[In the following essay, Bainton offers an account of Parr's religious attitudes and influence from the Protestant chronicler John Foxe, and goes on to assess her religious stance by looking at her writings, her friends, and her actions.]

Catherine Parr was the only one of the six wives of Henry VIII to survive him. One reason was that her failure to bear a son was not crucial since Henry already had an heir in Edward; another that she was English and no shift in foreign alliances could require that she be set aside and finally her irreproachable deportment precluded execution for infidelity. But there was one subject that might have meant her undoing and that was religion. Henry was of no mind to renounce the royal supremacy or restore the monasteries, but he was not inclined to doctrinal innovations and, to quiet disturbance occasioned by what he had already done, issued the Six Articles forbidding clerical marriage and visiting with death the denial of transubstantiation.

Among his counsellors was one thoroughly committed to what has been called the Tudor reaction, Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, chancellor of the realm and successor to Wolsey's preeminence. Gardiner accepted the royal supremacy on the ground that since the entire population of England belonged both to the church and to the state the same individual might be the head of both. In other words he believed in the nationalizing of the English church, the very point for the rejection of which More and Fisher went to the block. In other respects Gardiner was quite as conservative as they. Henry with an even hand sent Catholics to the block for the repudiation of the royal supremacy and Protestants to the stake for the rejection of transubstantiation. Gardiner feared that he might veer to a more Protestant policy unless delivered from the seductions of Catherine Parr.

John Foxe, the ardent Protestant chronicler gives us this account.¹ The ageing Henry, he tells us, plagued by gout became testy and brooked ill any divergence from his opinions. But with Catherine he was very patient, for “besides the virtues of the mind, she was endowed with very rare gifts of nature, as singular beauty, favor and comely personage, being things wherein the king was greatly delighted.” Catherine came often to begile his leisure and contrived to bring the conversation around to the zealous furthering of the reformation of the church. On one such occasion Gardiner was present and Henry was nettled by Catherine's “frowardness.” When she went out of the room he remarked, “A good hearing it is when women become such clarks; and a thing much to my comfort to come in my old days to be taught by my wife!”

Winchester (Foxe thus names Gardiner) assured him that it was very “unseemly that any of the king's subjects should argue with him malapertly.” Those who so controverted the sovereign in words might seek to overthrow him in deeds. The religion which “the queen so stiffly maintained would dissolve the government of princes” by teaching that all things should be common. Opinions so odious, though spoken by the highest subject in the land, were worthy of death. But far be it from him to say anything against the queen.

“These flattering words so whetted the king to anger” that he gave warrant to certain persons to draw up articles against the queen by which her life might be touched. He pretended to be fully resolved not to spare her if any “color of law gave countenance to the matter.” Winchester then proposed to bring charges not at first against the queen but against three of her ladies, whose quarters could be searched and might yield something incriminating with respect to the queen, who might be taken by night in a barge to the Tower. The king consented, being a “politic prince,” and desiring to “prove the bishop's malice, how far it would presume, … knowing notwithstanding what he would do.”

The queen, in the meantime, was innocent of the trap but the Lord “from his eternal throne of wisdom saw the inventions of Ahitophel and rescued his poor handmaid from the pit of ruin.” For the warrant signed by the king fell from the bosom of one of the counsellors and was taken to Catherine. She became positively ill but not devoid of the wisdom of the serpent, for she instructed her ladies to remove all books contrary to the law and then sought the presence of the king. He received her courteously and brought the conversation around to religion, desiring, as she perceived, to draw her out. She responded with a “mild and reverent countenance,” saying:

“Your Majesty doth right well know, neither I myself am ignorant, what great imperfection and weakness by our first creation is allotted unto us women and to be ordained and appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head, from which head all our direction ought to proceed. Her womanly weakness and imperfection ought to be tolerated, aided and borne withal so that by his wisdom such things as are lacking in her, ought to be supplied.”

“Since therefore God hath appointed such a natural difference between man and woman and your Majesty being so excellent in gifts and ornaments of wisdom, I, a silly, poor, woman, and so much inferior in all respects of nature unto you; how then comes it now to pass, that your Majesty in such diffuse causes of religion, will seem to require my judgment? When I have uttered and said what I can, yet must I, refer my judgment in this and all other cases to your Majesty's wisdom, as my only anchor, supreme head, and governor here in earth next to God, to lean unto.”

“‘Not so, by Saint Mary,’ quoth the king, ‘You are become a doctor, Kate, to instruct us … and not to be instructed, or directed by us.’” “‘If your Majesty took it so,’ quoth the queen, ‘then hath your Majesty much mistaken me, who have ever been of the opinion, to think it very unseemly and preposterous, for the woman to take upon herself the office of an instructor or teacher to her lord and husband; but rather to learn of her husband, and to be taught by him. And whereas I have, with your Majesty's leave, heretofore been bold to hold talk with your Majesty, where sometimes in opinions there hath seemed some difference, I have not done it so much to maintain opinion, as I did it rather to minister talk, not only to the end your Majesty might with less grief pass over this painful time of your infirmity, being attentive to our talk, and hoping that your Majesty should reap some ease thereby; but also that I, hearing your Majesty's learned discourse, might receive to myself some profit thereby: wherein I assure your Majesty, I have not missed any part of my desire in that behalf, always referring myself, in all such matters, unto your Majesty, as by ordinance of nature it is convenient for me to do.”

“‘And is it even so, sweetheart!’ quoth the king, ‘and tended your arguments to no worse end? Then, perfect friends we are now again, as ever at any time heretofore.’ And kissing her he added saying, ‘that it did him more good at that time to hear those words of her mouth, than if he had heard present news of a hundred thousand pounds in money fallen unto him.’”

Now on the morrow Winchester arrived with forty of the king's guard at his heels to take her to the Tower, whereupon Henry called him an “arrant, beast and fool,” and though these words were “uttered somewhat low,” yet were they so “vehemently whispered” that all heard and the queen received no little comfort. Perceiving her husband to be “much chafed” she put on a “merry countenance,” and besought him not to deal harshly with the bishop who had sinned in ignorance. And thus “by God's only blessing” she “escaped the dangerous snare of her bloody and cruel enemies for the gospel's sake.”

Such is the recital of John Foxe. What are we to make of it? Did Henry all along intend to vindicate his wife and was he simply giving the bishop more faggots for the fire of his burning? Did Henry plan to reverse the policy of his last days and push ahead with the reform? The case was so represented by the Edwardians, but a recent historian gives reasons for thinking that if Henry had veered it would not have been for the sake of religion but to keep the balance of the continental powers and their confessions.² In that case was Henry amusing himself by playing with his ministers? Would he actually have put Catherine Parr out of the way if she had obstructed his program? Did she in fact mollify him by using as a weapon the myth of female subjection? The question probably admits of no answer, and in any case our purpose is not to fathom the mind of Henry but to bring to light, if we can, the intentions of Catherine.

There are three ways of assessing her religious stance, by her words, her friends and her deeds. Her words include a collection of prayers, which, although belonging to the devotional classics of the Tudor age, are not helpful at this point because they voice the aspirations of the ages and might well have been composed earlier by St. Augustine, St. Bernard and St. Francis or later by Launcelot Andrews, George Herbert or William Law.

Her writings look toward a furthering of the reform. The prayers were rather a compilation than a composition, of which a further word later. The Lamentation or Complaint of a Sinner, appeared in 1547 with a preface by William Cecil, who came to be the great Lord Burghley of Elizabeth's reign. He lauds Catherine because “forsaking ignorance wherein she was blind, she has come to knowledge, whereby she may see; removing superstition wherewith she was smothered, to embrace true religion, wherewith she may revive.” For him, then, her tract was a manifesto of reform. But it was more than that. This little treatise is one of the gems of Tudor devotional literature³ and may well be compared with the Chansons Spirituelles of Marguerite of Navarre and the Rime Religiose of Vittoria Colonna. All are suffused with the rapturous glow of adoration for Christ the crucified.

