Thank you for the info on Henry VIII. Are you sure that marrying your brothers widow was wrong? I thought the book of Ruths was about one of them having to do just this. Wasn’t that the tradition back then that the brother had to marry his brother’s wife so she could have a child to continue the deceased brothers line? We do have rules for annulement to this day. Having children makes getting an annulement very hard and he had the daughter. He did eventually have the son who unfortunately died young. The church right or wrong did have the authority to turn down his annulement and I believe he should have honored it. You did say (preceived) but this is the first I’ve heard of that. And its 2am and I"M tired!
The conflict with the concept in Leviticus is directly expressed in Deuteronomy XXV, that the brother should take his brother’s widow and “raise up seed for his brother” - the levirate duty. The conflict could be glossed, in any particular incidence. And would be, in that the purpose of the entire constantly evolving system of impediments/dispensations, etc, was twofold. It was designed to permit the Church to control the sacrament of matrimony, as a sacrament, and at the same time to permit the making and breaking of dynastic marriages, for purposes of state. It happened literally all the time. The network of potential impediments, most significantly impediments of consanguinity, of affinity (which was what Henry’s
causa urged was standing in the way of Julius’ dispensation permitting him to marry Catherine, and a divine one, at that) and the justice of public honesty (which contained the more powerful argument that Henry could have made), was so extensive and so complex that a Scottish bishop of the time said it was almost impossible to find a couple high in society without some theoretical impediment to marriage. The whole system was reformed at the Council of Trent, Session XXIV. The current rules with respect to annulment decrees are even more reformed.
Henry asked for what was a commonplace, then. His original concern was for his (shaky) dynasty, and even before he sought the decree, he was taking what steps he could, with Mary, and with Henry Fitzroy, to see what these two assets might do for the problem. Both had drawbacks. When he became infatuated with Anne Boleyn, the commonplace solution for his problem struck him. And he started a quest for a decree of nullity, just as his sister had successfully done, the same year.
The system for handling this was, as I said, partially theological, and partially political. And Henry ran smack into politics, in the person of the Holy Roman Emperor, Catherine’s nephew, and a vacillating Pope, and the entire political scene in Europe (esp. the Battle of Pavia). And he did not prevail. But he was capable of making a political response himself, and he did.
One other point: earlier you mentioned nationalism, and that was certainly a factor. But it cannot be put on Henry’s head, or this particular conflict, alone. What happened then was the culmination of hundreds of years of political struggle, stretching back at least to the first Statute of Westminster in 1275, and before, through the 2 Statutes each of Provisors and of
Praaemunire, ending in 1393. These were a long history of conflict between the throne and Parliament, and the Church, seeking in each case to increase the state authority and to decrease the scope of the Church. Henry was merely the culmination.
HIstory is complicated. The cartoon version of Hank and his harem is not history. And we all know that we should, as a wise man suggested, be deep in history.
GKC
