Nothing is more necessary for one who desires to appreciate the true meaning of the English Reformation than to understand the attitude of men’s minds to the Pope and the See of Rome on the eve of the great change. As in the event, the religious upheaval did, in fact, lead to a national rejection of the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, it is not unnatural that those who do not look below the surface should see in this act the outcome and inevitable consequence of long-continued irritation at a foreign domination. The renunciation of Papal jurisdiction, in other words, is taken as sufficient evidence of national hostility to the Holy See. If this be the true explanation of the fact, it is obvious that in the literature of the period immediately preceding the formal renunciation of ecclesiastical dependence on Rome, evidence more or less abundant will be found of this feeling of dislike, if not of detestation, for a yoke which we are told had become unbearable.

At the outset, it must be confessed that any one who will go to the literature of the period with the expectation of collecting evidence of this kind is doomed to disappointment. If we put on one side the diatribes and scurrilous invectives of advanced reformers, when the day of the doctrinal Reformation had already dawned, the inquirer in this field of knowledge can hardly fail to be struck by the absence of indications of any real hostility to the See of Rome in the period in question. So far as the works of the age are concerned: so far, too, as the acts of individuals and even of those who were responsible agents of the State go, the evidence of an unquestioned acceptance of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope, as Head of the Christian Church, is simply overwhelming. In their acceptance of this supreme authority the English were perhaps neither demonstrative nor loudly protesting, but this in no way derogated from their loyal and unquestioning acceptance of the supremacy of the Holy See. History shows that up to the very eve of the rejection of this supremacy the attitude of Englishmen, in spite of difficulties and misunderstandings, had been persistently one of respect for the Pope as their spiritual head. Whilst other nations of Christendom had been in the past centuries engaged in endeavours by diplomacy, and even by force of arms, to capture the Pope that they might use him for their own national profit, England, with nothing to gain, expecting nothing, seeking nothing, had never entered on that line of policy, but had been content to bow to his authority as to that of the appointed Head of Christ’s Church on earth. Of this much there can be no doubt. They did not reason about it, nor sift and sort the grounds of their acceptance, any more than a child would dream of searching into, or philosophising upon, the obedience he freely gives to his parents.

That there were at times disagreements and quarrels may be admitted without in the least affecting the real attitude and uninterrupted spiritual dependence of England on the Holy See. Such disputes were wholly the outcome of misunderstandings as to matters in the domain rather of the temporal than of the spiritual, or of points in the broad debatable land that lies between the two jurisdictions. It is a failure to understand the distinction which exists between these that has led many writers to think that in the rejection by Englishmen of claims put forward at various times by the Roman curia in matters wholly temporal, or where the temporal became involved in the spiritual, they have a proof that England never fully acknowledged the spiritual headship of the See of Rome.

That the Pope did in fact exercise great powers in England over and above those in his spiritual prerogative is a matter of history. No one has more thoroughly examined this subject than Professor Maitland, and the summary of his conclusions given in his History of English Law will serve to correct many misconceptions upon the matter. What he says may be taken as giving a fairly accurate picture of the relations of the Christian nations of Christendom to the Holy See from the twelfth century to the disintegration of the system in the throes of the Reformation. “It was a wonderful system,” he writes. “The whole of Western Europe was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last resort, the Roman curia. Appeals to it were encouraged by all manner of means, appeals at almost every stage of almost every proceeding. But the Pope was far more than the president of a court of appeal. Very frequently the courts Christian which did justice in England were courts which were acting under his supervision and carrying out his written instructions. A very large part, and by far the most permanently important part, of the ecclesiastical litigation that went on in this country came before English prelates who were sitting not as English prelates, not as ‘judges ordinary,’ but as mere delegates of the Pope, commissioned to hear and determine this or that particular case. Bracton, indeed, treats the Pope as the ordinary judge of every Englishman in spiritual things, and the only ordinary judge whose powers are unlimited.”

The Pope enjoyed a power of declaring the law to which but very wide and very vague limits could be set. Each separate church might have its customs, but there was a lex communis, a common law, of the universal Church. In the view of the canonist, any special rules of the Church of England have hardly a wider scope, hardly a less dependent place, than have the customs of Kent or the bye-laws of London in the eye of the English lawyer.[94]

We have only to examine the Regesta of the Popes, even up to the dawn of difficulties in the reign of Henry VIII., to see that the system as sketched in this passage was in full working order; and it was herein that chiefly lay the danger even to the spiritual prerogatives of the Head of the Church. Had the Providence of God destined that the nations of the world should have become a Christendom in fact—a theocracy presided over by his Vicar on earth—the system elaborated by the Roman curia would not have tended doubtless to obscure the real and essential prerogatives of the spiritual Head of the Christian Church. As it was by Providence ordained, and as subsequent events have shown, claims of authority to determine matters more or less of the temporal order, together with the worldly pomp and show with which the Popes of the renaissance had surrounded themselves, not only tended to obscure the higher and supernatural powers which are the enduring heritage of St. Peter’s successors in the See of Rome; but, however clear the distinction between the necessary and the accidental prerogatives might appear to the mind of the trained theologian or the perception of the saint, to the ordinary man, when the one was called in question the other was imperilled. And, as a fact, in England popular irritation at the interference of the spirituality generally in matters not wholly within the strictly ecclesiastical sphere was, at a given moment, skilfully turned by the small reforming party into national, if tacit, acquiescence in the rejection of even the spiritual prerogatives of the Roman Pontiffs.

