The Excommunication of Henry VIII
Henry VIII’s break with Rome was a watershed moment for England and for Christendom. Did the papacy have itself to blame?
Pope Paul III did not mince his words. In the bull of excommunication promulgated on 17 December 1538, he reviled Henry VIII as a tyrant who had ‘transformed himself into a beast’. This was a king, the pope explained, who ‘daily more and more hardened himself in cruelty and rashness’ and who had now ‘sunk so low in wickedness as to preclude all hope of his restoration’. Paul proclaimed Henry a diseased member of the community of the faithful that needed to be cut off to protect the rest from contagion. Unfit to partake in the sacraments of the Church, Henry was likewise unworthy of the kingdom of England. Invoking at once Rome’s spiritual and temporal power, the pope duly absolved Henry’s subjects from allegiance to him and called on Christian princes to wage a crusade against England and topple the reprobate.
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