Learning From The Past

For Australians, the date 11th November has a special significance, whether it be 1918 or 1975, but for the Church of England 11th November 1992 was a major milestone. On that date, its Synod voted by a two-thirds majority in favour of the ordination of women as priests. This has led to the retirement of some Anglican clerics, and to the "popeing" of some, such as a Bishop of London, recently ordained as a Catholic priest; it has not yet been worked out finally by others.

A member of the Church of England Synod, Mr. John Gummer, then Minister for Agriculture in the Major Government, resigned from the Synod after that vote, and expressed his views in an article in The Times, on Friday 23/4/1993. Amongst other things, he said:

'The church which the Elizabethan Settlement sought to make the church of the English nation is turning itself into a sect.

"This is, of course, a denial of the whole of Anglican history. The Church of England has always claimed that it has no doctrines or orders of its own but only those of the universal church. It was on that basis that it demanded the allegiance of the people of England. It sought both to insist upon the Catholic essentials and to uphold the necessity of reform.

''Now the Church of England has changed all that. By asserting that it can alter doctrine and order unilaterally it has relinquished its apostolic claim to the allegiance of the people of England.

'That was the whole basis of the Elizabethan settlement. A church teaching nothing except that rooted in scripture and warranted by tradition. A church owning itself as only one part of the body of Christ and claiming no power to change unilaterally what has been believed everywhere and by all.

'No longer can such a claim be maintained. Very soon you will not be able to be a member unless you are prepared to believe as an article of faith that the General Synod can, by a two-thirds majority, alter the orders and doctrines of the church. In a real sense there will be a doctrinal test of membership - one which specifically changes the nature of the Church of England and makes it as much a sect as any Protestant nonconformist body. This synod-driven church has sought to alienate the goodwill and assets of the church of the nation and assign them to a body made up only of people who are prepared to assent to this novel doctrine of the infallibility of the General Synod.

'So a whole group of English Christians who were included by the Elizabethan Settlement are now to be excluded and must in conscience look elsewhere. That leaves the Church of England itself in a difficult position. It cannot claim comprehensiveness as the reason for establishment. It has chosen a new path. Nor can it claim to be the largest church in England. It has long been overtaken in numbers of regular attenders by the Roman Catholic church. All that is left is its history.

'It may even have to learn the more painful lesson that the conversion of England is now predominantly in the hands of others and that 1992 marked not only the end of the Oxford Movement, but also the Elizabethan Settlement.'

In considering whether Mr. Gummer's views are appropriate or not, it is useful to look at the history of the Church of the English.

For about 400 years, England was a territory of the Roman Empire, commencing at about the time of the crucifixion of Christ and ending probably shortly before the invasion of Rome by Attila the Hun in 452 in the time of Pope St. Leo the Great.

The Romans left many memorials of their presence. There are the Roman roads, the most significant roads in England until the Industrial Revolution. There is Hadrian's wall between England and Scotland, much of which is still extant. There are the remains of the Roman wall about the city of London, which enclose the area which is now the target of I.R.A. attacks on high rise buildings. There is part of the Roman wall at Winchester, adjacent to Wolvesey castle, beside the river; and, of course, the Roman bath at Bath, where the spring water is still reticulated by Roman constructions.

And Christianity came to England during the period of the Roman Empire. Catholic bishops of London, York and Lincoln, in union with Pope Silvester 1 (314-335) attended a Council at Arles in August 314. One of the early heretics, Pelagius, came from the British Isles, and was writing at Carthage in 418 A.D.

However, the present structure of the Church of the English derives from Pope St. Gregory I the Great, at a time when the invaders had driven English Christianity into Brittany, Cornwall and Wales. In 596, he sent 40 monks under St. Augustine, like Gregory a Benedictine Monk, to England. Augustine established his Cathedral at Canterbury and a Benedictine Monastery nearby.

In 601, Augustine sent to Gregory for directions on points of organisation and discipline, and the following correspondence ensued:

Augustine's Second Question: Whereas the faith is one and the same, are there different customs in different Churches? and is one custom of Masses observed in the Holy Roman Church, and another in that of the Gauls?

Pope Gregory answers: You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church, in which you remember you were brought up. But my advice is that you should make a careful selection of anything that you have found either in the Roman Church or that of the Gauls, or any other Church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, and diligently teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several Churches.

