Foundations of the Anglican Church XXXII

Anne Boleyn

I am sorry for not having given more attention to this blog as we are in the middle of our Henry VIII saga.  And there is so much that I want to comment on after World Youth Day and other recent events in the Church.  I have recently started a new job and am learning how to manage the work more effectively but a lot of balls get dropped in the juggling act.  Nevertheless, let’s go back to Henry and the English Church for a few more entries and then I want to talk about Francis’ comments on the flight back to Rome from Rio and WYD as well as the neo-traditionalists disillusionment with Francis’ Church and the attempts of neo-trads such as Judie Brown of the American Life League and Michael Voris of Church Militant TV to undermine Francis’ leadership by sabotaging the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Charities and other outreach programs that embody Francis’ vision for the Church at the service of the world.  But back to Henry. 
I mentioned that Henry began to take mistresses fairly early in his marriage to Katherine of Aragon even though that marriage was initially a happy one.  The sixteenth century was not a time noted for strict rules of moral behavior and it was not unusual for kings and noblemen—or bishops and popes—to take a mistress or a male lover according to their particular tastes.  The popes of Henry’s early years—Julius II and Leo X—were men of the world.  Julius had both male and female lovers, fathering several illegitimate children by his lady loves.  Leo was gay and had several lovers before and during his papacy.  Adrian VI who was pope briefly from 1522-1523 was noted—and somewhat despised—for his personal integrity, but his successor, to whom Henry would appeal for an annulment, Clement VII, was a man of relaxed morals and, as we shall see, valued the marital alliances of his children over the good of the Church.  But that story is a bit down the line yet.
Katherine made no objection, at least as far as we know, to Henry’s dalliances.  She did not see them as a threat to her position as his wife and Queen.  She loved Henry and was slow to recognize his falling out of love with her, but more to the point, her own royal blood kept her secure—she thought—from replacement as wife and Queen by any of the commoners Henry was indulging himself in.  Katherine realized that men of Henry’s stature commonly took mistresses and his dalliances relieved her of too frequent obligations of her “wifely duties.”  And indeed Henry’s fancy for Elizabeth Blount, his only acknowledged mistress, and his relationship with Mary Boleyn, a married woman of aristocratic but not noble birth, were no threat to Katherine’s position.
But as Henry tired of Mary Boleyn, Mary’s younger sister, Anne, came to his notice.  Anne was of a different stripe than Mary.  Mary was a practical sort and understood her duty was to relieve the King’s sexual needs.  She loved Henry but she had no illusions about the social gulf that separated them.  The Boleyn family could not exactly be held up for noble virtue.  Mary Boleyn had been a lady-in-waiting to Henry’s Sister, Mary Tudor when the princess was sent to France to marry the King, Louis XII.   Louis died not long after the marriage and the widowed princess Mary Tudor returned to England, but Mary Boleyn remained behind as a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen, Claude, wife of Francis I.  She earned a bit of a reputation, having affairs with several different men and possibly with King Francis himself.  She returned to England in 1519 and became a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon.  It was then that she was noticed by Henry.  She shortly after married William Carey, a knight in the King’s service, and her relationship with Henry commenced under the guise of her marriage and her accommodating husband. 
Just as her husband was willing to share her favors with the King in hopes of advancement at court, her father realized that his daughter’s royal intimacy could advance his position as well.  These were not highly moral people.  The father, Thomas Boleyn, was married to a woman far above his station, Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and both husband and wife were anxious, even desperate, for his advancement.  Thomas Boleyn had no noble title of his own though through his mother he had a remote hope of someday claiming the Irish title of Earl of Ormond.  Lack of a noble title does not mean that Boleyn was insignificant however.  He had served both Henry VII and Henry VIII well in diplomatic posts and had been named a Knight of the Bath by Henry VIII.  He was Henry’s ambassador to the court of Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands in 1512, as ambassador to France from 1518 to 1521, and as Henry’s ambassador to the Emperor Charles V from 1521-1523.  Indeed for a man of common birth, he held very important positions at Court. 