There are some differences. Catherine does not ascend to the mystical exaltation of Marguerite which caused the baffled Cardinal Pole to say that she was “forever soaring into the bosom of God.” There is no trace of the Neoplatonic dualism of flesh and spirit in which the flesh is the corporeal component of man. For Catherine the flesh is whatever wars against the spirit of Christ, such as envy and malice which are not of the body. And although Catherine uses the language of heat and light, her meditations do not teem with recurrent contrasts of light and dark, sunlight and shade, fire and cold, the dazzling and the tenebrous as in the Rime of Vittoria. What Catherine has to say about the contemporary situation is entirely in line with the policy of her late husband, and does not overtly go beyond. She laments her one time error in listening to the pope and rejoices that Henry as the new Moses delivered his people from thralldom under the new Pharaoh, the pope. She would encourage Bible reading—and Henry had cooled on that—undeterred by the fear that it would engender heresy or incite dissension.

The burden of her meditation is the benefit of Christ's death upon the cross. Listen to these passages somewhat condensed:

Let us consider the great charity of God in sending his Son to suffer death for our redemption. A more noble and rich gift he could not have given. He sent not a servant or a friend, but his only Son, so dearly beloved; not in delights, riches and honors but in poverties and slanders, not as a lord but as a servant, yea, and in most vile and painful sufferings to wash us, not with water, but with his own precious blood; not from mire, but from the puddle and filth of our iniquities. He hath given him not to make us poor, but to enrich us with his divine virtues, merits and graces; yea, and in him he hath given us all things, and finally himself, with such great charity as cannot be expressed. Even in the time when we had done him most injury he first showed his charity to us with such flames of love that greater cannot be showed.

Inwardly to behold Christ upon the cross is the best and goodliest meditation that can be. We may see also in Christ crucified the beauty of the soul better than in all the books of the world. For he that with a lively faith seeth and feeleth in spirit that Christ, the Son of God, is dead for the satisfying and purifying of the soul, shall see that his soul is appointed for the very tabernacle and mansion of the inestimable and incomprehensible majesty and honor of God.

There are those who make not Christ their chief foundation. The fleshly children of Adam are so politic, subtle, crafty, and wise in their kind that the elect should be deceived if possible. But the children of light know the contrary and are not abashed though the world hate them. They are not so foolish as not to give God thanks for their election, which was before the beginning of the world, for they believe most surely they are of the chosen. They are not by this godly faith presumptuously enflamed. Nor are they curious in searching the high mysteries of God, which are not meet for them to know. The crucifix is the book wherein God hath included all things and hath most compendiously written therein all truth profitable and necessary for our salvation. Therefore let us endeavor ourselves to study this book, that we, being enlightened with the spirit of God, may give him thanks for so great a benefit.

Some of this sounds like John Calvin. The mere reference to predestination need not of course have come from him. A devotional work published in Latin in 1498 and in English in 1525 addressed Jesus with reference to “the predestination of all thy chosen souls that should be saved by the merit of thy passion.”⁴ But there is an Ariadne thread which runs from England to Geneva by way of Italy. The clue is in Catherine's references to “the benefits of Christ's death.” Once again the mere word “benefit” calls for no specific source beyond the Psalm, “Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits.” But The Benefit of Christ's Death was precisely the title of the favorite compendium of the piety of the Italian evangelicals! It appeared in Italy in 1543 with the title Del Beneficio de Giesu Christo Crucifisso, and in an English translation in 1548.⁵ Catherine may not have seen the English. She could handle the Italian.⁶

How this work was conceived in England appears from the circumstance of the translation. It was the work of Edward Courtenay, who for ten years since the age of twelve had been a prisoner in the Tower for combining Plantagenet blood with possible royalist pretentions. He had spent his time learning Italian and now on the death of Henry dedicated this translation to the duchess of Somerset that she might “set her gracious good will and helping hand, that by the same your godlie and piteful meanes it may please my Lord's grace of his manyfolde and abundaunte goodness, to deliver me out of this miserable captivitie.” A copy with an inscription in Courtenay's hand was presented to the Protector, evidently with the thought that this tract would further the reform.

