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The Suppression of Lutheran Heretics in England, 1526–1529

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2003

CRAIG W. D'ALTON
Affiliation:
PO Box 8, Yarra Theological Union, South Yarra, Victoria 3141, Australia; e-mail: cdalton@netspace.net.au

Abstract

This article examines responses to the spread of Lutheranism and related heresies in England during the final years of the ascendancy of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. It demonstrates that the preferred method for dealing with scholars and others toying with the New Learning was to attempt to convince them of the error of their ways rather than to punish them. The small number of Lutheran heresy trials in the 1520s is shown to be evidence not of a ‘soft’ approach to the growing problem of Lutheran infiltration, but of a successful policy of humanist reform.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article is derived from the author's doctoral thesis, ‘The suppression of heresy in early Henrician England’, unpublished PhD diss. Melbourne 1999. Thanks are extended to Associate Professor Charles Zika and Dr Barry Collect of the University of Melbourne, and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch of St Cross College, Oxford, who supervised the work. Research was conducted with the aid of an Australian Postgraduate Award from the University of Melbourne.