William Tyndale's The Obedience Of A Christian Man

When objects collide it can sometimes be hard to distinguish the two from one another. The force at which they meet can sometimes make it difficult to see where one object ends and where the other begins. The same can be said with time. When time periods clash so too do the ideals held by those times. The sixteenth century was met with the clashing of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The times with changing and at its core religion was the spark that brought a great shift in the period. Literature was shaped by the chokehold that religion had on it. Even so, many of the texts during this time held great historical significance. The Middle Ages was a comfortable time for the Roman Catholic Church where they had all the power. This was not

Tyndale was well known for his translation of the Bible to English. This was a direct challenge to the church as they wanted to limit who had access to the Bible but it still wasn’t his most important work. William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man seems pretty straightforward to similar arguments presented by Protestants during the time. It rejected the way the Roman Catholic Church conducted themselves and called for a return to laws based solely on the scriptures. The line in the book that caused the most impact though was “God therefore hath given laws unto all nations, and in all lands hath put kings, governors, and rulers in his own stead, to rule the world through them” (Tyndale 63). To put it simply Tyndale was stating that the right to rule over the church did not belong to the pope, but to the king. Now this was big because for years the pope was the absolute authority in religious matters, yet Tyndale comes up and challenges what everyone just accepted. The Obedience of a Christian Man is actually said to have inspired King Henry VIII to create the Act of Supremacy (Scarisbrick), which made him the head of the church stripping even more power from the Roman Catholic Church. Being opposed though can make someone very dangerous, especially when backed into a

Her reign was different than those who came before. It was marked by stability and brought a sense of peace, which was probably in part thanks to her tolerance of Catholicism (there was still moments of persecution). Her time on the throne was known has the Elizabethan Era and is regarded as the peak of the Renaissance. Literature and plays flourished under Queen Elizabeth. It gave rise to a number of impressive playwrights such as Thomas Lodge and William Shakespeare who is quite well known in today’s classrooms for his impressive number of works. Another notable name was Edmund Spenser whose epic poem The Faerie Queen not only celebrated Queen Elizabeth, but actually showcased the era that came before Elizabeth by portraying the Roman Catholic Church as the villain (Greenblatt 707). Spenser’s poem was not met with attacks but instead praised illustrating the newfound calmness of the period. Words were finally allowed to flourish as the Renaissance left the Middle Ages in the past where it belonged. The times were no longer a battle of ideologies, but telling of stories and the flourishing of discovery. The times would no longer be weighed down by religion. Elizabeth gave her country an identity so they no longer had to battle over who they were and focus on discovering a world beyond what they thought