Little did Courtenay know, little did Catherine know that the last three chapters of this “most profitable treatise” were a reworking and sometimes a direct translation from the Institutes of John Calvin!⁷

When we look at the religious complexion of Catherine's associates we find that she brought under one roof Mary, Edward and Elizabeth, all ultimately of different persuasions. The Lamentation was published by the ardent Protestant, the duchess of Suffolk, with a preface by William Cecil, a moderate Protestant. The queen's chaplain was Parkhurst, an exile under Mary, and a nuisance for abetting non-conformity under Elizabeth. Something can be inferred from the stands of the translators⁸ engaged by Catherine for translating the Paraphrases of Erasmus, which appeared in two volumes under Edward in 1548. The project began under Henry.

In the first volume the chief contributor was the dramatist Nicolas Udall, the author of the play Royster Doyster. His prefaces are staunchly Protestant though he managed later to survive under Mary.⁹ Thomas Kay (Caius) proved to be more of a willow than an oak. The third translator was the inflexible Catholic, the Princess Mary. When she was too ill to carry through the rendering of John's gospel Catherine besought her to allow her name to appear along with that of her substitute, Malet, later sent to the Tower for having said mass in Mary's chapel. The inclusion of Mary shows a spirit of catholicity.

We are warned not to infer too much from the character of the translators in the second volume because the lead had passed from Catherine to the duchess of Somerset.¹⁰ To be sure the dedications shift but that was out of deference to the ruling house. The continuing influence of Catherine is indicated by the use in both volumes of a title page border with her coat of arms. This might, of course, have simply been automatically carried over by the intrepid Protestant printer, Whitechurch. But he used the cut also for the first Prayer Book of 1549 and if the duchess had been out of favor her arms could have been expunged, as they were when this same woodcut was taken to Mexico and used for a Spanish work. The initial W for Whitechurch was overlooked and retained.

But we need not rest the case on evidence so frail. The chief figure in the second volume was Miles Coverdale who pronounced the oration at Catherine's funeral and of whose Protestantism there was no question. Another in this second volume was John Olde, appointed to a living by the duchess of Somerset at the instance of the undoubted Protestant, Hugh Latimer. Under Mary, Olde was in exile. Edmund Allen proved his Protestantism already under Henry by securing leave to reside on the continent where he begat “eight legitimate children” (legitimate presumably only if he were Protestant). Leonard Coxe was to this extent hospitable to the reform that when Frith, the later martyr was in the stocks he “procured his releasement, refreshed his empty stomach and gave him money.”

The composition of this body of translators suggests Protestant leanings with a spirit of catholicity. The tone is that of Erasmus. Why did Catherine sponsor the project and induce the Protector to enjoin that copies be set up in the parish churches? The most obvious answer is that she wished to disseminate the word of God and believed that the simple elucidations of Erasmus would assist “silly souls” to grasp those passages “hard to be understood which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” (1 Peter 3:16). The appeal to the authority of Erasmus would of itself prove nothing as to the alignment of parties, for all referred to him.

