Talk:Elizabethan Religious Settlement/revision 869853588
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The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which was made during the reign of Elizabeth I, was a response to the religious divisions in England during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response, described as "The Revolution of 1559",[1] was set out in two Acts. The Act of Supremacy of 1558 re-established the Church of England's independence from Rome, with Parliament conferring on Elizabeth the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity of 1559 outlined what form the English Church should take, including the re-establishment of the Book of Common Prayer.
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As for the governance of the church all but one of the Marian bishops refused to consecrate a new Archbishop of Canterbury (canon law from the 4th century required a minimum of three for consecration). Intent upon maintaining the three-fold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop in the apostolic succession, Matthew Parker, a Cambridge University don (lecturer), priest and former vice-chancellor of the university, was consecrated in December 1559 by four bishops. Two had been ordained using the 1551 English Ordinal and two in the mid-1530s using the Roman Pontifical when the Church was in schism with Rome but in all other aspects Roman Catholic. All four had been consecrated by men in Roman Catholic Orders. The Church might be 'reformed in some aspects doctrinally and it's liturgy changed but there would be no break with the ancient institutional life of the church. Continuity was the order of the day. The result was a 'half-baked' reform opposed by Roman Catholics and the radical Protestants.
The Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, issued on 25 February 1570 by Pope Pius V, declared "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic, released all of her subjects from any allegiance to her, and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders. The bull, written in Latin, is named from its incipit, the first three words of its text, which mean "ruling from on high" (a reference to God). Among the queen's alleged offences, it lists that "she has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics."