It is said that Henry, being ‘tired of Queen Catherine,… and passionately enamoured of Anne Boleyn, had made known to [Thomas] Wolsey in May, 1527, that he wished to be divorced. He pretended that his conscience was uneasy at the marriage contracted under papal dispensation with his brother’s widow (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04024a.htm), though others argue that the year 1527 ‘may be when he decided that a divorce was needed. [but] The truth is that historians simply do not know’ (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/henry_catherine_divorce.htm). Whatever the case, once he made a decision to divorce Catherine, Henry began to act ‘to solicit from the Holy See contingently upon the granting of the divorce, [and] a dispensation from the impediment of affinity in the first degree [an impediment which stood between him and any legal marriage with Anne on account of his previous carnal intercourse with Anne’s sister Mary]’ (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04024a.htm). In short, Henry needed to obtain a permission from judicial authority of the Roman Catholic Church to divorce his wife Catherine, and a pardon for having an affair with Mary Boleyn, in order to marry her sister Anne because ‘the beliefs within the Catholic Church were clear and simple. Only the Pope could annul a marriage and as the Church believed in the sanctity of marriage and family, this was a reasonably rare occurrence. In many senses, royal families in Western Europe were expected to set the standards that others should follow’ (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/henry_catherine_divorce.htm).
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| Mary Boleyn |
In his petition to the Pope, ‘Henry used his knowledge of the Bible to justify his request for a marriage annulment. Henry used the Old Testament [Leviticus Chapter 20 Verse 16] where it stated:
“If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an impurity; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”
Henry argued that his marriage to Catherine had been against God’s law from the start despite the Pope’s blessing for it to go ahead in 1509. He was therefore living in sin and that the Pope had to annul his marriage so that he could rectify this. As “Defender of the Faith”… Henry believed that such an annulment was almost a foregone conclusion’ (ibid).
To read the text in full: http://wrex2009.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/the-divorce-between-henry-viii-and-catherine-of-aragon/
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