30
July 1540 A.D. Robert
Barnes Executed—English Reformer & Anglican Churchman
The link below appears to be dead now,
another reason for identifying the date of accessment. Nevertheless, we cite it.
“Today, July 30, in 1540, the English
Reformer, Robert Barnes, was killed for his faith and public confession. He
became a friend of Luther and lived in the home of Johann Bugenhagen, pastor of
the city Church in Wittenberg. He was committed to spreading the Gospel in
England, but was caught up in Henry VIII’s murderous plots and schemes and so
paid the ultimate price for his faith. Here is the article about him from the
1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica:
BARNES,
ROBERT (1495-1540),
English reformer and martyr, born about 1495, was educated at Cambridge, where
he was a member, and afterwards prior of the convent of Austin Friars, and
graduated D.D. in 1523. He was apparently one of the Cambridge men who were
wont to gather at the White Horse Tavern for Bible-reading and theological
discussion early in the third decade of the 16th century. In 1526, he was
brought before the vice-chancellor for preaching a heterodox sermon, and was
subsequently examined by Wolsey and four other bishops. He was condemned to
abjure or be burnt; and preferring the former alternative, was committed to the
Fleet prison and afterwards to the Austin Friars in London. He escaped thence
to Antwerp in 1528, and also visited Wittenberg, where he made Luther’s
acquaintance. He also came across Stephen Vaughan, an agent of Thomas Cromwell
and an advanced reformer, who recommended him to Cromwell: “Look well,” he
wrote, “upon Dr Barnes’ book. It is such a piece of work as I have not yet seen
any like it. I think he shall seal it with his blood” (Letters and Papers of
Henry VIII. v. 593). In 1531 Barnes returned to England, and became one of
the chief intermediaries between the English government and Lutheran Germany.
In 1535 he was sent to Germany, in the hope of inducing Lutheran divines to
approve of Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and four years later he
was employed in negotiations connected with Anne of Cleves’s marriage. The
policy was Cromwell’s, but Henry VIII had already in 1538 refused to adopt
Lutheran theology, and the statute of Six Articles (1539), followed by the
king’s disgust with Anne of Cleves (1540), brought the agents of that policy to
ruin. An attack upon Bishop Gardiner by Barnes in a sermon at St Paul’s Cross was
the signal for a bitter struggle between the Protestant and reactionary parties
in Henry’s council, which raged during the spring of 1540. Barnes was forced to
apologize and recant; and Gardiner delivered a series of sermons at St Paul’s
Cross to counteract Barnes’ invective. But a month or so later Cromwell was
made earl of Essex, Gardiner’s friend, Bishop Sampson, was sent to the Tower,
and Barnes reverted to Lutheranism. It was a delusive victory. In July,
Cromwell was attainted, Anne of Cleves was divorced and Barnes was burnt (30th
July 1540). He also had an act of attainder passed against him, a somewhat
novel distinction for a heretic, which illustrates the way in which Henry VIII
employed secular machinery for ecclesiastical purposes, and regarded heresy as
an offence against the state rather than against the church. Barnes was one of
six executed on the same day: two, William Jerome and Thomas Gerrard, were,
like himself, burnt for heresy under the Six Articles; three, Thomas Abel,
Richard Fetherstone and Edward Powell, were hanged for treason in denying the
royal supremacy. Both Lutherans and Catholics on the continent were shocked.
Luther published Barnes’ confession with a preface of his own as Bekenntnis
des Glaubens (1540), which is included in Walch’s edition of Luther’s Werke
xxi. 186. Source: Wikipedia.
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