Reformation Church History

Transcription

1 Reformation Church History CH502 LESSON 16 of 24 W. Robert Godfrey, PhD Experience: President, Westminster Seminary California This is lecture 16 in the series of Reformation Church History. In the last lecture we were looking at Henry s break with Rome, a break that took largely for dynastic concerns, a break that led to his marriage to Anne Boleyn and his hope for a succession guaranteed through her. Even though that marriage would ultimately end in Anne s death in her beheading for a time it seemed that Anne s marriage to Henry would be a success even though the first child was a girl and that Anne s own Protestant commitments and connections would lead Henry in a further Protestant direction. Indeed Henry seemed determined to break all relations between Rome and England, and a series of acts were entered into law in 1534 to ensure that. For example, there was passed in 1534 the Restraint of Annates, which included forbidding seeking papal authorization for the consecration of bishops, and so that was intended to prevent both money and appeals for authorization for them going to Rome. Also in 1534 was formally an act of the Dispensations Act that insisted from then on all dispensations must be sought in Canterbury and not in Rome. Also 1534 saw the Submission of the Clergy, an act whereby the clergy submitted itself to the crown. It had been traditional for the English clergy to gather in a rather parliamentary or conciliar-like meeting known as convocation, and the Submission of the Clergy recognized that convocation would not act without a crown license to do so. Also, 1534 saw the Succession Act, which declared that henceforth the heirs of Henry and Anne would be regarded as the legitimate heirs to the throne. It was that act which Thomas More refused to sign Thomas More refused to recognize Elizabeth as the heir to the throne ahead of Mary, and for that refusal to sign, Thomas More was put in prison in Thomas More continuously refused to offer a reason for his refusing to sign, and therefore the king could not technically charge him with treason, but More was in time charged with treason and was finally executed in of 14

2 More certainly was a martyr to the cause of Roman Catholicism, but in some modern retellings of the story, Thomas More has almost been portrayed as a martyr to the cause of free thought or something. That is far from the case. Thomas More was a staunch Roman Catholic and given the opportunity would probably have willingly martyred Protestants to their faith. Also in 1534 the parliament had adopted what was known as the Act of Supremacy, and this act declared that the Church of England was free from the jurisdiction of the pope and the king was the supreme head of the church in England, and that was the ultimate capstone, then, on the separation of the English church from the Roman church. But you notice these acts are all what we might call judicial acts or procedural acts. None of them are specifically theological. The fact that Henry was taking over the jurisdiction of the church and taking it away from the papacy did not mean that in fact he had moved theologically far from Rome. In fact, as we ll see, he never moved terribly far from Rome, even in these middle years of the 1530s when Protestant influence at court was at the very highest. 1536, I suppose we can say, marked about the high water mark of Protestant influence in England. There were a series of acts taken there. The Dissolution of the Monasteries began in 1536; that is, those very wealthy and influential establishments of monks and nuns were now being dissolved and the income from those establishments was passing to the crown. The crown, in fact, often passed them on as favors and gifts to members of the gentry and nobility. Also in that year, 1536, was produced a document known as The Ten Articles. This was to be a sort of theological guide for the church and was rather encouraging to Protestants. It seemed to teach that one was justified by faith alone. It declared that authority in the church resided in Scripture, in the three ancient creeds of the church, and in the four original councils of the church, so although it was not a full statement of sola Scriptura, it certainly went back to the ancient church and went behind the papacy in terms of seeking authority in the church. The Ten Articles says nothing about the doctrine of the Lord s Supper and therefore neither affirms nor denies the doctrine of transubstantiation. Therefore, this document remains somewhat conservative and ambiguous, but certainly it shows some shift on Henry s part in a more Protestant direction. 2 of 14

