Katherine of Aragon, a deeply spiritual woman

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Did this fine lady ever get acknowledged by the Church for her incredible spirituality, in the face of her banishment by her husband, Henry VIII? I’m reading a very good book titled The Other Boleyn Girl. It’s based on the life in the English Court when Henry VIII was betraying his wife, Katherine of Aragon. The book isn’t entirely historically accurate, according to my online research, but is fairly close.

The book portrays Katherine as a deeply spiritual woman, with perfect manners and poise, in the face of her utter humiliation by her husband. She was devoted to the Rosary and the Catholic Church in the sense of true spirituality. Apparently, she was this way, according to what I’ve discovered online. The book is written from the perspective of Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s sister, who had an affair with Henry before her ruthless sister set her sights on the King.

Her greatest fault, in the eyes of her husband, was that she never produced a living son. She had one surviving child, a daughter Mary, who was also faithful to the Church. I think it’s interesting that the subjegation of women, and devaluation of them, led to the downfall of the Catholic Church in England. Another thing that seemed to contribute to it were men like Cardinal Worsley, who had become deeply involved in manipulating politics and attached to the power it brought to him personally.

Katherine’s nephew in Spain actually kidnapped the Pope of the time in order to keep him from granting an annullment to Henry. I’m not done with the book yet, but I do recommend it. It really gives an interesting peek into an important chapter of history.

Has anyone here researched this remarkable woman?
 
I read a ton about the Tudor dynasty (and “The Other Boleyn Girl” is a GREAT book). I do admire Katherine’s calm and poise during the whole divorce. I do sometimes wonder why she didn’t agree to enter a convent (a scheme that was cooked up in the beginning of the divorce drama). If she had, her marriage would have remained valid, but it would have freed Henry to remarry…thus keeping England Catholic…at least until Henry got some other bug in his britches. Although I greatly admire the woman, I sometimes question whether her pride in being queen got in the way of her faith and her care for the faith of the country.

Either way, Henry treated her horribly!
 
Newsflash! Phillipa Gregory (the author of The Other Boleyn Girl) has written a book from Katherine’s own point of view - called The Constant Princess - about her youth and marriage to Prince Arthur, and her early years with Henry.

As great as The Other Boleyn Girl is, there are a number of inaccuracies. There is no way Anne was the older daughter - she was sent to the French court after Mary. AND Mary was the first married. It simply wouldn’t have been done in wealthy families for younger daughters to be favoured over the elder in such matters, King’s mistress or not.

And if Anne did indeed commit adultery in order to conceive a child that could be claimed to be Henry’s - why on earth with her brother? There were any number of young men about the Court who fancied her and would’ve been willing to help out 😉

To get to the question of Katherine. Katherine most likely didn’t enter a convent because to do so would have been seen as at least implicity agreeing with Henry that the marriage was in fact INvalid. It would have cast doubts on her claim to have been a virgin at the time of her marriage to Henry (remember the whole annulment hinged on this point).

For her to enter a convent would’ve also made it easier for Henry to repudiate their daughter Mary. Of course he ended up divorcing her and doing so anyway, but at least she fought against it until her dying day and kept Mary at the forefront of Henry’s mind.

And she quite possibly was hoping as well that Henry would grow tired of Anne Boleyn and come back to her - remember they were fairly happily married for at least 15-odd years! Which would’ve been a bit difficult if she’d entered a convent.
 
Hi Seattle Catholic, it looks like we’re in the same general vicinity of the Pacific Northwest. What do you think of the idea that Mary Boleyn had two of Henry’s children? According to what I read online, in actuality only her son was, perhaps, Henry’s son. I read that Mary Boleyn is an ancestor of both Princess Di and Winston Churchill.

I agree with you, the one fatal flaw that Katherine perhaps possessed was the inability to let go of her position of being the Queen of England, and all it entailed.
 
I agree, there are a lot of inaccuracies in the book, but I still love it.
LilyM said:
To get to the question of Katherine. Katherine most likely didn’t enter a convent because to do so would have been seen as at least implicity agreeing with Henry that the marriage was in fact INvalid. It would have cast doubts on her claim to have been a virgin at the time of her marriage to Henry (remember the whole annulment hinged on this point).

