the Catholic Monarchs

Examples of the Catholic Monarchs in the following topics:

• The Reconquista

  • The Reconquista ("reconquest") is a period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, spanning approximately 770 years, between the initial Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 710s and the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, to expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.
  • Around 1480, Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (known as the Catholic Monarchs) established what would be known as the Spanish Inquisition.
  • It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control.
  • In 1492 the monarchs issued a decree of expulsion of Jews, known formally as the Alhambra Decree, which gave Jews in Spain four months to either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain.
  • Although the period of rule by the Visigothic Kingdom (ca. 5th-8th century) saw the brief spread of Arianism, Catholic religion coalesced in Spain at the time.

• The Glorious Revolution

  • The religious tolerance policies of the Catholic King James II of England met with increasing opposition by members of leading political circles, who were troubled by the king's religious convictions and his close ties with France.
  • The establishment of a Roman Catholic dynasty in the kingdoms was now likely.
  • After only two minor clashes between the two opposing armies in England, and anti-Catholic riots in several towns, James's regime collapsed.
  • In February 1689, William and his wife became joint monarchs as William III and Mary II of England .
  • Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over a century; they were also denied commissions in the army, and the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or to marry a Catholic, a prohibition that continues today.

• Elizabeth I and English Patriotism

  • She never married or had children and thus was the last monarch of the Tudors dynasty.
  • She and her advisers recognized the threat of a Catholic crusade against England.
  • As a result, the parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many Catholic elements.
  • All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office.
  • She was the first Tudor to recognize that a monarch ruled by popular consent.

• Philip II and the Spanish Armada

  • Extreme commitment to champion Catholicism against both Protestantism and Islam shaped both domestic and foreign policies of Philip II, who was the most powerful European monarch in an era of religious conflict.
  • He considered himself the chief defender of Catholic Europe, both against the Ottoman Turks and against the forces of the Protestant Reformation.
  • Philip financed the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion (primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants known as Huguenots).
  • Weary of war, most French Catholics switched to his side against the hardline core of the Catholic League, who were portrayed by Henry's propagandists as puppets of a foreign monarch, Philip.
  • Because Philip II was the most powerful European monarch in an era of war and religious conflict, evaluating both his reign and the man himself has become a controversial historical subject.

• Empress Maria-Theresa

  • Consequently, she explicitly rejected the idea of religious toleration but she never allowed the Church to interfere with what she considered to be prerogatives of a monarch and kept Rome at arm's length.
  • She tolerated Greek Catholics and emphasized their equal status with Roman Catholics.
  • Convinced by her advisors that the Jesuits posed a danger to her monarchical authority, she hesitantly issued a decree that removed them from all the institutions of the monarchy.
  • The empress was arguably the most anti-Semitic monarch of her time yet, as many of her contemporaries, she supported Jewish commercial and industrial activity.
  • The empress permitted non-Catholics to attend university and allowed the introduction of secular subjects (such as law), which influenced the decline of theology as the main foundation of university education.

• The First Stuarts and Catholicism

  • The break with Rome was effected by a series of acts of Parliament but Catholic Mary I restored papal jurisdiction in 1553.
  • After she died without an heir, James VI, King of Scots and her cousin, succeeded to the throne of England as James I in 1603, thus uniting Scotland and England under one monarch (the Union of the Crowns).  
  • By the 1620s, events on the continent had stirred up anti-Catholic feeling to a new pitch.
  • The failed attempt to marry Prince Charles with the Catholic Spanish Infanta Maria (known as the Spanish match), which both the Parliament and the public strongly opposed, was followed by even stronger anti-Catholic sentiment in the Commons that was finally echoed in court.
  • Many members of the Commons were opposed to the king's marriage to a Roman Catholic.

• Monarchy

  • Currently, 44 nations in the world have monarchs as heads of state.
  • Of these, 16 are Commonwealth realms such as Canada and Australia that recognize the monarch of the United Kingdom as their head of state.
  • The person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch.
  • Currently, 44 nations in the world have monarchs as heads of state.
  • Of these, 16 are Commonwealth realms such as Canada and Australia that recognize the monarch of the United Kingdom as their head of state.

• Discontent with the Roman Catholic Church

  • The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther and continued by other early Protestant Reformers in Europe in the 16th century.
  • Luther began by criticizing the selling of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel.
  • In the North, burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to the Pope in Italy.
  • Jan Hus at the University of Prague was a follower of Wycliffe and similarly objected to some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
  • The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent and spearheaded by the new order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) specifically organized to counter the Protestant movement.

• Catholicism

  • The Catholic Church in the United States is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, or the Christian Church that is in full communion with the Pope.
  • The U.S. has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world after Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.
  • By far, most Catholics in the U.S. belong to the Latin Church and the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
  • There are 14 other Churches in the U.S. (23 within the global Catholic Church) that are in communion with Rome and fully recognized in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
  • The largest of these communities in the U.S. is the Chaldean Catholic Church.

• Voltaire

  • Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, who attacked the Catholic Church and advocated freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.
  • He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristocratic-monarchical authority and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects people's rights.
  • Only a year later, he published The Philosophical Dictionary - an encyclopedic dictionary with alphabetically arranged articles that criticize the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions.
  • In it, Voltaire is concerned with the injustices of the Catholic Church, which he sees as intolerant and fanatical.
  • He long thought only an enlightened monarch could bring about change, given the social structures of the time and the extremely high rates of illiteracy, and that it was in the king's rational interest to improve the education and welfare of his subjects.