History test Royal power and the Reformation in England. The struggle for dominance on the seas Grade 7 with answers. The test is presented in two versions, each with 5 tasks.

Option 1

1.

The Reformation in England was carried out "from above" - ​​by the will of the king.

1) true
2) wrong

2. The head of the Anglican Church is

1) Archbishop of Canterbury
2) King of England
3) Pope

3. Match the names of rulers with events related to their reign.

Rulers

A) Henry VIII
B) Elizabeth I
B) Mary Tudor

Events

1) the death of the "Invincible Armada"
2) an attempt at a counter-reformation
3) closing of monasteries

4.

Puritans, Calvinists

1) Puritans denied the teachings of J. Calvin
2) Puritans were followers of Calvinism
3) Calvinists were hostile to the Puritans

5.

At the end of the XVI century. England became a strong maritime power. The Reformation helped to strengthen the royal power. Elizabeth I felt so strong that she never convened Parliament.

1) in fact, Elizabeth repeatedly convened Parliament
2) in fact, the Reformation weakened the royal power
3) in fact, England was not able to achieve dominance on the seas

Option 2

1. Is the following statement true?

The Anglican Church retained many vestiges of Catholicism.

1) true
2) wrong

2. In 1588, the "Invincible Armada" sailed to the shores of England. She

1) defeated the English fleet under the command of F. Drake
2) fell into a storm and was smashed against the rocks
3) was defeated by the English squadron, commanded by Queen Elizabeth I herself

3. Establish a correspondence between the names of rulers and events, phenomena related to their reign.

Rulers

A) Elizabeth I
B) Mary Tudor
B) Henry VIII

Events, phenomena

1) executions of English Protestants
2) the beginning of the English Reformation
3) the rise of English absolutism

Write the chosen numbers under the corresponding letters.

4. Establish connections between concepts.

Puritans, Anglican Church

1) Puritans were faithful to the teachings of the Anglican Church
2) the Puritans denied many of the institutions of the Anglican Church
3) the Anglican Church saw the Puritans as its allies

5. Read the text and find the error in the description.

By the end of the XVI century. England never became a mighty maritime power. But she managed to achieve significant success in the economy. The Reformation strengthened the royal power, absolutism was established in the country.

1) in fact, England became a strong maritime power
2) in fact, absolutism did not develop in England
3) in fact, successes in foreign policy were combined with an economic crisis

Answers to the history test Royal power and the Reformation in England. Fight for supremacy on the seas Grade 7
Option 1
1-1
2-2
3-312
4-2
5-1
Option 2
1-1
2-2
3-312
4-2
5-1

A country known for its reformist tendencies. Back in the 14th century, the Bible was translated into English by John Wycliffe, and his followers - the Lollards - secretly continued to exist on the island and preach. In 1525, William Tyndale published his translation of the New Testament, which allowed many who wished to familiarize themselves with the text of the Bible. However, the decisive role in the Reformation in England was to be played by another person. The Reformation in England can be called the "Reformation from above" in the full sense, since the English King Henry VIII became its head.

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  This contributed to the enmity between his young contemporaries and the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. While Henry listened to Wolsey, he adhered to Catholicism and would not have done anything against it: in 1521 he defended the Catholic Church against accusations of heresy by Martin Luther. He did this in a book written, probably with considerable assistance from Thomas More, under the title In Defense of the Seven Sacraments, for which he received from Pope Leo X the title "Defender of the Faith" ( Fidei defensor). (English and British monarchs have retained the title to the present day, even after the Anglican Church broke away from Catholicism, in part because the title was awarded again after the split, this time by Parliament.) Among Wolsey's enemies at court were those who were influenced Lutheran ideas, including the attractive and charismatic Anne Boleyn.

  Anne was raised in France by Queen Claude and arrived at the English court in 1522 as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine. By the end of the 1520s, Henry decided that his marriage to Catherine should be annulled. All sons born died in infancy, and Henry wanted to have a son to continue the Tudor dynasty.

  Henry announced that no male heir was born because the marriage was "dark in the sight of God". Catherine was the wife of his late brother, and therefore Henry's marriage to her was contrary to biblical teachings (Lev. 20:21); before the wedding, it was necessary to obtain permission from Julius II. Henry claimed that this was not done and therefore the marriage was never valid. In 1527, Henry asked Clement VII to annul the marriage, but the pope refused. Clement was under the influence of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, whose troops sacked Rome at the beginning of the same year and held the Pope captive for some time.

  The combination of these circumstances and his infatuation with Anne Boleyn fueled his desire to get rid of the then Queen. In 1529, Chancellor Wolsey was accused of infringing on the power of the king and his government (recognizing the power of the pope above the power of the Crown) and died in November 1530 on his way to London, where he was traveling to answer charges of treason. Thus Henry was exposed to the opposing influences of the queen's supporters and those who stood for renunciation of allegiance to Rome, and for whom an annulment was a good opportunity.

  Debate in Parliament

  Cromwell was a lawyer and a Protestant MP who understood how Parliament could be used to increase royal power, which was what Henry wanted, and to spread Protestant beliefs and practices, which was what Cromwell and his friends wanted. One of his closest friends was Thomas Cranmer, the future archbishop.

  On the issue of cancellation, no progress seemed possible. The Pope feared Charles V more than Henry. Anne and Cromwell and their allies wanted to simply ignore the pope, but in October 1520 a meeting of clergy and lawyers advised that Parliament could not empower the archbishop to act against the pope's ban. Then Henry decided to intimidate the priests.

  Actions of the king against the English clergy

  Left without Wolsey, Henry VIII, in order to obtain consent to the annulment, finally decided to accuse the entire English clergy of encroaching on royal power. A law passed in 1392 that forbade submission to the authority of the Pope or other foreign rulers had previously been used in legal proceedings against individuals. Now Henry, having first blamed Catherine's supporters, Bishops John Fisher, Nicholas West and Henry Standish, and Archdeacon Adam Travers of Exeter, decided to act against the entire clergy. Henry demanded that the church pay £100,000 for forgiveness. The clergy wanted to pay in installments over five years. Heinrich refused. The church assembly responded by refusing to pay at all and required Heinrich to provide certain guarantees before they would give him the money. Henry refused to comply with these conditions. He only agreed to a five-year payment term and the following terms:

  1. The clergy recognize Henry as "the only protector and supreme head of the church and clergy of England"
  2. The king has spiritual jurisdiction
  3. The privileges of the church will be preserved only if they do not detract from the royal prerogative and laws.
  4. The king will pardon the church for encroachment on power
  5. The laity are also pardoned.

  Further legislative acts

  Reformation in England under subsequent rulers

  After the death of Henry, his son Edward VI, who was only nine years old, ascended the throne. The Duke of Somerset, who had a clear inclination towards Protestantism, became regent under him. In 1547, communion of parishioners "under both kinds" began. In 1549 priests were allowed to marry. In 1549, the Book of Common Prayer was introduced, containing texts exclusively in English language. This book, with minor changes, is still used in the Church England. In worship, special attention was paid to reading the Bible.

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  12. REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

  12. REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

  The immediate cause for the beginning of the Reformation in England was the refusal of the Pope to allow Henry VIII to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. And the reason for this was that she was the aunt of the German emperor Charles V. Since the pope did not want to aggravate relations with him at that moment, it is quite natural that he rejected the request of the English king. In response to the refusal of Pope Henry VIII issued in 1534 an act of supremacy (which is translated from Latin means "supremacy"). The king was declared the head of the English church, as a result of which all Catholic dogmas and rites were preserved, but the king took the place of the pope. The episcopate became the backbone of the absolute monarchy. In 1536 and 1539 monasteries were closed and monastic property was confiscated: buildings, gold and silver utensils and, most importantly, vast monastic lands.

  Sheep breeding and cloth production have long been the main occupations of the British and important source income of the royal treasury. The English called the cloth "the most precious product of the kingdom." Wool prices have been on the rise. Sheep grazing required extensive pastures. Therefore, landowners seized communal wastelands and pastures, forbade peasants to graze cattle there. Dissatisfied with this, they tried in various ways to take away the allotments from the peasants: they drove the peasants from the land by force, destroyed their houses, demolished entire villages. The forcible removal of peasants from the land was called fencing.

  Having seized peasant lands, the nobles bred huge herds of sheep on them. To cultivate the fields and care for livestock, they hired agricultural workers - farm laborers. The "new nobles" abandoned their knightly armor and sat down at the account books. Some of them started weaving, leather and other enterprises. Tens of thousands of people, driven from the earth, joined the ranks of vagabonds and beggars. The government issued cruel laws against them, providing for whipping, branding with a red-hot iron, and even the death penalty as punishment. Most of these people joined the ranks of the reform movement in England.

  England achieved great success during the reign of the smart, cautious, well-educated Elizabeth I. Under her, the English church, independent of Rome, finally took shape, which was called the Anglican. In 1559, when she ascended the throne, the organizational structure of the Church of England was established in forms that have largely survived to this day. During these 30 years, many changes have taken place, but the English have always been of the opinion that their church is not new, but the same church that has existed in England for more than a thousand years; its reform was carried out to return to the model of the church presented in the New Testament. In support of this continuity, the English refer to their doctrine, priesthood and liturgy.

  But, despite this, nevertheless, as a result of the reformation movement in England, a number of serious changes were made. The parishioners received the Bible in English, and the clergy began to teach them to treat it as the highest authority in matters of faith and life. The service was now conducted in the local language. The Church of England insisted on the independence of national churches in internal affairs, on the right of churches to act at their own discretion in relation to rites and liturgical practice. The pope's jurisdictional claim to English territory was rejected. Nevertheless, because of the dual nature of its Reformation, the Church of England claims to be both Catholic and Protestant.

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  1533 Reformation in England King Henry VIII became the initiator of the Reformation on the island. The reason for the sharp turn of the eccentric king - at first the accuser of Luther and the defender of the Catholic faith - to the Reformation was very prosaic - he wanted to divorce

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  Reformation in Livonia Luther's teaching won in Livonia as well. It found support among the German colonists, as it became the catalyst for long-standing hostility between the Catholic bishops and the order. We remember that Bishop Albert was forced to found

  Rebellion against the established authority of the Catholic Church, that is, against the papacy and hierarchy, which is one of the essential aspects of the Reformation, has long been no news in England. It began four centuries before the Reformation and was found, as we have seen, in complaints, and in requests, and in legislative definitions, and in denunciations of literature, and even in unauthorized manifestations of popular reprisals. But, judging by these phenomena, the uprising had so far had an exclusively secular, political and economic character. England rebels here against the pope; but she looks at him during her rebellion only as a foreign sovereign, not at all thinking of rejecting his spiritual authority as the head of the Catholic Church, the successor of St. Peter and Christ's vicar on earth. She rebels against the clergy; but he sees in him only one of the estates, subjects of the state, having no intention at all of denying his sacred character as a minister of the church and a performer of the sacraments. What arouses her displeasure? Why is she rising? Is it because the abuses accumulated in the Catholic Church tempt her? Was it because her religious feeling was dissatisfied? Not at all. The phenomena we have considered do not give the researcher any right to assume anything of the kind. There is almost no mention of them. England is only indignant at the fact that a foreign pope is assuming more royal power in this country; that he sucks the juice out of the state and depletes it by means of his enormous exactions, that he gives foreigners a clear advantage over natural Englishmen in being appointed to lucrative positions, etc. England is not pleased with her clergy because they oppress her with their court, their privileges, with their wealth, etc. What is the ultimate goal of this uprising? Is it religious reform? Is the church cleansed of the abuses that distort it? Not at all. The goal is to weaken the oppression of the church, which seems heavy, and, if possible, completely crush its political and economic predominance, take away its estates and subordinate its servants to secular state power. Concern for public welfare, for national interests, is constantly put forward as the highest justification for an uprising. It was, so to speak, political and economic Protestantism. But even with this character, the revolt against the papacy and the hierarchy could not, of course, remain without consequences in the religious sphere. Whatever the motives and goals that guided it, in any case it was directed against the church and its ministers; it gradually accustomed the people, accustomed before unconditionally to bow before the dictates of ecclesiastical authority, to treat these decrees critically, sometimes to refuse obedience to them, to rise up and fight against them. True, this struggle had in mind questions that did not concern religion and were primarily of political significance; but it was nevertheless waged against the pope and the clergy. Is it possible to cut the nature of a person into two, so that at the same time he has two completely opposite feelings towards the same person or institution? It is impossible that the people of England should at the same time regard the pope and the clergy with unconditional trust and reverent respect as their spiritual leaders, and with contempt and hatred as enemies of their political and economic welfare. Such feelings are poorly reconciled with each other, and if one of them increases, the other inevitably decreases. That is exactly what should have happened in this case. The stronger was political struggle against the pope and the clergy, the more decisively the popular discontent was against them, the more, of course, the authority of the church in general suffered. Nobody cared about the support and preservation of this authority; no one thought to separate politics from religion, but on the contrary, the clergy themselves tried to give the struggle a religious character, to cover up their worldly rights and benefits with the sacred name of religion and the church. After this, it was all the more difficult to expect that the political and economic hostility of England against the pope and the clergy did not cause more or less significant damage in the religious sphere. We do not yet see the beginnings of religious-ecclesiastical Protestantism here, but if they appeared, then, of course, they would find a very considerable support for themselves in political-economic Protestantism. They were not slow to show up.

  The worldly direction of the pope and the clergy; their constant pursuit of material gain; their pride and lust for power, their moral licentiousness - all this, we have seen, has long been noticed and appreciated by the estates of England, although this assessment was made only from the point of view of public welfare. It was impossible, of course, to expect that these outrageous phenomena would not finally be paid attention from the religious point of view. Regardless of any policy, a religious person, delving into the study of the teachings of the Catholic Church, and comparing the results of his study with the existing practice of the Church, inevitably had to sooner or later, to a greater or lesser extent, come across some points on questions and bewilderment. And it was all the more difficult to avoid these questions because some of them, thanks to the politico-economic opposition against the church, were persistently put on the queue by life itself. But it was enough to dwell on these questions in order to bring to light what we call the beginnings of religious-church Protestantism, i.e., to begin complaints and objections against the existing order in the church, not from the point of view of public welfare, but in the name of the interests of religion.

