The great Protestant Reformation took place in Europe from approximately 1517 to either 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg or 1648 with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia1. There were many movements that were sparked due to Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Each movement’s leader specified biblical and/or theological reasons for separating from the Roman Catholic Church (henceforth abbreviated as RCC) and it is doctrines. In contrast, however, the English Reformation occurred due to political and personal reasons2 of King Henry VIII. England’s separation from the RCC, while tumultuous, seemed altogether inevitable.
Henry Tudor was born on June 28, 1491, in Greenwich near London, England3. He was one of four surviving children of King Henry VII and Elizabeth York. As a child, Henry excelled in book learning and benefited from private teaching throughout his entire childhood. He seemed highly competitive, evidenced by his six-foot stature, charismatic athleticism and the many jousting tournaments in which he participated4. His father had thought of Henry becoming a church official, which was appropriate for the second son during that time. Unbeknownst to either of them, Henry’s older brother Arthur Tudor would meet his untimely demise at age 15 after only four months of marriage to Catherine of Aragon3. Henry was now set to ascend the throne of England in 1509 when King Henry VII passed. Six weeks after taking his father’s throne he would marry his first of six wives, his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon5. Their marriage and eventual annulment (which technically was a divorce) gave King Henry VIII his supposed reasoning and method for detaching from the RCC.
Initially, King Henry VII was against Martin Luther and the explanations put forth in his Ninety-five Theses. Henry still held to his Catholic beliefs and church doctrine. So much so that he earned the title “Defender of the Faith” from Pope Leo X for his defense of the Catholic sacraments against Martin Luther’s analysis of them and detraction of all but two6. Henry’s loyalty and allegiance to the RCC began to dwindle with his inability to produce a male child as heir to the throne:
“Although Catherine gave birth to Henry’s first child, a daughter, Mary, Henry grew frustrated by the lack of a male heir and began keeping two mistresses at his beckon. His philandering ways were tame by the standards of his contemporaries, but they nonetheless resulted in his first divorce in 1533”4.
Henry blamed Catherine for not giving him a male and sought annulment and banishment of Catherine and Mary. In this situation, recognizing Mary as heir to the throne meant depriving England of state independence. The only way out of the circumstances Henry VIII to see a divorce. In addition, the court’s fawning lawyers were quick to find a reason for dissolving the marriage. After 18 years of marriage, the king suddenly remembered that, before marrying him, Catherine was the wife of his elder brother, tragically killed at an early age. Thus, the union of Henry and Catherine was considered incestuous, so their marriage could be declared null and void.
He wanted a divorce, but the Pope, influenced by Emperor Charles V, was both unwilling and unable to grant Henry’s wish7. The moral nature of Clement VII and his successor, Paul III, was determined by good reason: Henry VIII’s first wife was the sister of the Spanish king and German emperor Charles V, whose possessions included most of Italy. In addition, Charles V pursued a broad foreign policy to create a universal Catholic state. Ideologically this policy coincided with the theocratic position of the popes8. Henry VIII’s divorce proceedings were the occasion for England’s long overdue break with Rome.
Without the support of the RCC, the English Church had many questions what the impending separation would cause. These questions were temporarily resolved with the documents titled “Submission of the Clergy,” which gave all religious authority to the sitting monarch and the “Ecclesiastical Appeals Act,” which broadened the scope of the monarchy’s reign and authority over all people in England for religious and political affairs9. Now that spiritual and political power was secured, King Henry could move forward with his annulment.
“Action called for a revolution, and the revolution required a man who could conceive and execute it. That man was Thomas Cromwell, who, in April 1532, won control of the council… The revolution consisted of the decision that the English church should separate from Rome, becoming a spiritual department of state effectively under the rule of the king as God’s deputy on earth. The revolution that he had not intended gave the king his wish: in January 1533, he married Anne Boleyn; in May, a new archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, presided over the formality of a trial that declared the first marriage annulled”10.
