Elizabeth I and Anglicanism

[Music] in this lecture we're looking at Elizabeth the and the rise of later anglicanism we pick up in this point where we were in our last lecture on anglicanism where we had traced the story from Henry VII all the way through the reign of Edward I 6 and Edward died in 155 three taking with him all of the hopes that England would proceed step by step over years all the way until the point where it was fully reformed or Protestant you might say not reformed in the sense of being calvinistic though it certainly treaded that way during the course of Edward's Reign One of the examples of this is the fact that in the reformed world as opposed to the Lutheran world you see a great deal of what we call iconoclasm now iconoclasm just means the ruction of icons and it's generally a position that is opposed to the use of Art In Worship now this is important to grasp the issue with iconic clasm is always to do with worship there have been over the years pretty intensified iconic classs who have been opposed to the use of Christian art at all but they're in the minority the majority of people whenever they're discussing iconic clasm come at it from a position of worship now Luther in his day right after he came out of the vurg castle after his year in Exile when he was translating the German New Testament and these kinds of things he actually comes back to vitberg in part because a man by the name of Andreas carlot one of Luther's right-hand men who had gone a bit funky gone a bit extreme in his understanding of the Lutheran Reformation had amongst other things begun to destroy and really sort of violent clashes so much of the art and the images that had been part of the churches there both in vitberg and throughout all of Catholic Europe well when Luther comes out of the vurg he comes to really put a stop to this from a theological position Luther really didn't care all that much about statues or icons Luther's issue here with iconic clasm though really fits more with his understanding of what we think we're doing in worship Luther's primary goal Always In Worship Is to preach law and gospel and to partake in the sacraments he is always going to be allergic to the idea that if we cleanse the worship or if we do certain things that we think we're making God happy that really is more the theological person he's coming from to that end he really doesn't have a theology or a position you might say on where art and images in the worship should or should not be used his main concern is always with this self-justifying move that we always make where we attempt to radicalize ourselves because we feel we're making God happy now not everyone has liked Luther's position but in general where he's coming from is a not unsympathetic view to those who will be called reformed down the line on this issue Luther just thinks preach the gospel and do the sacraments and eventually without being forced to the people will stop treating these things idolatrous they will cease to have a grasp on their minds and on their hearts he's also a bit sensitive to the idea that if you merely destroy them you're wounding someone who needs to hear the gospel first and so by doing you end up ruining the very thing you're trying to do now by and large within protestantism that position by Luther is idiosyncratic from the reformed World in all of its varieties both in the Swiss regions in the French regions in Scotland and other places they're going to be pretty uncomfortable if not quite hostile to the idea of the use of any imagery which in the context of worship and their theology comes more from the issue that they believe that any use of these kinds of things even good ones hypothetically speaking say a statue of Christ or a crucifix is not wrong in and of itself it's not a Talisman that is going to do some kind of hex on the person if they look upon it they're not superstitious against icons or images though perhaps in some cases you can find this kind of thing particularly amongst the mobs who occasionally will enact a violent attack on a church and its iconography the issue though for them is to quote Calvin in one of his other places in his writings they believe that the heart is a factory for Idols now Calvin doesn't have in mind the Industrial Revolution yet of course he's not thinking of an assembly line factory but rather what he means is our hearts are always prone to wander they're always prone to put our hope in things and not in God himself and so where Calvin and other reformed people come from is a position that at times you need to take these things out of the hands of the Ley now he's going to be opposed to violence but in general if let's say the genevan leadership there decided that they were going to remove all icons and art and stained glass depicting images at least not just merely color if they're going to remove these things Calvin will applaud he sees it more as a pastoral and a leadership responsibility not to leave dangerous things before the Le who may not have the categories or the Christian maturity to really understand what these things are used for well when you cast about to the English Reformation under Edward you see exactly this kind of move it's one of the indications that Edward's Reign and those within it Trend reformed they're not calvinistic again but they're trending not so much towards the Lutheran position on these kinds of reforms but