Accession of Pope Clement VII.
153.Poor Hadrian speedily died, worn out with the vain effort to correct the abuses close at home. He was followed by Clement VII, a member of the house of Medici, less gifted but not less worldly than Leo X. A new diet, called in 1524, adhered to the policy of its predecessor. It was far from approving of Luther, but it placed no effective barrier in the way of his work.
The formation of a Catholic party at Regensburg.
The papal legate, realizing the hopelessness of inducing all the members of the diet to coöperate with him in bringing the country once more under the pope's control, called together at Regensburg a certain number of rulers whom he believed to be rather more favorably disposed toward the pope than their fellows. Among these were Charles V's brother, Ferdinand, Duke of Austria, the two dukes of Bavaria, the archbishops of Salzburg and of Trent, and the bishops of Bamberg, Speyer, Strasburg, etc. By means of certain concessions on the part of the pope, he induced all these to unite in opposing the Lutheran heresy. The chief concession was a reform decree which provided that only authorized preachers should be tolerated, and that these should base their teaching on the works of the four great church fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. The clergy were to be subjected to careful discipline; there was to be no more financial oppression and no unseemly payments demanded for performing the church services. Abuses arising from the granting of indulgences were to be remedied and the excessive number of holidays reduced.
Religious division of Germany.
Beginning of a reform within the Catholic Church.
This agreement of Regensburg is of great importance, for it served to separate Germany into two camps. Austria, Bavaria, and the great ecclesiastical states in the south definitely took sides with the pope against Luther, and to this day they stillremain Catholic countries. In the north, on the other hand, it became more and more apparent that the princes proposed to secede from the Catholic Church. Moreover, the skillful diplomacy of the papal legate was really the beginning of a reformation of the old Church in Germany. Many of the abuses were done away with, and the demand for reform, without revolution in doctrine and institutions, was thereby gratified.[285]A German Bible for Catholic readers was soon issued, and a new religious literature grew up designed to prove the truth of the beliefs sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church and to spiritualize its institutions and rites.
Luther's rash talk about the princes and nobles serves to encourage the revolt of the peasants.
154.In 1525 the conservative party, who were frankly afraid of Luther, received a new and terrible proof, as it seemed to them, of the noxious influence of his teachings. The peasants rose, in the name of "God's justice," to avenge their wrongs and establish their rights. Luther was not responsible for the civil war which ensued, but he had certainly helped to stir up discontent. He had asserted that, owing to the habit of foreclosing small mortgages, "any one with a hundred guldens could gobble up a peasant a year." The German feudal lords he had declared to be hangmen, who knew only how to swindle the poor man. "Such fellows were formerly called rascals, but now must we call them 'Christian and revered princes.'" Wise rulers are rare indeed: "they are usually either great fools or the worst rogues on earth." Yet in spite of his harsh talk about the princes, Luther really relied upon them to forward his movement, and he justly claimed that he had greatly increased their power by destroying the authority of the pope and subjecting the clergy in all things to the government.
The demands of the peasants in the 'Twelve Articles.'
Some of the demands of the peasants were perfectly reasonable. The most popular expression of their needs was the dignified "Twelve Articles."[286]In these they claimed that theBible did not sanction many of the dues which the lords demanded of them, and that as Christians they should no longer be held as serfs. They were willing to pay all the old and well-established dues, but they asked to be properly remunerated for extra services demanded by the lord. They thought too that each community should have the right freely to choose its own pastor and to dismiss him if he proved negligent or inefficient.
Demands of the working classes of the towns.
Much more radical demands came from the working classes in the towns, who in some cases joined the country people in their revolt. The articles drawn up in the town of Heilbronn, for example, give a good idea of the sources of discontent. The church property was to be confiscated and used for the good of the community, except in so far as it was necessary to support the pastors chosen by the people. The clergy and nobility were to be deprived of all their privileges and powers, so that they could no longer oppress the poor man.
