How the English learned to hate Catholics

The history is full of fights between countries, between religions, inside religions, between humans and inside human minds, and the lecture by Alec Ryrie, Gresham Professor of Divinity, from the 20th November 2019 gives you an example about the Christian religion in England.

Medieval England was proudly Catholic and ostentatiously loyal to Rome, but after the Reformation, anti-catholic prejudice came to be a cornerstone of English and then British identity. The fight with words and ideas between the British king and the Catholic pope became something else, and listening Alec Ryrie you may understand better the country and the people from Europe. From the late sixteenth century until recent times – and even now – anti-Catholic prejudice has been a cornerstone of English and British identity. This lecture will look at how this prejudice grew out of the persecution of Protestants in the 1550s, at the idealistic historian who crystallised it, and at the political crises, real and invented, which turned his text into a paranoiacs’ charter.