PLEASE do a Henry/Becket video!!!!! We get SO much Tudor history- the Angevins/Plantagenets need more attention. Eleanor of Aquitaine deserves 5 films (Lion in Winter- Brillant!) and 3 mini-series. Wife of 2 Kings- Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, mother of 2 kings Richard I and John, grandmother of multiple rulers.... the 100 years' war and frankly all of England's wars with France 1200s-1500s were mostly over her lands, the Aquitaine (and Henry's Normandy, Anjou, etc.)

I'd love an episode on the Bayeux tapestry. A history of Peredur/Percival/Parsifal in literature would be wonderful, too.

I think when Henry and John were excommunicated, it would have been catastrophic for the general population. But when H8 and Elizabeth were excommunicated it would have been less of a problem because Protestantism had replaced RC for the most part .

Yes, the behaviour of the English Monarchs went pretty far (an understatement!); you could say tyrannical. But there is an argument that the Papacy indulged in some pretty tyrannical behaviour themselves. But they always had the excuse (or reason) that it was God's Will. At least in Tudor times, the Papacy's power was being questioned by a lot more people than it was in the Angevin Monarch's time.

I would also love an episode on the Bayeux tapestry/embroidery. It has fascinated me for many years, and when it’s mentioned in documentaries it is a high point. Also, I absolutely love your channel and the information you share. Your knowledge and humor make me wish we were neighbors, so we could discuss all things historical over tea and cake all the time!

Please do Dr Kat make a video of Thomas Becket and Henry II, that would be so interesting.

One thing that puzzled me when I think about England turning away from the Catholic Church, was during the dissolution of the monasteries, was there any consideration to the royal tombs. I always understood the Tudors and to some extent the Stuarts as being quite hyper sensitive when it came to their ancestry, so I wonder were the final resting places of their direct ancestors considered.

I think during the Reigns of Henry II and John I the excommunications and interdicts were more effective because power was less centralized in the hands of the King. In the Reigns Henry VIIII and Elizabeth I it was much easier for for the Monarch to control the Nobles and Church. The Reformation in Europe also allowed the Tudors to seek other religious options, that the Angevins couldn't imagine.

Thank you for excellent content. I'd love to hear your take on Henry II and Thomas Becket - or indeed Henry II and basically any of his other relationships! I find him to be an interesting King. I'd also enjoy your take on his mother Empress Matilda and how Henry II in fact became king. Interesting times!

It's always fascinating to see medieval/early modern monarchs interact with the church. it seems like its usually more often about politics than faith... also, Bayeux Tapestry Video Yes Please!

Dr Kat, I just want to thank you for all your videos. They really feed my love of history and help sustain my intellectual life. More, please. Much love & appreciation for all you do. ❤🙏

I don't comment often, but I do want you to know how much I enjoy your content.

isn't excommunication how Henry and Eleanor met? Henry's father was excommunicated for appointing a bishop the king/pope didn't want and he refused to remove him/make their choice bishop.... Geoffry travelled to Paris with his son, Henry to plead his case- he gave up the Vexin to get out of trouble, but the family got it back when it came with Alice as her dowry at her betrothal to Richard.

So interesting. I also never realized that excommunicating the Monarch extended to his/her subjects as well. It makes me wonder about the impact that must have had on the day-to-day lives of the various classes of people during those times. Didn't the wealthier folks have their own chapels? I can imagine some were traumatized, some became more cynical and some found work-arounds, perhaps. It must have been especially difficult for those who wanted their loved ones buried in consecrated ground. Thank you for another fascinating video! 🤔 💖

I was hoping you might mention the papal interdict placed on Scotland in the early 14th century. English kings could use papal censure to their advantage when they wanted.

I've always thought it was pretty clear that the claim of Harold declaring his allegiance to William while touching holy relics was a nice piece of propaganda. Given how hard Harold fought to try to keep the throne, it doesn't seem likely in my opinion that he would have willingly done such a thing.

Greetings Dr. Kat from Virginia, USA. Absolutely love all of you videos! Particularly enjoyed your latest on Angevin vs. Tudor response to threats from Rome. Have always wondered exactly what Pius V (or St. Pius V) was thinking when he excommunicated Elizabeth. In his biography of Edmund Campion, Evelyn Waugh seems to ask the same question. To paraphrase Waugh, he seems to say "oh well, this happened, don't know why, but it did!" It's really hard to make a case that this act not only worsened the lot of all English Catholics, but also ended any hope of reconciliation with Rome during Elizabeth's reign or immediately thereafter. I wonder if Pius V would not have been much better served by following the lead of the popes dealing with Henry II and King John. Best Regards.

