Free Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson Page B

adding to the copy being prepared for the pope a verse of dedication in his own handwriting. By August the
Assertion
was completed, and twenty-eight copies were sent to the English ambassador in Rome, John Clerk, who took them to Pope Leo. The pope was immediately taken with his own copy, which was bound in cloth of gold, and urged Clerk to stay while he read the first five pages or so, nodding his head in approval as he read. Looking up from his reading he remarked on Henry’s “wit and clerkly conveyance,” and paid him the high compliment of comparing his work favorably to that of men who devoted their entire lives to learning. Leo’s eyesight was almost too dim to make out Henry’s dedicatory verse, but once it was pointed out to him he read it again and again, and praised it and the king in the most grateful terms, 6
    Leo presented the
Assertion
later at a private consistory, and on the following day he announced his intention to give Henry his coveted title Defender of the Faith. The pope requested copies of the royal book for his cardinals as if he expected it to be used against Luther, but in fact the twenty-eight presentation copies were allowed to gather dust in his library,and a year later Clerk noticed them there, still unread. 7 Other clerics welcomed Henry’s efforts with extravagant praise, however, calling the
Assertion
a “golden book” and its author an “angelic rather than a human spirit.” Outside Rome Henry’s treatise was read, and translated from Latin into German and English. Certainly it did not hurt the papal cause to have such a celebrity as the king of England declare himself in opposition to Luther at a time when most humanists were reluctant to denounce him and the German knights were rebelling in his name. One of Luther’s opponents exclaimed that Henry’s work was “multiplied into many thousands,” and “rilled the whole Christian world with joy and admiration”; another was ready to turn over to him the whole field of learning. “If kings are of this strength,” he wrote, “farewell to us philosophers.”
    Of course there were those who claimed that Henry could not have written his book without help; some said More or Erasmus or, as Luther believed, Erasmus’ enemy Edward Lee was the true author. Modern scholars are equally reluctant to give the king credit for the
Assertion,
although at least one cites the mediocrity of the treatise as proof of its royal authorship. By his own admission Henry disliked putting pen to paper, but he may have dictated the treatise to a secretary. And if he had help in choosing and organizing his arguments, still the impetus to write it and the persistence to complete it were his. Henry disliked allowing others to take recognition he could earn for himself, and he rarely took credit for other men’s feats. In all probability the
Assertion of the Seven Sacraments
was largely the king’s own book.
    Certainly the abuse heaped on the reformer in the treatise was worthy of Henry. He called Luther a “venomous serpent, a pernicious plague, an infernal wolf ... an infectious soul, a detestable trumpeter of pride, calumnies and schism, having an execrable mind, a filthy tongue, and a detestable touch.” 8 To Luther, “Squire Harry” was nothing but “a damnable rottenness and worm,” and he showed no deference to royalty in his rude response to the
Assertion.
Henry and Luther proved themselves masters of invective, if not of theological argument, but after their first exchange the king left it to others to defend his side of the controversy. Under a pseudonym Thomas More took up the battle against “Lousy Luther,” and Henry shifted his assault on the reformer from the religious to the diplomatic realm.
    It was no coincidence that Luther’s chief enemy, after the pope, was the man Henry and Wolsey were courting most assiduously, the Emperor Charles V. When Henry wrote to Charles execrating Luther as “this weed, this dilapidated, sick and