Luther urges the government to suppress the revolt.
There were, moreover, leaders who were still more violent, who proposed to kill the "godless" priests and nobles. Hundreds of castles and monasteries were destroyed by the frantic peasantry, and some of the nobility were murdered with shocking cruelty. Luther tried to induce the peasants, with whom, as the son of a peasant, he was at first inclined to sympathize, to remain quiet; but when his warnings proved vain, he attacked the rebels violently. He declared that they were guilty of the most fearful crimes, for which they deserved death of both body and soul many times over. They had broken their allegiance, they had wantonly plundered and robbed castles and monasteries, and lastly, they had tried to cloak their dreadful sins with excuses from the Gospel. He therefore urged the government to put down the insurrection. "Have no pity on the poor folk; stab, smite, throttle, who can!"
The peasant revolt put down with great cruelty.
Luther's advice was followed with terrible literalness by the German rulers, and the nobility took fearful revenge for the depredations of the peasants. In the summer of 1525 the chiefleader of the peasants was defeated and killed, and it is estimated that ten thousand peasants were put to death, many with the utmost cruelty. Few rulers or lords introduced any reforms, and the misfortunes due to the destruction of property and to the despair of the peasants cannot be imagined. The people concluded that the new gospel was not for them, and talked of Luther as "Dr. Lügner," i.e., liar. The old exactions of the lords of the manors were in no way lightened, and the situation of the peasants for centuries following the great revolt was worse rather than better.
Catholic and Protestant unions of the German princes.
155.The terror inspired by the peasant war led to new measures against further attempts to change the religious beliefs of the land. The League of Dessau was formed among some of the leading rulers of central and northern Germany, to stamp out "the accursed Lutheran sect." The union included Luther's arch enemy, Duke George of Saxony, the electors of Brandenburg and Mayence, and two princes of Brunswick. The rumor that the emperor, who had been kept busy for some years by his wars with Francis I, was planning to come to Germany in order to root out the growing heresy, led the few princes who openly favored Luther to unite also. Among these the chief were the new elector of Saxony, John Frederick, and Philip, landgrave of Hesse. These two proved themselves the most ardent and conspicuous defenders of the Protestant faith in Germany.
The diet of Speyer gives to the individual rulers the right to determine the religion of their subjects, 1526.
A new war, in which Francis and the pope sided against the emperor, prevented Charles from turning his attention to Germany, and he accordingly gave up the idea of enforcing the Edict of Worms against the Lutherans. Since there was no one who could decide the religious question for all the rulers, the diet of Speyer (1526) determined that, pending the meeting of a general council, each ruler, and each knight and town owing immediate allegiance to the emperor, should decide individually what particular form of religion shouldprevail in his realm. Each prince was "so to live, reign, and conduct himself as he would be willing to answer before God and His Imperial Majesty." For the moment, then, the various German governments were left to determine the religion of their subjects.
Yet all still hoped that one religion might ultimately be agreed upon. Luther trusted that all Christians would sometime accept the new gospel. He was willing that the bishops should be retained, and even that the pope should still be regarded as a sort of presiding officer in the Church. As for his enemies, they were equally confident that the heretics would in time be suppressed as they had always been in the past, and that harmony would thus be restored. Neither party was right; for the decision of the diet of Speyer was destined to become a permanent arrangement, and Germany remained divided between different religious faiths.
Charles V again intervenes in the religious controversy in Germany.
New sects opposed to the old Church had begun to appear. Zwingli, a Swiss reformer, was gaining many followers, and the Anabaptists were rousing Luther's apprehensions by their radical plans for doing away with the Catholic religion. As the emperor found himself able for a moment to attend to German affairs he bade the diet, again meeting at Speyer in 1529, to order the enforcement of the edict against the heretics. No one was to preach against the Mass and no one was to be prevented from attending it freely.
Origin of the term 'Protestant.'
