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[The following is in regards to the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and her husband, Henry VIII. Quick set up: As Henry’s wife seemed unable to bear male children that survived, he began to believe (or use as an excuse, depending on who you ask) that he was cursed for marrying his brother’s wife. He pursued the divorced aggressively, but the pope and general Christendom seemed unwilling to grant it. This led to a religious schism in England that would tie into the greater schism between Protestantism and Catholicism.]

So, in the conspiratorial secrecy of the King’s collusive suit at Westminster, began the resounding case which custom obliges us to call “the divorce” of Catherine of Aragon. While royal officials swore each other to silence, and frowned and denied knowledge of it, and referred to it obliquely as “the king’s great matter” even in their most private correspondence, all London buzzed with the open secret; on the morrow all Europe would ring with it. The tiny splash which Mendoza barely heard would send ripples widening and swelling higher, until the quiet cells of scholars, the innermost rooms of chanceries, and the daily life of a whole people rocked with its commotion, until its center became a vortex sucking ancient institutions into its abyss, and its subsiding waves stirred armies and launched navies from Lisbon to the Baltic. Men would die because of it, in battle, on the scaffold, at the stake, long after the last participant had ceased to plead; and the scholars who wrote mountains of books about it for three hundred years would find their eyes blurred by the ancient fury, and dip their pens in bile.

Whether the great case itself was the mine which wrecked the unity of Christendom, or only the spark which fired the train, its battle cries became the shibboleth of partisans, and its events marked the line of the watershed between the old way of life and the new, so that even today it is hard to find men to write or speak of it without prejudice or heat, and many of its features are still obscured, as much by passion as by the erosion of time.

Source:

Mattingly, Garrett. “Part III: The Divorce of Henry VIII (1527-1536); Chapter One, Section ii” Catherine of Aragon. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 241-42. Print.

Further Reading:

Henry VIII’s Annulment from Catherine
[**The following is in regards to the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and her husband, Henry VIII. Quick set up: As Henry’s wife seemed unable to bear male children that survived, he began to believe (or use as an excuse, depending on who you ask) that he was cursed for marrying his brother’s wife. He pursued the divorced aggressively, but the pope and general Christendom seemed unwilling to grant it. This led to a religious schism in England that would tie into the greater schism between Protestantism and Catholicism.**] So, in the conspiratorial secrecy of the King’s collusive suit at Westminster, began the resounding case which custom obliges us to call “the divorce” of Catherine of Aragon. While royal officials swore each other to silence, and frowned and denied knowledge of it, and referred to it obliquely as “the king’s great matter” even in their most private correspondence, all London buzzed with the open secret; on the morrow all Europe would ring with it. The tiny splash which Mendoza barely heard would send ripples widening and swelling higher, until the quiet cells of scholars, the innermost rooms of chanceries, and the daily life of a whole people rocked with its commotion, until its center became a vortex sucking ancient institutions into its abyss, and its subsiding waves stirred armies and launched navies from Lisbon to the Baltic. Men would die because of it, in battle, on the scaffold, at the stake, long after the last participant had ceased to plead; and the scholars who wrote mountains of books about it for three hundred years would find their eyes blurred by the ancient fury, and dip their pens in bile. >Whether the great case itself was the mine which wrecked the unity of Christendom, or only the spark which fired the train, its battle cries became the shibboleth of partisans, and its events marked the line of the watershed between the old way of life and the new, so that even today it is hard to find men to write or speak of it without prejudice or heat, and many of its features are still obscured, as much by passion as by the erosion of time. _______________________________ **Source:** Mattingly, Garrett. “Part III: The Divorce of Henry VIII (1527-1536); Chapter One, Section ii” *Catherine of Aragon*. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 241-42. Print. _______________________________ **Further Reading:** [Henry VIII’s Annulment from Catherine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Annulment_from_Catherine)

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