Editing Elizabethan era (section)

==Religion==
{{Main|Elizabethan Religious Settlement|Tudor period#English Reformation}}
[[File:Copperplate map St Pauls.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Detail from the [[Copperplate map of London]] (1553–1559), showing [[Old St Paul's Cathedral|St Paul's Cathedral]]]]
Elizabeth managed to moderate and quell the intense religious passions of the time. This was in significant contrast to previous and succeeding eras of marked religious violence.<ref>{{cite book|author=Patrick Collinson|author-link=Patrick Collinson|title=Elizabethans|url=https://archive.org/details/elizabethans00coll|url-access=limited|publisher=Hambledon|location=London|year=2003|page=[https://archive.org/details/elizabethans00coll/page/n57 43]|chapter=The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I|isbn=978-1-85285-400-3}}</ref>

Elizabeth said "I have no desire to make windows into men's souls". Her desire to moderate the religious persecutions of previous Tudor reigns – the persecution of Catholics under Edward VI, and of Protestants under Mary I – appears to have had a moderating effect on English society. Elizabeth, Protestant, but undogmatic one,<ref>Christopher Haigh, English Reformations, Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, 1993 p.&nbsp;237 {{ISBN|978-0-19-822162-3}},</ref> authorizing the [[Book of Common Prayer (1559)|1559 ''Book of Common Prayer'']] which effectively reinstated the [[Book of Common Prayer (1552)|1552 ''Book of Common Prayer'']] with modifications which made clear that the Church of England believed in the (spiritual) Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion but without a definition how in favor of leaving this a mystery, and she had the [[Black Rubric]] removed from the Articles of Faith: this had allowed kneeling to receive communion without implying that by doing so it meant the real and essential presence of Christ in the bread and wine: she believed it so. She was not able to get an unmarried clergy or the Protestant Holy Communion celebrated to look like a Mass.<ref>Haigh, op. cit. p.&nbsp;241</ref> The Apostolic Succession was maintained, the institution of the church continued without a break (with 98% of the clergy remaining at their posts) and the attempt to ban music in church was defeated. The Injunctions of 1571 forbade any doctrines that did not conform to the teaching of the Church Fathers and the Catholic Bishops. The Queen's hostility to strict Calvinistic doctrines blocked the Radicals.

Almost no original theological thought came out of the English Reformation; instead, the Church relied on the Catholic Consensus of the first Four Ecumenical Councils. The preservation of many Catholic doctrines and practices was the cuckoo's nest that eventually resulted in the formation of the Via Media during the 17th century.<ref>Diarmaid MacCullough, ''The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603'', 2001, pp.&nbsp;24–29 {{ISBN|0-333-69331-0}}, "The cuckoo in the nest", p.&nbsp;64, 78–86; English Reformations, Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors, 1993, pp.&nbsp;240–242, 29–295.</ref> She spent the rest of her reign ferociously fending off radical reformers and Roman Catholics who wanted to modify the Settlement of Church affairs: The Church of England was Protestant, "with its peculiar arrested development in Protestant terms, and the ghost which it harboured of an older world of Catholic traditions and devotional practice".<ref>MacCullough, p.&nbsp;85.</ref>

For several years, Elizabeth refrained from persecuting Catholics because she was against Catholicism, not her Catholic subjects if they made no trouble. In 1570, [[Pope Pius V]] declared Elizabeth a heretic who was not a legitimate queen and that her subjects no longer owed her obedience. The pope sent Jesuits and seminarians to secretly evangelize and support Catholics. After several plots to overthrow her, Catholic clergy were mostly considered to be traitors and were pursued aggressively in England. Often priests were tortured or executed after capture unless they cooperated with the English authorities. People who publicly supported Catholicism were excluded from the professions; sometimes fined or imprisoned.<ref name="B. Black, 1959 pp. 166"/> This was justified because Catholics were not persecuted for their religion but punished for being traitors who supported the Queen's Spanish foe; in practice, however, Catholics perceived it as religious persecution and regarded those executed as martyrs.