It is necessary to insist upon this matter if the full meaning of the Reformation movement is to be understood. Here in England, there can be no doubt, on the one hand, that no nation more fully and freely bowed to the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See; on the other, that there was a dislike of interference in matters which they regarded, rightly or wrongly, as outside the sphere of the Papal prerogative. The national feeling had grown by leaps and bounds in the early years of the sixteenth century. But it was not until the ardent spirits among the doctrinal reformers had succeeded in weakening the hold of Catholicity in religion on the hearts of the people that this rise of national feeling entered into the ecclesiastical domain, and the love of country could be effectually used to turn them against the Pope, even as Head of the Christian Church. With this distinction clearly before the mind, it is possible to understand the general attitude of the English nation to the Pope and his authority on the eve of the overthrow of his jurisdiction.

To begin with some evidence of popular teaching as to the Pope’s position as Head of the Church. It is, of course, evident that in many works the supremacy of the Holy See is assumed and not positively stated. This is exactly what we should expect in a matter which was certainly taken for granted by all. William Bond, a learned priest, and subsequently a monk of Syon, with Richard Whitford, was the author of a book called the Pilgrimage of Perfection, published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1531. It is a work, as the author tells us, “very profitable to all Christian persons to read”; and the third book consists of a long and careful explanation of the Creed. In the section treating about the tenth article is to be found a very complete statement of the teaching of the Christian religion on the Church. After taking the marks of the Church, the author says: “There may be set no other foundation for the Church, but only that which is put, namely, Christ Jesus. It is certain, since it is founded on the Apostles, as our Lord said to Peter, ‘I have prayed that thy faith fail not.’ And no more it shall; for (as St. Cyprian says) the Church of Rome was never yet the root of heresy. This Church Apostolic is so named the Church of Rome, because St. Peter and St. Paul, who under Christ were heads and princes of this Church, deposited there the tabernacles of their bodies, which God willed should be buried there and rest in Rome, and that should be the chief see in the world; just as commonly in all other places the chief see of the bishop is where the chief saint and bishop of the see is buried. By this you may know how Christ is the Head of the Church, and how our Holy Father the Pope of Rome is Head of the Church. Many, because they know not this mystery of Holy Scripture, have erred and fallen to heresies in denying the excellent dignity of our Holy Father the Pope of Rome.”[95]

In the same way Roger Edgworth, a preacher in the reign of Henry VIII., speaking on the text “Tu vocaberis Cephas,” says: “And by this the error and ignorance of certain summalists are confounded, who take this text as one of their strongest reasons for the supremacy of the Pope of Rome. In so doing, such summalists would plainly destroy the text of St. John’s Gospel to serve their purpose, which they have no need to do, for there are as well texts of Holy Scripture and passages of ancient writers which abundantly prove the said primacy of the Pope.”[96]

When by 1523 the attacks of Luther and his followers on the position of the Pope had turned men’s minds in England to the question, and caused them to examine into the grounds of their belief, several books on the subject appeared in England. One in particular, intended to be subsidiary to the volume published by the king himself against Luther, was written by a theologian named Edward Powell, and published by Pynson in London. In his preface, Powell says that before printing his work he had submitted it to the most learned authority at Oxford (eruditissimo Oxoniensium). The first part of the book is devoted to a scientific treatise upon the Pope’s supremacy, with all the proofs from Scripture and the Fathers set out in detail. “This then,” he concludes, “is the Catholic Church, which, having the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter, as its head, offers the means of sanctifying the souls of all its members, and testifies to the truth of all that is to be taught.” The high priesthood of Peter “is said to be Roman, not because it cannot be elsewhere, but through a certain congruity which makes Rome the most fitting place. That is, that where the centre of the world’s government was, there also should be placed the high priesthood of Christ. Just as of old the summus Pontifex was in Jerusalem, the metropolis of the Jewish nation, so now it is in Rome, the centre of Christian civilisation.”[97]

We naturally, of course, turn to the works of Sir Thomas More for evidence of the teaching as to the Pope’s position at this period; and his testimony is abundant and definite. Thus in the second book of his Dyalogue, written in 1528, arguing that there must be unity in the Church of Christ, he points out that the effect of Lutheranism has been to breed diversity of faith and practice. “Though they began so late,” he writes, “yet there are not only as many sects almost as men, but also the masters themselves change their minds and their opinions every day. Bohemia is also in the same case: one faith in the town, another in the field; one in Prague, another in the next town; and yet in Prague itself, one faith in one street, another in the next. And yet all these acknowledge that they cannot have the Sacraments ministered but by such priests as are made by authority derived and conveyed from the Pope who is, under Christ, Vicar and head of our Church.”[98] It is important to note in this passage how the author takes for granted the Pope’s supreme authority over the Christian Church. To this subject he returns, and is more explicit in a later chapter of the same book. The Church, he says, is the “company and congregation of all nations professing the name of Christ.” This church “has begun with Christ, and has had Him for its head and St. Peter His Vicar after Him, and the head under Him; and always since, the successors of him continually. And it has had His holy faith and His blessed Sacraments and His holy Scriptures delivered, kept, and conserved therein by God and His Holy Spirit, and albeit some nations fall away, yet just as no matter how many boughs whatever fall from the tree, even though more fall than be left thereon, still there is no doubt which is the very tree, although each of them were planted again in another place and grew to a greater than the stock it first came off, in the same way we see and know well that all the companies and sects of heretics and schismatics, however great they grow, come out of this Church I speak of; and we know that the heretics are they that are severed, and the Church the stock that they all come out of.”[99] Here Sir Thomas More expressly gives communion with the successors of St. Peter as one of the chief tests of the true Church.

