Henry Viii And The English Reformation
HENRY VIII AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION
If any event may be said to have prepared the ground for the translation of the Bible into English, it was the Reformation in England, which began under Henry VIII. Henry came to the English throne in 1509, and set himself the agenda of making the realm of England a significant European power. The origins of the English Reformation are probably best understood in terms of Henry VIII's concern to ensure a smooth transition of power after his death through producing a son as heir to the English throne. His marriage to the Spanish Catherine of Aragon had produced a daughter, the future queen, Mary Tudor. The marriage had not only failed to produce the requisite son and heir, it had also reflected the political realities of an earlier generation, which saw an alliance between England and Spain as essential to a sound foreign policy. The weakness of this assumption had become clear by 1525, when Charles V declined to marry Henry's daughter by Catherine. Henry, therefore, began the process by which he could divorce Catherine.
Under normal circumstances, this procedure would not have been expected to encounter any formidable obstacles. An appeal to the Pope to annul the marriage would usually have secured the desired result without difficulty. Popes were generally open to granting favors to kings; after all, they might need a return favor in due course. However, the situation regarding Henry VIII was not normal. At this time, the city of Rome was under virtual siege by the army of the emperor Charles V, and the Pope (Clement VII) was feeling somewhat threatened as a result. Catherine of Aragon was the aunt of Charles V. Clement would hardly wish to offend Charles V at such a sensitive moment by allowing Henry to divorce one of his relatives. As a result, the request for a divorce failed. As if to add insult to injury, Clement VII informed Henry that he would be excommunicated if he married again.
Henry VIII was less than happy about this decision. He wanted a male heir badly, and felt that the Pope's intransigence was indefensible. Henry's response was to begin a program of persuasion, at both national and international levels, designed to assert both the independence of England as a separate province of the Church, and the autonomy of the English king. Henry wanted to break free from the power of the Pope by being able to take control of the affairs of the English Church. On November 3, 1529, Henry convened a Parliament with the intention of reducing the power of both Church and clergy. At this stage, it may be noted, Parliament lacked the independence that would become such a significant feature of English politics in the early seventeenth century under James I.
The English clergy initially refused to concede these points, fearing an erosion of their influence and status. This prompted Henry to bring in more severe measures to help the English clergy realize the errors of their ways. The most important of these took place over the period 1530–31, during which Henry argued that the English clergy, by virtue of their support for Rome, were guilty of praemunire (a technical offense that can be thought of as a form of treason, in that it involves allegiance to a foreign power—namely, the papacy). Faced with this threat—which, incidentally, could incur the death penalty—the clergy reluctantly agreed to at least some of Henry's demands for recognition of his ecclesiastical authority. Henry knew perfectly well that the threat of a traitor's death would help his clergy cope with their theological difficulties over his demands.
Henry was presented with an opportunity for the further advancement of his aims in August 1532, when the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, conveniently died. Henry replaced Warham with Thomas Cranmer, who had earlier indicated his strong support for Henry's divorce proceedings. Cranmer was finally consecrated archbishop (possibly against his will) on March 30, 1533. Meanwhile, Henry had begun an affair with Anne Boleyn. Anne became pregnant in December 1532. The pregnancy raised all kinds of legal niceties. Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled by an English court in May 1533, allowing Anne to be crowned queen on 1 June. Her daughter, Elizabeth Tudor—a future queen of England—was born on September 7.
Henry's divorce of Catherine immediately led to the threat of excommunication. Henry now determined to follow through the course of action on which he had embarked, by which his supreme political and religious authority within England would be recognized. A series of acts were imposed in 1534. Among them, the Succession Act declared that the crown would pass to Henry's children. The Supremacy Act declared that Henry was to be recognized as the “supreme head” of the English church. The Treasons Act made denial of Henry's supremacy an act of treason, punishable by death. This final act led to the execution of two prominent Catholic churchmen, Thomas More and John Fisher, both of whom refused to recognize Henry as supreme head of the English church—a title they believed belonged only to the Pope.
Henry now found himself under threat of invasion from neighboring Catholic states. The mandate of restoring papal authority would have been a more than adequate pretext for either France or Spain to launch a crusade against England. Henry was thus obliged to undertake a series of defensive measures to ensure the nation's safety. These measures reached their climax in 1536, when Henry ordered many English monasteries to be closed, and their assets to be seized by the crown. To some extent, this was designed to eliminate potential centers of resistance to his reform measures; the main motivation for this move, however, seems to have been financial. Henry benefited considerably from the income resulting from the sale of monastic lands and buildings.
