The Eve of the Reformation

The Eve of the Reformation offers studies in the religious life and thought of the English people in the period preceding the rejection of the Roman jurisdiction by Henry VIII. The contents list names, among others, chapters called The Revival of Letters in England, The Two Jurisdictions, England and the Pope, Clergy and Laity and Erasmus.

The text says that three emperors in succession journeyed into the Western world to implore assistance in their dire necessity. Manuel, called the second of these pilgrim emperors, landed at Dover in December 1400 and was entertained, with a large retinue of Greeks, at the monastery of Christchurch, Canterbury. Gibbon is quoted as writing that the travels of the three emperors were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps their spiritual salvation, but productive of a beneficial consequence, the revival of the Greek learning in Italy. The text says the whole range of Christian teaching, dogmatic and moral, was to be explained to the people four times in every year.