HENRY VIII. SUPPORTED IN FRANCE AND ITALY BY THE CATHOLICS, AND BLAMED
IN GERMANY BY THE PROTESTANTS.
(JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER 1530.)
[Sidenote: Henry Appeals To Foreign Opinion.]
The king did not limit himself to asking the opinions of England; he
appealed to the universal teaching of the Church, represented according
to his views by the universities and not by the pope. The element of
individual conviction, so strongly marked in Tyndale, Fryth, and
Latimer, was wanting in the official reformation that proceeded from the
prince. To know what Scripture said, Henry was about sending delegates
to Paris, Bologna, Padua, and Wittemburg; he would have sent even to the
East, if such a journey had been easy. That false catholicism which
looked for the interpretation of the Bible to churches and declining
schools where traditionalism, ritualism, and hierarchism were magnified,
was a counterfeit popery. Happily the supreme voice of the Word of God
surmounted this fatal tendency in England.
Henry VIII., full of confidence in the friendship of the King of France,
applied first to the university of Paris; but Dr. Pedro Garry, a Spanish
priest, as ignorant as he was fanatical (according to the English
agents),[58] eagerly took up the cause of Catherine of Aragon. Aided by
the impetuous Beda, he obtained an opinion adverse to Henry’s wishes.
When he heard of it, the alarmed prince summoned Du Bellay, the French
ambassador, to the palace, gave him for Francis I. a famous diamond
fleur-de-lis valued at 10,000_l._ sterling, also the acknowledgments for
100,000 livres which Francis owed Henry for war expenses, and added a
gift of 400,000 crowns for the ransom of the king’s sons. Unable to
resist such strong arguments, Francis charged Du Bellay to represent to
the faculty of Paris ‘the great scruples of Henry’s conscience;’[59]
whereupon the Sarbonne deliberated, and several doctors exclaimed that
it would be an attaint upon the pope’s honor to suppose him capable of
refusing consolation to the wounded conscience of a Christian. During
these debates, the secretary took the names, received the votes, and
entered them on the minutes. A fiery papist observing that the majority
would be against the Roman opinion, jumped up, sprang upon the
secretary, snatched the list from his hands, and tore it up. All started
from their seats, and ‘there was great disorder and tumult.’ They all
spoke together, each trying to assert his own opinion; but as no one
could make himself heard amid the general clamor, the doctors hurried
out of the room in a great rage. ‘Beda acted like one possessed,’ wrote
Du Bellay.
Meanwhile the ambassadors of the King of England were walking up and
down an adjoining gallery, waiting for the division. Attracted by the
shouts, they ran forward, and seeing the strange spectacle presented by
the theologians, and ‘hearing the language they used to one another,’
they retired in great irritation. Du Bellay, who had at heart the
alliance of the two countries, conjured Francis I. to put an end to such
‘impertinences.’ The president of the parliament of Paris consequently
ordered Beda to appear before him, and told him that it was not for a
person of his sort to meddle with the affairs of princes, and that if he
did not cease his opposition, he would be punished in a way he would not
soon forget. The Sorbonne profited by the lesson given to the most
influential of its members, and on the 2nd of July declared in favor of
the divorce by a large majority. The universities of Orleans, Angers,
and Bourges had already done so, and that of Toulouse did the same
shortly after.[60] Henry VIII. had France and England with him.
This was not enough: he must have Italy also. He filled that peninsula
with his agents, who had orders to obtain from the bishops and
universities the declaration refused by the pope. A rich and powerful
despot is never in want of devoted men to carry out his designs.
