Henry VIII: Act of Supremacy and Religion

Here is the process about Act of Supremacy to express briefly. In 1534, a significant law named Act of Supremacy was passed by the English parliament. This law effectively stripped all of authorities the Pope held by disorganised all the churches which belonged to the Catholic. Also at the same time, the King, Henry VIII had a new title, Supreme Head of the Church of England. Additionally, Act of Supremacy defined the limitation of the King’s rights and what power the King should have.

I will explain from 4 points in detail:

1.Why Henry VIII broke with the Pope
2.The reasons of against Catholic
3.The medium of Act of Supremacy
4.The church of England

The main idea of this law was to contend for that the much stronger power of the English King to avoid the Pope holding higher authority in English. Thus in 1529, Henry VIII had a thought to change the religious establishment and stopped to give the annual gold to the Catholic churches. What’s more, Henry VIII always had the arguments between him and the Pope in English because firstly he still did not own a son who could heir his position. The reason of this was at the background of 16th century, royal people in English did not have a tradition to have a woman to become the Queen who would lead them. Therefore, Henry wanted a son with his wife, which was the princess of the Spanish Royal, Catherine of Aragon to protect the crown from his other relatives and other external forces. Moreover, he knew if he could not have descendants before his death, the distribution of the power of the whole royal became chaos, and the Pope would get pretty bigger influence to corrupt citizens’ ideas and then took charge of English genuinely. But things go contrary to his wish. Henry VIII still could not have children with Catherine of Aragon in their marriage. Henry VIII had to experience the domestic trouble because according to the rules and canons of Catholic, people could not divorce their mates although they had been dead, that is to say if Henry VIII obeyed it, he would not have the chance to get his son in his whole life for the physical problem of Catherine of Aragon. It leaded to that the divorce with Catherine of Aragon became the immediate cause of the beginning of Act of Supremacy. It was easy to predict the reaction of the Pope when Henry VIII wanted to get the special right of the divorce from him. The Pope refused to allow it to happen. Then, the misunderstanding had been made.

Of course, this event just could become the fuse of the appearance of Act of Supremacy, not the real reason of this reformation. The main reason of it was that Henry VIII did not want to be restrained by the Catholic; he wanted to strip authorities of Papacy and turned it into monarchical power. And I will explain it from three different factors as follows.
First, English people had the idea to get rid of Catholic. And in 16th century, in Europe , a person named Martin. Luther established a religion which was a protestant to against Catholic. A great number of people joined into and spread this idea away. A part of English citizens believed it and were encouraged by this protestant. Almost of them believed a new time would come. So in English, Act of Supremacy, the popularity of this law inclined pretty fast. Secondly, the truth of the ticket to heaven was exploded, Catholic lost a lot of believers and their trustworthiness. The popularity and the credit of it declined slopingly. More and more Europeans withdrew from this religion and the force was going down. In addition, the wealth of churches was resented by numerous normal people. The final point was the most important one among these three points. It was Henry VIII who needed money because at that time, most of old English royal died in Wars of Roses.It directly caused the force of the noble was weakened. That is to say authority came back to the King and strengthened centralised feudal monarchy as well as this opportunity was too good to miss if Henry VIII desired to establish a new time. But actually, all of it had to depend on money. As people in the 1500s In English all knew, the clergy owned a lot of wealth. So the ‘enemy’ of the royal, as known as Catholic in English became weaker and weaker, the King wanted to rise up. In conclusion, as Catholic declined, Henry VIII relied on the will of people to rise to prominence.

