Would Queen Mary I of England and other people in history who persecuted people for their religious beliefs be considered bigots by modern-day standards? Is it fair to judge them with modern-day standards, or did the people in the past have a different sort of thinking and therefore we cannot use our way of thinking (post-Enlightenment) to judge people living before the Enlightenment?
I’m going to say “yes”.
IMO hating someone because of their race, colour, creed etc etc (whatever makes them Not Like You) is a shitty way to behave, enlightenment or no.
She was thought of as cuckoo even by the standards of her time, so I think
HELL YEAH.
Nearly every historical figure from far enough back would be racist, sexist, etc. by modern standards.
“Judge” may not be the right idea. We can try to understand their conceptual limitations, but unless their actions caused others to experience unneeded suffering, I don’t see where a judgement is required.
But Queen Mary I? Heck, my own father was a very liberal man for his time, but he would be an embarrassing bigot if he were alive today with the same attitudes.
Pretty much the entirety of the human race for its whole existence pre-modern times would probably be considered bigoted these days. You don’t even have to go back that far; a century would probably do it. Even less in some cases.
Queen Mary was very anti-Protestant during her reign. Her father’s long and protracted attempts to divorce himself from her mother, Queen Katherine of Aragon, resulted in two things: Princess Mary wound up being classified as illegitimate, and King Henry would not permit her to see her own mother (not even allowed to go to her funeral!) until she knuckled under and recognized Anne Boleyn as Queen. What a nice dad! He assigned her to the household of her two-year old half-sister, so that she was basically a servant to the “usurper”, Princess Elizabeth, while Mary was downgraded to the King’s bastard daughter.
She probably had PLENTY of hate for her new half-sister and later, her half-brother, the future Edward VI, who were both raised as Protestants, and were both placed ahead of her in line at one point or another. Edward even attempted to exclude her from taking the throne by letting his lame-brain advisers write some proclamation that his cousin Lady Jane Grey (waaaaay down the line of succession) would be Queen, instead!
Talk about a lady with an axe to grind. Of course she was bigoted against Protestants. She burned them at the stake. Probably she was a bitch on wheels, avenging herself against all the wrongs ever done to her by the Protestants, real and imagined.
Imagine if Romney became president, and began persecuting anyone he deemed to be anti-Mormon? Would people call him a bigot? No, I think we’d call him “impeached”! That stuff would not fly. No matter how much power was behind it.
Heh, I see what you did there.
Many of those people, specially heads of state, did not do it out of personal conviction, but to get their hands on the Evil Ones’ goods or due to other political reasons such as national unity, troubles with Rome or fear that once people started questioning religious authority they’d question civil authority next.
Ferdinand I of Aragon was one son of a [del]bitch[/del] decent woman and a murdering, thieving traitor, and he took after Daddy, but he wasn’t a bigot - and it wasn’t heavily-religious Isabella who was behind the expulsions, it was Ferdinand.
I don’t think she was a bigot because she had no problem with Protestants who renounced their protest and returned to Catholicism (I’m no historian, maybe that’s not true). To be a bigot she would have to ascribe characteristics to the practioners of the religion she didn’t like, not simply dislike the religion itself.