, emphasizing her political authority to, “exercise any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdictions” that belonged to her. The oath of loyalty also required all clergymen and statesmen to swear fealty to the Supreme Governor. This act, along with the reinstated Act of Uniformity, ensured that the Queen was protected from religious threats of Rome, Catholic nations, and dissenters within the Anglican Church.
Modelled after Edward VI’s original law, the Act of Uniformity standardized the Anglican Church’s liturgies, prayer book, and communion in order to allow the most people salvation and to achieve common ground between the supreme state and subordinate clergy. It also, paradoxically, reduced ambiguity in church practices by dictating exactly what every congregation should say during church, while allowing for relatively broad interpretations within those wordings to reduce conflicts of the spiritual nature between clergy and the state. In the essential, Elizabeth’s government demanded uniformity, but in the nonessential minute details of the faith, they allowed flexibility to preserve some religious peace.
In creating the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth’s council eliminated many previous church practices as being “too burdensome” and “abused”; but to maintain peace, leeway was given to more traditional clergy, who used some Romanesque vestments and ceremonies to “[retain] discipline and order”. Overall, the prayer book passed in parliament easily, as it was simply a more conservative form of Thomas Cranmer’s 1552 version used during Edward VI’s short reign. In an effort to compromise, though, saints’ days were included, anti-papal prayers discontinued, and allowance of more ornate vestments were made to partially appease English Catholics. Elizabeth’s political power came from her relatively ambiguous wording that allowed flexibility for interpretation within a very uniform set of prayers, baptism, marriage, and funeral liturgies. For example, the wording of the Communion confirmed the “real presence” of Christ, allowing for a broad interpretation that allowed both consubstantiation and transubstantiation. It is in this paradox of ambiguity allowing for relative freedom of worship and specific uniformity concerning preaching that Elizabeth was able to pull Anglicanism together under one common liturgy with some placating flexibility.
Although many criticized the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity as theologically questionable, Elizabeth’s parliament was able to pass both, which proved effective in bringing relative stability to England. After decades of religious and political turmoil, Elizabeth managed to execute policies both domestic and abroad which gave England the solidity of a strong monarch amongst imminent threats from Europe and within the country. In the end, Elizabeth needed to enact Protestant reforms not for the sake of her people’s spirituality, but for the sake of her own legitimacy as queen.
. Kirby, WJ Torrance, 2006, “Lay supremacy: reform of the canon law of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (1529-1571),” Reformation and the Renaissance Review 8, no. 3: 363.
. Booth, Ted W., 2014, “Elizabeth and Pope Paul IV: reticence and Reformation,” Church History And Religious Culture (Online) 94, no. 3: 317.
. Ibid., 319.
. Ibid., 321-322.
. Ibid., 319.
. Ibid., 333.
. Ibid., 323.
. Ibid., 323.
. Ibid., 329.
. Hughes, Phillip, The Reformation in England, 5th ed. Vol. 3, (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 8.
. Ibid., 8.
. Ibid., 10.
. Booth, 331.
. Fincham, Kenneth, and Peter Lake, eds. Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England, (Woodbridge, Suffolk, United Kingdom, The Boydell Press, 2006), 44.
. Ibid., 52-53.
. Ibid., 52-53.
. Kirby, 364.
. Fincham, 54.
. Ibid., 56.
. Kirby, 356.
. Fincham, 30.
. Ibid., 31.
. Ibid., 32.
. Cressy, David and Lori Anne Ferrell, Religion and Society in Early Modern England, (New York: Routledge, 1996), 43-44.
. Ibid., 40.
. Ibid., 48-56.
. Hughes, 32.
Booth, Ted W. “Elizabeth and Pope Paul IV: Reticence and Reformation.” Church History and Religious Culture (Online) 94, no. 3: 316-33