Scarica The Renaissance- The Tudors and the raise of Protestantism e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The Renaissance: The Tudors and the raise of Protestantism Key points - The period - The Tudors and the raise of Protestantism - Henry VII - The raise of Protestantism The period Let’s start with this timeline that shows the most important events of the period. The Renaissance period goes from 1485-1660, but today we stop at 1588. So, let’s see the main events of the period. The Tudors and the raise of Protestantism The Tudor era witnessed the most sweeping religious changes in England since the arrival of Christianity, which affected every aspect of national life. The Reformation eventually transformed an entirely Catholic nation into a predominantly Protestant one. - The Old order Before Henry VIII’s break with the papacy in the 1530s, the Roman Catholic Church was all powerful in England. Only a small, persecuted minority questioned its doctrines. The early years of Henry’s reign also saw traditional religious practices – such as pilgrimages, saints’ holidays and religious plays – enthusiastically observed, together with the continued building and embellishment of churches that had been a major feature of the reign of his father, Henry VII. Henry VII When the Wars of the Roses ended in 1485, Henry VII (1485-1509) became the first Tudor King of England. He created a new family emblem, the Tudor rose, by combining the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York. The symbol can still be seen in churches, castles and palaces across England. Henry VII introduced high taxes and banned nobles from raising their own armies. However, he had to face several Yorkist plots against him, often helped by the Kings of Scotland or the Irish. In 1496 he sponsored John Cabot to explore eastern America and planted the Tudor flag in Nova Scotia. During his reign Erasmus of Rotterdam brought the Humanism of the Renaissance to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, while the scholar Sir Thomas More, the author of Utopia (1516), moved England closer to North-European thought and the origins of Protestantism. Henry VII's foreign policy was very cautious. He married his son and heir to the Aragonese heiress Catherine and two of his daughters equally well to the Kings of France and Scotland. When he died in 1509, he left England economically stable and at peace with France and Scotland. The raise of Protestantism But when Henry declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England in 1533, following the Pope’s refusal to sanction his divorce from Katherine of Aragon, his decision initiated the Reformation of English religion. With it came the sweeping away of institutions that symbolised medieval Catholicism – and monasteries became the main focus of the king’s attack. The monastic impulse was long past its peak: excepting those run by stricter orders like the Carthusians, monasteries had become property-owning corporations – some very rich – with few inhabitants. Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, which had about 650 monks at its peak, had only about 20 by the 1530s; massive Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk, had only ten. Some smaller abbeys had already closed because of a lack of recruits when Henry VIII forcibly suppressed all monasteries between 1536 and 1540. - Reaction and acceleration The suppression of the monasteries was largely accepted in the South, especially by those who acquired monastic lands. But in parts of the north it provoked the 1536–37 pilgrimage of grace, the largest peacetime revolt in English history. But although henry had rejected papal authority, he remained wedded to catholic doctrine, and burned protestant ‘heretics’. Real religious change only began to speed up under the radically protestant Edward VI (r.1547–53), before being reversed when the catholic Mary I (r.1553–8) tried to restore the old order, burning nearly 300 protestants in the process. - The church transformed For ordinary worshippers, the rapid changes to parish churches between 1538 and 1558 must have been bewildering. Shrines, images of saints and other ‘popish’ trappings were destroyed, removed or (as was the case with the medieval paintings at Binham Priory, Norfolk) whitewashed over. Under Mary, these were renewed or replaced by royal command, only to be removed again when the Protestant Elizabeth I succeeded in 1558. The Reformation similarly resulted in striking changes to religious practice – and in time, belief. The Bible was now accessible to all literate people in English translations. Instead of being spectators at Latin Masses, congregations became participants in English- speaking services that focused on sermon-preaching, Bible readings and set forms of prayer. From 1549 these were formalised in the hugely influential Book of Common Prayer. - The Elizabethan settlement