For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from each Church those things that are pious, religious, and seemly, and when you have, as it were, incorporated them, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto.

Gregory had in mind that the two major dioceses should be London anrl York. It was not to be, since Canterbury took precedence over London, although the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace is at Lambeth in London, on the bank of the Thames opposite Westminster Abbey.

Gregory also wrote in 601 to Augustine:

Moreover, for the future, let there be this distinction of honour between the bishops of the City of London and of York, that he himself take the precedence who has been first ordained. But whatever things are for the zeal of Christ must be done by common counsel and harmonious act: let them arrange these concordantly, let them take right views and give effect to their views without any mutual misunderstanding.

But you, my brother, shall have subject to you not only the bishops you ordain, and not solely those ordained by the Bishop of York, but as well all the priests of Britain, by authority of our Lord Jesus Christ.

A question arises: what right did the Bishop of Rome have to make appointments and to decide questions in relation to the Church of the English.

As the "Acts of the Apostles" show, before His Ascension, Jesus Christ gave all authority which He possessed to His apostles and their appointees, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But He had already given a special authority to the head of the apostles, Peter, at Caesarea:

"You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven".

Peter later became the first bishop of Antioch and then of Rome.

Prior to the time of Gregory, this authority had been exercised by subsequent Bishops of Rome and accepted by the Church.

For example, at a time when St. John the Apostle was still alive, a dispute at Corinth was referred to Pope Clement, the fourth Pope, which led to the Pope's resolving the matter in his "Epistle to the Corinthians" (C.95).

St. Ignatius of Antioch acknowledged the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in his "Letter to the Church of Rome" (C.112).

St. Cyprian wrote to Pope St. Cornelius (C.250) in the following terms:

"...Peter, however, on whom the church has been built by the same Lord, speaking one for all, and answering with the voice of the Church, says, "Lord to whom shall we go?...".

After all this, they yet in addition, having had a false bishop ordained for them by heretics, dare to set sail, and to carry letters from schismatic and profane persons to the chair of Peter, and to the principal church, whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise. They fail to reflect that those Romans are the same as those whose faith was publicly praised by the apostle, to whom unbelief cannot have access...".

In 255, a question arose as to whether the bishop of Arles should be deposed. The Pope, Stephen I, acceded to a request that this should be done, and appointed a successor.

St. Jerome, in his letter to Pope Damasus, says: (c.376)

"Because the East is shattered by the fierce antagonisms of its peoples and is rending into tiny fragments the undivided and woven tunic of the Lord... therefore I have thought best to turn to the See of Peter and to the faith that was praised by the apostle's lips, to ask food for my soul from the source where once I received the raiment of Christ... An evil posterity has squandered its patrimony. You alone preserve unspoiled the heritage of the Fathers.

...A victim, I implore the priest for salvation; a sheep the shepherd for protection. Away with jealousy of the Roman pre-eminence! away with ambition! I speak to the successor of the fisherman and to the disciple of the cross. I follow no one as chief save Christ but I am joined in communion with your blessedness, that is, with the See of Peter. Upon that rock I know the Church is built. Whoever eats the lamb outside that house is profane."

St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and mentor of St. Augustine of Hippo, wrote to Pope Siricius in about c.390:

"Let them believe in the Apostles Creed, which the Roman Church has always kept undefiled".

Innocent I (c.401-417) received an appeal from the African bishops to support the condemnation of Pelagianism, and his fatherly reply was as follows:

"We approve your action in following the principle of the Fathers that nothing which was done even in the most remote and distant provinces should be taken as finally settled unless it came to the notice of this See, that any just pronouncement might be confirmed by all the authority of this See, and that the other churches might from thence gather what they should teach".

Innocent I also wrote to Decentius, Bishop of Eugubium in 416 as follows:

"Who does not know or observe that it [the church order] was delivered by Peter the chief of the apostles to the Roman church, and is kept until now, and ought to be retained by all, and that nothing ought to be imposed or introduced which has no authority, or seems to derive its precedents elsewhere?"

