Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Walker
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Ambiguous Figure ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Significant Figure ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.

Thomas More and the Early Church Fathers

Traditio ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 379-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Marius
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Pope Gregory I ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Thomas More, humanist, statesman, and martyr, was one of the most prolific apologists for the Catholic Church in the early years of the Reformation. In numerous polemical and apologetic works he ranged widely over the issues raised by the controversy. But if his scope was large, he possessed one sure foundation to which all his arguments inevitably returned. This was the faith of the early Church Fathers, those men who interpreted the life and faith of the Church from the time of the Apostles to the end of the pontificate of Pope Gregory I in 604.

Roman Catholicism and Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 436-457
Author(s):  
Petr Kratochvíl
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Church ◽  
Hostile Attitude ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter explores the complex relationship between the Catholic Church and Europe over many centuries. It argues that the Catholic Church and Europe played a mutually constitutive role in the early Middle Ages and one would not be conceivable without the other. However, the Church gradually disassociated itself from Europe and vice versa. Since the Reformation, but even more strongly in the last two centuries, the Church’s attitude to Europe has become markedly more ambivalent, due to the rise of the European state, the hostile attitude of the Church to modern European social and political thought, Europe’s ongoing secularization, and the increasingly global nature of the Catholic Church. While the tension between the Church and Europe persists, the process of European unification marked a watershed in the Church’s relationship to Europe, given that integration is a key area in which the Church strongly supports the political developments of the continent.

The Biblical Question and the English Liberal Catholics

1969 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
James Tunstead Burtchaell
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Looking backward from the early nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in England had disappointingly little scholarly achievement of which to boast since the Reformation. Henry Holden, Charles Butler, John Lingard—all were men to be proud of, but Catholics of such intellectual bent were so few. And understandably so. The penal laws had effectively deprived the recusants of any access to higher education, and would perdure until the latter nineteenth century. Squires whose sons were barred for their faith from most schools and from the two universities had to be content to enroll them quietly at one or another of the exile schools across the channel. The Irish immigrants who later came to fill and overspill the churches in the nineteenth century had even less exposure to—and perhaps appetite for—scholarship. And the clergy who shepherded this extraordinary flock of secluded gentry and boisterous working folk pursued a highly sacramental and understandably unsophisticated pastorate. The Church naturally felt itself somewhat put upon, and fell into rather defensive postures. Scholarship would appear as a luxury at best, and at worst as a weapon that the Establishment seemed always more adept and smooth at handling.

The Scottish Reformation and the Theatre of Martyrdom

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Jane E. A. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distinct Sense ◽  
Complete History ◽  
The Catholic Church ◽  
Acts And Monuments

Poor John Knox felt a distinct sense of inferiority when he sat down to write the first book of his History of the Reformation in Scotland. Unlike his English friend John Foxe, he could not draw upon the stories of hundreds of martyrs and fit them into the complete history of the persecuted Church from its beginning until the present day. To make matters worse, Foxe would duplicate Knox’s labours by incorporating the stories of most of the Scottish martyrs into his 1570 edition of the Acts and Monuments. In his ambition to be both the historian and the martyrologist of the Scottish Reformation, Knox thought he faced an immediate and apparently overwhelming problem: that of a distinct shortage of martyrs. Yet he was quickly reassured once he began assembling the details of those who had vigorously opposed the ‘manifest abuses, superstition and idolatry’, which characterized the Catholic Church in Scodand before the Reformation. Martyrs soon began to appear before his eyes, and Knox consoled himself, ‘Albeit there be no great number, yet are they more than the Collector would have looked for at the beginning.’

The Historical Faith of William Tyndale: Non-Salvific Reading of Scripture at the Outset of the English Reformation*

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 661-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weil Baker
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Reformation

AbstractThis essay argues that for William Tyndale, not only was scripture not sola, but it did not have to be read solely as scripture, that is, the salvific word of God. It could also be read with historical faith, a term that Tyndale borrowed from the German Reformer Philip Melanchthon and used to signify “believing in scripture as one would a non-scriptural history.” Tyndale did not exactly advocate this approach to scripture, but he recognized it as having at least some validity, given the role of human agency and authority in the transmission of God's word. More broadly, the notion of historical faith in scripture reflects the Reformation elevation of what John Foxe called the “truth of history” along with that of scripture. In the polemical writings of Tyndale and later English Protestant Reformers, scripture served both as a means of personal salvation and as a source of historical evidence against the Catholic Church. As a source for this kind of evidence, scripture was cited in conjunction with non-scriptural histories and in ways not discernibly different from those in which such histories were cited. Tyndale's historical faith is not, then, as his opponent Thomas More dubbed it, an “evasion” borrowed from Melanchthon, but rather a part of the complex and developing relationship between scripture and history during the English Reformation.

