A friend sent me a recent(ish) article from the Times Literary Supplement titled, "In defence of Thomas More." My quick answer is: that guy doesn't need a defense. But I put a little more work into it, and that's what follows. It's long, by the way, for those who like a warning.
A look at Henry's attempt to get rabbis to sign off on his annulment, the Torah passages used, and if it worked. (It didn't.)
Anne is ::finally:: crowned, so everything is going to go perfectly from here out. We wonder what kind of moral animal Cromwell is. And it's hard out there for a Holy Maid.
she [Mary] hints, in Castilian, that it is her women's disorder From about the age of 15 on, Mary Tudor (Katherine's daughter with Henry; later to be Bloody Mary or Mary I) suffered from irregular periods (and there are a LOT of factors that could have encouraged this, like stress, for example). She eventually dies… Continue reading Mike’s Marginalia for Part IV
Another look inside Wolf Hall with a bunch of people I just love the stuffing out of.
[* High school is never the best time of your life and if you are living a life where that seems to be the case -- where you think you can make a legitimate, stickable argument, you are wrong but I love you high school was terrible.]
Please take some time and tell me what you would do to act like Henry VIII. Mine is "injure myself doing something dumb and then getting some kind of syphilis, so find another way.
The BBC article is short on information directly related to Henry, Katherine, Anne, or anyone else whose name you may know/backside you've seen on an episode of the very terrible The Tudors, but it does give us a chance, real quick, to discuss the goings on with Katherine at this time.
We like knowing the beginnings of things -- this sort of purity of source. Many Evangelical Christians hold this hope in their heart that, if one were to drill far enough down/back into history, you'd find the purist version of Christianity that ever existed, before it was corrupted by politics and propositions, changed by shifting alliances and points of view.
It doesn't work that way, though. There has never been an ur-version of Christianity at all. There have been Christianities. But can it work with a portrait? Can we pinpoint when a portrait was painted, and can we then know when someone's obsession started, the purist form of that possession?
There's a new documentary coming, A Tale of Two Sisters, which, I am promised, is not that weird Japanese horror film I saw where something upsetting happened to teeth. (I think it was teeth? Don't you dare tell me.) Instead, it looks at Elizabeth and Margaret, comparing and contrasting them with Anne and Mary.
The Cromwell Trilogy 