3 The next year, 1537, saw the production of what was known as The Bishops Book, also known as The Institute of the Christian Man, taking a similar theological position to The Ten Articles, although making one further step, that in the direction of denying the doctrine of purgatory. Part of the reason for this growth of Protestant influence was that in spite of the death of Anne Boleyn by beheading in 1536, Henry had proceeded to marry another Protestant lady, the Lady Jane Seymour. He married her just eleven days after the execution of Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour finally did for Henry what he so eagerly desired: namely, gave him a male heir. On October 12, 1537,a son was finally born to Henry and was named Edward. Jane Seymour did not long survive this delivery; she died of complications from the childbirth on October 24, Both the Princess Elizabeth and the young Prince Edward were placed under Protestant tutors for their training and upbringing, and the Princess Mary remained largely with her mother and under the influence of her mother and Roman Catholic tutors as long as her mother lived. Her mother died in January 1536, but Mary remained a staunch Roman Catholic in honor of her mother s memory. So Henry found himself at last with a son and found himself with a large number of Protestant advisors at court. Thomas Cranmer and many other important bishops of the church had become quite convinced Protestants in their own hearts by this time, and things seemed to be going relatively well. But now that Henry had his heir, a more conservative streak seems to have settled back in in Henry s mind and heart, and in 1539 Henry had issued what were known as The Six Articles and show a strong a reaction on Henry s part back toward medieval theology. The Six Articles of 1539 reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation and made the denial of that doctrine an offense punishable by death. So Henry clearly was now seeking to reassert a Roman Catholic theology, although he had no interest in asserting the authority of the papacy. Perhaps the final blow to a Protestant hope under the reign of Henry VIII came with marriage of Henry to Anne of Cleves. Anne was a Protestant princess from the Holy Roman Empire, and some hoped that such a marriage would cement Henry s political ambitions to the ambitions of German princes, German Protestant princes, and would increasingly draw England into a Protestant political stance. But Henry found Anne unacceptable as a wife. He found her ugly and unappealing, and so that marriage 3 of 14

4 lasted only about six months and ended in another divorce. And Thomas Cromwell, who had been advising Henry in these matters, also found himself falling from his high office in the realm. So Protestant influence now began to diminish and Henry began to turn from dynastic concerns back to his concerns of building up the realm and strengthening his own hand. Just to round out the picture of Henry s wives, Henry married again shortly after his divorce from Anne of Cleves, this time to a young Roman Catholic lady, Catherine Howard, connecting him with one of the most influential Roman Catholic families in England, but Catherine Howard ended her marriage after about eighteen months by being beheaded. She again was charged with adultery, and this charge may have been had more substantive than that against Anne Boleyn. After the death of Catherine Howard, Henry remarried for the last time, this time marrying Catherine Parr, the queen who survived him. That marriage took place in July That brings us then Henry s six wives three Catherines, two Annes, and one Jane. You ll remember that poem again, King Henry the Eighth to six wives was wedded. One died (that was Jane Seymour), one survived (that was Catherine Parr), two divorced (Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves), two beheaded (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard). And so when Henry died, he was survived by Catherine Parr, who was a Protestant and who wanted to promote, then, the Protestant position of the heir Edward and the Protestant advisors around about him. And so the beginnings of a Reformation that were begun by Henry VIII were continued under his son Edward. Only whereas the Reformation under Henry VIII had remained almost entirely ecclesiastical or involved in ecclesiastical politics, that is, the throwing off of the papacy s control, under Edward at last real theological change was going to begin. Edward was only nine years old when he came to the throne in 1547, and therefore Henry in his will had established a council that would govern the realm until Edward came of age. It was Henry s hope that by putting a number of powerful men on this council that they would sort of balance each other out and allow no one figure to come to ultimate authority and influence. But that didn t really work out, and soon an uncle of the king, a brother of Jane Seymour, the mother of the king, became the primary influence and became known as the Duke of Somerset. This influential figure, then, in the early days of Edward s reign had strong Protestant sympathies, and, in fact, 4 of 14

5 was particularly drawn to the teachings of John Calvin and wanted to see the Church of England moving in that direction. A number of things were done to encourage the Protestation of the Church of England Bibles were distributed widely in the churches, various sermons were gathered together that were to teach Protestant doctrine that could be read in the churches, and in September 1548, the bishops approved a revision of the order of worship in England, a revision that would be conducted under the title A Prayer Book for the Church of England, and that prayer book was approved in June 1549 by the parliament and the king and became the sole legal form of worship in England. Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, was the main influence behind that prayer book, and he had moved very slowly. He did translate the liturgy into English and did seek to create a liturgy that Protestants in good conscience could use, but he also wanted it to be a liturgy that would be as little offensive to Roman Catholics as possible and would make a gradual movement of the whole nation together toward Protestantism. Therefore, it was a prayer book with a lot of ambiguities in the language and in the theology, and with Roman Catholic practices, particularly in terms of vestments and altar decorations, maintained. When the old staunch Roman Catholic Bishop [Stephen] Gardiner looked at the book, he said he could still use it because it was close enough to a Roman Catholic approach to worship. That upset Cranmer a good deal, but Cranmer did feel that there were things in this book that were decidedly Protestant. For example, the book talks about one only sacrifice being offered and that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross who, the prayer book said, made there by his oblation once offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. And so Cranmer felt he had intruded some Protestant teaching clearly like the sole sufficiency and completion of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Still there was a feeling that this prayer book was not adequate and that a new one would be needed, and indeed a work on a new prayer book began. By 1550 there had also been a change in the government. Somerset was ousted by the man who became the Duke of Northumberland and proceeded to seek a way of making the church even more Protestant. There were a number of influences in the direction of making the English church more Protestant, and one of the important factors was an influx of continental Protestants to encourage the Church of England in 5 of 14

