Legal revolution: St. Thomas More, Christopher St. German, and the schism of King Henry VIII.

• Author: Gregg, Samuel

INTRODUCTION

As the headsman's axe descended on St. Thomas More on Tower Hill on July 6, 1535, (1) much more came to an end than the life of an exemplary Renaissance humanist. More's execution symbolized the schism of English religious life from Catholic Europe. While the Catholic Church's influence in England would temporarily revive under Queen Mary I, Catholicism gradually was reduced to a relatively clandestine existence, a half-world of shadows marked by sporadic outbreaks of ferocious persecution followed by interludes of half-hearted and haphazard enforcement of penal laws primarily enacted under Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.

St. Thomas More's death also marked the culmination of a fundamental shift in the understanding of law that prevailed in England until the schism engineered by King Henry VIII between 1529 and 1535. On one level, More's opposition to these changes was driven by his commitment to Catholic doctrine concerning the indissolubility of marriage and the pope's dispensing power. His resistance, however, was also linked to concerns about the legal significance of Henry VIII's policies. In part, this was associated with More's fears concerning how these policies would impact England's ability to resist heresy. But it equally reflected More's views about the Catholic Church's nature and its relationship to the temporal realm. This became most evident in More's debates with the Tudor legal scholar Christopher St. German between 1532 and 1533.

St. Thomas More has a well-established reputation as the graceful author of morally charged works such as Utopia (2) and his unfinished The History of King Richard III. (3) He is also remembered as an able controversialist, most notably as a result of his lengthy critiques of the ideas associated with Martin Luther and other "new men." More employed these controversialist abilities in his Apology (4) and The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, (5) in which he questioned St. German's proposals for, first, altering the relationship between canon law and English common law and, second, revising the legal procedures for addressing heresy. (6) While More's debate with St. German went to the heart of the conflict between the Catholic Church and the English Crown, his beheading underlined not only England's separation from the See of Peter, but also a fundamental change in the English understanding of law and the relation between the spiritual and temporal realms. This Article outlines the pre-Reformation background to these developments and examines the implications of Luther's rebellion for the dominant understanding of law-particularly the relationship between civil and ecclesiastical law-then prevailing throughout England and much of Western Europe. The reaction of Catholic English scholars such as More to these changes is then considered before I demonstrate how the ensuing debates influenced the theological, political, and legal controversies that engulfed England as Henry VIII relentlessly pressed his case for a divorce.

1. CHRISTENDOM, CANON LAW, AND COMMON LAW

   The Catholic Church from its very beginning has been embroiled in disputes about the respective authority of church and state. In Law and Revolution, Harold J. Berman maintains that the eleventh-century investiture controversy that pitted pope against emperor decisively shaped the legal systems prevailing throughout Western Europe until the sixteenth century and even beyond. (7) The irony is that Pope St. Gregory VII's proclamation of the Catholic Church's ecclesiastical autonomy from, and superiority over, the secular arm in his Dictatus Papae (8) did not, as Berman observes, achieve either objective. (9) The outcome was a negotiated arrangement between the papacy and the emperor in 1122, (10) and a series of compromises between the Church and other secular rulers.

   In England's case, the relationship between church and state--and, more particularly, the respective jurisdictions of ecclesiastical and secular courts and the different competencies of canon, common, and statutory law--was not settled until the crisis that followed the struggle between King Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket and the latter's assassination in 1170. (11) The subsequent resolution did not, however, engender an especially tidy situation. (12) Ecclesiastical courts, Berman notes, claimed jurisdiction over:

   (1) all civil and criminal cases involving clerics, including all cases involving church property; (2) all matrimonial cases; (3) all testamentary cases; (4) certain criminal cases, such as heresy, sacrilege, sorcery, usury, defamation, fornication, homosexuality, adultery, injury to religious places, and assault against a cleric; and (5) contract, property, and other civil cases, where there was a breach of a pledge of faith (called "perjury," that is, violation of an oath). (13) Given the number of cases potentially subject to ecclesiastical review, it is little wonder that secular courts constantly disputed jurisdictional claims by Church officials. (14) The situation was further complicated by the fact that the secular authorities were responsible for enforcing the decisions of ecclesiastical courts. (15) The secular arm had certain obligations, for example, concerning the detection and punishment of heresy, but neither the monarch nor his courts determined what was and was not heretical. (16) The handling of marriage cases reflected a similar division of duties, with the secular authorities enforcing the decisions of ecclesiastical courts concerning the validity of marriages. (17)

