ABSTRACT
The formal abrogration of papal authority in England, the persecution of those individuals who remained loyal to Rome and the obliteration of the name of the pope from service books are suggestive of a vigorous effort on the part of the Henrician regime to destroy the political, physical and spiritual presence of the pope in the English church. Histories and biographies of the medieval popes featured prominently in the literature of the early Reformation. The reconstruction of the history of the medieval church in the middle decades of the sixteenth century included a radical re-evaluation of the origins and development of papal primacy, in which the popes were recast as the agents of Satan rather than as the vicars of Christ. Antichrist, as exposed by English evangelical writers, future figure of evil, but a permanent and spiritual presence in the world, one whose actions could be witnessed in the present and identified in the events of the past.