Thanks for mentnioning that the Bayeux 'tapestry 'is really an embroidery.

I’d LOVE to see a segment on Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. One of my favorite movies is “TheLion in Winter” and would like your historical take on that whole situation. Thanks for your videos, Dr. Kat……I look forward to watching them daily!

I may have told you this in the distant past yet it bares repeating: even though I speak a form of English common to the Rocky Mountains, I have never particularly had any interest in English history…until I started watching your program. Thank you for all the time and study you put into what you present. I never feel as if I am hearing just a chronological presentation for which I must be held accountable; your passion makes me want to find out the precursor and follow up to the week’s events. Thank you for peaking my interest in something beyond Wyoming history.

I wonder what a play about Henry II written by Shakespeare would have been like.

Ive always thought that Henry 8th won the war against Rome that Henry 2nd lost

I just love your lecures, I could listen to you for hours and not fall a sleep!!!!

Henry VIII was an egotistical fool. He was mean, immature, very selfish. He cared not for his people and was a bad leader, a bad person.

Hello all, looking forward to History Friday. 💜

Thank you so much for another, brilliant presentation. You keep my love of history going, and keeps my brain going.Thankyou

I've heard the story of Henry the 2nd and Thomas Becket a million times as most English History fans have but a question occurred to me today that I've never had before. Who recorded Henry's words to those knights who eventually killed the archbishop? I could see how the knights would try to use it in their defense but where would that have been recorded and who would that defense have been given to? I know that they were punished with some of them if not all of them being sent on crusades but I've never wondered about how we know the exact words of Henry 2 to them?

4 for 4 you are on a roll dr kat keep it up appreciate the additional info on bad king john remember this is coming from the same Henry the 8th who had previously vehemently defended the Roman Catholic faith

The Henry II/Becket history is amazing. A lesson in irony and being careful what you wish for

Fascinating as ever! Really got me interested in exploring just how much power the papacy had. Makes thinking of the time of the 3 Popes both funnier, and concerning!

Thank you, Dr Kat ❤. As always, informative and presented with true eloquence! You are the BEST 👏🏻👏🏻

Clearly, religion held little meaning for royalty. And I do love, Dr. Kat, how you use "allegedly" with the notifications. This past Monday, I received the notification that you were going live four hours after your broadcast ended.

One thing we learned from history, if your name is Thomas, don't befriend a king named Henry

One of the things that continues to amaze me about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is that her marriage to the King lasted less than three years. Anne had three years to come up with a son OR ELSE. Only three years, that's it. How many mothers could be given this ultimatum and not be laughed out of the house for it? Three years at maximum output would be 36 months or, if consistently pregnant, 5 potential babies or more reasonably for time conceiving and recovering from giving birth, maybe 4, maximum. I went to a school with a little girl named Victoria. She had 9 older brothers because her mother desperately wanted a daughter. It took her 18 years to pump out 10 babies and only one, the youngest, was a girl. Did Henry VIII think he could just order up a son and have it done for him simply because he asked? It boggles the mind.

You are Brilliant! You have inspired my reading choices and I Look forward to each new Video You release.

Thank you Dr. Kat for another informative video .

You have to distinguish between excommunication and interdict which extends to the Kingdom itself

It’s not m a matter of severity: Excommunication is against an individual, an Interdict is against a kingdom or country, it forbids the clergy of that kingdom from performing many routines rites of the Church, like baptisms, weddings and funeral services. One or both could be used, and were, in the days when the Catholic popes believed they had authority over all temporal rulers.

proffessor dr kat is fantastic as always,....

Excommunication was a political weapon which caused divisions. The excommunicated person wasn't part of Christianity anymore and thus was a potential target for assassins who could think they wee carrying out God's work. The excommunicated target would retaliate by protecting themselves to extreme levels. Regnans In Excelcis placed all English Catholics in a very difficult position. It basically incepted persecution. Acknowledging the political weapon aspect of the bull, Philip II of Spain opposed the Pope's excommunication of Elizabeth, because he was concerned for the consequences on English Catholics.

Love your videos!

