Test file
The Test Act ( English Test Act , "sample") was a law that the English Parliament in 1673 by Charles II. Enforced. It wrote for each state officials - in addition to the supremacy (of the supreme ecclesiastical power of the crown was concerned) - mandatory yet another oath before the signed writing had. With this test oath , the test person declared that he would reject the doctrine of transubstantiation , that is, the Catholic doctrine of the conversion of the Eucharistic forms of bread and wine into the true body and blood of Christ.
The test act thus excluded professing Catholics not only from all state offices, but also from membership in parliament. The 1673 Act was part of a series of similar provisions known collectively as the Test Acts , such as the Corporation Act of 1661 requiring anyone to hold public office in the state, city, or corporation , had to receive communion within a year according to the rites of the Anglican Church of England . This was particularly directed against Presbyterians and other Protestant dissenters who rejected the rites and the hierarchy of the Anglican Church . Another Test Act of 1678 also introduced this provision to members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords . With the law, Parliament responded to the conversion of the Duke of York, Jacob , to the Roman Catholic Church . The Anglican parliamentarians feared that the brother and likely successor of the childless king would embark on the re-Catholicization of England and Scotland. After his accession to the throne in 1685, James II appointed Catholics to high offices. This was instrumental in the resistance to the new king, who was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 .
It was not until the Catholic Relief Act of April 13, 1829, that test acts and test oaths were repealed and that the Catholics were emancipated. For the dissenters, the file had already been repealed in 1828 with the Sacramental Test Act . However, similar regulations were in force at universities in England until 1871 and Catholics were denied the offices of Lord Chancellor and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland until the 20th century .
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Heussi : Compendium of Church History , 11th Edition, Tübingen, 1957, p. 492
- ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia. 14th edition, 1908. Vol. 15.