Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

history that men lie most when they govern states. From seventeen days

of festivities with Francis, Henry went to three days of conference

with Charles at Calais (July 1520). There King and Emperor, chaperoned

by Wolsey, swore eternal friendship, and agreed to proceed no

further with their plans to marry into the royal family of France.

These separate alliances were a more precarious basis for European

peace than the multilateral entente that Wolsey had arranged before

Maximilian's death, but it still left England in the position of

mediator and, in effect, arbiter- a position far loftier than any that

could be based on English wealth or power. Henry was satisfied. To

reward his Chancellor he ordered the monks of St. Albans to elect

Wolsey as their abbot and dower him with their net revenue, for "my

Lord Cardinal has sustained many charges in this his voyage." The

monks obeyed, and Wolsey's income neared his needs.

He was, on a grander scale than most of us, a fluid compound of

virtues and faults. "He is very handsome," wrote Giustiniani,

"extremely eloquent, of vast ability, and indefatigable." `062312

His morals were imperfect. Twice he slipped into illegitimate

parentage; these were peccadilloes readily overlooked in that lusty

age; but, if we may believe a bishop, the Cardinal suffered from the

"pox." `062313 He accepted what might or might not be called bribes-

large gifts of money from both Francis and Charles; he kept them

bidding against each other with the pensions and benefices that they

offered him; these were courtesies of the time; and the expensive

Cardinal, who felt that his policies were serving all Europe, felt

that all Europe should serve him. Beyond doubt he loved money and

luxury, pomp and power. A large part of his income went to maintain an

establishment whose surface extravagance may have been a tool of

diplomacy, designed to give foreign ambassadors an exaggerated

notion of English resources. Henry paid Wolsey no salary, so that

the Chancellor had to live and entertain on his ecclesiastical

revenues and his pensions from abroad. Even so we may marvel that he

should have required all the income that came to him as holder of

two rectories, six prebends, one provostship, as Abbot of St.

Albans, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Archbishop of York, administrator of

the diocese of Winchester, and a partner of the absentee Italian

bishops of Worcester and Salisbury. `062314 He disposed of nearly

all the major ecclesiastical and political patronage of the realm, and

presumably each appointment yielded him a gratuity. A Catholic

historian has estimated that Wolsey at his zenith received a third

of all the ecclesiastical revenues of England. `062315 He was the

richest and most powerful subject in the nation; "seven times more

powerful than the pope," thought Giustiniani; `062316 he is, said

Erasmus, "the second king." Only one step more remained to be taken-

the papacy. Twice Wolsey tried for it, but in that game the wily

Charles, ignoring promises, outplayed him.

The Cardinal believed that ceremony is the cement of power; force

can gain power, but only public habituation can cheaply and

peaceably sustain it; and people judge a man's altitude by the

ceremony that hedges him in. So in his public and official appearances

Wolsey dressed in the formal splendor that seemed to him advisable

in the supreme representative of both pope and king. Red hat of a

cardinal, red gloves, robes of scarlet or crimson taffeta, shoes of

silver or gilt inlaid with pearls and precious stones- here were

Innocent III, Benjamin Disraeli, and Beau Brummel all in one. He was

the first clergyman in England who wore silk. `062317 When he said

Mass (which was seldom) he had bishops and abbots as his acolytes; and

on some occasions dukes and earls poured out the water with which he

washed his consecrating hands. He allowed his attendants to kneel in

waiting upon him at table. Five hundred persons, many of high lineage,

served him in his office and his home. `062318 Hampton Court that he

built as his residence was so luxurious that he presented it to the

King (1525) to avert the evil eye of royal jealousy.

Sometimes, however, he forgot that Henry was king. "On my first

arrival in England," Giustiniani wrote to the Venetian Senate, "the

Cardinal used to say to me, 'His Majesty will do so and so.'

