The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (134 page)

Some authorities did act more quickly. Bonfires of Luther’s works were lit at Louvain on 8 October 1520 and at Cologne on 12 November. On the other hand, it was on 15 April, only a month before Wolsey formally declared his hand, that in France the Sorbonne condemned them, and it was at about the same time that action was taken in Venice and Naples.
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Thus, if Wolsey was dilatory, he was in good company, but perhaps company that, like he himself, was concerned only to make diplomatic signals? It seems unlikely, and becomes even more so when it is realized that such responses as the lighting of bonfires required a good deal of preliminary work. This made them unsuitable instruments for conducting diplomacy, for by the time the bonfires had been lit, the situation was likely to have changed. Unfortunately it is difficult to establish precisely when Wolsey began the preparations for 12 May 1521. It rather looks as if Tunstall’s letter to him of 21 January provides the
terminus a quo
. Writing from the battleground of Worms, where on 18 April Luther had defied his emperor and pope by refusing to retract one jot of his teachings, Tunstall begged Wolsey to summon ‘the printers and booksellers and give them straight charge that they bring none of his [Luther’s] books into England nor that they translate none of them into English, lest thereby might ensue great trouble to the realm and Church of England, as is now here’.
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It does not look as if any steps had yet been taken in England, though as Tunstall had been out of the country since the previous September it could be that he was out of date.
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However, by the end of February rumours were circulating that Henry himself
was contemplating a work against the heresiarch,
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and seven months later his defence of the seven sacraments, the
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martin Lutherum
was presented to the pope. On 16 March Leo x thanked Wolsey for forbidding the importation of Lutheran works, which puts the ban in late February at the latest, but also specifically suggested a burning of Luther’s works.
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Wolsey’s reaction was to wonder whether he possessed sufficient powers to do this, and though he was informed that his doubts were groundless, it looks as if further powers were sent.
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And whether groundless or not, there is no real reason to believe that his doubts were not genuine. Legal niceties were always a major concern, and the more important the matter, the more important it was to get them right.
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Moreover, even before the pope had written, preparations for some considerable response to the new heresy were under way. On 3 April Warham thanked Wolsey for sending various Lutheran and Lollard works, and promised to consult with him about them on his return to London on the 11th.
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On the 16th Henry was reported to be anxious to meet with theologians, already summoned to a conference to consider the orthodoxy of Luther’s works, so as to be able to discuss his own reply to Luther.
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On the 21st Oxford appointed four of their leading theologians to attend the conference, and Cambridge, at presumably about the same time, did likewise.
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The date it took place and precisely who attended it has proved difficult to establish, but for the moment the most relevant point is that the conference was being planned at least a month before the bonfire took place which makes it difficult to attach the diplomatic significance to the episode that some have wanted.

What Wolsey is supposed to have intended in lighting a bonfire was to signal to the emperor and pope that in the armed conflict that had just broken out in Europe he was on their side. Given the large number of bonfires that were being lit at this time, it might be thought that amidst so much smoke any particular signal would be hard to pick up. Moreover, in giving such a signal it is important to know what the recipient wants. Charles v’s condemnation of Luther was not given until 19 April. It was not a foregone conclusion, so for Wolsey to have started upon elaborate arrangements for a message that the emperor might have found unwelcome would surely have been a curious way of conducting foreign policy. Of course, there was no doubting that a bonfire would please the pope, but pleasing the pope was never a major priority of Wolsey’s foreign policy. Moreover, in April 1521 it could not have been clear that in pleasing the pope he would have been pleasing the emperor, because it was not until 28 May that the two came to their unexpected agreement.
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But above all even by 12 May England was still trying to act the honest broker between the emperor and Francis
I
, and it was not until a month later that she made
any significant move in the direction of the emperor.
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Thus, if by any any chance Charles saw the burning as a friendly signal, he would have been reading far too much into it!

The notion that the ceremonies of 12 May 1521 were some kind of diplomatic signal has virtually nothing to commend it, and need not have been considered at all were it not indicative of just how pervasive has been the notion that Wolsey was soft on heresy. In fact diplomatic considerations played no part in the moves to condemn Luther. The reason why some states acted more quickly than others is that the papal condemnation of Luther in June 1520 had been hasty and ill-prepared, and that Luther had been given sixty days to admit his errors. As it happened, he did no such thing, but instead sat down to write three of his most influential works. The
Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation
appeared in August.
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church
, the work that Henry set out to refute, followed a month later and finally in November appeared
The Liberty of a Christian Man
. It took this marvellous riposte for the extent to which he had moved into direct conflict with the Catholic Church and the seriousness of the threat that he posed to be widely appreciated. For those who did not read such works for themselves, it might have taken Luther’s public burning of the papal condemnation on 10 December and the coming into effect, on 3 January, of the sentence of excommunication against him to make the position absolutely clear and by the following month Henry was planning his counter-attack.

In the light of this, it is difficult to argue that the English response to Luther was dilatory or unimpressive. One estimate puts the number of spectators at the ceremony as high as thirty thousand, but if this seems incredible – it would have meant that about half the population of London had turned up – the attendance was certainly good.
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Wolsey, processing under a canopy ‘as if’, according to the Venetian ambassador, ‘the pope in person had arrived’, was much in evidence, but then as cardinal and papal legate so he should have been. However, the centrepiece was a two hour sermon by John Fisher in which, lamenting ‘this most pernicious tempest of heresy that Martin Luther hath now stirred’, he sternly warned his audience of the terrible fate that would befall all those who would ‘give faith to Martin Luther, or any such heretic, rather than to Christ Jesu and unto the spirit of truth’.
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Fisher’s sermon was quickly published, and instructions were sent out to the bishops to promulgate in their dioceses the forty-two errors of Luther identified by the English theologians, while a fifteen-day amnesty was to be proclaimed to allow everyone time to hand in heretical literature without suffering any penalty.
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The English Church had been put on a red alert for the forthcoming battle with the Lutherans, although it is far from clear that in 1521 there were any Lutherans in England with whom to fight!