The translators bent him to their own use by the devices of marginal annotations, additions in the text and especially by prefaces. Nicolas Udall, in the preface to Edward VI, called attention to the commentary on Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.¹¹ The marginal annotation reads: “The Byshop of Romes pompe is covertly described.” There can be no doubt about that. Here is my own translation directly from the Latin of Erasmus:

Now for a moment, reader, compare with me this scene with the behavior of one of those who hold the chief seats among the Jewish priests. But consider first of all how great is he who rides upon the ass's foal. He is none other than the Son of God, to whom the Father has given all power in heaven and on earth. He is the Savior and Ruler of the whole world, the Author, Lord and King of all things that are created, and King forever after the order of Melchizedek, who with a beck can do whatsoever he will, whose majesty is adored by all the orders of angels, who sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty.

Now with his dignity compare the pontiff of a certain temple, who for the price of a year's income buys a benefice from an impious king. Compare the bare head of Jesus with this man's tiara glittering with gold and gems. Compare the modest gentle face of Jesus with this priest's bloated visage, grim brow, beetling eyebrows, lofty eyes and insolent mouth. Compare the bare hands of Jesus with this man's fingers laden with rings and precious stones.

Look at Jesus clad in the simple garment of a peasant and this man in his theatrical robes, stirrups of silver and gold. Look at the common foal of the ass which carries Jesus and with it compare the many mules caparisoned with silk and cloth of gold, so many lordly coursers, so many palfreys of great price, so many wagons, so many chariots, so many palanquins, all ready to carry this one man. Compare once more the few and lowly followers of Jesus with the throngs before this priest of noble youths, trumpeters, pipers, henchmen and guards with a pomp exceeding that of any prince and among them he is most proud who is nearest and most pleasing to the pontiff. Compare the cries of the throng before and after Jesus, who filled with the Holy Ghost chant the prophecy of the psalm, ‘Hosanna, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord,’ compare this with the profane acclamations with which the chorus of adulators hail the base Jewish High Priest, ‘Long live the most holy pontiff.’ How greatly Jesus despised such priests is plain since he ordered the destruction of their tinselled, proud priesthood and of their very temple. And such today are those who kill Christ in his members, for he wills to be alone the head of the priesthood.¹²

Now, who ever heard of the Jewish high priest wearing a tiara? Manifestly this is meant for the pope and what is more, Erasmus reworked the description of Pope Julius II in the anonymous satire Julius Excluded from Heaven, of which Erasmus himself was in very great likelihood the author. The English translator has added a few embellishments. To the tiara he has added the miter and pontifex is translated commonly bishop or prelate to include the whole hierarchy.

But this diatribe, however stinging, is really not radical, even in the last days of Henry VIII, for it could be used to justify nothing more drastic than the demolition of the usurped primacy of the Roman pontiff. There is a much more radical passage which might seem to be utterly innocuous. It is the exposition of Jesus' word in Matthew 6:7,¹³ “In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words.” Erasmus expands: “This also must be considered in prayer. It is the affection and hearty desire that moveth God, not the noise of the lips and it skilleth not how long and how loud the prayer be, but how fervent and sincere the affection and desire is. … We ought to pray often rather than much, and vehemently rather than long; finally with the heart rather than with the voice. Neither always with prescribed and purposed wordes after the custom of the heathen, but so much as the fervencies of the mind and the ravishment towards God doth stir and provoke.” Such a passage might serve to eliminate The Book of Common Prayer in favor of free prayers, or private prayers or prayers unuttered, as in a Quaker meeting.

The radicalism of Erasmus consisted in his spiritualizing of religion to the degree that the external aids to worship were regarded as superfluous or even impediments: prayers by rote, telling of beads, reverence for relics, adoration of images, including the crucifix, prayers for physical benefits to the saints and the blessed Virgin, dietary rules, the obligatory celibacy of the clergy—All these might go, but should not be rooted out by royal fiat. Conversion, not coercion, should be the method. This was the point over which he had clashed with the reformers at Basel in 1529. In accord with his assumed principles, they called for the smashing of the images, the removal of the organs, the abolition of fast days and distinction of foods, the removal of the prohibition of clerical marriage, the discontinuance of the mass in favor of the Lord's Supper as a memorial of Christ's death. The mass should not be celebrated in any church in the city. The penalty for non-compliance was banishment. Erasmus left. Now in England, nearly twenty years later, appeal was again made to his principles, again to be implemented by methods which he could not have condoned.