Subsequently, by degrees, he forgot himself, and commenced saying, 'We

shall do so and so.' At present he... says, 'I shall do so and

so.'" `062319 And again the ambassador wrote: "If it were necessary to

neglect either King or Cardinal, it would be better to pass over the

King; the Cardinal might resent precedence conceded to the

King." `062320 Peers and diplomats seldom obtained audience with the

Chancellor until their third request. With each passing year the

Cardinal ruled more and more openly as a dictator; he called

Parliament only once during his ascendancy; he paid little attention

to constitutional forms; he met opposition with resentment and

criticism with rebuke. The historian Polydore Vergil wrote that

these methods would bring Wolsey's fall; Vergil was sent to the Tower;

and only repeated intercession by Leo X secured his release.

Opposition grew.

Perhaps those whom Wolsey superseded or disciplined secured the

ear of history, and transmitted his sins unabsolved. But no one

questioned his ability, or his assiduous devotion to his many tasks.

"He transacts as much business," Giustiniani told the proud Venetian

Senate, "as that which occupies all the magistracies, offices, and

councils of Venice, both civil and criminal; and all state affairs are

likewise managed by him, let their nature be what they may." `062321

He was loved by the poor and hated by the powerful for his impartial

administration of justice; almost beyond any precedent in English

history after Alfred, he opened his court to all who complained of

oppression, and he fearlessly punished the guilty, however

exalted. `062322 He was generous to scholars and artists, and began

a religious reform by replacing several monasteries with colleges.

He was on the way to a stimulating improvement of English education

when all the enemies he had made in the haste of his labors and the

myopia of his pride conspired with a royal romance to engineer his

fall.

III. WOLSEY AND THE CHURCH

-

He recognized and largely exemplified the abuses that still survived

in the ecclesiastical life of England: absentee bishops, worldly

clergymen, idle monks, and priests snared into parentage. The state,

which had so often called for a reform of the Church, was now part

cause of the evils, for the bishops were appointed by the kings.

Some bishops, like Morton and Warham and Fisher, were men of high

character and caliber; many others were too absorbed in the comforts

of prelacy to train their clergy in spiritual fitness as well as

financial assiduity. The sexual morality of the curates was probably

better than in Germany, but among the 8,000 parishes of England

there were inevitably cases of sacerdotal concubinage, adultery,

drunkenness, and crime- enough to make Archbishop Morton say (1486)

that "the scandal of their lives imperiled the stability of their

order." `062323 Richard Foxe, toward 1519, informed Wolsey that the

clergy in the diocese of Winchester were "so depraved by license and

corruption" that he despaired of any reformation in his

lifetime. `062324 The parish priests, suspecting that their

promotion depended on their collections, were more than ever

exacting of tithes; some took a tenth, each year, of the peasant's

chickens, eggs, milk, cheese, and fruit, even of all wages paid to his

help; and any man whose will left no legacy to the Church ran high

risk of being denied Christian burial, with prospective results too

horrible to contemplate. In short the clergy, to finance their

services, taxed almost as sedulously as the modern state. By 1500

the Church owned, on a conservative Catholic estimate, about a fifth

of all property in England. `062325 The nobility, here as in

Germany, envied this ecclesiastical wealth, and itched to recover

lands and revenues alienated to God by their pious or fearful

ancestors.

The condition of the secular clergy in England was summed up with

obvious exaggeration by Dean Colet in an address to an assembly of

churchmen in 1512:

-

I wish that at length, mindful of your name and profession, you

would consider the reformation of ecclesiastical affairs; for never

was it more necessary.... For the Church- the spouse of Christ-

which He wished to be without spot or wrinkle, is become foul and

deformed. As saith Isaiah, "The faithful city is become a harlot"; and

as Jeremiah speaks, "She hath committed fornication with many lovers,"

whereby she hath conceived many seeds of iniquity, and daily

bringeth forth the foulest of offspring.... Nothing has so

disfigured the face of the Church as the secular and worldly living on

the part of the clergy.... What eagerness and hunger after honor and

dignity are found in these days among ecclesiastical persons! What a

breathless race from benefice to benefice, from a less to a greater

one!...

As to lust of the flesh, has not this vice inundated the Church with

a flood... so that nothing is more carefully sought after... by the

most part of priests, than that which ministers to sensual pleasure?