The medium of Act of Supremacy was law, the way just belonged to monarchical power to express their will to the normal people. Additionally, this way not only exercised the ability of the English Parliament, but also paved the road of the development in the future. For example, among people in the parliament, not all of them were useful to this country such as some of the elder noble’s younger descendants. In this way, the King could use this chance to strip them out. And after Act of Supremacy, the English Parliament applied ‘First succession to the throne’ condemned the judicial power of the Pope violated the monarchical power, ‘Treason law’ said that people do not acknowledge the dignity of the king and queen, title and property - which was to deny the supreme authority of the sovereign, Henry was guilty of treason and numerous laws which needed wisdom people to formulate. But from this document, we still could figure out the law which identified the monarchical power vaguely. ‘all honours, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity of the supreme head of the same Church belonging and appertaining’ (quoted from the original text of Act of Supremacy) Through these words, we could find the words’ definition of this law was vague because all of the nouns appearing in this fragment were subjective. It means these could be understood from various ways. However, Henry VIII got a new title which was the supreme head of the Church of England. That is to say the original Catholic churches were disorganised and the new religion which was established by Henry VIII appeared. The first of Henry VIII’s will had been achieved— Nobody would contend the absolute of right to speak in England. This religion was entitled as Anglicans Ecclesia. The name was a Latin word and it was transformed in English as Anglican Church, which meant that was the national religion of English. I thought the purpose of they using Latin was to show the same position as the Catholic. As we all know, Latin was the language for people who had been high educated. In my opinion, the Catholic church had existed saintly and used Latin for a long time so Henry VIII also wanted the national religion was as holy as Catholic to stand. ‘and that our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities’ (quoted from the original text of Act of Supremacy) It signified Henry VIII had the right to appoint people to be the clergy officially and had successfully concentrated the whole power of monarchy. Certainly, he got the support of most people and established the Privy Council. He confiscated the land which should be belonged to churches’ and of nearly the whole wealth. The land was used to auction and Henry gained the money he needed. So the second will of Henry VIII had been realised.

This part will introduce the church of England. First, as I have said, Anglican, it was named by a Latin word at the first time in Act of Supremacy. But actually, in the believers’ daily life, the language they used and prayed was changed as another one not Latin. Additionally, the canons and rules were similar to Catholic. There were not many changes with the doctrine of Catholic when it was used in this protestant. In this process, Anglican believers used The Ten Articles as Catholics used bible. The Ten Articles was a collection of ten points of faith that should be followed by members and believers of the Church of England. A Convocation of bishops was put together to meet and decide on the doctrines.
Here is a brief outline of its points:

1. Defending the truth of the whole Biblical Canon; the believing in three Creeds: Apostles, Nicaean, and Athanasius; condemning any belief that was not in accordance with the four sacred councils: Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedone.

2. The Sacrament of baptism is the only way one can be saved and be truly cleansed of their sins.

3. The Sacrament of penance is necessary so that a man who was baptized and has again fallen into sin may be remitted of his sins and receive eternal life.

4. The Sacrament of the Altar: The King and Church believe in transubstantiation the wine and bread become the body and blood of Jesus Christ when blessed by the priest.

5. Justification results from a combination of contrition, faith and charity.

6. Images should only be used to honor God, Jesus, the Cross, Mary or any other
   Saint and not in a superstitious manner.

7. Saints are to be honored only as revered people who lived on earth and not in anyway equal to God.

8. It is acceptable to pray to saints to be intercessors for us to God, but only from God does salvation and remission of sins come.

9. The use of rites and ceremonies are good practices to put people in the mood of remembrance for their salvation and the acts of Jesus and God, but do not have any bearing on ones salvation.

10. Purgatory may exist, but not in the way the Roman Catholic Church believes.( quoted from wikipedia)

‘any usage, foreign land, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding.’(quoted from the original text of Act of Supremacy) It implied people in any other places, cities, countries even the colonies which were conquered by English did not need to obey this sentence in this law. So Henry VIII maybe still kept the heart of fear to the main force of Catholic in Europe. The passed law was carried out from the upper class to the poor and saved the doctrine of the Catholic church and the system of teaching order, balancing the interests of the old and the new believers "middle way" to avoid the large civil conflicts, and keeping the reformation processing smoothly.

To sum up, Act of Supremacy was a law used to take the authority back from the Pope to the King after the noble class had experienced Roses of Wars which caused numerous elder feudalistic nobles to die. Since confiscating a lot of wealth from disorganising the Catholic churches, people in England entered into a new era. In that era, the society met capitalist and met Renaissance.