Henry VIII's Break with Rome

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

King Henry VIII was deeply religious and started out as a staunch supporter of the Pope and the Roman Catholic church. But everything changed when Henry's need to produce a male successor led to his wanting to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

In this first of an occasional series of Explainer podcasts, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb offers everything you ever wanted to know about one of the most famous and far-reaching episodes in British history.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Sometimes on this podcast I thought it might be nice to do something other than speaking
0:16.0	to my brilliant guests. Sometimes I'd like to take you on a trip out perhaps to Hampton
0:22.1	Court or Kennerworth Castle or Fountains Abbey and talk about what we see there. But the other
0:28.8	thing I thought it would be nice to do is to do a series of explainers. So looking at some issue
0:36.0	from the period and talking through what we know, what are the facts as it were that we have on
0:41.2	the table, what's the timeline and circumstances of the events. And so I thought I'd start with
0:47.5	something obvious and something I know quite a lot about which is Henry VIII's Reformation.
0:53.3	Today I just want to talk about the break with Rome which is something that we all know so much
1:00.8	about at one level but the detail of which may be surprising. So let's start by looking at Henry VIII's
1:09.1	faith. Henry VIII was the very devout man. He expressed it in 1511 after the birth of his son
1:17.5	who didn't live long, the Prince Henry, by going on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Worsingham.
1:23.7	And perhaps if that boy had lived longer than seven weeks he might have continued to make pilgrimages
1:30.1	to Shrine's of Roman Catholic saints throughout his life. But throughout his life he was a devout man.
1:36.2	He heard several masses a day and he maintained it in its Latin splendor until his death. He cherished
1:43.2	his beautiful rosary which you really must see. It's incredible carved work. After he died he left
1:50.8	£1300 for the clergy at St George's Chapel Windsor to pray for his soul in perpetuity.
1:58.8	And of course in 1521 he wrote perhaps with the help of some friends a book defending the Pope.
2:06.8	His assertio septum sacramentorum, his assertion of defence of the seven sacraments which was
2:15.1	a rebuttal of Martin Luther. Henry, although he had much in common with Martin Luther, hated the man.
2:22.4	Luther had compared the Pope to the whore of Babylon and Henry was feeling particularly defensive
2:28.7	of the Pope at the time. And Henry's assertio was something of a bestseller in the 16th century. It
2:34.0	went through 20 editions and translations. This is the book famously that earned Henry the title
	...

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