This meant that the "Evangelical" princes would be forced to restore the most characteristic Catholic ceremony. As they formed only a minority in the diet, all that they could do was to draw up aprotest, signed by John Frederick, Philip of Hesse, and fourteen of the imperial towns (Strasburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, etc.). In this they claimed that the majority had no right to abrogate the edict of the former diet of Speyer for that had passed unanimously and all had solemnly pledged themselves to observe the agreement. They therefore appealedto the emperor and a future council against the tyranny of the majority.[287]Those who signed this appeal were called from their actionProtestants. Thus originated the name which came to be generally applied to those who do not accept the rule and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Preparations for the diet of Augsburg.
156.Since the diet at Worms the emperor had resided in Spain, busied with a succession of wars carried on with the king of France. It will be remembered that both Charles and Francis claimed Milan and the duchy of Burgundy, and they sometimes drew the pope into their conflicts.[288]But in 1530 the emperor found himself at peace for the moment and held a brilliant diet of his German subjects at Augsburg in the hope of settling the religious problem, which, however, he understood very imperfectly. He ordered the Protestants to draw up a statement of exactly what they believed, which should serve as a basis for discussion. Melanchthon, Luther's most famous friend and colleague, who was noted for his great learning and moderation, was intrusted with the delicate task.
The Augsburg Confession.
The Augsburg Confession, as his declaration was called, is an historical document of great importance for the student of the Protestant revolt.[289]Melanchthon's gentle and conciliatory disposition led him to make the differences between his belief and that of the old Church seem as few and slight as possible. He showed that both parties held the same fundamental views of Christianity. The Protestants, however, defended their rejection of a number of the practices of the Roman Catholics, such as the celibacy of the clergy and the observance offast days. There was little or nothing in the Augsburg Confession concerning the organization of the Church.
Charles V's attempt at pacification.
Certain theologians, some of whom, like Eck, had been loud in their denunciations of Luther, were ordered by the emperor to prepare a refutation of the Protestant views. The statement of the Catholics admitted that a number of Melanchthon's positions were perfectly orthodox; but the portion of the Augsburg Confession which dealt with the practical reforms introduced by the Protestants was rejected altogether. Charles declared the Catholic statement to be "Christian and judicious" and commanded the Protestants to accept it. They were to cease troubling the Catholics and were to give back all the monasteries and church property which they had seized. The emperor agreed to urge the pope to call a council to meet within a year. This, he hoped, would be able to settle all differences and reform the Church according to the views of the Catholics.
Progress of Protestantism up to the Peace of Augsburg, 1555.
157.It is unnecessary to follow in detail the progress of Protestantism in Germany during the quarter of a century succeeding the diet of Augsburg. Enough has been said to show the character of the revolt and the divergent views taken by the German princes and people. For ten years after the emperor left Augsburg he was kept busy in southern Europe by new wars; and in order to secure the assistance of the Protestants, he was forced to let them go their own way. Meanwhile the number of rulers who accepted Luther's teachings gradually increased. Finally there was a brief war between Charles and the Protestant princes, but the origin of the conflict was mainly political rather than religious. It occurred to the youthful Maurice, Duke of Saxony, that by aiding the emperor against the Protestants he might find a good excuse for dispossessing his Protestant relative, John Frederick, of his electorate. There was but little fighting done. Charles V brought his Spanish soldiers into Germany and captured both John Frederick andhis ally, Philip of Hesse, the chief leaders of the Lutheran cause, whom he kept prisoners for several years.[290]
The Peace of Augsburg.
This episode did not check the progress of Protestantism. Maurice, who had been granted John Frederick's electorate, soon turned about and allied himself with the Protestants. The king of France promised them help against his enemy, the emperor, and Charles was forced to agree to a preliminary peace with the Protestants. Three years later, in 1555, the religious Peace of Augsburg was ratified. Its provisions are memorable. Each German prince and each town and knight immediately under the emperor was to be at liberty to make a choice between the beliefs of the venerable Catholic Church and those embodied in the Augsburg Confession. If, however, an ecclesiastical prince—an archbishop, bishop, or abbot—declared himself a Protestant, he must surrender his possessions to the Church. Every one was either to conform to the religious practices of his particular state, or emigrate.
