A HISTORIAN backed by the Vatican has attacked the film 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' as a "distorted anti-papal travesty" that risks dividing the West just when it should be rediscovering its "common Christian roots" in the face of Islam.Writing in Avvenire, the official organ of the Italian Bishops Conference, Franco Cardini said that the film formed part of a "concerted attack on Catholicism, the Holy See and Papism" by an alliance of atheists and "apocalyptic Christians".
Professor Cardini, who holds the chair of medieval history at Florence University and taught formerly at the Lateran University in Rome, a Vatican body, said that its aim was to "secularise and de-Christianise" Europe.
'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' stars Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth, Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh and Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's spymaster.
It was praised widely at the Rome Film Festival last month, with Italian critics describing Ms Blanchett's performance as magnificent.
Professor Cardini said "a film which so profoundly and perversely falsifies history cannot be judged a good film".
It had potentially offered "a contribution to the understanding of a moment of vital importance."
Instead, the Virgin Queen was portrayed as "an able politician and courageous sovereign" while King Philip II of Spain was shown as a "ferocious, fanatical Catholic, dreaming of subjugating the the world to the Catholic faith".
The defeat of Spain's "invincible armada" was due to a storm, but was presented in the film as a "shining victory for free thought against the forces of darkness in the form of the Inquisition," Professor Cardini said.
He added that Elizabeth I had also "exterminated the Catholics of Scotland and Ireland," and had Mary Queen of Scots, her own cousin, executed in 1587 "after an illegal trial".
He slammed the film as "perverse anti-Catholic propaganda".
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