The Church That Francis Built

Pius XII--each pope in
his own papacy remakes
the Church 

There is no doubt that in two and a half years Pope Francis has effected a radical change in Catholicism—creating a very different Church than the one he inherited from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.  The Franciscan Revolution has not yet been complete and its thoroughness will depend, to some extent, on how much longer Francis continues in the papal ministry, but once again the toothpaste is out of the tube and will not successfully be put back, at least in its entirety. 

The most notable change in this papacy is from an emphasis on objective moral norms to a much stronger personalist appreciation for the vagaries of human behavior, most particularly regarding human sexuality.  As practically every commentator has pointed out, Francis has not changed any Church teaching on sexual morality but his openness to encounter and willingness to dialogue with transgendered individuals, the divorced and remarried, people in same-sex relationships, has done far more than change a tone.  It has torn down the barriers that isolated non-conforming individuals from the larger Catholic community.  It has put sexual behavior in its proper context and not let it be any longer the overriding defining characteristic of a person’s moral quality.  Francis doesn’t claim that non-marital sexual relationships are not sins but he treats them like any other area of moral fracture and doesn’t impose some sort of Scarlet Letter on individuals who don’t measure up to our somewhat strict Catholic codes.  Consequently people once seemingly isolated from full participation in the life of the Christian community are finding the Church a comfortable spiritual home and learning to integrate themselves back into the community.  More and more are even taking responsibility for their spiritual integrity and deciding for themselves questions about whether their individual choices are indeed serious fractures in their relationship with God and how to handle their taking responsibility for their moral integrity vis a vis participating in the Eucharist and other sacraments.  There is nothing really new in this except for the scale on which it is proceeding.  Some individuals have long had that maturity and spiritual depth to plumb their own consciences and act accordingly, but it is now almost becoming normative.  This does drive some people of the old Scribe and Pharisee Club ‘round the bend however.  Always did.  Even back in the day when the disciples picked corn on the Sabbath.  But that is another story.

The second way in which the change is becoming effective is a move away from the triumphant style of recent years.  Towards the end of the reign of John Paul II there was a very notable shift in sartorial style in Vatican circles.  Cappae Magnae had not been seen in years but were suddenly popping up at all these “traditional” Pontifical Masses in the “Extraordinary Form.”  Silver buckles and violet and scarlet stockings began appearing on prelatial feet.  JPII kept his ox-blood loafers for everyday, but began wearing some vestments, especially copes, that were exceptionally beautiful but also quite different from the more simple style set by Paul VI and used by JPII himself in the first two thirds of his reign.  Then Benedict hit the scene with a fury that can only be compared to a confused six-year old allowed to raid his Gramma’s attic for dress-up.   I mean he was giving Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham a run for her money in period costume.  I don’t mean to be unkind or demeaning but frankly, it was embarrassing.  It was certainly hard to explain to people who live in the everyday world.  And it was threatening to turn the Church into a bizarre fantasyland as the enthusiasm for vintage costuming trickled down through Bishops Burke and Finn and Slattery and Morlino et al to local clergy.  Francis’ return to the more simple style of vesture as well as his Ford Focus and apartment in the Vatican Guest House has set a standard of normalcy. 

I suppose there are other ways in which Francis has changed the Church.  One would certainly be the reduction of bureaucracy and the levels of transparency, especially in financial matters.  There is still a long way to go in these areas, but more progress has been made in these areas in the last two years than in the previous thirty-five.  Another is the move away from a juridical mentality where every canon and each liturgical rubric was noted and enforced.  Francis is not one for allowing his agenda to be snared by minor points.  Francis’ willingness to speak off the cuff is a huge difference from his predecessors and witnesses to his concern for the broad picture rather than sweating the small stuff.  His permitting free and open discussion at the Synod of Bishops witnesses to this same point.  And of course his willingness to take on the issues of the day—Climate Change, Income Inequality, Migrants—is notable.  His predecessors brought up these issues as well but always heavily veiled with abstractions.  Francis is very specific and concrete in his approach. 