6 its reforming work. In 1547 Peter Martyr Vermigli and Bernardino Ochino, important Protestant theologians originally from Italy now serving in various parts of Europe, came to England to teach. In 1548, John Alasco, the Polish Protestant, came to England to teach, and perhaps most importantly of all, in 1548, fleeing from the German interim, Martin Bucer came from Strasbourg and lived out the last three years of his life there teaching in England. At this time also John Knox, who is best known as the father of the Scottish Reformation, was in England working and teaching, and so there were many staunch Protestants in England who were present influencing the development of the church and urging a more sharply and clearly Protestant commitment on the part of the church. The revision of the prayer book, then, which led ultimately what is known as The Second Edwardian Prayer Book of 1552 was under the encouragement of stauncher Protestants and, indeed, that second prayer book more clearly Protestant. Part of the principle that guided the preparers of this prayer book was that everything without scriptural warrant should be omitted from the first prayer book, and this meant that a much more radical and, in fact, some have argued Zwinglian point of view began to dominate in the preparation of their prayer book. One way of looking at the change is to look at the words to be spoken by the minister in the administration of communion, of the Lord s Supper. This for Roman Catholics and Protestants was a most important dividing point between their two theologies, and it s interesting to look at the words that each prayer book laid down to be spoken by the minister at the administration of the sacrament. The first Edwardian prayer book of 1549 had said the minister was to speak these words, The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Those words are ambiguous. A Protestant can certainly affirm that it is the body of our Lord Jesus Christ given for us on the cross that preserves us unto everlasting life, but the words as spoken at communion are not clear whether the body of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be sought in the bread or not. Roman Catholics would interpret it in that way, and Protestants would not, but the words themselves remain ambiguous. 6 of 14

7 The words of 1552 are less ambiguous. The priest or minister is to use these words, Take and eat this in remembrance the Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. There you see the emphasis is much more upon remembrance, upon feeding by faith, and the words are much more difficult to take in a Roman Catholic interpretation and seem much more likely to be read in a Protestant direction. You noticed that I said, priest or minister. The Church of England continued to call their ministers priests, and the reason for that is that analogically the English word priest is derived from the Greek word presbyter or elder, and so the Church of England leaders argued there was no need to abandon the word priest because it didn t necessarily have sacrificial connotations, but was a perfectly good old English word meaning elder or minister or presbyter. Cranmer wanted to proceed to other areas of reform in the life of the church. He certainly recognized that this issue of worship was where most people were most immediately touched, and he developed one of the liturgies of the history of the church through his reforming work, but he saw other areas too where the church needed to be improved and changed. And one area that concerned him very much was the area of how bishops would function in the life of the church. The episcopal structure of the Church of England had developed in the course of the Middle Ages and had allowed the bishops to develop into a not only spiritual elite but also a political elite. The bishops were a major political influence in England and were great personages of great power and wealth and influence. Cranmer felt that bishops ought to be pastors, and he felt that the only way that bishops could function effectively as pastors is if the dioceses were broken up into smaller units so that bishops could have a real relationship with the people in their dioceses. And so he drew up a document known as the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, the Reformation of the Laws of the Church, and wanted to implement then a plan by which there would be many more bishops. They would all be reduced in prestige and wealth, but they would all be better able to function as bishops in the life of the church. Regrettably that plan of Cranmer s was never put into effect. The church never had a greatly increased number of bishops, and indeed to this day, bishops in England sit in the House of Lords as part of that aristocratic establishment. 7 of 14