The main difference for the Angevin kings and the Tudor kings is that the reformation had already started elsewhere in Europe by the time Henry VIII took the throne so the knowledge that The Pope really had very little authority, was fallible and likely corrupt was growing in certain circles in Northern Europe. In fact, Thomas Cranmer had already flirted with Lutherism during his time as ambassador to the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The Angevins were still tied by the conventions of their day.

The swords in shape of cross above the old shrine of Beckett are interesting.

This is fascinating stuff! I am presently studying emigration of the Scots-Irish to the American colonies. In my 70s, history has opened a whole new world for me.

Excellent video! Thanks so much.☘️

Hello Dr. Kat, from Michigan, USA. 😊

I just want to say I watched the Jane Boleyn Documentary. YOU WERE AMAZING!!! and I didn't realise how long your hair is 💙

I love your channel

I forgot how far reaching the pope's struggle for power reached. I was schooled in Austria and of course we learned all about King Otto and his journey to Canossa when he was excommunicated. Interesting how different hat event played out. It must have been terrifying for the King and the people. I mean if they were true believers they would fear gonig to hell because of it. But it also makes me wonder: what would have happened if Mary had sons to succeed her.

I listen to many of your programs. The subject of love comes up in many of them. I can't figure out as Tina Turner sang, what love has to do with it. I truly don't believe that love has the same meaning or definition that as some of us have today. Was there a familial love between parents, children and siblings as we want to know it or was love more of a social and religious ideal? In history, people of wealth and royalty were seemingly more concerned with family mergers and heirs than a concerned effort made to actually love each other and as bastions of respectable social behavior, these ideals we're adopted by the common people. I see the practical aspects as infant mortality was high, can't get too attached to someone that probably won't live to see their fifth birthday. I understand that duty to the monarchy took presidency over the love of a child, proven by that many children were immediately separated from the mother on birth. It's difficult for a baby to imprint if it's taken away on anyone but a wet nurse or governess like Queen Victoria. If fact, babies were allowed to only be seen during the children's hour. Did Henry II love his boys? I don't think so on the sense of a dad, but as a duty. Did Henry VIII love his kids? If so, he had a really strange way of showing it. Elizabeth I wrote of her love and sadness on the death of her father, but upon becoming queen, had all of his portraits removed because he killed her mother. There are still some really disfunctioning families, mine included, but I believe that with better resources for the time taken away from the work of living, it's the free time that has given people the chance to truly love and love as we all want and wish for today.

Thanks!

It is obvious to me, thanks to you, that the papacy was an operating political entity throughout its history. That explains the growing enmity to it over time. Rather than a center of faith they were basically just another player in mostly European politics - some awfully nice art though. I do appreciate when a clear factual presentation can provide such a useful overview. Thanks

Dr. Kat, Watching you video made me wonder, did the prohibitions in England by Popes during the 1500s ever get repealed? If not, why/how did full Roman Catholic faith practices re-establish themselves in GB? Thank you again for this channel!

Didn't realize this was a trailer at first. Tell me more!!

The situations Dr. Kat has described show exactly why it is dangerous to individuals when the government decides who shall worship whom and how. This history was a major part of why the US Bill of Rights prohibits any established religion. Regrettably, too many in the US government today are trying to impose one version of religion onto all the citizens of the country. This is particularly seen in US Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion, public prayer, and public accommodation. We are heading for another turbulent time. Clearly, no one pushing those religious objectives has any comprehension of history, especially not of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.

