C
Contarini
Guest
Lots of good replies on this thread. I think that one of the reasons this is confusing for some folks is that we tend to read the contemporary situation back into the sixteenth century. For one thing, sixteenth-century Protestants saw themselves as Catholics (that’s why they called Catholics “papists” and so on). They didn’t think they were starting something brand new. They thought they were straightening out some problems with the one Church that had always existed, and thus helping the Church become more “visible”–i.e., bringing its structures and practices and doctrines more fully in line with the mystical reality it embodied. Obviously the more “conservative” the changes, the less it would seem to people involved that they were starting something new.
But the big difference I think has to do with church-state relations. It’s easy to say “they didn’t have separation of church and state” but harder to think like a sixteenth-century person on this point. What we mean by “church” and “state” didn’t really exist at all. There was a civil hierarchy (the “secular” or “temporal power”) and there was an ecclesiastical hierarchy (“the spiritual power”), both of which were not simple pyramid structures but complex arrangements of many different interlocking authorities of both kinds. (Civil authority was relatively simpler and more centralized in England than in Germany, which is one reason why the Reformation took the turn it did in England.) They had different responsibilities in principle, but in practice they overlapped in all sorts of ways. The Pope was a temporal ruler, as were bishops and abbots. (For instance, in York in northern England, seat of one of the two archbishops in England then as now, there’s an area around the cathedral that was called the “Liberties of St. Peter” and was under the direct authority of the bishop, independent of the city–much like Vatican City within Rome today. I think this was the case with most cathedrals, but I just visited York this past spring and the boundaries of this area are strikingly evident even today–in part because they correspond to the old Roman military camp, which is itself a significant point, and in part because they form a pedestrianized tourist area.) And on the other hand, kings and nobles and magistrates were seen as having responsibility for promoting the spiritual welfare of the people under their rule. The term often used was “commonwealth”–a Christian community united by a commitment to the common good in both this life and the life to come.
So when Henry VIII broke with the Pope, most people in England didn’t see this as a “break with the Church.” They would have seen it more as a squabble between two different authorities within the broader Christian “commonwealth.” And rising nationalist sentiments (not unique to England but certainly very strong there) inclined many people to see the Pope as a foreign prince and the king as a more natural leader of the Christian commonwealth in England.
So no, most bishops didn’t resist. Stephen Gardiner, for instance, went along (if sometimes reluctantly) with the King’s rebellion against Rome and made theological arguments defending it, while always seeing himself as a good Catholic. He was reconciled quite easily to Rome under Mary: not an apostate returning to the true Faith so much as someone who had made a bad call in a conflict of ecclesiastical politics.
Obviously there were those who saw things differently, like More and Fisher. But More and Fisher were reformers: More had a vision of a united Christian commonwealth transcending the nation precisely because of his Biblical and patristic scholarship. In some ways, people like Gardiner were behaving like more typical late medieval Catholic ecclesiastical politicians, while More had the insight to see that something much deeper was at stake than whether a particular king got a particular annulment.
But the big difference I think has to do with church-state relations. It’s easy to say “they didn’t have separation of church and state” but harder to think like a sixteenth-century person on this point. What we mean by “church” and “state” didn’t really exist at all. There was a civil hierarchy (the “secular” or “temporal power”) and there was an ecclesiastical hierarchy (“the spiritual power”), both of which were not simple pyramid structures but complex arrangements of many different interlocking authorities of both kinds. (Civil authority was relatively simpler and more centralized in England than in Germany, which is one reason why the Reformation took the turn it did in England.) They had different responsibilities in principle, but in practice they overlapped in all sorts of ways. The Pope was a temporal ruler, as were bishops and abbots. (For instance, in York in northern England, seat of one of the two archbishops in England then as now, there’s an area around the cathedral that was called the “Liberties of St. Peter” and was under the direct authority of the bishop, independent of the city–much like Vatican City within Rome today. I think this was the case with most cathedrals, but I just visited York this past spring and the boundaries of this area are strikingly evident even today–in part because they correspond to the old Roman military camp, which is itself a significant point, and in part because they form a pedestrianized tourist area.) And on the other hand, kings and nobles and magistrates were seen as having responsibility for promoting the spiritual welfare of the people under their rule. The term often used was “commonwealth”–a Christian community united by a commitment to the common good in both this life and the life to come.
So when Henry VIII broke with the Pope, most people in England didn’t see this as a “break with the Church.” They would have seen it more as a squabble between two different authorities within the broader Christian “commonwealth.” And rising nationalist sentiments (not unique to England but certainly very strong there) inclined many people to see the Pope as a foreign prince and the king as a more natural leader of the Christian commonwealth in England.
So no, most bishops didn’t resist. Stephen Gardiner, for instance, went along (if sometimes reluctantly) with the King’s rebellion against Rome and made theological arguments defending it, while always seeing himself as a good Catholic. He was reconciled quite easily to Rome under Mary: not an apostate returning to the true Faith so much as someone who had made a bad call in a conflict of ecclesiastical politics.
Obviously there were those who saw things differently, like More and Fisher. But More and Fisher were reformers: More had a vision of a united Christian commonwealth transcending the nation precisely because of his Biblical and patristic scholarship. In some ways, people like Gardiner were behaving like more typical late medieval Catholic ecclesiastical politicians, while More had the insight to see that something much deeper was at stake than whether a particular king got a particular annulment.