Again, in his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, written in 1532 when he was Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More speaks specially about the absolute necessity of the Church being One and not able to teach error. There is one known and recognised Church existing throughout the world, which “is that mystical body be it never so sick.” Of this mystical body “Christ is the principal head”; and it is no part of his concern, he says, for the moment to determine “whether the successor of St. Peter is his vicar-general and head under him, as all Christian nations have now long taken him.”[100] Later on he classes himself with “poor popish men,”[101] and in the fifth book he discusses the question “whether the Pope and his sect” (as Tyndale called them) “is Christ’s Church or no.” On this matter More is perfectly clear. “I call the Church of Christ,” he says, “the known Catholic Church of all Christian nations, neither gone out nor cut off. And although all these nations do now and have long since recognised and acknowledged the Pope, not as the bishop of Rome but as the successor of St. Peter, to be their chief spiritual governor under God and Christ’s Vicar on earth, yet I never put the Pope as part of the definition of the Church, by defining it to be the common known congregation of all Christian nations under one head the Pope.”

I avoided this definition purposely, he continues, so as not “to entangle the matter with the two questions at once, for I knew well that the Church being proved this common known Catholic congregation of all Christian nations abiding together in one faith, neither fallen nor cut off; there might, peradventure, be made a second question after that, whether over all this Catholic Church the Pope must needs be head and chief governor and chief spiritual shepherd, or whether, if the unity of the faith was kept among them all, every province might have its own spiritual chief over itself, without any recourse unto the Pope.…

“For the avoiding of all such intricacies, I purposely abstained from putting the Pope as part of the definition of the Church, as a thing that was not necessary; for if he be the necessary head, he is included in the name of the whole body, and whether he be or not is a matter to be treated and disputed of besides” (p. 615). As to Tyndale’s railing against the authority of the Pope because there have been “Popes that have evil played their parts,” he should remember, says More, that “there have been Popes again right holy men, saints and martyrs too,” and that, moreover, the personal question of goodness or badness has nothing to say to the office.[102]

In like manner, More, when arguing against Friar Barnes, says that like the Donatists “these heretics call the Catholic Christian people papists,” and in this they are right, since “Saint Austin called the successor of Saint Peter the chief head on earth of the whole Catholic Church, as well as any man does now.” He here plainly states his view of the supremacy of the See of Rome.[103] He accepted it not only as an antiquarian fact, but as a thing necessary for the preservation of the unity of the Faith. Into the further question whether the office of supreme pastor was established by Christ Himself, or, as theologians would say, de jure divino, or whether it had grown with the growth and needs of the Church, More did not then enter. The fact was sufficient for him that the only Christian Church he recognised had for long ages regarded the Pope as the Pastor pastorum, the supreme spiritual head of the Church of Christ. His own words, almost at the end of his life, are the best indication of his mature conclusion on this matter. “I have,” he says, “by the grace of God, been always a Catholic, never out of communion with the Roman Pontiff; but I have heard it said at times that the authority of the Roman Pontiff was certainly lawful and to be respected, but still an authority derived from human law, and not standing upon a divine prescription. Then, when I observed that public affairs were so ordered that the sources of the power of the Roman Pontiff would necessarily be examined, I gave myself up to a diligent examination of that question for the space of seven years, and found that the authority of the Roman Pontiff, which you rashly—I will not use stronger language—have set aside, is not only lawful to be respected and necessary, but also grounded on the divine law and prescription. That is my opinion, that is the belief in which, by the grace of God, I shall die.”[104]

Looking at More’s position in regard to this question in the light of all that he has written, it would seem to be certain that he never for a moment doubted that the Papacy was necessary for the Church. He accepted this without regard to the reasons of the faith that was in him, and in this he was not different from the body of Englishmen at large. When, in 1522, the book by Henry VIII. appeared against Luther, it drew the attention of Sir Thomas specially to a consideration of the grounds upon which the supremacy of the Pope was held by Catholics. As the result of his examination he became so convinced that it was of divine institution that “my conscience would be in right great peril,” he says, “if I should follow the other side and deny the primacy to be provided of God.” Even before examination More evidently held implicitly the same ideas, since in his Latin book against Luther, published in 1523, he declared his entire agreement with Bishop Fisher on the subject. That the latter was fully acquainted with the reasons which went to prove that the Papacy was of divine institution, and that he fully accepted it as such, is certain.[105]