Church Organization in Brandenburg–Prussia from the Reformation to 1740

1938 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-290
Author(s):  
Reinhold A. Dorwart
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Church Organization ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

For obvious reasons, a study of the organization of the Church in Brandenburg-Prussia must begin with the formal acceptance of the Reformation in those territories. The Reformation was not accepted officially in Brandenburg until after the death of Joachim I in 1535. His son and heir, Margrave and Elector Joachim II joined the Protestant ranks in 1539. Prior to this time the Church in Brandenburg had been an integral part of the Catholic Church of Rome; and local church organization and the supervision thereof had been in the hands of the episcopal consistory. This latter body attended to all the business of reviewing and supervising the administration of its diocese, of issuing the reports of the bishop or administrator, of appointment of apostolic visitors, and of the government, temporal administration, and discipline of seminaries.

A Joint Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017

Horizons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-409
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Clifford
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

When the young Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, affixed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church on October 31, 1517, calling for the reform of the church, he could hardly have anticipated the succession of events that would lead to the division of Western Christendom. Luther had no intention of creating a “Lutheran” Church, nor could he have foreseen that his initiative would give rise to an ecclesial divide that would persist for half a millennium. The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism, which acknowledged the need for continual reform and renewal in the church, created the conditions for the Catholic Church to enter in earnest into a dialogue “on equal footing” with other Christian communities. The Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity, as it is known today, was established in 1967 and was the first commission for official bilateral dialogue. Thus, as we commemorate five hundred years since the Reformation, we also mark with gratitude fifty years of official dialogue and growth in communion.

Disciplining Diversity: The Roman Inquisition and Social Control in Malta, 1743–98

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 354-365
Author(s):  
Frans Ciappara
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Tight Control ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Having lost northern Europe to the Protestants the Catholic Church tried to preserve control over what remained of therespublica Christiana. The attempt was twofold. First, it was political. The popes declared the entire Catholic world for their diocese. The government of the Christian peoples’, Pius V observed, ‘belongs to Us and We should see that they are governed with charity’. Second, the popes admitted that the Reformation had been the result partly of the religious and spiritual shortcomings of the Church itself and tried to make the requisite internal reforms. The Council of Trent defined Catholic doctrine and anathemized whoever disagreed with it. Seminaries were set up to train the clergy while the lay population was held under tight control. The Jesuits and the Office of the Holy Roman Inquisition were the main instruments of discipline. In this article I will explore the ways in which the Holy Office impinged on Maltese society during the time of the last eight inquisitors. Fortunately the archive deposits of the Inquisition in Malta are nearly complete and the recent opening of the Vatican archives has added further to our knowledge of the Maltese Holy Office.

The Controversial Sir Thomas More

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Thomas More ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Lord Chancellor ◽  
The Church ◽  
Public Career

Perhaps the most notable achievement of the so-called renaissance in Morean studies in recent years has been to provide the historiography with a new focus, namely the phase of More's career that begins in the aftermath of Utopia (1516) and concludes with his imprisonment in 1534. Hitherto, interest in that period was confined largely to the domestic scene celebrated in Holbein's famous portrait and drawings, the household at Chelsea as a centre of humanist culture, Christian piety and cosy family virtue. Yet this was the period of More's public career in which he served as a councillor to Henry vm and in a number of major administrative posts before his elevation to succeed Cardinal Wolsey as lord chancellor in 1529. It was also the period in which he assumed a leading role in the campaign against the Reformation in England, partly as a prosecutor of heresy on behalf of the Crown, but more spectacularly as a polemicist, specifically commissioned by the Church to defend orthodox doctrine against the challenge of the reformers – a task on which he expended some million words in the period between his tract against Luther in 1523 and the changed circumstances which induced a more devotional literary mode in the much acclaimed Tower Works.

XVI ԴԱՐԻ ՌԵՖՈՐՄԱՑԻԱՅԻ ՆԵՐՔԻՆ ԵՎ ԱՐՏԱՔԻՆ ՊԱՏՃԱՌՆԵՐԸ

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Haykaram Hakobyan
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Immoral Behavior ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
External Reasons ◽  
The Catholic Church

The reasons for the Reformation, which shook Europe in the XVI century and had a huge impact on the new historical era in the Armenian scientific literature, are generally presented in part or related only to the internal issues of the Catholic Church. Among them were, for example, vast territories of the Catholic Church, the ignorance and immoral behavior of the clergy, as well as the inquisition and indulgences. Above mentioned issues of the Catholic Church would not suffice to make such a revolution in the history of humanity. The external reasons that spread the movement within the Church to all spheres of society were essential. The above observations show that the Reformation was not a revolution of the world system, but an evolution based on the demands of the time against the deviate from the main principles.

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