The principle that the government should determine the religion of its subjects.
This religious peace in no way established freedom of conscience, except for the rulers. Their power, it must be noted, was greatly increased, inasmuch as they were given the control of religious as well as of secular matters. This arrangement which permitted the ruler to determine the religion of his realm was natural, and perhaps inevitable, in those days. The Church and the civil government had been closely associated with one another for centuries. No one as yet dreamed that every individual, so long as he did not violate the law of the land, might safely be left quite free to believe what he would and to practice any religious rites which afforded him help and comfort.
Weaknesses of the Peace of Augsburg.
There were two noteworthy weaknesses in the Peace of Augsburg which were destined to make trouble. In the first place, only one group of Protestants was included in it. Thenow numerous followers of the French reformer, Calvin, and of the Swiss reformer, Zwingli, who were hated alike by Catholic and Lutheran, were not recognized. Every German had to be either a Catholic or a Lutheran in order to be tolerated. In the second place, the clause which decreed that ecclesiastical princes converted to Protestantism should surrender their property could not be enforced, for there was no one to see to its execution.
158.For at least a century after Luther's death the great issue between Catholics and Protestants dominates the history of all the countries with which we have to do, except Italy and Spain, where Protestantism never took permanent root. In Switzerland, England, France, and Holland the revolt against the mediæval Church produced profound changes, which must be understood in order to follow the later development of these countries.
Origin of the Swiss Confederation.
We turn first to Switzerland, lying in the midst of the great chain of the Alps which extends from the Mediterranean to Vienna. During the Middle Ages, the region destined to be included in the Swiss Confederation formed a part of the empire, and was scarcely distinguishable from the rest of southern Germany. As early as the thirteenth century the three "forest" cantons on the shores of the winding lake of Lucerne had formed a union to protect their liberties against the encroachments of their neighbors, the Hapsburgs. It was about this tiny nucleus that Switzerland gradually consolidated. In 1315 the cantons gained their first great victory over the Hapsburgs at Morgarten and thereupon solemnly renewed their league. This was soon joined by Lucerne and the free imperial towns of Zurich and Berne. By brave fighting the Swiss were able to frustrate the renewed efforts of the Hapsburgs to subjugate them. Later, when a still more formidableenemy, Charles the Bold, undertook to conquer them they put his armies to rout at Granson and Murten (1476).[291]
The Swiss ConfederationThe Swiss Confederation
Switzerland becomes a separate country; mixed nationality of its people.
Various districts in the neighborhood successively joined the Swiss union, and even the region lying on the Italian slopes of the Alps was brought under its control. Gradually the bonds between the members of the union and the empire were broken. They were recognized as being no more than "relatives" of the empire; in 1499 they were finally freed from the jurisdiction of the emperor, and Switzerland became apractically independent country. Although the original union had been made up of German-speaking people, considerable districts had been annexed in which Italian or French was spoken.[292]The Swiss did not, therefore, form a compact, well-defined nation, and for some centuries their confederation was weak and ill-organized.
Zwingli (1484–1531) leads the revolt in Switzerland against the Church.
159.In Switzerland the leader of the revolt against the Church was Zwingli, who was a year younger than Luther and like him was the son of peasant parents. Zwingli's father was prosperous, however, and the boy had the best education which could be obtained, at Basel and Vienna. His later discontent with the old Church came not through spiritual wrestlings in the monastery, but from the study of the classics and of the Greek New Testament. Zwingli had become a priest and settled at the famous monastery of Einsiedeln near the lake of Zurich. This was the center of pilgrimages on account of a wonder-working image in the cell of St. Meinrad. "Here," he says, "I began to preach the Gospel of Christ in the year 1516, before any one in my locality had so much as heard the name of Luther."
