SOURCE: Haugaard, William P. “Katherine Parr: The Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queen.” Renaissance Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1969): 346-59.

In the following essay, Haugaard explores Parr's religious beliefs, including her acceptance of Reformation doctrine and her desire for peace and unity, and suggests how they influenced her court, her subjects, and, likely, the future Queen Elizabeth I as well.

Among the wives of Henry VIII, only his first and last, Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr, possessed both the education and the intelligence to exemplify the Renaissance ideal for a woman born to gentle life. Both Katherines took their religion seriously, and in spite of the papal loyalties of the one and the Protestant proclivities of the other, they belonged to the same tradition of Renaissance religion which J. K. McConica has most recently traced in his study of English humanists.¹ If Katherine of Aragon far surpassed her English namesake...