In the last years of Handel's life, when his sight failed him, it was Ellen who nursed him faithfully as if she had been his own child, while her husband wrote down his last compositions.
Translated from Les Études Religieuses, etc.
The Title Of The Kings Of England
Defensor Fidei:
Its Signification And Its Origin.
If an Englishman will take a pound sterling of the present year, he will find around the effigy of Queen Victoria the words, Defensor Fidei, a title which the sovereigns of Great Britain have been proud to bear for more than three centuries.
From whom did they receive it? Why was it given to them? What did it originally mean, and what does it mean now?
Henry VIII. received this title from the pope as a personal privilege, and one that he had ardently desired and solicited for a long time. It was conferred by a bull of Leo X., confirmed by Clement VII. No one is ignorant on what occasion. Luther had left the church. He was sowing his heresy in Germany, declaring that the pope was Antichrist, and declaiming with furious rage against Rome in his impious work, The Captivity of Babylon. Henry VIII., indignant at the effort to mislead the people, replied in a book called Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum. We regret that the space to which we are limited prevents us making copious citations from it; for our readers would then see that it would be impossible for any one to proclaim a more devoted attachment to the holy see than did Henry VIII. at that time. These pages are more than three centuries old; but to-day, when war against the papacy is more bitter than ever, we know of none among the contemporary works which defend the church more filially and more warmly.
If at the time when Henry VIII., full of joy, received the bull of Leo X., amid the hearty congratulations of his people, a man had stood before him and said: Sire, in less than fourteen years you will belie all your protestations of filial devotedness and submission to the Vicar of Jesus Christ; you will rebel against the Roman Church in just as striking a way as Martin Luther has done; you will proclaim yourself the head of the Church of England; you will be the author of a schism which will make blood flow in torrents and will desolate England, Scotland, and Ireland for more than three centuries; you, the victorious Henry VIII., who would be the delight of your people if you were the master of your passions instead of being their slave; you will become the Nero of England: had such words been spoken, their author would have been looked upon as insane. The proud and passionate Tudor would have exhausted his ingenuity in inventing means to torture a traitor like this. But, at the end of 1534, he who would venture to print this book, which had purchased for Henry VIII. the title which the sovereigns of England are so proud to use even to-day, would have been declared guilty of high treason.
Thus, God has wished that the very coins of his country shall become for the Englishman who reflects and studies a precious and lasting historical monument of the ancient faith of the country, the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith, the faith of France, of Spain, of Italy, of Austria, and of all Christianity. The title Defensor Fidei signified at that time defender of the Roman Faith. What does it mean now? After 1534, Henry VIII. pretended to defend the Catholic faith, by refusing obedience to the pope and submitting to his own spiritual supremacy, a new star in the firmament of the church.
Under the reign of Edward VI., or rather under that of the two successive protectors, the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, the faith was defended in the shape of the Forty-two Articles. It was no longer the Catholic faith in its purity.