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In studying the early stages of the development of the Council of Religion, care must be taken to distinguish between the suppression of individual heretics and the systematic elimination of heresies. The medieval reforms of the Inquisition, the irregular inspection of the diocesan and the exercise of supreme royalty in ecclesiastical affairs in various ways around 1535 were temporary and expedient.
But with the establishment of the High Council of Religion, the king used a systematic means to suppress heretics, for example Henry VIII allowed the county governors to investigate heresy in the Caiyi criminal court in their jurisdiction and present them to the bishop, who tried the case and handed over the guilty to the secular authorities to be burned.
According to the Six Articals, the punishment for heresy could be carried out by a council appointed by the king for the counties or dioceseses, but in fact it gave all ecclesiastical and secular officials full power to enforce their provisions.
This is in fact an attempt to suppress some type of heresy through the mechanism of a committee in which ecclesiastical figures, ministers of state and lawyers work together, in a procedure that is a combination of the ancient trial of heresy, ordinary ecclesiastical procedure and the judicial tradition of the Privy Council.
The Tudor monarch also tried to develop the High Council of Religion by various means, eliminating various factors that endangered the royal power, so as to achieve the goal of maintaining the supremacy of the royal power.
Commission before Elizabeth I
In 1535, Henry VIII gave Cromwell rich powers in ecclesiastical affairs and allowed him to delegate some of his powers from time to time to those he saw fit.
After Cromwell was empowered, he inspected the dioceses on behalf of the king, and the committee represented by Cromwell delegated power to local officials who were required to supervise and report on the implementation of the Reformation measures by the bishops of the dioceses, which served as an administrative body to provide specific guidance on the suppression of monasteries.
This was the first clear evidence of the existence of such a commission, from which what came to be known as the Court of High Comission was developed.
If the wording of the Letters Patent is used as the criterion for determining the beginning of the High Council of Religion, both substantively and formally, the first commission with the characteristics of a "High Council of Religion" was established by Edward VI in 1549.
The charter provides for a total of 25 members of the High Council of Religions, which confers powers on bishops, some clergy, ministers of state and civil lawyers.
The powers it gives are so broad that the committee can "suspect, detect, denunciatos, inquisitos, and accusatos" against heretics and heresies.
The Commission will examine through sworn witnesses, readmit those who have repented, expel diehards from the Church, punish and send to prison all those who condemn or oppose the Book of Common Prayer.
In addition, the licence provides that it may be assisted by all officials within the territory of the Kingdom in the performance of its duties.
Despite Mary I's renewed allegiance to Rome, the nature of the High Council of Religions changed with the monarch's religious policy.
Since the High Council of Religion had previously played an important role in maintaining royal power and combating heresy, Mary I followed the Edwardian rules and established her own High Council of Religion.
In 1557, she established a 22-member council to deal with pagans in a harsher manner. She cited false and incendiary books, as well as misdeeds and atrocities that had a bad impact on the stability of society and people's lives.
In order to further prevent such situations from occurring, Queen Mary has given the Commission full power "to allow it to investigate, by every means and by all means, in the presence of twelve legally sworn witnesses, all heresies, fallacies, conspiracies, and all falsehoods that are published, disseminated, fabricated or presented against us or any of us".
Mary I also provided for its specific work, such as its authority to govern all crimes committed in the church, crimes against church property, all refusal to attend church services, and close supervision of vagrants;
Impose fines, imprisonment or other punishments on offenders in conjunction with the confessions of the parties or through sufficient witnesses to know the facts and the trial, or by any other means or means necessary, after appropriate evidence is available;
It shall impose fines and imprisonment on all those who refuse to obey their orders, collect a bond for the appearance in court or the execution of decrees, and certify all fines to the treasury for collection, and in the process of execution, may accept the help of all secular officials.
It should be noted here that the High Council of Religions before Elizabeth I was temporary, each member was named by name, and although the death of one member did not invalidate the entire Commission, it created a vacancy that could not be filled, which did seriously affect its efficiency, and it was only a matter of time before the death of a member invalidated the Commission.
In later Elizabethan councils, the chief commissioner served ex officio, so the High Council of Religion was permanent until it was abolished.
Practical work
During this period, the main work of the High Council of Religions was to monitor the vagrants, suppress heresy and maintain specific ecclesiastical settlements, and the main nature of its work remained related to religion.
In order to better perform its functions, an important provision was developed at this time, that is, the establishment of the High Council of Religions must meet the double condition of a valid "quorum", and only a designated part of its members had the right to participate in the hearing of specific cases.
The so-called "quorum" refers to the Edwardian council's use of three as the minimum number of people to deal with business, and further conditions were imposed on the requirement that one of the three should be some specific person, so they were described as a "quorum".
