2 - Reformations

Summary

“What hath God wrought!”

Numbers 23:23, King James Bible

With Henry's divorce and the creation of an autonomous Church of England, Italian intercourse with England entered into a period of disjointure that would continue, except for a brief revival under Mary, through the end of Elizabeth's reign. It is worthwhile, therefore, pausing for a moment to consider the implications of Henry's actions and the subsequent realignment of England's ecclesiastical polity in terms of Anglo-Italian relations. The history detailed in the previous chapter demonstrates a lively and unencumbered stream of high-profile Italian visitors to England over the course of almost a century, some of whom settled there permanently. Following the royal divorce, the variety of Italians who then came to England shifted (with the exception of those involved in commerce) in accord with England's new political and religious orientation. The status of foreigners under Henry VIII was often precarious, the result of xenophobic motives as potent in the sixteenth century as they are in our own era, but at no time were the “strangers” already in England at more of a disadvantage than after the king had severed ties with the Roman church and effectively isolated foreign-born Catholics in an initially ambiguous religious environment. The situation would have been particularly problematic for Italians in England, given the manifold ways in which we have seen that they were inserted into English political and cultural life.