Heretic Queen
Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars on Religion—the battle between Protestantism and Catholicisim that tore apart Europe in the 16th Century
Elizabeth's 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as their Protestant savior, aiming to provide the nation with new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary's reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.
Extravagant, witty, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the ultimate tyrant. Yet at the outset, in religious matters, she was unfathomably tolerant for her day. "There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith," Elizabeth once proclaimed. "All else is a dispute over trifles." Heretic Queen is the highly personal, untold story of how Queen Elizabeth I secured the future of England as a world power. Susan Ronald paints the queen as a complex character whose apparent indecision was really a political tool that she wielded with great aplomb.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this companion volume to Pirate Queen, Ronald's 2007 study of the life and times of England's Elizabeth I , the author sets the Elizabethan age within the context of the Catholic-Protestant wars of religion that flared across Europe throughout the latter half of the 16th century. Elizabeth had witnessed the religious divisions that marked the reigns of her infamous father, Henry VIII, as well as her Protestant brother, Edward VI, and her Roman Catholic sister, Mary I ("Bloody Mary"), so upon her ascension to the throne in 1558 she was eager to grant a measure of religious tolerance to her subjects. As she and her advisers hammered out the terms of what became known as the Elizabethan religious settlement, they had to contend with political distractions from beyond England's borders, such as Elizabeth's beautiful, charismatic, and Roman Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who, with the backing of first France, and then Spain, claimed the throne of England as her birthright. Ronald deftly pulls together a vast amount of historical research into a compelling narrative that's essential reading for anyone interested in the strife-torn world in which this most fascinating queen used both wits and diplomacy to safeguard her kingdom, despite almost insurmountable odds. 16 pages of b&w photos.