We must remember however that the Church Francis inherited was not the Church as it came down from the Apostles.   John Paul II, along with Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI—had done much to create the Church as it stood on March 13, 2013.  It was not the Church John XXIII and Paul VI had left.  Francis’ predecessors re-centralized authority in the Roman Curia at the expense of the local bishops whom Christus Dominus at Vatican II recognized as heads of the local Churches.  Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue had largely gone into a stall.  Liturgical development had taken an ugly turn with “The Reform of the Reform” and even worse with Ecclesia Dei and Summorum Pontificum.  There was a serious attempt to re-interpret the Second Vatican Council in a minimalist fashion.  In fact, much of what Francis has done, has been to restore the Church to the track envisioned at the Council. 

And John XXIII and Paul VI themselves had radically reshaped the Church that Pius XII had left at his death on October 9, 1958.  Few popes have had the opportunity to shape the Church in their papacy as had Pius XII.  His years as a diplomat gave him the skills to exploit the WWII period and the post-war period to extend papal control at the expense of local bishops and cathedral chapters as well as traditionally autonomous religious communities.  Resistance to Communism required the surrender of local independence to centralized Papal authority.  With henchmen like the American Francis Spellman, the French Maurice Feltin, British Bernard Griffin, and Spaniard Enrique Pla y Deniel Pius was able to control the Church throughout Western Europe and the Americas.  He was uncompromising with the Communist Regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia even though it meant the imprisonment and death of numerous bishops, priests, religious and faithful.   He created a political alliance with the United States government to check the spread of Communism, especially in Latin America and placed the resources of the Church at the disposal of the CIA in their joint efforts.  He was the most powerful pope since the 13^th century apex of papal power and, at least until is health problems began in 1954 was able to concentrate all power, curial and diplomatic, in his own hands.  His failing health and loss of ability to manage the Curia is in great part responsible for creating that behemoth that has plagued every pope since. 

We could go back further and see how Church has morphed to fit the vision of each Pope, some simplifying and others aggrandizing the Church and their own office.  But for this posting suffice it to say that while Pope Francis has done remarkable work, substantially he has done nothing other than what each of his predecessors has done in his reign. 

When Sheldon Cooper Was Pope

Coat of Arms of Pius XII 

I remember the death of Pius XII.  It was a Wednesday night—a school night—and we had just gone to bed, probably about 9:30.  For some reason I had gotten up after about a half hour and gone back downstairs where my parents were watching television.  I heard the news bulletin break through the television show they were watching. In those days, it was black and white, of course and I vaguely remember that the program may have been Bat Masterson, but I do remember clearly how startling an idea it was that the Pope was dead.  I didn’t know any other pope, of course.  When one is young, one does not think  of a pope dying.  The Pope was an institution, not a human being.  Pius XII.  There had been a Pius XI, but that was long before me.  As a kid still in grade school, I had never given it much thought but presumed there had only been Piuses.  Twelve of them.   A link through the centuries to Peter and through Peter to Jesus, to God.  I really was pretty unsophisticated, I guess but for a generation who only knew John Paul II, the shock was similar.  Popes just seemed to be the bridge between us in this world and God in the world above.  Of course, Pius XII was, or seemed to be, no mere mortal—he transcended the world of the simply human—this was a Pope who seemed to float above our everyday world, who represented the Divine to our spiritual imaginations.  When it came to Popes, Pius had lulled us into a sort of monophysitism where his humanity had been absorbed into a papal divinity. 

This was no accident.  Pius was a man who invented the papacy for his age.  He understood, at least at a subliminal level, the idea that the “medium is the message” long before anyone heard of Marshall McLuhan.  And for those of us of his generation, no Pope would ever measure up to Pius XII.  He set the bar as to what a Pope should be. 

Now I don’t want this to be taken as a negative, and I am not trying to be funny or to ridicule, but in fact, Pius was somewhat of an ecclesiastical Sheldon Cooper.  He was a brilliant man but a social misfit who was incapable of normal human relationships.  He was all intellect and no conscious affect; a man of rigid protocols and compulsive routine.  He was born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli on March 2^nd 1876 to a Princely family of the “Black Nobility”—the Roman aristocracy that refused to recognize the Kingdom of Italy and its claims on the former papal states. The Pacelli were steadfast supporters of the Papacy and its lost claims to civil power, and family members were among the most active employees of the Holy See.  Eugenio was one of four children—two boys and two girls and was educated as a day student in various private schools.  At eighteen he enrolled in Rome’s most ancient seminary, the Collegio Capranica.  The Capranica is not only the oldest seminary in Rome but perhaps the most exclusive, admitting less than a dozen new students each year.   At the same time it has turned out a remarkable number of prelates for the Church.