They give themselves to feasting and banqueting... devote themselves

to hunting and hawking, are drowned in the delights of this world....

Covetousness also... has so taken possession of the hearts of all

priests... that nowadays we are blind to everything but that alone

which seems able to bring us gain.... We are troubled in these days by

heretics- men mad with strange folly; but this heresy of theirs is not

so pestilential and pernicious to us and the people as the vicious and

depraved lives of the clergy.... Reformation must begin with

you. `062326

-

And again the angry Dean cried:

-

O priests! O priesthood!... Oh, the abominable impiety of those

miserable priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great

multitude, who fear not to rush from the bosom of some foul harlot

into the temple of the Church, to the altar of Christ, to the

mysteries of God! `062327

-

The regular or monastic clergy incurred even severer censure.

Archbishop Morton in 1489 charged Abbot William of St. Albans with

"simony, usury, embezzlement, and living publicly and continuously

with harlots and mistresses within the precincts of the monastery

and without"; he accused the monks of "a life of lasciviousness...

nay, of defiling the holy places, even the very churches of God, by

infamous intercourse with nuns," making a neighboring priory "a public

brothel." `062328 The records of episcopal visitations paint a less

lurid picture. Of forty-two monasteries visited between 1517 and

1530 fifteen were found without serious fault, and in most of the

others the offenses were against discipline rather than

chastity. `062329 Some monasteries still faithfully practiced the

medieval regimen of prayer, scholarship, hospitality, charity, and

education of the young. Some exploited the credulity- and gathered the

coins- of the commons by bogus relics to which they ascribed

miraculous cures; bishops complained of the "stinking boots, mucky

combs... rotten girdles... locks of hair, and filthy rags... set forth

and commended unto the ignorant people" as authentic relics of holy

women or men. `062330 All in all, in the estimate of the latest

Catholic historian, the 600 monasteries of England, in the first

quarter of the sixteenth century, showed widespread misconduct,

wasteful idleness, and a costly negligence in the care of

ecclesiastical property. `062331

In 1520 there were some 130 nunneries in England. Only four had over

thirty inmates. `062332 Eight were suppressed by the bishops, in one

case, said the bishop, because of "the dissolute disposition and

incontinence of the religious women of the house, by reason of the

vicinity of Cambridge University." `062333 In thirty-three visitations

of twenty-one nunneries in the diocese of Lincoln, sixteen reports

were favorable; fourteen noted lack of discipline or devotion; two

told of prioresses living in adultery, and one found a nun pregnant by

a priest. `062334 Such deviations from arduous rules were natural in

the moral climate of the times, and may have been outweighed by kindly

services in education and charity.

The clergy were not popular. Eustace Chapuys, Catholic ambassador of

Charles V to England, wrote to his master in 1529: "Nearly all the

people hate the priests." `062335 Many men fully orthodox in creed

denounced the severity of ecclesiastical taxation, the extravagance of

the prelates, the wealth and idleness of the monks. When the

chancellor of the bishop of London was accused of murdering a

heretic (1514), the bishop begged Wolsey to prevent trial by a civil

jury, "for assured I am, if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men

in London, they be so maliciously set in favor of heretical pravity

that they will cast and condemn my clerk though he were as innocent as

Abel." `062336

Heresy was rising again. In 1506 forty-five men were charged with

heresy before the bishop of Lincoln; forty-three recanted, two were

burned. In 1510 the bishop of London tried forty heretics, burned two;

in 1521 he tried forty-five and burned five. The records list 342 such

trials in fifteen years. `062337 Among the heresies were contentions

that the consecrated Host remains merely bread; that priests have no

more power than other men to consecrate or absolve; that the

sacraments are not necessary to salvation; that pilgrimages to holy

shrines, and prayer for the dead, are worthless; that prayers should

be addressed only to God; that man can be saved by faith alone,

regardless of good works; that the faithful Christian is above all

laws but that of Christ; that the Bible, not the Church, should be the

sole rule of faith; that all men should marry, and that monks and nuns

should repudiate their vows of chastity. Some of these heresies were

echoes of Lollardry, some were reverberations of Luther's trumpet

blasts. As early as 1521 young rebels in Oxford eagerly imported

news of the religious revolution in Germany. Cambridge in 1521-25

harbored a dozen future heresiarchs: William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale,

Hugh Latimer, Thomas Bilney, Edward Fox, Nicholas Ridley, Thomas

Cranmer.... Several of them, anticipating persecution, migrated to the

Continent, printed anti-Catholic tracts, and sent them clandestinely

into England.