they're going to actually be on the reformed axis of things and so under Edward you see all kinds of Art and images a lot of the destruction of the traditional churches up and down England happened during Edward's Reign now Henry had suppressed some of the monasteries he had suppressed the big ones and he had confiscated their monies but Henry's intentions in this were not theological they were political he felt that in particular the large monasteries and many of the monastic order there in England were out to get him at least in terms of their ideas about his having kicked the pope out and so the henrician suppression of the monasteries was not so much a theological conviction that he wanted to Lurch the church into a more reformed position on things to my knowledge and frankly I've never seen any evidence to the contrary Henry is pretty oblivious to what's going on in the Swiss regions he would probably not have identified anything as being reformed per se under Edward it's different they take out just about every element of the traditional Catholic Worship not only in terms of the Liturgy but also in terms of the architecture and of the panoply you might say of all of the color and variety and all these things that were part of traditional worship as one of the books recently on this period of time calls it this was a stripping of the altars well Edward died 1553 and with him went this more robust protestantism and as we said in our lecture on early anglicanism we suddenly have Mary tutor rise to the throne now Mary has had an unfortunate history in terms of the legacy of the memory of her Mary tutor goes by the unfortunate name of Bloody Mary and it's sometimes hard to do it justice particularly when you see art depicting the older Mary as Queen many people just feel that she just looks a bit D and cross there sitting on the throne but let me go ahead and ask you a question if you had been a princess if you were the first born of Henry VII and Katherine of Aragon and if in the course of your young life during the course of your development into maturity your father had cast off Your Mother cast off her religion had instigated policies that really did a disservice to your mother and not only that if the king your father Henry had you declare publicly before the court that you were a bastard that your very existence as a princess should be called into doubt do you think you're going to be very happy about being Protestant or do you think you're going to embrace any of these things obviously the answer is no Mary was devoutly Catholic all throughout Edward's Reign she actually from time to time kept a priest somewhat hidden within her estate where she was living her Confessor and the man who would do mass for her there was one case where Edward wanted to get rid of the man and they tried to find him and they hid the man so that he wouldn't be found and taken away Edward wrote letters to Mary very pleading with her to come over to the Protestant Faith but of course she would have none of it not only that but due to the realities of the lineage in this day because she was a female she was hopped in line and Edward went first now this was uncontroversial in general at least there were no people complaining about this in this day this was frankly just how things went very often not only in the Middle Ages but here in the early modern period but from Mary's position Edward frankly should not have been on the the throne Edward was the son of Henry and his third wife Jane Seymour and at least according to Mary her Lage her right and claim to the throne superseded his in addition when she came to the throne in 1553 now being the first female to rule in England as Queen she was also frankly getting on in years in terms of being able to have children the biggest issue for Mary was who is she going to marry again given the TR iism of the way the lineages worked if she were to marry someone within the nobility of England what this would do is it would raise one family up from being a lesser Noble to being a house that does not have a claim to the throne to suddenly having this House have a claim to the throne and not only that but given the marriage laws of the day or the marriage assumptions of the day because he would be head of the household he would be head of his wife Mary though Queen would be unable in some regards at least this was the conspiracy theory to handle her own business and therefore whoever she married would become de facto King of England and she would become merely the queen keep this in mind in a minute when we look at Elizabeth because Elizabeth will never marry well Mary does decide to Wed and she chooses the hapsburg dynasty the dynasty that held control over the Holy Roman Empire and from whom her mother had been descended and she married Phillip Philip of Spain now this brought all kinds of anxiety amongst the Protestants because again this was the family that had put Luther on trial that was going to war with the Lutheran faith and in other parts of Europe the places that they controlled they were suppressing the Protestant message in particular in the Netherlands for example there was a knot of those who were coming up Protestant who were beginning to do things like publish and frankly the Netherlands at least certain parts of it had long been bastions of reformed or Protestant thinking and during Mary's life while Philip was her husband in fact he