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:
“I have a fair amount of faith that women won’t sit back and allow South Africa to become a totally male-dominated new society. The women in South Africa have shown that they are strong, and I think they will make their voices heard.”
—Paula Hathorn (b. c. 1962)
“Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)