toleration in England, 1689

The Act of Toleration, after being passed in Parliament, was approved on May 24, 1689 by William and Mary (1 Will & Mary c 18). The long title of the Act reveals its limited scope: An Act for Exempting their Majesties Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of Certain Laws (modern spelling). It was limited to allowing some freedom of worship to some dissenters. Catholics and Unitarians were excluded from the Act of Toleration.

The Protestants who dissented from the Church of England (Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.) were not "granted" freedom of religion and the Church of England remained the established church--its members had all the privileges of citizenship. England would certainly be protected from the dangers of Catholicism, as this paragraph emphasizes:

Be it enacted by the King's and Queen's most excellent majesties, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, That neither the statute made in the three and twentieth year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, entitled, An act to retain the Queen's majesty's subjects in their due obedience; nor the statute made in the twenty ninth year of the said Queen, entitled, An act for the more speedy and due execution of certain branches of the statute made in the three and twentieth year of the Queen's majesty's reign viz. the aforesaid act; nor that branch or clause of a statute made in the first year of the reign of the said Queen, entitled, An act for the uniformity of common prayer and service in the church, and administration of the sacraments; whereby all persons, having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, are required to resort to their parish church or chapel, or some usual place where the common prayer shall be used, upon pain or punishment by the censures of the church, and also upon pain that every person so offending shall forfeit for every such offence twelve pence; nor the statute made in the third year of the reign of the late King James the First, entitled, An act for the better discovering and repressing popish recusants; nor that other statute made in the same year, entitled, An act to prevent and avoid dangers which may grow by popish recusants; nor any other law or statute of this realm made against papists or popish recusants, except the statute made in the five and twentieth year of King Charles the Second, entitled, An act for preventing dangers which may happen from popish recusants; and except also the statute made in the thirtieth year of the said King Charles the Second, entitled, An act for the more effectual preserving the King's person and government, by disabling papists from sitting in either house of parliament; shall be construed to extend to any person or persons dissenting from the Church of England, that shall take the oaths mentioned in a statute made this present Parliament, entitled, An act for removing and preventing all questions and disputes concerning the assembling and sitting of this present Parliament; and shall make and subscribe the declaration mentioned in a statute made in the thirtieth year of the reign of King Charles the Second, entitled, An act to prevent papists from sitting in either house of Parliament; which oaths and declaration the justices of peace at the general sessions of the peace, to be held for the county or place where such person shall live, are hereby required to tender and administer to such persons as shall offer themselves to take, make, and subscribe the same, and thereof to keep a register: and likewise none of the persons aforesaid shall give or pay, as any fee or reward, to any officer or officers belonging to the court aforesaid, above the sum of six pence, nor that more than once, for his of their entry of his taking the said oaths, and making and subscribing the said declaration; nor above the further sum of six pence for any certificate of the same, to be made out and signed by the officer or officers of the said court.

If that wasn't clear enough, article XIV reiterated:

Provided always and bee it further enacted by the authorities aforesaid That neither this Act nor any Clause Article or Thing herein contained shall extend or be construed to extend to give any ease benefit or advantage to any Papist or Popish Recusant whatsoever or any person that shall deny in his Preaching or Writing the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity as it is declared in the aforesaid Articles of Religion.

This book explores the progress of religious toleration through the seventeenth century in England:

The seventeenth century is traditionally regarded as a period of expanding and extended liberalism, when superstition and received truth were overthrown. The book questions how far England moved towards becoming a liberal society at that time and whether or not the end of the century crowned a period of progress, or if one set of intolerant orthodoxies had simply been replaced by another.

The book examines what toleration means now and meant then, explaining why some early modern thinkers supported persecution and how a growing number came to advocate toleration. Introduced with a survey of concepts and theory, the book then studies the practice of toleration at the time of Elizabeth I and the Stuarts, the Puritan Revolution and the Restoration. The seventeenth century emerges as a turning point after which, for the first time, a good Christian society also had to be a tolerant one.

Persecution and Toleration is a critical addition to the study of early modern Britain and to religious and political history.

But the difficulty for such an argument is that Catholics and Quakers were so completely shut out of the progress for toleration--except for under James II's Declaration of Toleration (1687 and 1688) which opened England up to freedom of religion:

We do likewise declare, that it is our royal will and pleasure, that from henceforth the execution of all and all manner of penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, for not coming to church, or not receiving the Sacrament, or for any other nonconformity to the religion established, or for or by reason of the exercise of religion in any manner whatsoever, be immediately suspended; and the further execution of the said penal laws and every of them is hereby suspended.

And to the end that by the liberty hereby granted, the peace and security of our government in the practice thereof may not be endangered, we have thought fit, and do hereby straightly charge and command all our loving subjects, that as we do freely give them leave to meet and serve God after their own way and manner, be it in private houses or in places purposely hired or built for that use, so that they take especial care, that nothing be preached or taught amongst them which may any ways tend to alienate the hearts of our people from us or our government; and that their meetings and assemblies be peaceably, openly, and publicly held, and all persons freely admitted to them; and that they do signify and make known to some one or more of the next justices of the peace what place or places they set apart for those uses.

And that all our subjects may enjoy such their religious assemblies with greater assurance and protection, we have thought it requisite, and do hereby command, that no disturbance of any kind be made or given unto them, under pain of our displeasure, and to be further proceeded against with the uttermost severity. (from the 1687 version)

And yet, John Coffey gives only ten (10) pages to considering James II and Toleration in his book (according to the Table of Contents)!