What reasons are there to why Henry VIII spilt with Rome?

Answer 1

From a very simplistic point of view, he was tired of his wife, Catherine, and had fallen in love with one of her ladies, Anne Boleyn.

But there was really more to it than that.

Catherine of Aragon was the intended bride for Henry's older brother, Arthur (she was the daughter of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, the Spanish monarchs who largely united Spain by their marriage and completed the reconquest of Spain from the Moorish occupation). She came to England, married Arthur, and he died of tuberculosis within months.

To keep the Spanish alliance, Henry VII suggested that his surviving son, Henry, marry Catherine. This required a dispensation from the Pope, because of 'affinity'--because she was Henry's sister-in-law, marriage to her without proper dispensation would have been considered incest.

This dragged on for a number of years; Henry VII, even though the dispensation had been granted, kept putting off the wedding. Bear in mind that Catherine was some six years older than Henry, and this delay took up valuable time in which she could have produced an heir to the throne.

Finally, when her fiance ascended the throne as Henry VIII, the marriage took place. They lived together amicably enough for quite a number of years--close to twenty, in fact--but their children didn't seem to be very lucky. They had a son who survived for only a short time--from what I've read, it's likely he died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. All the other children, with one exception, either died shortly after birth or were miscarried. The exception was their daughter, Mary.

This was a problem for Henry, since no woman had ruled England in her own right since Queen Matilda in the 12th century, and her reign was marked by civil war against her cousin, Stephen of Blois, who also claimed the crown. It was a period of such turmoil and strife and suffering that one chronicler said of it that "Christ and all His saints slept." Naturally, as a man of his time, he was convinced that no woman could possibly ascend and keep the throne. A foreign alliance bothered him because he saw his country being swallowed up by either France (the traditional enemy) or the Holy Roman Empire (Mary's cousin Charles, son of Catherine's sister Joanna, was heir to the vast hapsburg dominions). If she married into the English nobility, he foresaw civil war.

About the time the French were negotiating a match between Mary and the Dauphin, one of their commissioners questioned the validity of the dispensation allowing Henry's and Catherine's marriage, and there's the crux of the matter.

According to Leviticus 20:21, "If a man marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonered his brother. They shall be childless." (NIV) Of course, there is another verse in Deutoronomy that covers what is known as levirate marriage, in which the brother of a man who died without heirs was to marry his brother's widow in order to preserve his brother's family line (their first son would have the status of being his brother's son and heir--for full details, see Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

Well, Henry got to thinking about this, and in the meantime met Anne Boleyn and went what we might call middle age crazy. He thought more and more about the verse in Leviticus and came to the conclusion that having only a daughter to succeed him was the same thing as being childless. He knew he could father a boy--he'd already done so with one of his mistresses, so he figured that if he had the right woman (not Catherine), he could beget a prince and all would be well in his world.

He initially probably only wanted Anne as his mistress, but she took a leaf from the book of Elizabeth Woodville, Henry's maternal grandmother, who, on being approached by Edward IV, told him roundly that she might not be good enough to be his wife, but was far too good to be his mistress. So Edward married her and they had a large family which included Henry's mothher and the Princes in the Tower.

Anne held Henry off for about six years, during which time he attempted to get the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine, tried to persuade Catherine to enter a convent (which would have dissolved their marriage and gotten Catherine brownie points for religious devotion), and finally sent his wife from court and didn't allow her to see their daughter (at this point, Mary was about eleven years old, and never saw her mother again). He also canvassed the universities of Europe for opinions on the validity of his marriage to Catherine, but the scholars seemed to be split down the middle, some holding that a Papal dispensation overrode Leviticus and others saying that not even the Pope's ruling could go against Holy Writ.

While all this was going on, Anne finally yielded and, when she became pregnant, the matter got quite urgent. They married in a hasty, secret ceremony (no one is sure just when) and, when the Archbishop of Canterbury died, quickly found the perfect candidate in Thomas Cranmer, a former chaplain tot he Boleyn family who had a strong leaning toward the beliefs of Martin Luther. The Pope, wanting to do something to soothe Henry, quickly agreed to Cranmer's promotion. Cranmer's first act was to declare the marriage with Catherine invalid and that with Anne lawful. In a fine exhibition of legal reasoning, since Henry had never REALLY been married to Catherine, he was perfectly free to marry whomsoever he chose.

When the Pope finally ruled in Catherine's favor, Henry declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England. Interestingly, he retained all the trappings of Catholicism in ritual and worship, even though he suppressed monasteries and nunneries, and ordered with no apparent compunction the deaths of such old friends and highly respected individuals as John Fisher and Thomas More.