Zwingli denounces the abuses in the Church and the traffic in soldiers.
Three years later he was called to an influential position as preacher in the cathedral of Zurich, and there his great work began. Through his efforts a Dominican who was preaching indulgences was expelled from the country. He then began to denounce the abuses in the Church as well as the shameless traffic in soldiers, which he had long regarded as a blot upon his country's honor.[293]The pope had found the help of the Swiss troops indispensable, and had granted annuities andlucrative positions in the Church to influential Swiss, who were expected to work in his interest. So, from the first, Zwingli was led to combine with his religious reform a political reform which should put the cantons on better terms with one another and prevent the destruction of their young men in wars in which they had no possible interest. A new demand of the pope for troops in 1521 led Zwingli to attack him and his commissioners. "How appropriate," he exclaims, "that they should have red hats and cloaks! If we shake them, crowns and ducats fall out. If we wring them, out runs the blood of your sons and brothers and fathers and good friends."[294]
Zurich, under the influence of Zwingli, begins a reform.
Such talk soon began to arouse comment, and the old forest cantons were for a violent suppression of the new teacher, but the town council of Zurich stanchly supported their priest. Zwingli then began to attack fasts and the celibacy of the clergy. In 1523 he prepared a complete statement of his belief, in the form of sixty-seven theses. In these he maintained that Christ was the only high priest and that the Gospel did not gain its sanction from the authority of the Church. He denied the existence of purgatory and rejected those practices of the Church which Luther had already set aside. Since no one presented himself to refute Zwingli, the town council ratified his conclusions and so withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church. The next year the Mass, processions, and the images of the saints were abolished; the shrines were opened and the relics buried.
Other towns follow Zurich's example.
Some other towns followed Zurich's example; but the original cantons about the lake of Lucerne, which feared that they might lose the great influence that, in spite of their small size, they had hitherto enjoyed, were ready to fight for the old faith. The first armed collision, half political and half religious, between the Swiss Protestants and Catholics tookplace at Kappel in 1531, and Zwingli fell in the battle. The various cantons and towns never came to an agreement in religious matters, and Switzerland is still part Catholic and part Protestant.
The chief importance for the rest of Europe of Zwingli's revolt was the influence of his conception of the Lord's Supper. He not only denied transubstantiation,[295]but also the "real presence" of Christ in the elements (in which Luther believed), and conceived the bread and wine to be mere symbols. Those in Germany and England who accepted Zwingli's idea added one more to the Protestant parties, and consequently increased the difficulty of reaching a general agreement among those who had revolted from the Church.[296]
Calvin (1509–1564) and the Presbyterian Church.
160.Far more important than Zwingli's teachings, especially for England and America, was the work of Calvin, which was carried on in the ancient city of Geneva on the very outskirts of the Swiss confederation. It was Calvin who organized the Presbyterian Church and formulated its beliefs. He was born in northern France in 1509; he belonged, therefore, to the second generation of Protestants. He was early influenced by the Lutheran teachings, which had already found their way into France. A persecution of the Protestants under Francis I drove him out of the country and he settled for a time in Basel.[297]
Calvin'sInstitutes of Christianity.
Here he issued the first edition of his great work,The Institutes of Christianity, which has been more widely discussed than any other Protestant theological treatise. It was the first orderly exposition of the principles of Christianity from a Protestant standpoint. Like Peter Lombard'sSentences, it formed a convenient manual for study and discussion. TheInstitutesare based upon the infallibility of the Bible and rejectthe infallibility of the Church and the pope. Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and admirable style. The French version of his great work is the first example of the successful use of that language in an argumentative treatise.
Calvin's reformation in Geneva.
