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| There is a common perception, among all sorts of people, that Henry VIII broke with Rome, and so brought about the English Reformation, because he wanted to divorce his first wife. It is believed that the result-an independent Church of England was a novelty for which there was no precedent. The doctrinal quarrels that followed the split have been described as arguments over words, and there are people today who are working very hard for the reunification of the Protestant Church of England with the unreformed Church of Rome. They think that they are taking England back to her original position, but the facts of history do not agree.
These articles will attempt to describe, first, the situation that prevailed prior to the rise of the Tudor dynasty, looking at the origins of papal influence in England, and at resistance to such influence - in particular in the reigns of Henry II and `Bad' King John. Then, we shall give a summary of Henry VIII's reasons for acting, and look at the action he took, in order to show what it was that he intended by the removal of papal authority from this realm.
1. Background to Divorce
I. An Unequal Marriage
The date on which Christianity arrived in Britain cannot be known for certain. However, it was here by the beginning of the third century, and some have suggested that it may have been here as early as AD 40. British bishops are known to have attended the Council of Arles (314). So the arrival of Augustine at Canterbury in 597 did not bring Christianity for the first time.
Southern Britain had felt the effects of the Saxon invasion. The result of this influx of warriors, hungry for land more than for spoil, was that the Britons were pushed further and further west, into Wales and Cornwall. There was no love lost between the Britons and the settlers, one result of which was that the Celtic Church did not preach the Gospel to the newcomers. This task fell to Augustine.
There were now two sorts of Christianity in Britain, the Celtic Christianity of the indigenous British Church, and the Roman Christianity of Augustine, his monks, and those tribes who had been converted under him. The best evidence for the difference lies in the dating of Easter, held by each party. While Augustine naturally followed Rome's dating, which was common for the Western Church, the Celtic Church followed the original, Eastern dating.
The difference was not resolved until the Synod of Whitby in 664, at which the Celtic bishops were persuaded to drop the Eastern date, and adopt the Western. However, the submission was about far more than just when to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord; it was about who is in charge, and this success caused the British bishops to submit to the Pope for the first time in the history of the Celtic Church. From now on there was, officially, one Church in Britain, and it was subject to the Bishop of Rome. The unequal marriage had begun.
One of the tools in the papal arsenal for keeping control in the various provinces of the Western Church was the office of legate. This was a judicial office, and the holder of it was responsible for legal matters in ecclesiastical circles. It was, consequently, an office of immense prestige and power. Indeed, such was its importance that it was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, since he was the senior ordained man in the English Church. However, on occasions the Pope appointed the Archbishop of York, or even the Bishop of Winchester to this office, thus making the Archbishop subject to one of his diocesans!
Yet for all the importance of the office of papal legate, the first millennium saw a grand total of one legatine council in Britain. To quote the historian R. W Southern,
"There were no legatine councils held in England before 1070 except in 786 when two legates of Adrian I visited the country. Then between 1070 and 1312 there were at least twenty-one, and perhaps as many as thirty. Then after 1312 there were no legatine councils till we get a last short burst of activity under Wolsey between 1519 and 1523..." (Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970 p. 108)
Southern does point out that councils are only one way of gauging both legatine and papal activity. However, he says that this pattern was common throughout Europe at the time, and that the two and a half centuries at the beginning of the second millennium mark a period of heightened papal activity. It is to that period that we now turn.
II. A Troubled Marriage
Following the Norman Conquest a number of attempts were made to reform the legal structures of England. It was the duty of the monarch to ensure that his people had good laws, and so, in the reign of Henry II, a serious attempt was made to reform the law and its administrative structures. This would lead, inevitably, to conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities.
The theory of monarchy at the time was quite straightforward. "Early medieval kingship claimed authority from God, who had set the king above his subjects to protect and govern them for their common good in peace and justice." (Gerald Harriss, Shaping of Nation: England 1360-1461, Oxford: OUP, 2005, p. 3). As God's deputy, the king's will was all-sufficient in declaring and enforcing what he deemed to be law. Indeed, Harriss points to the elements of ordination that were present in the coronation service-the singing of Veni Creator Spiritus, the ring, and anointing with oil.
However, the king, though God's deputy in law, was nevertheless a man, and as such, corrupt. The Church's power to "bind and loose from sin did not stop at the steps of the throne" (Harriss, p. 4), and the king had to accept papal admonitions as any son of the Church must. Yet the theory of monarchy meant that, though the king was subject to the Pope as a man, he refuted his authority as a ruler, a position strengthened by the revival of Roman law in the twelfth century, which vested absolute power in the person and will of the monarch.
