Maureen Quilligan

The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of chronic destabilisation in which institutions of traditional authority were challenged and religious wars seemed unending. Yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacifist culture, cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers—most notably, Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de' Medici—whose lives were intertwined not...

The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of chronic destabilisation in which institutions of traditional authority were challenged and religious wars seemed unending. Yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacifist culture, cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers—most notably, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Catherine de' Medici—whose lives were intertwined not...