Elizabethan religious regulation
The Elizabethan religious settlement ( Engl. Elizabethan Religious Settlement ) refers to the process by Elizabeth I to reform the Church of England in the Protestant sense and to establish final.
Parliamentary process
Elisabeth had the religious regulation discussed in her first parliament. In April 1559, after lengthy negotiations, Parliament passed the Supreme Act , which made Elizabeth head of the Church in place of the Pope, and an Act of Uniformity , which introduced Protestant teaching.
This made the Church of England a Protestant church independent of Rome.
execution
At first the British government tried to implement the new order in a moderate way. The incumbent Catholic clergy were offered to continue their offices. The majority of the upper clergy refused, while the majority of the lower clergy accepted. The new doctrine was preached to the population over and over again in numerous masses, so that a slow but continuous re-education took place. The limit of this tolerant policy was only exceeded when someone publicly called for disobedience. However, it was quite possible to continue to live one's own religious convictions in private.
In the course of Elisabeth's reign there were increasing tensions with various religious groups. Internally, there was a dispute with Protestant theologians , for whom the religious regulation had not gone far enough. Catholic missionaries coming from outside threatened the new order. The British government then tightened its approach.
historiography
In the study of history, two different interpretations prevail as to how the religious regulation came about.
In the 1950s, the historian John Neale coined the view that Elisabeth was striving for a very moderate Reformation. Like her father Henry VIII, she had largely retained Catholic theology and only wanted to separate from the papacy. With this plan, Elisabeth failed due to the fierce resistance of radical Calvinists in the lower house . They had to give in and, with the act of uniformity, carry out moderate Protestantization.
Since 1982, Neale's theory has been challenged by research by Norman Jones . According to his reading of the sources, Elisabeth strived for a Protestant solution from the start and had no problems with the lower house, which was far less homogeneous than Neale assumed. Rather, the Catholic bishops and conservative lay people in the House of Lords would have forced Elisabeth to make some compromises, so that the English Church became Protestant in terms of teaching, but continued elements of the old denomination in its gesture and structure.