Eleven of the twenty-five appointed by the 1549 charter were "quorums", including seven bishops, two other ecclesiastical figures, and two ministers of state.
One of these eleven and any other two may lawfully exercise the full powers conferred on the Committee as a whole. This provision makes it possible to divide the labour among the commissioners, so that the Commission can prosecute different cases at the same time. Queen Mary did not designate any quorum and therefore allowed any three of her commissioners to conduct business.
In general, the commissions of this period, although nominally religious, were completely under the control of the king, lacked the life or continuity of an institution, and the elasticity of its composition, its broad powers, and its great efficiency made it a flexible and adaptable tool of the king.
"If the principal bishops, the most able members of the Privy Council, and the most able civil solicitors fail to accomplish a particular purpose with unlimited power and discretion, it means that both the wisest man and the royal power have failed."
For example, Henry VIII used the Council to suppress heresy; Edward VI used it to strip priests of their rights and uphold the Book of Common Prayer; In the time of Mary, it was used to strip Edwardian bishops, restore priesthood, and abolish the Book of Common Prayer and re-establish Catholicism.
Commission under Elizabeth I
When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the international and domestic situation was extremely complicated, and there was considerable international criticism about her eligibility to inherit the throne of England, and at home, Elizabeth needed to reorganize the turmoil caused by the harsh religious policies of the former Queen Mary, so in order to better implement the Supreme Act and the Uniform Decree, Elizabeth began to form her own High Council of Religion.
Two options were before her at this time, one was the Council of the times of Henry VIII and Cromwell, which was essentially a secular form, mainly performed by secular officials under special royal powers, and fewer ecclesiastical figures, under the protection of officials, could do practical work well;
The other was the Edwardian and Mary-era commissions, which were formally ecclesiastical and worked by clergy and lawyers in accordance with canon law.
But after Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, she found that there were few clergy who openly supported her religious policies, and she could not guarantee that there would be enough trusted people to carry it out.
Thus, section 8 of the Supreme Act, which expressly grants the High Council of Religion, by charter, almost as extensive powers as those conferred on Cromwell by Charter.
"The High Council of Religions shall have jurisdiction over spirituality or ecclesiastical competence in all parts of our Kingdom of England for inspection, reform, rectification, order, all errors, heresies, crimes, atrocities and sins."
In 1559, Queen Elizabeth issued a charter establishing her own High Council of Religions, giving it the power to dispossess, restore, and appoint clergy and jurisdiction over moral crimes.
In addition, an exemption clause was reaffirmed, exempting all other regulatory or other authorizations that contradicted the license. With regard to the "quorum", Elizabeth, who had always been cautious, required the presence of six commissioners to conduct business and reduced the quorum to seven, namely two bishops, a minister of state and four lawyers.
In the Elizabethan era, the nature of the High Council of Religions changed, not just as an institution for conducting religious inspections in emergency situations, but also as a work that was more administrative in nature.
For example, the Uniform Decree (art. 13) gives the Religious Council the power to recommend to the Queen what further changes should be made in terms of decoration and dress. It was thus given the more important function of the Queen to consult the High Council of Religions on church ceremonies, the setting of dress, etc.
Queen Elizabeth asked the High Council of Religion to carefully study the sequence of Bible classes throughout the year and draw up a new calendar; Ensure that all cathedrals and parish churches use "one way" to properly hang the Ten Commandments in English.
The High Council of Religions paid special attention to examining whether the United Church had misused the permission already given to them to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Latin. In addition, it is very active in censorship.
Both the Star Chamber Orders of 1566 and 1586 were issued at the request of and under the direction of the Commission in order to obtain accurate information on all books that were to be published or had already been published in London. In order to better perform its functions, the High Council of Religions even relies on a large number of private informants to obtain information.
It is worth noting that the addition of administrative work does not mean that previous work of a repressive nature such as the suppression of heresy does not belong to the committee, in fact, very important special work such as the surveillance and prevention of the Puritans still falls within its purview, the most famous case being the success of the High Council of Religions in thwarting the Presbyterian Council headed by Cart-Wright and providing evidence for the final trial of the Star Chamber Court.
The work of the High Council of Religions during this period was still of a strong religious patrol character, with little fixed procedural character in specific trials or hearings. If the impression of the courts of the High Council of Religions in later generations was illegal and authoritarian, it is likely the result of the stereotype of the High Council of Religions during this period.
In the interrogation of criminals, it is usually the commissioners who sit in front of the criminals and question the criminals in a way that their ingenuity can think of, but the trial quickly turns into a series of accusations and insults.
bibliography
Cheng Handa, editor-in-chief: A History of the British Legal System, Qilu Books, 2001.
Eniwa Shiba: British Puritanism, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1994 edition.
Chen Qinzhuang: A Brief History of Christianity, People's Publishing House, 2004.