Pope St. Boniface, wrote in 419:

"As you have loyally said in your letter, the most blessed apostle Peter watches with his eyes in what manner you exercise the office of rector. He who was appointed shepherd of the Lord's sheep in perpetuity cannot but be very close to you, cannot but watch over any church, no matter where it is situated, in which we have laid a foundation stone of the universal Church".

Pope Gelasius wrote to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I in about 495 as follows:

'The Apostolic See's confession of faith is unassailable; it is impossible for it to be stained by any false doctrine or to be contaminated by error... know that the world is ruled over by two great powers, that of the pontiffs and that of the kings, but the authority of the pontiffs is far greater, since they must, on the judgment day, give account to God of the souls of the kings..."

After Augustine was appointed to Canterbury, for nearly 500 years Christianity spread through England. In 664, at the Synod of Whitby, the English Catholics agreed to fall in with the customs of the Catholic church elsewhere throughout the world.

During the next four hundred years England, was to be the subject of invasions by Danes and others, but nevertheless there were benedictine foundations, Saxon churches and even Saxon cathedrals. There is still extant, for example, a Saxon church at Cambridge, but Saxon cathedrals did not survive. The original Westminster Abbey was founded in 610.

Thus there developed cults of Anglo-Saxon saints such as St. Ethelburga (whose church in London was blown to bits in the IRA attack in April 1993), St. Swithin (whose bones were removed from the Saxon Cathedral in Winchester to the Norman Cathedral) and St. Etheldreda, whose Catholic Church in Holbom, London (bought at auction by the Rosminian fathers in the 19th century) claims to be the oldest Catholic Church in England.

There was also St. Edward the Confessor, the second last of the pre-Norman rulers.

The Church of the English developed in a land of villages, with some small towns, and a large town in London. The houses and churches in England appear to have grown out of the ground, rather than have been put on top of the ground, as in Australia. In a country where distances were short, roads were few, transport by horse or water, and means of communication so different from ours, village life was oriented to meet the needs of the villagers. This substantially remained the situation until the Industrial Revolution.

In 1066, a major change took place in England, with its conquest by William of Normandy. He brought with him a stricter form of feudalism than ever existed anywhere on the continent. His Norman companions oecame the dominant forces in England, and gave protection to the Anglo/Saxon/Danish/Celtic English only on the basis that they became the lord's vassals, and would, at the behest of the lord, grant to the lord military and other service. Pope Alexander II had encouraged William the Conqueror to venture into England.

Many of the direct or indirect descendants of the Normans are in positions of significance in England to this day, including the royal Family, the House of Windsor.

In Europe at that time, there had been the emergence of states other than Normandy. In 1059, Pope Nicholas II had issued a decree on Papal elections with a view to ensuring that the election of popes was free of control of appointments by princes.

Apart from the lay states in Europe, there had developed also the states of the Church, areas in the Italian peninsula, which had originally been given to Pope Stephen II by Pepin III, the King of the Franks in about 756. They remained as such with variations until 1879; indeed, the church only relinquished its title in 1929.

Consequently, in dealings with the Pope, William the Conqueror was dealing not only with the spiritual successor of St. Peter, but a prince who had available to him an income from the States of the Church to enable him to carry out his spiritual duties.

However, there was a further aspect of papal sovereignty. In about 750, there had come into existence a document, the genuineness of which was not disproved for another 700 years, known now as the false Donation of Constantine, which, in part, read as follows:

'We convey to the oftmentioned and most blessed Silvester, universal pope, both our palace, as preferment, and likewise all provinces, palaces and districts of the city of Rome and Italy and of the regions of the West; and, bequeathing them to the power and sway of him and the pontiffs, his successors, we do (by means of fixed imperial decision through this our divine, sacred and authoritative sanction) determine and decree that the same be placed at his disposal, and do lawfully grant it as a permanent possession to the holy Roman Church'.

Pope Gregory VII claimed, not only the spiritual allegiance of William the Conqueror, but also that he should be the Pope's feudal vassal. It would follow that, if William agreed to this, England would owe fealty to the Pope as his Suzerain to fight for the independence of the States of the Church.

William was unimpressed by this, particularly since Gregory VII (known as Hildebrand) was engaged in a mighty conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, which resulted in the penance in 1077 of Henry IV at Canossa.

