A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

Anglicanism is the name frequently applied to that form of Protestantism which stamped the state church in England in the sixteenth century and which is now represented by the Episcopal Church in the United States as well as by the established Church of England. The Methodist churches are comparatively late off-shoots of Anglicanism.

The separation of England from the papacy was a more gradual and halting process than were the contemporary revolutions on the Continent; and the new Anglicanism was correspondingly more conservative than Lutheranism or Calvinism.

[Sidenote: English Catholicism in 1500]
[Sidenote: Church of England]

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the word "Catholic" meant the same in England as in every other country of western or central Europe —belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the veneration of saints; acceptance of papal supremacy and support of monasticism and of other institutions and practices of the medieval Church. During several centuries it had been customary in legal documents to refer to the Catholic Church in England as the Ecclesia Anglicana, or Anglican Church, just as the popes in their letters repeatedly referred to the "Gallican Church," the "Spanish Church," the "Neapolitan Church," or the "Hungarian Church." But such phraseology did not imply a separation of any one national church from the common Catholic communion, and for nearly a thousand years—ever since there had been an Ecclesia Anglicana—the English had recognized the bishop of Rome as the center of Catholic unity. In the course of the sixteenth century, however, the great majority of Englishmen changed their conception of the Ecclesia Anglicana, so that to them it continued to exist as the Church of England, but henceforth on a strictly national basis, in communion neither with the pope nor with the Orthodox Church of the East nor with the Lutherans or Calvinists, abandoning several doctrines that had been universally held in earlier times and substituting in their place beliefs and customs which were distinctively Protestant. This new conception of the Anglican Church— resulting from the revolution in the sixteenth century—is what we mean by Anglicanism as a form of Protestantism. It took shape in the eventful years between 1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

In order to understand how this religious and ecclesiastical revolution was effected in England, we must appreciate the various elements distrustful of the Catholic Church in that country about the year 1525. In the first place, the Lutheran teachings were infiltrating into the country. As early as 1521 a small group at Cambridge had become interested in the new German theology, and thence the sect spread to Oxford, London, and other intellectual centers. It found its early converts chiefly among the lower clergy and the merchants of the large towns, but for several years it was not numerous.

In the second place, there was the same feeling in England as we have already noted throughout all Europe that the clergy needed reform in morals and in manners. This view was shared not only by the comparatively insignificant group of heretical Lutherans, but likewise by a large proportion of the leading men who accounted themselves orthodox members of the Catholic Church. The well-educated humanists were especially eloquent in preaching reform. The writings of Erasmus had great vogue in England. John Colet (1467?-1519), a famous dean of St. Paul's cathedral in London, was a keen reformer who disapproved of auricular confession and of the celibacy of the clergy. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), one of the greatest minds of the century, thought the monks were lazy and indolent, and the whole body of churchmen in need of an intellectual betterment. But neither Colet nor More had any intention of breaking away from the Roman Church. To them, and to many like them, reform could be secured best within the traditional ecclesiastical body.

[Sidenote: Political Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

A third source of distrust of the Church was a purely political feeling against the papacy. As we have already seen, the English king and English parliament on several earlier occasions had sought to restrict the temporal and political jurisdiction of the pope in England, but each restriction had been imposed for political reasons and even then had represented the will of the monarch rather than that of the nation. In fact, the most striking limitations of the pope's political jurisdiction in the kingdom had been enacted during the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, when the papacy was under French influence, and had served, therefore, indirectly as political weapons against the French king. Before that war was over, the operation of the statutes had been relaxed, and for a century or more prior to 1525 little was heard of even a political feeling against the bishop of Rome.

Nevertheless an evolution in English government was in progress at that very time, which was bound sooner or later to create friction with the Holy See. On one hand, a sense of nationalism and of patriotism had been steadily growing in England, and it was at variance with the older cosmopolitan idea of Catholicism. On the other hand, a great increase of royal power had appeared in the fifteenth century, notably after the accession of the Tudor family in 1485. Henry VII (1485-1509) had subordinated to the crown both the nobility and the parliament, and the patriotic support of the middle class he had secured. And when his son, Henry VIII (1509-1547), came to the throne, the only serious obstacle which appeared to be left in the way of royal absolutism was the privileged independence of the Catholic Church.