For her to enter a convent would’ve also made it easier for Henry to repudiate their daughter Mary. Of course he ended up divorcing her and doing so anyway, but at least she fought against it until her dying day and kept Mary at the forefront of Henry’s mind.

And she quite possibly was hoping as well that Henry would grow tired of Anne Boleyn and come back to her - remember they were fairly happily married for at least 15-odd years! Which would’ve been a bit difficult if she’d entered a convent.
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My understanding from all the biographies of the Tudors that I have read is that, if Katherine agreed to enter the convent, her marriage was to be seen as valid and Mary would remain legitimate, but it would free Henry to marry someone who could provide him a male heir since it was obvious that she wouldn’t be able to. This was the hope that Henry had at the beginning of the whole affair.

I’m not saying that I think she should have stepped aside, or that getting a male heir was a legitimate reason to ask Katherine to enter a convent. I do think Katherine was a very intelligent woman, and knowing the history of England and Henry’s temperment, she might have forseen his determination to get a male heir.
 
Anne slept with her brother? I haven’t finished the book, don’t give it away!. The book suggests that her brother, George, was a homosexual, and apparently she got that subplot from a book titled “The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn”, on which she heavily relied as a reference.

I believe there was an intense loyalty in the Howard/Boleyn clan, therefore, her brother George would have been someone implicitly to be trusted. The book depicts Anne as a woman possessed with a lustful ambition that obsessed her. I’m to the point where the King has sent Katherine to the late Cardinal Worsley’s manor to live in exile from the Court. The people are turning against Anne, who cannot go unescorted anywhere because of mobs who are against her, and loyal to the Queen.
 
SeattleCatholic said:
My understanding from all the biographies of the Tudors that I have read is that, if Katherine agreed to enter the convent, her marriage was to be seen as valid and Mary would remain legitimate, but it would free Henry to marry someone who could provide him a male heir since it was obvious that she wouldn’t be able to. This was the hope that Henry had at the beginning of the whole affair.
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I seem to be missing something. If Catherine’s marriage to Henry was valid, then how would that leave him free to remarry, even if she went into a convent?
 
I just read “A Man for All Seasons” in my Language class (the teacher is Catholic although he’d never admit it because it’s a public school!). Even though it dosen’t focus on Catherine, but St. Thomas More rather, it still got me wondering about how Catherine and her family back in Spain was thinking during all the politics of the schism in Great Britain. I reccommend that play as further light fictional reading if the time period or situation is of interest to anyone here!
 
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Victorious:
I seem to be missing something. If Catherine’s marriage to Henry was valid, then how would that leave him free to remarry, even if she went into a convent?
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Well by entering a convent Katherine would have been effectively both deserting Henry and abdicating her coronation vows to God and duties (and hence rights) as England’s queen. Henry could have had the marriage dissolved for desertion. As a practical matter a King needs a wife and heirs, so rules as to dissolution and remarriage were applied a bit more loosely for them.

Certainly to do so wouldn’t technically mean that the marriage had been entered into invalidly. But Henry’s whole case for annulment hinged on whether Katherine’s marriage to Henry’s older brother Arthur, who died shortly after their marriage, had been valid and consummated.

If it had been, Henry very likely would’ve been in an impermissible relationship to her marriagewise (under the marriage laws at the time) and able to get his annulment. Katherine willingly going into a convent would give plenty of ammunition to those wanting the annulment.

She of course was aware that she couldn’t give Henry the son he wanted, and didn’t want Mary taking a back seat to anyone else’s child(ren). Being the daughter of the great Queen Isabella of Spain, she had a different view on the role women could take than did the English. They had never had a Queen, in fact there had only ever been one female claimant to the throne, Matilda, who had sparked decades of civil war.

As for Katherine’s family, they certainly put pressure on the Pope not to grant the annulment, and since at one point during this time they had held him prisoner in Rome, he obliged. He quite likely would have even otherwise.

Here endeth the lesson 🤓
 
I’ve long admired Catalina de Aragon. Does anyone know if there’s been a movement to canonize her?
 
If there isn’t there should be.

