The Catholic Church

What really caused the end of the Catholic Church in England?

This information is very important for the Church of England since it removes a misunderstanding which produced a huge stain on their reputation.

There is a misunderstanding that the Church of England gained their power and position from King Henry VIII because:

They were willing to compromise and the Catholic Church was not. That their pre-eminence is based on their unlawful and immoral endorsement of a divorce from Catherine of Aragon by King Henry VIII and was due to a compromise of their ethics. That the Church of England's power is supposedly derived solely by usurpation from an honorable well meaning Catholic Church which refused to bend it's high ethical standing to accommodate a headstrong and selfish king. That the Catholic Church always acted honorably for God and was considering the best interests of England over the personal greed of clerics and a king.

It was exactly the opposite. The real reason for the split between England and the Catholic Church was really about something totally different.

This information changes the establishing factor of the dominion of the Church of England to that of being a greater force of God and the more honest shepherd for a deserving English people.

Several hundred boys including about 70 sons of noblemen one year were sent to Italy for 'special' musical training. Most were students of musical instruments but some were singers. They were all castrated to make them Castrati (which were coming into vogue at the time).

T Wolsey

This was done on the authority and orders of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey the second most powerful man in England. This was when he was the Archbishop of York. He sanctioned it and his response to the mass castration was adamant, blunt and arrogant. His response was something akin to: 'they can't sing (well) if they have those'. Even this statement was a cover up. These boys had been castrated to make them into soft and compliant playthings for Wolsey and his fellow gay clergy.

This action involved not only the Catholic Church in England but the church in Italy, probably in either Florence or Siena. I think it was Siena. It was thought to be the initial location of Romeo and Juliet and not Verona since the men in the play all behaved like children.

People accused the Vatican and the Pope of being involved since it was only a few miles from the Vatican and I thought that at first but later I found out otherwise. It turned out that the Vatican had no information about it. It was almost a year before the Pope was even told the truth. He was told that several boys had the operation done by mistake. Then he was told several other things.

Then finally the pope found out that those who did it were bribed to castrate the boys. Then those men bribed his secretary not to expose them to the Pope. By then he was committed to the lies and cover up so he could not back down from his support of the castrators.*

That spelled doom for the Catholic Church in England and it completely destroyed Wolsey. The entry concerning his death says that Wolsey died on the way to London to be tried for treason. However, if those were the only charges then he probably would have won since he worked on England's behalf, often when it went against the Pope's wishes. However, I think the charges were going to be greater than that. They also involved something else which concerned his ethics which he could not have won. It involved corruption involving finances though I can't remember the details of it yet.

However, the ethics charges would have reflected on society. So those charges were hidden or set aside when he died. They arrested him and he was poisoned almost as soon as he got outside of his archdiocese of York. He was still in denial of what he had done to those boys. Each of those castrated boys had up to four or even more angry brothers, one father with blood in his eyes and about a dozen highly upset friends. That's a fair sized army of poisoners and one of these 4,000 men got assigned to the detail that was sent to arrest and transport him back to London.

If you intend to research this then get in touch with me but to get you started I think most of the boys he had castrated were from right around the city of York. However, over to the west of York was where the best records will probably be. Maybe at Wakefield, Manchester or even Liverpool. (It's a real chore to figure out where this occurred as everything has changed. Just look at these middle ages maps, this Ecleastic map or this traditional map and see what I mean. I have a hard time figuring out where anything was. Now most cities are just piles of brick which costs five quid a pop to view.

Anyway there was one place where a lot of the boys came from where everyone rioted against the church when they found out about the mass castration and that included the mayor. There was actually a siege of the church with the clergy on the inside piling up furniture against the doors and knights in armor on the outside debating who would pay for the heavy wood door if they burned it down.

It wasn't quite the 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' but the mayor (or the count) felt all the clergy were real Quasimodo's and since the clergy did their best to act the part the whole thing was pretty close to it with the castrated boys playing the part of numerous Esmeraldas.

The outbuildings, which were mainly the monks homes, were burned down and the monks were praying like they are supposed to but don't usually because they never seem to have the time. I think it was recorded in the historical records that there was a fire that burned the out buildings but there never was a siege.

I never could find out if anyone got killed or injured. I never got an answer to those questions (even when those that knew got drunk) so it may seem to you to be a non sequitur but getting no answer lead me to believe that there was an even bigger cover up than it appears. It also lead me to believe that at least ten clergy got killed. I recall why I thought this. Those that knew would not look in my eyes when I asked them directly except one who pointed to the letter X (10) and quickly walked away.