As to your final comment in this video (which is excellent as always) -- specifically, that Pius V, by issuing the Bull "Regnans in Excelsis," had only "made the lives of Roman Catholics in England more difficult and more dangerous" -- it's important to remember that Elizabeth did not claim sovereignty merely over the English but also over the people of Ireland and of the Highlands of Scotland, both of whom were at the time resisting in arms Elizabeth's wrongfully pretended authority over them. And that, from 1570 until the later 18th Century, the Regnans formed an indispensable ideological, political and diplomatic cornerstone for the Irish in their struggle for existence as an independent people and nation, a struggle which even the genocidal campaigns of Elizabeth's Lords Deputy, Grey and Mountjoy, could not extinguish. It is true of course that the cause of Irish freedom and independence was a secondary motivator in Pius's decision to issue the Regnans, since Continental politics obviously weighed more heavily in his mind. Nonetheless, it's clear that the Pope, in drafting and issuing the Bull, did take into consideration Elizabeth's ongoing and accelerating policy of Irish dispossession and the unjust deviation entailed in that policy from the practice of Elizabeth's predecessor, Mary -- who, as Richard Bagwell notes, left Ireland in a stable condition. (For specifics on all this, the standard text is Volumes 2 and 3 of Bagwell's "Ireland Under the Tudors.") Furthermore, without the Regnans, it's highly uncertain whether the Irish cause could have sustained itself through the two centuries of tyranny that would pass before Grattan and Wolfe Tone could re-articulate it into its contemporary form of Irish nationalism. Within the exclusively English context, we can indeed reasonably debate, as you've just done, whether Elizabeth was (or was not) sincere in her tentative early attempts to reinstitute the radical protestantism of Edward VI in a "kinder, gentler" form ... or at least in a more nuanced, efficient and superficially tolerant form ... at least for those privately observant English Catholic subjects who outwardly conformed to it and paid to sustain it. One obvious counterpoint would be that those same English Catholics were still, even during the mildest times of Elizabeth's reign, heavily fined for nonattendance at weekly Protestant service but the point is, again, still reasonably debatable. (In this, I am referring primarily to John Guy's "Tudor England.") And, from the perspective of that one portion of the total population Elizabeth & her armies had under their power, it might, as you say, be argued -- though probably not many English Catholics at the time would have agreed -- that Pius V and the Jesuits ultimately did nothing but make things more difficult. But it's surely impossible to reasonably apply any such claim throughout the entire span of the Tudor autocracy. And, as I say, within the Irish context, the statement is objectively false. Looking forward, as ever and with much anticipation, to your next video! 👋

Is it possible that the reason John has gone down in history as being such a bad king down in part to public perception after the Pope issued the interdict? Cause at the time, for the every day person, Church was thee most important aspect of their life. Would them being unable to receive sacrement have caused much of a negative view of the king on his subjects?

I am of the opinion of that the matter with Henry II and John led to the Tudor break from the church, People learned the sun stil shone the rain still fell and life went on without having to pay the church tithes and it got remembered.

I had no idea that excommunication and mass, sacrament, ect were also withheld from the people csuse of the monarchs choices. That is mind blowing to punish the entire population based on thr monarchs "papacy punishment". Wooow. Thank you Dr. Kat. as always it's a pleasure to hear you and have my mind expanded. Thank you for what you do. I absolutely adore you & your channel. 😁

I’m confused. Why did Henry Vlll keep “defender of the faith” after the break from Rome.

Can a catholic be a consort to a king/queen now? I know they can’t be a regent or stand in for a king.

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Can you do a video on the status of Jewish people in England during this time?

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I think that, although we humans, generally, no longer have to suffer under the direct rule of hereditary, petulant, monarchs, very little has changed in the way that capricious foreign and domestic tyrants try to bend us to their will.

Such was life under a narcissistic king. Ego rules all.

What happened in 1066?

I bet there were a lot of people who were glad of Protestantism cuz if you were excommunicated, you could still go church. There was that option

I suppose if people believed at the time that kings ruled by divine right, the only check on their power could come from whom they believed was Christ's representative on earth. The Pope's real power, though, came from the people that were believers. After the Reformation, people assumed that power for themselves, and kings and the Pope had to contend with the public more.

Today’s post makes me think of religion, and how much division, hate, war, and death it has caused over the centuries.

To our modern sensibilities it's quite obvious that Elizabeth's treatment from the Pope/Papal authorities being the strongest and most immediate wreaks of sexism and misogyny In my romanticised version of events Id like to think that William Cecil et al recognised this and that's why they stepped up their protection (and thus persecution) in response. Obviously sexism is a modern concept but I'd love to have been privy to whether this was discussed at the time.

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Why did you use “Angevins” instead of “Plantagenet”? As to what I think… every one of these people (pope or monarch) was more concerned with power than with piety.

This the best proof for the separation of church and state worldwide.

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That a monarch is excommunicated, a pope has a reason. Either religious or political. However, an interdict on an entire realm goes way too far for me. Why punish the people for what he/she has or not done?

I don't think religion meant as much to the people as we are told. There are plenty of songs and poems lampooning the church and its people. A lot of the Robin Hood tales contain segments about the treachery of the church officials. There were always break away groups that had to be destroyed too.

Henry II even considered switching to Islam to avoid papal edicts.

William of N. was illigit, so when did the rule about only heirs of the body can succeed come into play? For the people not be be able to marry must have caused a lot of upset. Lots of illegitimate children would upset the order of society.

As the power of religion began to wane, who was in charge seems to have been less important to the citizens.

To channel you need either Amy or a the