When, with the failure of the divorce proceedings, came the rejection of Papal supremacy in England, there were plenty of people ready to take the winning side, urging that the rejection was just, and not contrary to the true conception of the Christian Church. It is interesting to note that in all the pulpit tirades against the Pope and what was called his “usurped supremacy,” there is no suggestion that this supremacy had not hitherto been fully and freely recognised by all in the country. On the contrary, the change was regarded as a happy emancipation from an authority which had been hitherto submitted to without question or doubt. A sermon preached at St. Paul’s the Sunday after the execution of the Venerable Bishop Fisher, and a few days before Sir Thomas More was called to lay down his life for the same cause, is of interest, as specially making mention of these two great men, and of the reasons which had forced them to lay down their lives in the Pope’s quarrel. The preacher was one Simon Matthew, and his object was to instruct the people in the new theory of the Christian Church necessary on the rejection of the headship of the Pope. “The diversity of regions and countries,” he says, “does not make any diversity of churches, but a unity of faith makes all regions one Church.” “There was,” he continued, “no necessity to know Peter, as many have reckoned, in the Bishop of Rome, (teaching) that except we knew him and his holy college, we could not be of Christ’s Church. Many have thought it necessary that if a man would be a member of the Church of Christ, he must belong to the holy church of Rome and take the Holy Father thereof for the supreme Head and for the Vicar of Christ, yea for Christ Himself, (since) to be divided from him was even to be divided from Christ.” This, the preacher informs his audience, is “damnable teaching,” and that “the Bishop of Rome has no more power by the laws of God in this realm than any foreign bishop.”

He then goes on to speak of what was, no doubt, in everybody’s mind at the time, the condemnation of the two eminent Englishmen for upholding the ancient teachings as to the Pope’s spiritual headship. “Of late,” he says, “you have had experience of some, whom neither friends nor kinsfolk, nor the judgment of both universities, Cambridge and Oxford, nor the universal consent of all the clergy of this realm, nor the laws of the Parliament, nor their most natural and loving prince, could by any gentle ways revoke from their disobedience, but would needs persist therein, giving pernicious occasion to the multitude to murmur and grudge at the king’s laws, seeing that they were men of estimation and would be seen wiser than all the realm and of better conscience than others, justifying themselves and condemning all the realm besides. These being condemned and the king’s prisoners, yet did not cease to conceive ill of our sovereign, refusing his laws, but even in prison wrote to their mutual comfort in their damnable opinions. I mean Doctor Fisher and Sir Thomas More, whom I am as sorry to name as any man here is to hear named: sorry for that they, being sometime men of worship and honour, men of famous learning and many excellent graces and so tenderly sometime beloved by their prince, should thus unkindly, unnaturally, and traitorously use themselves. Our Lord give them grace to be repentant! Let neither their fame, learning, nor honour move you loving subjects from your prince; but regard ye the truth.”

The preacher then goes on to condemn the coarse style of preaching against the Pope in which some indulged at that time. “I would exhort,” he says, “such as are of my sort and use preaching, so to temper their words that they be not noted to speak of stomach and rather to prate than preach. Nor would I have the defenders of the king’s matters rage and rail, or scold, as many are thought to do, calling the Bishop of Rome the ‘harlot of Babylon’ or ‘the beast of Rome,’ with many such other, as I have heard some say; these be meeter to preach at Paul’s Wharf than at Paul’s Cross.”[106]

The care that was taken at this time in sermons to the people to decry the Pope’s authority, as well as the abuse which was hurled at his office, is in reality ample proof of the popular belief in his supremacy, which it was necessary to eradicate from the hearts of the English people. Few, probably, would have been able to state the reason for their belief; but that the spiritual headship was fully and generally accepted as a fact is, in view of the works of the period, not open to question. Had there been disbelief, or even doubt, as to the matter, some evidence of this would be forthcoming in the years that preceded the final overthrow of Papal jurisdiction in England.

Nor are direct declarations of the faith of the English Church wanting. To the evidence already adduced, a sermon preached by Bishop Longland in 1527, before the archbishops and bishops of England in synod at Westminster, may be added. The discourse is directed against the errors of Luther and the social evils to which his teaching had led in Germany. The English bishops, Bishop Longland declares, are determined to do all in their power to preserve the English Church from this evil teaching, and he exhorts all to pray that God will not allow the universal and chief Church—the Roman Church—to be further afflicted, that He will restore liberty to the most Holy Father and high-priest now impiously imprisoned, and in a lamentable state; that He Himself will protect the Church’s freedom threatened by a multitude of evil men, and through the pious prayers of His people will free it and restore its most Holy Father. Just as the early Christians prayed when Peter was in prison, so ought all to pray in these days of affliction. “Shall we not,” he cries, “mourn for the evil life of the chief Church (of Christendom)? Shall we not beseech God for the liberation of the primate and chief ruler of the Church? Let us pray then; let us pray that through our prayers we may be heard. Let us implore freedom for our mother, the Catholic Church, and the liberty, so necessary for the Christian religion, of our chief Father on earth—the Pope.”[107]

Again, Dr. John Clark, the English ambassador in Rome, when presenting Henry’s book against Luther to Leo X. in public consistory, said that the English king had taken up the defence of the Church because in attacking the Pope the German reformer had tried to subvert the order established by God Himself. In the Babylonian Captivity of the Church he had given to the world a book “most pernicious to mankind,” and before presenting Henry’s reply, he begged to be allowed to protest “the devotion and veneration of the king towards the Pope and his most Holy See.” Luther had declared war “not only against your Holiness but also against your office; against the ecclesiastical hierarchy, against this See, and against that Rock established by God Himself.” England, the speaker continued, “has never been behind other nations in the worship of God and the Christian faith, and in obedience to the Roman Church.” Hence “no nation” detests more cordially “this monster (Luther) and the heresies broached by him.” For he has declared war “not only against your Holiness but against your office; against the ecclesiastical hierarchy, against this See, that Rock established by God Himself.”[108]

