The Religions in Tudor Dynasty Essay Example

the Catholicism because she believed passionately in Catholic religion. And Queen Elizabeth I restored Protestarism as the official religion.

In the course of the sixteenth century, the religious culture of England underwent radical change. Tudor religions changed constantly during the Tudor Dynasty and was dictated by the views of the reigning monarch. The two major religions in Tudor England were the Catholic and Protestant religions. The religion of Tudor England careered from the Catholic to Protestant religions according to, how I just said, wishes of the reigning King or Queen. King Henry VII ( 1485 – 1509 ) adhered to the Catholic faith. King Henry VIII ( 1509 – 1547 ) was raised as a devout Catholic and his daughter Mary was brought up in this faith.

In 1521 he received the title "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Leo X for his opposition to Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation. He then fell in love with Anne Boleyn and in order to divorce Katherine of Aragon he broke his ties with the Catholic Church and the Church of England was established and King Henry VIII became head of the Church of England. King Edward VI ( 1547 – 1553 ), the son of King Henry VIII, was raised as a Protestant and in 1549 introduced a uniform Protestant service in England based on his Book of Common Prayer.

Edward VI died young leaving the throne to 'the Lady Jane Grey and her heirs male' in order for the continuance of the Protestant religion in England. Queen Mary I ( 1553-1558 ) believed passionately in the Catholic religion and persecuted Protestants who were burned alive for their beliefs.

Queen Elizabeth I ( 1558-1603 ) adhered to the Protestant religion and restored Protestantism as the official religion. Queen Elizabeth firmly believe that people should be allowed to practice the Catholic religion without fear of recrimination so long as it presented no threat to peace in the realm and her rule over

Henry VIII and the Reformation The trigger for the Reformation in England was Henry VIII’s battle with Rome over the validity of his marriage. A monarch’s primary duty was to secure his dynasty. By the 1520s Henry and many of his advisers were deeply disturbed that he had not fathered a legitimate male heir. Accustomed to look for God’s hand in all that did and did not happen, Henry could only assume that he must have offended God, who was withholding from him a blessing so essential for the future peace of the realm. He concluded that his marriage, dogged by miscarriages and still-births, was unacceptable in God’s eyes.

So, "Wolsey`s fall in 1529 and the break with Rome in 1533 – 4 resulted from the inability of the cardinal – minister and Henry VIII to presuade Pope Clement VII to annul the king`s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order that he might marry Anne Boleyn. ". In January 1533 Henry wed the pregnat Anne Boleyn, with Thomas Cranmer officiating. In March 1533 Cranmer became archbishop of Canterbury and led the Convocation in invalidating the King`s marriage to Catherine. In 1534 Parliament ended all payments by the English clergy and laity to Rome and gave Henry sole jurisiction over high ecclesiastical appointments.

The Act of Succession in the same year made Anne Boleyn`s children

legitimate heirs to the throne and the Act of Supremacy declared Henry the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England. When Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused to recognize the Act of Succession and the Act of Supremacy, Henry had them executed, making clear his determination to have his way regardless of the cost. Henry VIII made his Reformation a complicated matter. His Church has often been called ‘Catholicism without the pope’ or ‘Lutheranism without justi? ation by faith’, for the king never accepted this central doctrine of the Reformation. Henry was part both of the old religious world and the new. Throughout the king’s reign, the Latin mass remained in all its splendour, and all his clergy had to remain celibate, as did the monks and nuns whose lives he had ruined. On the other hand Henry ceased to pay much attention to the doctrine of purgatory, he destroyed all monasteries and nunneries in England and Wales (and, where he could, in Ireland) and he was positively proud of closing and destroying all the shrines in England and Wales.

With the ten articles in 1536, he made only mild concessions to Protestant tenets, otherwise maintaining Catholic doctrine. Despite his many wives and amorous adventures Henry absolutely forbade the English clergy to marry and threatened any clergy who were caught twice in concubinage with execution. The six articles of religion, which laid down authorized religious belief in 1539, were noticeably more Catholic than the ten articles that had preceded them in 1536. Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547 and he left behind him a Church in England that was

in transition.

Until his death, although split off from Rome, the English Church remained Catholic . So, the Church was not Protestant on 28 January 1547, but it was about to become so. 3. Religious changes under Edward VI When Henry died, his son and successor, Edward VI, was only ten years old. Under the regencies of the duke of Somerset and the duke of Northumberland, England fully enacted the Protestant Reformation. So, it was in the years after 1547 that the country moved in a decidedly Protestant direction. Most early Protestants believed that God communicated with human beings primarily through the Bible.

This meant that they perceived truth as conceptual, and doubted claims that spiritual reality could be expressed and embodied in things material. They dismissed as superstitious the belief that certain objects had power in themselves to keep evil at bay. The consecration of candles at Candlemas as talismans against evil was banned, as was the sprinkling of congregations with holy water to bless and protect. Their emphasis upon the “Word of God” led Protestants to disparage rituals that communicated through senses other than hearing.

