Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
It is easy to be unaware of the church wars of the past. We may well take our protestant evangelical faith for granted.
When the often sordid details of the interactions of church and state (and church and church!) become a best-selling and award-winning novel, you know the author has real literary talent.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize to much acclaim. It is a meaty novel at 650 pages, but extremely well-paced and readable. It chronicles the struggles of Henry VIII to rid himself of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (simply "Katherine" in the novel), and marry Anne Boleyn in order to try and achieve a male heir and stability for the throne.
While popular movies, novels and plays have told the story from Henry or Anne's perspective, Hilary chooses to take the perspective of the enigmatic Thomas Cromwell, Henry's chief adviser. He was a commoner who rose through the ranks through his skill, ability, and sheer cunning.
As a lawyer, administrator and accountant, Cromwell makes an unlikely hero. He is perhaps, the ultimate public servant.
The issue Henry faced in divorcing Katherine was the opposition of the church, with the pope as the ultimate authority. Henry failed in his attempt to seek from the Pope, a dissolution of his first marriage because of incest (Katherine had been married to his brother Arthur, but claimed she was still a virgin when she married Henry).
Cromwell then came up with the concept of making Henry the supreme authority of church and state, achieved through a series of Bills passed by Parliament. This marked the beginning of the English Reformation.
While some have described this novel as a wonderful insight into Thomas Cromwell's character, I found it increasingly frustrating to determine Cromwell's motivation. Was he truly sympathetic to Luther's movement, and the English evangelicals including Tyndale and Latimer? They were described as "the Bible men", questioning any church structure or practice that was not endorsed in the Bible.
However, he is also a shrewd pragmatist, motivated by power and wealth. What is clear in the novel is that Henry is purely motivated by his desire for Anne, and the hope of a son.
It seems even the author may be unsure of his motives with Cromwell commenting to himself: "I shall not indulge More, he thinks, or his family, in any illusion that they understand me. How could that be when my workings are hidden from myself."
Regardless of matters that it may be difficult to determine from historical records, Mantel's narrative, particularly the conversations between Cromwell and his arch-enemy, the papist Thomas More, are an interesting examination of the significance of the theological principle of "sola scriptura".
Mantel, through Tyndale, expresses the essential truths that so challenged the church based in Rome:
Saints are not your friends and they will not protect you. They cannot help you to salvation. You cannot engage them to your service with prayers and candles, as you might hire a man for the harvest. Christ's sacrifice was done on Calvary; it is not done in the Mass. Priests cannot help you to Heaven; you need no priest to stand between you and your God. No merits of yours can save you: only the merits of the living Christ.
This was a time when espousing such beliefs led to persecution, torture and martyrdom with More as the spearhead; but as the wife of martyr John Petyt says: "He can close the booksellers, but still there will be books. They have their old bones, their glass saints in windows, their candles and shrines, but God has given us the printing press."
We should never take for granted our access to the Bible in our own language, and the availability of excellent Bible-based resources, now not only in print, but also online.
The difference made by having the Bible available is well expressed:
As the Word of God spreads, the people's eyes are opened to new truths. Until now… they knew Noah and the Flood, but not St Paul. They could count over the sorrows of our Blessed Mother, and say how the damned are carried to Hell. But they did not know the manifold miracles and sayings of Christ, nor the words and deeds of the apostles, simple men who, like the poor of London, pursued simple wordless trades. The story is much bigger than they ever thought it was.
The other major theme of the book is how all humanity is depraved: Cardinal Wolsey had an illegitimate child, people had to pay for every service provided by the church, monks and church leaders were often seen as getting fat and lazy on the offerings of the poor. Of course, the propensity of kings, lords and ladies for promiscuity, violence and excess of every desire is also chronicled.
It is also about the exercise of power, not in processions or conclaves, but "two men in small rooms… a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rosewater."
How true that seems in Australia's recent political history!
This is a wonderfully lyrical and compelling book with some clearly expressed Gospel truths and a sharp warning that those of us who claim the name of Christ, should live and love as he did.
