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Pope Pius V and Queen Elizabeth I

Regnans in Excelsis was a papal bull issued on February 25, 1570 by Pope Pius V declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her.

The bull also declared any subject of Elizabeth who was loyal to her excommunicated from the Catholic Church. The name of the bull is taken from the first three words of its text, written in Latin and meaning "ruling from on high" (a reference to God).^[1] Among the queen's offenses, "She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics."

Pius had previously reconciled with Mary I, who returned the Church of England to Roman Catholicism. After Mary's death, Elizabeth returned the Church to Protestantism.

The bull provoked the English government into taking more repressive actions against the Jesuits, who they feared were acting in the interests of Spain and the papacy.

To relieve the pressures on Roman Catholics in England, and to conceal the genuinely subversive nature of the bull, Pope Gregory XIII issued a clarification in 1580, explaining that Catholics should obey the queen in all civil matters, until such time as a suitable opportunity presented itself for her overthrow.

In 1588 Pope Sixtus V, in support of the Spanish Armada, renewed the solemn bull of excommunication against Queen Elizabeth I, for the regicide of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 as well as the previously catalogued offences against the Roman Catholic Church.^[2] During the threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada, it transpired that most of the Roman Catholic residents in England remained loyal, and that those who were a real threat to the throne, like William Cardinal Allen and Robert Parsons, were already exiles.

• Religion in the United Kingdom

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Regnans in Excelsis