8 Another area of concern that Cranmer pursued was the drawing up of a doctrinal statement. He wanted to have the Church of England guided by a doctrinal statement that would be clearly Protestant and would preserve the church in its Protestant commitments, and so he appointed a committee of six to draw up such a doctrinal statement. Interestingly enough one who served on that committee of six was John Knox, later the father of Presbyterianism, and I suppose one can argue that John Knox therefore was not only the father of Presbyterianism but was to some extent the father of Anglicanism as well, which is kind of a neat trick when you think about it. In any case, this committee of six drew up a document that came to be known as the Forty-Two Articles of the Edwardian Church. They were adopted in 1553 and were decidedly Protestant in character. They were anti-roman Catholic. They were anti-anabaptist, and if there s any theology that emerges rather clearly, one can say it s a kind of a basic Calvinism that is articulated in the Forty- Two Articles. Under Elizabeth the Forty-Two Articles will be abbreviated to Thirty-Nine Articles, and it s those Thirty-Nine Articles that still are supposed to govern and direct the Church of England to this day. The Thirty-Nine Articles are not a major shift from what was in the Forty-Two Articles. It s just a slight abbreviation of that document. The Reformation, then, of the church in England seemed to be going forward with remarkable speed, all things considered, and with remarkable Protestant commitment. The young king was rather clearly and sincerely devoted to the Protestant cause. John Calvin would dedicate a commentary to him and call him a young Josiah involved in the reformation and purification of the church. The leadership that surrounded Thomas Cranmer were all devout and committed Protestants. They were proceeding somewhat slowly, but the reason for that was that they wanted to bring the whole country along. They didn t want to divide the country, and they were having great success in bringing most of the Roman Catholics along with their reforming ideas. But the young Edward had never been very healthy. He was not a healthy child even when he was born, and he was never robust, and indeed as his life went on, his health weakened, and so about the age of fifteen his health deteriorated even more and he died in In many ways it seems incredible that someone like the Duke of Northumberland and the other major political powers were not better prepared for the death of the king than they were. 8 of 14

9 Everyone knew that according to Henry s last will if Edward died he was to be succeeded by his older sister Mary, and everyone knew that Mary was a staunch, militant Roman Catholic. All of the power at the center of the kingdom was now in Protestant hands, and there would be no desire at all to see the monarchy handed over to Mary. It seems that a wily politician could have found some effective way of dealing with this, perhaps having parliament revoke Henry s will. There were all sorts of things that could be done.... In any case, it is amazing that someone with the power of the Duke of Northumberland in effect did next to nothing. There came to be a brief uprising after Edward was dead, but that was too little and too late by a long shot. Perhaps it was simply a medieval sense of legitimacy that paralyzed those who were opposed to Mary mounting the throne. Perhaps too many felt that it was wrong to oppose the legitimate succession. Whatever the reasons, Mary rather easily and successfully became queen in 1553, and she did indeed set about with her determined task to restore Roman Catholicism as the religion of the realm. She did that by a whole series of actions. She did it by arresting or allowing to flee into exile various leaders of the Reformation church. She did it by surrounding herself with advisors who would seek to restore the Roman Catholic Church, and she did it by submitting immediately to the papacy and recognizing the authority of the pope over the Roman Catholic Church in England. Mary Tudor, Queen Mary, is known to history as Bloody Mary, and in many ways that s a somewhat unfair title. It is true that there were martyrs under Mary, perhaps two hundred martyrs who died confessing their Protestant faith, but by sixteenth-century standards as Roman Catholic rulers go, that s a relatively small number. Mary was certainly not the worst sort of persecutor that Europe saw in the sixteenth century, and yet it was some of the finest leaders of the Protestant movement in England who were martyred. Many of them were martyred with great heroism, and so this label for Mary has stuck to her through the centuries Bloody Mary. The most famous martyrdoms that occurred were first of all the martyrdoms of Bishop [Nicholas] Ridley and Bishop [Hugh] Latimer. Bishop Ridley was one of the central figures in the planning of the liturgy of the Church of England and of the Forty- Two Articles; Bishop Latimer was one of the greatest preachers that the Church of England ever produced, and the two of them 9 of 14