But our concern for the moment is not with what he thought but with what they thought he thought, and more especially what they thought, and then as to whether Catherine was of their mind. Their prefaces are more revealing than the translations. The preface to Mark by Thomas Kay¹⁴ is addressed “To the most excellent and vertuous princesse quene Catherine, wyfe to our moste gracious soueraigne Lorde Henry eight,” obviously during the lifetime of her husband, who is extolled as the new Josiah, the demolisher of the shrines of Baal on the hilltops of Israel. Whereas in time past

many a thousand putte more confidence of soule healthe in workes that were but of mennes phantasying, as in pardons, in pilgrymages, in kyssing of reliques, of offerying to saintes, in halowed beades, in numberying of prayers, in mumblyng up of psalmes not understand [understood] in the merytes of those that called themselfes relygious, and in other lyke thynges. … Nowe hathe England cleane forsaken Antichrist of Rome.

This enumeration was programatic rather than descriptive. Henry VIII had by no means gone so far.

The prefaces of Udall are more realistic and afford an interesting contrast to each other.¹⁵ The first was addressed to Catherine while her husband was alive, the second to Edward after the death of his father. The one to Catherine begins by calling attention to the praises bestowed on women in the Bible. For Udall to extol her virtues would be like bringing out a smoking firebrand on a sunny day.

Your manifold unestimable giftes of grace and among them most principally your studious seekyng to promote the glory of God and of his most holy ghospell, haue been the thynges that haue moued the most noble, the most renounned, and the moste godly Prince of the universall worlde, our most gracious soueraigne Lord kyng Henry the eight, to iudge and esteme your grace a mete spouse for his maiestie.

[Your] contemplative meditations [show that] women are no lesse apt, no lesse wittie, no lesse able, no lesse industrious, no lesse active, no lesse frutefull and pithy in the acquirying or handlying of all kyndes of disciplines then men are. All your delite, all your studie, and all your endeuour is by all possible meanes emploied to the publique commoditie of all good English people, the kynges moste louyng and obedient subiectes, to bee nourished and trayned in the readyng of Gods woorde.

This is the grayne of mustard sede … [which now] spredeth the braunches in suche a coumpace, that all Englishe readers may therein fynd many places where to lyght and to bylde them nestes, in whiche their soules and consciences may to theyr ghostely comfort quietly repose themselves. Where the texte of the gospel afore was in sum partes … to the complexcion of grosse, rude and grene stomaked Englishmen disagreeyng and harde of digestion [yet through the Paraphrases of Erasmus you have] minced it and made it euery English mans meate.

Then begins praise of Henry, the new David who with the stone of God's word and the sling of the divine spirit put down the idol of the Roman Antichrist. Henry is the new Hezekiah commissioned to put down false religion and root out superstition and idolatry. When then God shall bestow on our most gracious sovereign the “croune of immortality and he shall surrender this emperiall croune to the most regal Impe his sonne, our noble prince Edwarde … may he without any let of stumblyng blockes to be layed in his way by papistrie … continue the godly trade nowe at this daye well begonne.” David laid the foundation. Let Solomon build the temple.

Now compare the preface to Edward VI. “During the reign of your most noble father all hoped that you would be equal to your sire. But now you have shown such towardness of godly zeal that we have conceived no less than an undoubted hope that you will by God's gouernance surpass your sayd father.” Far be it from me to engage in flattery but all who speak of your Majesty extol your “incomparable virtues.” This is not “clawing adulation,” but rather an exhortation that you should not degenerate from the godly trade of religion. Your noble father, having begotten the two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, yet for the tranquility of England provided a son in your person. Your father was another Cyrus to deliver us from the bondage to the Romish Nebuchadnezzar, who with “develish inventions” cast the “mist of ignorance” over God's most holy Word, perplexed the grace of the gospel with false, feigned merits and works of supererogation, mangled the Christian profession with cloisters of Antichrist's own generation, oppressed the true religion with pilgrimages to dead stokes and stones of men's handiwork … and “with a purgatory of material fire.”