When Henry lost interest in Mary Boleyn around 1526, Thomas Boleyn panicked.  He saw this liaison amoureuse as his ticket to better things and he was much relieved when Henry, looking for his next fling, looked not far but to the second daughter Anne.  Anne, as a young girl, had been a  lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Austria and then, like her sister Mary, to Mary Tudor during her marriage to Louis XII of France,  to Queen Claude, the wife of Francis I, successor to Louis XII. 
Catholic polemicists in the past were quick to project on Anne the promiscuity of her sister Mary.  Indeed the court of Claude of France was not known for its high moral standards and Anne could not afford to be naïve. It would have been expected of her to be somewhat generous with her “favors” to the flirtatious young men around Queen Claude.  Yet at the court Anne became friends, and to some degree, a protégée of the King’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre.  Marguerite was a highly educated woman and much respected in humanist circles.  Like many of the humanist circle, she was anxious for religious reform and embraced the new theology coming from Germany and Switzerland where Luther, Zwingli, and others were embracing evangelical ideals.  Anne seems to have become devoutly religious though skeptical about papal Catholicism in this period.  Part of that developing anti-papalism—both for Anne and for her patron, Marguerite of Navarre—was the close ties between the papacy and the Court of the emperor Charles V.  Navarre, on the border with Charles’ Spain, was particularly vulnerable.  France was the Empire’s chief rival in Europe both for control of the Netherlands and for influence in the Italian peninsula.  That dependency of the papacy on Charles and his empire would have terrible consequences for the Church of England.
Despite the stories later circulated about her by the religious conservatives of her day and subsequent years, Anne probably retained her virginity through this period.  Virgin she may have been, but Anne was in every other way a high-spirited lady of the French Court.  She was a remarkably intelligent woman to whom languages came easily and she spoke French and read Latin.  She possibly knew some Italian as well.  She was used to the intelligent conversations of humanist circles and had a more than rudimentary knowledge of philosophy and theology.  In addition she was accomplished at dancing, cards, hunting, archery, falconry, lawn tennis, and lawn bowling.  She had very fine taste in clothing, art, and music.  The liveliness and culture of the French court had made its impression on her and when Henry met her, he was smitten.  This was no mere roll-in-the-royal-hay—Anne was entertaining to be with, a match for Henry who was himself highly gifted and inclined to be bored with most of his more mundane companions.  But Anne had noted how Henry had “loved and left” her sister and she was not to be trifled with in that same way.  Soon after Anne’s return to England from France in 1522 Henry made his suit; Anne refused him, leaving court to return to the family home at Hever Castle. 
Anne was coy.  Moreover, her father and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, knew that they could exploit the situation for their own advancement.  Anne was named a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Katherine which kept her at Court and she used her position to charm the King but at the same time to frustrate his desires.   But Henry had more matters on his mind than Anne.  He needed an heir to secure the dynasty and prevent the struggles over the throne that had led to the Wars of the Roses.  He had, of course, a daughter, Mary, his daughter with Katherine of Aragon.  But could a woman rule?  There was no good historical precedent.  Katherine was beyond the years when she could bear a new heir.  But a new Queen could bear a child.   

