ABSTRACT
Divorce, the legal dissolution of a marriage, was central to the creation of the Church of England. In the well-known story of Henry VIII, the King of England wished to rid himself of a wife who had failed to provide him with a male heir. He desperately wanted to marry another woman who would, he hoped, be able to bear a legitimate son. Henry’s Queen, Catherine of Aragon, had been married briefly to his brother Arthur. After Arthur’s death, Catherine had married Henry. Of six children born to them, only one daughter, Mary, survived. On the basis of the Biblical prohibition against marriage to a brother’s widow, Henry claimed that his marriage was cursed and asked the Pope for an annulment. The Pope, who could not afford to offend Catherine’s uncle, the Emperor Charles V, refused. The King then turned to Parliament, which passed a statute prohibiting appeals from English courts to Rome in ecclesiastical suits. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s court could then declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine null and void. After 1534, when the Act of Supremacy recognized the King as the head of the Church in England, the Pope no longer had legal authority there.
