Henry never formally repudiated the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but he declared himself supreme head of the church in England. This, combined with subsequent actions, eventually resulted in a separated church, the Church of England. The pope behaved more as an Italian prince involved in secular affairs, which often obscured his religious role. The Church treated England as a minor stepchild, allowing it one cardinal out of fifty, and no possibility of becoming pope. For reasons of state it was increasingly intolerable that major decisions in England were settled by Italians. The divorce issue exemplified the problem but was not itself the cause of the problem.
Henry asserted that his first marriage had never been valid, but the divorce issue was only one factor in Henry's desire to reform the church. In 1536–37, Henry suppressed monasteries and pilgrimage shrines in his attempt to reform the church. The king was always the dominant force in the making of religious policy; his policy, which he pursued skilfully and consistently, is best characterised as a search for the middle way.
Questions over what was the true faith were resolved with the adoption of the orthodox "Act of Six Articles" (1539) and a careful holding of the balance between extreme factions after 1540. Even so, the era saw movement away from religious orthodoxy, the more so as the pillars of the old beliefs, especially Thomas More and John Fisher, had been unable to accept the change and had been executed in 1535 for refusing to renounce papal authority.
Thomas Moore<-----
Critical Henrician reformation was the new political theology of obedience to the prince that was enthusiastically adopted by the Church of England in the 1530s. The founding of royal authority on the Ten Commandments, and thus on the word of God, was a particularly attractive feature of this doctrine, which became a defining feature of Henrician religion. Rival tendencies within the Church of England sought to exploit it in the pursuit of their particular agendas.
Reformers strove to preserve its connections with the broader framework of Lutheran theology, with the emphasis on faith alone and the word of God, while conservatives emphasised good works, ceremonies, and charity. The Reformers linked royal supremacy and the word of God to persuade Henry to publish the Great Bible in 1539, an English translation that was a formidable prop for his new-found dignity.
