by
Damien F. Mackey
“In 1532 a priest named William Peto preached an
Easter sermon in which he asserted that that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who
were in the congregation listening,
were just like the Old Testament tyrant Ahab and his painted queen Jezebel”.
Kyra
Cornelius Kramer
We read about a new book, The Jezebel Effect, at:
https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/the-slut-shamed-anne-boleyn-by-kyra-cornelius-kramer/
To celebrate the release of her new book The
Jezebel Effect: Why the Slut Shaming of Famous Queens Still Matters on
Kindle, Kyra Cornelius Kramer has written this thought-provoking guest article
on Anne Boleyn for us here at The Anne Boleyn Files. I do hope you enjoy it.
Over to Kyra…
In
1532 a priest named William Peto preached an Easter sermon in which he asserted
that that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who were in the congregation listening,
were just like the Old Testament tyrant Ahab and his painted queen Jezebel.1
Ahab was considered to have been a king who had turned his face from the
correct path of worshiping God, and it is was clearly an insult to Henry and a
jab at his break from Catholicism. However, Jezebel was considered WORSE
because she was seen as the harlot who had used sex to enslave Ahab and turn
him from the Lord. Anne, like Jezebel, was therefore the scheming temptress who
had dragged a formerly-good king down into the muck with her womanly wiles. In
spite of the historical evidence to the contrary, Anne Boleyn’s reputation as a
jezebel and harlot has clung to her name like the stench of skunk spray for
five centuries.
Anne
Boleyn is, in the opinion of many, “the most controversial woman in English
history. She is shaped by preoccupations with the mystery of female power,
described as a witch, bitch, temptress, cold opportunist… a woman whose power
is feared, her gender mistrusted”.2 She has been castigated as “a
whore, a home wrecker, [and] a soulless schemer”.3. In novels and
plays, on television and in the movies, Anne Boleyn continues to slink about as
the ultimate femme fatale. Even today history buffs online comment that Anne
was “a piece of work” who “deserved to die” because she poisoned Henry’s first
queen, calling Anne a “sociopath”, “cruel and crazy”, a “wack-job”, a “horrible
person” who “stole someone’s husband”, and “sly” … all before declaring Anne
did things she patently and provably did not do.
In
her book The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Susan Bordo talks about how many
media representations of Anne, “inevitably led to recycling the image of Anne
Boleyn as the seductive, scheming Other Woman. That’s the classic soapy element
of the story, after all: sexpot steals husband from mousy, menopausal first
wife. [Michael Hirst, the creator of the Showtime series The Tudors] says he
never intended this, and attributes it less to the script than to “deep
cultural projections.” He had initially seen Anne … as a victim of her father’s
ambitions, and believed he was writing the script to emphasize that. He
was surprised when “critics started to trot this line out: ‘here she is, just a
manipulative bitch.’ Well, actually I hadn’t written it like
that. But they couldn’t get out of the stereotypes that had been handed
down to them and that’s what they thought they were seeing on the screen. It
didn’t matter what they were actually seeing. They had already decided that
Anne Boleyn was this Other Woman, this manipulative bitch”.4
Even
some academic historians have jumped on the slut shaming bandwagon. In 2010
historical biographer G. W. Bernard wrote a book about Anne Boleyn in which he
said, “it remains my own hunch that Anne had indeed committed adultery with
Norris, probably with Smeaton, possibly with Weston, and was then the victim of
the most appalling bad luck” of having her actions come to light.5
This led to tabloids and newspapers trumpeting headlines such as, “Anne Boleyn
DID have an affair with her brother: The poem that ‘proves’ the adultery of
Henry VIII’s queen”.6
….
Even
Henry’s actions were her fault. Inasmuch as Henry “frequently made a
public fool of himself in his fervor for Anne and his love for her”,10
Anne has been blamed for “making” the king act like a buffoon. Much of the
hatred of Anne Boleyn in her own time stems from the fact that a “love-struck
middle-aged man was an unsettling sight. When that ageing man was a king… the
uneasiness grew, for here was an all-powerful being in thrall to a woman… the
obvious way to absolve that feeling of unseemliness in the spectator was to
blame Anne”.11
Everyone
blamed Anne. Katherina blamed Anne for Henry’s desire for a divorce. Wolsey
blamed Anne for his political and economic losses, not the king and certainly
not his own actions. Chapuys blamed Anne for the schism between Catholicism and
England, not the actions of the Holy See that had inspired an entire reform
movement throughout Europe. Princess Mary blamed Anne for the king’s emotional
cruelty toward his once pampered eldest child. A large chunk of the population
blamed her for Henry’s lusts. It must have been very hard for the English when
Anne was dead, because she took the ultimate scapegoat with her to the grave.