spent a great deal of time suppressing the faith there in the Netherlands their marriage though was really on rocky soil interpersonally there really wasn't much of a spark or connection again Mary is been on in years and Philip had concerns and issues further a field out in other parts of Europe one of the more troubling things about Mary and I really choose to see her as an unfortunate soul who was abused and who attempted to live according to her principles however much I have trouble with the way she does it but one of the more tragic things is on not one occasion but two Mary believes that she is pregnant and historians have always tried to figure this out frankly it's a mystery but on two occasions she proclaims that she's pregnant she gets to the moment where it is supposed to be the case where she's having a child she withdraws and then you kind of hear crickets in the background and suddenly she comes back back out with no baby and at least the sting of appearing to have lied about this one of the issues with this of course is historians know that later on she dies of stomach cancer it should go without explanation of course that they don't have MRIs or sonograms or anything to look within her womb to tell what's going on they barely frankly know anything about female anatomy in reproductive Cycles so whether or not she was confused by the signs that her body was giving her or whether or not she was delusional about her pregnancies these are real signs of some of the troubles interpersonally not in terms of her faith but interpersonally with the fact that she felt as if she was a woman who had been wronged and that perhaps if she had been younger if her father had embraced her and treated her with the kindness that he ought to have treated her she at the very least should have been married to another house maybe in another country just like many from the tutor extended family had over the years now why is Mary known as Bloody Mary well the answer is is because she reimposed Catholicism on England and over the course of her 5 years of Reign she burned or had executed somewhere in the neighborhood of about 300 Protestants not only that but close to a th000 fled Protestant leaders pastors Bishops lay folks all kinds of people ended up fleeing to the continent the majority of those who flee land in cities like strawberg Geneva Zurich and other places all up and down what we would call the reformed axis this is due in large part to two reasons one those leaving those who had been part of the Edwardian Reformation many of them could not embrace the Lutheran understanding of the sacraments and we mentioned this before in a previous video in order to reside within a Lutheran City you had to be significantly comfortable let's say with the doctrine of physical eating and a number of other things but in particular their sacramental ology was not clearly Lutheran and people again need to know this if you go to the book of common prayer that Kramer had written particularly the 1552 version during the Eucharistic liturgy there's a very clear indication of what's going on here crer writes in there towards the end right before the distribution of the elements for communion to the Le feed on him in Your Heart by faith with Thanksgiving now a theologian might believe that this is ambiguous that feeding on him in your heart is certainly not saying that this is merely a memorial well that's because not many people other than zingle and those living in Zurich would say that it was merely a memorial Calvin and botser and all kinds of other reformed people believed Christ was present in the Eucharist they just believed he was present spiritually by the holy spirit zingle is more in that line as well but he often gets a bad rap of being believed to have said that Christ was nowhere in the sacrament he doesn't actually say that he's rather so strongly against physical eating that he doesn't spend as much time talking about the positives of spiritual eating well when you go to the book of common prayer and it says feed on him in your heart that in your heart bit those few words does Trend again towards a modified reformed position it's not overtly Lutheran so that's one of the reasons why the Maran Exiles as they're known end up in reformed areas the other is because frankly Mary had wed Philip who was part of the hapsburg dynasty so that made these Exiles essentially political Rebels against the crown and believe me if you're a political Rebel you're not going to move to the hapsburg lands which are generally there in the Lutheran lands even areas that might have accepted these Exiles if they might have overlooked their sacramental would not have played fast and loose with this for Charles son Philip to be married to the woman the Queen Mary who these figures were in protest against and who were leaving would have been let's just say not a good idea the issue with Mary though as we transition from her to Elizabeth's Reign is again because she's called Bloody Mary it's often alleged that she was wildly unpopular all of the books on the English Reformation tend to argue that what Mary does when she comes to the throne is she essentially makes unintentionally England leurt even further towards protestantism the idea here is that Henry got it going Edward and the privy Council pushed it further and then when Mary comes on the throne and she's so nasty and bitter it is again alleged with