  In October 1231, the Canon of Lincoln, Robert Grosstat, lay ill in bed and meditated on the present state of the Catholic Church. He was in no way able to resolve the deep contradiction between the Christian concept of the high ministry of the pastor of the church and the sad reality of Catholicism, where plurality and non-residence prevailed. He himself owned several beneficiaries and now his conscience tormented him for this. Upon recovery, he turns with his bewilderment to the pope and, not having received peace from him, ends up renouncing all his benefices, leaving behind him only one, in order to be a true shepherd in it. This trifle from the biography of the English prelate seems to us characteristic enough to show that some educated people England, still in the thirteenth century, sometimes fell into discord with the existing orders of the Catholic Church, apart from any considerations of politics, solely by virtue of their personal reflection on the subjects of religion. A few years later, Grosstat became Bishop of Lincoln and devoted all his subsequent activity to the fight against church abuses, boldly entering into a collision even with the apostolic see itself. In 1250, he went to Lyon and handed there to Pope Innocent IV his note, in which he expressed his views on the current state of the Catholic Church with complete frankness. For our salvation, Grosstat said here, the son of God descended to earth. Through the labors of His apostles and the shepherds appointed by them, the kingdom of God was established and spread in the world; but now this kingdom, the church of Christ, is more and more diminished and restricted. Unbelief dominates in most of the universe, and as for Christianity, a significant part of it falls into schism. Heresy and mortal sins nest in a small remnant, so that in the vineyard of the Lord there is almost no fruit. Where is the reason for such a bleak situation, such a decline of the church? The reason is that the church is filled with bad shepherds who are driving away the flock of Christ, laying waste to His vineyard and defiling the land. And this is not at all surprising, for it is not the preaching of the life-giving word that comes from them, but only arrogance, covetousness and debauchery. By their godless course of action, they spread a deadly darkness in the world rather than being its lamps. Where do such shepherds come from? Their source is the Roman Curia, which not only does not care about the destruction of evil, but itself strengthens it with its provisions, dispensations, etc. It thinks only of giving people an advantageous provision, thereby leaving thousands of souls to eternal perdition, for shepherds appointed by her turn out to be only mercenaries. Grosstet appeals to the papal throne with a plea that he take care, first of all, of his own purification and correction, and mainly of the destruction of that venality that, in view of everyone, dominates the papal curia. Not impudence and any claims were the reason for such a bold appeal, the bishop concludes his note, but only the fear of God and a sincere desire for improvement, guided by which he, with a feeling of deep devotion, with humility and tears, addresses his prayer to the holy father. But the holy father did not heed the entreaties of the bishop; three years later he appointed in England the beneficiary of his negligence, and on this occasion sent a special bull, filled with all sorts of exceptions and the removal of all obstacles. The fiery jealousy of Grosstat prompted him to protest against the papal act. In this protest, the bishop first of all testifies to his respectful obedience to the papal decrees and to his deep respect for the mother church of Rome. But it is precisely this respect that compels him in the present case to oppose the papal appointment, for the measure adopted by the pope is immoral and contrary to the apostolic spirit. It is harmful to the church and inspired by the voice of flesh and blood, and not of the Heavenly Father, and therefore everyone sincerely devoted to the interests of the church and the apostolic throne should not obey it, but oppose it with all his might. The complaints of the Bishop of Lincoln obviously do not add anything new to what we already know on the question of the relationship of England to the See of Rome. Here we are talking about the same simony, about the same provisions, about which England has complained many times before and since. But in Grosstat's complaints, what matters to us is not the facts that gave rise to them, but the motives that caused them. Not only does Grosstet resent the fact that, thanks to papal abuses, the finances of England are exhausted and the national interests suffer damage. No, he is bitter that the Church of God is suffering, that the kingdom of Christ on earth is being diminished. The papal measures provoke his protest not because they are harmful to the well-being of the public, but because they are inspired by the voice of flesh and blood, because they are immoral and contrary to the apostolic spirit. It is not patriotism that prompts him to complain and protest, but the fear of God, zeal for the good of the church and for the salvation of the souls entrusted to its leadership. The bishop, therefore, in this case looks at the matter not from a political point of view, but from a religious one.

  At the beginning of the XIV century, another English theologian, a graduate of Oxford, the Franciscan William of Ockham, enters into a fierce literary struggle against the papacy and hierarchy. He rebels against the secular claims of the pope, calling them usurpation, and it is not concern for the interests of the state that guides him in this case, but jealousy for the interests of the church itself. The area of ​​religion and church, in his opinion, should be completely aloof from worldly and temporal interests, and therefore it is illegal and harmful to combine secular and ecclesiastical power in one person. The infallibility of the pope is a harmful and dangerous invention that has no justification, for the facts show that popes can also err and even fall into heresy, like all other people. Ockham confirms his idea with the bulls of the popes themselves, where they often contradict one another. With particular force he rises against the material wealth of the Catholic clergy. For what purpose, he says, did sovereigns and princes give their estates to the church? In order for the clergy to pray for the souls of the donors, and for it to do good to the poor. Now, however, it does neither one nor the other; it uses estates for itself and for its children and non-possessors, deceiving both the living and the dead. If the clergy do not fulfill the conditions on which they were given their estates, then these estates must be taken away from them by the sovereigns. And not because Ockham rebels against the wealth of the clergy, because their accumulation in his hands is harmful to the country, but because such a state of the clergy does not correspond to his purpose, that he should not own wealth, but imitate the apostles in poverty. Correcting the abuses that have crept into the church is the goal towards which Ockham also strives in his polemic, advocating in this case for the good of the church itself.

  The activity of Richard Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armakhan, dates back to the middle of the 14th century. According to contemporaries, he was a very learned man and worked hard for the theological literature of his time, but we know only one episode from his activity, namely his polemic against mendicant monastic orders. In the age of Richard, the mendicant monks received various kinds of privileges in England, by virtue of which they enjoyed the predominant influence in the church. It was this predominance of mendicant monks and the various abuses that came from him that caused Richard's controversy. In a number of sermons delivered in London, and in a speech that Richard held before Pope Innocent VI and his cardinals in Avignon, he denounced the mendicant monks because they had accumulated enormous wealth for their monasteries; that they have acquired a kind of monopoly on the performance of the sacrament of repentance, that they indulge in vices and lead an immoral lifestyle. Not any political considerations and not envy of monastic wealth caused Richard to polemic with the beggars, but only concern for the interests of the church, for the salvation of the souls of believers. He is indignant at the fact that mendicant monks attract the majority of the population to confession, because this undermines the importance of parish pastors, who thus lose one of the best means of exerting a moral influence on their flock. He is outraged by the fact that with such an order it is humiliated and moral significance repentance, because a monk who is a mendicant as a confessor cannot in any way affect the conscience of a penitent as fruitfully as a parish priest. The penitent sees him for the first, and often for the last time, and therefore the monk, of course, does not have a greater moral influence over him by virtue of his personal authority; he cannot lead his correction, because he does not live near him and does not know his life at all. He cannot follow his spiritual life afterwards, for he himself wanders from place to place and, having accepted confession, leaves and forgets about his spiritual son. Finally Richard is indignant for the monks themselves, for the moral death that they are preparing for themselves. Wealth and honor have a demoralizing effect on them; they forgot the rules of their charter, set up princely palaces for themselves, live in luxury and indulge in vices. For the salvation of the monks themselves, a reform is needed in their way of life. Richard does not recognize the very principle on which the institutions of mendicant orders are based. These institutions appear to him to be inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel. , he says, during his earthly life he was poor, never voluntarily begged and did not teach anyone such begging. Richard's controversy is thus purely religious.

  Not only questions of church organization and practice attracted the attention of English theologians. Not infrequently, religious-philosophical thought delved into the study of the basic dogmas of the Catholic faith, and sometimes it happened that the personal opinion of the researcher fell into discord with the established dogma. This is what happened, for example. with the confessor and preacher of Edward III, and then the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardino. This "doctor profundus", as his contemporaries called him, devoted his professorial, preaching and literary activity to the study of high theological questions about grace, predestination, free will, etc., expounding the results of his research mainly in the treatise "De causa Dei" . He resolves these issues both through his own philosophical research, and through the explanation of the Holy Scriptures and numerous testimonies from the works of the fathers and teachers of the church, scholastic theologians and philosophers of ancient and later times. In Catholicism, the idea of ​​Pelagius has long been established that a person is saved by his own exploits and that justification in this way is a reward for a person for his personal merits. The dominance of such a Pelagian view caused Bradwardina to study with the aim of refuting it. It seemed to him that the Pelagian errors, which had infected almost the entire Catholic world, were offensive to God, because they degraded the significance of Divine grace and belittled the dignity of the redemptive merits of the Son of God. But in her own study, Bradwardina goes to the opposite extreme and approaches the views of later reformers. He proves that the justification of man is a free gift of Divine grace and is accomplished regardless of his merits. It would be an insult to God, he thinks, to regard Him as some kind of merchant who seems to be selling, exchanging the gifts of His grace for human merits. The prayers of a person, the intercession of saints, good or evil deeds - nothing can change the definitions of the eternal Divine will, for God does not depend on anything, but on the contrary, everything depends on God. Developing these and similar thoughts, Bradwardina himself realizes that in this case he is going against the prevailing views.

  The examples given show that among the learned theologians of England as early as the 13th and 14th centuries there were already cases of deviation from established views, not only on questions of church structure and practice, but sometimes in the sphere of dogma. But these deviations did not entail any serious and dangerous consequences for the church. In the minds of the theologians themselves, their deviant views were not so dominant as to break their unity with the church. Condemning the existing order in the church, undermining its very foundations and even falling into heresy, these theologians still continue to consider themselves true Catholics and clearly testify to their deep devotion to the Catholic Church. Grosstet, in his very protest, declares his devotion and obedience to the Roman Church. That his statement was not just a reservation can be seen from the fact that the same Grosstat develops and proves in detail the famous theory of two swords. Occam accepts and develops the Roman theological system with unparalleled humility, placing it, as an undoubted truth, at the basis of his research. Richard Armakhansky does the same in his book “On Armenian Errors”, and arguing against the mendicant orders, he considers it his sacred duty to declare that he does not at all think of insisting on their destruction, for they are established and approved by the church; he wants only their reform. Bradwardina declares that he does not intend to go against the church, that he bows before her authority, she leaves to judge his opinions and decide whether he is right or wrong in them. Not being a reason for separation from the church, these opinions are not promoted as any special doctrine. They remain the personal property of thinkers and are only occasionally assimilated by their students and admirers. The church itself does not look upon them as heresy and as anything dangerous; she leaves them alone, leaving their authors to continue to hold high church positions and generally live and act as before. Their opinions remain their own opinions. But whatever the fate of these opinions, what is important for us is the fact that they exist, and therefore show that some learned people in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries already raised their voice against certain points of the Catholic system, thus laying the foundation for religious Protestantism.

  There were no heresies in the true sense of the word, no sectarian divisions in England during the entire course of the Middle Ages until the second half of the fourteenth century. England's own soil did not give rise to or develop a single heresy during all this time, and the attempts of continental propagandists to transplant their teachings here were always unsuccessful. English chronicles tell us very little about these attempts, however. The first time propagandists of heresy came to England in 1159. They were Germans, men and women in the amount of thirty people. They preached a heretical view of marriage, rejected baptism and the Eucharist; but they managed to convert only one woman to their teaching. Very soon they were brought, together with their leader Gergard, to court, at the Oxford Cathedral they were accused of heresy and betrayed to the secular authorities for punishment. They were branded, flogged in the streets and half-dressed were driven out of the city. The harsh winter time and the prohibition of anyone to provide them with shelter and assistance had the consequence that they all died without a trace. At the beginning of the 13th century, several Albigensians arrived in England, but they were all burned alive. Thus, the few attempts of continental heretics to instill their teachings in England did not have any consequences, and therefore a polemical poem of the late XIV century, condemning the Lollards - followers of Wyclef, could rightly say that England, now infected with heresy, has always been free from such a stain. But for that, from the end of the XIV century, i.e., from the time of the birth of the Lollards, generated by the teachings of Wyclef, heresy acquires such strength in England that, despite all the persecution, it does not die out until the Reformation itself.

  Wyclef begins his business in the same way as his predecessors began before him: Grosstet, Occam, and others. Engaged in research in the field of religious and ecclesiastical issues, he falls into discord with the established views of the church, at first only on some particular points, but then, like the later reformers, prompted in part by external circumstances, he develops his protest further and finally reaches that extreme, which is marked and condemned by the church as heresy. Even during the life of Wyclef, his teachings were already condemned as heretical, although this condemnation did not extend to his personality. The church curse broke out over him when he was already in the grave. The followers of Wyclef, who adopted and developed his teachings, and are known under the name of Lollards, are considered by all England to be heretics. At Wyclef we thus see that moment in the development of the religious consciousness of England, when personal views, deviating from those of the Church, go to the extreme and become heresy. Of course, we do not have the opportunity and need to dwell in particular detail on the consideration of Wyclef's views, we will indicate here only what is essential for our purpose.

  Opposition Church social activity Wyclefa is divided into two periods, which differ significantly from each other in the essence of those views, the dissemination of which constituted their content. In the first period, embracing a decade, Wyclef's opposition has an ecclesiastical-political character, while in the second it is purely religious. At first, Wyclef teaches and acts like a patriot, and then becomes exclusively a theologian. As a patriot, he could not raise any new questions, because the political-economic opposition to the Catholic Church, as we know, had long existed in England; it has already said or has said at the present time everything that could be said against the Catholic Church from the point of view of national interests. But the same phenomena could be looked at from a different point of view. Wyclef's patriotism was not only political, but ecclesiastical-political. In opposition to the church, he was in this case the successor, not so much of the royal power or the estates of parliament, as of Robert Grosstat, Richard of Armachan, etc. Going with the flow, adjoining the national anti-Roman and anti-church movement that was dominant at that time, he brought into it a little from himself, gave it a religious connotation.

