The Reformation in England took some strange turns; it developed entirely differently from the continental Reformation. First, the Reformation began with the king seeking a divorce, and providentially the prelate who facilitated it, his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was Reformed. Henry remained a Catholic at heart, but Cranmer was permitted considerable latitude in carrying out ecclesiastical and doctrinal reform. Cranmer had proposed a creed of ten articles which Henry found unacceptable and substituted his very Catholic six articles. It was not until Henry’s death and the accession of his son, Edward VI, that Cranmer could effect a true reform under his 42 articles.
Considering the rather political and sometimes economic objectives of Henry VIII, it is not unsurprising that he undertook a dissolution of the monasteries in England. He authorized this project to be carried out by Thomas Cromwell, his vicar-general and vice-regent in the years between 1536 and 1541. While it was true that these Catholic institutions had become notoriously corrupt, Henry was driven more by the fact that they were also quite wealthy, having accumulated the donations of the faithful over hundreds of years. The money confiscated from monastic treasuries filled the royal coffers of the exchequer.
The down side of his action was the loss of some magnificent architectural treasures. These structures dwarfed the large churches that were allowed to remain on the former monastic grounds. In our 2001 summer semester spent in England, my wife and I visited St. Albans near London and Bury St. Edmund. Only scattered ruins remain today, but diagrams of these structures in comparison to the churches on the grounds are amazing. One can only imagine what these monuments looked like and what wonderful tourist attractions they would make today. As I stood at Bury St. Edmund, I marveled at what I could imagine of the original structure as I looked first at the ruins and then at the diagram.
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