William wrote to Gregory VII as follows in 1075:

"Your legate Hubert came to me as your representative. Holy Father, and ordered me to do fealty to you and your successors, and to think better of my decision about the money which my predecessors were accustomed to send to the Roman Church. I agreed to one of these requests, but not to the other. I refused to do fealty, and I will not do it; for I did not promise it, nor do I find that my predecessors did fealty to yours. As to the money, it has been carefully collected for almost three years, during the time that I was in Gaul. Now that I have returned to my kingdom, by the mercy of God, what has been collected is being sent by the aforesaid legate, and the remainder will be dispatched, when opportunity is offered, by the legate of Lanfranc, our trusty Archbishop."

Holding the temporal power of the pope at arm's length was thereafter always a characteristic of the Church of the English.

The advent of the Normans set the scene for a different development for the Church of the English. It led to the building of very many magnificent buildings still amazing to behold today, such as Winchester Cathedral, Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, to name three of the best known. England is not only dotted with a great number of Norman and Gothic Cathedrals, but also many village churches going back to the 12th Century, which replaced the Saxon churches. Many of these churches, such as Betchworth in Surrey and Cutcombe in Somerset, contain lists of the priests/rector/vicar, from the 12th or 13th century to date. However, most of them have been significantly modified over the centuries, particularly where Romanesque Norman architecture was replaced by Gothic. William had been ably assisted by Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury. William Rufus, son of and successor to William the Conqueror, was obstructive to the Church after his father's death and burial in Caen in Normandy. King Henry I, King William Rufus's brother and successor, was also ably assisted by St Anselm of Canterbury.

In 1107, an accommodation was negotiated by St Anselm between Pope Paschal II and the King in relation to the claim by King Henry I that he had the right to invest bishops, as follows:

'In the presence of Anselm and a large concourse, the king agreed and ordained that henceforward no one should be invested with bishopric or abbacy in England by the giving of a pastoral staff or the ring, by the king or any lay hand; Anselm also agreeing that no one elected to a prelacy should be deprived of consecration to the office undertaken on the ground of homage, which he should make to the king.

'After this decision, by the advice of Anselm and the nobles of the realm, fathers were instituted by the king, without any investiture of pastoral staff or ring, to nearly all the churches of England which had been so long widowed of their shepherds.'

It must be borne in mind that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, apart from what has already been stated, the influence of Platonic philosophy and Augustinian theology tended to support the idea of papal political supremacy.

As it happened, it was mainly those educated in the church that the state could rely on at that time for independent leadership, of whom Lanfranc and Anselm are but two examples. It was largely they who civilised Europe. Despite this, in England the local clergy was ill educated and many of them were irregularly married.

The distinction between a cardinal (such as Beaufort in the 15th and 16th Centuries or Wolsey in the 16th) and a Pope, (such as Julius II in the 15th Century) as men of God and as temporal rulers, was not likely to be immediately obvious to the masses.

For about five hundred years after William the Conqueror, the English church continued firmly Catholic in its faith, as it had been ever since Christianity reached the island.

In 1208, King John fell foul of Pope Innocent III as a result of keeping bishoprics vacant and appropriating their revenues. No pope more than Innocent III actually exercised Caesaro-papal authority. In order to do this, he relied on the twin penalties of excommunication and interdict.

An interdict was a sentence barring persons or places from ecclesiastical functions or privileges until the ruler had a change of attitude.

The problem came to a head when Innocent III in 1208 summoned the monks of Canterbury to Rome, where they elected Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, but King John refused to accept him preferring a bishop of his own nomination.

Consequently Innocent III put England under an interdict, to be observed in the following terms:

'Innocent the bishop, etc., to the Bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, greeting and apostolic blessing.

We reply to your inquiries, that whereas by reason of the interdict new chrism cannot be consecrated on Maundy Thursday, old must be used in the baptism of infants, and, if necessity demand, oil must be mixed by hand of the bishop, or else priest, with the chrism, that it fail not.

And although the viaticum seem to be meet on the repentance of the dying, yet, if it cannot be had, we who read it believe that the principle holds good in this case, "believe and thou hast eaten", when actual need, and not contempt of religion, excludes the sacrament, and the actual need is expected soon to cease.