Calvin was called to Geneva about 1540 and intrusted with the task of reforming the town, which had secured its independence of the duke of Savoy. He drew up a constitution and established an extraordinary government, in which the church and the civil government were as closely associated as they had ever been in any Catholic country.[298]The Protestantism which found its way into France was that of Calvin, not that of Luther, and the same may be said of Scotland.
The gradual revolt of England from the Church.
161.The revolt of England from the mediæval Church was very gradual and halting. Although there were some signs that Protestantism was gaining a foothold in the island not long after Luther's burning of the canon law, a generation at least passed away before the country definitely committed itself, upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, to the change in religion. It seems at first sight as if the revolution were due mainly to the irritation of Henry VIII against the pope, who refused to grant the king a divorce from his first wife in order that he might marry a younger and prettier woman. But a permanent change in the religious convictions of a whole people cannot fairly be attributed to the whim of even so despotic a ruler as Henry. There were changes taking place in England before the revolt similar to those which prepared the way in Germany for Luther's success.
John Colet.
English scholars began, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, to be affected by the new learning which came to them from Italy. Colet,[299]among others, strove to introduce the study of Greek in Oxford. Like Luther he found himselfespecially attracted by St. Paul, and had begun to teach the doctrine of justification by faith long before the German reformer was heard of.
Sir Thomas More and his 'Utopia.'
The most distinguished writer of the period was, perhaps, Sir Thomas More. The title of his famous little book,Utopia, i.e. "Nowhere," published about 1515, has become synonymous with ideal and impracticable schemes for bettering the world. He pictures the happy conditions in an undiscovered land where a perfect form of government has done away with all the evils which he observes about him in the England of his day. The Utopians, unlike the English, fought only to keep out invaders or to free others from tyranny, and never undertook wars of aggression such as Henry VIII was constantly contemplating. In Utopia no one was persecuted for his religion so long as he treated others fairly.[300]
The English admirers of Erasmus.
When Erasmus came to England about 1500 he was delighted with the society which he found, and we may assume that his views, which we have before described,[301]represented those of a considerable number of intelligent Englishmen. It was at the house of More that he finished thePraise of Folly, and he carried on his studies with such success in England and found such congenial companions there that it seemed to him that it was hardly worth while to go to Italy for intellectual inspiration. There is every reason to suppose that there were, in England, many who were quite conscious of the vices of the churchmen and who were ready to accept a system which would abolish those practices that had come to seem useless and pernicious.
Wolsey's policy of peace and his idea of the balance of power.
162.Henry VIII's minister, Cardinal Wolsey, deserves great credit for having constantly striven to discourage his sovereign's ambition to take part in the wars on the continent. The cardinal's argument that England could become great bypeace better than by war was a momentous discovery. Peace he felt would be best secured by maintaining thebalance of poweron the continent so that no ruler should become dangerous by unduly extending his sway. For example, he thought it good policy to side with Charles when Francis was successful, and then with Francis after his terrible defeat at Pavia (1525) when he fell into the hands of Charles. This idea of the balance of power came to be recognized later by the European countries as a very important consideration in determining their policy. But Wolsey was not long to be permitted to put his enlightened ideas in practice. His fall and the progress of Protestantism in England are both closely associated with the notorious divorce case of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII of EnglandHenry VIII of England
Henry VIII's divorce case.
It will be remembered that Henry had married Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. Only one of their children, Mary, had survived to grow up. Henry was very anxious to have a son and heir, for he was fearful lest a woman might not be permitted to succeed to the throne. Moreover, Catherine, who was older than he, had become distasteful to him.
Catherine had first married Henry's older brother, who had died almost immediately after the marriage. Since it was a violation of the rule of the Church to marry a deceased brother's wife, Henry professed to fear that he was committing a sin by retaining Catherine as his wife and demanded to be divorced from her on the ground that his marriage had never been legal. His anxiety to rid himself of Catherine was greatlyincreased by the appearance at court of a black-eyed girl of sixteen, named Anne Boleyn, with whom the king fell in love.