  The main point against which the national opposition was directed, as we know, was the power of the pope, and therefore Wyclef, as a patriot, dwells not a little on the question of the papacy and its relations with England. He rebels against the secular claims of the pope and does not recognize for him any right to supreme fief dominance over secular sovereigns and over the king of England. The pope, he says, must above all others be an imitator of Christ, because he is His successor and vicar. But Christ, during His earthly life, not only did not appropriate any authority for Himself, but did not even have “where to bow his head.” If the pope himself calls himself a slave of the servants of God, then he must justify this in practice. He must be the successor of Christ and in his own moral character , in his humility, love for others and patience. The financial oppression of the papacy on England, the papal system of taxes, Wyclef calls the robbery of the church. He demands that the secular authorities put an end to the extortion of the papal agents of the collectors, because their course of action is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and the commandment of fraternal reproof must be applied to them. He proves to the estates that they have every right, in the interests of the state, to prohibit the export of any kind of treasures abroad and thus stop all payments to Rome, because these payments are voluntary giving and alms, which, according to Christian law, ceases to be obligatory in when the giver himself begins to endure the need. Wyclef's argument makes it clear that it is not patriotism that only motivates him to rebel against the secular and financial pretensions of the papacy, but also the consciousness that this institution has deviated from its ideal and in its actions is contrary to the spirit of Christianity. But Wiklef doesn't stop there. Gradually developing his protest, he comes to a denial of the papacy in general, even as an ecclesiastical authority. At first, Or denies his sanctity, expressing the idea that the pope, as a man, is subject to error, can even fall into mortal sins, and that one cannot give full play to the theory that proclaims that everything prescribed by the pope is just in itself and should have force. law. Then he says that the papacy is not a divine institution and its recognition is not at all a dogma necessary for salvation. The Roman church is not at all the head of all other churches, and the apostle Peter had no advantage over the other apostles. Then, under the influence of the schism of 1378, Wyclef declares that for the good and peace of the church it would be better to overthrow both popes, who were at war then, to destroy this institution altogether and live without a pope, as the Greeks do. But even here Wyclef does not stop yet. The systematic oppression of national churches, arrogant pride, the secular nature of the papal government, claims to world domination - all these features of the degenerated papacy, covered with a personal divinity, finally appear to Wyclef as the work of the Antichrist. He now stigmatizes the pope with the name of the Antichrist, calls him a man of sin, not corresponding to his original pastoral appointment, but puffed up even to the desire to become higher than Christ Himself. The papacy, he says, is from the evil one, and worshiping him is vile idolatry, for divine honors are given to the member of Lucifer. There was obviously nowhere to go further in this direction. So, Wyclef, starting with political opposition, reached the point of completely rejecting the papacy in general, and politics was already completely aloof.

  After the papacy, as we have seen, the Catholic hierarchy was also a subject of popular discontent. As a patriot, Wyclef is a supporter of the people in this respect as well. He takes up arms against the monks, cruelly denounces the immorality and vices of the entire Catholic clergy, and rebels against church estates. But it is not solicitude for the interests of the public welfare that primarily guides it in this case, but religious zeal. He takes up arms against the monks because he does not recognize monasticism as legal in principle. This institution seems to him offensive to the dignity of Christianity. As if the Christian doctrine and rules of life were insufficient and imperfect, if it was necessary to invent some new rules that would contribute to even higher perfection. Looking at the monastic orders from this point of view, Wyclef calls them "religiones privatae, sectae novellae". The establishment of these orders he imputes to their founders not as merit, but as a crime. He rebels against the monks also because he sees in them the most zealous adherents and servants of the Antichrist, i.e., the pope, and therefore considers them the main culprits for the spread among the people of various superstitions and false teachings, the source of which is the pope. The bad way of life of the clergy therefore especially outrages Wyclef, because thanks to him, the clergy neglect their duties and are the most vile thief, for they steal the Divine word from their flock, depriving them of instruction, and such abduction is more criminal than any sacrilege. Wyclef rebels against church estates and strongly insists on their secularization because the existence of these estates seems to him illegal and harmful both in principle and in practice. According to the prescriptions of Holy Scripture, he says, the ministers of the church should not own any estates, apostolic poverty should be obligatory for them. If estates are donated to the church, then not for the personal use of its ministers, but for the purposes of charity, and therefore, in case of perversion of these purposes, the secular authorities and the donors themselves must take the estates back. Wyclef is indignant against church estates also because they serve as the main cause of that extraordinary moral corruption to which the rich clergy have now reached and which has a disastrous effect on the religious state of the people. Thus, on this point, too, Wyclef takes a religious standpoint. The contemplation of various shortcomings in the church structure or abuses in practice and their denunciation naturally and inevitably leads a person to the thought of the need for reform. As we know, the kings of England, and the estates of parliament, and thinkers-theologians have already come to this idea more than once, although they often touched on only certain aspects of church life and looked at them from different points of view. But no one has hitherto approached this thought so closely, has not exposed and discussed it so decisively, and has not understood it as widely as Wyclef does. Catholic, he says, as it is now, is not what it should be; she gradually deviated from the pattern that was drawn for her in the Word of God and according to which she was created and existed in the age of the apostles. To be convinced of this, one need only compare the current state of the church, the laws, the life and preaching of modern pastors, with the life and institution of the Savior and with those prescriptions that are given to us from Him. Such a comparison convinces of the urgent need for church reform. What should this reform consist of? It is to purify the church from the errors and abuses that have invaded it and to restore the original in its purity and perfection. Since Wyclef sees the root of all evils in the worldly direction that has gained dominance in the church, the very first and best means of reform should be, in his opinion, taking away from the church its possessions and freeing it from all possessions, which liberation should be done either through voluntary renunciation bishops, abbots, etc., or through violence on the part of secular authorities. To carry out the necessary reform, Wyclef calls on all people imbued with the spirit of the gospel. People who have knowledge should help this cause by explaining the grounds borrowed from the Word of God: secular rulers - by their authority given to them from God; people - good behavior and prayer to God; popes, bishops, monks, etc., by their own cleansing. Wyclef does not hide the fact that the attempt at reform will meet with strong resistance and will have to endure the struggle, in which even martyrdom will be the lot of its defenders, because not only the Antichrist-pope and his disciples, but the devil himself and all his evil forces will rise up with fury against the restoration of the cause of Christ on earth. But, with the assistance of Divine help, the holy cause of reform will surely triumph. No one has hitherto imagined reform in such a broad sense as Wyclef does now. If the thought about it was expressed before, then it usually had a very narrow and particular meaning. One rebelled against provisions and demanded reform in the order of appointment to church offices, another complained of financial oppression and demanded reform in the papal tax system: a third fought against the monks and insisted on the reform of mendicant orders, etc. e. But no one has raised himself to the idea of ​​the necessity of reforming the church in all respects. Wyclef expresses and develops this thought clearly. The Catholic Church, in his opinion, not only deviated from its ideal in structure and practice, it made many mistakes in teaching, and therefore the reform should also touch on the dogmatic area. In the second period of his activity, Wyclef was predominantly a theologian, he revised almost the entire system of Catholic doctrine and pointed out many points in which, in his opinion, the Roman Church deviated from the original Christianity and distorted the true meaning of its dogmas. We need only a short list of Wyclef's dogmatic teachings to understand how far he diverged from the teachings established by the Catholic Church, and how wide, therefore, the reform he required must have been.

  On the question of sources Christian doctrine, Wyclef is the harbinger of the so-called formal principle of Protestantism. Although at first he was not completely free from the scholastic habit of elevating the significance of tradition; but then the further, the more resolutely he approached the Protestant view. He draws a sharp boundary line between Holy Scripture and any human authority, recognizing Holy Scripture as the only sufficient source of Christian knowledge, having infinite, guiding authority. To confirm and defend this position, Wyclef wrote one of his most significant works: "De veritate Scripturae sacrae." In the Holy Scripture, he teaches, contains all that is necessary for salvation; it is infallible, morally pure and quite sufficient, it is the magna charta of the Christian Church. Explicitly or indirectly, Scripture contains every commandment necessary for the church, and only it alone has unconditional authority for the church. In the interpretation of Holy Scripture, no one has any special exclusive right; but in this case, the Holy Spirit Himself guides everyone. The material principle of Protestantism was not available to Wyclef. In determining the significance of faith in the matter of justification, he stands on the point of view of medieval scholastics, not reaching the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, but even through a person’s own merits, according to his teaching, he is not able to give satisfaction to God for his sins; he can achieve justification, although not without his own moral labor, only with the assistance of Divine grace.

  In the doctrine of the church, Wyclef goes completely against the prevailing Catholic view. According to him, the church is a society of the elect. Belonging to the church is determined not by external entry into the number of its members, but by grace-filled election from God by virtue of His predestination. It is impossible to determine the size of the church, because no one can definitely distinguish who has been awarded the grace-filled election from God and who has not. One can only guess about this with greater or lesser probability, judging by the moral image of this or that person. It goes without saying that, with such a composition of the church, the external difference between pastors and flocks is of no importance. The outcast does not belong to the church, even if he holds an ecclesiastical position and is a bishop and even a pope himself. There is no need for any mediation between God and man, and every righteous person is a priest called by God. Of course, the claim of the Catholic church authorities to pronounce sentences on excommunication or on canonization of someone has no meaning either. No one can be excommunicated from the church by anyone if he is not excommunicated by God, and vice versa, no one can be called a saint if he has not been honored with Divine election, which no one from people can know, for in a militant church, the elect and the reprobate are mixed with each other.

  In the doctrine of the Eucharist, Wyclef acknowledges that in this sacrament both the true bread and wine and the true body and blood of Christ are present at the same time. He asserts that bread and wine are not only signs of the body and blood of Christ; but that the body and blood are really present in the sacrament, although this presence is not bodily and spatial, but mysterious, for in a spatial way the body of Christ is present only in heaven. Wyclef refuses to explain the mode of this presence, for it is a miracle beyond our understanding. With particular force, Wyclef rises against the doctrine of transubstantiation. He proves that this teaching has no basis for itself in the Holy. Scripture and even contrary to it; that it goes against the evidence of ancient tradition and is not in accordance with the requirements of common human sense. This doctrine, says Wyclef, is especially harmful in view of the consequences that it inevitably entails. He exposes that the Divine veneration shown to the substance of the sacrament of the Eucharist is idolatry, all the less excusable for Christians, because they know the spiritual essence of their God. He directly calls the ministers of transubstantiation the priests of Baal. This teaching, he says, is an excessive exaltation of man and an extreme humiliation of Divine dignity, for man-creature is here the doer of his Creator, every day creating His body. It is harmful, and finally because it serves the priests as the best means of extorting money from the people. From the view established by Wyclef on the relationship of man to God and on the significance of man's merits in the matter of justification, it clearly followed his denial of the need for oral confession before the priest and his opinion about the so-called beyond due merits as a dangerous and deceitful invention. Modern Catholic worship, according to Wyclef, has deviated too much from the spiritual to the sensual, so that external signs are now valued more than the objects they designate. On the question of icons, he says that they are not prohibited by Christian teaching and can be used, although they were not in such a large number in the dominant church as they are now. But, on the other hand, icons very easily lead to error, forcing us to represent God in a bodily form and leading to a false idea that icons are something animated, that they squander miracles on people, etc.

  It is necessary to instill in the people that idolatry is a very dangerous thing, in which the poison of idolatry is hidden under honey, and that the true meaning of icons is only to excite, through an external image, the spirit of man and elevate him to heaven. The worship of the relics of saints and the rich decoration of their tombs, according to Wyclef, do not deserve approval. , he says, for this he hid the bodies of Moses, the Mother of God, and others, so as not to make them an object of worship and not to mislead people. It would be better for the honor of the saints and for the benefit of the church if the jewels were taken from the relics and divided among the poor. The abundance of holidays only burdens the church. The shepherd will not sin, but rather do what is pleasing to Christ if he allows his flock to work on the feasts of the saints. With regard to pilgrimage, Wyclef thinks that the pilgrims would do more good for themselves if they would leave their travels as having no basis in the New Testament, but would sit at home and pay attention to what they are obliged to do, i.e. would take care of the fulfillment of the commandments of the Lord.

  Incomplete and imperfect as the outline of Wyclef's teachings here presented, it still seems to be sufficient to give Wyclef its proper place in the religious history of England. Wyclef's teaching is not, obviously, any private opinion, concerning only a few religious questions; but a whole system of doctrine, which is something integral, as far as possible harmoniously connected in its parts. How special system, this teaching was not only a deviation from the Catholic Church, but competed with it, undermined its very foundations, made a claim to re-create this church according to its own model, that is, in other words, to destroy it as it is, and to stand on its own her place. This teaching did not want to remain only the personal property of Wyclef, which could go with him to the grave; it set itself the task of moving into life and activity, becoming the property of the whole people. Proclaiming his teachings, Wyclef called on all who were zealous for the glory of God and for their salvation to rally into a close union, the task of which was the reform of the church, that is, the practical application and confirmation of his teachings. As a special creed, the cause of Wyclef tried to win proselytes for itself and recognized propaganda as necessary.