Let neither gospel nor church hours be observed in the accustomed place, nor any other, though the people assemble in the same. Let religious men, whose monasteries people have been wont to visit for the sake of prayer, admit pilgrims inside the church for prayer, not by the greater door, but by a more secret place. Let church doors remain shut save at the chief festival of the church, when the parishioners and others may be admitted for prayer into the church with open doors.

Let baptism be celebrated in the usual manner with old chrism and oil inside the church with shut doors, no lay person being admitted save the godparents; and if need demand, new oil must be mixed.

Penance is to be inflicted as well on the whole as the sick; for in the midst of life we are in death. Those who have confessed in a suit, or have been convicted of some crime, are to be sent to the bishop or his penitentiary, and, if need be, are to be forced to this by church censure.

Priests may say their own hours and prayers in private. Priests may on Sunday bless water in the churchyard and sprinkle it; and can make and distribute the bread when blessed, and announce feasts and preach a sermon to the people.

A woman after child birth may come to church, and perform her purification outside the church walls. Priests shall visit the sick, and hear confessions, and let them perform the commendation of souls in the accustomed manner, but they shall not follow the corpses of the dead, because they will not have church burial. Priests shall, on the day of the Passion, place the cross outside the church, without ceremony, so that the parishioners may adore it with the customary devotion.'

As this had no immediate effect on King John, Innocent III excommunicated him. The interdict lasted five years, causing his subjects to become angry with their King.

In 1213, John submitted, but he also surrendered to the Pope his temporal power, to be received back as a feudal dependency from the Pope:

'We, willing to humble our selves for Him who humbled Himself for us even to death, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit's grace, under no compulsion of force or of fear, but of our good and free will, and by the unanimous advice of our barons, offer and freely grant to God and His holy apostles Peter and Paul and the holy Roman Church, our mother, and to our lord the Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors, the whole realm of England and the whole realm of Ireland, with all their rights and appurtenances, for the remission of our sins and those of all our race, as well quick as dead.

'And from now receiving back and holding these, as a feudal dependant, from God and the Roman Church, in the presence of the prudent man Pandulf, subdeacon and one of the household of the lord the pope, do and swear fealty for them to the aforesaid our lord the Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors and the Roman Church, according to the form written below, and will do liege homage to the same lord the Pope in his presence if we shall be able to be present before him; binding our successors and heirs by our wife, for ever, that in like manner to the supreme pontiff for the time being, and to the Roman Church, they should pay fealty and acknowledge homage without contradiction.'

He subsequently took an oath of fealty to the Pope.

In 1215, King John, by signing 'Magna Carta', provided for the freedoms of the Church of the English. There were terms of the document which led the Pope to denounce Magna Carta and censure the barons. He suspended Archbishop Langton, who returned to his full duties in 1221 only after the death of both Pope and King.

Last month's article ended with the I feudal accommodation agreed between the monarch and the Pope in the early thirteenth century, the century which can be described as the full flowering of Christendom.

It saw, for example, the foundation, largely by the medicant orders, of the first of the present university colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, there developed major ruptures in the relationship between the Church and princes, although England remained somewhat remote.

Problems particularly had developed between Edward I of England and Pope Boniface VIII. The latter issued the bull 'Clerics Laicos' in 1296 to oppose the taxation of the clergy to provide money for payment for wars. The Pope's main quarrel, however, was with Phillip IV of France, the father-in-law of Edward II of England.

Boniface VIII in 1302 struck particularly at Phillip IV (known as 'the Fair') in 'Unam Sanctam' in 1302:

'And we learn from the words of the Gospel that in this Church and in her power are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the apostles said, 'Behold here' (that is, in the Church, since it was the apostles who spoke) 'are two swords' - the Lord did not reply, 'It is too much' but 'It is enough'. Truly he who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter misunderstands the words of the Lord, 'Put up thy sword into the sheath'.

'Both are in the power of the church, the spiritual sword and the material. But the latter is to be used for the Church, the former by her; the former by the priest, the latter by kings and captains but at the will and by the permission of the priest. The one sword, then, should be under the other, and temporal authority subject to spiritual. For when the apostle says 'there is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God they would not be so ordained were not one sword made subject to the other. . .' In the 14

In the 14th and 15th Centuries, England was faced with the 'Hundred Years War' with France (desultory though it may have been at times), the onsets of the Black Death, and the cruel internecine Wars of the Roses between the descendants of King Edward III and their followers.

