When he heard of it, the alarmed prince summoned Du Bellay, the French ambassador, to the palace, gave him for Francis I. a famous diamond fleur-de-lis valued at 10,000l. sterling, also the acknowledgments for 100,000 livres which Francis owed Henry for war expenses, and added a gift of 400,000 crowns for the ransom of the king’s sons. Unable to resist such strong arguments, Francis charged Du Bellay to represent to the faculty of Paris ‘the great scruples of Henry’s conscience;’[[59]] whereupon the Sarbonne deliberated, and several doctors exclaimed that it would be an attaint upon the pope’s honor to suppose him capable of refusing consolation to the wounded conscience of a Christian. During these debates, the secretary took the names, received the votes, and entered them on the minutes. A fiery papist observing that the majority would be against the Roman opinion, jumped up, sprang upon the secretary, snatched the list from his hands, and tore it up. All started from their seats, and ‘there was great disorder and tumult.’ They all spoke together, each trying to assert his own opinion; but as no one could make himself heard amid the general clamor, the doctors hurried out of the room in a great rage. ‘Beda acted like one possessed,’ wrote Du Bellay.
Meanwhile the ambassadors of the King of England were walking up and down an adjoining gallery, waiting for the division. Attracted by the shouts, they ran forward, and seeing the strange spectacle presented by the theologians, and ‘hearing the language they used to one another,’ they retired in great irritation. Du Bellay, who had at heart the alliance of the two countries, conjured Francis I. to put an end to such ‘impertinences.’ The president of the parliament of Paris consequently ordered Beda to appear before him, and told him that it was not for a person of his sort to meddle with the affairs of princes, and that if he did not cease his opposition, he would be punished in a way he would not soon forget. The Sorbonne profited by the lesson given to the most influential of its members, and on the 2nd of July declared in favor of the divorce by a large majority. The universities of Orleans, Angers, and Bourges had already done so, and that of Toulouse did the same shortly after.[[60]] Henry VIII. had France and England with him.
This was not enough: he must have Italy also. He filled that peninsula with his agents, who had orders to obtain from the bishops and universities the declaration refused by the pope. A rich and powerful despot is never in want of devoted men to carry out his designs.
The university of Bologna, in the states of the Church, was, after Paris, the most important in the Catholic world. A monk was in great repute there at this time. Noble by birth and an eloquent preacher, Battista Pallavicini was one of those independent thinkers often met with in Italy. The English agents applied to him; he declared that he and his colleagues were ready to prove the unlawfulness of Henry’s marriage, and when Stokesley spoke of remuneration, they replied, ‘No, no! what we have received freely, we give freely.’ Henry’s agents could not contain themselves for joy; the university of the pope declares against the pope! Those among them who had an inkling for the Reformation were especially delighted. On the 10th June the eloquent monk appeared before the ambassadors with the judgment of the faculty, which surpassed all they had imagined. Henry’s marriage was declared ‘horrible, execrable, detestable, abominable for a Christian and even for an infidel, forbidden by divine and human law under pain of the severest punishment.[[61]]... The holy father, who can do almost everything,’ innocently continued the university, ‘has not the right to permit such a union.’ The universities of Padua and Ferrara hastened to add their votes to those of Bologna, and declared the marriage with a brother’s widow to be ‘null, detestable, profane, and abominable.’[[62]] Henry was conqueror all along the line. He had with him that universal consent which, according to certain illustrious doctors, is the very essence of Catholicism. Crooke, one of Henry’s agents, and a distinguished Greek scholar, who discharged his mission with indefatigable ardor, exclaimed that ‘the just cause of the king was approved by all the doctors of Italy.’[[63]]
Protestants Condemn The Divorce.