  

Foundations of the Anglican Chruch XXIX

Katherine of Aragon arounhd the

time of her marriage to Henry

Well back to the saga of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the story of Henry’s break with Rome.   As previously mentioned, Henry VII brought England out of the dynastic struggles of the Wars of the Roses and established the Tudor dynasty.  His chief policy was to make the Tudor claim to the throne strong so that the struggles did not break out again.  Henry held the throne by force but the rightful succession was not so clear.  There were a number of claimants to the throne and none had an undisputed right though several had stronger claims for royal legitimacy than Henry VII Tudor whose only claim was through his mother’s descent from a bastard line (though later legitimized) descending from Edward III through John of Gaunt’s relationship to this mistress (and later wife) Katherine Swynford.  This line, while after-the-fact legitimized by both Church and Parliament was explicitly barred from the succession, making Henry Tudor the least legitimate of the several claimants and resistance to the Tudor monarchy would continue into the reign of his son, Henry VIII.  Despite the lack of legitimacy, however, Henry Tudor held the throne by virtue of his defeat of the usurper, Richard III, suspect of killing his own nephew, the rightful King Edward V, one of the “Princes in the Tower.”
Henry was faced not only with a weak claim to the throne he had seized from the hunchback murderer, Richard III, but he also had seized a throne with few financial resources.  How could he govern without the funds needed?  Legitimacy—or at least recognition—was granted him by the most powerful and aristocratic monarchs in the Catholic World—Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile—when they betrothed their youngest daughter, Katherine of Aragon, to Henry’s son and heir, Prince Arthur.  Moreover the Spanish bride came with a dowry sufficient not only to solve Henry’s fiscal crisis but to make him financially secure in the foreseeable future.
The marriage of Katherine and Arthur was duly celebrated in November of 1501 in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London but the young prince was dead in five months.  Henry would have to send the widowed princess back to Spain and, worse, send back her dowry.  But Ferdinand of Aragon did not want this any more than Henry and so the plan was hatched to marry Katherine to her deceased husband’s brother, the prince Henry.
I find it curious that Ferdinand and Isabella did not want their daughter back under any circumstances.  They were loving parents and their parting from her had been sad, most especially from her father who doted on her.  The only thing I can figure out is that they wanted to leave their joint realm to one child and didn’t want a disputed succession. With their son, the Prince of Asturias, dead, their oldest daughter, Isabella the Queen of Portugal, also dead and her sister Maria married and presently Queen of Portugal, the thrones of Castile and Aragon could both go to child 3, Joan.  This would not only unite the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile into one nation, Spain, but join the Spanish Realm and New World Empire to the Empire of which Joan’s husband, Philip of Burgundy was heir—the Holy Roman Empire.  Joan and Philip’s child would inherit Spain, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the Spanish Americas, what is today Belgium and Holland, Germany, Austria, and Bohemia, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and significant parts of Poland.  This was a grand dynastic plan—in fact, too grand.  It would hold together only under one monarch, the Emperor Charles V.  He would see the impossibility of it and upon his abdication break this world-empire apart once again into the Spanish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.  But it was a dream and a dream that could only be accomplished if child 5, Katherine, could be kept from a Spanish inheritance.  Katherine was to stay in England—hopefully as the bride of the next heir, but she was to stay under any and all circumstances.      
Henry the “spare” of the “heir and a spare” policy of the English royal family had been preparing for a career in the Church as a future Archbishop of York, but his brother’s death catapulted him from the clerical life to heir apparent.  He would be king.  And now his father was to force on him a royal bride to be his queen.  Henry
VII and Ferdinand appealed to Rome for the appropriate dispensations.  Katherine claimed that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated but the two Kings, leaving nothing to chance, obtained the dispensation permitting Katherine to marry her deceased husband’s brother. 
This did not please the young prince Henry.  Henry initially had misgivings about marrying Katherine.  It was not that he didn’t like her.  He was very fond of her but he was still a teenager and seems reluctant to marry young.  Moreover, she was five years older and that wasn’t terribly romantic.  The issue was still not resolved when in 1509, shortly before his 18^th birthday, Henry became king.     Upon ascending the throne, Henry suddenly decided to yield to the wishes of his late father and quietly married Katherine in a private ceremony at the Greyfriars’ (Franciscan) Church in Greenwich just over a month after his father’s funeral.  (Placentia Palace, the chief royal residence, was in Greenwich and the Observant Franciscans were especially favored by the royal family for their devotion and strictness of their lives. Keep them in mind.) 
The quiet simplicity of the royal wedding was in direct contrast to the splendid coronation of Henry and Katherine in Westminster Abbey two weeks later.  Henry and Katherine processed along a route carpeted in rich fabrics to Westminister Abbey where William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury anointed them with the sacred chrism and placed the crowns on their heads.  The Court then adjourned to Westminster Hall for the traditional coronation banquet. 
The marriage of Henry and Katherine was initially—and for a long time—a happy and fruitful one.  Katherine became pregnant, but miscarried and then became pregnant a second time but miscarried at the end of January 1510.  On New Year’s Day 1511 she gave birth to a prince, Henry, Duke of Cornwall.  There were great celebrations at the birth of an heir—a son to continue the dynasty—but the prince died towards the end of February.  In 1513, Katherine gave birth to a second son, but he died within a few hours, before he could even be named.  A third son, also named Henry and made Duke of Cornwall was born in December 1514 but died within the month.  In 1516 Katherine gave birth to the one child who survived—the Princess Mary—and would eventually sit on England’s throne.  Another daughter was born in November of 1518 but lived for only six days and was never named. All in all Katherine brought six children to term and miscarried at least one more.  Only one, a daughter, survived.  This was not auspicious for a dynasty whose claim to the throne was still fragile.  England had only once before had a Queen regnant—Maud, the daughter of Henry I in the 12 century—and England had devolved into Civil War during her reign.  Could England hold together under a woman?  There were doubts—doubts that would prove to be most ironic, but that is a later part of our story.   