There was no doubt that Pacelli was not to be a simple parish priest but would go on for a career in the Church.  His family connections and social position guaranteed that, but still Eugenio could not handle life in the seminary.  He had been a coddled child—not inherently delicate but much cossetted by his parents, particularly an over-devoted mother.  He had never been encouraged to form friendships with other children at school.  He had no peers—others lacked the impeccable social standing of the Pacelli.  His inability to develop peer relationships made life at the Capranica impossible, but no other collegio was suitable—and, in any event, would have been no less disturbing to the introverted young seminarian.  Yet it was unthinkable that he should withdraw from priestly studies.  Permission was sought and easily obtained that he should live at home while continuing his studies.  This, of course, only served to reinforce Eugenio’s isolation and retard his social development.   

Now when I say that his social skills were arrested, I do not mean that he lacked the proper forms of etiquette.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Like other families of the Black Nobility, protocol was very air which they breathed.  The Pacelli, like other Black families, were rigid in maintaining their public appearance in matters of dress, speech, conveyance, entertainment, table-manners, and other aspects of social niceties.  Frankly, they would have made Downton Abbey look like the Beverly Hillbillies.  The honor of the disenfranchised papacy depended on the uncompromised social propriety of its nobility.  But again, this very artificial living environment made Eugenio compulsive (at the least) in all matters of public persona.

When it came time for ordination to the priesthood, Eugenio was not ordained with the other candidates for the Diocese of Rome, but was ordained by himself in a private ceremony in the personal chapel of Archbishop Francesco de Paolo Casetta, Patriarch of Antioch and soon to be Cardinal, on Easter Day 1899.  As ever, Eugenio was to stand alone—he had no peers.  He had a brief assignment to his home parish, the Chiesa Nuova, allowing him to continue to live at home, but after two years was given a post in the Secretariat of State and given the assignment to be the personal representative of Pope Leo XIII to deliver condolences to King Edward VII of England on the death of Queen Victoria.   This is an interesting assignment.  Pacelli was 25 years old and a simple priest and yet was sent to a King on the personal behalf of a Pope.  Rome and England had no official diplomatic ties of course—and English Law prohibited any such official ties—yet diplomatic niceties required the personal—if not official—condolences.  The messenger obviously had to be totally unofficial—thus not a prelate—and yet a person of sufficient standing to represent a Pope and not be a slight to the King.  Pacelli was perfect.  While not a prelate, he was a noble.  And he could be counted on to have the gravity and savvy to carry this off.  It also was a clear sign that he was going to be someone.

Pacelli’s rise was quick.  He received the Roman Doctorate and became a monsignor by 28.  He stood in favor of Pius X’s Sectretary of State—and, for all practical purposes, vice-pope—Cardinal Merry del Val.  He accompanied Merry del Val to London for an International Eucharistic Congress in 1908 and he was sent back to London to deliver the congratulations of the Holy See to George V upon his coronation in 1911.  On these trips he met several Englishmen, including Winston Churchill, whose contacts would be invaluable during World War II.  By 1917 he was an Archbishop and papal nuncio to Bavaria.  As such he handled all diplomatic ties of the Holy See for the German Empire as Berlin and the Holy See did not have formal diplomatic ties.  This was the final year and a half of World War I, so it was a crucial post at a crucial time.  His post as nuncio was formally moved to Berlin and the Weimar Republic in 1920 and he continued in this post until recalled to Rome in 1929.  He was prescient about Hitler and the evils of National Socialism, but he also had had to deal with the threat of a Communist Revolution in Munich after the German collapse of 1918.    In 1929 he was created cardinal and named papal secretary of State to Pius XI, a post in which he continued to serve until h is election as Pope in March, 1939. 

