England: Notable Religious Figures

909 - 988 - St. Dunstan (All Facts)

• English Benedictine Monk who spurred the revival, restoration, and reform of monasticism throughout England under the reign of King Edgar

  • He set about sacking lax secular priests and installing monks who adhered strictly to the Benedictine Rule

  • His efforts led to the revival of monastic culture, learning, and art as well as the development of new monasteries

• He was made Archbishop of Canterbury by King Edgar

  • He was helped by Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, and Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester

1050 - 1154 - St. Stephen Harding (All Facts)

• English Abbot

• He was one of the founders of the Cistercian Order

  • He was known for his organizing talents which transformed the order into the fastest-growing of all the monastic orders at the time

1119 - 1170 - St. Thomas Becket (All Facts)

• Archbishop of Canterbury

• He was the London-born son of a Norman merchant

  • He rose rapidly in the royal service

  • When King Henry II of England had him installed at Canterbury, he believed he was installing a docile cleric, but he was anything but for he became a firm upholder of ecclesiastical privileges

    • One time, he waved his crozier at King Henry II of England and told him that the King of England had no right to judge him

    • When King Henry II of England had his son and heir crowned in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of York and six other bishops, the namesake had publicly denounced the action and excommunicated the bishops

    • In response, King Henry II of England cried out “Who will free me from this turbulent priest?” and he eventually had four English knights of the royal household go after the namesake to kill him

• He was known for his feud with King Henry II of England

• He was murdered and died after being struck down by swords in the north transept of his own cathedral as he stood by the altar of the Virgin Mary

  • His killers were four knights of the royal household, who rode there and began a violent argument with the namesake prelate

  • He struggled for several minutes with his assailants, while a crowd of his men and townspeople who had come to attend evensong looked on

  • When he realized that death was near, he bowed his head and joined his hands in prayer in which he is famous for having said, “I commend myself to God, the Blessed Mary, St. Denis, and the patron saints of this Church”

1328 - 1384 - John Wycliffe (All Facts)

• Proto-Protestant English Christian Religious Reformer, Priest, and Theology Professor

  • He was a renowned Oxford University scholar who delivered a series of lectures in which he moved from radical criticism of the church establishment to outright heresy

  • He was once the master of Balliol College

  • He left Oxford once the Blackfriars Council of 1382 condemned him and the Lollards / Lollardy Movement’s teachings

• He founded the Lollards / Lollardy Movement, which believed as he did that

  • the bread and wine are not miraculously changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ literally, only symbolically

  • ordinary people can and should read the Bible for themselves, which rose the risk of a doctrinal free-for-all

• He launched attacks on papal authority which were sympathetically received in many regions

  • His attacks on papal power easily became critiques of state power

• Politically, he had many allies including John of Gaunt

  • Their support helped him to weather papal condemnation of a series of errors

• He died at Lutterworth, the parish to which he retired after leaving Oxford University

1328 - 1384 - John Wycliffe: On Civil Dominion (All Facts)

• Work which proposes a propertyless church and argued for direct access to God for individuals

1370 - 1417 - John Oldcastle (All Facts)

• Leader of the Lollards in his namesake revolt in England against King Henry V of England and the Catholic Church

• Before the revolt, he escaped from the tower in which he was imprisoned and gave out word to Lollards across the country

• During the revolt, King Henry V, alerted to the plot, awaited for him and the rebels when they met outside London

• After the revolt, he was burned at the stake for heresy

• In his time, he was seen as having discredited the Lollardy Movement due to his linking it with social radicalism

1375 - 1447 - Henry Beaufort (All Facts)

• Bishop of Winchester who crowned King Henry VI of England King of France at Notre Dame

1469 - 1535 - St. John Fisher (All Facts)

• English Catholic Prelate and Bishop of Rochester

• He was executed by King Henry VIII for refusing to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England and for upholding the Catholic Church's doctrine of papal supremacy and the independence of the Church from control by the State

1478 - 1535 - St. Thomas More (All Facts)

• He was a greatly respected lawyer and the under-sheriff of the city of London

• He was loved by his fellow citizens who regarded him as “the fairest of judges, the general patron of the poor”

• He was a man of simple tastes, noted for his gentle sense of fun and his in those around him

• He was “born for friendship”

• He made his name as a writer early in his career when he wrote a biography and condemnation of King Richard III of England