Clement VII refuses to divorce Henry.
Fall of Wolsey.
Unfortunately for his case, his marriage with Catherine had been authorized by a dispensation from the pope, so that Clement VII, to whom the king appealed to annul the marriage, could not, even if he had been willing to alienate the queen's nephew, Charles V, have granted Henry's request. Wolsey's failure to induce the pope to permit the divorce excited the king's anger, and with rank ingratitude for his minister's great services, Henry drove him from office (1529) and seized his property. From a life of wealth which was fairly regal, Wolsey was precipitated into extreme poverty. An imprudent but innocent act of his soon gave his enemies a pretext for charging him with treason; but the unhappy man died on his way to London before his head could be brought to the block.
Henry forces the English clergy to recognize him as the supreme head of the Church of England.
163.The king's next move was to bring a preposterous charge against the whole English clergy by declaring that, in submitting to Wolsey's authority as papal legate, they had violated an ancient law forbidding papal representatives to appear in England without the king's permission. Yet Henry had approved Wolsey's appointment as papal legate. The clergy met at Canterbury and offered to buy pardon for their alleged offense by an enormous grant of money. But Henry refused to forgive them unless they would solemnly acknowledge him to be the supreme head of the English Church. This they accordingly did;[302]they agreed, moreover, to hold no general meetings or pass any rules without the king's sanction. The submission of the clergy ensured Henry against any future criticism on their part of the measures he proposed to take in the matter of his divorce.
Parliament forbids all appeals to the pope, 1533.
An English court declares Henry's marriage with Catherine void.
He now induced Parliament to threaten to cut off the income which the pope had been accustomed to receive from newly appointed bishops. The king hoped in this way to bring Clement VII to terms. He failed, however, in this design and, losing patience, married Anne Boleyn secretly without waiting for the divorce. Parliament was then persuaded to pass the Act of Appeals, declaring that lawsuits of all kinds should be finally and definitely decided within the realm, and that no appeal might be made to any one outside the kingdom. Catherine's appeal to the pope was thus rendered illegal. When, shortly after, her marriage was declared void by a Church court summoned by Henry, she had no remedy. Parliament also declared Henry's marriage with Catherine unlawful and that with Anne legal. Consequently it was decreed that Elizabeth, Anne's daughter, who was born in 1533, was to succeed her father on the throne, instead of Mary, the daughter of Catherine.
The Act of Supremacy and the denial of the pope's authority over England.
In 1534 the English Parliament completed the revolt of the English Church from the pope by assigning to the king the right to appoint all the English prelates and to enjoy all the income which had formerly found its way to Rome. In the Act of Supremacy, Parliament declared the king to be "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and that he should enjoy all the powers which the title naturally carried with it. Two years later every officer in the kingdom, whether lay or ecclesiastical, was required to swear to renounce the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Refusal to take this oath was to be adjudged high treason. Many were unwilling to deny the pope's headship merely because king and Parliament renounced it, and this legislation led to a persecution in the name of treason which was even more horrible than that which had been carried on in the supposed interest of religion.
Henry VIII no Protestant.
The English Bible.
It must be carefully noted that Henry VIII was not a Protestant in the Lutheran sense of the word. He was led, it is true,by Clement VII's refusal to declare his first marriage illegal, to break the bond between the English and the Roman Church, and to induce the English clergy and Parliament to acknowledge him as supreme head in the religious as well as in the temporal interests of the country. No earlier English sovereign had ever ventured to go so far as this in the previous conflicts with Rome. He was ready, too, as we shall see, to appropriate the property of the monasteries on the ground that these institutions were so demoralized as to be worse than useless. Important as these acts were, they did not lead Henry to accept the teachings of Protestant leaders, like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin. He shared the popular distrust of the new doctrines, and showed himself anxious to explain the old ones and free them from the objections which were beginning to be urged against them. A proclamation was made, under the authority of the king, in which the sacraments of baptism, penance, and the Mass were explained. Henry also authorized a new translation of the Bible into English. A fine edition of this was printed (1539), and every parish was ordered to obtain a copy and place it in the parish church, where all the people could readily make use of it.