The Foundatios of the Anglican Church XXV

Henry VII Tudor

Well, our story of the Church of England is coming to its crunch—the break with Rome.  We have seen that there has been an uniquely English Church since at least the second century with the early Christian communities in York, Chester, London, and other Roman towns.  These local churches were in communion with the Church at Rome but, given the geographic distance, were quite independent of it.   While they maintained the same beliefs as Christian communities throughout the Empire, they selected their own bishops, developed their own liturgy, and maintained their own practices. At this point of history, the Church at Rome and its bishop served as a focus of unity and orthodoxy among Christians around the known world but did not in any way supervise the vast network of Christian communities stretching from India in the east to Britain in the west.  This English Church only marginally survived the Anglo-Saxon invasions and did so with an infusion of leadership and vitality from the Irish Church which also has an ancient and very distinct (from the Continental Churches, most especially from the Roman Church) history.  This is not to say that the English or Irish Churches were not in communion with Continental Churches but it is to remember that they had their own peculiar customs and rites as well as a hierarchy that was not influenced (much less appointed) by Rome.
We also saw that with Augustine’s mission, sent by Gregory the Great, a second strain of Christianity, one that was influenced by Rome, was introduced into Britain and that it took a while for the these two strains to join together and that in their joining together the English Church retained its ancient rites of Sarum, York, Hereford, and Lincoln as well as a variety of distinctly English customs and usages.  And while the devotion of the Anglo Saxon kings and faithful to Saint Peter strengthened the bonds of England with the papacy, the policy of later kings such as Henry II, John, Edward I, Edward III and Richard II, was to enact legislation limiting papal power in England.  Note, “limiting” not “eliminating.”   The royal policy was to protect the rights of the King in England against intrusions whereby appeals were made over the King to Papal authority both in secular and ecclesial matters.  The Kings saw themselves as governors of the Church as well as of the State, but remember in the Middle Ages, Church and State were inextricably joined in the reality of the nationhood. 
One of the crucial areas where papal and royal authority came into conflict was over the naming of bishops.  While bishops were “elected” by their Cathedral Chapters, both the Crown and the Papacy demanded a voice in the election.  Nominations to a See were usually carefully negotiated so that both King and Pope were satisfied.  However, with the 1393 Statute of Praemunire (there was a 1353 Statute of the same name and a 1306 Statute of Provisors that provided a foundation for these later acts) it was explicitly claimed to be the right of the King alone to “present” candidates for ecclesiastical preferment.  Moreover, the same act declared that "… 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 excommunications, bulls, instruments or any other things whatsoever ... he and his notaries, abettors and counsellors" shall be put out of the king's protection, and their lands escheat.” It was forbidden by these various statutes as well for any Englishman to pay any tax or fees to powers outside the realm.   While such was the law, Rome expected its due and in fact the Crown looked the other way while English churchmen applied for their appointments to be confirmed by Rome and while they, the English churchmen, paid the appropriate (or at times, inappropriate) fees to the Roman Curia.   So what we in fact have is a dual allegiance of the Church to both Crown and Papacy and, while the law claimed, or attempted to claim, one thing, in fact the relations of the English Church and Rome were quite cordial and correct.
There was political trouble in England, however.  In 1399 Henry Bolingbroke seized and deposed his cousin, Richard II and claimed the throne for himself.  Richard was a weak and vacillating man at a time when England needed a strong king and Bolingbroke was strong; nevertheless, Bolingbroke—now Henry IV—did not have as strong a claim to the throne as did Edward Mortimer and England entered a period of political instability and civil war.  Henry IV’s grandson, Henry VI, himself was overthrown by Edward Duke of York, a descendent of Edward III.  This was the period known as the Wars of the Roses—the conflicts between the House of York (the white rose) and the House of Lancaster (the red rose).  The Wars of the Roses came to an end when in 1485 Henry Tudor (a Lancastrian) defeated Richard III (of York) who himself had seized the throne by murdering his nephew, Edward V, a boy of twelve. 
To cement the peace, Henry (a Lancastrian) married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV.  (A curious side note:  The portrait of Elizabeth of York is the model for the four queens of playing cards: Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts.)   

