19 Dezember 2024

by Paul Haneke

This month in history, on December 17, 1538, Henry VIII was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Paul III for apparently no other reason than to justify his divorce.

On his quest for a legitimate male heir to consolidate the Tudors’ claim to the throne, Henry had already bent the church’s strict non-divorce policies once. By divorcing his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, even though the church forbade it, he had already severely damaged his relationship with Pope Clement VII. Henry claimed that, since Catherine had previously been married to his late older brother Arthur, the marriage was invalid from its very beginning, which miraculously only occurred to him after 23 years of marriage and while, as the rumours went, having an affair with one of her ladies-in-waiting (and his later second wife -- I know; who would’ve thought?!) Anne Boleyn.

The Pope, however, remained unconvinced and when he caught wind of Henry marrying Anne Boleyn in secret, without any officially recognized annulment of his previous marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he threatened to excommunicate Henry from the Church. Henry, on the other hand, was tired of needing the churches approval for his marital preferences and went on to declare himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, claiming that Rome and the Pope were instrumentalising the once great and autonomous English Church for political purposes (unlike he ever would).

Without the need of any further justification, Henry went on to officially annul his marriage to Catherine, marry Anne, and thus take the first leaps towards his descent into a long reign of tyranny. Of course, just how it was with Catherine, when Anne Boleyn would not produce a male heir quick enough, his fondness of her quickly turned into disgust. Once again, having to find some straw-man argument for another divorce, he accused her of having an incestuous affair with her brother, and in true tyrannical fashion, lacking of course any real evidence to support his accusations, condemned them to death. Tragically, only the first of many femicides that marked the dark time that followed with him on the throne.

A few years after proclaiming himself Supreme Head, he ordered his chief minister Thomas Cromwell to destroy shrines and idols of previous importance to the church, which was the final straw prompting Pope Paul III, who had succeeded Clement VII, to officially excommunicate King Henry VIII from the Catholic Church, severing all ties between the English Monarchy and the European Catholic Church.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/why-did-henry-viii-break-rome

https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/anglo-papal-relations-henry-viii-break-with-rome/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pope-clement-vii-forbids-king-henry-viii-from-remarrying

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII#Annulment_from_Catherine