FIDEI DEFENSOR

Most people know that Henry VIII, king of England from 1509 to 1547, had six wives. "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" was the ditty we learned at school in order to remember what happened to them.

Fewer people know that he also had another title; Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith. In his youth, when he was still happily married to his first wife Catherine of Aragon, Henry was a sober, rather pious man. The papacy was having trouble in Germany with a revolutionary monk called Martin Luther. In 1521 Henry commissioned a team of eminent English theologians to help him write - in Latin - a refutation of Luther's works, The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments. This was rather successful, and the title Fidei Defensor was Henry's reward from a grateful Pope Leo X.

Fast forward a decade and things were rather different. Under pressure from the Emperor Charles V, who was Catherine's nephew, a different Pope refused to annul Henry's marriage so that he could remarry and obtain a male heir. So Henry broke with Rome, founding what became the Anglican Church, repudiated Catherine, married Anne Boleyn, dissolved the monasteries and nicked all of their property, and executed Sir Thomas More and others for not approving. Not surprisingly, the papacy became very angry with its former star pupil, excommunicating Henry in 1530 and withdrawing his title.

There matters might have rested if it had not been for that bolshy institution, the English Parliament. In 1544, they reauthorised the accolade as a formal royal title, a position it has retained ever since. Its importance is underlined by the fact that it appears on all British coins; the Queen's head is surrounded by Elizabeth II DG ("by the grace of God") Reg ("queen") FD ("defender of the faith") and the year of issue.

It may well seem odd for the head of the British monarchy and Anglican Church to retain a title designed to promote another religion; a religion, moreover, which her forebears spent a lot of effort trying to suppress (think Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, the Test Acts, the banning of Catholics from Parliament, universities and the succession, and much else). It certainly discomforts some people, notably the heir to the throne Prince Charles, who has suggested replacing the title with Defender of Faith, meaning of all faiths (including Islam, Hinduism and such like). That rather neat (too neat?) solution would have the decided advantage that no coins, ornaments, sculptures or paintings would have to be changed. But the wheels of royalty turn very slowly. Henry VIII claimed to be king of England, Ireland and France. The claim to France had existed for most of the Middle Ages, and resulted in the Hundred Years War. Despite being booted out of France by Joan of Arc in the 1430's and losing Calais, their last toehold on the continent in 1558, English kings continued to style themselves king of France until the Act of Union in 1801, by which time France was no longer a monarchy. Expect Fidei Defensor to be around for a while yet.

Walter Blotscher