The university of Bologna, in the states of the Church, was, after
Paris, the most important in the Catholic world. A monk was in great
repute there at this time. Noble by birth and an eloquent preacher,
Battista Pallavicini was one of those independent thinkers often met
with in Italy. The English agents applied to him; he declared that he
and his colleagues were ready to prove the unlawfulness of Henry’s
marriage, and when Stokesley spoke of remuneration, they replied, ‘No,
no! what we have received freely, we give freely.’ Henry’s agents could
not contain themselves for joy; the university of the pope declares
against the pope! Those among them who had an inkling for the
Reformation were especially delighted. On the 10th June the eloquent
monk appeared before the ambassadors with the judgment of the faculty,
which surpassed all they had imagined. Henry’s marriage was declared
‘horrible, execrable, detestable, abominable for a Christian and even
for an infidel, forbidden by divine and human law under pain of the
severest punishment.[61]... The holy father, who can do almost
everything,’ innocently continued the university, ‘has not the right to
permit such a union.’ The universities of Padua and Ferrara hastened to
add their votes to those of Bologna, and declared the marriage with a
brother’s widow to be ‘null, detestable, profane, and abominable.’[62]
Henry was conqueror all along the line. He had with him that universal
consent which, according to certain illustrious doctors, is the very
essence of Catholicism. Crooke, one of Henry’s agents, and a
distinguished Greek scholar, who discharged his mission with
indefatigable ardor, exclaimed that ‘the just cause of the king was
approved by all the doctors of Italy.’[63]
[Sidenote: Protestants Condemn The Divorce.]
In the midst of this harmony of catholicity, there was one exception, of
which no one had dreamt. That divorce which, according to the frivolous
language of a certain party, was the cause of the Reformation in
England, found opponents among the fathers and the children of the
Reformation. Henry’s envoys were staggered. ‘My fidelity bindeth me to
advertise your Highness,’ wrote Crooke to the king, ‘that all Lutherans
be utterly against your Highness in this cause, and have letted
[hindered] as much with their wretched poor malice, without reason or
authority, as they could and might, as well here as in Padua and
Ferrara, where be no small companies of them.’[64] The Swiss and German
reformers having been summoned to give an opinion on this point, Luther,
Œcolampadius, Zwingle, Bucer, Grynæus, and even Calvin,[65] all
expressed the same opinion. ‘Certainly,’ said Luther, ‘the king has
sinned by marrying his brother’s wife; that sin belongs to the past; let
repentance, therefore, blot it out, as it must blot out all our past
sins. But the marriage must not be dissolved; such a great sin, which is
future, must not be permitted.[66] There are thousands of marriages in
the world in which sin has a part, and yet we may not dissolve them. _A
man shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh._ This law
is superior to the other, and overrules the lesser one.’ The collective
opinion of the Lutheran doctors was in conformity with the just and
Christian sentiments of Luther.[67] Thus (we repeat) the event which,
according to Catholic writers, was the cause of the religious
transformation of England, was approved by the Romanists and condemned
by the evangelicals. Besides, the latter knew very well that a
Reformation must proceed, not from a divorce or a marriage, not from
diplomatic negotiations or university statutes, but from the power of
the Word of God and the free conviction of Christians.
[Sidenote: English Address To The Pope.]
While these matters were going on, Cranmer was at Rome, asking the pope
for that discussion which the pontiff had promised him at their
conference in Bologna. Clement VII. had never intended to grant it: he
had thought that, once at Rome, it would be easy to elude his promise;
it was that which occupied his attention just now. Among the means which
popes have sometimes employed in their difficulties with kings, one of
the most common was to gain the agents of those princes. It was the
first employed by Clement; he nominated Cranmer grand almoner for all
the states of the King of England, some even say for all the Catholic
world. It was little more than a title, and ‘was only to stay his
stomach for that time, in hope of a more plentiful feast hereafter, if
he had been pleased to take his repast on any popish preferment.’[68]
But Cranmer was influenced by purer motives; and without refusing the
title the pope gave him,—since having the task of winning him to the
king’s side, he would thus have compromised his mission,—he made no
account of it, and showed all the more zeal for the accomplishment of
his charge.
