Ed Oldenburg

Thanks - Bede- I just sent for the book from amazon. Do you know of any publication relative to the origins of the Church of England and King James' influence on it?

Bede

Hi Ed,

King James I of England only came to the throne after the English Reformation had happened and got the job partly because he was a Protestant. Personnally he isn't an important figure beyond putting his name to a translation of the Bible that became famous.

England left the Catholic Church because King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife and the Pope wouldn't let him. Henry's son, Edward VI then completed the Reformation and turned England fully Protestant which it stayed despite the efforts of Edward's sister Mary when she became queen.

Try a book like John Guy's The Tudors (published by Oxford) or any other popular book on the Tudors and the English Reformation will be covered in full. It is not a very edifying story.

Yours

Bede

Toto

You might find what you are looking for in the recently published (and well reviewed) God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.

lpetrich

Good grief! Pagans have had plenty of male deities as well as female ones.

Toto

Is this the book:

Tudor England by John Guy

Doctor X

Unfortunately the modern pagan movement has this agenda to make up a universal goddess that never actually existed.

--J.D.

Roger Pearse

Not by sensible people, but the allegation does appear online from time to time.

Not rightly, tho.

The origins of Christmas are discussed in a Catholic Encyclopedia article, which trawls through the data and comes up with a 'don't know how we got this' but gives as mostly likely that the custom was adopted in Rome in the mid-4th century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Chadwick, of course, is a patristics scholar of venerable status, who is still alive albeit very frail.

Many of the primary sources for Constantine's reign are online, apart from some polemic by Julian (which I will add when I can find an out-of-copyright version). But as Bede said, you need an overview first. Most of the stuff online is rubbish.

You might suppose that this is for religious reasons. But I learned from Cameron & Hall's recent translation of the Vita Constantini that attacks on Constantine became endemic in the mid-19th century for *political* reasons. This was because the revolutionaries were trying to undermine the Hapsburg and Russian empires, which drew their political or ideological legitimacy ultimately from Constantine; and thus these attacks served to undermine the governments of the Tsar and the Austrian emperor. (The same went for attacks on Eusebius, the main chronicler of Constantine.)

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ed Oldenburg

Thanks, Roger. I think I'm beginning to learn something here.

The object of my search is really to discover why the Church of England differs so much in dogma from Roman Catholicism.

I've got a lot to read now and will start with that.

Ed -

Roger Pearse

You're welcome!

Beware of presuming that what is officially dogma in the CofE, however, bears any resemblance to what is actually believed or practised. But either way, reading the history will be a necessary process to understanding.

All the best,

Roger Pearse