As another historical “aside”, the main fuel for the story of George, Viscount Rochfort, sleeping with his sister Anne came from George’s wife, Jane. Jane apparently was jealous; she was possessive and unwilling to ‘share’ her husband with anyone else, family or not. And so, like a ‘woman scorned’, she sought to punish George and Anne by making the accusation of incest. Well, surely a ‘witch’ like Anne, already supposedly poisoning Katherine of Aragon and ready to poison Mary Tudor as well as cuckolding Henry, wouldn’t stick at some incest as well. . .

I always was sympathetic to Anne after Elizabeth was born and she started to face the fact that the man who ‘raised her up’ when he got tired of his wife was just as likely to raise somebody ‘else’ when he tired of her. . . Contemporary accounts also agree that Anne was a devoted mother (which partly explains some of her animus to Mary Tudor, whom she saw as a danger to Elizabeth), and that particularly after Elizabeth’s birth she became a much better person, not just to polish up her image but because she sincerely had a change of heart. Poor woman! She was a great sinner but she was a penitent and she was unjustly condemned.

In an interesting twist of faith, Jane went on to serve in the entourage of another ‘Howard’ queen (Catherine Howard was part of the Howard dynasty from a minor cadet branch, just as Anne Boleyn was). Jane apparently was privy to Catherine’s meetings with Thomas Culpepper, a member of the King’s Bedchamber who had had relations with Catherine before Catherine married Henry. While it is not known (or like my favorite Scots trial decisions, “not proven”) that Catherine committed physical adultery (most scholars believe that she did not), when the investigation started, Jane was tried as an accessory and she wound up being executed as well as Catherine. Justice? Perhaps. Most contemporaries thought that Jane had lost her mind even before her execution. . .perhaps she was subconsciously trying to get herself killed as an expiation of her guilt in sending innocent people to the block. Who knows?
 
LilyM said:
Well by entering a convent Katherine would have been effectively both deserting Henry and abdicating her coronation vows to God and duties (and hence rights) as England’s queen. Henry could have had the marriage dissolved for desertion. As a practical matter a King needs a wife and heirs, so rules as to dissolution and remarriage were applied a bit more loosely for them.

Certainly to do so wouldn’t technically mean that the marriage had been entered into invalidly. But Henry’s whole case for annulment hinged on whether Katherine’s marriage to Henry’s older brother Arthur, who died shortly after their marriage, had been valid and consummated.
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I’m still missing something. The point of inquiry in an annullment case is the beginning of the marriage. If all the essential elements of a marriage are present at the time the couple is wed, then it is a valid, sacramental marriage. This was the point of focusing on Catherine’s marriage to Prince Arthur: if there was a true marriage there (i.e., if it had been consummated), then – the argument ran – the marriage between Catherine and his brother Henry would have been incestuous and therefore null.

The whole point of a valid marriage is that it cannot be dissolved, regardless of what happens afterward. This must have been true even in the 16th century. And it must have been true even among monarchs, or Henry wouldn’t have gone through the acrobatics in an attempt to have Catherine annulled.
 
Tantum ergo, thanks for the historical notes. I did quite a bit of reading online about Henry’s other wives (inbetween going back to my book, Anne is just about to be coronated. Mary has married William Stafford) I read about Catherine Howard. She had affairs with two men, both of whom were executed. Here is an interesting account of her life. She was, apparently, a youthful and foolish woman who had been brought up in a lax manner.

Link to life of Catherine Howard

There are excellent synopsises on all of the characters surrounding Henry VIII on this site, just follow the links.

In the book, they portray George’s wife as a gossipmonger, and George as a bi-sexual who was in love with a man named Sir Francis Weston. I don’t doubt that there was probably plenty of homosexuality in the English court, the English aristocracy has always been riddled with it and still is.
 
I love Tudor history and Katherine of Aragon is one of my favorites. She is definetly to be admired for her steadfast dedication to the faith, that’s for sure.
 
I’m really enjoying this book. I’m almost to the end, and Anne has given birth to a grossly deformed child that apparently was the result of an incestuous relationship with her brother George. The midwife is also a witch-hunter and has reported back to the King, who is now elevating Jane Seymour and shunning Anne. Anne Boleyn’s family is encouraging her to pull out every trick in the book to win Henry back. Anne replies to George, her brother:

"But it was me who taught him to follow his desires. Worse than that, I filled his stupid head with the new learning. Now he thinks that his desires are God’s manifestations. He only has to want something to think that it is God’s will. He doesn’t have to confirm it with priest, bishop, or Pope. His whims are holy. How can anyone make such a man return to his wife?"