not much evidence that everyone in England this goes boy this is awful I hate these Catholics and so by the time Elizabeth comes to the throne it's believed that everyone's ready for a Protestant Nation the fact of the matter is is that's not really true the persecutions under Mary are certainly awful they're bad but as I often tell students this is a very bloody age all kinds of folks are being executed not just for their faith and not just by Catholics there are Protestant countries and Protestant areas where people are killed one example of this in fact Elizabeth the one who is beloved so much by the English peoples as the one who stitched back together this Anglican Heritage she killed not 300 but a thousand Catholics and not over 5 years but over the span of several weeks there had been a protest and Uprising up in the North during her Reign and she and the government cracked down hard on this and so just by the law of numbers you got to kind of scratch your head about this Mary is Bloody Mary the awful Tyrant Queen who everyone hates and she kills 300 and Exiles a thousand Elizabeth the Glorious one the Protestant Anglican Queen kills a thousand Catholics and we just shrug our shoulders when have to be a bit careful about this there is no real evidence that what Mary was doing was wildly unpopular in fact as we saw under Edward a lot of the populist was still relatively Catholic well Mary dies in 1558 and she toyed with the idea of executing her sister for treason and for her role in supporting protestantism in general but she doesn't in the end and she leaves the country to her sister and she dies frankly knowing that what's going to happen is that when Elizabeth comes to the throne there's going to be a reinstitution of protestantism there in England and so in 1558 Elizabeth the first comes to the throne now the second Queen to have ruled in England she ruled from 1558 to 16003 an enormously long period of time in many ways what Elizabeth is able to achieve during her Reign the real galvanizing of an English ethos the real rise of English culture happens because she is so stable and she Reigns for so long you don't have just a few years back and forth as you've had for the last two generations well Elizabeth is remembered very highly all throughout the centuries within English culture her nickname is Gloriana the Glorious one and a lot of this has to do not only with her own personality and the Very striking ways that she ruled a male nobility in Parliament as a woman an unmarried woman and at times has a great deal of fun tweaking their noses about this really sort of puts her in the Limelight she is pretty phenomenal in terms of her personal skill and Leadership but it's also under Elizabeth that you have the rise of the Shakespearean playwright culture with all these wonderful things being to arise that again are read in universities and by afficionados of literature in the stage even until the modern world you see the English language really come into its own under Elizabeth in fact when we talk about things having a tutor feel to them whether it's tutor architecture or whatnot we often mean this Shakespearean Elizabethan culture that is so much beloved throughout history well what about her faith what about the Anglican Church during Elizabeth's Reign well just as with Mary if you look at Mary's background in her mother and her mother's relationship to Henry you might say that Elizabeth in some ways embodies the very Reformation in England herself Elizabeth was the daughter of an bin Henry's second wife the one frankly who propelled Henry into the Reformation however peace meal he wanted it to be Elizabeth is not going to be Catholic there is absolutely no case that she's going to be historians and those at the popular level often tend to say things like Elizabeth was a quote conservative in her religious Outlook and by that they mean that she some kind of Anglo Catholic she's some kind of person halfway between being a Protestant and a Catholic as we'll see here that is the furthest thing from the truth there are things that Elizabeth likes that people don't like but by and large the things that are being squabbled over are not the things of traditional Catholicism they're the more Ticky Tac issues you might say they're things like a crucifix Elizabeth kept a crucifix in her private Chapel for her private devotional time and on multiple occasions an angry Protestant person within the court comes in breaks the crucifix and throws it on the floor of course they never get caught because they do it when no one's looking but Elizabeth just has it restored well the crucifix is hardly the thing that we would considered to be the defining definition between Catholicism and protestantism as we'll see here Elizabeth is Protestant but she pushes against one form of protestantism that she finds to be abhorent but she is Protestant in fact within one year of her coming to the throne in 1559 Elizabeth devises and brings together something that we know today as the religious settlement well what the religious settlement is is a return to protestantism during Mary's Reign the English Nation as a whole and the queen herself were received back into the Catholic church after a certain amount of mulas had been done and a lot of restoration language and apologetic language had been issed is to the pope well Elizabeth here again within one year lurches the church back into