영국 국교회 성립에 관한 연구

A Study on the Establishment of the Anglican Church

The essential feature of the English Reformation consisted in the fact that the church in England severed herself from the rule of Rome, in the Establishment of the Anglican Church. Why did Henry Ⅷ, who was originally loyal to the Roman Pope, dare to resort to such a revolutionary act? It is true that his divorce furnished the principal occasion for the English Reformation, but it cannot be connected directly with the Establishment of the Anglican Church. Drawing a conclusion from the historical process, we may say that, at the excellent opportunity afforded by the king s divorce question, the anticlerical and antipapal feeling prevalent in the nation, above all in the middle class, came to its fullest expression in the Reformation Parliament, and, finally, gave rise to the independence of the Church in England. In this cases, however, the role which Thomas Cromwell enacted was of great importance, because we may justifiably conjecture that he, as a spokesman of the middle class close to the throne, transmitted the anticlerical and antipapal feeling of this class th the king and, at the same time, showed an explicit destination to which both the king and the middle class should come in the end.