Henry VIII's evidence to support break with Rome turns up in Cornish library | Hacker News Reader

Henry VIII's evidence to support break with Rome turns up in Cornish library

theguardian.com

92 pointsbenbreen40 comments

What is unappreciated today, even by serious historians, is Henry's wisdom and foresight in separating from the authority and commands of Rome. That is from strategic point of view, as regards England's subsequent development vis-a-vis the mainland of Europe. It was a masterstroke, not to be equalled by the actions and strategic abilities of any subsequent kings or queens. It laid the foundations for the British Empire, which would have been quite impossible to create otherwise and at best would have ended up like the Spanish one.

Compared to this, the endlessly hyped story of how many wives he divorced pales into insignificance. I even think that they were just a useful means to him of justifying this break with Rome, which was his prior primary objective.

What a ridiculously stereotypical Whiggish view of the English Reformation.

Wisdom and foresight or lust fueled selfishness?

Try "observably greater success than you've ever had".

Wait, you're telling me someone born into extreme wealth and power, with an unrivaled network and level of influence throughout the world, who could just click his fingers and have something done and fund it from the vast amounts of money available to him, enjoyed more success than middle class, run of the mill me?

No way, I refuse to believe it.

And yet there are endless possibilities for us compared to such a monarch. You wanna go to Bali for a month and just hang around, doing diving, kite boarding, hike to active volcano and much much more? No problem. That monarch? Didn't even read about that place in books. Even on that Bali, appendectomy won't kill you. Got fungus infection on feet? Here is cream, in 2 weeks you are OK. And so on... Yes, I think many many people live now much nicer lives than medieval monarchs. In 2 months, I go to Mont Blanc on skis, and I'll propose to my girlfriend up there if we both make it. As for monarch...

Actually, I think we do ourselves a disservice by forgetting how many things we have that he could but dream of.

I can, in seconds, order items from the other end of the globe and have them shipped here in a day or two. I have luxuries, like electricity, modern transportation, communication, modern medicine and the like that he could but dream of.

While it may be that he will have a bigger place in history than I do and that he had more authority, leaving you free to define a 'success' of some kind where that statement is true, I dare say that the day to day lives of decently well-off people in first world countries like myself are, in fact, far more comfortable than even the kings of ages past and we shouldn't forget that.

Neither. The tone of the first being laudatory, the second being contemptuous, academic history isn't in the business of telling readers how likeable historical figures were.

" I even think that they were just a useful means to him of justifying this break, which was his prior primary objective." Probably not, since prior to his penis getting the best of him, his regime was impeccably orthodox-the title "Defender of the Faith" was bestowed by the Pope for defending Catholicism against Lutheranism (I believe in a book that was largely ghost written by Thomas More). Even after the Act of Supremacy, his regime officially remained orthodox in a way that ruffled the feathers of many more radical reformers. Despite the fact that Henry was a really bad catholic who skirted the bounds of heterodoxy, and laid the grounds for the more radical reformation of Edward VI.

What I have tried to convey, perhaps not successfully, is that as a king he had to think strategically about his kingdom's interests, not about theological disputes. That is why even in those times it was understood that the king, as a worldly power, was separate from the church's power. By emphasising that separation, regardless the finer points of catechisms, he strengthened himself and his country.

OK, you may argue as to whether this was his explicit intention but it undoubtedly was the effect.

You are still reading a very Whiggish, anachronistic view of history into what happened. With a corresponding value judgement that Catholic England wasn't worthy of survival, and that the great achievements of the Glorious Revolution and parliamentary democracy were a given at the time of the break with Rome.

No, it is you who is reading a Popish view into it. My judgement is based on informed comparison with countries like Spain and Portugal, and Bohemia, which either never attempted such separation or failed in it - and their relative importance compared to the British Empire.

Either way the British Empire being helped or hindered by Catholicism (or the lack there of) is mostly conjecture. Its like trying to argue if the Romans had abolished slavery they would have landed on the moon in 1462. Without time traveling and alternate histories to explore we will never know.

Exploring the counterfactual allows us to reveal holes in our understanding, by setting up hypotheses and allowing them to be knocked down by argument. And it's fun.

But it is not a conjecture. The results are plain to see, that is my point. We really did land on the moon. People like Sir Isaac Newton, who by the way refused the holy orders of the Anglican Church too, were nonetheless allowed to pursue their interests without being threatened by the inquisition. That is what laid the foundations.

I am surprised and saddened for you, to get -4 votes here of all places. I would have thought that at least some of you may have understood and appreciated the important connection between free thought and scientific and technical progress and the fact that Henry VIII just may have made that possible in Britain.

Instead all I get is cheap jibes about "whiggish view" and Mussolini. Sad.

And no, it really is not interesting to see regurgitated back the standard TV line that "it was all to do with his gonads". Kings can and do discreetly satisfy their gonads without having to go through difficult public divorces.

> But it is not a conjecture. The results are plain to see, that is my point. We really did land on the moon. People like Sir Isaac Newton, who by the way refused the holy orders of the Anglican Church too, were nonetheless allowed to pursue their interests without being threatened by the inquisition. That is what laid the foundations.

