Music for Christmas

Speaking of whether the state is supreme over the Church, if you're looking for some beautiful Christmas music but something different than the usual fare, I heartily recommend the 2010 CD “Puer Natus Est: Tudor Music for Advent & Christmas” by Stile Antico, an English early music ensemble. The CD features music by the great English recusant Catholic composers Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, including Tallis’s Christmas Mass, probably composed in 1554 for the arrival in England of Philip II of Spain to be married to Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Put it on your iTunes this season while reading Eamon Duffy’s recent rehabilitation of Mary I's reign, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (Yale, 2009).