Roles of Catholic and Protestant Women By Chandra Tallent The roles of women of the sixteenth century in the Catholic and Protestant churches differ from each other in multiple ways. Though they are similar in some ways, they are different in others. Protestantism contains a dramatic array of potential roles for women. Some roles range from the highly permissive to very conservative. In the Catholic Church, women have played a variety of roles and the church has affected societal attitudes to women throughout the world in significant ways.
I think Elizabeth was a very successful Queen, but on the other hand she did cause disagreement and executed lots of Catholic e.c.t. Elizabeth could be as ruthless and calculating as any King before her. One of the problems Elizabeth faced was religion and I think she managed it well I think this because she made all of the churches a mixture. Elizabeth was a Protestant and her mother was a Protestant so I would thought that she would of made all the churches, Protestant, but she was good queen and managed the religion well. She kept the Monarch as the Governor of the church not the Pope which is Protestant, I believe this is a good idea because the Protestants will still think she is a true Protestant and she will be popular with them.
She would make a new prayer book to please the catholic and then change it to English to please the Protestants. During Mary’s reign, persecuted Protestants looked on Elizabeth as their saviour. Many Protestants thought that Elizabeth would turn the country firmly back towards the Protestant religion. In my analysis of Elizabeth’s religious settlement it is clear to see that this is not totally the case. Out of the eight main points of the settlement, I found that Elizabeth had rules that would please both Protestants and Catholic’s.
Her responsibilities have ranged from a vessel of the lord to a mediator between Christ and humanity. Investigating a sampling of these works will illuminate how the redefinition of these roles was marked and sometimes changed through images of the Virgin. Images of Mary had special significance to medieval women because she was the sole female deity in a high position in the church. Addressing how the iconography of the Virgin was viewed and internalized by women will shine a light on the overall social significance of Mary. Due to the unclear timeline of medieval art many of the themes discussed overlap.
An unmarried female ruler was inconceivable to sixteenth-century Europeans. There were two major threats to the peace of her reign, the reigns of Edward and Mary had left England as a divided country religiously. Elizabeth’s religious ideals were unknown, but both Catholics and Protestants hoped for her support. She brought Protestants who had been exiled back into England. As for the religious divide, Elizabeth created a Church of England where Protestants and Catholics alike could go to pray and let people decide what religion they would like to follow.
The Roman Catholics in those days thought Elizabeth 1st was the heretic queen in their eyes; however, for the protestant, she was their hero. As she brought fortune to a country that was considered poor [in comparison to other superpowers (during that era) such as France, Spain, or Portugal], she was one of England’s best rulers, despite all the religious conflicts. Also, she dedicated pretty much all of her life for England. Mary Queen of Scots had previously claimed Elizabeth’s throne as her own and therefore perceiving her as a threat to Elizabeth. Furthermore, Elizabeth had her arrested.
Women wanted the same working rights as men, and they fought hard for it. Suffragettes stoped their campaign of violence and supported the government and its war effort in every way. The work done by women in the First World War was to be vital for Britain's war effort. Even though women gained the right to vote shortly after the war, its argued that the war wasn’t really the cause of giving women this right. After all, in countries such as New Zealand (1893), Australia (1901), Finland (1906) or Norway (1913) women got the vote before the war began, whereas others such as Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915), Holland (1917) or Sweden (1919) gave it to women during the war without being involved in it.
During Mary’s reign, she killed a number of Protestants as a result of them resisting her Catholic rule. Her motives to persecute Protestants were a combination of political, personal and religious reasons. Mary’s fundamental reasons for persecuting Protestants were religious. She was a devout Roman Catholic raised by her Catholic mother Catherine of Aragon, however, as she grew up, England and Wales were undergoing a Protestant reformation. Mary believed that it was her duty to restore the true faith and the true Church.
It is unclear and has been long debated over when the view of women changed. In Helen Zenna Smith’s novel Not So Quiet… she would debate that The Great War was when women’s roles and gender ideologies transformed because she portrays women as more masculine, has women doing men’s jobs, and the questioning of Nationalism. This brings about a new way for men and women to co-exist more equally in European society. Before the First World War gender roles for women were viewed as the house wife and nurture the children to be civilized beings in society. It was expected that they would rear their young.
But as Mary was very strict and punctual catholic; she had the duty of transferring England into a Roman Catholic country, as England was left protestant by Lady Jane Grey. But this job came with its struggles, as Mary tried to accomplish this, which will be pointed out in this essay. Mary took on much advantage, trying to transfer England back to a Catholic country, which improved her. Hence by her nickname ‘Bloody Mary’. Mary was called this for a reason, as Mary ascertained that all Protestants of England who declined to become a Catholic were killed.