Isn’t that a great commentary on the weakness of the Protestant approach to God? I wonder, I’ll have to research this author.
 
Victorious said:
I’m still missing something. The point of inquiry in an annullment case is the beginning of the marriage. If all the essential elements of a marriage are present at the time the couple is wed, then it is a valid, sacramental marriage. This was the point of focusing on Catherine’s marriage to Prince Arthur: if there was a true marriage there (i.e., if it had been consummated), then – the argument ran – the marriage between Catherine and his brother Henry would have been incestuous and therefore null.

The whole point of a valid marriage is that it cannot be dissolved, regardless of what happens afterward. This must have been true even in the 16th century. And it must have been true even among monarchs, or Henry wouldn’t have gone through the acrobatics in an attempt to have Catherine annulled.
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Henry first took the tack of invalidity of the marriage, and stuck with it as well, because it was his best chance of procuring an annulment, not because it was the only option as far as ending the marriage went.

It was, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia anyways, not until the Council of Trent (ie after Henry’s case) that the absolute indissolubility of marriage was declared as dogma. Prior to then the laws on annulment were indeed applied with more or less rigor as circumstances dictated. There must be precedent for the dissolution of a marriage for the purpose of one or both partners taking religious vows - otherwise the suggestion wouldn’t have been made.

Remember even today some have problems with the comparative ease of annulments being obtained in certain cases (Ted Kennedy anyone?) - what makes you think it was any different in those days?
 
I finished my book. I must say, Henry VIII and Saddam Hussain had quite a bit in common. :rolleyes: He really was a terrible sinner. I wonder how the Anglican Church views him? I suppose it was the norm for the times, but he really was a wretched, self-centered and evil man. Anne Boleyn did deserve her downfall, however.
 
If Catherine had entered the convent, it would have been tacitly conceeding the invalidity of the first marriage (due to the whole Arthur thing) but under the laws of the time would have left Mary legitimate, I believe. An annulment would have been granted, but under church and civil law at the time this would have made the children unable to inherit…unless the couple was already “seperated” before the annulment with a binding agreement about maintaining the inheritence of the children. But at the time, one of the only allowed reasons for that type of “seperation” was entrance into religious life.
 
Why didn’t Catherine enter the convent? Well, maybe she was not as holy as you are all making her out to be. There were plenty of political hands in this whole situation, from all over Europe. But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. So, maybe it was because she really never did consummate her short marriage to Arthur and wasn’t going to lie or legitimize Henry’s adultery.

Or perhaps she was worried that Henry would not honor the agreement about the inheritence of Mary that would have been made upon Catherine’s entrance into religious life and subsequent anullment (the seperation and entry would almost have certainly been taken as a tacit concession that the first marriage was invalid) .

Henry may have claimed that since the first marriage was found not valid, the seperation agreement was not binding. That’s not true, it would still have been binding, but he may have claimed it wasn’t. But it would have been. Entry to religious life being seen as a type of death, the agreement about the inheritance of the children of a seperating couple is binding irregardless of what happens in the future. Just as children don’t suddenly become illegitimate if the mother dies and thus the marriage ends…so to, a seperation agreement for a mother “dying to the world” doesn’t change just because the marriage is later found invalid and thus the marriage dissolved…

But I dount Henry would have cared if he was trying to deprive Mary of her rights for some reason…
 
WenckebachCath said:
I finished my book. I must say, Henry VIII and Saddam Hussain had quite a bit in common. :rolleyes: He really was a terrible sinner. I wonder how the Anglican Church views him? I suppose it was the norm for the times, but he really was a wretched, self-centered and evil man. Anne Boleyn did deserve her downfall, however.
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Yes, I have no love for Henry VIII. I do feel a bit of sympathy for Anne. We have to remember that she was in love with someone else (I forgot his name - will have to look it up) and wanted to marry him. Henry and Wolsey put an end to her matrimonial plans. Henry wanted her to be his mistress, practically forcing dishonor upon her. To reject him would be to ruin the future fortunes of her family. Her options were limited, and non of them were desirable.
 
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