The dissolution of the monasteries provided Henry with funds for his military preparations. Negotiations with German Lutherans were begun with the object of entering into military alliances. At this point, Lutheran ideas began to be adopted in some official English formularies of faith, such as the “Ten Articles” of 1536. This short statement of faith, which never had much influence in England or elsewhere, can be seen as an ingenious way of suggesting that Henry was sympathetic to Lutheran ideas, when in fact all that Henry wanted was Lutheran political and military support at a critical juncture in his dealings with Rome.
It soon became obvious this theological enthusiasm for Luther-anism was little more than a temporary political maneuver, inspired by Henry's chief adviser, Thomas Cromwell. Unwisely, Cromwell tried to force Henry into a closer alliance with Lutheranism by persuading him to marry Anne of Cleves. Cromwell arranged for Hans Holbein to paint an excessively flattering portrait of this Lutheran princess, whom Henry never met prior to the marriage. On seeing her in the flesh, his enthusiasm for the alliance paled into insignificance. He divorced Anne as soon as it was convenient to do so, and had Cromwell executed.
When it became clear that there was serious opposition within England to his reform measures, Henry backtracked. The 1543 “King's Book” shows every evidence of Henry's desire to avoid giving offense to Catholics. By the time of Henry's death in January 1547, the religious situation in England was somewhat ambivalent. Although Henry had made some concessions to Lutheranism, his own preference appears to have remained for at least some traditional Catholic beliefs and practices. For example, his will made provision for prayers to be said for his soul—despite the fact that Henry had, less than two years earlier, tried to close down the chantries, which existed for precisely this purpose!
From this brief account of the origins of the English Reformation under Henry VIII, it will be clear that there are reasons for supposing that Henry's aims were of critical importance for the genesis of that Reformation. Henry's agenda was political, and was dominated by the desire to safeguard the succession. Through a series of developments, this required a schism with Rome, and an increasingly tolerant attitude toward Lutheranism, both in Germany and England. Yet Henry's tolerance for Lutheranism, which peaked around 1536, does not seem to have been grounded primarily on religious considerations.
This does not mean that Lutheran ideas were without influence in England. Many significant English churchmen were sympathetic to the new ideas, and made it a matter of principle to secure a favorable hearing for them in both Church and society at large. In fact, there are reasons for arguing that at least some degree of popular support for Lutheran ideas led Henry to pursue his policies in certain matters, rather than others. The point being made is that the origins of Henry's reform policies were not themselves religious in nature.
In the end, the English Reformation has to be recognized as an act of state. The comparison with the situation in Germany is highly instructive. Luther's Reformation was conducted on the basis of a theological foundation and platform. The fundamental impetus was religious (in that it addressed the life of the Church directly) and theological (in that the proposals for reform rested on a set of theological presuppositions). In England, the Reformation was primarily political and pragmatic. The Reformation of the Church was, in effect, the price paid by Henry (rather against his instincts) in order to secure and safeguard his personal authority within England. It was, however, impossible to isolate issues of religion and politics in the sixteenth century, and Henry's actions were heavily charged with religious implications. Henry's decision to place himself at the head of the English national church, displacing the Pope in this respect, resonated with part of the Reformation agenda—the establishment of national reformed churches, independent of the influence of Rome. And if Henry was sympathetic to this aspect of the Reformation agenda, many reasoned, would he not be equally receptive to others—such as the translation of the Bible into English?
Henry VIII does not appear to have seen things this way. Henry's personal religious views, in so far as these can be established with any degree of certainty, show him to have remained cautious, conservative, and Catholic in his general religious outlook. Nevertheless, the new directions taken by Henry in his relationship with Rome had immense implications. Under pressure from those sympathetic to the Reformation during the 1530s—such as Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer—Henry gradually found himself moving toward accepting additional aspects of the Reformation agenda. One of those was the increased use of English in matters of religion. Just as Henry had displaced the Pope as the head of the English church, so English came to displace Latin as the language of that church.
In the event, Henry's hand was forced in the matter of Bible translations. Suddenly without advance warning, a well-produced printed English translation of the New Testament began to circulate in England in early 1526. It caused a crisis. The Church authorities immediately set in place measures to block the importation of the book, and to destroy every copy that arrived in England. They knew that, if they could not stop this translation, they would have only one option at their disposal. They would have to produce one themselves, and ensure that it outperformed and outsold its rival.