Whilst the evidence goes to show the full acceptance by the English people of the Pope’s spiritual headship of the Church, it is also true that the system elaborated by the ecclesiastical lawyers in the later Middle Ages, dealing, as it did, so largely with temporal matters, property, and the rights attaching thereto, opened the door to causes of disagreement between Rome and England, and at times open complaints and criticism of the exercise of Roman authority in England made themselves heard. This is true of all periods of English history. Since these disagreements are obviously altogether connected with the question, not of spirituals, but of temporals, they would not require any more special notice but for the misunderstandings they have given rise to in regard to the general attitude of men’s minds to Rome and Papal authority on the eve of the Reformation. It is easy to find evidence of this. As early as 1517, a work bearing on this question appeared in England. It was a translation of several tracts that had been published abroad on the debated matter of Constantine’s donation to the Pope, and it was issued from the press of Thomas Godfray in a well-printed folio. After a translation of the Latin version of a Greek manuscript of Constantine’s gift, which had been found in the Papal library by Bartolomeo Pincern, and published by order of Pope Julius II., there is given in this volume the critical examination of this gift by Laurence Valla, the opinion of Nicholas of Cusa, written for the Council of Basle, and that of St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence. The interest of the volume for the present purpose chiefly consists in the fact of the publication in England at this date of the views expressed by Laurence Valla. Valla had been a canon of the Lateran and an eminent scholar, who was employed by Pope Nicholas V. to translate Thucydides and Herodotus. His outspoken words got him into difficulties with the Roman curia, and obliged him to retire to Naples, where he died in 1457. The tract was edited with a preface by the leader of the reform party in Germany, Ulrich von Hutten. In this introduction von Hutten says that by the publication of Pincern’s translation of the supposed donation of Constantine Julius II. had “provoked and stirred up men to war and battle,” and further, he blames the Pontiff because he would not permit Valla’s work against the genuineness of the gift to be published. With the accession of Leo X. von Hutten looked, he declares, for better days, since “by striking as it were a cymbal of peace the Pope has raised up the hearts and minds of all Christian people.” Before this time the truth could not be spoken. Popes looked “to pluck the riches and goods of all men to their own selves,” with the result that “on the other side they take away from themselves all that belongs to the succession of St. Peter.”

Valla, of course, condemns the supposed donation of Constantine to the Pope as spurious, and declares against the temporal claims the See of Rome had founded upon it. He strongly objects to the “temporal as well as the spiritual sword” being in the hands of the successors of St. Peter. “They say,” he writes, “that the city of Rome is theirs, that the kingdom of Naples is their own property: that all Italy, France, and Spain, Germany, England, and all the west part of the world belongs to them. For all these nations and countries (they say) are contained in the instrument and writ of the donation or grant.”

The whole tract is an attack upon the temporal sovereignty of the head of the Christian Church, and it was indeed a bold thing for Ulrich von Hutten to publish it and dedicate it to Pope Leo X. For the present purpose it is chiefly important to find all this set out in an English dress, whilst so far and for a long while after, the English people were loyal and true to the spiritual headship of the Pope, and were second to no other nation in their attachment to him. At that time recent events, including the wars of Julius II., must certainly have caused men to reflect upon the temporal aspect of the Papacy; and hearts more loyal to the successor of St. Peter than was that of Von Hutten would probably have joined fervently in the concluding words of his preface as it appeared in English. “Would to God I might (for there is nothing I do long for more) once see it brought to pass that the Pope were only the Vicar of Christ and not also the Vicar of the Emperor, and that this horrible saying may no longer be heard: ‘the Church fighteth and warreth against the Perugians, the Church fighteth against the people of Bologna.’ It is not the Church that fights and wars against Christian men; it is the Pope that does so. The Church fights against wicked spirits in the regions of the air. Then shall the Pope be called, and in very deed be, a Holy Father, the Father of all men, the Father of the Church. Then shall he not raise and stir up wars and battles among Christian men, but he shall allay and stop the wars which have been stirred up by others, by his apostolic censure and papal majesty.”[109]

Evidence of what, above, has been called the probable searching of men’s minds as to the action of the Popes in temporal matters, may be seen in a book called a Dyalogue between a knight and a clerk, concerning the power spiritual and temporal.[110] In reply to the complaint of the clerk that in the evil days in which their lot had fallen “the statutes and ordinances of bishops of Rome and the decrees of holy fathers” were disregarded, the knight exposes a layman’s view of the matter. “Whether they ordain,” he says, “or have ordained in times past of the temporality, may well be law to you, but not to us. No man has power to ordain statutes of things over which he has no lordship, as the king of France may ordain no statute (binding) on the emperor nor the emperor on the king of England. And just as princes of this world may ordain no statutes for your spirituality over which they have no power; no more may you ordain statutes of their temporalities over which you have neither power nor authority. Therefore, whatever you ordain about temporal things, over which you have received no power from God, is vain (and void). And therefore but lately, I laughed well fast, when I heard that Boniface VIII. had made a new statute that he himself should be above all secular lords, princes, kings, and emperors, and above all kingdoms, and make laws about all things: and that he only needed to write, for all things shall be his when he has so written: and thus all things will be yours. If he wishes to have my castle, my town, my field, my money, or any other such thing he needed, nothing but to will it, and write it, and make a decree, and wot that it be done, (for) to all such things he has a right.”