  To spread his views, Wyclef used two of the most powerful means that fully corresponded to the spirit of his teaching and flowed from his very being, it was the institution of itinerant preachers and the translation of Holy Scripture into the vernacular. Wyclef's doctrine of Holy Scripture was, one might say, the foundation on which his entire system was based. He recognized the Bible, as we know, as the only undoubtedly true and completely sufficient source of Christian knowledge. Developing his system, he constantly turned to the Scriptures. If he proved the truth of any doctrine, he was firmly convinced that this doctrine has undoubted grounds in the Holy Scriptures. If he rejected anything as an error and a distortion of Christianity, it was again because it seemed to him contrary to Scripture, or at least having no basis in it. The Scriptures contain everything that is necessary for salvation, and therefore, first of all, a person, of course, needs to know the Scriptures in order to conform to its instructions. Hence, the task of Christian preaching is precisely to communicate the Word of God to people, that is, to reveal to them the content of Holy Scripture, which is inaccessible to the direct use of the majority, for it is set forth in a language incomprehensible to the people. But the current state of Catholic church preaching did not meet Wyclef's requirements. Holy Bible did not at all constitute the exclusive content of this sermon, on the contrary, it was relegated to the background and often completely eliminated due to the intrusion into the sermon of other elements that were not at all characteristic of it. Catholic preachers of that time borrowed content for their sermons from various legends about the life and deeds of the saints, from walking folk stories, and even from works of ancient pagan poetry, such as Ovid's metamorphosis or Homer's Iliad. If the preachers turned to Scripture, then thanks to the extreme predilection for allegorical interpretation that prevailed at that time, they tried to extract special edification from almost every word of the text taken, to discover in it the numerous and most secret meanings, while, of course, they allowed wide arbitrariness and all sorts of stretches. With this mode of interpretation, the hearers were obviously not acquainted with the actual meaning of Scripture, but with the fruitfulness and ingenuity of the preachers. The clear meaning of Scripture was often only obscured by scholastic methods of preaching, thanks to various definitions, subtle divisions and subdivisions, pompous rhetorical embellishments, etc., which did not at all correspond to the level of understanding of the listeners. Rebelling against all these prevailing shortcomings of modern preaching, Wyclef demanded that the pure Word of God be preached and that it be offered to the people in the simplest and most understandable form for them. Put on such a basis, the sermon would have been, Wyclef thought, the best means for spreading his teachings, because he was convinced that his teaching was in full accordance with the Holy Scriptures. He himself, in his sermons, really tried, as much as he could, to apply his theory to the case; but this was, of course, not enough. Preaching for Wyclef was not an end in itself, but only a means for spreading his teachings, and therefore he needed to take care of the widest possible application of this means. To re-educate existing preachers was a task too difficult, almost impossible, for the efforts of one person and within the time limit of his life. To eliminate these preachers and replace them, at least in the positions of parish priests, with new ones brought up in other concepts, was not in the power of Wyclef, who himself was only a simple priest. Only one thing remained: to create a class of new preachers without eliminating the old ones, that is, to educate such people who would devote themselves exclusively to the work of preaching, without combining with it the duties of a parish priest. It is precisely such people that Wyclef brings up. While still at Oxford, he gathers around him a circle of young people from university students, inspires them with his religious views and instills in them a selfless desire to serve the cause of reform. As time goes by, these young people are properly prepared and come forward for the preaching work. The testimonies of modern chroniclers, the complaints and orders of archbishops and bishops provide us with enough material to characterize the activities of these apostles of Lollardism. These people, of course, did not have any official authority for their work. Neither the pope, nor the bishops, nor any other ecclesiastical authority gave them permission to preach; they went and preached, obeying only the voice of their own religious zeal, guided only by the desire to communicate to others the truth that they themselves, in their conviction, already possessed. Often these were people who, according to the church, did not even have the right to teach others, because only at first the Lollard preachers were mostly priests, but later they were in most cases simple laymen who did not have any church rank. In the selfless activity of these people there was not a little apostolic. They devoted themselves entirely to their work. They did not have any permanent residence, but moved from one place to another, from village to village, from city to city, from one county to another. In coarse woolen clothes, with bare feet and a staff in his hand, such a preacher would come to any village and, despite his fatigue, would hurry to a church or a chapel to start his work there. If the church was locked, he raised his voice in the churchyard, otherwise he gathered listeners for himself and simply in the square or street. The unusual atmosphere of the sermon, the preacher's impressive appearance, and his ardent, convinced word naturally attracted whole crowds of listeners to him, and, taking advantage of this, he hastened to plant the seeds of his anti-church views in their hearts. The content of his sermon is not difficult to predict. He left the school of Wyclef, and therefore he now went to spread among the people the views that his mentor had brought up in him. He preached against the corruption of the Catholic clergy, denounced various abuses and errors that prevailed in the church, preached the need for reform, proved that Divine grace is the only source of justification for man, and Holy Scripture is the only source of Christian doctrine. In a word, in his sermons he was a direct follower and successor of Wyclef, serving the cause of spreading his teachings. Wyclef himself, who organized the itinerant sermon, saw it as his own work; he defended preachers in his writings against various accusations and partly directed their activities, compiling pamphlets that were supposed to serve as a guide to them. Encouraged by its founder, sympathetically met by the people, and even patronized by the nobility with weapons in their hands, itinerant preaching was not slow to develop very widely. In a few years, it intensified to such an extent that it attracted the attention of the bishops and caused a number of measures against itself, as something that threatened the danger of the church. At the end of May 1382, Wil. Courtney, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued an order addressed to the Bishop of London, where he speaks of uncalled itinerant preachers, who, without any authority from church authority, orate in churches and other public places and spread heretical teachings. Following the example of Kaurtney, other bishops also take up arms against wandering preachers, as for example. Wakefield, Ep. Worcester, in 1387 and Spencer, ep. Nortsichsky, in 1389. It is clear that the establishment of itinerant preachers achieved its goal if the ecclesiastical authorities saw fit to lay their hands on it.

  As fruitful as itinerant preaching was, Wyclef did not regard it as the most important means of teaching. According to the meaning of his views, the relationship of a person to God is the higher and more perfect, the more direct it is, and therefore, when studying the Word of God, it would be much better if a person could do without intermediaries, if he himself read and comprehended the Divine Scriptures, with the assistance of and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to whom alone, as we know, Wyclef gave the exclusive right to interpret the Scriptures. But such a direct use of the Word of God was impossible for the people as long as the Bible remained in use only in Latin, a language incomprehensible to the people. A direct natural consequence of Wyclef's views was a strong desire on his part to make the Holy Scriptures accessible to all by translating it into the living vernacular. With the assistance of Hereford, he sets to work and soon brings it to the desired end; in 1382, the complete Bible in English was born.

  It cannot be said that the translation of Holy Scripture into English was unheard of before Wyclef. Even during the Anglo-Saxon period, some books of the Bible were already translated, as we know from modern evidence or even from the lists themselves that have survived to this day. Suffice it to mention the translation of the Psalter by Bishop Oldhelm, referring to recent years VIIth or to the beginning of the VIIIth century; about the translation of the Gospel of John Bede the Venerable, relating to the thirties of the VIII century; about the Gospels with interpretations from the time of Alfred, i.e., the end of the 9th century, about the translation of the books of Moses, Judges, Kings and others by the monk Elfric, the end of the 10th century. The little that has survived to a later time does not yet, of course, represent all that England really possessed of that period, because not a few had to perish, especially during the disasters of the Danish and Norman invasions. After the Norman conquest, the defeated and enslaved Anglo-Saxon tribe certainly could not expect the Norman ruling class to take care of translating Scripture into their language. The books of the Bible were translated at this time, but not into the Anglo-Saxon language, but into French, native to the ruling classes. The defeated tribe had to be content with what it had from the previous time, and it kept these remnants and did not lose them, continuing to use them for its edification. This is confirmed, among other things, by the fact that many lists of translations occurred precisely in the 12th century. From the combination of two previously hostile elements, that is, the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon, a single whole is formed over time and the history of the English people begins with the English language and literature. The thirteenth century was an epoch in this respect, and therefore at the end of the thirteenth century we already see the appearance of a verse translation of the Psalter into English. In the first half of the 14th century, the same book was translated several more times, as for example. Scorham and Rolle. Thus Wyclef's undertaking was not such as England had never heard of before; but for all that, his Bible may not without reason be called the first English Bible. The translations that existed before Wyclef never embraced the entire Bible, or even one of the Old and New Testaments. They were limited to only a few individual books and mainly the Psalter, while most of the sacred books remained untranslated. These translations could not always be called translations, because they often deviated quite far from their original, constrained by their poetic form, or else they were a paraphrase. But what especially deserves attention is the very purpose of translations. It was intended exclusively for the use of the clergy and a few scientists and educated persons. At the same time, it never occurred to any of the translators to think about the people. None of them, in their work, was guided by the thought of making the Word of God understandable and accessible to everyone, to give everyone the opportunity to learn the truths of faith for themselves. That is why Wyclef's case was the first of its kind and unlike anything that had been done before him. He created an accurate translation of the entire Bible and gave it to the people.

  A kind of preparatory step for the publication of the complete English Bible was Wyclef's translation of the Gospels (series collecta) by the Augustinian Prior Clemens, late twelfth century. In the preface to this work, Wyclef expresses and develops his view on the question of the need to translate the Holy. Scriptures into a living vernacular. Based on the words of the Savior: “blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it” (), Wyclef says that Christians should work day and night to study the text of Holy Scripture, and especially the Gospel in their native language, and meanwhile the Catholic Church does not give to the laity rights to it. Voluptuary scholars say that the laity can easily fall into error, and therefore they should not talk about matters of faith. But what cruelty, to destroy all food in the kingdom on the grounds that a few fools can overeat and harm themselves and others by immoderate use of it. Proud and devoted to the world, a priest can err and act against the gospel written in Latin as much as a layman can sin against the gospel written in English. Is it reasonable not to teach children to read at all because they will make mistakes in the first lessons? Every person is obliged to study the Holy Scriptures if he wants to be blessed. The clerics say that the translation of Scripture into English will cause discord among Christians and incite subjects to revolt against the authorities, and therefore it should not be tolerated. But is it possible to so obviously offend God, the source of peace, and His holy Law, which teaches humility, patience and love for one's neighbor?! etc. The dissemination of these thoughts among the people prepared the ground and paved the way for the first English Bible.

  The work of a complete translation of the entire Bible was accomplished by Wyclef and his associate Hereford. Wyclef translated the whole, and Hereford intended to translate the whole of the Old, but was interrupted by unfavorable circumstances for him at the nineteenth verse of the 3rd chapter of the book of the prophets. Baruch, so that's the end Old Testament was translated by Wyclef. The translation was made from the Latin text of the Vulgate, because Greek language was not at all familiar to Wyclef. At the end of the enterprise in 1382, Wyclef soon noticed some shortcomings in it, and therefore he immediately decided to revise and correct his translation, but death prevented his plan. The revision was made by Purvey and completed four years after Wyclef's death. With the completion of the translation, Wyclef's goal, of course, had not yet been achieved. Translation was only a means that now had to be used to achieve another higher goal. It was caused by the desire to give the people the opportunity to read the Word of God and learn from it the truths of the faith, and therefore now it was necessary to take care that the Bible translated into the popular language would receive the widest possible distribution among the people. To this end, immediately after the completion of the translation, diligent preparation of copies of it for general use begins. In addition to copies of the complete Bible, some of the most commonly used of the sacred books are copied in a separate form and parts of it separately, tables of the annual readings of the Apostle and the Gospel are attached: special books are also compiled that contain the entire range of apostolic and gospel readings of the liturgical year. All these copies are put into the light for popular use. Wyclef's undertaking, as might be expected, was a complete success. The contemporary chronicler Knighton complains bitterly that the beads of the Gospel are crumbling before the pigs, that thanks to the translation, the Gospel has now become much more accessible to literate laity and even women than it was before for educated members of the clergy. At the prayer meetings of Wyclef's followers, the most prominent place is occupied by the reading of the Holy Scriptures. In the later persecution of the Lollards, almost no trial was carried out without the accused being accused of using the English translation of the Bible. Despite the merciless destruction of copies of this translation, twelve manuscripts of it dating back to the end of the 14th century have survived to this day. And it cannot be said that only the followers of Wyclef treasured his translation; he had the majority of the whole nation on his side, insofar as parliament then served as the representative of public opinion. In 1390, the Roman party introduced a bill to parliament to withdraw from use and confiscate all copies English translation Bible. This proposal was met with resolute opposition in both chambers, and the bill could not pass. Both the lords and the commons thus declared themselves supporters of the translation. The Duke of Lancaster said at the same time: are we some kind of scum of mankind that we are not allowed to have, like other peoples, the Word of God in our own language?

  Wyclef's measures fully justified the hopes placed on them. The dissemination of the Holy Scriptures among the people and the activity of itinerant preachers brought wide and rapid success to Wyclef's views. Undoubted confirmation of this can be seen in some documents relating to the eighties and nineties of the fourteenth century. Among these documents, special attention should be paid to, for example, the statute, rejected by the House of Commons and approved only by the king and lords, relating to the 5th year of the reign of Richard II, 2 two royal prescriptions issued in the fifteenth and seventeenth years of Richard II, and finally the bull of Pope Boniface IXth in the name of the same king. From these documents it is seen that the number of Wyclef's followers increased in those years with extraordinary rapidity; that they freely and boldly appeared everywhere, adopting even special clothes; that they openly preached their heretical teachings and denounced the existing church order, captivating the people with their boldness. The church authorities turned out to be powerless so far and could in no way put a stop to the spread of heresy, because the heretics did not pay any attention to the church prohibitions directed against them. If their bishop called to his tribunal, they did not appear, and if he wanted to attract them by force, they left the boundaries of his diocese, where his power no longer extended. The testimonies of the chroniclers Knighton and Walsingham, as well as the records of the trials, show that Wyclef's teachings found patrons and followers in different classes of society. On the side of these teachings were, first of all, some members of the royal family itself, such as, for example. Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester, mother and wife of King Richard II. They were followed by many persons belonging to noble noble families, such as, for example. Earl of Salisbury, Clifford, Storry, Gilton, Neuville, and others. But most of all, Wyclef's supporters were among the townspeople, artisans and the rural population. We do not have the opportunity to determine the approximate number of Wyclef's followers at the end of the 14th century, because there is not enough data for this; but that his teachings were generally very widespread at that time, we can be sure of this with certainty and from the meager evidence that has survived to us. It goes without saying that Wyclef's teaching was most likely to spread and establish itself in the diocese of Lincoln, since Oxford and Lutterworth were located in it, that is, the places of the main activity of Wyclef himself, as a scientist and as a parish priest. The localities closest to these centers of Lollardism, of course, must have been most influenced by it. Indeed, in 1389 in Leicester, for example. already eight Lollards are being interrogated, and at the same time it is noticed that there are many others who hold the same way of thinking. The chronicler Knighton, who lived in Leicester, testifies that the Lollards attracted more than half of the nation to their teachings. This sect, he says, is so numerous that if you meet two inhabitants on the street, one of them is bound to follow Wyclef. From the district of Lincoln, Lollardism spread to other dioceses, more or less strong confirmation of which can be found in various modern testimonies. Residents of London, for example. they have already sufficiently declared their way of thinking by the support they gave to Wyclef in his clash with ecclesiastical authority. The chronicler Walsingham repeatedly mentions their adherence to the teachings of Wyclef and calls them: Lollardorum sustentatores. These, though not many, testimonies are quite sufficient to recognize as undoubted that the teachings of Wyclef were very widespread among the people at the end of the 14th century. An eloquent confirmation of this conclusion can be an event that happened in the Parliament of 1395. Two Lollard nobles, Sir Thomas Latimer and Sir Richard Storry, presented a petition to this Parliament on behalf of the entire Lollard party. This document, consisting of twelve propositions and a short conclusion, contains a strong statement of Lollard's views. It says that since the Church of England, following the example of her Roman stepmother, indulged in worldly acquisitions, faith, hope and love have left her, giving way to their pride and other mortal sins arising from it. The priesthood, it is said further, that originates from Rome and claims to have the highest angelic power, is not the priesthood that was established by Christ. The celibacy of the clergy is the source of the sin of Sodom. The fictitious miracle of transubstantiation in the Eucharist seduces people to idolatry. The rites of blessing performed over wine, bread, oil, water, salt, wax, incense, clothes, walls, etc. are nothing but sorcery and necromancy. Occupation by the clergy of secular positions is the simultaneous service of God and mammon. Oral confession before a priest encourages the pride of the clergy, who supposedly have the power to bind and loose, and serves as an excuse for them to engage in various immoral acts. Further, a petition arises against prayer for the dead, against monastic vows, etc. The petitioners end with the statement that, expressing their views, they are prompted to do so by Christ Himself and turn to God with prayer for the reform of the church. It cannot be overlooked, of course, that the Lollard petition was an accurate reflection of Wyclef's views, and in the fourth proposition, which deals with the Eucharist, the petitioners even directly refer to the "trialogue" of the evangelical doctor, one of Wyclef's outstanding works, where, in their opinion, the true doctrine of Eucharist. The petition did not have any practical consequences, it seems that it was not even discussed in Parliament, and the Lollards limited themselves only to trying to make it as famous as possible by nailing copies of it to the church doors of London in Westminster. But the very fact of the existence of this petition deserves special attention. It does not sound like the work of some insignificant and despised sect. If the followers of Wyclef dare to openly declare their anti-church views, if they come with a formal petition to Parliament and demand legislative support for their aspirations from the representatives of the whole nation, it is clear that they are aware of a strength and no small strength that can stand up for herself and is not afraid of being easily crushed by the hostile majority. The Lollards of that time obviously did not want to recognize themselves as only a sect, they did not limit themselves only to the demand that they be given the freedom to profess their views. No, they acted aggressively, they wanted to make their teachings dominant; they demanded that the whole existing system of church life be reformed according to their instructions.