The foundation of what? Is your argument that the success of the British Empire was due to a post-Henri VIII technological superiority over other European powers?

There were other aspects to it apart from good science, education and technology, all based on liberal thinking but, in a nutshell, yes. What I am saying is that these were the main reasons for the British Empire eclipsing the other European powers. It did not just happen totally by chance in one particular lucky country, out of nothing. If that is a "whiggish view", then I guess I am a whig.

I assume you're talking about the Industrial Revolution, something that came rather late. At the time of Newton, and afterwards, there was no shortage of scientists of renown in catholic countries. But considering the English Reformation as the leading reason for the Industrial Revolution to happen in England and not elsewhere is far from an accepted opinion.

When talking about the Spanish Empire, I think it's fair to say that few historians lay the blame sorely on the Church.

There are so many factors involved it is really impossible to even decide on a single factor as the most important.

Spain had huge and unsustainable drains on its treasury caused by it's European wars (and their overflow in the Americas against eg the Dutch) as well as campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates, and most would argue that was a huge factor. There is a religious part to some of these conflicts, but they were also about keeping Spanish influence strong in Europe.

>Popish

You're a buster.

http://lajhsslab.com/immigration/cartoon.jpg

>Bohemia

Have you ever heard of Jan Hus?

Of course I have. Bohemia is an excellent example. From being a powerful and wealthy kingdom to loss of sovereignty and resulting poverty and obscurity thanks chiefly to counter-reformation.

Again, I am not talking about this or that religious dogma, as you all are, but about more important things, like being able to pursue its own independent policies and development of thought.

>its own

Whose own?

You seem to think that Henry VIII staying married to Catherine of Aragon is but one step removed from Francisco Franco and Mussolini? Now there is some Protestant Anglo centrism! BTW, the Spanish Empire did manage to convert quite a few more people to Catholicism than the British did to their reformed religion.

Ironically, I agree that the Reformation was a good thing in general, since it led eventually to a more secular Western Civilization. What I do disagree with is the disparagement of a thousand years of Catholic England, the iconoclasm and book burning of the Reformation, and its replacement by a dour, sober, severe Protestantism in many forms.

I might agree with you there. Though I fail to see how you managed to imagine all those things in my simple statement which implied none of them.

Hrm, I wouldn't say that. There were laws which discriminated against Catholics for centuries afterwards in England. It was only after the Emancipation act in the nineteenth century where things started to improve and even then it took until the 20th century for anti-catholic sentiment to really die down.

I don't think that was Henry's objective at all. His objective was a male heir, to avoid another War of the Roses (which was quite recent history to him). The break with Rome was just a price he was willing to pay to avoid setting the stage for another civil war.

A male heir and a pile of cash: the Dissolution of the Monasteries gave Henry an excuse to fill his coffers and pay off some debts. It was a literal land grab.

I doubt he was thinking strategically much beyond immediate gain. He was a competent diplomat, in the terms of the day, but doesn't seem to have been gifted with imperial prescience.

Rome's "Authority and command"? We're talking about the late 15th century here. The Western Schism had only ended in 1417. Conciliarism had been strong throughout the 15th century. All the powerful monarchs of Europe were trying to consolidate their power, and wanted, as much as possible, to get money from the Church. The conflict between the papacy and the English king wasn't as harsh as that between the papacy and the French or Spanish king because England was far away from Rome, and the English had been left to do mostly what they wanted.

Spain was ruined by the Hapsburg's wars, in which Catholic France (and its very-Christian king) allied with protestant powers to become the dominant continental power.

It also allowed them to more effectively colonize Ireland. As much as I am vehemently not a fan of the various colonizing events and the effects of the resultant economic control of Irish food supplies...it did strengthen the British empire.

I think Henry's decision had very little to do with foresight and wisdom and a lot more to do with his gonads.

The Freudian perspective!

Surely the Freudian perspective would be something along the lines of him mourning the loss of his mother [1] and seeking to find a woman to replace her rather than really looking for a wife per se.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_of_York

I think it had a lot to do with the blow to the head he got when he fell from his horse.

Not that the decisions he made were all bad ones.

> It was a masterstroke, not to be equalled by the actions and strategic abilities of any subsequent kings or queens.

If England was the only European state to separate from Rome you might have an argument.

Henry was a decent King as Kings go, but honestly his daughter Elizabeth was the most kick-ass monarch in the history of Monarchs. I'm struggling to think of anyone who even comes close.

Interesting find. Makes me once again wonder what other previously thought to be lost treasures are sitting, hidden from the general public, out there on private shelves or in private collections.

Or even on the shelves of famous libraries - one of my favorite historical finds in recent decades was Deborah Harkness's discovery of John Dee's "Book of Soyga" (an Elizabethan occult text written in code and thought to have been lost). Turns out it had been sitting on a shelf in the Bodleian Library for centuries, unnoticed and uncatalogued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Soyga

I wonder if we'll get digital scans of the pages or something anytime soon. This is cool, but I don't want to have to get a doctorate in history to be able to flip through it.

Most interesting, though I would say "arguments" rather than evidence.

Except he may have called it "evidence."

I have no evidence to back that up, although I have seen "The Tudors" which probably qualifies me as an expert.

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