The clerk does not, however, at once give up the position. You mean, he says in substance, that in your opinion the Pope has no power over your property and goods. “Though we should prove this by our law and by written decrees, you account them for nought. For you hold that Peter had no lordship or power over temporals, but by such law written. But if you will be a true Christian man and of right belief, you will not deny that Christ is the lord of all things. To Him it is said in the Psalter book: ‘Ask of me, and I will give you nations for thine heritage, and all the world about for thy possession’ (Ps. ii.). These are God’s words, and no one doubts that He can ordain for the whole earth.”

Nobody denies God’s lordship over the earth, replied the knight, “but if be proved by Holy Writ that the Pope is lord of all temporalities, then kings and princes must needs be subject to the Pope in temporals as in spirituals.” So they are, in effect, answered the clerk. Peter was made “Christ’s full Vicar,” and as such he can do what his lord can, “especially when he is Vicar with full power, without any withdrawing of power, and he thus can direct all Christian nations in temporal matters.” But, said the knight, “Christ’s life plainly shows that He made no claim whatever to temporal power. Also in Peter’s commission He gave him not the keys of the kingdom of the earth, but the keys of the kingdom of heaven. It is also evident that the bishops of the Hebrews were subjects of the kings, and kings deposed bishops; but,” he adds, fearing to go too far, “God forbid that they should do so now.” Then he goes on to quote St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews to prove that St. Peter was Christ’s Vicar only in “the godly kingdom of souls, and that though some temporal things may be managed by bishops, yet nevertheless it is plain and evident that bishops should not be occupied in the government of the might and lordship of the world.” And indeed, he urges, “Christ neither made St. Peter a knight nor a crowned king, but ordained him a priest and bishop.” If the contention that “the Pope is the Vicar of God in temporal matter be correct,” then of necessity you must also grant that “the Pope may take from you and from us all the goods that you and we have, and give them all to whichever of his nephews or cousins he wills and give no reason why: and also that he may take away from princes and kings principalities and kingdoms, at his own will, and give them where he likes.”[111]

This statement by the layman of the advanced clerical view is somewhat bald, and is probably intentionally exaggerated; but that it could be published even as a caricature of the position taken up by some ecclesiastics, shows that at this time some went very far indeed in their claims. It is all the more remarkable that the argument is seriously put forward in a tract, the author of which is evidently a Catholic at heart, and one who fully admits the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope in all matters spiritual. Of course, when the rejection of Papal jurisdiction became imminent, there were found many who by sermons and books endeavoured to eradicate the old teaching from the people’s hearts, and then it was that what was called, “the pretensions” of the successors of St. Peter in matters temporal were held up to serve as a convenient means of striking at the spiritual prerogatives. As a sample, a small book named a Mustre of scismatyke bysshops of Rome may be taken. It was printed in 1534, and its title is sufficient to indicate its tone. The author, one John Roberts, rakes together a good many unsavoury tales about the lives of individual Popes, and in particular he translates the life of Gregory VII. to enforce his moral. In his preface he says, “There is a fond, foolish, fantasy raging in many men’s heads nowadays, and it is this: the Popes, say they, cannot err. This fantastical blindness was never taught by any man of literature, but by some peckish pedler or clouting collier: it is so gross in itself.” And I “warn, advise, beseech, and adjure all my well-beloved countrymen in England that men do not permit themselves to be blinded with affection, with hypocrisy, or with superstition. What have we got from Rome but pulling, polling, picking, robbing, stealing, oppression, blood-shedding, and tyranny daily exercised upon us by him and his.”[112]

Again, as another example of how the mind of the people was stirred up, we may take a few sentences from A Worke entytled of the olde God and the new. This tract is one of the most scurrilous of the German productions of the period. It was published in English by Myles Coverdale, and is on the list of books prohibited by the king in 1534. After a tirade against the Pope, whom he delights in calling “anti-Christ,” the author declares that the Popes are the cause of many of the evils from which people were suffering at that time. In old days, he says, the Bishop of Rome was nothing more “than a pastor or herdsman,” and adds: “Now he who has been at Rome in the time of Pope Alexander VI. or of Pope Julius II., he need not read many histories. I put it to his judgment whether any of the Pagans or of the Turks ever did lead such a life as did these.”[113]

The same temper of mind appears in the preface of a book called The Defence of Peace, translated into English by William Marshall and printed in 1535. The work itself was written by Marsilius of Padua about 1323, but the preface is dated 1522. The whole tone is distinctly anti-clerical, but the main line of attack is developed from the side of the temporalities possessed by churchmen. Even churchmen, he says, look mainly to the increase of their worldly goods. “Riches give honour, riches give benefices, riches give power and authority, riches cause men to be regarded and greatly esteemed.” Especially is the author of the preface severe upon the temporal position which the Pope claims as inalienably united with his office as head of the Church. Benedict XII., he says, acted in many places as if he were all powerful, appointing rulers and officers in cities within the emperor’s dominions, saying, “that all power and rule and empire was his own, for as much as whosoever is the successor of Peter on earth is the only Vicar or deputy of Jesus Christ the King of Heaven.”[114]