The one notable absentee on 12 May was the king – an enforced absence because of illness. And in a sense he was very much present, for throughout the proceedings Wolsey clutched in his hands the as yet unfinished manuscript of the
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum
, a work which Fisher in his sermon declared would deliver them all ‘from the slanderous mouth and cruelty that Martin Luther hath set upon them’.
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There has been a tendency to be dismissive of Henry’s theological enterprise, though this has not prevented doubts being raised, both at the time and since, about its authorship, on the grounds that the work was too good to have been written by him.
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Any such doubts should be rejected. Letters written by his secretary, Richard Pace, provide clear evidence of Henry’s deep involvement in the project,
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while the interest in and grasp of theological matters that he showed throughout his life make it plain that he was quite capable of writing such a work.
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The doubts arise because of the assistance he received – from More and Fisher, from the Oxford and Cambridge theologians summoned to give their judgement on Luther, and perhaps even from Wolsey
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– but then any major polemical work by a reigning monarch could never have been a purely private matter. Far too much was at stake. Indeed, it needs to be stressed that the writing of the
Assertio
gave the fight against Luther a priority in government circles that could not be ignored by any of his councillors, whatever their private views. There was the kind of editorial work that many books require; and Thomas More insisted, when he described himself as ‘only a sorter out and placer of the principal matters’, that this was the only part he had ever played in the
Assertio
.
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There was what would now be called research assistance, presumably from the university theologians – but many much more professional writers than Henry have made use of such help. Then there were the publishing aspects of the book, to do with production and distribution. These included the preparation of the beautifully illuminated manuscript copy for Leo x presented to him by the English ambassador in Rome, John Clerk, on 2 October 1521 at a consistory specially summoned for the purpose. Apparently the ceremony was not quite as spectacular as Clerk would have wished, though his disgruntlement might have been the result of having to deliver the book, and an oration, while on his knees! Still, Leo was full of praise for Henry, declaring that in writing the book he had ‘rendered himself no less admirable to the whole world by the eloquence of his style than by his great wisdom’.
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He also conferred upon Henry the much coveted title of Defender of the Faith, thereby enabling him to keep company on equal terms with the Most Christian king of France and the Catholic king of Spain.
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One thing that Leo very much approved of was the decision to give the book as wide a circulation as possible. The princes of Europe were to receive special copies, and in addition at least three editions were produced in 1522 and two more the following year.
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Two German editions were prepared by leading Catholic polemicists, Thomas Murner and Jerome Emser.
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All this testifies to the work’s
popularity, but this should come as no surprise, for the entry of a reigning monarch into the polemical lists was bound to cause a stir. It was also bound to generate a great deal of anxiety among the monarch’s councillors, especially since it was almost inevitable that Luther would reply, as sure enough he did. In his
Antwort deutsch
of August 1522 – a Latin version,
Contra Henricum
, appeared the following month – he made no concessions to royal authorship, of which anyway he chose to be sceptical. According to him, Henry’s work only proved the old adage that there were no greater fools than kings and princes – and Henry was also an ass, a pig, a drunkard, a dreamer, a mad and most ignorant monster, and much else besides!
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Such a reply would have to be answered, though in what manner would require a good deal of thought. For the king of England to get involved in a protracted slanging match with a heretical ex-monk and university lecturer would have been altogether too undignified. Moreover, it so happened that the ex-monk in question was one of the most brilliant polemicists that Europe had ever seen, and it would not have done at all for the king to be worsted in a theological and literary battle. The solution was to call in Sir Thomas More, as the most distinguished writer, and John Fisher, as the most distinguished theologian in England, to write the replies. Henry could then confine himself to composing a dignified letter to the two princes of Saxony, the Elector Frederick and Duke George, calling upon them to eradicate the poison of Lutheranism in their territories before it got out of hand. He also took the opportunity to inform them, and the rest of Europe, that he had no intention of personally answering what he referred to as the ravings of a madman, not least because there was nothing in Luther’s reply that had not been sufficiently dealt with in the royal book.
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The complex story of More’s and Fisher’s replies to Luther need not delay us long.
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More was to write two versions of his
Responsio ad Lutherum
, the first appearing early in 1523 under the pseudonym Ferdinand Baravellus, the second, written in the autumn but probably not appearing until early in 1524, under the better known pseudonym, William Ross. Fisher’s
Defensio regie assertionis contra Babylonicam captivitatem
did not appear until June 1525, long after his
Assertionis Lutheranae confutatio
, a refutation of Luther’s
Assertio omnium articulorum
of early 1521, his defence against the papal condemnation of his works. As such, Fisher’s work had nothing directly to do with the government’s response to Luther’s attack on Henry, but the preface contained much praise of Henry’s
Assertio
, and its publication in January 1523 could hardly have been better timed. It also happened to be probably the most important defence of the Catholic faith to appear anywhere at this time. It was not, however, the only one to be written in England, for the good reason that the government was very anxious to encourage such works. Not all the details of these have survived. Catholic apologetics were not likely to last long in Protestant England but they included work by Edward Powell, a leading Oxford theologian and one of those chosen by the university in April 1521 to consider Luther’s teachings, and Alphonso de Villa Sancta, one of Catherine of Aragon’s
confessors.
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