A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The English Reformation 111

They saw innocent, weak women submit to torture so as to bear wit­

ness to their faith... men exulting upon seeing the dreadful and

frightful preparations for and implements of death that were readied

for them... half charred and roasted, they looked down from the

stakes with invincible courage... they died smiling.

The judicial system could not keep up with the rapid pace of conversion,
including the conversion of many nobles. By 1560, there were more than
2,000 Protestant, or Huguenot (so named after a leading French reformer
in Geneva, Besan^on Hugues), congregations in France.
Calvinism became the dominant religion of reform in the Netherlands. To
root out Protestants there, Philip II of Spain expanded the Inquisition (which
had been set up by the Spanish crown after the expulsion of the Moors and
Jews from Spain in 1492 and later extended to the Spanish Empire in the
Americas). When the Dutch declared independence from Spain in 1581,
Calvinism quickly became part of the Dutch national movement during the
long war of independence that followed (see Chapter 5).

The English Reformation

Unlike continental reform, the English Reformation began with a strug­

gle between the king and the Church. But this dispute must also be

placed in the context of discontentment with ecclesiastical venality, and

the distant rule of Rome. Lollard influence persisted among the middle

and lower classes, which resented the wealth of the high clergy and

papal authority. Merchants and travelers returned to England from the

continent with Lutheran tracts. Among Luther's small group of followers

at the University of Cambridge was William Tyndale, who published the

first English translation of the New Testament. Burned at the stake as a

heretic in 1536, his last words were “Lord, open the eyes of the king of

England.”

Henry VIII and the Break with Rome

King Henry VIII of England (ruled 1509—1547) was a religious conservative

who published a book in 1521 defending the Catholic view of the sacra­

ments against Martin Luther, prompting the pope to grant him the title of

“defender of the faith.” The Catholic Church in England already enjoyed

considerable autonomy, granted by the pope in the fourteenth century, and

the king could appoint bishops.

The issue of royal divorce led to the English break with Rome. Henry’s

wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), had given birth five times, but

only an extremely frail girl, Mary Tudor, survived. Henry not only urgently