The Papacy had its own problems. It had become unsafe to live in Rome, so the Popes moved to Avignon, where they became unduly under French influence.

It must be remembered that the promulgation and limitations of the doctrine of papal infallibility, limited only to solemn declarations on matters of faith and morals, occurred only in 1870. In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, the supplanting of Platonic and Augustinian ideas by scholasticism had led many to believe that the state had its own rights independent of the church.

Indeed, even Pope Paschal II (1099 - 1118) had been in favour of surrendering the States of the Church, but did not succeed in doing so.

As a result of these developments, the rulers of England, which by now involved not only the King but also the parliament - although fully parliamentary democracy as known to us did not even begin to appear in England until the 1884 Reform Act - enacted the Statute of Provisors (first enacted in 1351) and, more importantly, the Statute of Praemunire (first enacted in 1353) in the reign of Edward III. The former was designed to prevent the Pope from giving English benefices to aliens and Cardinals who did not dwell in England. The latter was designed to prevent appeals to the Court of Rome in matters subject to the jurisdiction of English Courts except with the kings consent:

'If any purchase or pursue, or cause to be purchased or pursued, in the court of Rome, or elsewhere, any such translations, processes, and sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments, or any other things whatsoever, which touch our lord the king, against him, his crown, and his royalty or his realm, as is aforesaid, and they which bring the same within the realm, or receive them, or make thereof notification, or any other execution whatsoever within the same realm or without, that they, their attorneys, agents maintainers, abettors, supports, and advisers, shall be put out of the king's protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, forfeited to our lord the king.'

A further statute of Praemunire was enacted in 1393 in the reign of Richard II, the last of the Plantaganet/Angevin monarchs.

Nevertheless, the first of the Lancastrian Kings, Henry IV, was anxious to ensure that the spiritual welfare of his flock was preserved, so in 1401, he enacted the law 'De Haeretico Comburendo' aimed then against the Lollards:

'And if any person within the said realm and dominions, upon the said wicked preachings, doctrines, opinions, schools, and heretical and erroneous informations, or any of them, be, before the diocesan of the same place, or his commisaries, convicted by sentence, and the same wicked sect, preachings, doctrines and opinions, schools and informations, do refuse duly to abjure, or by the diocesan of the same place, or his commissaries, after abjuration made by the same person, be pronounced relapsed, so that according to the holy canons he ought to be left to the secular court, whereupon credence shall be given to the diocesan of the same place, or to his commissaries in this behalf - then the sheriff of the county of the same place, and the mayor and sheriff or sheriffs, or mayor and bailiffs of the city, town or borough of the same county nearest to the same diocesan or said commissaries, shall be required.

'And they shall receive the same persons and every of them, after such sentence promulgated, and them, before the people, in a high place cause to be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear to the minds of others, whereby no such wicked doctrine and heretical and erroneous opinions, nor their authors and favourers in the said realm and dominions, against the Catholic faith, Christian Law, and determination of the Holy Church be sustained (which God forbid), or in any wise suffered.'

Amidst these tensions, England produced contemplatives and saints in the ages of Christendom. For example, there was St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033 - 1109); Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 - 1167) abbot of that monastery in Northumbria (now a ruin), the author of 'Mirror of Charity' and 'On Spiritual Friendship'; Walter Hilton (1330 - 1395) (of Nottingham) author of The Scale of Perfection', and Juliana of Norwich (1342 - 1423) author of 16 Revelations of Divine Love'.

There was no significant change in the relationship between the monarch and the Church in the time of the Yorkist Kings (1461 - 1485) or the first Tudor King Henry VII.

In the early part of the 16th century, it would be fair to say that the unity of Christendom had finally ruptured. The way was left open for the Protestant revolution and the consequent reforms of the Council of Trent in the mid 16th Century, which have set the pattern of the Catholic Church to this day.

It is well known that the fundamental fight between the Papacy and the English State was precipitated by the determination of the Tudor King Henry VIII to marry Anne Boleyn. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, had previously been married to his brother, Arthur, and was still alive.