The point of all this is that England, after 1485, was in a newly found and yet unstable peace.  HenryVII Tudor was on the throne but there were other claimants whose rights, by strict rules of primogeniture, were stronger.  Civil War was always a possibility.  England was still a feudal state with a strong nobility and should leading men of that nobility desert King Henry for another claimant such as Edward Plantagenet, the Earl of Warwick or the brothers Edmund and John de la Pole, Dukes of Suffolk, Henry could have been in deep trouble.  In fact, well into the reign of Henry’s son, Henry VIII, the House of Tudor had to worry about maintaining their hold on the Crown.  Political stability was the chief policy of all the Tudors.  And it was the need for political stability in England that would eat away at the bonds of union between the Church of England and the Catholic Communion.  

A Protestant Funeral For a Catholic King

Richard III

Well, they found the remains of Richard III beneath a parking lot in the English city of Leicester, not far from Bosworth Field where he had been slain in the definitive battle of the War of the Roses.  The dead monarch had few friends in Leicester—the city was a stronghold of his Lancastrian enemies—and his corpse was buried rather ignominiously in the choir of the Greyfriars (Franciscan Church)—a far step down from the Cathedral or Abbey burials of other British Monarchs. 
And now the Dean and Chapter of Leicester Cathedral (Anglican) are fighting the Dean and Chapter of York Minster (Anglican) for ultimate reburial of royal bones.  Richard apparently wanted to be buried in York and he was the Yorkist claimant to the English Throne. 
The Wars of the Roses were a series of struggles between rival claimants to the English Crown in the fifteenth century.  The trouble started when the Yorkist Edward IV seized the throne from the Lancastrian Henry VI.  Both had claims to the throne.  Edward was the great-great grandson of Edward III through his fourth surviving son, Edmund of Langley.  Henry was also the great-great grandson of Edward III through his third surviving son, John of Gaunt.   The problem is that Edward III had a son—the Black Prince—who had predeceased his father.  The Black Prince also had a son—or several sons—who predeceased the old king as well.  The oldest surviving son at the time of the death of Edward III was the Black Prince’s son, Richard (Richard II), but Richard had no children.  Richard’s oldest sibling to produce an heir was Lionel of Antwerp who had a daughter Philippa.  Philippa was then heir presumptive to Richard II—but she died before Richard did.  She had a son who therefore should have inherited the throne—Richard Mortimer.  Unfortunately Richard Mortimer also died before his great-uncle but Richard Mortimer too had left a son—Edmund Mortimer.   In 1399 Henry Bolingbroke—a cousin of Richard II and grandson of Edward III through Edward’s son, John of Gaunt—led a coup against Richard and forced him to abdicate.  But—and I know this is confusing—the legitimate heir to the throne was, as said above, Edmund Mortimer, great-great grandson of Edward III. Bolingbroke seized the throne however under the argument that he was the oldest heir in an all-male line whereas Mortimer was descended from Edward through a female—Edward III’s granddaughter, Philippa.  To be fair to Edward’s claim, at the time there was a legitimate dispute as to whether a woman could inherit the throne and whether the throne could be inherited through a female line.  That issue was only settled definitively with the will of Henry VIII but that would only be in the following century.
