The Means the Pope and Other Christian Monarchs Took to Recall the Queen, and the Sentence Pope Pius V Rendered Against Her1

Book 2, chapter 27 The Means the Pope and Other Christian Monarchs Took to Recall the Queen, and the Sentence Pope Pius v Rendered against Her1

Through these methods of the queen’s and the rigor and violence of her ministers, heresy made great strides in the country. Hoping to cleanse it and re- store the queen to obedience to the Church, and to remove any fear or anxiety (if any she had) of losing her scepter because she was illegitimate, Pope Pius iv, who had succeeded Paul iv,2 dispatched an apostolic nuncio to England to reassure the queen about the succession if she chose to return to herself, and to beg and entreat her most lovingly not to cast herself and her kingdom into perdition through her hatred and abhorrence for the Apostolic See. But she refused to hear the nuncio, or even to allow him entrance into her realm.3 What is more, to exercise in all things the office of a merciful father, His Holi- ness, having ordered the continuation of the Council of Trent, decided to send another nuncio, to tell her at least to send a few of her ministers to the council to discuss with the Catholics the contested points of our holy faith.4 But her false bishops and ministers, fearing that this would expose their shallowness and ignorance and reveal it to the world, persuaded the queen not to do so. At the same time, other Catholic monarchs wrote to her not to trust a few unknown, ignorant, malevolent men over all the saints and scholars of Christen- dom and the ancient princes of her nation. One of their number was Emper or Ferdinand, who also begged her to release the bishops she held prisoner, being

1 Sander, De origine ac progressu, 412–15, 422–27. 2 Paul iv died on August 18, 1559. Giovanni Angelo Medici (r.1559–65) was elected to succeed him as Pope Pius iv on December 25, 1559. 3 In May 1560, the pope sent the Torinese abbot Vincenzo Parpaglia (dates unknown, fl. mid- sixteenth century) as nuncio to England. A former secretary of Reginald Pole’s and an inti- mate of the ultra-Catholic Guise clan, Parpaglia was hardly the most congenial choice, and he was summarily denied admittance to the realm. McCoog, Our Way of Proceeding? 50. 4 Pius iv issued the bull Ad ecclesiae regimen on November 29, 1560, setting a new session at Trent for the following Easter Sunday, April 6, 1561—although the council did not properly assemble until January 18, 1562. The pope dispatched a nuncio, Girolamo Martinengo (1504– 69) to England, but Elizabeth refused him entry, claiming that the presence of a papal nuncio might provoke unrest. John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 167–68, 170.

The Means to Recall the Queen, and Pope Pius v’s sentence 431 men of exemplary life and learning, guiltless of any crime against her, accused and jailed for nothing save wishing to persevere in the ancient faith and com- munion of all Christians, which the emperor himself followed, and at the very least to allow the Catholics churches in her kingdom, that they might gather to celebrate the divine office according to the practice of the Catholic Church.5 But she could not be persuaded or softened, either by these letters or by others written by various distinguished persons. Witnessing such intolerable disdain, the Council of Trent contemplated declaring her a heretic and excommunicate, but Emperor Ferdinand himself intervened against this, possibly hoping that she might marry his son the Archduke Ferdinand (for she had given some hope of this) and thereby return and amend.6 But what the Council of Trent did not do was done some years later by Pius v of holy memory (who had succeeded Pius iv), a brother of the Dominican Order and a saintly man— regarded as such even by the heretics themselves.7 Like another Phinehas, clad and burning with the zeal and love of God,8 as he witnessed and lamented the calamities and miseries of a realm so noble, in ages past so Catholic and so

5 Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand i (r.1558–64), Charles v’s younger brother. 6 It was actually Ferdinand’s third surviving son, Charles ii Francis (1540–90) that the emperor intended for Elizabeth—Ferdinand ii (1529–95), his second son, was, unbeknownst to much of Europe, already married Philippine Welser (1527–80), daughter of a wealthy merchant family of Augsburg. Paula Sutter Fichtner, Ferdinand i of Austria: The Politics of Dynasticism in the Age of the Reformation, East European Monographs 100 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 237–38, 242. During Sander’s attendance at the Council of Trent, he had advocated for a hardline policy on English affairs, arguing that English Catholics must not attend Protestant services and that Elizabeth should be deposed. He is probably the author of a secret memorandum urging the pope to excommunicate the queen. Not unnaturally, Sander has made this out to be a grander affair than it was. As Hubert Jedin recounts, “Militant emigrées in Belgium had been urging since the July session that Queen Elizabeth should be excommunicated by the council as a persecutor of Catholics. The legates had informed Rome of this and had also notified the emperor, who was vehemently against it; Morone had rejected the proposal from the very beginning, as it would involve the council in new difficulties. Such a move, the legates wrote to Rome on June 28, would bring about the ‘total ruin’ of the remnants of English Catholicism and the deaths of the imprisoned bishops, and indeed the harassment even of those Catholics living in Germany under Protestant rulers might follow. Accordingly, even before the pope had made his position clear, the legates had determined to ‘let the matter lie.’” Kilroy, “Paths Coincident,” 522. Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient. 4 vols. (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1951–75), 4.2:84–85. 7 Pope Saint Pius v was elected pope on January 8, 1566, after the death of Pius iv on December 9 of the previous year. 8 Num. 25:7–8, 10–11.