Henry is the David again who with the sling this time of the regal authority and the pebble of God's word felled the Goliath of the papacy stone dead. Henry is the archangel Michael who cast the old serpent and his angels out of England. Henry is Hercules who slew the seven headed hydra. King John had cut off one head but it had grown again.

When then the Roman anti-Christ was expelled God raised up Edward's mother, the noble Queen Jane, who as soon as she had borne the king took her leave of life, as if to say “I have done the office I was born for. Now fare ye well.” We may be sure that God took her at once to confer upon her an eternal crown, lest we “being inebriated with our insatiable felicity” might have been made proud.

The father was in his time peerless, but now the son must surmount him.

Such excellent beginnings being furthered by the daily prayers of all your faithful and true hearted subjects, cannot but have still better and better degrees of continuance and increase, especially since God has graciously supplied the boy king with such sapient counsellors.

Let him take heed to the examples of two boy kings in the Old Testament. Manasses was beguiled by evil counsellors and did not walk in the ways of his father Hezekiah, but Josiah, though but eight years old at the commencement of his reign, gave heed to his “sapient” advisers and did that which was pleasing in the eyes of the Lord.

O happy king are you to have such wise counsellors. O happy counsellors of such a toward king. Whereas Hezekiah and Josiah were able to establish the true religion only during their reigns may your Majesty establish it forever in the bowels of all your most tender and loving subjects.

Then a word of praise to Catherine for giving England God's Word winnowed by Erasmus from all scholastic chaff.

One observes that this time Henry is no longer Hezekiah or Josiah. The altars of Baal have not been pulled down from their high places. Edward is the one to accomplish the demolition.

Is this what Catherine wished? One notes that in her Lamentation she passed swiftly from a reference to a visible idol to reproach herself for making an idol of herself. This is the inwardness of Erasmus who disparaged the outward expressions of religion, though to remove them would not use outward means.

The collection of prayers compiled by Catherine voice the aspirations of the ages.¹⁶ They came to her from the ages. The selection rather than the phraseology reveal her leanings. One finds lamentation over the sinfulness and miseries of man, prayers for forgiveness, help and comfort. Here are a few excerpts from a modernized version:

O Lord Jesus, most loving spouse, who shall give me wings of perfect love that I may fly up from these worldly miseries to rest in Thee? O when shall I ascend to Thee, to see and feel how sweet Thou art? I beseech Thee, Lord Jesus, that the sighings and desires of my heart may move and incline Thee to hear me. …

Let not flesh and blood overcome me, nor yet the world with his vain glory deceive me, but give me spiritual strength in resisting them, patience in suffering them, constancy in persevering. …

O everlasting light, far passing all things, send down the beams of Thy brightness from above and purify and lighten the inward parts of my heart. …

O good Lord who hast lordship over all, and power of the sea to assuage the rages and surges of the same, arise and help me, destroy the power of mine enemies, which always make battle against me. Show forth the greatness of Thy goodness, and let the power of Thy right hand be glorified in me, for there is to me none other help or refuge but in Thee only, my Lord and my God; to Thee be honor and glory everlasting.