Edward’s council prohibited processions, the use of Ash Wednesday ashes and Palm Sunday palms, and the custom of “creeping to the cross” on Good Friday. In Protestant eyes these colourful and symbolic Catholic ceremonies were likely to obscure rather than illuminate God’s purposes, providing the masses with the illusion of religious observance that was no substitute for meditation on the written word. In the past, statues, crucifixes and stained-glass windows had informed people about their faith. In Edward’s reign orders were issued for their removal.

All bans on reading the Bible were

lifted, and English services were introduced. The short reign of Edward VI ( 1547 – 1553 ) had created many of the institutions of the Church of England which survive to the present day. Cranmer transformed the liturgy by masterminding two successive versions of a Prayer Book in English, the ? rst in 1549. He was generally cautious in orchestrating the pace of change, and his caution was justi? ed when a major rebellion in western England in summer 1549 speci? cally targeted the religious revolution, speci? cally his ? rst Prayer Book.

Not just Catholics objected to the book: no one liked it. It was too full of traditional survivals for Protestants, and it was probably only ever intended to be a stopgap until Cranmer thought it safe to produce something more radical. In dialogue with Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, Cranmer produced a second Prayer Book in 1552 far more radical than 1549; the theology of the eucharist which its liturgy expressed was close to a major agreement on the eucharist which Zurich had just agreed in 1549 with John Calvin of Geneva, the "Consensus Tigurinus". Edward VI died in 1553 at the age of 15.

By the terms of Henry VIII's will, his eldest daughter, Mary, was next in line of succession. However, Edward's Regent, Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, wanted to prevent the accession of a Catholic monarch. It was therefore announced that as both Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate they would not be able to take the throne. Chosen to be successor was Lady Jane Grey, grandaughter of Henry VIII's youngest sister, Mary. In order to maintain his control, Northumberland married

Jane to his son, Guildford. Jane became Queen of England, but only reigned for nine days.

Mary raised her standard against Northumberland and, with the people on her side, claimed her rightful place on the throne on 19th July 1553. Northumberland, his son Guildford and Jane Grey were executed for treason. 4. Mary I and the return to Catholicism In the short term, the Edwardian reforms were soon rescinded. When Edward died, he was succeeded by his Catholic half-sister, Mary, the daughter of Katherine of Aragon. Mary reinstated Catholic ceremonies and liturgy, and commanded churches to reinvest in all the accoutrements of traditional worship.

During the last three years of her reign, 300 leading Protestants who would not accepted Catholic beliefs were burned to death at the stake. Third earned her the nickname of 'Bloody Mary'. Clergy who had married under legislation passed in Edward’s reign were brought before the courts and deprived of their livings. Clerical celibacy symbolized the difference between lay people and priests, who were privileged to handle the body and blood of Christ in the Mass; by disciplining married clergy Mary affirmed the distinctive character of holy orders. The country renewed its allegiance to Rome.

Mary was influenced by humanist teachers, she made no attempt to re-establish the great shrines and the cult of the saints with the accompanying veneration of their relics. Her own faith centred on the offering of Christ in the Mass, and it was this above all that she wished to reinstate. In restoring the Mass to England she believed she was giving her country the greatest possible boon, God present in his chosen form in the midst of his

people. Each time Mass was celebrated the sacrifice which Christ had made that first Good Friday was offered anew.

Worshippers were enabled to gaze on his body and his blood given not just in time past but daily for their redemption. Protestants’ views on the “eucharist” or “communion” varied, there was widespread objection to the idea that the bread and wine were actually changed into the body and blood of Christ. Mary made her own vital contribution to the Protestant Reformation by restoring the heresy laws, and burning Cranmer and his various colleagues. That bitter experience became a central part of English consciousness in succeeding Protestant centuries.

It tied Protestant England into an active and deeply felt anti-Catholicism which was the particular forte of Reformed Protestant Christians. If anything was the glue which ? xed the kingdom into a Reformed Protestant rather than a Lutheran mould, this was it. So, the most notorious aspect of the regime, the burnings, proved devastatingly effective. Only the death of the childless queen and her cardinal on the same day in November 1558 brought the protestant Elizabeth to the throne, thereby changing the course of English history. 5. Elizabethan Religion Mary`s regime, like that of Oliver Cromwell a century later, lacked the undivided support of the gentry needed to secure stability. Her death was not accompanied by spontaneous public mourning such as had dignified the passing of Henry VIII. On the contrary, the popular mood switched immediately to optimism, though this was partly the result of a propraganda exercise. "? On the death of Mary I there was a surprisingly smooth transition to the accession of her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter

of Anne Boleyn.

Under Elizabeth the English church became identifiably Protestant. As soon as she was proclaimed queen, Elizabeth made clear to her subjects that she intended to introduce a Protestant Church Settlement. So, for the third time in little over a decade, parishes were sent instructions for a major reversal of religious practice. The commissioners appointed to ensure that liturgical instructions were obeyed and objects of Catholic devotion destroyed, included many zealous Protestants who had spent Mary’s reign in exile on the Continent.

