A Pope in a Schismatic Isle

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

LONDON — A side benefit of a British education used to be learning the mnemonics helpful for sifting through events on this blustery island since 1066. One ditty lists all the kings and queens, ending with the catchy “Ned, George, Ned, George, at whose death came a second Elizabeth.”

Another addresses the fate of the six wives of Henry VIII: “Divorced, beheaded, died/ Divorced, beheaded, survived.” The first of these queens was Catherine of Aragon. Henry was 17 when — not yet the fat potentate of Holbein’s portraits — he ascended the throne in 1509 and, months later, married Catherine, his brother’s widow.

Freud might have questioned the wisdom of young Henry wedding a dead sibling’s spouse six years his senior. But the match had dynastic merits. It endured through several infant deaths and stillborn children — including the male heirs Henry craved — before the king sought a divorce from Pope Clement VII, was denied, and, in 1534, severed relations with the Roman Catholic Church.

This was a divorce row that did not blow over.

(More here.)