10 were burned at the stake together and commented as they died that they hoped to light such a candle in England as would never go out and forcing, I believe it was the Spanish ambassador, to remark that at least these Protestants died well. The courage, the faithfulness, the commitment of these martyrs was truly remarkable and left a deep imprint upon the people. The other very famous martyrdom was the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, who for so long had served as archbishop of Canterbury, indeed had served for some twenty years. Cranmer found himself faced with a very difficult situation. Cranmer was a convinced and devout Protestant, but he also was one who had dedicated his life to the service of the crown, and now when he found the crown back in Roman Catholic hands, he was uncertain for a moment as to how he ought to behave, and so Cranmer s initial response was at an order form Mary he recanted his Protestant faith and returned to the Roman Catholic Church. Mary announced that she was going to execute him in any case for the time he had spent as a leader of heresy, and Cranmer then recanted his recantation and declared publicly that he died a convinced and committed Protestant. Some have felt that this showed a great weakness or a great vacillation in Cranmer. I think that s probably unfair to the man. I think he was genuinely caught in a question of conscience. Should he continue to serve the monarch as he always had? What were his opportunities to serve and perhaps preserve some Protestant element in the church? In any case, Cranmer also was martyred, being burned at the stake, and also showed a remarkable heroism plunging the hand that had signed his recantation into the flames first, that it might perish before him. And so again, Cranmer offered a great inspiring picture of faithfulness to the people of England. Other leaders of the Reformation in England fled to the continent for safety. John Knox was one of those who fled and a number of others as well. [These] people [were] known later as the Marian exiles, those who fled to Europe and lived then to provide some leadership for the Church of England when it was restored in its Protestant form under Queen Elizabeth. Mary, like her father, suddenly found herself with a need to try to produce an heir. Mary was not young when she came to the throne. She would have been about thirty-seven years old when she came to the throne and therefore was well aware that the possibility of bearing a child was becoming increasingly difficult 10 of 14

11 for her. And so she proceeded to try to marry quickly and to enter into a marriage that she thought would be advantageous, especially for the Church of Rome. And so in 1554, she married King Philip of Spain. This was a remarkable alliance, uniting the House of Habsburg to the House of Tudor, uniting the crowns of Spain and of England, and it is something perhaps to pause a minute over and reflect what might have happened if they had produced an heir. If they had produced a child, a son, that might have reigned over both Spain and England, it s hard to imagine how that might have changed the course of European history. It certainly would have had extremely difficult consequences for the history of Protestantism. Had Protestantism been permanently forced out of England, it might well have been increasingly a movement only of northern Europe, Germany, and Scandinavia and might have seriously harmed the prospects for survival for Protestantism. But in the providence of God there was no child from this marriage. Mary wanted a child so desperately that she had a hysterical pregnancy, where she thought she was pregnant but failed ultimately to produce an heir to guarantee a Roman Catholic succession. There s one little interesting footnote to Mary which gives a further insight into her personality and to the determined way in which she was committed to the Roman Catholic faith. Not so very long ago there were repairs being made at Windsor Palace in the Royal Chapel there, and it was in that Royal Chapel that Henry VIII was buried. As some of the workmen were working around the tomb of Henry VIII, the tomb collapsed, and this gave scholars an opportunity to look inside the tomb, wondering what could be found there. When they opened the tomb up, they found that there was nothing, nothing at all inside the tomb. And this has led to scholars speculation that it may well have been that Bloody Mary secretly dug up the bones of her father and had them burned and his ashes scattered as a heretic. We can t be sure of that, but it would be certainly consonant with Mary s Roman Catholicism and with her determination to avenge her mother and her mother s reputation. Mary s health began to fail and to decline, and in 1558 Mary died, and again it is surprising in many ways that someone so committed to the Roman Catholic faith would have failed to try to provide better for her succession, but she was in fact succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of the great enemy of Mary s mother, Anne Boleyn, and Mary seems to have been unwilling to take action against Elizabeth in her own life. Again, it would have 11 of 14

12 not been unthinkable for Mary to have Elizabeth executed, but Elizabeth tried and rather successfully played a very dangerous game, trying to appear in every way possible the loyal and faithful sister and subject of the queen. Elizabeth kept herself away from Protestant connections after Mary became queen. She kept herself away from any Protestant plots. She maintained absolute loyalty to the queen, and she went to Mass with the queen, and so Mary had no legitimate complaints about Elizabeth s behavior, but monarchs don t always need legitimate complaints to take action, but Elizabeth did survive. And Elizabeth, who had spent her whole life growing up having to be cautious, having to be careful, having to guard her every word and her every relationship, now found herself in 1558 as queen. Elizabeth in honor of her own mother and her own religious sentiments declared that the church in England would again become Protestant. This led to great excitement in England. The feeling was that the prospect of the Elizabethan reign was truly glorious, and indeed those predictions wore themselves out. Elizabeth reigned from 1558 to 1603, a long and glorious reign over England. In fact, in her own day she came to be known as Gloriana, the one who had brought glory to England. And it was during Elizabeth s reign that there was a great cultural flowering in England, a great progress in economic strength, a building up of the political might of England, and laying the foundations of the future success of England as a great nation in Europe. But from our point of view, what is particularly of concern is what Elizabeth did religiously, and what she committed herself to was a reform in the life of the church. She was supported in this by the return of many Marian exiles from Europe and many had advice for her, but what she decided was that she would restore the act of supremacy, declaring that the monarch was supreme governor of the church in England. She was somewhat hesitant to have herself declared head of the church in England. She was concerned that some people might not think appropriate for a woman to be the head of the church, so she had herself declared supreme governor of the church in England. She also had declared an act of uniformity which insisted that all people in England would worship according to the prayer book. This act of uniformity, then, was precisely an act to unite all English people in a common act of worship, an act of worship based upon a prayer book. 12 of 14