In the midst of this harmony of catholicity, there was one exception, of which no one had dreamt. That divorce which, according to the frivolous language of a certain party, was the cause of the Reformation in England, found opponents among the fathers and the children of the Reformation. Henry’s envoys were staggered. ‘My fidelity bindeth me to advertise your Highness,’ wrote Crooke to the king, ‘that all Lutherans be utterly against your Highness in this cause, and have letted [hindered] as much with their wretched poor malice, without reason or authority, as they could and might, as well here as in Padua and Ferrara, where be no small companies of them.’[[64]] The Swiss and German reformers having been summoned to give an opinion on this point, Luther, Œcolampadius, Zwingle, Bucer, Grynæus, and even Calvin,[[65]] all expressed the same opinion. ‘Certainly,’ said Luther, ‘the king has sinned by marrying his brother’s wife; that sin belongs to the past; let repentance, therefore, blot it out, as it must blot out all our past sins. But the marriage must not be dissolved; such a great sin, which is future, must not be permitted.[[66]] There are thousands of marriages in the world in which sin has a part, and yet we may not dissolve them. A man shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. This law is superior to the other, and overrules the lesser one.’ The collective opinion of the Lutheran doctors was in conformity with the just and Christian sentiments of Luther.[[67]] Thus (we repeat) the event which, according to Catholic writers, was the cause of the religious transformation of England, was approved by the Romanists and condemned by the evangelicals. Besides, the latter knew very well that a Reformation must proceed, not from a divorce or a marriage, not from diplomatic negotiations or university statutes, but from the power of the Word of God and the free conviction of Christians.
English Address To The Pope.
While these matters were going on, Cranmer was at Rome, asking the pope for that discussion which the pontiff had promised him at their conference in Bologna. Clement VII. had never intended to grant it: he had thought that, once at Rome, it would be easy to elude his promise; it was that which occupied his attention just now. Among the means which popes have sometimes employed in their difficulties with kings, one of the most common was to gain the agents of those princes. It was the first employed by Clement; he nominated Cranmer grand almoner for all the states of the King of England, some even say for all the Catholic world. It was little more than a title, and ‘was only to stay his stomach for that time, in hope of a more plentiful feast hereafter, if he had been pleased to take his repast on any popish preferment.’[[68]] But Cranmer was influenced by purer motives; and without refusing the title the pope gave him,—since having the task of winning him to the king’s side, he would thus have compromised his mission,—he made no account of it, and showed all the more zeal for the accomplishment of his charge.
The embassy had not succeeded, and they were getting uneasy about it in England. Some of the pope’s best friends could not understand his blindness. The two archbishops, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the marquises of Dorset and Exeter, thirteen earls, four bishops, twenty-five barons, twenty-two abbots, and eleven members of the Lower House determined to send an address to Clement VII. ‘Most blessed father,’ they began, ‘the king, who is our head and the life of us all, has ever stood by the see of Rome amidst the attacks of your many and powerful enemies, and yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his labors.... Meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries impending over the commonwealth.[[69]] If your Holiness, who ought to be our father, have determined to leave us as orphans, we shall seek our remedy elsewhere.... He that is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil.... We beseech your Holiness to consider with yourself; you profess that on earth you are Christ’s vicar. Endeavor then to show yourself so to be by pronouncing your sentence to the glory and praise of God.’ Clement gained time: he remained two months and a half without answering, thinking about the matter, turning it over and over in his mind. The great difficulty was to harmonize the will of Henry VIII., who desired another wife, and that of Charles V., who insisted that he ought to keep the old one.... There was only one mode of satisfying both these princes at once, and that was by the king’s having the two wives together. Wolsey had already entertained this idea. More than two years before the pope had hinted as much to Da Casale: ‘Let him take another wife,’ he had said, speaking of Henry.[[70]] Clement now recurred to it, and having sent privately for Da Casale, he said to him: ‘This is what we have hit upon: we permit his Majesty to have two wives.’[[71]] The infallible pontiff proposed bigamy to a king. Da Casale was still more astonished than he had been at the time of Clement’s first communication. ‘Holy father,’ he said to the pope, ‘I doubt whether such a mode will satisfy his Majesty, for he desires above all things to have the burden removed from his conscience.’[[72]]
This guilty proposal led to nothing; the king, sure of the lords and of the people, advanced rapidly in the path of independence. The day after that on which the pope authorized him to take two wives, Henry issued a bold proclamation, pronouncing against whosoever should ask for or bring in a papal bull contrary to the royal prerogative ‘imprisonment and further punishment of their bodies according to his Majesty’s good pleasure.[[73]] Clement, becoming alarmed, replied to the address: ‘We desire as much as you do that the king should have male children; but, alas! we are not God to give him sons.’[[74]]