Katherine Parr: Reformation Hero

With forward by Paul Zahl

Katherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII, died September 5, 1548. As Queen of England and Ireland (1543-47) Katherine left the throne as a committed evangelical having come to Protestantism as many of the reformers did, by way of Erasmus and Tudor humanism. When did she get the reformation bug? Henry appointed Katherine - yes, a woman! - Regent in 1544 for the time he was away fighting a war with France, and he ordering Thomas Cranmer to serve her as one of her advisors. Some think she might have had daily contact with the man would become the architect of the Church of England's liturgy and theology. From John Foxe's account, it was Catherine who strongly encouraged Henry to press for more of Cranmer's reforms and to end the '"superstitions" of Rome. Her greatest influence for reformation in England might well have been the impact she had on Henry's children, Elizabeth and Edward. She instructed, guided, and provided a real family for Henry’s three legitimate children: Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. Following Mary's short reign as Queen, Edward VI and Elizabeth would settle the Church of England into Protestantism with the publication of the first Books of Common Prayer and England's confession: The Articles of Religion. Katherine also did something quite unusual for women at the time: she wrote books. Included in her writings was an intensely personal testimony, The Lamentation of a Sinner (1546) in which she dumps on the pope as “riffraff” and the “persecutor of all true Christians”, and lifts up the importance of Bible reading and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Lamentation of a Sinner was not published until after Henry’s death in January 1547. Katherine is an unsung hero of Reformation Anglicanism.