1560 AD England-Wales ISOT to 340 BC

The Protestant Catholic divide is a serious issue, and the English population was far from homogeneously or hegemonic ally Protestant in 1560, nor even quite there at the time of Elizabeth's death.

I get that religious disputes of faith were deeply felt, and deadly serious, though only super controversial for the prior 26 since 1534. On the other, Catholic-Protestant divides and separate senses of identity were not necessarily as hardened as they would be later, and the removal of the Pope and entire non English ecclesiastical hierarchy, and all European Christian power politics could do a great deal to "lower the temperature" of religious disputes within England, and set grounds for reconciliation. Much of the power stakes are reduced, and discussions become more about theology, practices, and ceremonies, without anybody disputing the King or Queen is the senior Bishop appointing authority on Earth for now.



Certainly not, I imagine the English government of Elizabeth and her loyal servants and spies under Sir Walsingham would be quite watchful or wary of any elite self-exiles trying to set off and set up their own shingle in any renegade statelets. Especially in the British Isles or the European continent of course, but even overseas, though renegades might find it easier to get lost and not be found overseas.



Point taken, North America is a potential refuge, further away from where the Pope they are loyal to is *not*, but one where pursuit and destruction is less certain, but affecting the home country from there is more difficult.



Certainly, but keep in mind, it is important not to read back in time some of the hardened identities and divides of the sects that might be more subject to reconciliation of the vast majority of clergy and lay people under the extraordinary circumstances *all* English people and *all* Christians of whatever theological and apostolic preference find themselves in.

See good references here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicanism

From the above in particular, full-blown Puritan theology/ideology and definite polarization into Low Church and High Church factions hadn't occurred yet:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Common_Prayer

I would also note that on the Counter-Reformation Front, as of 1560, the Council of Trent had *started* its work, but not completed it (that would be 1563). Wikipedia does not date the French Wars of Religion to until 1562 (and no St. Bartholomew's Day massacre until 1572). And the Dutch Revolt not breaking out until 1566. The main religious wars or governmental strife thus far had been the quite brief Schmalkaldic War of 1546-47 in Germany, turmoil associated with Henry's Church dispossession moves and Mary's Protestant persecutions in England. Also the Keppel War in Switzerland where Zwingli was killed. Charles V and Martin Luther in their lifetimes spent of lot of time while confronting each other also negotiating, maneuvering, resisting actual war, while not compromising, with Charles working on other higher priority military tasks than Protestant suppression.

I get it, and emigration is logical for the purpose of simple escape and refuge alone, even without an intent to make a triumphant comeback.



I'm not sure this reads of the arc of sectarian conflict, the hardening of separate, irreconcilable Protestant and Catholic identities in England and the British Isles, and English anti-Catholic paranoia and Catholic's paranoia and persecution complex, entirely accurately. Especially if we consider things beyond mere numbers of violent acts or judicially ordered penalties, or high clergy martyrs, and consider the British Isles as a whole, and not just England itself. The Battle of Boyne and religiously inflected Irish plantations and Protestant ascendancy in Ireland and Protestant Wind all remain ahead.

It just seems to me that, in practice, Catholic dissidents, who can't abide the Church of England and the bastard Elizabeth as Queen and head of the Church with such passion they have to flee England have crap options in a pagan world, and high temptation to reconcile. There is no Christian Church, no Churches, no Congregations, no Churches, Bishops, Priests, and no Pope outside of England. Don't believe it? Visit the Vestal Virgins in Rome who've never heard of Jesus or the high priests of the Persian satrapy of Judea who've never heard of him either.

If traveling and settling among, and hopefully converting, heathens, committed English Catholics would have to carry any liturgical works, relics, altars, consecrated priests, monks, nuns, with them into places that would be comparative wilderness and frighteningly unknown and unfamiliar to Englishmen.....on behalf of a Pope, and Cardinals and Bishops that are no longer on this earth.

They will be highly dependent on their class of people ordained and trained to administer all the sacraments and with the full working knowledge of Church Latin, to keep up the full Latin Rite and liturgy that keeps them distinct from the Church of England. But they're comparatively smaller numbers, and rustic exile settings will prevent them from matching the splendor of home cathedrals for a generation or more. They won't have the wealth and diversity of craftsmen and supporting infrastructure to "go for baroque". Ironically their exiled Catholic chapels could end up like rather austere Congregationalist Churches and Quaker Meeting houses, and they may need to de facto adopt many Protestant habits and rely on lay people to continue different types of services and traditions in the absence of sufficient consecrated priests.

