Henry VIII & Thomas More

Thus trouble with a g exclusivelyant jointure implied a tension between semipolitical and moral spheres, not only for the marriage partners but as well for the various institutions to which they were attached, individually and severally.

more(prenominal)'s refusal to avow the legitimacy of total heat's annulment of marriage to Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn on angiotensin converting enzyme hand, and the refusal to avow Henry's hegemony all over the Church in England on the other was the direct micturate of More's fall. A close examination of the content of that refusal illustrates that, despite the spicy profile of the issue of the annulment and remarriage, the more serious top dog for More's political ethics and the political climate of England was the question of purple authority over the Church. To see why it is necessary to dedicate the context in which the issue of the refusal arose. Henry had married Catherine, his knackered elder brother Arthur's wife, on overblown dispensation, owing to a biblical prohibition of such a marriage. But the consequences of the sea captain dispensation surfaced as a matter of state for Henry for the rationality that Catherine had borne him no sons, only a daughter, Mary. He therefore treasured the pope to annul this marriage, thereby allowing him to marry his lover Anne Boleyn (Hayes, et al., 1967, pp. 360-3; Churchill, 1983, pp. 130-2).

apart from spiritual considerations, this would have cau

Hayes, Carleton J.H., Baldwin, marshal Whithed, and Cole. Charles Woolsey. (1967). History of western civilization. 2d ed. New -York: Macmillan.

Churchill, Winston. (1983). History of the communicatory peoples. Arranged by Henry Steele Commager. New York: Greenwich House.

Santillana, Giorgio de, ed. (1956). The Age of essay: The Renaissance Philosophers. New York: Mentor/NAL.

It was on the basis of secret conscience and the evidence of his display of absolute loyalty to and esteem of the generosity of Henry that More sought to be leftover alone in regard to publicly agreeing to the Act of eon. For several(prenominal) time he was able to finesse the court on that basis.

His ultimate refusal was based not on the Act of Succession per se but on the oath that accompanied it, and as long as the Act and oath remained separate, More could fence his human face on legal grounds.

More avoids the trap of disputing the positions of the case and argues only from the standpoint of the King's own previous arguments on one hand, and an insistence on the integrity of conscience on the other. The fact that the dispensation is in its essence a spiritual matter, it is also a matter of cloak-and-dagger conscience that is quite separate from royal authority, a fact that in any case Henry had specifically affirmed. But because of the systematic way in which papal authority was destroyed in Act after Act, More eventually falls into a trap. The public oath that the sanction Act of Succession required transformed the silence of private conscience from a protection against a positive commission of treason into proof of treason.

In asserting a superior general royal authority over a Church and all church matters, the Act also usurped the administrative infrastructure (i.e., clergy) of the breathing (Roman) Church. In any case, Henry, who had invested Catholic bishops in England, had the Archbishop of Canterbury, now chthonic English control, annul his marriage. The Act of Succession s
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