Mood:
incredulousNow Playing: "Fluir na h-Alba", by Roy Williamson
Topic: General
What does one make of this? (scroll down to the 'Petition for Sainthood' section)
Interesting, if true...
Honestly: I'll never know how his holiness JPII managed to canonize more people during his tenure than EVERY OTHER POPE COMBINED, yet poor MQS still lacks any papal recognition of her sacrifice.
...Alright, yes: it'd be a political nightmare, especially now, to canonize a woman that (in the public's eye, at least) plotted to kill one of the most retroactively beloved of all English monarchs...
The fact remains: Mary is a martyr, and whether she be a scapegoat for political schemers** or a genuine co-conspirator in said plot, the fact cannot be denied: she was executed in a time when religion and politics were one, and while her death was as much a political exercise as an act of religious persecution she was slaughtered on account of her faith, and on account of her persistence in practicing said faith.
People have been canonized for far, far, far, far, far less...
Interestingly, MQS was executed for treason despite the fact that she was not, in any way, shape, or form, a citizen and subject of the English crown. Her trial was admittedly a sham and a rush-job by certain political hacks in the Elizabethan court.
People have been canonzied for far, far, far, far, far less, indeed...
Well, without the corresponding 'Casket Letters' we'll never know how deeply she was involved in the Babington Plot (given the structure and secrecy of the overall scheme, though, I think it's ludicrous to believe that the conspirators would actually try to communicate with her at all, but the plot DID fail, so how smart were the guys, really?)
In any event, people would do well to "remember [that] the theatre of history is wider than the realm of England"
...and by a large margin, indeed.
(** I'm reluctant to link to this article at all, given that at the moment it demonstrates a horrible Elizabethan bias (the writer seems to have taken their knowledge of history from that Cate Blanchett monstrosity rather than a textbook... oh, well, history is written by men that hang heroes, I suppose...) As my own views are biased I cannot in good conscience edit it to remedy this, but if the reader's view is neutral, and their knowledge of history astute, then by all means see to it...)