Pius was a skilled diplomat but, unlike his successor as Pope, Giuseppe Roncalli (later John XXIII) he owed his success not to personal charm but to his rigid rationality and aristocratic manners.  Pacelli was not a man, he was a machine.  Very atypical to the Italian personality, he was highly structured and manically organized.  He was a stickler for detail and he never let down his guard regarding the dignity of the offices he held whether it that of the priesthood, a papal diplomat, or Cardinal Secretary of State.  Not the slightest jot or tittle of protocol was overlooked.  Ever.  He was always dressed impeccably and to his rank.  His manners were flawless.  His residence, whether official or while in transit, was perfectly in keeping with the demands of his station.  The guard was never let down.  There was no personal life nor any personality—he was always exactly what he was expected to be whether in public or in private. 

During his time in Germany he built a staff of very talented aids that were to remain around him for the remainder of his life: Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, Father Robert Leiber SJ, and the Franciscan Mother Pasqualina Lenhert.  These were talented and competent people, and like Pius, people who were totally devoted to the institutional aspects of Catholicism and who tended to view the world from a structuralist perspective.  They would have been totally unable to understand the personalist philosophy and policies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis would send them totally around the bend.  Pasqualina was particularly interesting as she was cut of the same protective—and isolating—nature has had been Pacelli’s mother.  Again, think of Sheldon Cooper.

Pius was elected Pope on his 63^rd birthday, March 2, 1939.  There was nothing of the Italian parish priest about him as there had been of his predecessors Pius X or Pius XI.  (Benedict XV, Pope between the two Piuses, also lacked a personal warmth, but was not the automaton that was Pacelli.)   As Pope Pius maintained the austere personal habits he had followed his entire life.  Moreover, no detail of papal ceremony or prerogative was overlooked or abandoned.  He took his meals in absolute privacy as he had always done.  He ran his life by a schedule as rigid as the German railways.  His housekeeper, the German nun Mother Pasqualina, served as bouncer to the Papal apartment, determining who had access to the Pope and when.  No breach of lèse majesté was tolerated.  Even senior Cardinals could not get past her.  Appearing in public, Pius always had an ethereal look on his face.  He could not look another person in the eye or bear to be looked at in the eye—this was all his inability to sustain human contact. 

Allegedly Pius had once “vice”—and that was a love for speed.  When travelling the road to the papal summer residence at Castle Gondalfo  in the Alban Hills south of Rome, he would order his chauffer to go faster and yet faster. 

So it was Sheldon Cooper in Papal drag.  Sadly for many neo-trads this “otherworldly” figure has become the papal ideal.  John XXIII and John Paul I were huge disappointments, for some even scandals. Paul VI and Benedict XVI came closer to the ideal, but still fell considerably short.  Francis seems to them to be no more than a buffoon in what shambles of a papal vesture remain.  This is what happens when we confuse eccentric with holy, arrested development with the “spiritual.”  Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that Pius was not a good man.  He was an extremely complex man and a rigid moral code was part of that complexity, too rigid in fact.  But we never saw the man—only the persona that he created to keep the man hidden.  Pius may have been an extreme when it comes to this artificiality, but he is not unique.  For many priests the persona or the mask of the perfect priest is the way that they keep from having to deal with the man behind the mask, or the penis beneath the cassock.  Strange for a religion whose central doctrine is the incarnation?  Good to have a Pope like Francis where what you see is what you get.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXIV

The Chapel Royal at Saint James Palace

The dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of their lands, buildings, and treasure was the most successful part of Henry’s raid on Church wealth to increase the wealth of the Crown, but it was not his first nor his only successful scheme to enrich the royal treasury from the Church’s immense wealth. 
To recap the problem: the Church had immense wealth—approximately one third of the land in England belonged to the Church and its revenues (mostly rents from tenants) went to the Church and did so without being taxable by the Crown.  The Crown, on the other hand, was desperately short of funds.  Henry was transforming England from a feudal kingdom to one of the first modern nation states (along with Spain and France, England’s traditional rivals/enemies.)  Henry knew he needed a Navy if he was to expand England’s trade and explore for both new markets and natural resources for manufacturing.  He also needed a Navy if he was to be able to defend England, particularly from Spain whose vast American Empire had required her to develop an unparalleled naval fleet.  Henry was not, for the most part, interested in foreign wars but he also needed a standing army if the Crown were to hold its own against the threats of the feudal nobility that were determined to preserve their traditional prerogatives against the centralized Government Henry was building.  To build that governmental machinery, Henry cultivated a new class of civil servants—drawing not on the old feudal families that had traditionally been ministers of state, but on the rural gentry and urban business classes whose sons had been sent to university to study law.  Henry vastly expanded the Civil Service to make royal government more efficient.  Where was he to get the resources to pay for this new England?  There could be no new taxation without Parliamentary consent.  The nobility in the House of Lords did not support the King because his plans were undermining their power.  The Commons were reluctant to vote new taxes because the burden fell on them and on their home constituency. They wanted the advantages of expanded government—increased commerce, more efficient judicial processes, better national security and defense—but they didn’t want it to come from their pockets. (I know: this does sound like a Democratic President with a Republican Congress and its fears of “big government,” but as Quoheleth said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”)   Henry had to look for existing wealth he could tap and the Church was replete with it. 
Henry began by seizing a number of ecclesiastical properties.  As mentioned in a previous post he took Wolsey’s country palace at Hampton Court, upriver from London, but he also took his London residence, York Place, which he renamed Whitehall and which became Henry’s principal London Residence. The problem in taking York Place, however, was that it wasn’t Wolsey’s personal property but the property of the Archbishopric of York (Wolsey was Archbishop of York) and which by right should have gone to Edward Lee, the next Archbishop of York for his use in London. Henry also seized Durham House, the London residence of the Bishops of Durham, from his submissive bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall.  This was not a punishment—Tunstall signed the Oath of Supremacy without complaint—and the King promised Tunstall Coldharbour in return, but never delivered on the promise.  Henry also disbanded the Leprosarium of Saint James and built a palace of the same name on the site.  The Palace of Saint James, though not used as the residence of the Sovereign since the accession of Victoria in 1837, remains in use today. Prince Charles long had his London residence there before moving to Clarence House.  The body of Charles’ ex-wife, Diana, lay there before her funeral in 1997. And their grandson, Prince George was baptized there this past October.     