the Protestant direction that should be an indication to you that she is not going to be Catholic well if she is Protestant what is all this talk about Elizabeth being opposed to certain Protestants within her regime the answer is she's opposed to an increasingly Hardline reformed position that is beginning to emerge from those who are coming back from Exile now a lot of this intensified reformed Calvinism you might say is not inspired by Calvin himself a lot of it comes from in particular a man by the name of John Knox and we'll see in a minute that Calvin actually is really taken back for being blamed for the way some of these more Hardline folks or received or not received back in England what had happened was as these men were in Exile they had really intensified the hostility that they had to the English crown and some such as Knox and others began to look back on the Edwardian Reformation not as baby steps peac meal efforts in the right direction but as incomplete and half-hearted reformations now this is a scandalous Judgment of course in particular since cranmer and others died at the stake for the sake of their Reformation but one of the things that happened to Knox is by the end of Mary's Reign Knox had written a book that was about as poorly timed as you could ever imagine it's a very famous book it's called the first blast against the Monstrous Regiment of women this book of course goes down in history as something of a misogynistic text but we have to understand its context Knox in 1558 is getting really really suspicious and concerned at the three Marys as they're called which are three monarchs that included Queen Mary of England who were catholic and who were imposed in Catholicism onto their countries well the problem is is within the English context there had always been a real heavy commitment to the idea that the subjects under the crown do not rebel Ever and in fact everyone is pretty much unanimous on this issue there are maybe one or two over the course of about 40 years or so who come to different conclusions well Knox is one of these but the problem is is no one's going to go go with Knox if he argues that you need to cast down all these queens and throw them out and start over particularly with violence no one had issued that kind of ideology you might say yet there had been violence but those are more the Hot Blooded kinds no one had made a case that regicide as it's called The Killing of the Monarch was allowable according to scripture well what the first blast essentially does is because the door to Rebellion is closed he goes through the window he argues strangely that women were ineligible because of their gender to rule at all in the political order and this is all this book is really for he's just trying to find a way if you want to look at it in its context to figure out a way to fight back now it's telling everyone thought that Knox was just out to see on this they thought he was crazy Calvin himself actually tells Knox that he thinks this is a horrible argument Calvin actually points to the case of ra who had ruled the Old Testament peoples and though at this time no one considered females eligible for ordination no one really had much of a problem theologically or biblically with a woman ruling a country in the political order certain countries had limited that like France and England was just now embarking on a long history of queens and kings ruling in England but from a Biblical theological standpoint no one fought back on that except for Knox here but his purpose is to say now we can fight back not because they're Catholic but hey they're a woman we can take them out now the problem is is the book is published just a matter of months before Elizabeth comes to the throne and Knox never really resends the argument he never says he's sorry but he does never make this argument again rather going forward he just says no let's just go ahead and say we can kill a king or a queen we can stand up against tyranny so he's moved on Beyond this argument doesn't make it a good thing but it makes it at least understandable well as you can imagine Elizabeth and her Entourage are just going to not have anything to do with this kind of a full-throated angry protestantism coming back into England famously in fact Knox had been a priest under Edward in England he's known for his role in the Scottish Reformation but he had been a priest in the English context well not anymore he is bored and others who have really the stench of this are considered to be men who are not to be trusted the new Archbishop of canbury in fact Matthew Parker who comes to the seat of the Archbishop Rick under Elizabeth right off the bat he is selected immediately what's telling is he himself was reformed he had actually studied under Martin botzer Martin botzer had been Calvin's Mentor he saw himself as reformed but when he came to the throne he wrote a letter to the man who had become Secretary of State William CLE and he says one of the things we're going have to be concerned about is this really feisty angry reformed voice that is coming back now that doesn't mean that he is anti-protestant and it doesn't mean Elizabeth is going to be anti-protestant William CLE himself by the way was also reformed and more importantly all of the Bishops and the priests and the people that were backed and supported and installed during Elizabeth's Reign were from a robustly Protestant