Anne, as we know, had a daughter, who became Elizabeth I, but then history began to repeat itself. Anne had a very bad temper (which Henry might have tolerated) and--worse--failed to have a son (which Henry would not tolerate). Henry fell in love with one of her ladies, Jane Seymour, and, after Anne miscarried their third child (ironically, a son), began looking for ways to get rid of her, which he succeeded in doing by charges of adultery (spurious, by the belief of most historians) with six different
men--including her own brother. This led to Anne's execution (and that of her alleged paramours), but before that occurred, she was forced to sign a document invalidating HER marriage to Henry.

So now you know the tale in depth.

Answer 2

The reason was that Henry VIII wanted to marry another woman and the Pope did not agree to annul the previous marriage with Catalin of Aragon daughter of the all powerfull king of Spain.

So he split with the church and later on, his daughter and heiress Elisabeth I founded a new religion in which the King or Queen was the uttermost authority of it.

Those are the beginnings of the Anglican church.
Lust and the killing of thousands of catholic priests.

Henry VIII married more times than Elisabeth Taylor and also killed more.

Answer 3

Superficially it is true that he did it so that he could divorce his first wife, or declare their marriage invalid, and marry Anne Boleyn. Also rather superficially, it is true that he wanted to do this in order to have a male heir. Nobody has got much further than this yet, but we really must, to understand Henry properly.

Henry was intelligent and well-educated, and he knew the history of his country and its monarchy for several hundred years back. He could see, as could anybody who studied the same period now, that when there was an undisputed male heir, the country had peace and prosperity; and when there wasn't, it had its nobles infighting and conspiring to see who could take over, foreign interference in support of one side or the other, and near-civil war.

So Henry didn't split with Rome for Anne Boleyn's sake, or for his own self-importance, or for the riches of the monasteries, or merely for the sake of a male heir; he did it for the sake of England. He deserves a better judgment from us than he usually gets.

Answer 4

Henry VIII split with Rome to ensure his divorce of his wife would not affect his rule as well as remarriage. Also during the time church leaders were involved with politics so by him ruling the church and state he controlled both worlds. At the time Christianity had only been in Britian for may be 300 years and the people of the island did not think of themselves as catholics nor like the idea of answering their beliefs to some one in Rome. So popular support could be gained with the public.

Answer 5

Henry VIII was desperate for a male heir. Catherine of Aragon had only given him one living child--Mary Tudor and was beyond her child-bearing years.

Anne Boleyn was young, pretty, and not stupid enough to be just Henry's mistress. Since Henry needed a legitimate male heir to supplant Mary's rights, she convinced him marriage was necessary.

The Pope denied Henry's request for a divorce. Catherine of Aragorn had powerful relatives and powerful allies and it just wasn't a good idea for Rome to offend them. Henry's only choice was to break with Rome and create his own church.

Not even Henry coud justify divorcing Anne Boleyn when she gave him another daughter and then a stillborn son. He needed to get rid of her for the same reasons he married her so he allowed her to be framed for adultry and beheaded.

Jane Seymour did give Henry the son he needed, but died in the process. After that Henry was simply looking for comfort and companionship in a queen. His marriage to Anne of Cleves was a political one and swiftly annuled because they hated each other on sight. He adopted her as his sister to keep from offending her relatives.

Catherine Howard was just a stupid little twit who played inappropriate games as a child and didn't make the right friends at court. She had the wrong relatives, too. Got beheaded for bigamy.

Catherine Parr was Henry's final wife. She was a widow and not a young thing. She knew how to keep an old man comfortable and brought all the children (Mary, Elizabeth and Edward) under one roof. She was also instrumental in getting a clear act of succession. Even though Henry sentenced her to die twice (the second time on his deathbed), Catherine Parr survived him. She made the right friends at court.

Answer 6

It goes further than getting a divorce - he didn't like the Pope interfering in the politics of his realm. And once he had got rid of the Pope's influence, he got a huge amount of dosh by dissolving the monasteries - taking over their lands and treasure and selling them.

The person who thinks that Britain had only been Christian for 300 years at Henry's time is a bit out of date - the Romans adopted Christianity in the 4th century and it came to Britain very shortly after: so it was over a 1,000 years even at Henry's time.

Answer 7

His excuse was that Rome did not authorize his divorce from Catalina of Aragorn so he could marrry Anne Boleyn (part because he was infatuated with Anne, part because he was looking for a male heir to his throne).

He probably also was looking at expropiating all the land from monstaries and parishes (which he did) for benefit of his treasury.

He also was tired of Rome discussing English affairs and was probably looking for bypassing the nonesense of Rome of giving all lands west of the Azores to Spain (the Americas)

Answer 8

He needed a lot of "wives" before he could produce offspring.
Apart from that he envied the econmic power which had been developed mainly through the good work of the Cistercian monastic communities across Britian and Ireland. When he robbed their communities he set the English economy back by years and his daughter tried to set it right by developing a navy. Less said about her, the better.

Answer 9

Divorce

Answer 10

He wanted to divorce is first wife Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Bolyen. The church in Rome wouldn't grant him a divorce so he started his own church.

Answer 11

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