Possibly as a deterrent to this movement, and perhaps to display his

theological erudition, Henry VIII issued in 1521 his famous Assertion

of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther. Many thought Wolsey

the secret author, and Wolsey may have suggested the book and its

leading ideas as part of his diplomacy at Rome; but Erasmus claimed

that the King had actually thought out and composed the treatise,

and opinion now inclines to that view. The book has the ring of a

tyro; it hardly attempts a rational refutation, but relies on Biblical

quotations, Church traditions, and vigorous abuse. "What serpent so

venomous," wrote the future rebel against the papacy, "as he who calls

the pope's authority tyrannous?... What a great limb of the Devil he

is, endeavoring to tear the Christian members of Christ from their

head!" No punishment could be too great for one who "will not obey the

Chief Priest and Supreme Judge on earth," for "the whole Church is

subject not only to Christ but... to Christ's only vicar, the pope

of Rome." `062338 Henry envied the honorific titles given by the

Church to the king of France as "Most Christian," and to Ferdinand and

Isabella as "the Catholic Sovereigns"; now his agent, presenting the

book to Leo X, asked him to confer on Henry and his successors the

title Defensor Fidei - Defender of the Faith. Leo consented; and

the inaugurator of the English Reformation placed the words upon his

coins.

Luther took his time answering. In 1525 he replied

characteristically to that "lubberly ass," that "frantic madman...

that King of Lies, King Heinz, by God's disgrace King of England....

Since with malice aforethought that damnable and rotten worm has

lied against my King in heaven it is right for me to bespatter this

English monarch with his own filth." `062339 Henry, unaccustomed to

such sprinkling, complained to the Elector of Saxony, who was too

polite to tell him not to meddle with lions. The King never forgave

Luther, despite the latter's later apology; and even when in full

rebellion against the papacy he repudiated the German Protestants.

Luther's most effective answer was his influence in England. In that

same year 1525 we hear of a London "Association of Christian

Brothers," whose paid agents went about distributing Lutheran and

other heretical tracts, and English Bibles in part or whole. In 1408

Archbishop Arundel, disturbed by the circulation of Wyclif's version

of the Scriptures, had forbidden any vernacular translation without

episcopal approval, on the ground that an unauthorized version might

misconstrue difficult passages, or color the rendering to support a

heresy. Many clergymen had discouraged the reading of the Bible in any

form, arguing that special knowledge was necessary to a right

interpretation, and that Scriptural excerpts were being used to foment

sedition. `062340 The Church had raised no official objection to

pre-Wyclif translations, but this tacit permission had been of no

moment, since all English versions before 1526 were

manuscript. `062341

Hence the epochal importance of the English New Testament printed by

Tyndale in 1525-26. Early in his student days he had planned to

translate the Bible, not from the Latin Vulgate as Wyclif had done,

but from the original Hebrew and Greek. When an ardent Catholic

reproved him, saying, "It would be better to be without God's law"-

i.e., the Bible- "than without the pope's," Tyndale answered: "If

God spare me life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth

the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do." `062342 A

London alderman gave him bed and board for six months, while the youth

labored on the task. In 1524 Tyndale went to Wittenberg, and continued

the work under Luther's guidance. At Cologne he began to print his

version of the New Testament from the Greek text as edited by Erasmus.