The embassy had not succeeded, and they were getting uneasy about it in
England. Some of the pope’s best friends could not understand his
blindness. The two archbishops, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the
marquises of Dorset and Exeter, thirteen earls, four bishops,
twenty-five barons, twenty-two abbots, and eleven members of the Lower
House determined to send an address to Clement VII. ‘Most blessed
father,’ they began, ‘the king, who is our head and the life of us all,
has ever stood by the see of Rome amidst the attacks of your many and
powerful enemies, and yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his
labors.... Meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries impending over the
commonwealth.[69] If your Holiness, who ought to be our father, have
determined to leave us as orphans, we shall seek our remedy
elsewhere.... He that is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper;
and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain
what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil.... We beseech your Holiness
to consider with yourself; you profess that on earth you are Christ’s
vicar. Endeavor then to show yourself so to be by pronouncing your
sentence to the glory and praise of God.’ Clement gained time: he
remained two months and a half without answering, thinking about the
matter, turning it over and over in his mind. The great difficulty was
to harmonize the will of Henry VIII., who desired another wife, and that
of Charles V., who insisted that he ought to keep the old one.... There
was only one mode of satisfying both these princes at once, and that was
by the king’s having the two wives together. Wolsey had already
entertained this idea. More than two years before the pope had hinted as
much to Da Casale: ‘Let him take another wife,’ he had said, speaking of
Henry.[70] Clement now recurred to it, and having sent privately for Da
Casale, he said to him: ‘This is what we have hit upon: we permit his
Majesty to have two wives.’[71] The infallible pontiff proposed bigamy
to a king. Da Casale was still more astonished than he had been at the
time of Clement’s first communication. ‘Holy father,’ he said to the
pope, ‘I doubt whether such a mode will satisfy his Majesty, for he
desires above all things to have the burden removed from his
conscience.’[72]
This guilty proposal led to nothing; the king, sure of the lords and of
the people, advanced rapidly in the path of independence. The day after
that on which the pope authorized him to take two wives, Henry issued a
bold proclamation, pronouncing against whosoever should ask for or bring
in a papal bull contrary to the royal prerogative ‘imprisonment and
further punishment of their bodies according to his Majesty’s good
pleasure.[73] Clement, becoming alarmed, replied to the address: ‘We
desire as much as you do that the king should have male children; but,
alas! we are not God to give him sons.’[74]
Men were beginning to stifle under these manœuvres and tergiversations
of the papacy; they called for air, and some went so far as to say that
if air was not given them, they must snap their fetters and break open
the doors.
Footnote 58:
Stokesley to the Earl of Wiltshire, January 16, 1530: _State Papers_,
vii. p. 227.
Footnote 59:
Le Grand, _Preuves du Divorce_, p. 459. This letter is from Du Bellay,
and not from Montmorency, as a distinguished historian has supposed.
Footnote 60:
The opinions of these universities are given in Burnet’s _Records_, i.
p. 83.
Footnote 61:
‘Tale conjugium horrendum esse, execrabile, detestandum, viroque
christiano etiam cuilibet infideli prorsus abominabile.’—Rymer,
_Acta_, vi. p. 155.
Footnote 62:
Burnet, _Records_, iii. p. 87.
Footnote 63:
_State Papers_, vii. p. 242.
Footnote 64:
Burnet, _Records_, i. p. 82.
Footnote 65:
Calvin’s letter or dissertation (_Calvini Epistolæ_, p. 384)
harmonizes the apparently contradictory passages of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy; but I much doubt if it belongs to this period.
Footnote 66:
‘Tam grande peccatum futurum permitti non debet.’—Lutheri _Epp._ iv.
p. 265.
Footnote 67:
Burnet, _Records_, i. p. 88.
Footnote 68:
Fuller, _Church History_, p. 182.
Footnote 69:
‘Malorum pelagus reipublicæ nostræ imminere cernimus ac certum quoddam
diluvium comminari.’—Rymer, _Acta_, vi. p. 160.
Footnote 70:
‘Rex aliam uxorem ducat.’—Letter of G. Da Casale, Orvieto, January 13,
1528.
Footnote 71:
‘Ut duas uxores habeat.’—Rome, September 28, 1530. Herbert, p. 330.
Footnote 72:
‘An conscientiæ satisfieri posset, quam V. M. imprimis exonerare
cupit.’—Herbert, p. 330.
Footnote 73:
Collier, ii. p. 60.
Footnote 74:
‘Sed pro Deo non sumus, ut liberos dare possimus.’—Herbert, p. 338.