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Bible Encyclopedias
Robert Barnes
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or VIII. v. 593). In 1531 Barnes returned to England, and became one of the chief intermediaries between the English government and Lutheran Germany. In 1J35 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 Watch's edition of Luther's Werke xxi. 186.
See Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. vols. iv.-xv. passim; Wriothesley's Chronicle; Foxe's Acts and Monuments, ed. G. Townsend; Burnet's Hist. of the Ref., ed. Pocock; Dixon's Hist. of the Church; Gairdner's Church in the XVIth Century; Pollard's Henry VIII. and Cranmer; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopddie, 3rd ed. (A. F. P.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Robert Barnes'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/r/robert-barnes.html. 1910.