In the body of the book itself the same views are expressed. The authority of the primacy is said to be “not immediately from God, but by the will and mind of man, just as other offices of a commonwealth are,” and that the real meaning and extent of the claims put forward by the Pope can be seen easily. They are temporal, not spiritual. “This is the meaning of this title among the Bishops of Rome, that as Christ had the fulness of power and jurisdiction over all kings, princes, commonwealth, companies, or fellowships, and all singular persons, so in like manner they who call themselves the Vicars of Christ and Peter, have also the same fulness of enactive jurisdiction, determined by no law of man,” and thus it is that “the Bishops of Rome, with their desire for dominion, have been the cause of discords and wars.”[115]

Lancelot Ridley, in his Exposition of the Epistle of Jude, published in 1538 after the breach with Rome, takes the same line. The Pope has no right to have “exempted himself” and “other spiritual men from the obedience to the civil rulers and powers.” Some, indeed, he says, “set up the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome above kings, princes, and emperors, and that by the ordinance of God, as if God and His Holy Scripture did give to the Bishop of Rome a secular power above kings, princes, and emperors here in this world. It is evident by Scripture that the Bishop of Rome has no other power but at the pleasure of princes, than in the ministration of the Word of God in preaching God’s Word purely and sincerely, to reprove by it evil men, and to do such things as become a preacher, a bishop, a minister of God’s Word to do. Other power Scripture does not attribute to the Bishop of Rome, nor suffer him to use. Scripture wills him to be a bishop, and to do the office of a bishop, and not to play the prince, the king, the emperor, the lord, and so forth.”[116] It is important to note in this passage that the writer was a reformer, and that he was expressing his views after the jurisdiction of the Holy See had been rejected by the king and his advisers. The ground of the rejection, according to him—or at any rate the reason which it was desired to emphasise before the public—would appear to be the temporal authority which the Popes had been exercising.

In the same year, 1538, Richard Morysine published a translation of a letter addressed by John Sturmius, the Lutheran, to the cardinals appointed by Pope Paul III. to consider what could be done to stem the evils which threatened the Church. As the work of this Papal commission was then directly put before the English people, some account of it is almost necessary. The commission consisted of four cardinals, two archbishops, one bishop, the abbot of San Giorgio, Venice, and the master of the Sacred Palace, and its report was supposed to have been drafted by Cardinal Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV. The document thanks God who has inspired the Pope “to put forth his hand to support the ruins of the tottering and almost fallen Church of Christ, and to raise it again to its pristine height.” As a beginning, the Holy Father has commanded them to lay bare to him “those most grave abuses, that is diseases, by which the Church of God, and this Roman curia especially, is afflicted,” and which has brought about the state of ruin now so evident. The initial cause of all has been, they declare, that the Popes have surrounded themselves with people who only told them what they thought would be pleasant to them, and who had not the honesty and loyalty to speak the truth. This adulation had deceived the Roman Pontiffs about many things. “To get the truth to their ears was always most difficult. Teachers sprung up who were ready to declare that the Pope was the master of all benefices, and as master might by right sell them as his own.” As a consequence, it was taught that the Pope could not be guilty of simony, and that the will of the Pope was the highest law, and could override all law. “From this source, Holy Father,” they continue, “as from the Trojan horse, so many abuses and most grievous diseases have grown up in the Church of God.” Even pagans, they say, scoff at the state of the Christian Church as it is at present, and they, the commissioners, beg the Pope not to delay in immediately taking in hand the correction of the manifest abuses which afflict and disgrace the Church of Christ. “Begin the cure,” they say, “whence sprung the disease. Follow the teaching of the Apostle St. Paul: ‘be a dispenser, not a lord.’”

They then proceed to note the abuses which to them are most apparent, and to suggest remedies. We are not concerned with these further than to point out that, as a preliminary, they state that the true principle of government is, that what is the law must be kept, and that dispensations should be granted only on the most urgent causes, since nothing brings government to such bad repute as the continual exercise of the power of dispensation. Further, they note that it is certainly not lawful for the Vicar of Christ to make any profit (lucrum) by the dispensations he is obliged to give.

Sturmius, in his preface, says he had hopes of better things, now that there was a Pope ready to listen. “It is a rare thing, and much more than man could hope for, that there should come a Bishop of Rome who would require his prelates upon their oath to open the truth, to show abuses, and to seek remedies for them.” He is pleased to think that these four cardinals, Sadolet, Paul Caraffa, Contarini, and Reginald Pole had allowed fully and frankly that a great portion of the difficulty had come from the unfortunate attitude of the Popes in regard to worldly affairs. “You acknowledge,” he says, “that no lordship is committed to the Bishop of Rome, but rather a certain cure by which he may rule things in the church according to good order. If you admit this to be true and will entirely grant us this, a great part of our (i.e. Lutheran) controversy is taken away; granting this also, that we did not dissent from you without great and just causes.” The three points the cardinals claimed for the Pope, it may be noted, were: (1) that he was to be Bishop of Rome; (2) that he was to be universal Bishop; and (3) that he should be allowed temporal sovereignty over certain cities in Italy.[117] Again we find the same view put before the English people in this translation: the chief objection to the admission of Papal prerogatives was the “lordship” which he claimed over and above the spiritual powers he exercised as successor of St. Peter. On this point we find preachers and writers of the period insisting most clearly and definitely. Some, of course, attack the spiritual jurisdiction directly, but most commonly such attacks are flavoured and served up for general consumption by a supply of abuse of the temporal assumptions and the worldly show of the Popes. This appealed to the popular mind, and to the growing sense of national aims and objects, and the real issue of the spiritual headship was obscured by the plea of national sentiment and safeguards.