In addition to seizing London properties belonging to bishops and abbots—most of which he turned to his private use—Henry forced cash settlements from the hierarchy.  In 1530 Convocation, the assembly of bishops and abbots, were charged with violations of the Statutes of Praemunire.  In the 14^th century Parliament passed a number of laws limiting papal power in England.  The Statute of Provisors (1306) forbad the sending out of England of revenue for any sort of tax, tribute, or fee imposed by a religious authority.  This would mean that such fees as Peter’s Pence, annates, or any fees paid to the Holy See were illegal.  (Annates were the monies paid to the Holy See when a cleric was appointed to his office—usually the first year’s salary.  In other words, a Bishop, a Cathedral Dean, an Abbot or another Churchman whose appointment required a papal confirmation was required by the Holy See to send to Rome the equivalent of his salary for his first year in office.  These amounts could be quite considerable.  The Statute of Provisors forbad this as well as other fees being sent abroad.)   
The 1353 Statute of Praemunire forbad filing an appeal to any Court outside England, including the Papal Court.  Thus it was forbidden to send any matter—such as a petition for annulment—to Rome for settlement.  In addition to annulments (which were rare) there were many cases where bishops or lower clergy appealed to Rome to settle matters of jurisdictional dispute or other questions that could not be handled by English courts—civil or ecclesiastical.  A further statute passed in 1393 forbad appealing to Rome or paying the Holy See for papal bulls, excommunications, or the translation of a prelate from one benefice to another.  These laws, along with several others that had been designed to limit the growth of Papal power in England but which had never been seriously enforced, compromised the entire hierarchy.  Every single Bishop and Abbot, as well as most Cathedral deans, had sent the required monies to Rome to obtain the bulls authorizing their consecration or abbatial blessing.  Every one of them had paid their annates.  Many of them had paid the fees that allowed them to transfer from one deanery to a better paying one, or one diocese to a wealthier one. Many clergy—not only bishops, abbots, and deans—had filed suits in a Roman Court.  The entire hierarchy stood guilty of a breach of law and the punishment declared them outlaws and the properties escheat to the Crown.  Moreover, not only were they to be punished, but their notaries and advisors were guilty and subject to punishment as well.  As I said, these laws had never been enforced but now Henry turned to Parliament—whose laws these were—and Parliament graciously decreed that should the clergy pay a fine of £118,000, punishment would be waived. 
Using the pension of £5 per annum paid to monks of suppressed abbeys in the 1537-41 dissolution of the monasteries as a guide, £118,000 would be worth approximately 475 million dollars in today’s cost of living.  (It is very difficult to give an accurate translation of cost from 1530 Tudor England to 2014 United States.  The actual value of the pound sterling, based on its silver content, would not be so high as to equal 475,000.000 USD 2014—perhaps the value would be about £27,500,000 in today’s British currency, or about 44,000.000 USD.   But you need to remember that a respectable 1540 salary for an English worker with which to support his family might be £8 a year.  Taking that as a base to translate the Pound Sterling for cost of living impact, you would come up with £295,000.000 or 475,000,000 USD.) 
This payment of £118,000 was only the beginning of Henry’s looting the Church coffers. A 1532 Act of Parliament reduced the amount of money sent to Rome for Annates and other fees to 5%.  1534 was a banner year for the Royal Coffers.  In the winter of that year, Parliament decreed that all monies formerly sent to Rome were now to go to the royal coffers.  In March that same year Parliament decreed that the Peter’s pence was no longer to be sent to Rome.  Later in the spring, Parliament then passed An Act Concerning the Archbishop of Canterbury, declaring that the power of dispensation formerly belonging to the Pope was now derived from the King’s authority and was to be exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It further decreed that the King was to be given 2/3 of any revenue from dispensations. That same spring it then taxed the clergy ten percent of their income to the Crown.  The Act of Supremacy passed in November 1534 and generally considered the definitive break with Rome granted the Crown all monies formerly sent to Rome.  By this point, Henry had squeezed the Dioceses and secular clergy dry and so he then turned to the religious with the suppression of the monasteries. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LVIX

