“Mary Stuart and Elizabeth both aimed at toleration in an intolerant age, in the same ways that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of one and the almost mother-in-law of another English queen, labored her whole life to heal the rift between Catholic and Protestant in France. All three of these queens worked as diligently and as astutely as they might to restrain the fratricidal wars of Christian against Christian. What they had to hold up against that violent seismic shift in human sensibility was the orderly traditions of monarchy. If they did not ultimately succeed, they slowed and tempered the disorder and violence.” RenaissanceReligious TolerationTudorsElizabeth IMary StuartElizabeth TudorMary Queen Of ScotsCatherine De Médici Book:When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe Source: When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe
“Because [Michel de Castelnau] had been charged with making peace between [Mary Stuart] and her barons, he ignored Mary’s adamant insistence on how anti-monarchal she considered the rebel lords to be; he decided that hers was a profoundly immature political analysis. Yet Elizabeth’s own moral outrage at these same rebels’ affronts to monarchal principles, when, two years later, they refused to obey her commands to release their anointed queen from prison, suggests that Mary was simply being clear-sighted rather than naïve and saw earlier what Elizabeth learned only later. Mary was neither stupid nor ill-educated. She knew what she was talking about.” MonarchyTudorsElizabeth IMary StuartElizabeth TudorMary Queen Of ScotsAnti Monarchy Book:When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe Source: When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe