The King s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church - Hardcover

Bernard, G.W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300109083 ISBN 13: 9780300109085

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Henry VIII’s reformation remains among the most crucial yet misunderstood events in English history. In this substantial new account G. W. Bernard presents the king as neither confused nor a pawn in the hands of manipulative factions. Henry, a monarch who ruled as well as reigned, is revealed instead as the determining mover of religious policy throughout this momentous period.

In Henry’s campaign to secure a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which led him to break with Rome, his strategy, as Bernard shows, was more consistent and more radical than historians have allowed. Henry refused to introduce Lutheranism, but rather harnessed the rhetoric of the continental reformation in support of his royal supremacy. Convinced that the church needed urgent reform, in particular the purging of superstition and idolatry, Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries and the dismantling of the shrines were much more than a venal attempt to raise money. The king sought a middle way between Rome and Zurich, between Catholicism and its associated superstitions on one hand and the subversive radicalism of the reformers on the other. With a ruthlessness that verged on tyranny, Henry VIII determined the pace of change in the most important twenty years of England’s religious development.

About this title

About the Author:

G.W. Bernard is professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton. His books include Power and Politics in Tudor England.

From Publishers Weekly:

It is commonplace to attribute the birth of the Church of England to Henry VIII's desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Bernard, professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton, demonstrates that Henry's reformation of the English church involved more complex motives and methods than his desire for a new wife and an heir. Bernard examines in meticulous detail the issues surrounding the divorce, including Henry's assertion that his first marriage had never been valid. But the divorce was only one factor in Henry's desire to reform the church. In 1536-37, he instituted a number of statutes-the act of appeal, the act of succession, the act of supremacy and others-that dealt with the relationship between the king and the pope and the structure of the Church of England. During these years, Henry also suppressed monasteries and pilgrimage shrines in his attempt to reform the church. Bernard offers a magisterially exhaustive account of Henry's religious reforms, his opponents, and his supporters, as well as the ways that Henry's policies led to the political and religious reformations of Thomas Cranmer and Oliver Cromwell. This is a first-rate account of a controversial king and his role in the development of the English church.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0300109083
• ISBN 13: 9780300109085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672