   Further complications ensued from Henry II's successful effort to extend the jurisdiction of royal courts to civil and criminal matters that previously had been subject to local and feudal courts administering local and feudal law. Organizationally, this took form in the creation of the Court of Common Pleas in 1178, which was empowered "to hear the people's complaints," (18) and the Court of King's Bench, whose jurisdiction covered criminal offenses and any civil case affecting the monarch. (19) The establishment of these courts was followed by a systematization of the chancellery's legal work. The Lord Chancellor--holder of the great seal of England and able to give orders in the king's name--and his officials were empowered to issue writs and a range of other legal instruments that initiated court action. (20)

   Despite the monarchy's augmentation of its legal powers, the ecclesiastical courts existing in England at the time preserved their independence from the state. This reflected the fact that they were part of a legal system that extended as far as the Catholic Church. Though plaintiffs could not appeal, for example, from the Archdiocese of York's courts to those of the Archbishop of Canterbury, they could petition higher tribunals in Rome. (21) This was often difficult in practice, and secular laws limited the types of cases subject to appeal. Nonetheless, the system gave concrete form to what St. Thomas More -would refer to at his trial as the "laws of God and his Holy Church" (22) and England's integration into a legal apparatus transcending English common law.

2. THE LUTHERAN CHALLENGE

   Though figures such as Archbishop Becket and King Henry II disagreed about the precise lines separating secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and quarreled about issues such as taxing the clergy and appointing bishops, it would not have occurred to them to question the Catholic Church's understanding of the nature of Christianity, its authority on matters of faith and morals, or that it was divinely invested with such authority. While heretical movements certainly existed in England before King Henry VIII's reign, none attracted significant and lasting followings.

   The English reaction to the advent of Martin Luther and his proposals was more muted than the enthusiastic response of the German nobility and peasantry. (23) Lutheran books first appeared in England in 1519, but do not appear to have sold well. (24) This did not prevent the Lord Chancellor, at the time Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, from prohibiting the entry of Lutheran books into England in 1521. (25) Cardinal Wolsey's action may have been sparked by a letter from Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury warning Cardinal Wolsey that Lutheran ideas were circulating at Oxford University. (26) In any event, Cardinal Wolsey was sufficiently moved to have Bishop John Fisher of Rochester deliver a sermon denouncing Luther as a heretic in St. Paul's churchyard on May 12, 1521, before joining the bishop to preside over a public burning of Lutheran texts. (27) At the same time, Henry VIII, because he was "more powerful than his predecessors" and enjoyed "the great authority of England with the Emperor and the German princes," (28) was urged to dispatch correspondence to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V asking him to repress Lutheran heresies, Luther's books, and their author. (29)

   This was not the end of the reaction of the English religious and civil authorities to the Lutheran heresies. Henry VIII himself chose to author a book, Defence oF the Seven Sacraments, which refuted Luther's attack on Catholic sacramental theology. (30) While writing such a text was not beyond the King's abilities, he received assistance from a committee of theologians, possibly including Archbishop Warham, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall of London, and Bishop Fisher. (31) In the spring of 1521, St. Thomas More was appointed to edit the book. (32) Copies were eventually sent to the Pope and the thirty cardinals in Rome. (33) For all his efforts, of which this book was one, Henry VIII was awarded the title Defensor Fidei by a papal bull promulgated on October 11, 1521. (34)

   In July 1522, Luther's reply, Contra Henricum regem Angliae, was published. (35) Its argument was, even for the standards of the time, expressed in terms of extraordinary aggression and vulgarity. (36) Erasmus of Rotterdam commented that the...