The King’s Great Matter

This week (May 23) in 1533, Thomas Cranmer, England?s Archbishop of Canterbury, ruled in a special court that the marriage of King Henry VIII to his wife Catherine of Aragon was “null and void.” Five days later Cranmer ruled that Henry’s subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn was "good and proper."

"The King’s Great Matter," as it was called, arose because in the 1520s Henry had no legitimate male heir to succeed him on the throne. He attributed this to the fact that his wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been married to his older brother, Arthur, whose untimely death necessitated that for diplomatic reasons Henry marry his brother’s widow.

Henry had willingly obliged, and the marriage had been good if not fruitful. Although by1520 Catherine had born Henry three children, only one - a daughter, Mary - survived infancy, and in England in the 1520s a woman ascending the throne was unthinkable. Also, by then Catherine?s childbearing years were over.

Henry decided that his and Catherine?s inability to produce a male child was God’s punishment for their violation of the Old Testament - specifically two passages in Leviticus - forbidding a man to marry his brother’s wife. Before their wedding, then-Pope Julius II had issued a papal bull BRUCE G. KAUFFMANN

Emailauthor BruceG. Kauffmann atbruce@ history lessons.net of dispensation, allowing Henry to marry Catherine, and in fact papal bulls for that purpose were not uncommon at that time.

But Henry still believed his marriage to Catherine violated God’s moral law, which was a sin no Papal bull could erase. Henry decided that the current Pope, Clement VII, needed to grant him an annulment of his marriage to Catherine.

It is true that by the mid-1520s Henry had become infatuated with the comely, Anne Boleyn, and his desire to marry her - and produce a male heir - was a strong motivation in wanting to rid himself of Catherine. But most historians believe Henry feared his marriage to Catherine violated God’s law, and therefore not only threatened his line of succession but also his mortal soul. That explains why Henry resisted Pope Clement VII’s preference that Henry quietly divorce Catherine and put the matter to rest. To Henry a divorce was a soul-staining impediment to his entrance into Heaven. He wanted the Pope to annul his marriage.

It would turn out that neither was possible, because Catherine?s nephew, Spain’s King Charles V, was also Holy Roman Emperor, and therefore had a powerful sway over Pope Clement, and Charles supported his aunt’s resistance to ending the marriage.

This ultimately led to Henry’s break with the Church of Rome, the establishment of the Anglican religion in England with him as the church’s leader, and his marriage - fully sanctioned by his Anglican Church - to Anne Boleyn.