Show description

Her short-lived restoration of Catholicism would forever pale in comparison with her half sister Elizabeth’s forty-five-year Protestant reign, which became a touchstone of English national identity. For centuries Mary was condemned as a religious zealot who had pursued a murderous crusade against Protestants and prepared to sacrifice her crown to the Spanish Catholics rather than see the Reformation triumph in England. 32 Although she passed legislation relinquishing her title as head of the church and giving the pope jurisdiction over English ecclesiastical matters, Mary maintained a clear distinction between her religious and secular power.

Bodin ridiculed the suggestion that the Spanish Empire could maintain the imperial mantle of ancient Rome, arguing that “if there is anywhere in the world any majesty of empire and of true monarchy, it must radiate from the [Ottoman] sultan. ”15 Bodin knew that history offered many examples of Christian states forging alliances with the Ottomans. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Venetians agreed to mutually beneficial commercial treaties with Sultan Mehmed II, and in 1536 the French king Francis I forged a formal alliance with Sultan Süleyman I to confront their common enemy Charles V.

To the south Portugal monopolized Africa and the eastern trade routes, objecting when English merchants sought to establish trade with Morocco and Guinea. And to the east the overland route to Asia lay in the hands of the Ottomans. In 1527 Robert Thorne, an English merchant based in Seville, advised Henry that the only way to outmaneuver his imperial rivals and reach the Spice Islands in Indonesia was to order his merchants to sail north. ” He speculated that the northern polar region contained a navigable temperate belt beyond the freezing Norwegian seas.