The Reformation
The Protestant Reformation had begun in 1517 with Martin Luther’s attacks on the
Church’s penitential system, order and doctrine. The Reformation, like the
Renaissance, was an outcome of a gradual transfer of authority away from weaker
central and non-national structures to stronger local individual ones, and an accom-
panying transfer from external to internal ways of thinking, feeling and representing.
These changes towards modern nation-states and individualism had begun in the
12th century, but the final stages were not gradual: after decades of turmoil and long
wars in the north, Europe divided into states – either Catholic or Protestant. In 1519
Henry VIII wrote the first book by an English king since King Alfred, though in Latin
not English. His Latin Defence of the Seven Sacraments, against Luther, was rewarded
by Rome with the title ofFidei Defensor(‘Defender of the Faith’: a title retained on
modern coinage as ‘F. D.’). Henry had had some help with the book from Thomas
More. Failing to produce a male heir by Catherine of Aragon, Henry asked Rome for
a divorce; he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. Rome hesitated, Ann fell pregnant,
Henry went ahead with the marriage, Rome excommunicated him, and Henry made
Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury. When in 1533 Henry made himself
Supreme Head of the Church, now the Church of England, More, who had resigned
as Chancellor, declined to take the Oath of Supremacy legitimizing Henry’s coup.
More was beheaded in 1535. By 1540 the three thousand religious houses of England
were suppressed, and their abbeys, plate and lands taken by the Crown and sold off.
Shrines wer e ransacked for gold and jewels, notably that of the Archbishop of
Canter bury, who in 1170 had stood up for Church against Crown, Thomas Becket.
Henry held to Catholic doctrines, and wanted a non-Roman and non-monastic
Catholicism,but in the six years under his young son Edward VI (r.1547–53), very
ra dical reform was imposed; there were now only two sacraments. For the next six
years, under Mary (Henry’s legitimate daughter by Catherine of Aragon),
Catholicism ret urned with much support. Mary began gently, recalling the
Benedictines to Westminster Abbey, but not reclaiming sold-off monastic lands. But
her marriage to Philip II of Spain was unpopular, and after a rebellion led by the son
ofthe poet Wyatt, orthodoxy was in peril. Cranmer and others were burnt to death
fo r heresy.
Elizabeth I (r.1558–1603), Anne Boleyn’s daughter, gradually imposed a compro-
mise between Protestant teaching and Catholic practice. The Queen liked Catholic
liturgy, and strongly believed in bishops. There was a major Catholic Northern
Rising, but Catholics lost ground when in 1570 Rome declared the Queen illegiti-
mate (as her father’s Parliament had done in 1536).
The divisions of the Reformation can still be seen in Europe and in the United
Kingdom and beyond. The effects on popular worship, on social provision, and on
general culture, were disastrous. The leading Northern humanist Desiderius
Erasmus(1466–1536) had advocated reform of Church, education and society, but
recoiled from the mayhem Luther unleashed. In Spain, Cardinal Ximenes turned
from liberal humanism to the defence of orthodoxy, as did More in England.
Sir Thomas More
Thomas More(1478–1535), a lawyer’s son, wrote a new kind of book, the life of a
new kind of writer, Pico della Mirandola, a Platonist aristocrat who withdrew from
court and cloister to study and write Of the Dignity of Man (1486). Humanists
RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 81Hops, heresy, bays and beer
Came into England all in
one year
A rhyme ofc. 1525