We outlaws, the children of Eve, weep and wail the bitter tediousness of our day, that is, of this present life, short and evil, full of sorrow and anguish, where man is oftentimes defiled by sin, encumbered with affliction and disquieted with troubles, wrapped in cares, busied with vanities, blinded with errors, overcharged with labors, vexed with temptations, overcome with vain delights and pleasures of the world and grievously tormented with penury and want. O when shall the end come of all these miseries? Send forth the hot flames of Thy love to burn and consume the hot fantasies of my mind. …

Lord give me peace, give me inward peace, give me inward joy and then my soul shall be full of heavenly melody. … It is good to me O Lord, that Thou hast meekened me, that I may thereby learn to know Thy righteous judgments and to put from me all honor of presumption and stateliness of heart. … Lord, I yield thanks to Thee that Thou hast spared my sins, but hast punished me with the scourges of love, and hast sent me affliction and anguish within and without. … Turn not Thy face from me, defer not visiting me, withdraw not Thy comforts, lest haply my soul be made as dry earth without the water of grace.

The note of world weariness, though characteristic of traditional piety, may well have been a reflection of her own mood. One observes the similarity to the poems of Marguerite of Navarre. Such eagerness to be released is the most understandable in her case seeing that she had lost her idolized brother and saw the hopes of her life belied. But Catherine did not live to see the execution of her husband, and the reforms for which she labored were in the ascendant. But where is the mortal who has no need of consolation? A touch of solace fell to Catherine when Princess Elizabeth at the age of eleven translated the Miroir de l'Ame Perchereuse of Marguerite of Navarre and presented it to Catherine Parr.¹⁷

Notes

1. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments, V (Reprint New York, 1965), 553-561.

2. Lacey Baldwin Smith, “Henry VIII and the Protestant Triumph,” American Historical Review, LXXXI, 4 (July, 1966) 1237-1263.

3. See Helen White and Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, (New York, 1955), 43.

4. Ibid., 220.

5. The Beneficio was published in Italian accompanied by a French translation and the English translation of Edward Courtenay by Churchill Babington under the title The Benefit of Christ's Death, (London, 1855). A new translation with notes has been published by Ruth Orelowski in Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus, (Florence, 1965). The Corpus Reformatorum Italicorum in 1972 published Il Beneficio di Cristo, edited by Salvatore Caponetta, who discovers indebtedness not only to Calvin but also to Luther and Melanchthon.

6. Haugaard, 347 note 8 citing Agnes Strickland, The Life of Queen Elizabeth, (Everyman ed., London, 1906), 15.

7. Valdo Vinay, “Die Schrift Il Beneficio di Giesu di Christo,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LVIII, 1 (1967), 29-72. McConica observed a similarity to the Beneficio in a manuscript poem attributed to Catherine.

8. Biographies of these men in the Dictionary of National Biography.

9. On Udall's constancy Ruth H. Blackburn, Biblical Drama under the Tudors, (The Hague, 1971), 65 note 3.

10. McConica, 241.

11. Udall's preface to Edward VI, Paraphrases, I, fol. X verso. At the bottom of the page Bii verso. The passage on Mark XI is fol. LXXVI verso, bottom Kiiii verso.

12. See my article “Erasmus and Luther and the Dialog Julius Exclusus,” Festschrift für Franz Lau, Vierhundertfünfzig Jahre lutherische Reformation, (Göttingen, 1967), 17-26.

13. On Matthew 6:7, Paraphrases, I, fol. fv verso.

14. Thomas Key's dedication to Catherine is before Mark in volume I.

15. Udall's prefaces precede Luke and Matthew in volume I.

16. See the comments in White.

17. The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, facsimile ed., Percy W. Ames, (Royal Society of Literature, London, 1897).

Bibliography

The works of Catherine Parr are reproduced in modernized form in a volume published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, n.d., entitled Writings of Edward Sixth, William Hugh, Queen Catherine Parr, Anne Aškew, Lady Jane Grey, Hamilton and Balnaves. Her religious position is assessed by William F. Haugaard, “The Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queene,” Renaissance Quarterly XXII, 4 (Winter, 1969), 346-359. Her Protestant leanings are underplayed. The devotional writings are evaluated by Helen C. White, Tudor Books of Private Devotion (University of Wisconsin Press, 1951). Catherine receives notice passim in James McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics (Oxford, 1965).