This is the day that … Henry VIII was excommunicated by the Pope of Rome. It was 1533.

He was 42 years of age, had sat upon the throne of England since 1509 … and (in 1521) had been awarded the title “Defender of the Faith” – by Pope Leo X!

Why? Because Henry had taken up his pen and denounced Martin Luther as a heretic.

Henry VIII was a loyal son of the Roman church. Until, that is, he set his eyes on Anne Boleyn! This raven-haired beauty, incidentally, “had a sixth finger on her left hand, a deformity she skilfully concealed…”

The problem was that Henry was already married to Catherine of Aragon … and after “16 years of repeated pregnancies” there was still no male heir. So Henry decided that his marriage was not legal in the first place – after all, Catherine had been the widow of Henry’s brother … and didn’t Leviticus have something to say about that? So he demanded that the Pope annul the marriage.

The Pope, however, stood firm. He may not have done so had it not been for the fact that he (the Pope) was “really a prisoner in the hands of Charles V of Spain … who was Catherine’s nephew”!

Suffice to say Henry divorced Catherine … married Anne, who was already pregnant (January, 1533) … and passed the Act of Supremacy (1534), which states that he is “the Supreme Head in Earth immediately under God of the Church of England”.

By September, 1533, Henry already had his roving eye on Jane Seymour.

Thus Anne was declared to be guilty of adultery, beheaded on Tower Hill … and Henry married Jane less than a month later.

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.