13 One of the questions was, What prayer book should be used? Elizabeth s own inclinations were to use the first Edwardian prayer book, the prayer book of 1549 that had been so ambiguous. Elizabeth rather favored ambiguity because she wanted to unite as many people as possible. Most of the bishops who surrounded her wanted very much to have the second Edwardian prayer book of 1552, the much more Protestant prayer book. The decision finally was to have a sort of compromise prayer book with some things out of one and some things out of the other. Probably in most points, the 1552 prayer book prevailed, but on that important point of administering the sacrament, Elizabeth insisted that ministers of the Church of England were to say this: The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. That is, Elizabeth took the sentence from the 1549 prayer book and the sentence from the 1552 prayer book and combined the two of them, and there we can see something of the comprehensive approach of Elizabeth in matters of religion. She took both things and stuck them together and thought that would be a good solution. Also drawn up in the early days of Elizabeth s reign were the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, not a significant shift form the Forty-Two Articles, and they provided a solid Protestant biblical statement to govern the theology of the Church of England. I might say as a footnote that those who want to claim later that the English Church was intended to be some kind of halfway house between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are surely wrong doctrinally when they look at the Thirty-Nine Articles and look at the books of homilies that Elizabeth had drawn up, sermons that could be read in the churches. They are all clearly Protestant positions theologically. Many of the bishops supported Elizabeth in her action of adopting this prayer book with its ambiguities because they saw it as a temporary pragmatic compromise that would ease the transition from a Roman Catholic ruler to a Protestant ruler, and they thought that we ll live with this for a while and then proceed as we had under Edward to further and further reforms in a Protestant direction for the life of the church. What they failed to realize that as far as Elizabeth was concerned, this was the final settlement. This was as far as Elizabeth wanted to go. Several factors influenced Elizabeth in this matter. In the first place, Elizabeth was a pragmatist as a monarch. She was what came to 13 of 14

14 be known as a politik; she was governed not by religious principle but by political realism in her approach to governing, and her conviction was that having a rather ambiguous form of worship in the church would help unite Protestants and Roman Catholics and prevent much objection from either side in the realm. She also was afraid of King Philip of Spain. Philip of Spain was regarded as the most powerful ruler of Europe. Philip of Spain after all was the widower of her sister, the queen of England, and Elizabeth was very much afraid that Philip might take it upon himself to invade England and try to set up a Roman Catholic ruler in the name of Elizabeth s dead half-sister. And in fact as you may well remember, in 1588 the Spanish Armada was sent by Philip to try to invade England. The effort was an utter disaster, but nonetheless Elizabeth was fearful about Philip s reaction for many years in her reign. Indeed, Elizabeth in her own chapel kept a crucifix and candles on an altar, and whenever the Spanish ambassador would complain about the growing Protestantism in England, Elizabeth would take the Spanish ambassador into her chapel to pray with her and to try to make the point that after all Elizabeth was a loyal daughter of the church; at least she maintained this crucifix in her private chapel. Elizabeth was quite an actress. Elizabeth was a remarkably successful queen. Historians have been somewhat divided though as to whether her success was because she was so indecisive that she led events run on their own and they tended to work out okay or whether she was tremendously careful and used indecisiveness as a kind of ploy and cover for her deep insight into events. Whichever is the truth, it is certainly clear that Elizabeth was generally very successful, but she was not utterly successful in the matter of fulfilling Protestant expectations and Protestant hopes. And, indeed, under Elizabeth was to develop the beginnings of a movement known as Puritanism, a movement that would be a movement to see further reform in the life of the church. Later in this course we ll return to talk in more detail about the phenomenon of Elizabethan Puritanism, but next time in our lecture, we ll turn to the subject of the Reformation in Scotland. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 14 of 14