Henry VIII

Life

Henry was born the second son of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. When his elder brother Arthur died young, Henry became heir to the throne, and upon his accession in 1509 he married Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon. When the marriage produced no surviving son, Henry asked Pope Clement VII to annul it, arguing that his union with his brother's widow had been invalid from the beginning. The pope's refusal deepened the conflict with the Church of Rome. Henry married six times in all, and his three successors, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, were all his children.

Work and Achievements

Early in his reign Henry wrote Defence of the Seven Sacraments, a rebuttal of Martin Luther, for which Pope Leo X granted him the title "Defender of the Faith" in 1521. After breaking with the pope over his marriage, however, he had Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, annul his first marriage in 1533, and he married Anne Boleyn. In 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy (the law declaring the king the supreme head on earth of the Church of England), and those who refused to comply, including Thomas More, were executed. Beginning in 1536 he dissolved the monasteries and transferred their property to the Crown.

His reforms, however, changed the church's structure of authority while largely preserving Catholic doctrine. The Six Articles of 1539 reaffirmed, among other things, transubstantiation (the doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion are actually changed into the body and blood of Christ) and clerical celibacy. In the matter of Bible translation, he at first banned William Tyndale's English Bible, but in 1539 he authorized the Great Bible, an English translation, to be placed in every church. Protestant reform of worship began in earnest only after his death, under Edward VI, with the publication of the Book of Common Prayer.

Influence on the Korean Church

The Church of England that Henry established later grew into the worldwide Anglican Communion. In Korea, the Anglican Church of Korea is generally regarded as having begun in 1890 with the arrival of Bishop Charles John Corfe of the Church of England. In Korean schools and churches, the origin of Anglicanism is commonly attributed to Henry VIII's divorce, though Anglicans regard this as an oversimplification.

Assessment

Assessments of Henry vary by perspective. The Catholic Church views his actions as a schism that broke the unity of the church. Anglicans regard Henry as the figure who supplied the political occasion for the break, but they locate Anglican identity in continuity with the ancient church and in the reforms of Cranmer and the Elizabethan era. Many Protestant historians judge that his reforms stemmed less from religious conviction than from political motives, namely securing the succession and strengthening royal power. The execution of opponents, the execution of two queens (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard), and the confiscation of monastic property are cited as major criticisms of his reign. Nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that England's independence from the Church of Rome and the official authorization of the English Bible laid the groundwork for the subsequent English Reformation and the Puritan movement.