In the meantime, Church of England propaganda will try to propagate the unity and brotherhood of Christians, urging everyone to come home to the Church, and the English people to show the people of the world the way with one voice. The Church of England is both at the same time the Church of the Kingdom and Universal and Catholic. While suspicions will linger, obedient CoE Bishops and Priests will be talking a lot about forgiveness, grace and bygones being bygones. The extraordinary ISOT event will create a "permission structure" for many people to compromise or reconcile on theological and ecclesiastical matters they would not have been able to otherwise.

My point with my comment and references to later events in the British Isles, especially Ireland, hinting at the campaigns of the wars of ECW and wars of the three kingdoms, the Glorious Revolution, plantations and Protestant Ascendancy, is that this all meant another two-hundred years of England fighting Catholic enemies in OTL, foreign and domestic, in which to further "other-ize" Catholicism and and intertwine its own patriotism with Protestantism.

In this ATL, none of that is happening, England, under a pretty solid Elizabethan-Walsingham-ian administration, has no enemies in the world, much less its neighborhood of its class. It will be reshaping and redefining its immediate security environment in Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland, and likely across the straits of Dover, Normandy and Brittany, rather rapidly and with ease, conquering and overawe-ing local pagan peoples, swamping them with numbers, converting survivors to the "right" CoE form of Christianity, and basically thoroughly immigrating them into Tudor England without continuous cultivated traditions of national defiance against England, and without strong anti-English patrons.

The existence of an evil Papist other threatening Merrie England will alongside foreign tyrannical Kings will be less important to England's identity, England's identity will be more about glorious expansion, trade, expanding the light of civilization and Christianity, defeating and holding back vicious and uncouth, but ultimately rather weak, and spiritually unchallenging primitives.

RELIGION.............RELIGION....

RELIGION!

Well, about that...

Stellar observations, contact with lands outside English boundaries themselves with people speaking Celtic tongues, confirmed with even greater precision after merchant exploratory voyaging to the Mediterranean, Italy/Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Holy Land and Persia will absolutely confirm that England has been sent back before the time of Christ, but to a time about which there is a decent amount of Classical and Old Testament writing about, especially in the central and eastern Mediterranean.

Churchmen of England can certainly put that in their pipe and smoke it!

It will be in their personal, material, political, social, psychological self-interest to come up with reasons and justifications, no matter how convoluted or arcane, why Christians should still worship Christ and God in the Trinitarian form despite Christ neither being born nor crucified as man yet.

Churchmen will worry about 'Judaizing' heresies, among Christians in general and their own ranks, and there will be secret practitioners of the idea and some public advocates of it who will be likely punished as heretics. The Bishops and any Cardinals and Archbishops gather together any Church scholars to come up, quickly with anticipatory arguments and explanation for why, even though they now living apparently in the world 60 years before the Crucifixion of Jesus, his sacrifice for our sins, and the replacement of the Old Testament covenant, the best way to worship God right not is still to worship the Holy Trinity including the as yet unborn and uncrucified Jesus (perhaps he's somehow eternally born and crucified?) and live for the next 60 years under the Old Testament covenant as Orthodox Jews.

Out of the people who actually attempt to do any Judaizing or imitation of Old Testament living, openly or secretly, it would be mainly a batch of baptized Christians doing cosplay s Jews/Israelites/Hebrews, using Biblical sources or found Jewish books for guidance.

This is because Jews still technically were not legally permitted in England, ever since their expulsion by medieval Norman Kings. The ban likely was not airtight in the increasingly complex and interconnected economy of late Henrician and early Elizabethan England, so there probably actually were some people arguably Jewish or born Jewish in England, numbering anywhere from the single digits to 50 or so, who may have be Spanish or Portuguese Jewish-born merchant conversos/New Christians, Italian bankers either converted, crypto-Jewish, or simply only practicing worship quietly at home, possibly a similar situation for a few Provencal, French or Rhenish Jews in commerce but religiously on the "down-low".

Now don't blow this "Judaizing" or Old Testament nostalgia idea out of proportion. I do not think this would be a mass movement of any sort. A 'Judaizing' heresy would probably never amount to small groups in some towns or universities, never getting larger than a dozen people, before getting found out and suppressed. Basically it would be just enough to motivate some out of proportion moral panics and justify the CoE putting out explanations for how and why it still makes sense to be believing Christians before the historical Jesus Christ.