When Henry II (ruled 1154-1189), then, came to reform the laws of England, he was doing so as God's agent in the civil sphere, and as a son of the Church in ecclesiastical matters. He was the highest court of appeal in the former, and subject to a foreign authority in the latter. Conflict could hardly be avoided, especially as Henry's reforms were taking place at precisely the same time as another reformation was being put in hand. This other, counter, reformation, is summarised by the historian Frank Barlow like this -
"...by the twelfth century the pope was advancing towards monarchical powers in the church, kings were being stripped of their priestly character, the laity was being forced out of active participation in ecclesiastical affairs, the clerical hierarchy was undertaking a mission to reform the world, a mission which was to lead to the excommunication and even deposition of kings, to the pope's feudal lordship over secular kingdoms, and to the political authority which made Pope Innocent III the real emperor of Christendom." (The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042-1216, Fourth Edn., Harlow: Longman, 1988, p. 236).
It was the forcing out of the laity from participation in ecclesiastical affairs that caused the most bitter problems. For Henry this would come to a head in his confrontations with his former friend, the new Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett.
III. A Violent Marriage - Part 1
The order of events during the time of Beckett's Archbishopric is quite involved and cannot be set down briefly. The main areas concerned the conflict between Henry's desire to reform certain actual abuses in the Church with Beckett's determination to maintain the increased powers that had been won both openly and by stealth during the weak reign of King Stephen.
The abuses Henry wanted to reform were three - the sheltering of criminal clergy from proper justice, the rapacious nature of sentences imposed on laity found guilty of moral charges, and the encroachment of ecclesiastical courts into areas traditionally under the jurisdiction of civil courts. He saw the best route to this lay in getting the bishops to agree to maintain the situation that existed in the reign of Henry I, with regard to customs and practices.
To this they willingly agreed, but when Henry codified these as the Constitutions of Clarendon in January 1164, and required the bishops to sign them, they refused. While the customs and practices remained unwritten they could hardly be forced to comply, because what the custom was that pertained in Henry I's time was a matter of legal opinion. However, when the written document was produced they would have been bound by a Code and to this they could not agree, especially as its main purpose was to limit ecclesiastical involvement.
In order to break the will of the bishops Henry determined to ruin their leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Beckett had been put forward for the role by the former Archbishop, Theobald. Beckett was a friend of Henry. He was also likely to want to consolidate the newly-won powers of the Church. As such he appeared to be the ideal candidate, who could maintain the peace while upholding the ecclesiastical privileges. Henry agreed, albeit reluctantly, to the appointment, on the ground that Beckett would co-operate with him in reforming the Church. Beckett, though, was his own man, and spurned friendship with Henry while doing all in his power to increase Church claims.
The result was that Henry began to use the law to ruin Beckett. Civil charges were brought, and although Beckett was cleared of the major charges, he was found guilty of minor ones. However, when he saw that the bishops were being manoeuvred into a position from which they would have to find him guilty of serious financial impropriety, Beckett appealed to the Pope. This played straight into Henry's hands, because such action was expressly forbidden by the Constitutions of Clarendon. Beckett fled to Flanders.
Negotiations for the return of the Archbishop were put in hand, but would be drawn out for six years, from October 1164 until November 1170. In the end, the speed of the final settlement would prove to be Beckett's undoing. He returned determined to assert all his rights, especially over a long list of individuals and institutions who he believed had usurped his authority. In fact, they had simply continued the work of the Church in the absence of the Archbishop, but in that they did not have his express permission to do so, Beckett was out for satisfaction.
When he went north on visitation to York, bearing a papal bull that had already been rescinded -and he knew it-word went out that he was advancing with an army. Henry sent senior barons to order him back to Canterbury or face arrest. Not unnaturally, the barons were wary of threatening the Archbishop of Canterbury directly, though their intervention did cause him to return to Kent. Henry berated the barons for their cowardice, and four seasoned household knights took Henry at his word. They came to Canterbury and demanded that Thomas Beckett accompany them. He resisted. Accounts suggest that he was backed up by a large crowd of monks. The four knights felt threatened, and attacked with their swords. Contemporary descriptions of the ensuing carnage are gruesome. Suffice it to say that at the end Thomas Beckett was very dead.
The Pope, who had done so little during the negotiations over Beckett's exile, now leapt into action. Henry's continental lands were put under interdict. All who had taken part in the murder were excommunicated. Although Henry was not named on this list, he was nevertheless subjected to a personal interdict. He was required to maintain two hundred knights to defend Jerusalem at his own expense for one year, and was to go on crusade himself for three years. More significantly, he was required to grant freedom to the English Church to appeal to the Pope (the Benefit of Clergy), to revoke all customs he and his grandfather had introduced that were deemed injurious to the Church, and to pardon those who had sided with Beckett during his exile. Henry, kneeling before the papal legates Albert and Theodwin, agreed to it all.
Although, following Beckett's death, Henry had some success in getting the Constitutions agreed by the Pope, the trade-off was fatal. The English clergy were subjected to civil law in a wide range of cases, but their right of appeal to the Pope was guaranteed. The grip of papal claims on England was tightening, and a strong king who had stood up to papal and ecclesiastical arrogance had been broken. The stage was now set for further confrontation, and it would not be long in coming.
Edward J. Malcolm
Originally published in September - October 2005 issue of Protestant Truth. |
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