  The more the Lollards raised their voice against the Church, the more boldly they declared their claims, the more, of course, all those who cared for the existing order had to arm themselves against them. It goes without saying that the ecclesiastical authority acted first of all in this case. The teachings of Wyclef, even during his lifetime, had already been considered several times by church authorities and condemned as heresy. In support of this, it suffices to point to the bull of Pope Gregory XI, published in 1377 at the request of the English bishops, who submitted to Rome for consideration by the papal consistory a number of provisions extracted from various writings and sermons of Wyclef, and to the verdict drawn up at the London Church Council of 1382 of the year . But the ecclesiastical condemnation was not strong enough to destroy the heretical teachings. Despite the condemnation, heresy continued to spread, and its wandering preachers more and more intensified their activities. To put an end to it, obviously, some more energetic measures were required, for which the church authority is soon taken. After the conciliar judgment of 1382, Archbishop William Courtney addresses the then assembled Parliament and King Richard II, asking for their assistance in stopping the spreading heresy. At the request of the archbishop, a draft law was drawn up, which was submitted to the parliament for approval. This law said that at the present time many bad people have bred, who wander from place to place and, without the permission of the church authorities, preach their teachings everywhere. After considering these teachings at a special council convened for this purpose by the archbishop, they were recognized as heretical and dangerous for the good of the church and state; but their preachers continue their outrageous activity as before, despising church authority and not paying any attention to its orders and calls to court. Wherefore, this Parliament decrees that the sheriffs and other officials of the realm be directed, upon notice and demand of the prelates, to arrest heretic preachers and all their patrons and accomplices, and keep them under strict imprisonment until they have been acquitted according to the laws of the church. . The meaning of this bill was obviously that the church authorities wanted to use the assistance of the secular authorities to fight heresy. But this project did not receive full legal approval; it was approved only by the king and the House of Lords, and the communities did not give their consent to it. When, despite the lack of legal approval, this project was nevertheless promulgated as a full-fledged statute, the House of Commons presented on its own behalf at the next meeting of Parliament, in October of the same 1382, a petition in which it stated that this statute would never consent to it. did not receive, and therefore demanded its cancellation, which was fulfilled. Why this statute did not have the approval of the communities is not known. Maybe he was discussed by the lower house and was rejected, or maybe he was not presented to her at all, knowing in advance that he could not pass in it. From this fact, however, we have no right to draw the conclusion that the House of Commons of this time was decisively on the side of the Lollards and did not want to hamper the activities of their preachers; it was guided in its opposition to the statute by considerations of an entirely different kind. In demanding its abolition, the communities declared that they did not at all wish to depend on the prelates and submit to them more than their ancestors allowed. Consequently, it was not sympathy for the Lollards that guided the House in this case, but a long-standing jealousy for the privileges of the clergy. Be that as it may, but the attempt of the clergy to enlist the assistance of Parliament to fight against heresy was unsuccessful. He had to use only those means that were in his power, and they really used them. Immediately after the condemnation of Wyclef's teachings at the council of 1382, Archbishop Courtney issued an order to his plenipotentiary commissioner at Oxford University, in which, on the basis of the conciliar verdict, he ordered that henceforth no one dared to carry condemned opinions in university lectures, sermons and disputes, and also listen to and encourage them; but that the defenders of heretical teachings should be shunned by everyone and removed under pain of excommunication from the church. Another order, issued in the name of the Bishop of London, directed that all bishops of the province of Canterbury promulgate in all the churches of their dioceses that no one should henceforth be allowed to teach and preach condemned views, and also to hear and encourage, secretly or openly, who preaches them, under pain church excommunication. Visiting the diocese of Lincoln in 1389, Courtney learned that many of the inhabitants of Leicester adhered to Lollard teachings. He demanded that they appear before his tribunal, and when they did so, he imposed an interdict on the whole city. Wakefield, Bishop of Werchester, in 1387 instructs all the monasteries and parish priests of his diocese that they should not allow the Lollards to preach in churches, in churchyards, or in any other place, even if not consecrated. Militant Spencer, ep. Norwich, even under pain of death, forbade the Lollards to visit his diocese. But the church excommunications that the bishops threatened, of course, were not terrible for those who rebelled against the church and did not recognize any significance for them, and all other threats could be impressive only when church authority had material strength, when it could - would have support in coercive measures of secular power. Not having received the desired assistance from Parliament, the clergy tried at least to win over King Richard II in their favor, so that in his power they could have support in the fight against heresy. A number of orders against the Lollard heresy are known with the name of Richard, dating back to 1382, 1383, 1388, 1392 and 1393. and addressed by them to the University of Oxford, or to the authorities of the County of Nottingham, or to the knights and the sheriff of Herefard, etc. All these documents, in their content, seem to be more or less identical, and therefore, without setting out separately the content of each of them, we present here only a general outline of them. The king declares that he has always been and always intends to be a zealous defender of the Catholic faith, and therefore, depicting the audacious activity of heretics in spreading their harmful teachings and mentioning the complaints against them to the authorities of the church, he assumes the duty to use certain measures in order to put an end to the success of heresy. He directs that a strict investigation be carried out in the university, and that all who are infected with heretical teachings be immediately expelled from among its members. It gives the bishops the power to arrest the preachers of Lollardism and imprison them, where they keep them until they renounce their views, or send them to the discretion of the king and his privy council. He instructs secular officials not to allow Lollard meetings and to render their assistance to the church authorities in the persecution of heretics. Those who patronize heretics and render them any assistance are threatened by the king with the confiscation of all their property. Finally, he orders a thorough search to be carried out everywhere to look for heretical books, especially those compiled by Wyclef, Hereford and Ashton. He orders these books to be confiscated and immediately forwarded to the royal council, and the sellers and buyers of these books to be arrested. With the exact execution of all these royal orders, the position of the Lollards could obviously be very difficult; but in reality the orders remained for the most part only on paper and were applied to the case very rarely and not willingly. Until the end of the XIV century. there is almost no news about the arrests and imprisonment of the Lollards. If they are called to trial for their teachings, then only the most important teachers of Lollardism, as for example. Hereford, Biedeman, Repington, Anton Swinderby, etc., so that trials on Lollards are still an exception. And the results of these processes did not seem particularly terrible. The convicts were supposed to lose their seats at Oxford, were excommunicated, or forced to renounce their teachings. Such punishments, of course, did not in the least hinder the further spread of heresy, since those who brought the renunciation did not hesitate to preach the same teachings again later, which confirms, for example, Swinderby's course of action, according to the testimony of the archbishop himself. There was apparently no question of the widespread persecution of the Lollards, of the execution of royal orders in their entirety. The chronicler Walsingham reproaches even the bishops for doing nothing against heretics, although they see and hear them. Another chronicler, Knighton, regarding one of the most decisive royal orders, notes that, despite all its severity, this order was too weakly carried out, because the time for punishment was not yet ripe. Thus, at the end of the 14th century, Lollardism developed almost unhindered, because there was no one to meet it with energetic resistance. The king did not see the need to pay special attention to the Lollards; he himself was not interested in this matter, and therefore, if he did anything, then at the insistence of the clergy. Parliament did not take any part in everything that concerned the fight against heresy, and did not issue a single statute on this subject. Only once, namely in 1387, did the lords and communities pay some attention to the question of the prosecution of heresy, but even then only because the complaints brought to them were caused by it. All their participation in the case was limited, however, only to the fact that they exposed to the king the danger that could result from the spread of heresy for the church and state, but they did not consider it necessary to take any measures on their part. In order to understand this inactivity of Parliament, it must be borne in mind that to legislate for the prosecution of heretics meant at the same time to increase the power of the clergy, which was not at all desirable for Parliament, as this declaration of the commons in 1382 attested. Only a serious danger could induce parliament to issue such laws, and Lollardism of that time had not yet developed to such an extent as to seem dangerous to the existing church and state order, at least the majority did not yet attach such importance to it. Thanks to these favorable conditions, Lollardism was able to develop quite freely until its rapid successes and its courage finally attracted general attention. This happened in 1395. The bold petition presented to the Houses by the Lollards was clear proof that the heresy had indeed grown to dangerous proportions. As a result, the clergy with redoubled energy began to insist on the need to persecute heretics, Parliament decisively took his side, and King Henry IV, who took the place of the deposed Richard, owed his throne to a large extent to the assistance of the clergy, and therefore naturally had to respect his desires. Since the beginning of the 15th century, a real persecution has been erected against the Lollards. At the very first convocation that took place on the accession of Henry IV, in October 1399, the king sent his representatives with a declaration that he would not take taxes from the clergy and would zealously support all the rights and privileges of the church, as well as suppress all false teachings and heresy and persecute heretics. In response to such a pleasant statement, the Archbishop of Arundel expressed gratitude to the king on behalf of the entire clergy. A new reign thus began with a close friendship between the king and the clergy, and the fruits of this friendship were not long in coming to light. When the parliament of 1400 met, the clergy, supported by the communities, submitted a petition in which they complained about the audacity and successes of the heretics, exposed the powerlessness of the church authorities in the fight against them, and demanded the assistance of the king and the law. The desire of the clergy was fulfilled, all the measures proposed by him were adopted by Parliament and the result of this was the statute known as "de heretico comburendo". The preface of this act says that deceitful and obstinate people, who think reprehensibly about the dogmas of faith, about the sacraments and about the authority of the church, arrogate to themselves, contrary to Divine and church laws, the right that does not belong to them to preach and teach others. In different parts of the kingdom, under the guise of outward holiness, they preach their heretical teachings, gather meetings, maintain schools and teach in them, write and distribute books, inciting the people to rebellion, sowing discord everywhere and overthrowing the Catholic faith, the rights and authority of the Church. They move from one diocese to another, avoiding court, do not appear at the call of the bishops, and treat ecclesiastical authority with complete disdain. In consequence of all this, Parliament now determines that henceforth no one should dare to preach anywhere without permission from the ecclesiastical authority, with the exception of parish priests and other privileged persons. So that no one dares to preach or teach anything contrary to the Catholic faith and the definitions of the church, to spread such teachings in books, to gather meetings, to teach in schools. That no one dare to give any protection and assistance to such heretical preachers, gatherers of meetings, writers of books, etc. That anyone who owns books of heretical content, give them to the local bishop within forty days from the time of promulgation of this statute. All who are guilty of violating these definitions, whether they are clearly caught or only suspected, must, by virtue of this statute, be arrested and imprisoned until they are acquitted according to ecclesiastical laws or renounce their heretical teachings. Those who are stubborn in their heresy, as well as those who open up, but then fall away again, should be handed over to the secular authorities. In this case, the ecclesiastical authority must pronounce its verdict in the presence of the local mayor, sheriffs or other officials and then hand over the accused into their hands. After the announcement of the verdict, the secular authorities must take the accused to an elevated place and there burn him in front of the whole people, in order to instill fear in the hearts of others.

  The next reign of Henry V began in exactly the same way as the reign of his predecessor. At the request of the clergy and Oxford University, Parliament of 1414 discusses and approves a new law against heresy, known as the statute "ex officio". By definition of this new statute, the estates of all persons accused of heresy must be subject to confiscation; and since, according to the statute, heresy is the root of every kind of disorder and indignation, it is now decreed, for the better safeguarding of the interests of the state, that the Lord Chancellor, Treasurer, Judges, Sheriffs, Mayors of the Balli, and other officials, upon assuming their office , took an oath that they would apply all their powers to the search for and persecution of heretics, zealously helping with their influence the activities of bishops. To confirm, clarify and develop the legislative definitions that have taken place, the church authorities also issued their own decrees, which are, for example. the so-called constitutions of the archbishops of Arundel and Chaichli, issued by them in consultation with convocations in 1408 and 1416. The constitutions of Arundel stipulate that no one should preach without the permission of the bishop, and these permissions are to be hindered as much as possible. That it be preached only in accordance with the quality of the hearers, that is, that the clergy be told about their sins, and the laity only about their sins. So that anti-church teachings about the sacraments are not spread under pain of punishment. That the writings of Wyclef and those like him should not be allowed to be read anywhere except after the preliminary consideration and approval of the university and the archbishop. That the translation of books of the Bible or texts from it into English and the reading of such translations should be permitted only with the approval of the church. Chaichdi's constitution went even further; it introduced into England something that closely resembled the Inquisition. According to her prescription, bishops, archdeacons and their commissars were, at least twice a year, to carry out a strict search in their districts for persons suspected of heresy. In every parish where, according to rumors, there are such suspicious people, three or more sworn informers must be kept, who would accurately and immediately bring to the attention of the church authorities about persons who hold heretical views, or who take people of a suspicious direction into their house, or having heretical books, or attending meetings, or, finally, simply differing in their way of life from ordinary Catholics. On the basis of such denunciations, the constitution prescribes that trials begin immediately.

