An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 45

[Sidenote: Parliament forbids all appeals to the pope, 1533.]

[Sidenote: 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 pa.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: 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 a.s.signing 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 t.i.tle 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 heads.h.i.+p 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.

[Sidenote: Henry VIII no Protestant.]

[Sidenote: 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 inst.i.tutions 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 Ma.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: The 'Six Articles.']

In 1539 Parliament pa.s.sed 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 other tenets[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.

[Sidenote: Henry's tyranny.]

[Sidenote: 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d, 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."

[Sidenote: 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 n.o.bles whose favor the king wished to secure.

[Sidenote: 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 superst.i.tious veneration in which the relics and images were popularly held.

[Sidenote: 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 executed on 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.

[Sidenote: Edward VI's ministers introduce Protestant practices.]

165. While the revolt of England against the ancient Church was carried through by the government at a time when the greater part of the nation was still Catholic, there was undoubtedly, under Henry VIII, an ever-increasing number of aggressive and ardent Protestants who applauded the change. During the six years of the boy Edward's reign--he died in 1553 at the age of sixteen--those in charge of the government favored the Protestant party and did what they could to change the faith of all the people by bringing Protestant teachers from the Continent.

A general demolition of all the sacred images was ordered; even the beautiful stained gla.s.s, the glory of the cathedrals, was destroyed, because it often represented saints and angels. The king was to appoint bishops without troubling to observe the old forms of election, and Protestants began to be put into the high offices of the Church.

Parliament turned over to the king the funds which had been established for the purpose of having ma.s.ses chanted for the dead, and decreed that thereafter the clergy should be free to marry.

[Sidenote: The prayer-book and the 'Thirty-Nine Articles.']

A prayer-book in English was prepared under the auspices of Parliament not very unlike that used in the Church of England to-day. Moreover, forty-two articles of faith were drawn up by the government, which were to be the standard of belief for the country. These, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, were revised and reduced to the famous "Thirty-Nine Articles," which still const.i.tute the creed of the Church of England.[305]

[Sidenote: Protestantism partially discredited by Edward's ministers.]

The changes in the church services must have sadly shocked a great part of the English people, who had been accustomed to watch with awe and expectancy the various acts a.s.sociated with the many church ceremonies and festivals.[306] Earnest men who watched the misrule of those who conducted Edward's government in the name of Protestantism, must have concluded that the reformers were chiefly intent upon advancing their own interests by plundering the Church. We get some idea of the desecrations of the time from the fact that Edward was forced to forbid "quarreling and shooting in churches" and "the bringing of horses and mules through the same, making G.o.d's house like a stable or common inn."

Although many were heartily in favor of the recent changes it is no wonder that after Edward's death there was a revulsion in favor of the old religion.

[Sidenote: Queen Mary, 1553-1558, and the Catholic reaction.]

166. Edward VI was succeeded in 1553 by his half-sister Mary, who had been brought up in the Catholic faith and held firmly to it. Her ardent hope of bringing her kingdom back once more to her religion did not seem altogether ill-founded, for the majority of the people were still Catholics at heart, and many who were not disapproved of the policy of Edward's ministers, who had removed abuses "in the devil's own way, by breaking in pieces."

[Sidenote: Mary's marriage with Philip II of Spain.]

The Catholic cause appeared, moreover, to be strengthened by Mary's marriage with the Spanish prince, Philip II, the son of the orthodox Charles V. But although Philip later distinguished himself, as we shall see, by the merciless way in which he strove to put down heresy within his realms, he never gained any great influence in England. By his marriage with Mary he acquired the t.i.tle of king, but the English took care that he should have no hand in the government, nor be permitted to succeed his wife on the English throne.

[Sidenote: The 'Kneeling Parliament,' 1554.]

Mary succeeded in bringing about a nominal reconciliation between England and the Roman Church. In 1554 the papal legate restored to the communion of the Catholic Church the "Kneeling Parliament," which theoretically, of course, represented the nation.

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Protestants under Mary.]

During the last four years of Mary's reign the most serious religious persecution in English history occurred. No less than 277 persons were put to death for denying the teachings of the Roman Church. The majority of the victims were humble artisans and husbandmen. The two most notable sufferers were Bishops Latimer and Ridley, who were burned in Oxford.

Latimer cried to his fellow-martyr in the flames: "Be of good cheer and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England as shall never be put out!"

[Sidenote: Mary's failure to restore the Catholic religion in England.]

It was Mary's hope and belief that the heretics sent to the stake would furnish a terrible warning to the Protestants and check the spread of the new teachings, but it fell out as Latimer had prophesied.

Catholicism was not promoted; on the contrary, doubters were only convinced of the earnestness of the Protestants who could die with such constancy.[307]

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION--PHILIP II

[Sidenote: The conservative or Catholic reformation.]

167. There had been many attempts, as we have seen, before Luther's appearance, to better the clergy and remedy the evils in the Church without altering its organization or teachings. Hopeful progress toward such a conservative reform had been made even before the Protestants threw off their allegiance to the pope.[308] Their revolt inevitably hastened and stimulated the reform of the ancient Church, to which the greater part of western Europe still remained faithful. The Roman Catholic churchmen were aroused to great activity by the realization that they could no longer rely upon the general acceptance of their teachings. They were forced to defend the beliefs and ceremonies of their Church from the attacks of the Protestants, to whose ranks whole countries were deserting. If the clergy were to make head against the dreaded heresy which threatened their position and power, they must secure the loyalty of the people to them and to the great inst.i.tution which they represented, by leading upright lives, giving up the old abuses, and thus regaining the confidence of those intrusted to their spiritual care.

A general council was accordingly summoned at Trent to consider once more the remedying of the long recognized evils, and to settle authoritatively numerous questions of belief upon which theologians had differed for centuries. New religious orders sprang up, whose object was better to prepare the priests for their work and to bring home religion to the hearts of the people. Energetic measures were taken to repress the growth of heresy in countries which were still Roman Catholic and to prevent the dissemination of Protestant doctrines in books and pamphlets. Above all, better men were placed in office, from the pope down. The cardinals, for example, were no longer merely humanists and courtiers, but among them might be found the leaders of religious thought in Italy. Many practices which had formerly irritated the people were permanently abolished. These measures resulted in a remarkable reformation of the ancient Church, such as the Council of Constance had striven in vain to bring about.[309] Before turning to the terrible struggles between the two religious parties in the Netherlands and France during the latter half of the sixteenth century, a word must be said of the Council of Trent and of an extraordinarily powerful new religious order, the Jesuits.