And Yet Another Fine Mess! Trivia Quiz

Answer: He had defended the Catholic Church from Martin Luther's accusations of heresy.

As a devout Catholic Henry wrote a response to Martin Luther's attack on the Catholic church in 1521, "The Defense of the Seven Sacraments", which supported the idea of papal supremacy, was probably written with the help of Thomas More. Incidentally, "Defender of the Faith" is a title that has been held by English monarchs to this very day.

After the final break from the Catholic Church it was re-conferred by Parliament.

Answer: He could have Catherine assassinated.

By 1525, after being married to Catherine for sixteen years, Henry was concerned. He wanted to make sure there was no uncertainty about succession; the last time the uncertainty had caused a civil war, remember? To gain complete certainty he needed a son - a legitimate son.

Henry FitzRoy, born in 1519, was the only acknowledged illegitimate son of Henry VIII. FitzRoy's mother, Elizabeth Blount, one of Henry's many mistresses, and in the public eye, helped prove that Henry was indeed capable of fathering healthy sons.

It would, however, take quite a bit of help from the pope to legitimize FitzRoy, and Henry realized that even if the pope agreed to help, the decision would always be questioned. It might be possible to arrange a marriage for his little daughter, Mary, but she wasn't quite ten years old yet and was not a very robust child.

The idea that she would marry and produce a grandson to inherit the throne before Henry died was unlikely. He saw annulling his marriage to Catherine as his only viable choice.

Answer: Leviticus

Henry had married his brother, Arthur's, wife, Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Arthur and Catherine had been married for twenty weeks, during which time he was critically ill. Catherine claimed that the marriage had never been consumated, and gained a papal disposition to marry Arthur's younger brother, Henry, who was ten years old. This union was supported by both Henry's father, Henry VII, and Catherine's mother. Even though it was said that Henry did not wish to marry Catherine, he did so in 1509 after his father died, stating that the marriage was his father's dying wish. Seven months after the wedding, Catherine gave birth to a stillborn girl, the first of many unsuccessful pregnancies. The next child was a boy, who died within seven weeks of birth. Finally, a girl named Mary was born in 1516.

As time went on, Henry began to convince himself that the problem was the fact that he, by marrying Catherine, his brother's wife, had violated Leviticus 20:21. He claimed his marriage had been "blighted by God" because it was against Biblical teachings to have married her. This, Henry claimed, invalidated his marriage to Catherine.

Answer: Cardinal Wolsey

As the king's chaplain, Wolsey had quite a bit of power. He had attained the high position of Lord Chancellor, the chief adviser to the king. Unfortunately, he fell out of favor with the king; he was stripped of property and office, and restricted to his role of the Archbishop of York. Eventually, however, he was charged with treason, which carried the death penalty. Wolsey died of natural causes while en route to answer the charges.

Answer: False

The pope was very reluctant to grant the marriage an annulment because a special dispensation had been given for the marriage to take place in the first place. In addition, the pope just had an unfortunate incident involving Catherine's nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and he didn't want to do anything that would bring Charles' army back to Rome.

Henry sent several people to talk to the pope on his behalf, and finally it was decided that a church court would convene in England to discuss the issue.

It is said that the pope never intended for his legate, Lorenzo Campeggio, to act on Henry's behalf. After a couple of months of hearing evidence, the case was taken back to Rome, never to be brought up again. Cardinal Wolsey, once such a close adviser to Henry, would take the blame and be charged with treason for his failure to successfully negotiate the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine.

Answer: True

It is said that Henry VIII was a deeply religious man and that he would attend as many as five masses a day, as long as it wasn't hunting season! Like Martin Luther, he originally had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church. The fact of the matter was that even though he was excommunicated, he remained, in his mind, a devout Catholic, and a believer in the core teachings of the Catholic Church.

Answer: As the widow of Prince Arthur, she became the Dowager Princess of Wales.

When the "Great Matter" began, it was clear that Catherine would not quietly go to a nunnery as Henry had hoped she would. "God never called me to a nunnery. I am the King's true and legitimate wife", she proclaimed. It is interesting that the same issue (consummation of the marriage to Arthur - or really the fact that it supposedly didn't happen) that convinced Pope Leo X to grant a papal dispensation for the marriage to take place, was the excuse Henry used for the divorce (the fact that NOW he wasn't so certain that consummation had not taken place).

Henry secretly married Ann Boleyn and Catherine was banished to The Moor, where she died five years letter. Altogether Catherine and Henry had six children, with only Mary surviving infancy.

In the end, Catherine wasn't even allowed to visit her daughter. By all accounts, Henry was never a faithful husband, however, the humiliation of losing her title seemed to be more than Catherine could bear.

Answer: Anglican

The term Anglican comes from the Latin "ecclesia anglicana", and means "the English church". Some sources claim the foundation of the See of Canterbury in 597 as the beginning of the "ecclesia anglicana". Others say it dates back to at least 1246, there is really no agreement as to when the Church was established. Even though Henry formally broke away from the Catholic Church, it was his son, Edward VI, and second daughter, Elizabeth I, who really began to set forth doctrine and practice. Edward provided for the writing of the "Book of Common Prayer", which is sometimes still used today, and the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, made during the reign of Elizabeth, re-established independence from the Catholic Church after Mary's disastrous attempt to return England to Catholicism. Today the Anglican Communion, an international association, consists of national and regional churches in full communion with the Church of England.

Answer: Henry had scholars write a new Bible.

Remember, Henry's principal problem that began the English Reformation had to do with the pope's authority, not the Church's teachings or anything else for that matter. He wanted that divorce, and that was all! No, wait. He wanted that divorce and supreme power, that was all. No...He wanted the divorce, supreme power, and all the land and money that belonged to the Catholic Church in England. That was all.

Answer: Divine Right of Kings

Divine Right is not actually a Catholic doctrine, though it can be traced to the Council of Nicea, where it was written that Christians were expected to honor and obey the ruling authority. The Scriptures, however, also make it clear that no earthly ruler has absolute power in all things. Many trace the application of the idea of divine right to the time of the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII. The idea justified the king's absolute authority in ALL matters, both political and spiritual. For good measure, Henry VIII also declared England an "empire". This was not an act of expansion, but an unambiguous declaration of complete sovereignty and a clear declaration that neither the pope nor the Holy Roman Emperor had any right to interfere in English affairs.

Henry VIII ruled in this way with little opposition, even though Parliament had existed to provide a check on the king's power for quite some time. James I and Charles I also advanced this belief in England, as did Louis XIV in France. After the overthrow of James II during the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Divine Right of Kings ceased to be a term associated with English (and later, also British) government.