Firstly, a very happy new year to everyone who enjoys the History Jar blog and thank you for your continued support. 2023 was something of a quiet year although the page underwent something of an overhaul towards the end of the year. I have further plans for 2024, although I am currently aware of a looming deadline for my fifth book with Pen and Sword! I have offered up the occasional ‘on this day in the past’ but this year it will make a more regular appearance.
On this day Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther whose objections to some of the more corrupt practices of the Catholic Church at the time led to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Luther’s 95 theses were nailed to the cathedral door at Wittenberg where the monk was a professor in October 1517 – he particularly objected to the sale of indulgences which meant people were able to buy a pardon from various sins. By the time he had refused to recant his views it was 1521.
In April 1521, Luther was called to the Diet of Worms to justify his views. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, declared him an outlaw but Luther found protection from German princes.
King Henry VIII got in on the act when he wrote a paper defending the seven sacraments -known as the Assertio (Assertio Septum Sanctorum) resulting in Henry being given the title Defender of the Faith by the Pope. When Henry split with Rome following his failure to gain an annulment of his marriage from Katherine of Aragon, he kept the title. It should also be noted that Henry, who saw himself as something of a top notch Renaissance Prince on the academic front, may have had a helping hand from his friend Sir Thomas More – Tom found himself in dire trouble in 1534 when he refused to accept Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England or to recognise Henry’s divorce from Katherine granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533.
Henry’s defence of the papacy had been a best seller for ten years by then and Luther had taken the time in 1522 to write an attack on Henry mocking the Church for needing a defender and pointing out that the English king was totally unqualified at any level to write the riposte to Luther’s objections to the church – not that it ever stopped Henry. Nor did the Tudor monarch appear to notice the irony of leaning more towards Protestantism in 1527 when Pope Clement VII first refused the king his request to annul his marriage.
