revolt. The Reformation consisted not only in a
religions change but in an assertion of nationalism, in a class revolt,
and in certain cultural revolutions. It was only the first that the
government had any idea of sanctioning, but by so doing it enabled the
people later to take matters into their own hands and add the social
and cultural elements. Thus the Reformation in England ran a course
quite different from that in Germany. In the former the cultural
revolution came first, followed fast by the rising of the lower and the
triumph of the middle classes. Last of all came the successful
realization of a national state. But in England nationalism came
first; then under Edward the economic revolution; and lastly, under the
Puritans, the transmutation of spiritual values.

[Sidenote: Divorce of Catherine of Aragon]

The occasion of the breach with Rome was the divorce of Henry from
Catharine of Aragon, who had previously married his brother Arthur when
they were both fifteen, and had lived with him as his wife for five
months until his death. As marriage with a brother's widow was
forbidden by Canon Law, a {287} dispensation from the pope had been
secured, to enable Catharine to marry Henry. The king's scruples about
the legality of the act were aroused by the death of all the queen's
children, save the Princess Mary, in which he saw the fulfilment of the
curse denounced in Leviticus xx, 21: "If a man shall take his brother's
wife . . . they shall be childless." Just at this time Henry fell in
love with Anne Boleyn, [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] and this further
increased his dissatisfaction with his present estate.

He therefore applied to the pope for annulment of marriage, but the
unhappy Clement VII, now in the emperor's fist, felt unable to give it
to him. He writhed and twisted, dallied with the proposals that Henry
should take a second wife, or that his illegitimate son the Duke of
Richmond should marry his half sister Mary; in short he was ready to
grant a dispensation for anything save for the one horrible crime of
divorce--as the annulment was then called. His difficulties in getting
at the rights of the question were not made easier by the readiness of
both parties to commit a little perjury or to forge a little bull to
further their cause.

Seeing no help in sight from Rome Henry began to collect the opinions
of universities and "strange doctors." The English, French, and
Italian universities decide