• He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and beheaded after refusing to take the oath to Anne’s issue demanded by the Succession Act; he is thus considered a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church

1516 - St. Thomas More: Utopia (All Facts)

• Written in the Renaissance Humanist tradition

  • It was known as the “golden little book” by the Humanists at the time

  • It was published at Louvain

  • It was written by the namesake while he was in service to King Henry VIII

  • It was later translated from Latin into English

• It is a shrewd, sometimes furious look at European society

  • It is an indictment of its harsh rulers at the time

  • It is a guide to the construction of an ideal civilization, as it was written in such a style

• The title refers to an island somewhere off the New World, coming from the Greek meaning “no place”

• It is about a people who

  • are distanced from all the social ills of Europe

  • live a communal existence, sharing equally in their food, government, clothes, houses, education, and wars

  • are a part of a deeply religious community, in which God rewards by an afterlife of immortality

• Many saw the book differently, including

  • as a fantasy, a humorless travelogue of a land which could exist in the dreams of an idealist

  • as a comedy, with humorous intent

1489 - 1556 - Thomas Cranmer (All Facts)

• Leader of the English Reformation, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martyr of the Church of England

  • He was a favorite of Anne Boleyn’s already

• He declared Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and he declared Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Anne Boleyn valid

  • Nevertheless, he took the oath of allegiance to the pope protesting that he is doing so “for form’s sake”

• He drew up “The Book of Common Prayer,” the moderate Protestant Prayer Book of the Church of England during the English Reformation

  • Its use throughout England was enforced by the Act of Uniformity

1521 - King Henry VIII and Thomas More: Defense of the Seven Sacraments (All Facts)

• Treatise which sets out to do the namesake task and attacks Martin Luther’s Reformation, maintaining strict orthodox theology

• As a result of its publication, Pope Leo X gave the namesake author the title “Defender of the Faith”

1509 - 1547 - Henry VIII (All Facts)

• During his reign, he instituted the English Reformation in which

  • he initiated the movement by rejecting Pope Clement VII’s denial of his annulment to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon and thus formally broke with the Roman Catholic Church, but which had also occurred due to the first printing of the Bible in English under his reign

  • The English Reformation Parliament took place, in which

    • the House of Commons put forth bills against abuses amongst the clergy and in the church courts of England

    • they passed the

      • Submission of the Clergy Act

      • Supremacy Act

      • Succession Act

      • Suppression of Religious Houses Act

    • the Court of Augmentations was established

  • he oversaw, via his Principal Secretary Thomas Cromwell, and as a result of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act, the Dissolution of Monasteries, in which he appointed a commission to report on the state of monasteries in England and had his Principle Secretary Thomas Cromwell monitor it,

    • which he desired in order to

      • acquire the wealth of the monasteries to fund

        • The Crown

        • His military campaigns

      • consolidate his power and authority over the Catholic Church

      • redistribute some of its assets

        • to those who supported him in order to ensure their future support

        • as auctions in order to build new family fortunes at the time that would base their fortune on the Dissolution of the Monasteries including the families of

          • William Cavendish

          • Richard Rich

    • which had the effect of having

      • disbanded all Catholic Church properties in England, Wales, and Ireland

      • seized their wealth

      • redistributed their wealth to the Crown of England and to fund King Henry VIII’s military campaigns

      • disposed of their assets

      • destroyed buildings and relics

      • dispersed or destroyed libraries

      • provided for their former personnel and functions

        • former abbots, monks, and nuns were given pensions; however clerical unemployment rose significantly during this movement

      • turned many of the nearly 800 church properties sold into private homes for the Gentry class

      • ceased the Church’s system of distributing alms, thus causing hardship amongst England’s poor

      • made it so that monks and abbots no longer sat in the House of Lords, having lost political power in addition to religious authority

      • made him the richest king in Europe

  • he and his royalist forces brutally suppressed Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace Catholic revolt against him and the English Reformation

  • he increasingly sought the support of Parliament to his need to carry public opinion with him as he attacked the Roman Catholic Church

• He maintained a strict orthodox theology despite his matrimonial problems; having written “Defense of the Seven Sacraments” against Martin Luther and was named “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X for doing so

1549 - Thomas Cramner: Book of Common Prayer (All Facts)

• Its use was enforced throughout England / the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, passed in the same year the namesake was published