Carthusian Saint John Houghton

In the last posting we looked at the early phase of the dissolution of the Religious Houses in England during the reign of Henry VIII.  Just to recap in the broadest of all possible views, the Church held immense wealth—more than the Crown—and owned approximately a third of the land in England.  About half of this land was owned by the great Benedictine, Cistercian, Augustinian, and Bridgettine Abbeys and monasteries.  (Augustinians here refers to the canons and canonesses, not to the friars or nuns affiliated to the friars.  Also the Bridgettines had only one major house in England—Syon Abbey in Middlesex—but it was an extremely wealthy foundation, one of the richest in England.) 
In the fifteenth centuries a number of defunct religious houses were closed and their properties devoted to other charities—hospitals and schools primarily---and Cardinal Wolsey got the idea during his administration to shutter a number of smaller religious houses and transfer their members to more stable abbeys while using their endowments for two educational foundations he was making—a grammar school in his native Ipswich and a new College, Cardinal College, at Oxford.  Cardinal College later was renamed Christchurch and today is perhaps the icon-college of Oxford even as Kings is of Cambridge. 
With Wolsey’s fall, Henry was not quick to close down other monasteries but he did note how the monastic wealth could be diverted to other causes.  He filed that piece of information away in his mind for later use. 
The Religious of England—monks, nuns, canons, friars—almost universally acceded to the royal supremacy.  A notable exception was John Houghton, prior of the Carthusians in London.  Prior Houghton was persuaded to swear to the 1533 Act of Succession which named Henry Head of the Church “so far as the Law of Christ Allows.”  However, the following year the Act of Supremacy declared Henry to be “the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England” and Prior Houghton and two other Carthusian priors—Robert Lawrence of Beauvale and Augustine Webster of Axeholm—along with Richard Reynolds (a Bridgettine of Syon Abbey) and John Haile (the Vicar of Isleworth, the town where Syon Abbey stood) were hanged, drawn, and quartered for refusing the swear to the royal supremacy.  The process—usual for treason—was that the condemned person was hanged until near death, then cut down while still alive and cut open with his heart and entrails removed, and then the corpse cut into four pieces to be taken and displayed at four different points of the realm. Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, would go to their deaths—simple beheadings—later that summer for refusing to swear to the same act.   Carthusians William Exmew, John Davy, William Greenwood, Thomas Green, William Holm, Thomas Johnson, Humphrey Middlemore, Sebastian Newdigate, Walter Pierson, Thomas Redying, John Rochester, and James Walworth, followed Houghton, Lawrence, and  Webster to their deaths rather than swear to the supremacy. 
Several Franciscans, especially among the Observant Franciscans at Greenwich—a house particularly important to Henry and the Tudors because of its proximity to the Royal Palace and the site of Henry’s Marriage to Katherine of Aragon as well as his own baptism and the baptism of his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth—resisted the Royal Supremacy.  Friars Anthony Brookby, Thomas Courtt and Thomas Belchiam refused to take the oath and paid with their lives.   Friars Richard Risby and Hugh Rich were Observant Franciscans from other convents who refused to swear to the supremacy and were martyred for their stalwart loyalty to the Holy See.  Henry, in exasperation declared that the Observant friars were “disciples of the Bishop of Rome and sowers of sedition.”  Some sources say that there were more martyrs among the Franciscans and Carthusians, but their names have been lost.  That is certainly possible but the comprehensive lists of English martyrs from this times make the historian conservative in estimating the numbers much beyond those actually known and recorded.   On the other hand, searching through various records—and the English were great keepers of records—to identify various other religious and their divergent fates is exactly the sort of work that doctoral students do.  Various charters, wills, ordination records, etc. make it possible to reconstruct with considerable accuracy the memberships of various abbeys, monasteries, and friaries at any point from the fourteenth century through their dissolution in the sixteenth.  These lists can be checked against not only court records but appointments to ecclesiastical benefices subsequent to Henry’s disbanding of the religious foundations and that would be of immense help in discovering the fate of many of the religious who either took or refused the oaths of royal supremacy.  As it is, given the number of religious in England in 1535—approximately fifteen thousand—the number of martyrdoms is remarkably small.  It should also be noted that there are approximately two dozen Benedictines or Cistercians executed in the period, as well as a Premonstratensian  presumably for refusing to swear to the supremacy, though some may have been connected more with the Pilgrimage of Grace.  By and large the religious or the other orders all subscribed to the royal supremacy without much hesitation.  Many, no doubt, considered a temporary sort of thing that would resolve itself and reconcile with the papacy in a period of time.  And indeed one would have thought that with Katherine’s death in 1536 that the reason for the break was over—especially as Ann was to go to the scaffold only five months after Katherine’s death and Henry was free to make a new beginning.   But by this time Henry had plans for his Church of England and those plans did not admit of any other person at its head than he himself. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LVI

Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London 

In our last entry on the Church of England we looked at Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham who, though a friend of Queen Katherine and supportive of her marriage to the King, when the chips were down sided with Henry in the break from Rome.  When Henry died and England began to move towards a more Protestant—Calvinist—position in matters religious, Tunstall objected and lost his diocese.  Restored to his bishopric under Queen Mary and reconciled to Rome, he stood fast in the Catholic camp when Elizabeth I reversed her half-sister’s Catholic policy in favor of a return to Protestantism.  We will look at these various twists and turns as England Protestantizes under Edward, reverts to Catholicism under Mary, and then goes Protestant again under Elizabeth, but today I want to look at another of Henry’s compliant churchmen who would later regret his choices, 

