Henry VIII and the Anglican Church

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stuckinavortex
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
7_Sorrows said:
I don’t know how long he was Lord Chancellor, but I believe he resigned eventually. So I don’t think he liked what he saw or heard.
Click to expand...
I think that none of what he saw and heard as Lord Chancellor would have come as a surprise.
 
Picky_Picky said:
I suspect More and Becket are becoming merged in the public imagination. Both Lord Chancellor, both martyred having put Pope before King. But only Becket was a priest.
Click to expand...
didn’t richard burton play Becket in a movie? you are probably right about More and Becket becoming merged. Tragic end to both of their lives.
 
JimmyG88 said:
I think that none of what he saw and heard as Lord Chancellor would have come as a surprise.
Click to expand...
In my reading, what did surprise him somewhat was Henry’s growing reluctance to allow a full pursuit of the Lutheran based heretics, as Henry sought to incorporate them into his power base, for his own goals. More’s goal was their extirpation from the land. Given that neither Henry or More were able to move the other an inch on the subject of the Great Matter, and that he was tired and not in good health, and that he wanted out of a position he had accepted with reluctance, he hoped to retire gracefully.
 
7_Sorrows said:
didn’t richard burton play Becket in a movie? you are probably right about More and Becket becoming merged. Tragic end to both of their lives.
Click to expand...
Burton played Becket against O’Toole’s king

Scofield played More against Robert Shaw’s king.
 
Picky_Picky said:
Burton played Becket against O’Toole’s king

Scofield played More against Robert Shaw’s king.
Click to expand...
both good movies, but I have forgotten which king Becket was under and why he was killed. my memory is getting really bad!!
 
7_Sorrows said:
both good movies, but I have forgotten which king Becket was under and why he was killed. my memory is getting really bad!!
Click to expand...
It was Henry II. The origin of the dispute between Henry and Thomas was on a sort of familiar subject: the relationship between the Crown and the Church. Whether Henry was actually suggesting Thomas be killed, or whether his followers incorrectly interpreted what he said, is unclear, but killed he was.
 
7_Sorrows said:
both good movies, but I have forgotten which king Becket was under and why he was killed. my memory is getting really bad!!
Click to expand...
Henry II. Thomas was a close friend of Henry’s until he was made Archbishop of Canterbury when he started opposing the king’s policies in areas where church and state authority collided. The story is that the king uttered some unwise words about Thomas which four of his knights took literally. “What idle and miserable men … who let me be mocked by this low-born clerk!”. The knights rode to Canterbury and killed Becket before the cathedral altar.
 
And the two cases are connected inasmuch as Becket’s cult was the first saint cult to be attacked under Henry. The regime very much did not want people venerating a saint who had stood up to “the Lord’s Anointed.”

(Note: for people unfamiliar with the terminology, “cult” is a neutral term in this context used by scholars to mean any organized practice of veneration or worship.)

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
And the two cases are connected inasmuch as Becket’s cult was the first saint cult to be attacked under Henry. The regime very much did not want people venerating a saint who had stood up to “the Lord’s Anointed.”

(Note: for people unfamiliar with the terminology, “cult” is a neutral term in this context used by scholars to mean any organized practice of veneration or worship.)

Edwin
Click to expand...
They are indeed logically connected.
 
​
It made Canterbury an international centre of pilgrimage (including Chaucer’s pilgrims, from every shires ende of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, the hooly blissful martir for to seke that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke). And Eliot’s splendid Murder in the Cathedral is worth reading as a poetic interpretation of the issues in Thomas’s mind.
 
Picky_Picky said:
​
It made Canterbury an international centre of pilgrimage (including Chaucer’s pilgrims, from every shires ende of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, the hooly blissful martir for to seke that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke). And Eliot’s splendid Murder in the Cathedral is worth reading as a poetic interpretation of the issues in Thomas’s mind.
Click to expand...
what was Henry II’s reaction when he was told what his 4 knights had done?
 
Picky_Picky said:
​
It made Canterbury an international centre of pilgrimage (including Chaucer’s pilgrims, from every shires ende of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, the hooly blissful martir for to seke that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke). And Eliot’s splendid Murder in the Cathedral is worth reading as a poetic interpretation of the issues in Thomas’s mind.
Click to expand...
Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of becoming a martyr.
 
GKC said:
Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of becoming a martyr.
Click to expand...
Yes, because that would be doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

That’s the stuff.
 
7_Sorrows said:
what was Henry II’s reaction when he was told what his 4 knights had done?
Click to expand...
Impressive display of grief; excellent PR; walking barefoot to the cathedral; scourged by monks; that sort of thing. Very likely he meant much of it, too.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top