"Bloody Mary"

Interesting article in the Smithsonian trying to make the case that Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, was not the "bloody" Queen history would have us remember. I don't buy it. Burning hundreds of Protestants at the stake for their failure to recant their Protestantism doesn't strike me as particularly bloodless. A timely reminder though of the dangers of theocracy.

One quote: "To the 16th-century mind, heresy was a contagion that threatened not just the church, but the stability of society as a whole. Heretics were also deemed guilty of treason, as questioning a monarch’s established religious policies was tantamount to rejecting their divinely ordained authority. The justification for one heretic’s death, writes Virginia Rounding in The Burning Time: Henry VIII, Bloody Mary and the Protestant Martyrs of London, was the “salvation of many innocent Christians, who might otherwise have been led astray.” Even the gruesome method of execution had an underlying purpose: Death at the stake gave recalcitrant heretics a taste of hellfire, offering them one final chance to recant and save their souls."

I have ordered the book.