  Having enlisted the support of secular authorities, the clergy could now obviously act with greater perseverance and self-confidence than before, and they tried to quickly give established laws against heresy practical application . Immediately upon the approval of the statute "de heritico comburendo", two Lollard priests, John Purvey and William Sawtry, are brought to trial by convocation for their heretical views. Purvey was forced to renounce his convictions, and Sotry, who remained firm, was condemned as a stubborn heretic, and in March 1401, with a large crowd of spectators, he was burnt. This was the first martyr of Lollardism, and he was, so to speak, the signal for the beginning of the persecution. The clergy held the conviction that it was impossible to successfully act to eradicate heresy among the masses if its main leaders and patrons were not destroyed, and therefore special attention was paid to them. Oxford was the scientific center and hotbed of Lollard's views, and the clergy first of all tried to purify it. The convocation of 1408 decreed that the university administration be required to investigate every month the mentality of all members of the corporation and of all students. Suspicious people were ordered first to be exhorted, and then to be deprived of their rights and expelled from the university with excommunication. The archbishop later confirmed this measure several times, and finally, in 1411, he himself visited the university. The consequences showed that the goal of the clergy in this case was achieved. In 1412, the university wrote to the archbishop that a commission of his doctors had extracted from the writings of Wyclef 267 propositions which the university considered false and heretical and wished to see them condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities. Two years later, the same university submitted a note to Henry V, which, among other things, demanded that bishops who were careless in the prosecution of heresy be deposed, and that secular officials assist the ecclesiastical authorities in persecuting the Lollards. It is obvious that Oxford, once the main stronghold of Lollardism, was now filled with its enemies. In addition to the leaders of scientists, the Lollards also had political patrons, strong nobles who supported them with their material means and their influence. The Cobham case showed that the clergy tried to take away this support from the Lollards. The cautious systematic attack of the clergy on this mighty patron of heretics finally culminated in 1417 with the public burning of him in a slow fire. Striking the leaders of Lollardism, the persecution at the same time spread to the masses, finding victims in London, and Oxford, and Leicester, and Norwich, and Bristol, and Worcester, and in other places. The persecuted were imprisoned, where they often died, were forced to renounce their views, and, in case of persistence, died at the stake. We do not, of course, need to state detailed history persecution, it is only important for us to note the fact that in the first quarter of the 15th century Lollardism occupied the position of a sect in England, condemned by state and church laws and subjected to systematic extermination.

  The rapid success enjoyed by Lollardism in the eighties and nineties of the fourteenth century did not seem to make it possible to suppose that such a sad fate would so soon befall it. Then the Lollards acted offensively; they wanted to make their teachings dominant; they threatened the very existence of the Catholic Church and they were sympathized, as it seemed to a contemporary, by a whole half of the nation; but three decades have passed and things have completely changed. Now the Lollards were no longer allowed to think about dominance; now their enemies were advancing on them, they were being pursued, sought after, persecuted and burned at the stake. The church, the government, and even the parliament, that is, representatives of the very nation that half sympathized with them, armed themselves with them. The House of Commons joins the clergy in presenting a petition with them that strict action be taken against the Lollards; parliament issues its harsh laws, ordering heretics either to renounce their teachings, or at the stake; and when, in consequence of these laws, the first martyr of Lollardism perishes in flames, the communities offer their solemn gratitude to the king for having used the proper means to destroy those harmful doctrines and their adherents, which undermine the faith of the church and threaten the destruction of the state. They ask him to immediately bring to justice all those accused and suspected of Lollardism in the future, so that they suffer due punishment and frighten others by their example. In view of such actions of Parliament, there can hardly be any sympathy for the Lollards of half the nation. What is the reason for such a sharp change in the public mood towards Lollardism? We think that, in the essence of the matter, such a change did not even take place at all. Both in Wyclef's personal activity and in Lollardism degenerated from it, one should distinguish between the church-political side and the religious-theological side, talking about the persecution of Lollards as heretics, looking at Lollardism in general as heresy, we naturally mean mainly its religious and theological side. Therefore, when we are told that half of the nation sympathized with the Lollards, we are inclined to think that this sympathy referred specifically to their religious views, i.e., that half of the nation deviated into heresy. But this was not at all, and hardly could have been. The English nation for many centuries lived under the influence of Catholicism; the modern generation of the Lollards was born and brought up in it, and the faith of grandfathers and fathers is not particularly easy to give up. The people are accustomed to bow before the altar and see on it in the Eucharist the body and blood of God Himself; he grew up in the need to pray for his dead loved ones: he was brought up in the firm conviction that traveling to worship the relics of a saint is a good and God-pleasing deed, and that it is precisely by such and other good deeds that a person deserves justification before God. Is it possible to think that a whole half of the nation could give up all these and other beliefs dear to the heart so easily as to become Lollard within a few years?! To abandon these convictions, a strong and not short-term influence of teachers was needed, or diligent and long reflection on the reading of Holy Scripture, and in any case not a small internal struggle, a series of doubts, hesitation, pangs of conscience, etc. All this, of course, is not managed to survive for not many years a whole half of the nation, especially since living word itinerant preachers and the Bible translated into English not long ago, as we know, touched the people. With this in mind, we think that the words of the chroniclers should be understood more in relation to the ecclesiastical-political side of Lollardism than to the religious-theological side. Half the nation sympathized with the Lollards, not on the question of the Eucharist or prayer for the dead, but in their opposition to the rights and privileges of the clergy, in their rejection of the papacy, in their desire to take away church property, etc. If so, then it is not difficult to explain to yourself that a course of action by Parliament which at first glance seems to be a sharp change in public sentiment towards Lollardism. Parliament did not sympathize with the actual religious teachings of the Lollards either at the end of the 14th century or at the beginning of the 15th; both then and now, his majority was disposed to stand up for the faith of their fathers. But at first this lack of sympathy was not revealed, because in the spread of Lollardism Parliament did not yet see anything so dangerous as to contribute to the strengthening of the clergy for its sake. When Lollardism began to develop rapidly and showed unprecedented courage, Parliament, so to speak, woke up from its inactivity and expressed its view of the matter in severe statutes. As for the ecclesiastical and political tendencies of Lollardism, the parliament, as a representative of the nation, sympathized with them too!.. His split in this respect was clearly expressed in his actions. At the same time, he issued severe statutes against Lollard heretics, demanded their execution and thanked the king for the burning of one of them - and at the same time he demanded the destruction of the judicial privileges of the clergy and more than once proposed the secularization of church property. . But no matter how strong the sympathies of Parliament for certain tendencies of Lollardism were, they could not shake its allegiance to the Catholic religion, and therefore the Lollards soon had to make sure that their aspirations for dominance were at least premature and that it fell to their lot for the time being. only the position of the persecuted sect.

  Thus the church triumphed; royal power and parliament were on her side, and dangerous heresy was persecuted. But the celebration was still not complete. Despite all the efforts of the defenders of the church, despite the growing severity of the persecution, he did not manage to completely kill the heresy, destroy its very roots, so that no trace of it remains. The anti-church and heretical teachings sown among the people showed such vitality that their complete extermination is impossible. For a whole quarter of a century, for example, persecution raged when Archbishop Chaichli, in 1428, convened a convocation in London, and meanwhile at this convocation he declared that its main goal was the defense of the faith and the church and the extermination of false teachings and heretics, which had intensified in an unusual degree. He insisted on the need for quick action, because otherwise the evil would intensify every day. With persistent persecution by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, heresy was not able to intensify, but at least it did not die until the Reformation itself. During this period of time, there is not a single decade in which there would not be a sufficient amount of data indicating its continuous existence. Such data include, for example, the order of Henry VI, referring to 1440, from which we learn that at that time the Lollards made pilgrimages to the place of burning of one of their martyrs; or the polemical writings of Bishop Reginald Pecock, relating to the middle of the 15th century, and giving quite a bit of information about the present state of the Lollards. But the richest material for the history of heresy during this time are the acts of trials carried out in different places and on different persons who were brought to trial for their heretical views. To talk about these processes meant to write a whole martyrology, which, of course, is not part of our task. We note only the fact that from the beginning of the XV century. and until the Reformation itself, the processes of accusation of heresy drag on in an almost continuous thread, then multiplying in number, as it was, for example, from 1428 to 1431, then in the eighties and nineties of the XV century, in the beginning and in the twenties XVI century., then decreasing and even completely stopping for a while, which depended on the degree of jealousy of one or another archbishop or bishop, or on political conditions. This mass of processes thus serves as the clearest proof of the existence of heresy that continued until the Reformation itself. The accusatory points of the trials and the responses to them by the accused give us a full opportunity to find out the very content of the heresy. From them we see that one of the main crimes charged against the heretics was their special respect for the Holy. Scripture. They said that translating the Bible into the vernacular was a necessary and commendable work, that reading the Bible was far more beneficial than preaching. Their word in this case was quite consistent with the deed. Most of the accused, especially since the 16th century, were accused of reading the English Bible and having copies of it in their possession. In addition to reading the Bible, they were accused also of the fact that they are generally very inclined to self-edification by reading religious books, of course heretical ones, such as the writings of Wyclef and other false teachers, and that they give great preference to the English language, studying in it contains the most common prayers, commandments, and the creed. In the dogmatic delusions of the heretics, the most widespread was their doctrine of the Eucharist, in which they did not recognize the transubstantiation or the bodily presence of Christ. They rejected the existence of purgatory, did not recognize the right of the hierarchy to knit and loose, and therefore denied the need for oral confession before a priest. They did not consider saints to be intermediaries and intercessors for people before God, and therefore they were not allowed to call them in prayers. Charity and prayers for the dead, in their opinion, cannot have any meaning. By the church they meant the community of the elect, in which every righteous person is a true priest and everyone has the right to preach and teach others if he is capable of doing so. No one has the right to excommunicate from the church. The Church, which apparently exists, that is, the Church of Rome, is full of a mass of abuses and is in need of a speedy and radical reform; she is too rich, her clergy are drowning in luxury and depravity; its head, i.e., the pope, is the Antichrist. In the existing practice of the Catholic Church there is much that only harms Christian perfection, seduces to superstition and idolatry. Heretics attributed to the category of such customs harmful to the soul, for example. various ceremonies during the performance of the sacraments, the consecration of water, the blessing of bread, pilgrimages, the veneration of icons and relics, feasts in honor of saints, etc. It seems not difficult to notice that all these teachings of heretics are nothing more than a repetition and development of those the same thoughts that were once expressed and disseminated by Wyclef. Consequently, the heresy that continued until the Reformation was Lollardism, a beginning that was laid at the end of the 14th century. – Despite the persecution, therefore, the heresy continued to exist and preach the same teachings that it had preached before the persecution. But trials and executions, of course, inevitably had some influence on her, and the Lollardism of the late 14th century is far from what we see it at the end of the 15th and early 16th centuries. Then the Lollards kept their policy of the offensive; they declared their demands and wanted to rebuild the existing order in their own way, while the church had to defend its existence, defend itself from their attacks; now the church went on the offensive, she demanded agreement with her teachings, and the Lollards had to fight only for their existence. At that time, the Lollards could not yet be called a heretical sect, that there was a large party dissatisfied with the present order that prevailed in the church, a party that demanded reform; now it is a sect of heretics, condemned by state and church laws. As condemned and persecuted heretics, the Lollards could no longer, of course, act in the same way as they had before. Then they boldly spoke everywhere with the preaching of their teachings, in churches and in open places they gathered crowds of listeners near them, they even made a petition in parliament; now they were left with only "conventicula occulta", in secluded peasant huts, as safe as possible from persecution. As a reform party, Lollardism had the attractive character of liberalism, all the more alluring in that no sacrifices had yet been required. But when he became a sect, to belong to which meant losing the protection of laws and risking death at the stake, the self-serving theological scholarship of Oxford, and the aristocracy committed to earthly goods, gradually recoiled from him; he became the property of the lower classes of society, acquired a plebeian character, which in turn in the eyes of many was a bad recommendation and repulsed them from him. Despised and persecuted, Lollardism did not assert itself on the surface of society, it acted as an underlying force; but, if one of the Lollards admitted at the trial in 1518 that he converted up to seven hundred people to his teaching, one can think that this latent force acted persistently and fruitfully.

  Through the force of persecution, the church authorities managed in this way, if not to kill heresy, then at least to drive it into the lower strata of society. But the upper classes, although they recoiled from Lollardism, were still not completely immune from the influence of those anti-church ideas that were preached by the Lollards. At the beginning of the 16th century, these ideas began to penetrate them in other ways, which apparently had nothing in common with Lollardism.

  The Reformation, proclaimed at that time in Germany, immediately found a response in all the Catholic countries of Europe. England was no exception in this case. Thanks to England's close commercial contact with the northern provinces of Germany, German reformist ideas very soon found access to it. Some evidence for this can be eg. trials against heretics relating to this time; in them we find, by the way, that heretics recognize the justification of man before God as the only fruit of faith, an idea that the Lollards did not think of. In the same processes, there is evidence of a more positive nature. Humphrey Mummut e.g. directly accused of adherence to Martin Luther and his opinions. The works of the German reformers were brought from abroad and to in large numbers spread in England. Richard Byfield was accused of ex. in the fact that he brought from the continent many books of sinful content, such as the works of Martin Luther, Ecolampadius and other heretics. Antwerp, Cologne, and Hamburg were hotbeds from which heretical books were sent in masses to England, and among these books were numerous copies of William Tyndall's new English translation of the Bible. The spread in England of the reformist ideas of the continent was, of course, noticed by the authorities, who were not slow to take their measures. In May 1521, Cardinal Wolsi saw fit to issue his order to all bishops against the most destructive, harmful and seductive opinions of Luther, declaring his writings heretical and demanding their extradition. In the same year, the king ordered all authorities to assist the bishops in finding and punishing those infected with Lutheranism. These measures could not, of course, completely destroy the Lutheran influence in England. Polydore Virgil remarked that many Lutheran books were in the hands of the English, and Herbert says that Lutheran teachings had taken root in some parts of England to such an extent that even the common people sometimes began to question what they had previously considered to be indisputable truth. As an influence coming from abroad, Lutheranism, of course, was reflected mainly on those classes of English society that had direct relations with the Continent, and these were mainly the highest representatives of the commercial class and the class of scientists. It was precisely these classes that acquired and brought to England the works of the Continental Reformers and even formed special circles for their study. Thus, the anti-church ideas of Lollardism, ousted from here by persecution, penetrated here again in a different way, in the form of Lutheranism.