She was well aware of the need for stability and, unlike her half-brother and sister, was anxious to effect religious arrangements that would command, if not majority support, certainly widespread acquiescence. The religious settlement effected during the 1559 parliamentary session in her name promulgated a more mellow Protestantism than that encouraged by her brother. If her father had styled himself “Supreme Head” of the church in England, Elizabeth adopted the title “Supreme Governor”.

Although designed to placate the Catholics, the change also pleased some Protestants who believed that the headship of the Church ‘is due to Christ alone, and cannot belong to any human being soever’, and were particularly uneasy at the prospect of a woman assuming a quasi-priestly role in the Church. The new title, however, made no difference in practice to the extent of royal authority over the Church, as Elizabeth exercised the same rights over religion as had her father, and was determined to keep religion firmly under the control of the Crown.

The Act of Uniformity imposed compulsory attendance at church on Sundays and Holy Days and sanctioned a new Prayer Book, which contained a few changes from its 1552 predecessor.

The most important modifications lay in the communion service and the Ornaments Rubric and were conservative in nature. In the communion service, the Elizabethan minister was required to insert two additional sentences from the 1549 Prayer Book at the point of offering the bread and wine to the communicant.

The 1552 injunction, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving”, seemed to imply that communion was essentially an act of grateful remembrance. It appears that Elizabeth herself believed that Christ was really present at each communion service. At her instigation the 1552 words of administration were prefixed by those from the 1549 book, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life”.

This range of wording made it possible for people of varied beliefs to use the same liturgy. The 1559 prayer book was not so rigidly Protestant as to alienate people of Catholic sympathies. The 1559 Settlement established by the queen in parliament contained no statement of faith. Since Elizabeth believed that the responsibility for theology lay with the clergy and not parliament, a definition of doctrine had to await the appointment of a new Protestant bench of bishops. Elizabeth was probably content to keep silent on the issue of doctrine in1559, as she wanted to avoid further antagonizing Catholics at home and abroad, as well s taking sides in the theological disputes which were dividing Protestant Europe. Her new Protestant episcopate, however, was very keen to get down to the task of establishing the doctrine of the English Church, since

it believed that a statement of faith was essential to the work of teaching the Gospels. In its liturgy and theology, therefore, the early Elizabethan Church was something of a hybrid, containing features that were Lutheran, Zwinglian and Calvinist. Some historians think that little or no change took place during the whole reign and that Calvinism remained a minority view within the Elizabethan Church. A short presentation of Puritanism Puritanism has traditionally been defined in relation to Anglicanism, since historians viewed it as the radical Protestant alternative to the Anglican Church and the ideology of a small but assertive opposition group who wanted to align the Church of England with the Reformed Church on the Continent. Puritans were, therefore, usually described as Calvinists or as reformers who wanted to purge the Anglican Church of its Catholic features. The redefinition of mainstream Protestantism and rejection of the name ‘Anglicanism’ clearly posed a problem for historians used to treating Puritans in this way.

It now became clear that there was no profound theological cleavage within the Elizabethan Church but that on the contrary there was in general a ‘Calvinist consensus’. With this revision, a new definition of Puritanism was clearly required but it was not easy to find. Puritans were not an easily identified group within the Church who held distinct opinions about doctrine, liturgy and discipline; nor were they merely a reforming group who saw the 1559 Settlement as temporary and endeavoured to obtain further instalments of reform, for this could equally well be said of the early Elizabethan bishops.

Elizabeth’s longevity did more than anything else to stem the constant religious reversals that had characterized mid-sixteenthcentury England.

Despite ongoing criticism, the religious settlement authorized in 1559 remained intact. A Protestant Reformation had been effected by force of law. 6. Conclusions In conclusion, during the Tudor Dynasty the religion changed from Catholicism to Protestantism four times. When Elizabeth died in 1603 she passed on to her successor a land in which Protestantism was the acknowledged faith although a fairly quiescent Catholic presence remained.

But, the religious battles that were to tear England apart in the first half of the seventeenth century were to be fought not between Catholics and Protestants but between different brands of Protestant. So, the extent to which England had moved in a Protestant direction in the course of Elizabeth’s reign. In my opinion, all the four monarchs, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, had a big contribution to the religious culture. Each of them changed in same way the English Church. But I think that Henry VIII and especially Elizabeth I influenced the History of England Religion. Footnotes . Jhon Guy, Tudor England, Oxford University Press, 1988 Jhon Guy, Tudor England, Oxford University Press, 1988  References Doran S. ( 1995 ) , Elizabeth I and Religion. 1558-1603, Routledge, London and New York Duffy E. and Loades D. ( 2006 ) , The Church of Mary Tudor, Ashgale, England Guy J. (1988 ) , Tudor England, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York Newcombe D. G. ( 1995 ) , Henry VIII and the English Reformation, Routledge, London and New York Rosman D. ( 1996 ) , From Catholic to Protestant. Religion and the people in Tudor England , UCL Press, London