Saturday, June 19, 2010

Question from Anne - Henry VIII's and Katherine Parr's religious beliefs

Just found your site. Very interesting!

I have been watching The Tudors (yes, I know...fiction...but loving it all the same) and I'm really confused.

Henry broke from the Rome and formed the English church. Surely Katerine Parr and he were on the same page religiously? She was a protestant was she? Wouldn't Henry also have become a prodestant when he broke from the catholic church?

Why was KP charged with heresy?

Many thanks,

Anne

4 comments:

Holly said...

What you have to keep in mind is that there is a difference in Henry's reformation and Protestantism. He wanted to break with Rome but still considered many Protestant ideas heretical. He would denounce the Pope and take the wealth of the church but he kept many things the same.

Elizabeth M. said...

Despite the fact that Henry broke with the Church of Rome, he did not break with the basic elements of the Catholic church. Prayers were still said for the souls of the dead and he still went to confession, and had the last rites. Likewise, Anne Boleyn, though a reformer, was NOT a Lutheran. She followed the tenets of the Catholic Church up to her death, including her last confession. Henry did not so much break with the rites of the church, as break with the adoration and superstition and corruption that was believed to be rampant in the Catholic church at the time. The reformers also believed God's word should not be a mystery to the lay person--hence the Bible in English. The reformers believed all people should be able to hear and understand God's word in their own language. Edward VI took things a good deal further, and the church in England under him was much stricter and spartan. Elizabeth returned the reformed church back to the way it was under her father

Laura said...

I really believe that at heart, Henry was always a Catholic. He simply could not abide the thought of being under the Pope's rule. Remember, this man was once "Defender of the Faith." Henry liked having the wealth of the monasteries, and liked that he was the "supreme head" of the church and the state, but in his beliefs, he never really broke with Catholicism...

kate said...

When Henry split with Rome and became the supreme head of the church in England,over the Pope's inability to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon he did not become a protestant. He merely reformed the catholic church in England and basically created himself pope in England, the dissolution of the monasteries and the wealth that brought was a boon to his depleted treasury. He was not incorrect in that graft and corruption ran rampant in the higher levels of the church at that time and he saw his policies as returning the church to the correct and upright way that it was meant to function. Unfortunately many smaller religious houses and persons suffered for this and the monastic system of caring for the ill, travlers and elderly was abandoned leaving many in want of the common comforts these institutions provided.