  Finally, another influence came to the aid of the oppressed Lollard ideas, the bearer of which was the very flower of the then European society, the aristocracy of talent, courted by both nobles and kings, before which the church itself bowed for some time. We are talking about humanism. As for England, the humanist movement did not have such strength as in Italy or Germany, and such representatives, whose influence would acquire a European character. But what has been said by Thomas More and John Colet, though by no means great, but at the same time the most prominent representatives of English humanism, is quite sufficient for our purpose. No matter how hard More's Catholic admirers try to prove his orthodoxy, no matter how much More's personal activity as Lord Chancellor speaks in favor of this orthodoxy, for all that, from the point of view of a strict Inquisition, those thoughts that More develop in his "Utopia" would be quite enough to put him on the fire as a heretic and an enemy of the church. Describing the state supposedly existing on the island of Utopia, More says that among its inhabitants, professing different religions, complete religious tolerance prevails. They hold on to the conviction that religion should subjugate people to itself solely by the power of truth itself, and therefore no one is forbidden to spread their teachings. Priests among the inhabitants of Utopia hold their offices by choice; they serve not so much as priests, but as teachers and leaders of the people, and therefore both men and women can equally be in this rank. Even those of the inhabitants of Utopia who adhere to the Christian religion are inclined to establish in themselves the same elective priesthood, without any apostolic succession and without any head, the pope. The inhabitants of Utopia do not use icons during divine services, they do not recognize fasting, because they consider the exhaustion of the body a sin, and the renunciation of food created by God is ingratitude towards the Creator. There are no idle people on Utopia, partly because it does not, like in other states, have a huge number of priests and monks. More ends the description of the state structure of Utopia with a vocation that, although he certainly does not hope, he would like such an order to be adopted in his own country. Obviously, the author of Utopia was not satisfied with the existing order. The thoughts developed in this work are nothing but a protest, although expressed in an indirect and subtle form. Colet declares herself much more directly and consistently in her words and actions. Like his other learned contemporaries, he went to Italy to improve his education, but from there he returned not only as a humanist-classic, but as a humanist-theologian, a humanist-reformer. It is not about Plato or Plotinus that he begins his lectures at Oxford, but about the epistles of St. Paul. He turns to Holy Scripture as the primary source of Christianity, and in its explanation he sees the best means of Christian enlightenment. With the general enthusiasm for classicism, and Colet respects the study of ancient languages, but he looks at this study as the key to a better understanding of Scripture. In this respect More agrees with him, who solemnly declared at Oxford that one cannot be a good theologian without having thoroughly studied the languages ​​of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. When explaining the Scriptures, Colet constantly has in mind that it is precisely it that should serve as the norm in determining the merits or demerits of the existing system of church life, and therefore very often he dwells on contemporary church phenomena and denounces their inconsistencies with the true spirit of Christianity. The Apostle Paul, for example. collected voluntary donations for the victims of the famine in Judea. Regarding this, Colet expands in his explanation of how these voluntary donations are much higher than the money that the modern clergy extort through cruel penalties from the people under the guise of tithes, etc. The Apostle Paul advises Timothy to run away from the love of money and prosper in truth, piety, faith, love, patience, meekness. Priests of our time, Colet adds, should pay more attention to this advice of the apostle, who himself worked, working with his own hands, so as not to give reason to suspect himself of greed and not to cause temptation to them. The modern clergy not only cause temptation by their behavior, but even completely undermine the authority of the church. It indulges in constant disputes and wrangling about worldly affairs and benefits; in his midst there are not a few such priests who are not afraid to approach the holy altar directly from the arms of a harlot. Even in the episcopal rank there are such people who should not at all be members of the clergy; they are extremely ignorant in everything that concerns the Gospel and in general Christian truths, and set the task of their ministry only to protect the worldly rights and possessions of the church. General conclusion, so to speak, of all these particulars was the statement that Colet made in his famous speech to the clergy of the convocation. He said that for the church the depraved life of the clergy is more dangerous than all heresies; that a reform of the church is needed, which must begin with the bishops and priests, and then touch the people. Colet and his friends understood this reform not as the correction of only private abuses of the church, but as a general restoration in it and the resurrection of the spirit of Christ. Do not these words of the English humanists remind us of what Wyclef and his followers, the Lollards, had long ago said? Here is the same appeal to the Holy Scriptures as the primary source of Christianity, the same denial, albeit indirectly, of the papacy and hierarchies, the same rebellion against certain church customs and institutions, the same satire, the same denunciations of the clergy, the same cry about the nearness of the fall of the church, the need for church reform. Meanwhile, humanism was a phenomenon, so to speak, aristocratic; his ideas were the property of only a select few. If so, then we can again say that the anti-church ideas of Lollardism, ousted from the upper classes of society by persecution, find a new way for themselves there in the form of humanism. It goes without saying that a learned and refined humanist would never agree to call the contemptible and oppressed Lollard his brother, just as Lollard would never claim his kinship with this proud aristocrat. But it did require them to reach out to each other. The only important thing was that each of them individually saw something native to himself in those ideas that the Reformation proclaimed.

  The general conclusion to which this chapter leads us does not seem to require much explanation. The phenomena presented and analyzed by us, we hope, with sufficient clarity convince the reader that in England, along with the development of political and economic Protestantism, an opposition to the church of a different kind developed, which had as its source not concern for material interests, but religious thought and religious feeling.

  So, in English society, by the beginning of the 16th century, the conviction had already strongly developed that the existing Catholic Church was not what it should be. This church, with its papacy and hierarchy, harms the national interests of the country and the public good, and in its teachings and practice has deviated far from the model that is inscribed for it in the sacred Scriptures by its Divine Founder. Is it not that consciousness of deformation which precedes and necessarily conditions the existence of the Reformation?

  Introduction

  The Beginning of the Reformation

  1 Causes of the Reformation in England

  2 Reformation under Henry VIII

  Reformation under the last Tudors

  1 Protestant Reformation under Edward VI

  2 Catholic reaction under Mary Tudor

  3 Compromise of Elizabeth I

  Conclusion

  Bibliography
  

  1. Introduction
  

  Relevance. Story Western Europe The early modern period cannot be comprehended without referring to the vast set of problems associated with the Reformation - a religious movement that in the 16th century swept almost all of Europe. In the understanding of the reformers, the reorganization of the Catholic Church included a significant set of measures aimed at changing the doctrine and worship, church practice and the life of parishioners, relations between church and state, and the system of canon law.

  In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, the church continued to play an important role in the life of society. Church institutions functioned on the basis of canon law, ecclesiastical courts regulated important aspects Everyday life people (marriage and family law, the approval of wills, etc.), therefore, the study of a specific area of ​​​​church law allows us to comprehend the process of reforming the church in a deeper and more detailed way.

  In each country, the Reformation had local conditions and features determined by the course of the previous historical development. In England, such a feature was the dominance of government initiative during the reforms, which significantly influenced their course and the formation of the system of canon law.

  The relevance of the topic is also related to the fact that despite the many works in foreign historiography, in the domestic historical science far from all aspects of the English Reformation have been studied.

  In addition, the Reformation led to the creation of many currents in Christianity, united under the common name "Protestantism".

  The scientific relevance of the topic is due to its close connection with the problems of humanistic ideology, the worldview of late medieval society. The historical traditions of Protestantism to this day have a great influence on the political and cultural life of modern states where Christianity is professed, which makes the work even more significant.

  One of the most moderate currents of Protestantism is Anglicanism, representing a kind of compromise between the Catholic and Protestant creeds. In this regard, the English Reformation has never been devoid of attention from researchers.

  The object of this study is the English Reformation. The events in England were one of the most original moments of the pan-European Reformation. Their originality was determined by the previous course of the historical development of the country and was associated with the dominant role of royal power. The change in the relationship between church and state inevitably led to the reorganization of the old Catholic system of canon law and changed the impact of the reformed church on the life of society.

  The chronological framework of my research covers the early royal reformation - the second half of the reign of Henry VIII and ends with the reign of Elizabeth I.

  The territorial scope of the study is England.

  Research methods:

  .A systematic method that allows us to consider the reformation as a complex, evolutionary phenomenon.

  .The comparative historical method makes it possible to identify general and particular processes in the development of English ecclesiastical law and trends in its development.

  .Biographical method - the study of personality in the context of history.

  Study of the topic: The topic of the Reformation in England has received wide coverage in various fields of humanitarian and social knowledge. The first works covering the events of the English Reformation were the works of various church historians belonging to the Catholic or Protestant camps: J. Barnet, J. Collier, L. Dodd, J. Stripe14. For these works of the XVII-XIX centuries. a confessional approach is characteristic, often a biased attitude towards Catholicism. To the works of the XVII-XIX centuries. the origins of the liberal (Whig) concept of the Reformation, very popular in the 19th century, go back. It was characterized by an overestimation of the Tudor period in the history of England: it was considered milestone on the way of turning the country into a world power, a turning point in the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age. The success of Protestantism was seen as a victory for progress. On the one hand, this aroused great interest in the problems of the Reformation, on the other hand, it led to an excessive emphasis on the Protestant nature of church reforms, an exaggeration of the "uniqueness and exclusivity" of the historical development of the English nation, and the transformation of the history of the Reformation into the history of Anglicanism. The thesis of the national exclusivity of the British, of the desire for freedom as a trait, was especially emphasized. national character, which determined the break with the papacy. A positive feature of the works of Whig historians (J. Russell, G. Gallam, T. B. Macaulay) is the development of the problem of establishing royal supremacy over the church.

  Tory historians, conservatives (D. Hume, Mitford) considered the Reformation in the context of strengthening the absolute monarchy. The radical direction is represented by W. Cobbett, who focused on secularization and the abolition of the poor laws and emphasized that the reasons for the Reformation were the economic interests of the king and the nobility. Historians-positivists (G.T. Bockl, D.R. Green) sought to show the Reformation as part of a holistic historical process, create a unified picture of the history of England.

  At the beginning of the XX century. took shape sociological school focusing on the connection between the Reformation and the economic component of society. Its most important figure is M. Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

  The purpose of this work is to study the Reformation in England as a historical process.

  From this follow the following tasks:

  .Identification of the causes of the birth of the Reformation in England

  .Studying the stages of the reformation: under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I.

  .Identification of the influence of the reform movement on the future fate of the church.

  .Analysis of the results of the Reformation.

  reformation england church

  2. The beginning of the reformation
  

  1 Causes of the Reformation in England
  

  The reasons that gave rise to the reformation in England developed over a long period of time, as in all European states that survived the reformation of the church. But in some aspects they were typical only for England itself. You should refer to the list of immediate causes:

  .Firstly, the Lollards, whose task was to spread the teachings of John Wyclif (he openly came up with ideas to reform Western Christianity, boldly opposed the payment of taxes to the papal treasury. Wyclif argued that, in case of need, the state has the right to deprive the Church of its possessions, and the encroachment of the pope on secular power is contrary to the foundations of Christianity), failed to exterminate to the end. On the contrary, their teachings were passed from house to house among the lowest classes of the population of England and became a religious underground movement of the 15th century. The Lollards' emphasis on the authority of Scripture and on the need for personal communion with Christ was reinforced by political changes in England in the first quarter of the 16th century.

  .Thirdly, the intellectual factor should not be ignored either. Biblical humanists or Oxford reformers such as John Colet (c. 1466-1519), deacon of St. Paul's Church, began to study the Bible translated by Erasmus of Rotterdam in the early 16th century and explained the meaning of the Bible to their people. These humanists were extremely critical of the shortcomings they saw in the Roman Church and tried to initiate reforms. William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) and Max Coverdale, who later made the Scriptures available to the English people in his own language, were also reformers. Tyndale published two editions (three thousand copies each) of his English translation of the New Testament at Worms in 1525. This translation from the Greek New Testament by Erasmus of Rotterdam was the first printed New Testament and was distributed in England by merchants. Although Tyndale was martyred near Brussels in 1536, his cause continued to live and helped bring about religious reform in England. Miles Cawsrdale published the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English in 1535. A student of the Reformation is always amazed that the success of the Reformation in the state is closely connected with the translation of the Bible into the language of the people living there.

  .Fourthly, Luther's writings and ideas were also circulated in England, which also spoke of the abuses of the Roman Church. The main provisions were written by him in the work "The Babylonian Captivity". Henry VIII reacted very negatively to this work and in response to it he writes his work "In Defense of the Seven Sacraments". For her, the Pope awards him the title "Defender of the Faith." Luther's books were publicly burned, although this act did not stop the spread of his ideas, which were no less studied, and through these ideas people came to Protestant views.

  .Also the immediate, direct cause that led to the Reformation was Henry VIII's desire to have a legitimate male heir. Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the founders of the Spanish state, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Henry VIII lived with her in marriage for 24 years, after the marriage there was a daughter, Mary. Henry VIII was never distinguished by marital fidelity, only he had 6 official marriages. Henry VIII wished to marry his new "passion" Anne Boleyn. But first he had to divorce Catherine of Aragon and, in order to marry, he had to bring the Roman Church in England under his control. Henry's actions were the direct and personal cause of the Reformation.
  

  2 Reformation under Henry VIII
  

  Henry VIII was King of England from 1509 to 1547. By the standards of the 16th century, King Henry VIII was a very tall man. He was distinguished not only by his height, but also by his very strong build - broad-shouldered, with muscular arms and legs. “He was very handsome - tall and slender,” a contemporary wrote about the twenty-two-year-old king, “and when he moved, the earth trembled under him.” In his actions, political and personal motives were combined in a very bizarre and at first glance contradictory way. Henry VIII was portrayed either as a king-zhuir, who did little public affairs and was constantly in a whirlwind of court entertainment (special attention is usually paid to his scandalous personal life), then as a cruel and treacherous tyrant, then as an extremely prudent sober politician, indifferent to women who arranged marriages only for political reasons and kept a magnificent courtyard solely out of necessity, for reasons of prestige. In fact, in an amazing way, he combined the features noble knight and tyrant, but sober calculation prevailed, aimed at strengthening their own power.

  His father was Henry VII, who dedicated himself to uniting the major royal families of Europe into one family through strategic marriages. His daughter Margaret married James of Scotland. His son Arthur married the Spanish princess Catharina of Aragon. When Arthur died, the impoverished king, not wanting to lose Catharina's dowry, persuaded Pope Julius II to grant a dispensation, and Catharina was able to marry Henry, Arthur's younger brother, in 1503. Heinrich and Katharina had one child. This child later became Queen Mary Tudor.

  When it turned out that Henry could not have a son from this marriage, he became concerned, because he believed that England would need a male ruler after his death to look after the dominions during the period of colonization. He also believed that perhaps God was punishing him for marrying his brother's widow. Having entered into a relationship with the pretty Anne Boleyn (Catherine's lady-in-waiting), Henry ordered his adviser, Cardinal Wolsey, to begin negotiations with Pope Clement VII, so that he would be allowed to be freed from Catherine. Clement VII was unable to comply with this request because in 1527 he was under the influence of Catharina's nephew, the powerful Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor of Germany. Henry accused Wolsey of conspiracy when he failed to get a divorce, but Wolsey died before Henry could execute him.

  Since it was clear that the pope would not allow a divorce, Henry decided to get it from the English clergy, who could relent under parliamentary pressure. The Tudor Parliament was made up of representatives of the people, but it was accountable to the king, not to the people. Thus the Reformation in England was initiated secular power king and parliament. The Reformed Parliament did away with papal control and monasticism. At the insistence of the king, Parliament adopted a number of statutes, the general meaning of which was the creation in the country of a national church independent of Rome.

  In 1529, Parliament "forbade members of the clergy to hold several benefices at the same time, or to live in a place other than their place of service."

