Editing Dissolution of the monasteries (section)

==Continental precedents==
In 1521, [[Martin Luther]] had published {{lang|la|De votis monasticis}} (''On the monastic vows''),<ref>{{Cite book
| publisher = Melchior Lotter d.J. / World Digital Library
| last = Lutherus
| first = Martinus
| title = On Monastic Vows – De votis monasticis
| access-date = 1 March 2014
| year = 1521
| url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9920
}}</ref> a treatise which declared that the monastic life had no scriptural basis, was pointless and also actively immoral, incompatible with the true spirit of Christianity. Luther also declared that monastic vows were meaningless and that no one should feel bound by them. Luther, a one-time [[Augustinian friar]], found some comfort when these views had a dramatic effect: a special meeting of the German province of his order held the same year voted that henceforth every member of the [[regular clergy]] should be free to renounce their vows, resign their offices, and marry. At Luther's home monastery in [[Wittenberg]] all the friars, save one, did so.

News spread among Protestant-minded rulers across Europe, and some, particularly in Scandinavia, moved very quickly. In the {{lang|sv|[[Riksdag]]}} of [[Västerås]] in 1527, initiating the [[Reformation in Sweden]], King [[Gustav I of Sweden|Gustav Vasa]] secured an edict of the Diet allowing him to confiscate any monastic lands he deemed necessary to increase royal revenues, and to allow the return of donated properties to the descendants of the donors. By the following [[Reduction of Gustav I of Sweden]], Gustav gained large estates, as well as loyal supporters among the nobility who reclaimed donations given by their families to the convents. The Swedish monasteries and convents were simultaneously deprived of their livelihoods. They were banned from accepting new novices, and forbidden to prevent their existing members from leaving. However, the former monks and nuns were allowed to reside in the convent buildings for life on state allowance, and many communities survived the Reformation for decades. The last of them was [[Vreta Abbey]], where the last nuns died in 1582, and [[Vadstena Abbey]], from which the last nuns emigrated in 1595, about half a century after the Reduction.{{Sfn|Andersson|Jörälv|2003}}

In [[Denmark–Norway]], King [[Frederick I of Denmark|Frederick I]] made a similar act in 1528, confiscating 15 of the houses of the wealthiest monasteries and convents. Further laws by his successor in the 1530s banned the friars and forced monks and nuns to transfer title to their houses to the Crown, which passed them out to supportive nobles who soon acquired former monastic lands.{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}

In Switzerland, too, monasteries were under threat. In 1523, the government of the city-state of [[Zürich]] pressured nuns to leave their monasteries and marry and followed up the next year by dissolving all monasteries in its territory, under the pretext of using their revenues to fund education and help the poor. The city of [[Basel]] followed suit in 1529, and Geneva adopted the same policy in 1530. An attempt was also made in 1530 to dissolve the famous [[Abbey of St. Gall]], which was a state of the [[Holy Roman Empire]] in its own right, but this failed, and St. Gall survived until 1798.

In France and Scotland, by contrast, royal action to seize monastic income proceeded along entirely different lines. In both countries, the practice of nominating abbacies {{lang|la|in [[commendam]]}} had become widespread. Since the 12th century, it had become universal in Western Europe for the household expenses of abbots and conventual priors to be separated, typically appropriating more than half the house's income. With papal approval, these funds might be diverted on a vacancy to support a non-monastic ecclesiastic, commonly a bishop or member of the Papal [[Curia]]; and although such arrangements were nominally temporary, commendatory abbacies often continued long-term. Then, by the [[Concordat of Bologna]] in 1516, [[Pope Leo X]] granted to [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] authority to nominate almost all abbots and conventual priors in France. Around 80 per cent of French abbacies came to be held {{lang|la|[[in commendam]]}}, the commendators often being lay courtiers or royal servants; around half the income of French monasteries was diverted into the hands of the Crown, or of royal supporters, all with the Popes' blessing. Where the French kings led, the Scots kings followed. In Scotland, where the proportion of parish [[tithe|tiends]] appropriated by higher ecclesiastical institutions exceeded 85 per cent, in 1532 the young [[James V]] obtained from the Pope approval to appoint his illegitimate infant sons (of which he eventually acquired nine) as commendators to abbacies in Scotland. Other Scots aristocratic families stuck similar deals, and consequently over £40,000 (Scots) per annum was diverted from monasteries into the royal coffers.{{citation needed|date= October 2019}}

It is inconceivable that these moves went unnoticed by the English government and particularly by [[Thomas Cromwell]], who had been employed by Wolsey in his monastic suppressions, and who would become Henry VIII's [[Secretary of State (England)|King's Secretary]]. Henry appears to have been much more influenced by the opinions on monasticism of the humanists [[Erasmus|Desiderius Erasmus]] and [[Thomas More]], especially as found in Erasmus's work ''[[In Praise of Folly]]'' (1511) and More's ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'' (1516). Erasmus and More promoted ecclesiastical reform while remaining faithful to the [[Catholic Church|Church of Rome]] and had ridiculed such monastic practices as repetitive formal religion,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cummings |first=Thomas |title=Erasmus and the Second Vatican Council |url=https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/erasmus-and-the-second-vatican-council/ |access-date=2022-05-05 |website=Church Life Journal |date=17 October 2016 |language=en}}</ref> superstitious pilgrimages for the veneration of relics, and the accumulation of monastic wealth. Henry appears to have shared these views, never having endowed a religious house and only once{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} having undertaken a religious pilgrimage, to [[Walsingham]] in 1511. From 1518, Thomas More was increasingly influential as a royal servant and counsellor, in the course of which his correspondence included strong condemnations of the idleness and vice in monastic life, alongside his equally vituperative attacks on Luther. Henry himself corresponded continually with Erasmus, prompting him to be more explicit in his public rejection of the key tenets of Lutheranism and offering him church preferment should he wish to return to England.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}