Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527 ed. by Richard Rex

Abstract

Reviewed by: Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527 ed. by Richard Rex Korey D. Maas Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527. Edited by Richard Rex. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2021. xvi + 306 pp. The bad blood between Henry VIII and Martin Luther has long held a prominent place in narratives and interpretations of the early English Reformation. The King's 1521 salvo against Luther's Babylonian Captivity, rewarded with the ultimately ironic "Defender of the Faith" title, never goes without mention. Nor do the hard feelings resulting a decade later from Luther's refusal to endorse the dissolution of Henry's first marriage, and from the intransigence attending England's bid to enter the Schmalkaldic League. Less well-known is the subject of Richard Rex's latest volume, what he dubs the "second controversy" between Henry and Luther. That this conflict has received less sustained attention is largely understandable, as it revolved around only two relatively brief letters. Luther wrote privately to Henry, expressing his belief that the King was becoming favorable to the Wittenberg theology and hoping that the imprudence of his earlier invective might be forgiven. Henry then replied publicly, saying, in effect, "You're badly [End Page 246] misinformed about my inclinations toward your still damnably heretical doctrines—but I'm glad we now agree about the foolishness of your earlier writings." Although the brevity and straightforwardness of the exchange itself might not demand extended scholarly analysis, Rex emphasizes that it quickly (if briefly) became an international affair, with more than a dozen editions of the two letters being published almost immediately across continental Europe. He highlights especially "the level of attention it attracted from leading Catholic scholars in Europe" (40), who "gave it all the publicity they could" (x), and who leveraged the opportunity to heap "praise on the king and scorn on Luther" (23). In addition to the texts of the original letters, the bulk of the volume is given over to transcriptions, translations, and annotations of the various pamphlets, letters, and prefaces produced in the months after the initial correspondence was made public. As such, it makes readily accessible to scholars a valuable cache of primary source material. The author's own 54-page introductory essay sheds further light on some important contextual questions. Perhaps the most obvious and baffling of these: What possible reason could Luther have had for suspecting a royal change of heart? Rex rightly notes that all objective indicators militated against that supposition, and that the most frequent explanation—that Luther had been misled by the exiled Christian II of Denmark—is unsupported by any extant evidence. Intriguingly, though, especially in light of long-running debates about who might have helped draft the King's contribution to the "first controversy" of 1521 (which the introduction illuminates), the author points to evidence indicative of Thomas More having a hand in Henry's 1526 reply to Luther. Similarly relevant to the earlier controversy, Rex deftly demolishes the "abiding myth" (2) that Henry was already at work on anti-Lutheran polemic as early as 1518. One significant question is unfortunately left unaddressed. While emphasizing that the attention given the correspondence by Catholic polemicists is one of the "remarkable features" (40) of the exchange, the author nowhere indicates—aside from the inclusion of one further contribution by Luther himself—whether the exchange [End Page 247] provoked any similarly polemical reactions from European Protestants. If it elicited only silence that is surely worth highlighting, if only because it further bolsters the implicit thesis that Luther's original missive constituted an unforced error and handed his detractors an embarrassingly lopsided rhetorical triumph. If, on the other hand, Protestants did weigh in against the King's letter, those interventions, too, surely deserve some attention. [End Page 248] Korey D. Maas Hillsdale College Hillsdale, Michigan Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.