It was very common even up to the late 19th century, for political marriages to be arranged between strangers, even when infants. The Emperor Charles V in the 16th century was engaged 10 times before he turned 20. Another example: the marriage of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, in the 16th Century to the French Dauphin, so that she became also the Queen of France, and potential Queen of England.

Indeed, the English never relinquished the claim to be monarchs of France after the coronation of the King Henry VI as King of France until Georgian times.

Pope Julius II in 1503 declared null the non-consummated marriage between Henry's dead brother Arthur and Catherine of Aragon. It would thus not be an impediment to Henry's intended marriage to her. This left Henry VIII free to reunite the Kingdoms of England and Aragon by their marriage shortly after his accession in 1509.

Henry VIII was appalled by Luther and his writings. For his defence of orthodoxy, Henry was awarded with the title 'Defender of the Faith' by Pope Leo X in 1521.

Henry later became disaffected with the Papacy when Pope Clement VII would not make a decision reversing that of Pope Julius II, or at all. Such a decision would permit him to marry Anne Boleyn. Clement VII was at that time besieged in Rome, which was being attacked by an army of the Emperor Charles V, Catherine of Aragon's nephew (probably unknown to Charles V).

Cardinal Wolsey, as Papal legate in 1527, submitted the King's request to Rome. When no decision was made, Henry VIII had him arrested on a Praemunire charge, but he died before he could be tried and executed.

Henry married Anne Boleyn in January 1533, whilst Catherine of Aragon was still alive, after obtaining decisions in his own favour from his own clergy to the effect that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was never a marriage, and ordering him to separate from her.

Henry VIII then took the matter from the Papacy into his own hands by legislation, the Act of Supremacy 1534:

'Albeit the king's majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in their Convocations, yet nevertheless for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ's religion within this realm of England, and to repress and extirp all errors, heresies, and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same:

'Be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament, that the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia;

'And shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof, as all honours, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits and commodities to the said dignity of supreme head of the same Church belong and appertaining;

'And that our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended, most to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue of Christ's religion, and for the conservation of peace, unity, and tranquility of this realm; any usage, custom, foreign law, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding.'

He thereby made himself the head of this Church of England.

The clergy in Convocation at Canterbury had been called upon by the King to abjure Papal supremacy, and this they did in 1534:

'On the last day of March, in the presence of the most reverend Ralph Pexsall, the clerk of the crown in the chancery of the lord the king, in the name of the said king, presented a royal writ for summoning Convocation and proroguing it to the fourth day of November following. And afterwards was exhibited a writing by William Saye, notary public, concerning the answer of the Lower House to the question, viz. 'Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy Scriptures in this realm of England, than any other foreign bishop? Noes 34, doubtful I, ayes 4.'

Likewise, a similar decision was made by the Convocation of York in 1534:

'By virtue of a royal writ this synod, convened on the fifteenth day of May, sent to the lord the king, by the archbishop's certificate, the sentence of their decision against the pope's supremacy: 'To the most illustrious and excellent prince and lord, the lord Henry VIII, by the grace of God king of England and France, defender of the faith, and lord of Ireland, Edward, by Divine permission archbishop of York, primate of England, and metropolitan, greeting.

'We make known and declare to your royal highness, by the tenor of the presents, that when, according to the mandate of your royal majesty, the following conclusion was proposed in the presence of the prelates and clergy of the province of York, gathered together in the sacred synod of the province or Convocation of the prelates and clergy of the same province of York, held in the Chapter House of the metropolitan church of York, on the fifth day of May, in the present year of our Lord 1534, and continued from day to day: That the Bishop of Rome has not, in Scripture, any greater jurisdiction in the kingdom of England than any other foreign bishop'.

'And when further, on behalf of the presidents deputed by you in the same synod, the said prelates and clergy were asked and demanded to confirm and endorse that opinion by their consent, if they thought or judged it consonant to the truth and not repugnant to the Holy Scriptures; at length the said prelates and clergy of the province of York aforesaid, after careful discussion had in that behalf, and mature deliberation, unanimously and concordantly, with no dissentient, affirmed the conclusion above-mentioned to have been and to be true, and concordantly consented to the same.'

Pope Clement VII on the other hand, finally decided in 1534 that the King had not been free to marry Ann Boleyn.