Today is the 470th anniversary of the formal reconciliation of England to the Catholic Church in 1554. This was effected when the Papal Legate, Cardinal Reginald Pole, formally absolved the country from schism in the presence of the monarchs, King Philip and Queen Mary and the assembled Lords and Commons.
King Philip and Queen Mary
A 1557 window in Sintjanskerke in Gouda in The Netherlands
Image: Once I was Clever Boy
For the Queen in particular, this must have been an occasion of profound joy, the culmination of an extraordinary and extended annual mirabilis since she heard of her half-brother’s death in the July of the previous year. In the intervening months she had gained the throne and been crowned, negotiated her marriage to the now King Philip, seen off Wyatt’s rebellion, married the most eligible man in Europe, believed herself to be expecting an heir, and had finally undone her father’s break with Rome, and potentially all that had flowed from it.
There were doubtless a considerable variety of opinions amongst the great and the good as they knelt to receive the Legate’s blessing, but the majority appear to have accepted it.
Cardinal Reginald Pole
Image: Wikipedia
Cardinal Pole must also have had mixed emotions at what he was facilitating as he may well have reflected on the loss of his immediate family and other relatives in 1538-41, and on the task that now confronted him. To see how seriously he set about restoring and reviving the Catholic faith of England I do recommend reading Eamonn Duffy’s Fires of Faith.
One man who was there did articulate his feelings. That was the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, the officiant at the Queen’s Coronation and wedding, and Lord Chancellor.
Bishop Stephen Gardiner
Image: Shakespeareandhistory.com
Having survived the upheavals.of the Henrician and Edwardian reformations he had found a new serenity it would seem in the restoration of the Church. He requested, and received, the privilege of preaching at Paul’s Cross on the Sunday following the reconciliation. Contemporaries considered that his greatest sermon. Acknowledging the national apostasy, including his own, Gardiner stressed in ringing terms the fidelity of just two people, the Queen and the Cardinal. It is extensively quoted in my friend Glyn Redworth’s wonderful biography of Gardiner In Defence of the Church Catholic. It is a book I heartily recommend. Not only is it good history well written, but it was a key element in my conversion to full Catholicism
twenty or so years ago.
St Andrew’s Day was enjoined as an annual commemoration of the reconciliation, but that must have last been observed in 1558, only a fortnight after the deaths of Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole on the same day.
The 1554 reconciliation is definitely one of the great ‘might have beens’ of English history.