  The statute of 1532 stated: "If the pope imposes an interdict or excommunication on the country, the king, the subjects, this should not be taken into account."

  Thomas Cromwell became Henry's chief advisor. In 1532 the Protestant Thomas Cranmer was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He immediately annulled the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and legalized his marriage to Anne Boleyn. In the autumn of 1533, Anna had a daughter, Elizabeth Tudor

  The Statute of Parliament of 1533 stated: “There are many inconveniences arising from appeals to the See of Rome in matters of wills, marriages and divorces, which cause the king and his subjects much anxiety, difficulties and expenses. In addition, Rome is so far away that the investigation is dragged out and justice suffers. Therefore, it was decided that "all such matters should be finally decided within the kingdom."

  The parliament of 1534 made an important addition in the matter of appeals to Rome. If, according to the statute of 1533, appeals to the pope on certain issues were prohibited, now “any appeals and appeals ... to Rome are prohibited. In the event of an unfair decision in the court of the archbishop, dissatisfied may appeal to Royal Highness» .

  Developing opposition to Rome, the Parliament of 1534 destroyed all influence of the pope on the appointment of archbishops and bishops of England. He decreed that “candidates for the sees of archbishops and bishops should not present themselves to the pope and should not wait for a bull from the pope; all such bulls and such representations must be stopped forever.

  All these pieces of legislation dealt a mortal blow to papal power in England. The Pope was no longer the highest judge in the country. He ceased to be a fief lord of the English Church, as he was throughout the Catholic world, since the English prelates - the former vassals of the pope - were appointed without his consent. The pope could not strike England with his curses, because interdicts and excommunications were ordered to be ignored. Papal jurisdiction in the country was abolished.

  Along with measures aimed at destroying the legal privileges of the papacy, the Parliament adopted statutes to free England from financial dependence on Rome: the “Act to Limit the Payment of Annats” (1532), “The Act to Abolish Papal Dispensations and the Payment of St. Peter’s Penny” ( 1534).

  The apogee of the activity of the “Parliament of the Reformation” was the publication in 1534 of the “Act of Supremacy” (supremacy), which declared the king the supreme head of the Anglican. The “Act of Supremacy” was approved by Parliament in November 1534. The act specifically stated: “the king (his heirs and successors) must be accepted, recognized, honored by the only supreme head of England ... and must own all titles, honors, dignity, privileges, jurisdiction, and revenues proper to and belonging to the dignity of the Supreme Head of the Church.” The power of the English king was declared imperial - excluding subordination to anyone, including the head of the Catholic Church.

  The break with Rome was to determine the attitude towards monasticism and monasteries. Moreover, of all the land wealth in Catholic Europe, 1/3 belonged to the church, and of all the land held by the clergy, 2/3 were the property of monasteries. From the end of 1535 to 1540. In England, there was a process of secularization of monasteries. It included the so-called visitation (a tour of all church institutions and drawing up reports on their condition), consideration of the report of visitors at parliament sessions, and the adoption of a law on the liquidation of monasteries. The dissolution of the monasteries proceeded sequentially, starting with the small ones. At the same time, resistance to the procedure was interpreted as political unreliability, which could result in prosecution for high treason. Monasteries passed into the possession of the king. In 1540, the parliament passed a statute that assigned all church estates to the king and his heirs. As a result of secularization, 645 monasteries were confiscated. Since as a result of secularization, a huge amount of real and movable property turned out to be in the hands of the king. The secularization of the monasteries enriched the treasury. The king gave part of the land as a reward to his associates, the court aristocracy, and part was leased. Secularization caused a new wave of "enclosures" that went on in the country from the end of the 15th century. The monastic peasants filled up the army of the dispossessed, the paupers. The monasteries were strongholds of the papacy, so their secularization contributed to the destruction of papal influence. The liquidation of monasteries destroyed the material, legal, moral influence of the clergy on the masses. Finally, secularization cleared the way for the further course of the Reformation.

  Having created a national church led by himself, having taken property from the church, thus turning the church into a part of the state apparatus, Henry VIII could stop. He did not need a reform of dogmatics and was even harmful. But no matter how much the king wanted to break with Catholicism, he had to look for features of differences to justify the ongoing separation from the papacy. In May 1536, by order of the king, the Reformation Committee was established, headed by T. Cranmer, which formulated the first Anglican creed - the Ten Articles. Then three more variants of religion appeared: “Instruction to a good Christian”, or “Bishop's book”, “Six-article statute “Bishop's book”, “Six-article statute King's book”. By the end of the reign of Henry VIII, the Anglican Church had taken an intermediate position between the Catholic and the Lutheran. It rejected extremes in the veneration of saints and icons, prohibited indulgences, reduced the number of holidays, made minor changes in worship and rituals, and called Holy Scripture as a source of faith. Hence, one of the first tasks of the Reformation was the translation of the Bible into English. From that time on, the Bible becomes available to the English.

  In general, the religious issue was not resolved at the first stage of the reformation. Only political and economic transformations were carried out.

  1 Protestant Reformation under Edward VI
  

  After the death of Henry VIII, the future of England was in the weak hands of a nine-year-old boy, small for his age. King Edward VI grew up as an intelligent and lively child. White skin, reddish hair and a graceful physique. Prince Edward was very beautiful child. In early childhood, Edward was sometimes sick, and besides this, he did not cause any concerns to his father. He mastered Latin and the basics of Greek, and when it came time to take the reins of government, he knew French well, fenced with his peers in the castle courtyard and went hunting on horseback. From the point of view of religious education, this was a real child of the Reformation. The prince did not know any other religion than that adopted at Henry's court, where services were held in English. So he grew up unencumbered by the nostalgia for the old church and masses in Latin, the nostalgia that haunted his parents' generation. Of course, Edward was to become a nominal ruler. In his will, Henry appointed a regency council of sixteen "close ones dear to my heart", which included all the chief ministers of his government. This council was to guide the young king until he came of age. Two of the sixteen named, Edward Seymour, who shortly after Henry's death became Duke of Somerset, and William Paget, immediately took over the regency business. Edward Seymour was Edward's closest female relative, and it was only natural that he became his guardian. Moreover, Edward himself approved that he would be his regent.

  It was Edward who would carry out a religious reform, as a result of which a new religion and worship was approved.

  From 1548 to 1551 a series of documents (Statutes of Parliament, Orders of the King, Epistles of the Archbishop of Canterbury) and The Book of Common Prayer were issued, which completed the liturgical reform. These events brought the Anglican Church closer to Lutheranism. When the reform of worship and rites was completed, the question arose of a systematic exposition of the dogmas of the English Reformed Church.

  In 1551, Archbishop Cranmer was ordered by the king to draw up a creed that would be distributed throughout the country. A new creed of the English creed was written, considered by the Privy Council (the closest royal state structure), a meeting of the highest ranks of the church, and in 1553, under the title "42 articles" sent to the dioceses "for strict adherence to it in sermons and teachings." The main provisions of the "42 Articles" were Protestant: the Catholic teaching on purgatory, on indulgences, on the veneration of icons, relics, on turning to saints was rejected; only 2 sacraments were left instead of 7 in Catholicism - baptism and communion; communion was to be administered under both kinds and for the laity; clergy marriages were allowed; Divine services were to be conducted in a language understandable to the people.

  But still, all the measures taken and the transformations were carried out on very fragile, vacillating ground. When Edward VI reached the age of 15, it became clear that his reign would not be long. After his death, in the absence of direct heirs, the throne was to pass into the hands of Mary (daughter of Catherine of Aragon), passionately devoted to Catholicism, who spent her whole bitter life in prayer.

  At this time, the Duke of Northumberland conceived the idea of ​​setting in motion such a political intrigue, which was to both consolidate the Reformation in England and transfer the royal power to his house. The Duke of Northumberland announced the marriage of his son Guildford even before the announcement of the changes in the succession to the throne.<#"justify">After the death of Mary, Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, ascended the English throne. When she came to the throne she was twenty-six years old. As for her appearance, her hair was very red. Many at court called her an incomparable beauty, which was not true, but she had sufficient attractiveness and, of course, won in comparison with Mary.

  She received an excellent education, but did not skimp on scolding and was sometimes very rude when talking. In many ways, she inherited the rabid character of her father. Some extolled her to the skies, while others unrestrainedly blackened her.

  After the accession of the new queen to the throne, some courtiers were directly tempted to continue the same system of government that had existed until now. The saddened widower Philip II, king of Spain, hurried to offer her his hand as soon as the well-known, decency-set period for such a search had passed. He was no longer ashamed of the origin of Elizabeth - he was guided only by political motives. But he did not meet with sympathy from Elizabeth, who, although she was very peculiar in her religious views, could not in any way lean towards Catholicism. At the same time, she was by no means reconciled with all manifestations of Protestantism. So, for example, married clergy was disgusting to her, and she felt much more disposition towards rituals, towards the appearance of worship in general, than all the reformers of the time of Edward VI. When, at her entrance to London, she was informed about the prisoners who were languishing in captivity and awaiting release from her, and among the prisoners they allegorically mentioned “the four evangelists,” Elizabeth very subtly and cautiously remarked that she still must first investigate whether these four prisoners themselves want to be freed"? But she also could not remain a Catholic, because already by the fact of her birth she was, as it were, a living contradiction to papism.

  Her father married her mother against the will of the pope, and even if she forgot about this circumstance, she should have been reminded of it by that impudent message with which Pope Paul IV answered her notice of accession to power. However, she did not let herself be confused, did not suffer any constraint in her actions, did not succumb to the temptation of revenge and did not return directly (as one of the parties advised her) to the religious orders of Edward VI, but managed to correctly guess the mood of the people, choosing in this relation to some middle way. She saw that in England there was a very zealous Catholic party and a very zealous Protestant party. Both of them are comparatively small. The vast majority of people (at least in influential circles) stood mainly for the independence of the country from the pope, and in the rest, as far as rituals were concerned from the dogmatic side, they were ready to make concessions, almost unwilling to demonstrate the opposite in relation to the old, so called Catholic-based religion.

  Elizabeth and her government once again changed the entire English church structure. Has been restored english church, that is, independent of the Pope of Rome, which had the English King (Queen) as its supreme head. In this church, however, the bishops remained, now subordinate to the king. According to its dogma, the Anglican Church differed little from the Catholic Church. The extreme vagueness of the new catechism made it possible to interpret it in different ways. Rejecting the humiliating dogmas of the old Church, cruel laws against heretics and destroying the spiritual courts, she almost did not move away from the structure of the Church that was under Henry VIII, and gradually began to bring her closer to general provisions Protestantism in the form in which it had already managed to establish itself on the mainland.

  By agreement with her first and closest adviser and with the consent of parliament, although she abolished the high-profile title of "Supreme Head of the Church", she nevertheless retained the most significant rights of leadership, in the sense of control and leadership of transformations in the church environment. Both higher and lower clergy had to recognize these rights and secure them with an oath. Then, the 42 paragraphs of Cranmer's "Confession of Faith" were revised, but moderately and in the form of "39 paragraphs" were approved by a meeting of the clergy in London in 1562, and in 1571 passed by Parliament as a law binding on all. At the same time, both the brilliance and the solemnity of worship, and the vestments of the priests, and the most significant positions from the hierarchical system were preserved.

  The Thirty-nine Articles emphasize the supreme authority of Scripture, as does the entire Protestant movement. However, Anglicans retained close ties to their Catholic heritage, reasserting the importance of tradition. They did not claim equality of authority between Scripture and tradition, as the Catholics did, but still followed tradition as closely as possible. In addition, they argued that when Scripture is silent on an issue, the church has the power to establish a binding tradition on that issue. After the church exercises its authority and establishes a tradition, every believer and every local parish must follow it. Change can only come from the church as a whole. That is, more emphasis was placed on the common tradition than on the conscience and freedom of man. The Church of England predominantly remained liturgical. Those who focused on traditional rituals became known as the "high church," and those whose services began to be celebrated in an evangelical manner became known as the "lower church."

  Thus, Elizabeth founded the Anglican Church - akin to Protestantism in its doctrine and independence from the pope and, at the same time, akin to Catholicism in rites and internal structure. In England, of course, there were even then a sufficient number of people who did not agree with this system (non-conformists), there were even more ardent supporters of Calvinism and Presbyterianism, independents (independents) - in a word, all those elements who later were designated by one common name - the Puritans. But they did not dare to raise their heads during the reign of Elizabeth and had to wait for the onset of other times more favorable for their propaganda.
  

  4. Conclusion
  

  Studying the history of modern times, it is impossible not to turn to the complex of problems associated with the reformation. The Reformation - as a religious movement swept through many countries of the world, and in each country there were only small differences, which cannot be said about England. The English Reformation differed from all others in that it was dictated from above, since English absolutism could afford such a phenomenon. Naturally, the reformation took place not only at the behest of the king, but there were enough problems associated with the church: this was the spread of the ideas of Wyclif, Luther, and the intellectual factor, indignation at the behavior of Rome. We see how the reorganization of the church changed under different kings (queens). The Reformation was started by Henry VIII, who in many respects did not decide the future fate of the church after the break with Rome, but only limited himself to calling himself the head of the church and began the secularization of the monastic lands. Protestantism took shape already under his son Edward VI, he also completed secularization. As for the policy of Mary Tudor towards the church, we see that she returned everything to the old order, the persecution of Protestants began, the role of Catholics increased. Namely, the Anglican Church was designed by Elizabeth I, the church became Protestant, although its tenets differed little from Catholicism.

  The Church established in England by the Reformation became known as the Anglican Church. It was a national church and occupied a middle position between the Catholic and Protestant churches. The 39 Articles also recognized the Protestant dogmas about justification by faith, about Scripture as the only source of faith, and the Catholic dogma about the saving power of the Church (with some reservations). The king became the head of the Anglican Church, and the church itself became part of the state apparatus of the feudal-absolutist monarchy. “The king has supreme power in the church over all classes and persons; but he does not have the right to preach the word of God and perform the sacraments,” says the “39 Articles”. The service was performed in English. The teaching of the Catholic Church about indulgences, about the veneration of icons and relics was rejected, the number of holidays in honor of the saints was reduced. However, the sacraments of baptism and communion were recognized, the episcopate was preserved, as well as the liturgy and a number of other rites characteristic of the Catholic Church. Tithes were still collected, which began to flow in favor of the king and turned into important tool generalizations of the king and the new owners of the monastic lands. The crown, transferring the monastic lands to secular owners, simultaneously transferred to them the right to the tithe, previously collected by the monasteries. Thus appeared in England a layer of secular persons who received tithes.
  

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