Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner (also Wintoniensis, Stephen Gardiner, * 1497 in Bury St Edmunds; ? † November 12, 1555 in Whitehall Palace, London) was Bishop of Winchester, statesman, Canon and is among the humanists and the Hellenist. He is regarded as one of the leaders of the Conservatives in the first generation of the English Reformation. He was involved in both the establishment of the Anglican Church as well as under Mary I in the attempted recatholicization England.

Life

Start time

Born the youngest son of the tailor and draper John Gardiner († 1507) or possibly the illegitimate son of the Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Lionel Woodville, he undertook in 1507 an educational trip to Paris, where he is said to have met Erasmus of Rotterdam. From 1511 he studied at Cambridge at the ( Trinity Hall ) and received his PhD in 1520 for Doctor of Civil Law and in the following year for the canonical law. Despite his love for the law and his work as a jurist and diplomat his love for music and acting is mentioned again and again. The connection to Cambridge and the University remained throughout his life made ​​. Throughout his troubled and busy public life he was except for the period 1549-1553 ( the years of his imprisonment) rector of Trinity Hall.

Climb to the royal advisor and bishop

In the fall of 1524 he entered the service of Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey was as Archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor and papal legate next to Henry VIII, the most powerful man in the state, 1525 Gardiner was his secretary. Through his efforts in the negotiations with Pope Clement VII to reach a divorce from Catherine of Aragon to Henry, he received from the king in 1531 the diocese of Winchester. The marriage itself was only in 1533 annulled by a divorce court of the English Church. Together with Thomas More in 1527, he negotiated with France over a United Kingdom's entry for the League of Cognac.

Together with the other bishops, he agreed to the law of 1534, in which Henry declared to be the head of the Church in England, and defended the royal supremacy over the church, among others in the treatise De Vera obedientia (1535, The true obedience). Gardiner was reform-oriented but only on the issue of non-recognition of papal primacy; in matters of doctrine and liturgy, he joined remain committed to maintaining the Catholic practice; " The supremacy of the king does not mean the distinction between the Catholic Church. " The Six Articles of 1539, in which Catholic principles were laid down, came for the most part of it.

Fall and return to power

After the fall of Cromwell Gardiner in 1540 chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He also won back more influence in the Privy Council of the monarch, the Privy Council. Gardiner was an opponent of extreme Protestantism and tried with all his means the Protestant circles at the court roll back. He settled in intrigues against the last wife of King Henry VIII, Catherine Parr, getting involved, which cost him a lot of sympathy and hostility not less Protestants and church reformer earned. The growing shortly before the death of Henry influence of the reformist circles at the court and in the Privy Council led to the end of 1547, that Gardiner was not included in the Regency Council, which was made ​​available to the underage heir Edward aside.

After Gardiner himself in 1547 shortly after the accession to power of King Edward VI. , Refused to implement the religious innovations of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, he was jailed as a profiled famous representative of Catholic conservatism. He was released for a short time, but was arrested again at the instigation of zealous Protestants in 1549 and held for four years in the Tower of London. Was extracted from Gardiner already in 1547 the Office of the University Registrar, in 1549 the rector of Trinity Hall in 1551 and also his diocese. With the accession of Queen Mary I. Gardiner was released and regained his bishopric and its other offices. For political reasons, he had to plead against the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and the mother of Mary I., explain this again for valid and Mary I confirm to be the rightful heir to the throne.

Gardiner in 1553 Lord Chancellor and participated as a champion of the Catholic reaction under Mary I on the inner renewal of the Catholic Church in England and at the re-introduction of laws against heresy, and thus also to the prosecution of a Protestant minister. He was, however, against their execution, and even attempted the life of his opponent Thomas Cranmer's rescue, but without success. While the queen who burned Protestants, there was no death sentences in his diocese Winchester.

As a national conservative Catholic Gardiner also tried to prevent in order to preserve England's political freedom the marriage of Mary I. with the Spanish King Philip II. In vain he strove to make a substantial peace between France and the German Kaiser - efforts, however, were undermined by King Charles V of Spain. Gardiners troubles and concerns were heard by the Queen, and more and more faded Gardiner's influence at court. This circumstance made ​​him to create health. In 1555, his condition deteriorated rapidly. He took on November 8, still at the opening of Parliament in part, but was too weak to return to his residence ( Winchester House ) in Southwark, so he was taken to the palace of Whitehall, where he on the night of 12 died November 1555. Gardiner found his final resting place in his Episcopal Church in Winchester.

He was friends with the humanist Thomas More and John Fisher. He also worshiped the head of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. With this he was during his stay in England in close contact. His idea of ​​itself by means of the influence of humanism itself be reformed church crashed to the ground.

Selections

Gardiner's extensive correspondence is collected in The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. by J. A. Muller, Cambridge 1933, Westport 21970; A comprehensive collection of Gardiner's works are not yet available. The Vera obedientia that Conquestio and a third writing are published in P. Janelle (eds.): Obedience in Church and State - Three Political Tracts by Stephen Gardiner, New York 21968th

Unpublished PhD thesis: D. L. Potter: Diplomacy in the mid - sixteenth Century: England and France, 1536-1550, University of Cambridge in 1973; S. Thompson: The Pastoral Work of the English and Welsh Bishops, c. 1500-1550, University of California, Los Angeles in 1975.