Edmund Bonner was born in or about 1500—possibly illegitimately—in circumstances of relative poverty in Worcestershire.  Despite his lower-class background he was admitted to Broadgates Hall, a hostel for law students, at Oxford. (Broadgates Hall was re-constituted as Pembroke College in the 17^th century and is still a constituent college of the University.)  Actually, before the gentrification of England—one of the fruits of the English Reformation—it was not at all unusual for even the poorest of young men to be able to find a place at Oxford or Cambridge and use that as a propellant into political, ecclesiastical, and economic advancement.  It was Calvinism, with its tying of material prosperity to the idea of God’s predestination, which contributed to the rigid stratification of English society, but that topic  is for another day.  Bonner earned his doctorate in Canon Law and became a chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey.  To Bonner’s credit, he remained loyal to Wolsey when the Cardinal fell in disgrace and was with him when Wolsey died at Leicester Abbey in the late autumn of 1530.  Taken into the King’s service as a protégé of Thomas Cromwell, Bonner went to Rome in 1532 to try to win Henry’s case for annulment, or at least to prevent the Pope and Curia from taking any action against Henry for his divorcing Katherine.  He suggested to Pope Clement that the Pope should allow Henry to appeal to a General Council for an annulment—a route that would let the Pope off the hook with the Emperor, Queen Katherine’s nephew, who opposed the annulment.

Of course, what Bonner—and back in England, Henry and Cromwell—did not understand was Clement’s policy of allying himself to the Emperor to further Medici policy in central Italy.  That policy opposed any annulment be it from the Pope or a Council.  But it was all in vain anyway as events were moving faster than Bonner’s diplomacy and Anne Boleyn’s 1533 pregnancy made it imperative that Henry marry her in time for the expected child—a hoped for son—to be a legitimate heir to the throne.  Of course the child was a daughter, but Henry was married and excommunicate and Bonner summoned home as Henry was losing interest in the papacy anyway.  Bonner was rewarded by Henry for his efforts with a number of well-salaried Church positions and entrusted with further diplomatic duties in embassies to the Emperor and to the King of France.  His rabid anti-papal tirades annoyed the French King but delighted Henry who in 1540 named him bishop of Hereford.  (By this time, of course, Henry had broken completely with the papacy and thus was naming bishops himself.)  Before he could be consecrated, however, Henry decided to name him to the far more prestigious see of London.  He was consecrated bishop in April 1540. 

Now Henry had broken with Rome but he was not inclined to introduce Protestant ideas into his Church.  The Church was Catholic—it just wasn’t papal anymore.  (It had never been “Roman,” from antiquity having its own Rites and peculiarities as outlined in previous postings.) Mass remained unchanged (except that the prayer for the Pope was dropped) and in Latin, clergy remained unmarried, prayers to the saints continued to be said, holy water and incense to be used.  As Bishop of London, Bonner was always vigilant against any Protestant ideas seeping into his diocese.  He was not a theologian—as he himself admitted—but a canon lawyer and he was very distrustful of any theological novelties.  London and Norwich, because of their being the primary ports, were always the first point where new ideas would come in and take root.  Londoners had long been disgusted with the Church and its clergy (as we saw in the entries about Richard Hunne) and consequently very open to the new Protestant ideas coming from Germany.  When Henry died and the new King, Edward VI—acting under the tutelage of his guardians, Thomas Cranmer and the Duke of Somerset—began to introduce Protestant practices, Bonner ardently resisted, but by then it was too late.  He was deprived of his see and thrown into the Marshalsea prison.  Upon the accession of Mary and the restoration of Catholicism, he was returned to his see where he was vigorous in searching out Protestants and handing them over for prosecution and execution.  His most famous prisoner was Thomas Cranmer, the deposed Archbishop of Canterbury, who was executed at Oxford in March 1556. 

With the Accession of Elizabeth, Catholicism was out and Protestantism back in.  Bonner was again deprived of his see and imprisoned.  Despite calls for his execution by the radical Protestant party, he remained in prison until his death in 1569.  Four times each year he was called out and given the opportunity to adjure his Catholic faith in favor of the Reformed Church of England with a promise of release, and each time he refused. 

Bonner, like Tunstall, and like Stephen Gardiner (with whom we have yet to deal) was very typical of the Churchmen of Henry’s time.  Only one bishop in England went to his death rather than give in to Henry’s demands to be recognized as head of the Church of England.  Most priests likewise acquiesced.  They were naïve in failing to see where the Church would go once it got mixed into the political machinations of rabid nationalists.  Thomas More and John Fisher, on the other hand, stood firm not so much because they believed in the papacy per se but because they knew that the Church by its very nature needs to transcend the political, cultural, and geographic limits that would otherwise divide it.  Catholics must always have an international outlook that sees the good of the entire human family as trumping the interests of any particular nation or society.