To take one more example: Bishop Tunstall, on Palm Sunday, 1539, preached before the king and court. His object was to defend the rejection of the Papal supremacy and jurisdiction. He declaimed against the notion that the Popes were to be considered as free from subjection to worldly powers, maintaining that in this they were like all other men. “The Popes,” he says, “exalt their seat above the stars of God, and ascend above the clouds, and will be like to God Almighty.… The Bishop of Rome offers his feet to be kissed, shod with his shoes on. This I saw myself, being present thirty-four years ago, when Julius, the Bishop of Rome, stood on his feet and one of his chamberlains held up his skirt because it stood not, as he thought, with his dignity that he should do it himself, that his shoes might appear, whilst a nobleman of great age prostrated himself upon the ground and kissed his shoes.”[118]

To us, to-day, much that was written and spoken at this time will appear, like many of the above passages, foolish and exaggerated; but the language served its purpose, and contributed more than anything else to lower the Popes in the eyes of the people, and to justify in their minds the overthrow of the ecclesiastical system which had postulated the Pope as the universal Father of the Christian Church. Each Sunday, in every parish church throughout the country, they had been invited in the bidding prayer, as their fathers had been for generations, to remember their duty of praying for their common Father, the Pope. When the Pope’s authority was finally rejected by the English king and his advisers, it was necessary to justify this serious breach with the past religious practice, and the works of the period prove beyond doubt that this was done in the popular mind by turning men’s thoughts to the temporal aspect of the Papacy, and making them think that it was for the national profit and honour that this foreign yoke should be cast off. Whilst this is clear, it is also equally clear in the works of the time that the purely religious aspect of the question was as far as possible relegated to a secondary place in the discussions. This was perhaps not unnatural, as the duty of defending the rejection of the Papal supremacy can hardly have been very tasteful to those who were forced by the strong arm of the State to justify it before the people. As late as 1540 we are told by a contemporary writer that the spirituality under the bishops “favour as much as they dare the Bishop of Rome’s laws and his ways.”[119]

Even the actual meaning attached to the formal acknowledgment of the king’s Headship by the clergy was sufficiently ambiguous to be understood, by some at least, as aimed merely at the temporal jurisdiction of the Roman curia. It is true it is usually understood that Convocation by its act, acknowledging Henry as sole supreme Head of the Church of England, gave him absolute spiritual jurisdiction. Whatever may have been the intention of the king in requiring the acknowledgment from the clergy, it seems absolutely certain that the ruling powers in the Church considered that by their grant there was no derogation of the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction.

A comparison of the clauses required by Henry with those actually granted by Convocation makes it evident that any admission that the crown had any cure of souls, that is, spiritual jurisdiction, was specifically guarded against. In place of the clause containing the words, “cure of souls committed to his Majesty,” proposed in the king’s name to his clergy, they adopted the form, “the nation committed to his Majesty.” The other royal demands were modified in the same manner, and it is consequently obvious that all the insertions proposed by the crown were weighed with the greatest care by skilled ecclesiastical jurists in some two and thirty sessions, and the changes introduced by them with the proposals made on behalf of the king throw considerable light upon the meaning which Convocation intended to give to the Supremum Caput clause. In one sense, perhaps not the obvious one, but one that had de facto been recognised during Catholic ages, the sovereign was the Protector—the advocatus—of the Church in his country, and to him the clergy would look to protect his people from the introduction of heresy and for maintenance in their temporalities. So that whilst, on the one hand, the king and Thomas Cromwell may well have desired the admission of Henry’s authority over “the English Church, whose Protector and supreme Head he alone is,” to cover even spiritual jurisdiction, on the other hand, Warham and the English Bishops evidently did intend it to cover only an admission that the king had taken all jurisdiction in temporals, hitherto exercised by the Pope in England, into his own hands.

Moreover, looking at what was demanded and at what was granted by the clergy, there is little room for doubt that they at first deliberately eliminated any acknowledgment of the Royal jurisdiction. This deduction is turned into a certainty by the subsequent action of Archbishop Warham. He first protested that the admission was not to be twisted in “derogation of the Roman Pontiff or the Apostolic See,” and the very last act of his life was the drafting of an elaborate exposition, to be delivered in the House of Lords, of the impossibility of the king’s having spiritual jurisdiction, from the very nature of the constitution of the Christian Church. Such jurisdiction, he claimed, belonged of right to the Roman See.[120]

That the admission wrung from the clergy in fact formed the thin end of the wedge which finally severed the English Church from the spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See is obvious. But the “thin end” was, there can be hardly any doubt, the temporal aspect of the authority of the Roman See; and that its insertion at all was possible may be said in greater measure to be due to the fact that the exercise of jurisdiction in temporals by a foreign authority had long been a matter which many Englishmen had strongly resented.