The result of this cousinly tussle for the throne led to a war between the supporters of the Lancaster line represented by Henry VI, grandson of Henry IV Bolingbroke and the Yorkist line represented by Edward IV.  While Henry had an all male lineage, Edward had a double claim as he was descended from Edward III both through an all male line from Edward’s son Edmund and through the Lionel-Philippa-Mortimer lineage.
In the end, Edward IV (Yorkist) held the throne.  He should have  been succeeded by his son, Edward V, but his brother, Richard, locked the young king and his sibling, Richard, (ages 12 and 9) in the Tower of London and they were never seen alive again.  In 1674 during renovation work in the Tower skeletal remains of two boys were discovered.  They were reburied in Westminster Abbey as the presumed remains of Edward V and his brother Richard.  Their uncle, who had become Richard III, has always been blamed for their murder but whether he in fact had them murdered or whether this was propaganda from the Tudor dynasty is disputed.  Richard III was, as written above, defeated at Bosworth Field by Henry VII Tudor who succeeded him. 
So after begin defeated and slain on Bosworth Field, the remains of Richard III were brought to nearby Leicester and interred without coffin or even shroud in the Greyfriars Church.  They seem to have been literally tossed into a grave without any ceremony or rites.  When Henry VIII, the son of Richard’s nemesis, suppressed the religious orders in England in 1538, the Franciscans were sent packing and the Greyfriars Church and friary demolished.  There are records of a memorial stone in the early 17^th century marking the grave but that eventually disappeared.  An archeological dig sponsored by the University of Leicester in 2012 discovered the remains and DNA testing confirmed they are those of Richard III.
The interesting question will be how they should be reburied.  To Catholics, Richard was a Catholic.  To Anglicans he was an Anglican at a time when the Church of England was still in communion with the Pope.  This is the point that I wanted to get to and for us to begin exploring.  Did Henry VIII establish the Anglican Church (aka the Church of England) or did he take the ancient and well-established Church of England out of Roman Communion.  Catholics will be quick to say that Henry founded the Anglican Church but as we will see in future entries the issue is far more complex.
There is a precedent on this matter of whether the King should be buried according to Catholic Rites or to those of the Prayer Book.  In 1964 the remains of Anne de Mowbray, the eight-year-old “child bride” of that nine-year old Prince, Richard Duke of York, who disappeared along with his brother Edward V in the Tower of London under the connivance of their uncle Richard III, were discovered on the site where the Poor Clare nuns had their monastery in Stepney.  (Yes, you read right.  Anne was five and Richard four when they were married on January 15, 1478 in the Chapel of Saint Stephen in Westminster Palace).    When her remains were reinterred in Westminster Abbey in 1965 there was a debate about the rites.  Anne—like everyone else at this time was Catholic.  But the Dean of Westminster, the Vy. Rev. Eric Abbott, KCVO, insisted that the Church of England now is the same Church of England to which Anne had belonged, only no longer in communion with the Roman See and no longer in usage of the ancient rites.  Thus she was buried according to the Prayer Book rites. Of course those were the days before ecumenism.  Now we live in the days after ecumenism.  That window of opportunity has been slammed shut.