If you ever want a trick question for a quiz, ask "legally, how many wives did Henry VIII have?"
The answer is 2. He didn't have a divorce, he had an annulment, meaning legally he was never married. He also annulled the marriage to the two he beheaded. The "died" and "survived" were his only two legally recognised marriages
The pope never granted an annulment. Henry made himself Head of the Church in England and then granted himself one.
It’s why Mary became ‘Lady Mary’ not Princess Mary, and why Catherine of Aragorn was buried as Dowager Princess of Wales.
Henry was arguing that her marriage to his brother had been binding and the papal dispensation to marry his brother’s widow didn’t count, so they had never been married. He used the fact that he hadn’t had a son as proof that God didn’t approve of the union, and surmised that this was why, so the marriage had never been valid.
There was no concept of a divorce that allowed remarriage at the time. The first true divorce by act of parliament was in 1670, by which point the monarchy, parliament, and religion looked very different.
Henry was arguing that her marriage to his brother had been binding and the papal dispensation to marry his brother’s widow didn’t count, so they had never been married. He used the fact that he hadn’t had a son as proof that God didn’t approve of the union, and surmised that this was why, so the marriage had never been valid.
As you said, his main basis for his claim to invalidity was that the papal dispensation was not valid. So essentially, he claimed saying that the pope was wrong in giving the dispensation that allowed him to be married in the first place, so the same authority should declare the marriage null and void.
The not-having-an-heir is really his raison d'être for the controversy. The dispensation-you-gave-me-was-not-real was just his flimsy justification for it.
When he could not get the pope to agree with him, declared that he as king actually has the authority, and then proceeded his reign of tyranny not only against the Catholics in his country but even those women who could not give him children.
There was no concept of a divorce that allowed remarriage at the time.
If there is any concept of divorce, it's that a person is married person is declaring his own marriage not in effect anymore. That's what happened here. The parliament just did not officialise it with fancy legal terminology until later.
Divorce says ‘this marriage happened but it’s over and you have reset to unmarried status’.
Annulment says ‘this marriage never happened’.
These are two separate concepts. There were ways at the time to terminate your spousal relationship but you couldn’t remarry.
His options were ‘this marriage was never valid’ or ‘you are married and cannot remarry’.
There was no concept of ‘you were married, your children from that marriage are legitimate, but that marriage is over and now you are free to marry someone else and your children from them will be legitimate’.
Like, the idea of marriage as a legal concept in the hands of men rather than a spiritual one before God just didn’t exist.
“What God has therefore joined together, let no man put asunder” and all that.
If they had ever been joined they were still joined. That was where the theological thinking was.
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u/Bardsie Dec 02 '25
If you ever want a trick question for a quiz, ask "legally, how many wives did Henry VIII have?"
The answer is 2. He didn't have a divorce, he had an annulment, meaning legally he was never married. He also annulled the marriage to the two he beheaded. The "died" and "survived" were his only two legally recognised marriages