The relationship between Britain and the popes is exceedingly complex and controversial. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the tiny letters “F. D.” stamped on any British coin. These nearly imperceptible signs, which are part of the royal title, stand for fidei defensor (defender of the faith), the honorific initially conferred on Henry VIII by Leo X in 1521 in grateful recognition of the king's anti-Lutheran treatise, Assertio septem sacramentorum. However, in the wake of Henry's break with Rome, Paul III stripped the king of this now inappropriate designation. In response, the English Parliament defiantly restored it to their monarch in 1544, and his successors have retained it ever since. Thus, even this short phrase bears witness to both the amity and animosity of relations between the Atlantic archipelago and the Holy See.
It is this tangled relationship, and its myriad realignments, that Stella Fletcher sets out to unravel in her excellent survey of Anglo-papal relations: The Popes and Britain: A History of Rule, Rupture and Reconciliation. Drawing together a dizzying array of vastly different sources, from the liber pontificalis starting in the sixth century to press coverage ending in the twenty-first, she provides a coherent, chronological narrative that reveals both the continuities and discontinuities of this relationship. To this end, she masterfully inhabits the complex worlds of Roman ecclesiastical institutions, Stuart conspirators, and rival papacies. The most striking features of this text are these: its truly remarkable scope and its ability discern relatively coherent narratives across more than a millennium and a half. It is, therefore, an extremely welcome addition to scholarship on the relationships of the popes in the already rich year, which yielded A. Edward Siecienski's The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Introducing her topic though the 2016 referendum by which British voters decided whether or not to remain within the European Union, Fletcher furnishes “the first single-volume survey of the Anglo-papal story” (7). Similar to the British exit, or “Brexit,” a powerful rupture lies at the heart of her narrative: the sixteenth-century break with Rome. Behind this breach, the longer history of Anglo-papal cooperation, ranging from Anglo-Saxon piety to medieval papal authority and administrative integration, is presented in the first three chapters. This rift itself, the forging of a Protestant Britain, and the continued overtures of popes to their wayward British subjects are outlined in chapter 4. Finally, an account of the converging interests and eventual realignment of Anglo-papal relations, depicted as reaching its zenith in Pope Benedict XVI's state visit of 2010, is provided in chapters 5, 6, and 7. Not only does this narrative provide particularly fascinating details, like the slew of Anglo-Saxon rulers who abdicated to join monasteries, but it also offers a valuable antidote to the popular myth that interaction with the popes ground to a halt in the wake of the Britain's break with Rome.
Fletcher's enormous and, at times, complicated narrative is aided by her choice to draw on literature and performance, from John Bale's anti-papal polemic of the sixteenth century to the English staging of Rolf Hochhuth's The Representative in the twentieth. With the exception of a strange reference to Middlemarch, which will be opaque to any readers that have not read this novel (139), these inclusions not only enliven her story but also provide genuine insight into the cultures in which Anglo-papal relations either flourished or floundered. Her account also is abetted by Fletcher's dry wit. For example, reporting the fraught relationship between Pope Alexander III and Thomas Becket, she quips “With subordinates like that, who needed schismatics?” (41).
Despite its many redeeming qualities, this work is not without flaws. It contains minor errors, like describing the papal imposition of an interdict on Venice in 1606 as the “excommunication of an entire state” (97). Likewise, there is one substantial omission: the diplomatic mission of Gurone Bertano to the court of Henry VIII in 1546 to discern if some solution could be found to the British break with Rome (see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life [Yale University Press, 1994]: 355–356; cf. Kenneth Bartlett, “Papal Policy and the English Crown, 1563–1565: The Bertano Correspondence” [The Sixteenth Century Journal 23, no. 4 [1992]: 643–659). Given that Fletcher's chapter on this era of British history (75–102) seeks to disrupt traditional accounts of a “clean break” between medieval allegiance to papal Rome and subsequent Protestant resistance (75), mention of this episode might have added to her otherwise helpful revision. Finally, Fletcher's overarching narrative of institutional connection, disruption, and ultimate reconciliation (194–195) is markedly complicated by the advent of Pope Francis (194) and the decision to leave to European Union (1–2). Both the realignment of papal priorities toward the Global South and the rise of Euroscepticism suggest further changes to Anglo-papal relations, which at the very least should be taken into account in this study.
However, as hopefully is evident, these are but minor foibles in an otherwise truly excellent work. It tells a fascinating and little understood story, which will be of interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike. The Popes and Britain should be read by everyone interested in the history of the church in the Atlantic archipelago.
