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| Stephen Gardiner |
Let’s go back to the history of the Church of England for an entry or
two. This weekend with the Holy Father’s trip to Jordan, Palestine, and Israel
will give some contemporary events to comment on, but before we get into that
hoopla, I would like to advance by a notch or two the history of the Church of
England as there is still so much to cover.
We are only up to about 1554 and most of the best stuff is yet to come.
Where we left off was Queen Mary’s process of brining the Church of
England back into the Roman Communion. It
was not as quick a process as one might think.
Mary had deposed about a half-dozen or more convinced Protestant bishops
but to replace them had no choice but to rely on any number of bishops who had supported
her father’s schism and even some who had introduced the Protestant reforms of
Archbishop Cranmer during the reign of her brother, King Edward VI. Robert
Parfew, Bishop of St Asaph, had even been one of the contributors to Cranmer’s
1549 Prayerbook. With only two or three
exceptions of clergy who had remained on the continent during the reigns of her
father and brother, there simply were no bishops and few priests who had not
acceded to schism, if not having gone further in embracing the new doctrines
and liturgies of Cranmer.
One of the Churchmen who had gone along with the schism of King Henry,
indeed provided the canonical justifications for it, but rebelled at the
liturgical and doctrinal innovations of King Edward’s reign, was Stephen
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.
Gardiner was a brilliant jurist—holding the doctorates in both canon
and civil law from Cambridge. He also
was a classicist, an avid scholar of both Latin and Greek. He was one of the humanists in the early
phases of what might be called the Renaissance England, following the example
of Dean Colet and Thomas More. (I know I
am a snob, but I am reluctant to speak of an “English Renaissance, and if it
weren’t for Shakespeare I would refuse completely. The English have always struck me as far to
practical to pay serious attention to anything beyond commerce and the
military.) Originally in the service of
Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s all-competent Lord Chancellor, Gardiner was noticed by
the King and transferred to his service before Wolsey’s fall. Gardiner served Henry in a variety of
diplomatic missions on the continent, several of which had to do with advancing
Henry’s plans to divorce Queen Katherine.
In 1527 Gardiner was sent to Rome to plead Henry’s cause to Clement
VII—a futile effort despite Gardiner’s superior knowledge of canon law because
of Clement’s dependency on the Emperor Charles V, Katherine’s nephew. (Medici politics doomed this mission from the
start. You can see more about this in
the entry for September 7, 2013.) While
Gardiner failed in his mission to secure the annulment, Henry was grateful for
his efforts—and anxious to use his talents
in the upcoming battle he (Henry) had determined to wage with the Church—named
Gardiner his secretary. In 1531 Henry
arranged for Gardiner to be named Bishop of Winchester—England’s wealthiest
see. This should not be construed to
mean that Gardiner was the King’s toady.
In giving Gardiner the See of Winchester, Henry acknowledged that
Gardiner had often opposed Henry’s policies and indeed he would do so again in
the following year when Henry tried to intimidate the bishops as the break with
Rome came closer. Nevertheless, as the
leading canon lawyer in the realm—and indeed one of the finest in Europe—Henry
depended on Gardiner both to argue the case for his annulment and to justify
the break with Rome. Gardiner delivered
on both counts.
Henry was no slouch theologically and although a firm Catholic
doctrinally and liturgically—though not a papal Catholic after 1530 or so—was
willing to make some accommodation to the crypto-Protestants in the English
Church and politics. This was the
Cranmer-Cromwell faction. In 1538 Cranmer had brought three Lutheran
theologians to London to discuss a variety of doctrines and practices—transubstantiation,
celibacy of the clergy, the importance of confession, the sacrificial nature of
the Mass. As Henry was at the time in
negotiation for marriage with a Protestant Princess—Anne of Cleves—he turned a
blind eye to the introduction of this Trojan Horse of Continental Protestantism
into his realm, but a number of conservative bishops, including Gardiner, saw
it as a threat to orthodoxy. The rest of
Henry’s reign would be marked by infighting among the bishops as Gardiner,
Tunstall of Durham, Bonner of London and other conservatives tried to out
maneuver Cranmer, Latimer and Shaxton who represented a Protestant party among
the bishops. While Latimer and Shaxton
did fall into Henry’s disfavor, Cranmer was able to outwit his foes and in fact
turn the tables on them. When Henry
died, Cranmer was able to keep Gardiner from the Council of Regency and as the
new reign changed the course of the Church of England, to advance the
Protestant agenda. Gardiner, who resisted, was deprived of his see and
imprisoned. He remained imprisoned
throughout Edward reign. Mary, upon her
accession, freed him, restored him to his see at Winchester, and named him her
Lord Chancellor, a position equivalent to Prime Minister today. Tables were now turned as the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Cranmer, was imprisoned for treason and on trial for heresy. In Cranmer’s enforced absence, Gardiner
performed the coronation rites for Mary at Westminster Abbey on November 1,
1553.
Mary and her Chancellor did not always agree. Their most notable disagreement was over
Mary’s plan to marry her cousin, Philip of Spain, in hopes of bearing a child
who could succeed to the throne and avoid Mary’s Protestant sister, Elizabeth,
becoming Queen. Gardiner saw the
unpopularity of a foreign husband, particularly a Spaniard, and joined a
petition of Parliament that Mary should choose an English husband, but Mary
would not be dissuaded. As Chancellor
Gardiner had to conduct much of the negotiations for this ill-advised marriage
and he carried out his duties and presided at their marriage in his cathedral
at Winchester on July 25, 1554. The
marriage failed to produce the desire heir.
While Mary genuinely loved her husband, Philip saw the marriage strictly
in political terms and Philip remained in England just over a year. Mary should have listened to Gardiner.
While she intended on restoring England to the Catholic Communion,
Mary initially promised religious tolerance to her Protestant subjects. In
regard to Cranmer she was determined to avenge her mother, but otherwise did
not seem over anxious to persecute Protestants.
Gardiner encouraged her in this policy of toleration, but as time went
on the Queen grew more worried about what would happen should her Protestant
sister gain the throne, and became more aggressive in her religious policies.
Gardiner tried to warn her off this. He
himself showed great tolerance towards Protestants in his diocese. But in 1554 Mary had Parliament pass the
Heresy Acts as part of the conditions under which the Church of England would
be readmitted to the Catholic Communion.
Despite Gardiner’s advice Mary became more and more harsh on her
Protestant subjects, executing almost 300 people and earning the sobriquet:
Bloody Mary.
Stephen Gardiner died in November 1555 and is buried in a mortuary
chapel in his cathedral.
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