Faith
Catherine was a member of the Spanish order of the Catholic organisation Observant Franciscans and she was punctilious in her religious observations, integrating without demur her necessary duties as queen with her personal piety. The outward celebration of saints and holy relics formed no part of her personal devotions, which she rather expressed in mass, prayer, confession and penance. Privately, however, she was aware of what she identified as the shortcomings of the papacy and church officialdom. Her doubts about church improprieties certainly did not extend so far as to support the allegations of corruption made public by Martin Luther in Wittenberg in 1517, which were soon to have such far-reaching consequences in initiating the Protestant Reformation: In 1523 Fray Alfonso de Villa Sancta, a learned friar of the Observant Franciscans and friend of the king's old advisor Erasmus, dedicated to the queen his book De Liberio Arbitrio adversus Melanchthonem denouncing Philipp Melanchthon, a supporter of Luther. Acting as her confessor, he was able to nominate her as a "Defender of the Faith" for denying Luther's arguments.
Read more about this topic: Catherine Of Aragon
Famous quotes containing the word faith:
“After a few months’ acquaintance with European “coffee,” one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Adjoining a refreshment stand ... is a small frame ice house ... with a whitewashed advertisement on its brown front stating, simply, “Ice. Glory to Jesus.” The proprietor of the establishment is a religious man who has seized the opportunity to broadcast his business and his faith at the same time.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“And Faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord deliver us.”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)