Henry VIII (1509-1547) of England.

1. Henry VIII (1509-1547) of England. • In 1527 he requested the pope to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon on the basis that it was sinful of them to have married when she had been his brother’s widow. God was now punishing them by Katherine only having stillborn or girl children. Katherine and Henry had one daughter Mary. • Pope Clement VII said no to the annulment. Katherine’s nephew the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V did not want the disgrace on his aunt. Especially just because Henry wanted a divorce to marry another woman of the court.

4. Henry believed he needed a strong, powerful son to inherit the Tudor dynasty as there had been civil war before the Tudors took power. • And plus... • Henry was ‘in love’ with Anne Boleyn (one of Katherine’s ladies in waiting at the court). • In 1531 Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church of England (or Anglican church) and had to power to appoint church officers. He did so. And these new church officers granted his request of a divorce.

5. In 1533 he divorced and remarried. He married Anne Boleyn. She became pregnant and gave birth to….. Another daughter. Elizabeth. • In 1534 England passed the Act of Supremacy declaring the king head of the new protestant Church of England. The Treason Act declared the death penalty for anyone who called the king a ‘heretic.’ As an example Sir Thomas More was beheaded in 1536 for not accepting Henry as his religious leader.

6. 1536--Anne was brought up on (faked) charges of adultery. She was executed at the Tower of London prison. • Henry married another lady of the court Jane Seymour--who had a son…. Edward…and then died of childbirth complications. • 4th wife--Anne of Cleves (of Germany) was found to be too plain and divorced. She had a pre-nup that gave her a nice living and property in England for the rest of her life. • 5th wife--Catherine Howard--young, pretty, naïve. Executed 1542. • 6th wife--Catherine Parr--outlived her husband. Henry VIII died in 1547. • “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.”

7. Creating the Church of England-- • beyond the manner in which it was created, the Church of England, or the Anglican church, or in the USA the Episcopalian Church was a true Protestant church--even if it had a lot of Catholic type rituals and beliefs. • Henry VIII had all (or most) of the Catholic monasteries dissolved. The land sold off to aristocrats and making money for the new church. • Church accepted clerical marriage, services conducted in English using the Book of Common Prayer, and people participating in the services of the church.

8. In 1547 Henry VIII’s son Edward VI took the throne. • He was chronically ill and only 9 years old. He died in great pain and suffering in 1553 as doctors tried to keep him alive so as to prevent his elder sister from inheriting the throne. • In 1553 Mary, the Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, took over. • She restored Catholicism to England, punished by death any that disobeyed, and forged an alliance with Catholic Spain by marrying the King Philip II. She had dreams of creating a great Catholic dynasty. She had no children and her husband did not even stay in England to be with her. • Her reign is referred to as the time of “Bloody Mary” for the execution of over 300 people.

9. Catholic Reformation • 1540s-60s Catholic church officials held many Councils and meetings on the subject of purifying the church of corruption. • They maintained the basic doctrine of Catholicism. On this they did not waver. The pope was the head of the church. The sacraments remained the same. The doctrine of “good works” to aid salvation remained. • They were just as firm in their beliefs as the new protestant churches.

10. Ignatius Loyola • Spanish soldier turned monk. He has a spiritual reawakening while in the hospital and vowed to become a “soldier of Christ.” • 1530s--he worked on a book Spiritual Exercises to promote a strong, powerful Catholic church. • Missionary work • discipline • obedience • His work was so influential that the pope allowed him to create his own monastic order--the Society of Jesus--or the Jesuits in 1534. The Jesuits would be responsible directly to the pope. • The Jesuits become teachers, educators, diplomats and advisers to all the Catholic kingdoms in Europe and their missionary work took them around the world.

11. France -- • mixed reaction to the Protestant Reformation. • In 1534 Protestantism was declared illegal. Forcing French Protestants (usually called Huguenots) into hiding and exile. • Civil Wars of Family politics and religion in the 1560s and 90s divided the country further. • French kings were weak. Catherine de Medici served as Queen mother and regent of a 10 year old king. • She is blamed for ordering on August 24, 1572 the so called “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”--in which some 10,000 Protestants were killed.

12. The occasion, ironically enough, was a wedding--between the king’s older sister Margaret to a Protestant Henry of Navarre which had been intended to bring the two sided together. • The Huguenots, attending the wedding as well as many others, were attacked the night before starting the massacre. • More civil war, more deaths. • Finally in 1589 Henry of Navarre became king. He knew what he had to do--famously saying “Paris is worth a mass” and turned Catholic. But • He granted the Edict of Nantes in 1598 which guaranteed Protestants religious freedom in France.