Henry's anxiety to prove himself a good Catholic.
Henry was anxious to prove that he was orthodox, especially after he had seized the property of the monasteries and the gold and jewels which adorned the receptacles in which the relics of the saints were kept. He presided in person over the trial of one who accepted the opinion of Zwingli, that the body and blood of Christ were not present in the sacrament. He quoted Scripture to prove the contrary, and the prisoner was condemned and burned as a heretic.
The 'Six Articles.'
In 1539 Parliament passed a statute called the "Six Articles." These declared first that the body and blood of Christ were actually present in the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper; whoever ventured publicly to question this was to be burned. For speaking against five othertenets[303]of the old Church, offenders were to suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offense, and to be hanged for the second. Two bishops, who had ventured to go farther in the direction of Protestantism than Henry himself had done, were driven from office and some offenders were put to death under this act.
Henry's tyranny.
Execution of Sir Thomas More.
164.Henry was heartless and despotic. With a barbarity not uncommon in those days, he allowed his old friend and adviser, Sir Thomas More, to be beheaded for refusing to pronounce the marriage with Catherine void. He caused numbers of monks to be executed for refusing to swear that his first marriage was illegal and for denying his title to supremacy in the Church. Others he permitted to die of starvation and disease in the filthy prisons of the time. Many Englishmen would doubtless have agreed with one of the friars who said humbly: "I profess that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother, the Church, hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained."
Dissolution of the English monasteries.
Henry wanted money; some of the English abbeys were rich, and the monks were quite unable to defend themselves against the charges which were brought against them. The king sent commissioners about to inquire into the moral state of the monasteries. A large number of scandalous tales were easily collected, some of which were undoubtedly true. The monks were doubtless often indolent and sometimes wicked.Nevertheless, they were kind landlords, hospitable to the stranger, and good to the poor. The plundering of the smaller monasteries, with which the king began, led to a revolt, due to a rumor that the king would next proceed to despoil the parish churches as well. This gave Henry an excuse for attacking the larger monasteries. The abbots and priors who had taken part in the revolt were hanged and their monasteries confiscated. Other abbots, panic-stricken, confessed that they and their monks had been committing the most loathsome sins and asked to be permitted to give up their monasteries to the king. The royal commissioners then took possession, sold every article upon which they could lay hands, including the bells and the lead on the roofs. The picturesque remains of the great abbey churches are still among the chief objects of interest to the sight-seer in England. The monastery lands were, of course, appropriated by the king. They were sold for the benefit of the government or given to nobles whose favor the king wished to secure.
Destruction of shrines and images for the benefit of the king's treasury.
Along with the destruction of the monasteries went an attack upon the shrines and images in the churches, which were adorned with gold and jewels. The shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury was destroyed and the bones of the saint were burned. An old wooden figure revered in Wales was used to make a fire to burn an unfortunate friar who maintained that in things spiritual the pope rather than the king should be obeyed. These acts suggest the Protestant attacks on images which occurred in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The object of the king and his party was probably in the main a mercenary one, although the reason urged for the destruction was the superstitious veneration in which the relics and images were popularly held.
Henry's third marriage and the birth of Edward VI.
Henry's domestic troubles by no means came to an end with his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Of her, too, he soon tired, and three years after their marriage he had her executedon a series of monstrous charges. The next day he married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who was the mother of his son and successor, Edward VI. Jane died a few days after her son's birth, and later Henry married in succession three other women who are historically unimportant since they left no children as claimants for the crown. Henry took care that his three children, all of whom were destined to reign, should be given their due place by act of Parliament in the line of inheritance.[304]His death in 1547 left the great problem of Protestantism and Catholicism to be settled by his son and daughters.