Interesting
history of the English Reformation from a Catholic perspective.
Once upon a
time, England was a very Catholic country . . .
How a
Protestant spin machine hid the truth about the English Reformation
Today,
May 23, is the anniversary of King Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of
Aragon — the event which started the English Reformation.
In 2003, Charles Clarke, Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for
Education and Skills, expressed strong views on the teaching of British
history.
I don’t
mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is
no reason for the state to pay for them.
In response, Michael Biddiss, professor of medieval history at
Reading University, suggested that Mr Clarke’s view may have been informed by
Khrushchev’s notion that historians are dangerous people, capable of upsetting
everything.
In many ways, Khrushchev was correct. Historians can be a
distinct threat — both those who create “official” history, and those who work
quietly to unpick it, filling in the irksome and unhelpful details.
Rulers in all ages have tried to control how history sees them,
and have gone to great lengths to have events recorded the way they want. The
process is as old as authority itself.
The result is that generations of people learn something at
school, only to find out later that it was not so. For instance, children
brought up in the communist countries of the 20th century have little idea of
the indiscriminately murderous mechanics at the heart of their founding
revolutions. More recently, in the United States, anyone young enough not to
have lived through the two recent Iraq wars might, if they only read political
memoirs, actually believe that the wars were fought to root out al Qaeda.
So what about England? Has our constitutional monarchy and
ancient tradition of parliamentary democracy protected our history from
political manipulation? Can we rely on what we are taught and told, or are
there myths we, too, have swallowed hook, line, and sinker?
Where better to start than with that most quintessentially
English of events — the break with Rome that signalled the birth of modern
England?
For centuries, the English have been taught that the late
medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all,
we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish
flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the
ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the
country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe,
Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh
people had long desired – an excuse to break away from an anachronistic
subjugation to the ridiculous medieval strictures of the Church.
For many in England, the subject of whether or not this was true
was not even up for debate. Even now, the historical English disdain for all
things Catholic is often regarded as irrefutable and objective fact. Otherwise
why would we have been taught it for four and a half centuries? And anyway, the
English are quite clearly not an emotional race like some of our continental
cousins. We like our churches bright and clean and practical and full of common
sense. For this reason, we are brought up to believe that Catholicism is just
fundamentally, well … un-English.
But the last 30 years have seen a revolution in Reformation
research. Leading scholars have started looking behind the pronouncements of
the religious revolution’s leaders – Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas
Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley – and beyond the parliamentary
pronouncements and the great sermons. Instead, they have begun focusing on the
records left by ordinary English people. This “bottom up” approach to history
has undoubtedly been the most exciting development in historical research in
the last 50 years. It has taken us away from what the rulers want us to know,
and steered us closer towards what actually happened.
When this approach is applied to the Reformation, what emerges
is a very different picture to the one we were taught in school.
It seems that in 1533, the year of Henry’s break from Rome,
traditional Catholicism was the religion of the vast majority of the country.
And in most places it was absolutely thriving. . .
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