Six Articles (1539)
In 1538 three German theologians – Francis Burkhardt, vice-chancellor of Saxony; George von Boyneburg, doctor of law; and Friedrich Myconius, superintendent of the church of Gotha – were sent to London and held conferences with the Anglican bishops and clergy in the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth for several months. The Germans presented, as a basis of agreement, a number of Articles based on the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg. Bishops Tunstall, Stokesley and others were not won over by these Protestant arguments and did everything they could to avoid agreement. They were willing to separate from Rome, but their plan was to unite with the Greek Church and not with the evangelical Protestants on the continent. The bishops also refused to eliminate what the Germans called the "Abuses" (e.g. private Masses, celibacy of the clergy, invocation of saints) allowed by the Anglican Church. Stokesley considered these customs to be essential because the Greek Church practised them. In opposition, Cranmer favoured a union with German Protestants. The king, unwilling to break with Catholic practices, dissolved the conference.
Henry had felt uneasy about the appearance of the Lutheran doctors and their theology within his kingdom. On 28 April 1539 Parliament met for the first time in three years. On 5 May, the House of Lords created a committee with the customary religious balance to examine and determine doctrine. Eleven days later, the Duke of Norfolk noted that the committee had not agreed on anything and proposed that the Lords examine six doctrinal questions which eventually became the basis of the Six Articles. The articles reaffirmed traditional Catholic doctrine on key issues:
- transubstantiation,
- the reasonableness of withholding of the cup from the laity during communion,
- clerical celibacy,
- observance of vows of chastity,
- permission for private masses,
- the importance of auricular confession.
Penalties under the Act ranged from imprisonment and fine to death. However, its severity was reduced by an act of 1540, which retained the death penalty only for denial of transubstantiation, and a further act limited its arbitrariness. The Catholic emphasis of the doctrine commended in the articles is not matched by the ecclesiastical reforms Henry undertook in the following years, such as the enforcement of the necessity of the English Bible and the insistence upon the abolition of all shrines, both in 1541.
As the Act of the Six Articles neared passage in Parliament, Cranmer moved his wife and children out of England to safety. Up to then the family was kept quietly hidden, most likely in Ford Palace in Kent. The Act passed Parliament at the end of June; subsequently bishops Latimer and Nicholas Shaxton, outspoken opponents of the measure, resign their dioceses. After Henry's death the articles were repealed by his son, Edward VI.
Read more about this topic: Thirty-Nine Articles