Became Queen of England June 1533 through a secret marriage to King Henry VIII. His earlier marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void by an English church court upon Henry's insistence. The explicit reason given was because that she was the widow of Henry's brother and was thus supposedly the recipient of a Levitical curse and thus bore Henry no male children. Upon Henry's marriage to Boleyn in January 1533 and the subsequent annulment of his former marriage to Catherine, Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry. In response Henry ordered English clergy to stop all relations with the roman Pope and declared the Act of Supremacy in 1534, making himself the head of the Anglican Church, thereby completely separating himself from Rome. The September following their marriage Anne bore him a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry later executed Boleyn on charges of adultery and then married Jane Seymour.
[tags]Anne-Boleyn, BlogRodent,
While other influences contributed to the break with Rome, succession to the throne was the primary constitutional factor in the transformation of the Church in England into the church of England.
For centuries the Church in England had been moving toward independence from Rome. by Luther's time, most patriotic Englishmen had a sense of the distinctive character of the faith in their fatherland.
The schism in the church came over a royal problem — not over theological conflicts. Henry VIII, King of England, revolted against the pope because he passionately desired Anne Boleyn, a lady-in-waiting of the court. Henry and Catherine of Aragon had borne no male children and Pope Clement VII would not issue them an annulment for fear of offending Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V. When Henry secretly married Anne, he had an English church court declare his marriage to Catherine
After his election to the papacy (1523-34), Clement moved the Papacy to Rome to begin the 72 year Babylonian Captivity of the papacy, it was moved to Avignon, France. When Clement VII was selected, he ruled from Avignon while Pope Urban VI ruled from Rome. This began the Great Schism of the Papacy. Clement refused to annul King Henry's marriage to Catherine because she was the Aunt of Charles V, Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Clement eventually excommunicated Henry. His alliance with Francis I, King of France, spurred the Ire of King Charles V, who marched against Rome and sacked it. Clement barely escaped with his life.
[tags]BlogRodent, Charles-V, church-history, ChurchRodent, Francis-I, Great-Schism, history, Pope-Clement-VII, Pope-Urban-VI[/tags]
In 1377 the aged Pope Gregory XI re-entered Rome, and shortly passed away. In haste the College of Cardinals elected a new pope, Pope Urban VI. In August the cardinals suddenly informed all Europe that the people of Rome had forced the election of an apostate to the chair of Peter and that the proceedings were invalid. A new College of Cardinals then elected another pope a month later, Pope Clement VII. Clement moved about Italy and eventually sailed for France and Avignon. Thus, with Urban ruling from Rome and Clement from Avignon the Great Schism began, lasting for 39 years. Each pope had his own College of Cardinals, and each pope claimed to be the true Vicar of Christ with the power to excommunicate those who did not acknowledge him. France went with Clement; Italy with Urban. The empire went with Urban; so did England. Scotland went with Clement.
King of England from 1509-1547. Under King Henry, England rejected the authority of Rome. King Henry had no son born of his queen, Catherine of Aragon, who had delivered five children (the only survivor beyond infancy was the princess Mary). England was in no mood to accept a girl as heir to the throne because of the nation's only previous queen who had occasioned bloody wars of succession. As Catherine grew older, Henry grew more troubled. In 1525 the queen was forty and Henry pondered more and more the ways of God: "Am I under some curse of God?" (Catherine had been Henry's deceased brother Arthur's wife for several months.) In his mind was Le 10:21, "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing, they shall be childless." The Church of Rome recognized the curse, but had granted the marriage for reasons of its own