position what made him different though is they were not from this feistier more aggressive and unhappy lot now it's a bit unfair to say that but that really is how they are characterized and it's how they act so for example 1570 12 years into Elizabeth rain there arose something called the vestments controversy which is a controversy where those who were of a more sty committed aggressive protestantism began to take a stand that if selected to be a priest or a pastor or a bishop even they were not going to wear the vestments these were things from the Catholic church and they didn't want anything to do with this well Matthew Parker and the Queen and others say put them on guys just shut up we're not saying the Investments are necessary to make you a Catholic priest rather what Elizabeth wanted is a uniform clergy who in a divided country that was still pretty heavily Catholic she wanted a United clergy and these guys are Rock in the boat so as Elizabeth's Reign unfolds and develops it increasingly comes to the point where and this will have a dramatic impact on the near future and the far future in the english- speaking World Elizabeth and her main supporters there both from the Secretary of State position as well as from the archbishops of Canterbury that she will select throughout her Reign they are going to be committed Protestants and you might say reformed but they're going to use their Protestant theology to go against these hardliners you just look at the evidence it's actually quite telling both sides are citing the same people Calvin Bullinger bser zwingley Peter Martyr and others they're saying no no no no they're on our side we need to not wear the vestments or these kinds of things the other side says no no they're on our side conform stop being such a Wier stop trying to make yourself so important and resist all these things what begins to happen here then is you have the emergence of a group that we will later call the Puritans now defining who the Puritans are is important and we'll do that as we go through this course when we get to the actual Puritans particular under King James and others but the origins of it really begin here because the name Puritan just means those who want to purify and to establish a new the English church they wanted you might say to continue what Edward wanted to do which is to get rid of any vestage whatsoever of any cultural thing whether it's vestments or crucifixes or whatnot that appeared to be Catholic Catholic Doctrine had already been truncated what they're fighting against is that culture are they going to go the way of a more reformed you might say calvinistic way of doing things or are they going to form a new identity that is not overly concerned with these things to the point of creating controversy over them in the end the Puritans will come into existence because as they carry on through the decades in particular after the death of Elizabeth and on into the next Century they will become a self-identified group in some ways who Challenge and continually stand up against things that they think are quote but half reformed and as they get feistier eventually you have groups that will become not internal Puritans who are complaining about things but separatists people who want to leave the church of England and either found new denominations like a Baptist structure a presbyterian structure or something else and eventually they will come to bash heads metaphorically speaking with the very King in The Next Century anglicanism then you might say it's not a mixture some sort of Frankenstein church between Catholicism and protestantism rather you might say they are their own identity they are Protestant but they are not going to identify themselves with an increasingly Hardline reformed or calvinistic side and they are not going to Simply adopt the Lutheran side they want to form their own identity and not be beholden to another Theologian and it's telling in the English speaking World in particular the word calvinist during Elizabeth's Reign and on into the next Century begins to mean not the teachings of Calvin per se though it certainly meant that in general but rather this intensified more aggressive form of protestantism and it's for that reason in part that the word calvinist in some ways down until even the modern world has both a positive Tone If you are calvinist and for those who may not realize it some of the negative connotations some of the push back against the reformed position in the english- speaking world that then transitions to the new world with the formations of English settlements here will be very uncomfortable with the way Calvinism rests within the Anglican eth us and so as the years were on you have this internal struggle you might say from time to time between Calvinism or purism in an alternative [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 97,601

Keywords: Elizabeth I Of England (Monarch), England (Country), Anglicanism (Religion), Anglican Communion (Religious Organization), Puritan (Religion), Calvinism (Religion), Religious Settlement, Mary I Of England (Monarch), Tudor Dynasty (Royal Line), Tudor Period (Event), James I Of England (Monarch), Book Of Common Prayer (Religious Text), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, Religion (TV Genre), College (TV Genre)

Id: BP4dtZoWlZg

Length: 34min 49sec (2089 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2015