An English agent roused the authorities against him; Tyndale fled from

Catholic Cologne to Protestant Worms, and there printed 6,000

copies, to each of which he added a separate volume of notes and

aggressive prefaces based on those of Erasmus and Luther. All these

copies were smuggled into England, and served as fuel to the incipient

Protestant fire. Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, alleging serious

errors in the translation, prejudice in the notes, and heresies in the

prefaces, tried to suppress the edition by buying all discoverable

copies and publicly burning them at St. Paul's Cross; but new copies

kept coming from the Continent, and More commented that Tunstall was

financing Tyndale's press. More himself wrote a lengthy Dialogue

(1528) criticizing the new version; Tyndale replied; More replied to

the reply in a Confutation of 578 folio pages. The King thought to

quiet the disturbance by forbidding the reading or circulation of

the Bible in English until an authoritative translation could be

made (1530). Meanwhile all printing, sale, importation, or

possession of heretical works was banned by the government.

Wolsey sent orders to arrest Tyndale, but Philip, Landgrave of

Hesse, protected the author, and he proceeded, at Marburg, with his

translation of the Pentateuch (1530). Slowly, by his own labor or

under his supervision, most of the Old Testament was rendered into

English. But in a careless moment he fell into the hands of Imperial

officials; he was imprisoned for sixteen months at Vilvorde (near

Brussels), and was burned at the stake (1536) despite the intercession

of Thomas Cromwell, minister to Henry VIII. Tradition reports his last

words as "Lord, ope the King of England's eyes." `062343 He had

lived long enough to accomplish his mission; the plowboy could now

hear the Evangelists tell in firm, clear, pithy English the

inspiring story of Christ. When the historic Authorized Version

appeared (1611), 90 per cent of the greatest and most influential

classic in English literature was unaltered Tyndale. `062344

Wolsey's attitude toward this nascent English Reformation was as

lenient as could be expected of a man who headed both Church and

state. He hired secret police to spy out heresy, to examine suspicious

literature, and to arrest heretics. But he sought to persuade these to

silence rather than to punish them, and no heretic was ever sent to

the stake by his orders. In 1528 three Oxford students were jailed for

heresy; the bishop of London allowed one to die in confinement; one

recanted and was released; the third was taken in charge by Wolsey,

and was allowed to escape. `062345 When Hugh Latimer, the most

eloquent of the early Reformers in sixteenth-century England,

denounced the deterioration of the clergy, and the bishop of Ely asked

Wolsey to suppress him, Wolsey gave Latimer license to preach in any

church in the land.

The Cardinal had an intelligent plan for Church reform. "He despised

the clergy," according to Bishop Burnet, "and in particular... the

monks, that did neither the Church nor state any service, but were

through their scandalous lives a reproach to the Church and a burden

to the state. Therefore he resolved to suppress a great number of

them, and to change them to another institution." `062346 To close a

malfunctioning monastery was not unheard of; it had been done by

ecclesiastical order in many instances before Wolsey. He began

(1519) by issuing statutes for the reform of the canons regular of St.

Augustine; if these rules were followed the canons became quite

exemplary. He commissioned his secretary, Thomas Cromwell, to visit

the monasteries in person or through agents, and to report the

conditions found; these visitations made Cromwell a practiced hand

in later executing Henry's orders for a severer scrutiny of

England's conventual life. Complaints were heard of the harshness of

these agents, of their receiving or exacting "gifts," and of their

sharing these with Cromwell and the Cardinal. `062347 In 1524 Wolsey

obtained permission from Pope Clement VII to close such monasteries as

had less than seven inmates, and to apply the revenues of these

properties to establishing colleges. He was happy when these funds

enabled him to open a college in his native Ipswich and another at

Oxford. He hoped to continue this process, to close more monasteries

year by year and replace them with colleges. `062348 But his good

intentions were lost in the confusion of politics, and the chief

result of his monastic reforms was to provide Henry with a respectable

precedent for a more extensive and lucrative scheme.

Meanwhile the Cardinal's foreign policy had come to grief. Perhaps

because he sought the Emperor's support for election to the papacy

(1521, 1523), he allowed England to join Charles in war with France

(1522). The English campaigns were unsuccessful and expensive in money

and lives. To finance fresh efforts Wolsey summoned (1523) the first

Parliament in seven years, and shocked it by asking an unprecedented

subsidy of L800,000- a fifth of every layman's property. The Commons

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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