Friday, November 29, 2024

Henry VIII and the Politics of Divorce: It's Complicated.

 

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To even begin to understand the dilemma Henry VIII faced trying to get a dispensation from the Pope to divorce his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, we must first give a brief overview of matters in Italy between the Battle of Pavia (1525) and Henry's decision to try to force the Pope's hand, in 1529, which we have outlined in the previous piece.

To simplify greatly, France felt it must reduce the power of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, by reducing his power over Italy. The competition between the two then greatest European powers had already resulted in every kind of deviousness between and within the two realms.

The first phase of the conflict ended with the Imperial military victory at Pavia. The french King Francis I was captured and held prisoner for about a year. Once free he allied himself with a league of Italian states newly formed by Pope Clement VII in hopes to prevent Charles taking Italy ever more firmly under his control. Thus reneging on the conditions of his release (a.k.a. The Treaty of Madrid), and regardless that his sons were being held hostage in order to assure he would not, Francis assembled new armies in Italy.

The resulting maneuver and combat bordered on being a free-for-all. Allies failed to fulfill their promises. On those occassions when they did so, they failed to coordinate their maneuvers thus losing precious time. From time to time it was difficult to be sure who was on whose side. The troops on all sides went unpaid for extended periods of time and sacked what towns and cities were at hand, in lieu of payment, without concern for whose territory they were, friend or foe.

Amidst all of this the English Cardinal Wolsey was putting out feelers for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. Charles owed Henry more than a few major favors but would not agree to negotiate Catherine's divorce. Finally, Henry was declared “Protector” of the Italian League in hopes of bringing material support from England. He did not take the bait but rather sought to improve his negotiating position with both Emperor and Pope — largely without success.

At last Rome itself was pillaged, on May 6, 1527, by Imperial soldiers long unpaid. The Duke of Bourbon, Commanding General of the Imperial armies, was shot dead early on, in the initial assault, saving his reputation from any accusations of having ordered the sack of Christianity's holiest city and physically threatening Christ's representative on earth.

The Borgho was soon gained, and whilst the Pope was flying to the castle, close to the city walls, the Spaniards fired their hackbuts at him, and at those of his suite. So narrow was the Pope's escape that had he tarried for three " creeds " more he would have been taken prisoner within his own palace. For one hour after this time the Spaniards went on slaying every man they came across in the Borgho, except a few who were fortunate enough to fly to the castle. Between six and eight thousand men were thus slaughtered on the occasion, whilst the Imperialists lost only about 100,...

[T]he plundering lasted nine or ten [days], during which the atrocities perpetrated by our soldiers have been unexampled, people of all nationalities being indiscriminately put to the sword or subjected to the most atrocious tortures to make them confess where their money and valuables, if they had any, were concealed.

*

The Papal Palace completely gutted, and in many places burnt; its beautiful rooms turned into stables owing to the great number of horsemen now quartered in it.1

The Pope and a few lucky cardinals escaped into the Castel Sant Angelo. The soldiers found enough booty to satisfy their appetites elsewhere in the city and left the citadel unmolested. It would be the de facto prison of the Pope for some six months to come.

While the Emperor and Pope were coming to terms, Henry was already putting out feelers in the matter of the divorce. He had yet to produce a male heir, he was not getting any younger and his queen was getting ever more plump-ish. A slender young courtier named Anne Boleyn had returned from the French court (then the finest of English finishing schools). She was made a lady-in-waiting to the queen who soon realized that they were in competition for the king's affections and almost as soon realized that the king could only satisfy his desires at the cost of replacing her as queen.

The French and the Italian League were no match for the Emperor's Spanish and mercenary troops. A huge number of German troops were due to arrive to reinforce the empire's forces. The League was hopelessly Italian in the worst sense of the word. They simply could not stop getting in each other's way when they weren't leaving each other in the lurch.

The French were being encouraged by their old Venetian allies to send reinforcements themselves. They were on the verge of being resoundingly beaten twice in a decade.

The Pope's ransom was enormous, reducing the his secular power substantially and obligating him to neutrality in further engagements between the Empire and the League. Nevertheless, His Holiness did what he could on the sly to help the efforts of his old allies.

Henry found himself asking for a divorce from a Pope in the power of his wife's nephew. The Pope would only equivocate in order to prevent angering that nephew while trying to maneuver the English king into providing some amount of counter-leverage that might turn the tide against that nephew.

These, then, were the conditions under which Henry VIII was petitioning the Pope for a divorce from his queen.



1 Calendar Of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers... Spain (1877). III.2.195-6.




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