Cromwell's ferocious anti-Catholicism and anti-Irishism
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Cromwell
zooeyhall — 17 years ago(October 04, 2008 10:31 AM)
In the scene where Cromwell and others from Parliament first meet with Charles I, Cromwell launches into a ferocious denounciation of the Catholic religionreferring to it not only as a religion but a political movement seemingly bent on conquering the world. As an American, it strongly resembles to me the anti-communist hysteria that was prevalent here in the 1950's.
Also Cromwell and others seem to have a strongly anti-Irish bias, as displayed in the horror and disgust when it becomes known that Charles I had planned to bring an Irish army to England to help him in his struggle.
Was the movie a true relation of Cromwell's beliefs? Were his attitudes typical of the English in the 17th century? -
Xumuon — 17 years ago(December 27, 2008 01:41 AM)
"Was the movie a true relation of Cromwell's beliefs? Were his attitudes typical of the English in the 17th century?"
Throughout the 17thC from Guy Fawkes to the 'Glorious Revolution', England was paranoid about Catholicism and fanatically opposed to it in every sense. Cromwell was undoubtedly the darkest but by no means the only manifestation of that. Cromwell committed so many atrocities against Ireland partially because the Thirty Years War led him and other calvinist fanatics to believe that this was now ok, was permissible after it had been done in Europe. People mention Drogheda and Wexford only because those were towns, throughout the countryside his armies murdered Irish at will in numbers that dwarf those who fell in those cities. Many more fell to famine as they lost their land and were driven out, others to slavery or pestilence.
These dramas can only give very limited truth, for example where he complains that Catholicism was conquering the world, this is ridiculous. The Catholic Hapsburgs had just been greatly weakened during the 30 years war (a war in which a French Cardinal led Catholic France on the same side as the Protestants, a war in which Protestant Sweden arose for the first time as a power) as a result of this war Protestants would enjoy ever more power in Europe. And yes the 'hysteria' was whipped up purposefully as some fanatical puritans like the poet Milton (who was probably crazy and certainly obsessed with torture and satan) spread lies suggesting that hundreds of thousands of Protestant colonists had been massacred in battles in Ireland in 1641, the Commie witchhunt is not a bad analogy.
Ireland's problem was she was without allies and Catholic during an era of ostensibly religious warfare and geographically located behind a powerful Protestant nation. It was a good opportunity for Cromwell, and Cromwell and his army would do well out of the spoils, seizing the land and using Ireland's (then) magnificent ancient forests for building ships - their long term goal was to build up their navy so they could compete with the Netherlands. Even the Catholic nations of Europe such as Spain and France did well out of it, because it drove vast numbers of soldiers to those nations were they swelled the ranks of their armies, the Irish mercenaries were greatly in demand and European nations competed with each other for them. Despite all the puritan language about devils and unChristian Catholics and so on we can say greed played the major role. -
james1986london — 17 years ago(January 04, 2009 12:29 PM)
Yes. The belief that Catholicism and its equivalent of the Waffen-SS, the Jesuits, would use any means necessary to impose Catholicism on England was widespread and most had a hatred of the Pope as Antichrist. In the international context, Protestantism was losing ground in Europe and at home the policies of Charles and his Archbishop, William Laud, seemed to be imposing popery on the Church of England. So for Protestants like Cromwell the Catholic threat was very real and had to be resisted as the force of Satan.