Why Athens Still Matters, 4

The rebirth of Greek culture flourished under Queen Elizabeth, one of the best educated of her day, brilliant in Latin, a patron of the arts.

England – Protestant or Catholic
England was the battleground for religion. Henry VIII was ordered to marry his late brother’s widow. His lack of a male heir convinced him that his incestuous marriage was cursed. The divorce from Catharine of Aragon and marriage to Ann Bolyn led to his break with Rome. Catherine gave birth to Mary (known as Bloody Mary for persecuting Protestants). Ann gave birth to Elizabeth, who favored the Protestant leanings of her country and her father. Elizabeth’s fabled reign, immediate after Bloody Mary’s, was especially tolerant of religion. Scholarship flourished. England was relatively free, prosperous, and stable. Shakespeare wrote his sonnets and plays, all of them imbued with classical learning.

Queen Elizabeth was finally forced to have her cousin Mary Queen of Scots executed for high treason. However, Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England and Scotland, the first of the Stuart kings. One author said of the Stuarts, “They left an indelible bad impression on England (Trevelyan, 1996.).” James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II all plotted to make England Roman Catholic again. This led to two important developments:
1. Parliament gained influence and the throne lost power, giving English citizens more rights and freedom.
2. Protestants tired of the strains of religious tension (such as the Catholic plot to blow up Parliament) and headed for America.
America – Haven for Religious Freedom

The founding of America by educated English citizens during this period made the earliest citizens completely opposed to the rule of the Church by any monarch. They also arrived with a sense of Parliament having powers over and above that of any king. The American Revolution focused on the rights of man established by the Creator. “We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Founders were well aware of the decline of Rome because Edward Gibbons published his sensational Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. They looked to the Roman Republic and the earlier Athenian democracy as the ideals of government. When they established their tiny little schools in America - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, William and Mary College – they taught their students Latin, Greek, and the elements of a classical education.