Today, I would like to introduce Thomas Cromwell: The Little-Known Story of Henry VIII's Most Loyal Servant, written by the famous British historian Tracy Borman.
This Thomas Cromwell was not oliver Cromwell, the protector who ordered the execution of the king in the English Revolution, but Thomas Cromwell was the uncle and custodian of the protector Oliver Cromwell's grandfather.
At that time, King Henry VIII of England, in order to divorce the queen in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn, declared the establishment of the state religion and completely broke with the Church of Rome. This was the Reformation in England, and as Henry VIII's most powerful minister, Cromwell's opponents were two: the church and the nobility. In England, through the Reformation, he broke away from the control of the pope, recovered wealth and wealth from the church, and took the lead in establishing a king's bureaucracy based on the civilian elite. He defeated the church and the nobility through a series of political maneuvers, and later, during the daughter of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, England became the world's number one power, and the reason behind this was the political reforms launched by Cromwell.
To truly understand the struggle between ecclesiastical and royal power in Europe at that time, we need to look back at the history of the European Middle Ages, starting with the Roman Empire.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > the Roman Empire and Christianity</h1>
At the beginning of the 4th century AD, Christianity became the state religion of Rome, in 476, the Western Roman Empire was destroyed by the barbarians from the north, but the Roman Church did not collapse, at that time, whether it was the church or the Eastern Roman Emperor, they all felt that the restoration of Europe was sooner or later, and the church did not want to live a good life with the uncultured barbarians, and even the barbarians were not willing to preach.
From 533 AD, the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian began a large-scale attack, to restore Europe, he not only withstood the Persian attack, but also restored a large part of the territory of the Western Roman Empire, just before the last breath, there was a great plague in Constantinople, killing a small half of the population, the restoration of Europe, the failure, the church can only die in the end.
In 751 AD, the barbarian prime minister Pepin deposed the king and replaced him himself, which is the Carolingian dynasty replacing the Merovin dynasty, which is equivalent to our Cao Wei replacing Liu Han.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > exclusive divine agent of monarchy</h1>
After Pepin came to power, deeply suffering from the lack of legitimacy of his rule, he came up with an idea, saying, "O Church of Rome, I have given you all the land around Rome, and you have endorsed me with your God to increase the legitimacy of my rule. "Such a good deal, of course, the Church of Rome agreed, so that the missionary work against the barbarians was widely spread, and Pepin also gave the land around Rome to the Church.
This is the origin of the Papal States, which in the history of Christianity is called the Pepin Sacrifice of the Earth.
After Pepin's death, his son Charles unified Europe, which was larger than the Western Roman Empire.
On Christmas Day 800 A.D., Charles was praying in the church in Rome, when Pope Leo III took out a crown and put it on Charles's head, declaring charles the "great Roman Emperor", Charlemagne, and that's how he came. And the barbarian Frankish kingdom, this is considered to inherit the Taoist system of the Western Roman Empire.
From there, the Church announced that the coronation of the emperor must be carried out by the Pope in Rome.
This convention was not broken until Napoleon became emperor, when he sent people to arrest the pope from Rome to Paris to crown himself, and the crown was not worn by the pope, but he took the crown of the pope and put it on himself. Napoleon was concerned with the core question of who was greater in the clergy and the royal power.
After Charles, the emperor must be crowned by the pope in Rome, the Church of Rome has become the exclusive agent of God, with the big card of "divine exclusive agent of kingship", the church has been in a dominant position for a long time in the contest with the royal power, bringing countless benefits to the church. For example, extraterritorial power, the clergy breaks the law, the king can not punish, must be punished by the church; the bishops of the countries can be appointed by the Church of Rome; and most importantly, the tithes paid by the believers, and the great wealth of the nations is given to the Church of Rome every year.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > getting bigger and bigger "buying and selling"</h1>
Not only that, but in the thirteenth century, the church was even more excessive, and developed a concept of "purgatory", which means that after death, people first go to purgatory to stay, waiting for the final judgment, and wait for an average of 500 years. It is particularly difficult to fry in oil, boil water, and roast on the fire, so everyone is particularly afraid before they breathe, and they donate money and property to the church.
By the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, 25% of the annual income of the whole country of England was given to Rome in vain, and even worse, the Holy Roman Empire of Germany was sucked up by the Church of Rome every year, up to 40%, and three of the seven electors of the German electors for emperor at that time were bishops appointed by the pope. Zweig said that Germany is the breast of Europe, and the sucker is, of course, the Church of Rome.
Faced with this terrible situation, did the emperors and kings of the European countries resist? Let's talk about it next!