The new political theology of obedience to the prince which was enthusiastically adopted by the Church of England in the 1530s was essentially founded upon Luther's new interpretation of the fourth commandment. It was mediated to an English audience by Tyndale, but his ideas were not officially adopted as early as some recent research has suggested. The founding of royal authority on the Decalogue, and thus on the ‘word of God’, was a particularly attractive feature of this doctrine, which became almost the defining feature of Henrician religion. Rival tendencies within the Church of England sought to exploit it in the pursuit of their particular agendas. Reformers strove to preserve its connections with the broader framework of Lutheran theology, with the emphasis on faith alone and the ‘word of God’, while conservatives strove to relocate it within an essentially monastic tradition of obedience, with an emphasis on good works, ceremonies, and charity. The most significant achievement was that of the Reformers, who established and played upon an equivocation between the royal supremacy and the ‘word of God’ in order to persuade the king to sanction the publication of the Bible in English as a formidable prop for his new-found dignity.
Se quanta infina a qui di lei si dice fasse canchiusa tutta in una lada, paca sarebbe a farnir questa vice.
The Lollards offers a brief but insightful guide to the entire history of England's only native medieval heretical movement. Beginning with its fourteenth century origins in the theology of the Oxford professor, John Wyclif, Richard Rex examines the spread of Lollardy across much of England until its eventual dissolution amidst the ecclesiastical and doctrinal upheavals of the sixteenth century. Taking account of recent scholarship, Rex reassesses Wyclif's political career and provides a compact survey of his theology which corrects a number of current misapprehensions about it and identifies those features which help explain the hostility it aroused. Whilst endorsing the traditinal view that Lollardy was indeed the lay face of Wycliffism, the author nevertheless challenges a number of cherished myths about England's late medieval heretics. Rex controversially argues that Wyclif and the Lollards were far less important than historians and literary scholars have often claimed, and takes issue with recent attempts to restore Lollardy to its once conventional position as a 'cause' of the Reformation. Powerful and persuasive, The Lollards is essential reading for anyone interested in the movement's relationship to Wyclif's teachings, its social and geographical distribution, its political significance, and its impact on the English Reformation.
This article investigates Henry VIII's ecclesiastical foundations in order to assess their signi®cance and to see what they can tell us about the king's personal religious convictions ± a relatively under-explored area. After sketching the medieval background, the article catalogues Henry's foundations, and then explores their perceived and stated purposes, and their implications for the general course of the Reformation under Henry VIII. The main original sources are the patent rolls (here referred to mainly via the calendar of Letters and Papers of Henry VIII). Henry's choices about the dedications of his foundations are found to cast interesting new light on his devotional tastes and development. More broadly, the history of his foundations illustrates his hesitancy in breaking with traditional religion, and leads the authors to take issue with interpretations of Henry VIII's religious development advanced by G. W. Bernard.
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