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In her final hours, Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote a powerful letter to her brother-in-law, King Henry III of France. It was a farewell steeped in faith, defiance, and reflection. Denied the Catholic rituals that should have accompanied her death, Mary used her final words to reclaim the sacred acts denied to her in life and captivity.
In this illuminating lunchtime lecture, researcher Marlee Merson explores how Mary’s last letter reveals her enduring devotion, her understanding of ritual, and her awareness of her own death as both a political and spiritual event. Using her postgraduate research into women’s roles in rituals of death in late medieval and early modern France, Marlee explains how Mary’s final moments linked her to a long tradition of devotion, even while in exile and facing execution.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) by Flemish School, image credit: Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Museum, reproduced with permission.