The last thread to sever the English Church’s ties to the RCC was the passing of the “Act of Supremacy.” This act essentially created the Church of England and the Anglican church11. All canonical relations with Rome were terminated, and even the church treasury was equated with state property. In the next few years, Henry VIII dissolved all the monasteries of England, their lands were partly given to the nobles loyal to him, and others he sold and greatly enriched the state treasury, that is, the kings.
King Henry’s reign and the beginning stages of the reformation did not change much concerning church doctrine and practices. In fact, Henry seemed content with separating and keeping things the same. This brought opponents who refused to acquiesce to the monarchy rule of the new Church of England, which in turn brought about the persecution of the non-compliant laity. One such martyr of great importance was William Tyndale. Prior to his martyrdom in 1536, Tyndale was able to complete his translation of the Bible to English from original Greek and Hebrew sources12. He also made great use of the then-recent invention of the printing press for mass production. His version, however, was rejected by the church in England when he introduced it.
After the death of Henry VIII, England returned for a time to Catholicism. But the reign of his daughter Mary I, nicknamed Bloody, was short-lived. Soon the Protestants took over again. An obedient parliament abolished all church reforms under her and restored papal authority in England. But Mary failed to return to the monasteries the property distributed under her father and brother to new owners. The queen resumed executions for the faith, and among those burned at the stake under her was Cranmer. Mary was even called Bloody for her cruelty, but her drastic measures only alienated the people from Catholicism. When she died, after a short reign, she was succeeded by another daughter of Henry VIII – Elizabeth13.
On her accession to the throne, she, also using acts of parliament, restored the Anglican Church to what it had been under Edward VI. Abandoning, as a woman, the hierarchical title of “head of the church,” she adopted a similar title of “supreme ruler of ecclesiastical and secular affairs. The “Act of Uniformity,” issued by parliament, mandated that worship be conducted according to the new English Syllabus. The whole doctrine of the Church of England, as outlined in the Thirty-nine Articles of Faith, was also approved by parliament14. The Anglican Church is still preserved as it was in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign.
The Anglican Reformation only strengthened royal power, and Elizabeth enjoyed it to the fullest extent for the rest of her life. In the Middle Ages, parliament generally convened annually; under the Tudors, it averaged once every two years. The ecclesiastical lords (bishops) were entirely dependent on the crown. The secular lords were usually of new origin and tried to ennoble their lands cautiously and slowly. But the fact that the Tudors carried out their ecclesiastical reforms by parliamentary resolutions later allowed parliament to invoke its rights in matters of faith.
Bibliography
“Henry VIII”. 2017. Biography.
Nickens, Mark. 2020. A Survey of the History of Global Christianity. Nashville: B&H Academic.
Morill, John S., Elton, Geoffrey R. 2022. “Henry VIII”.
Sheils, W.J. 1989. The English Reformation 1530-1570. London: Routledge.
“The Reformation”. 2021. History.
Ryrie, Alec. 2017. “Prologue: When did the English Reformation happen? A historiographical curiosity and its interpretative consequences”. Études Épistémè [En ligne] 32.
Wilkinson, Freddie. 2022. “The protestant reformation”. National Geographic, 2022.
Footnotes
- “The Reformation”. 2021.
- Nickens, Mark, A Survey of the History of Global Christianity, B&H Academic, 2020.
- Morill, John S., Elton, Geoffrey R. 2022. “Henry VIII”.
- “Henry VIII”. 2017. Biography.
- Sheils, W.J., The English Reformation 1530-1570, Routledge.1989.
- Nickens, Mark, A Survey of the History of Global Christianity, B&H Academic, 2020.
- Sheils, W.J., The English Reformation 1530-1570, Routledge.1989.
- Nickens, Mark, A Survey of the History of Global Christianity, B&H Academic, 2020.
- Same.
- Morill, John S., Elton, Geoffrey R. 2022. “Henry VIII”.
- Nickens.
- Nickens, Mark, A Survey of the History of Global Christianity, B&H Academic, 2020.
- Ryrie, Alec. 2017. “Prologue: When did the English Reformation happen? A historiographical curiosity and its interpretative consequences”.
- Wilkinson, Freddie. 2022. “The protestant reformation”.