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

114 Ch. 3 • The Two Reformations

with Rome, including twenty-five Anabaptists. In 1536, in the Church of
England's first doctrinal pronouncement, Ten Articles affirmed the essen­
tial tenets of Lutheran reform: salvation by faith alone (although good
works were still advised), three sacraments, and rejection of the concept of
Purgatory and the cult of saints. However, six more articles promulgated
two years later reaffirmed some aspects of orthodox Catholic doctrine,
including transubstantiation and clerical celibacy.
Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540), Wolsey’s ambitious protege, oversaw the
dissolution of England’s 600 monasteries, completed in 1538 despite a
northern insurrection (the “Pilgrimage of Grace”) in defense of the Roman
Catholic Church. Two-thirds of the monasteries were sold within ten years,
the largest transfer of land in England since the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The appropriation of Church lands doubled royal revenue, allowing the con­
struction of forts along the troublesome border with Scotland and on the
Channel coast, and financing the purchase of new ships of war. Nobles, par­
ticularly those living in the more prosperous south, were the chief pur­
chasers of monastic lands. Many turned their acquisitions into pastureland
for sheep, or undertook more intensive agricultural production.
A few months after she married Henry, Anne Boleyn gave birth to a
daughter, Elizabeth, a future queen of England. But Henry then had Anne
tried on charges of adultery with one of his courtiers, claiming that she had
coyly dropped her handkerchief in order to attract him. Anne was executed
in 1536, insisting to the end that “a gentler nor a more merciful prince [than
Henry] was there never.” Next the king married Jane Seymour, who died
shortly after giving birth to a son. Another Anne, this one from a small Ger­
man state, was next in line, as Henry sought allies against Spain and the
other Catholic powers. But this Anne did not please Henry—he claimed he
had never consummated his marriage to this woman he disparaged as a
“Flemish mare.” He divorced her, too. Catherine Howard became Henry’s
fifth wife, but in 1542 he ordered her dispatched for “treasonable
unchastity.” Henry’s sixth wife, a pious older woman named Catherine Parr,
could have been excused for entering the marriage with considerable trepi­
dation, but managed to outlive her husband.

The Catholic Reformation

The Catholic Church responded to the schism within Christendom by

reasserting the pope’s authority and strengthening its own organization.

The Catholic Reformation (sometimes called the Counter-Reformation)

was both a defensive response by the Church to the success of Protes­

tantism and an aggressive attempt to undertake reform within the limits

determined by Catholic theology.