Anne’s
true crimes were not those of sexual impropriety, but those of gender
inversion. She was too “masculine” to be a good girl. A man — a king no
less — fell in love with her and acted “feminine” in his adoration, which had
to have been her fault somehow. She was too smart to be discounted, and she was
determined to bring about religious reform that would flout the existing
conventions. Like other evangelical women she was outspoken about her religious
opinions. She made a mockery of the status quo. Everything that was supposed to
mark the attributes of a “good girl” – that she be passive, demur, humble,
effacing, docile, and dominated – were reversed in the bold and determined Anne
Boleyn.
Mackey’s comment: Mmmmm, sounds a lot like Queen Jezebel if one
substitutes, for Anne’s Protestant evangelism, Baalism!
“If Henry didn’t
listen to Friar Peto’s prophecy, or the holy mother church, he would suffer the
same fate as King Ahab and have his blood licked by dogs”.
The Protestant Jezebel:
Friar Peto’s Vicious Attack against Anne Boleyn
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
On Easter Sunday 31st March
1532, Friar William Peto, Princess Mary’s confessor, preached a controversial
sermon at the Franciscan Chapel of Greenwich Palace. The sermon was aimed at
the King and his intended bride Anne Boleyn. The Friar, being the Princess’
confessor and head of the Franciscan Observants, was a staunch supporter of the
Princess and her mother. In his sermon he compared the King of England to the
biblical King Ahab whose refusal to listen to Elijah’s prophecies led to his
divine punishment, dying in agony from the wounds inflicted to him during a
battle. In addition, the King had sinned by marrying the pagan Jezebel who
brought with her, her pagan priests and the adoration of her many gods.
“The King” Peto said, “was brought to Samaria”
to be buried. When the chariot carrying his body broke down and “the dogs licked up his blood, as
the word of the Lord had declared.”
Henry VIII wasn’t the
only one under attack by the Friar’s vicious words.
The Tudor era was no
different than the medieval world ….
Mackey’s comment: That is an interesting statement in the context
of a revised AD history.
… where women were
the scapegoats of all the country’s problems. In this case the scapegoat was
Anne Boleyn. Perhaps in what Peto was unique was that his sermon included the
King, instead of focusing solely on Anne. Kings were after all anointed
figures, ordained by the Catholic heads of their countries; they were seen as
infallible. If anyone had a complaint against the King, they would not point
fingers at him; instead, they would blame his councilors, his mistress or in
this case his intended bride. Peto’s attack to Henry, while brutal, [were] no
more brutal than those to Anne whom he compared (ironically) [with] Jezebel,
Ahab’s wife. I say this ironically because Jezebel was an idolater in her
adoptive country’s eyes. Their priests worshipped great figures, statues, and
had sumptuous rituals which were unlike those of the Jewish tradition who
forbid images. Anne, while advocating for a different religion, was no pagan
and records show that she was a strict mistress who kept her household in
order. When she became Queen, she ordered an English translation of the bible
and told her servants and guests, that everyone was welcome to borrow it or
read from it. She was the one who introduced Henry to religious reform by
giving him her copy of Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man and Fish’s The
Supplication of Beggars. While much has been said about Anne’s religion, it is
likely that she and her father were not “more
Lutheran than Luther himself” like Chapuys described. It is very likely
that Anne agreed with some of Luther’s ideas, but was more influenced by the
Swiss and French thinkers whom her previous mistress’ sister-in-law (Marguerite
of Navarre) admired. Perhaps it was this that made her in the eyes of her many
a purely ambitious, amoral, irreligious persona who like Jezebel would bring
doom to her kingdom. ….
(Jezebel
meeting her tragic fate (pushed out from a window by her adoptive people).
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