(I researched this about 1585 which not long before the invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588. I was the Queens personal secretary (as shown in this cartoon I sketched) and she had asked me to provide her with a list of the wrongs that had caused the initial split of England from the Catholic Church. There were actually five others who did the actual research included two old castrati's but I gathered their info and made the final report. The castrati's had great stories and provided most of the information. As they were boys at the time and they all knew each other they told each other everything that happened.)

You have Queen Elizabeth to thank for this page. Otherwise I never would have gathered this information and been able to provide it to you in the first place.

By the way the main point that Queen Elizabeth kept foremost in her mind was that England was just too far from the Vatican for them to know what was really going on. Also, communication in general took far too long. Many churches in Europe would provide for the people when crop yields were low but in England people often died of starvation before their church was able to get approval from the Vatican.

This great distance was also the cause of their disbelief when the English were told that the Pope was never informed about the boys being castrated. Since the distance from England often prevented the more timely information from getting to the Vatican most Englishmen had not believed that the truth had never traveled from Siena to the Vatican, a distance of less than 100 miles but they were wrong. It was assumed, wrongly, that the Pope was an accomplice in these horrible actions. He was only an accomplice long after the fact.

That lack of communication was a large cause of the clergy thinking the Catholic clergy in England could do whatever they wanted. So they did.

The horrors this created went far beyond the physical and psychological problems it directly created for the boys who I think were mainly from around the city of York.

Lineages were often stopped when it had to go through the son who was castrated since they could not have children. Often the lineage stopped because the law stated something to the effect that the title, such as Earl, went 'to the oldest living son upon maturity'. Since he could never mature and even though another son might mature the title got stuck until the first born died. Some of the first born committed suicide in order to free up the title and others were murdered by their close relatives. Many lived in fear of being murdered by their own kin.

All the girls who were betrothed to marry the boys who got castrated were in real trouble since their marriage in most cases were irrevocable. The boys in question didn't care and the betrothed girls still had to produce heirs. Even if they got annulments nobody else could marry them according to the Catholic Church.

Huge dowries that had been paid in some cases had to be returned but the rules were different in Wales, etc. It took more than five years to get the cases through the choked courts. I can't recall all the problems they faced but it was incredible and insurmountable in many cases.

It created big problems for a high percentage of the Dukedoms and Baronies (England peerage). Several hundred thousand of their subjects 'sank or swam' according to their fortunes and about half of their futures were suddenly cast into doubt.

Many of these records, especially the trials, should still be available.

Wolsey was then known to be a bisexual/homosexual but until he had those boys castrated everyone had just ignored his sexual preferences.

Many historians see Wolsey’s handling of the church as his greatest failure. Wolsey epitomized all that was corrupt and heretical about the church prior to reformation. Wolsey is often seen as quite the hypocrite, condemning the debauchery of corrupt clergymen, yet himself partaking in the crimes of pluralism, absenteeism (he was archbishop of York, yet never visited the city until1529), simony (for example, even when appointed, Bishops and abbots could not take up their posts unless they had been “confirmed” by Wolsey, at a price), ostentatious display of wealth, sexual relations, nepotism, and ordination of minors (the latter three illustrated through the premature rise to power of his illegitimate son). Here

I think the above is pretty correct except for the illegitimate son part which was actually one of his young lovers.

I now remember that the boys got sent in ~1529 (I think to Florence) and I think it was in the early part of that year. Then about 3/4 of the boys had returned by the end of the year and most of the rest came back by the spring of 1530.**

The school said that the boys could not pronounce the words in all the languages that the songs were written in, like Latin and Italian. Those languages are very different from English. Anyone including myself could have told them that they would have a very hard time learning to comfortably roll their 'r's' and I could have told them that without cutting off a single testicle.

The rational the clergy used to have sex with Castrati was this: The Bible forbid men from having sex with other men but the Castrati were not men since they had no testicles.

That is all the rational they needed to be as predatory as they wanted toward the Castrati. However, they had another argument they used but I can't recall it. That one justified everything in their eyes. Their attitude was 'so what, we will do what we want.' That attitude is what ended it for the Catholic Church in England more than did their direct actions.

This is really why England split with the Catholic Church and it was the noblemen who forced King Henry VIII to do it. He never would have dared try to do it on his own. The Noblemen would have risen up and overthrown him if it was not for their sons. The issue of the divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon was simply too insufficient to warrant a break from the Catholic Church. The divorce was just the final straw.*** By that I mean it was not a determining factor. The handwriting was on the wall. The Catholic Church was going to be eliminated before the divorce became an issue. A major part of the process was the passing of the Buggery Act in 1533.

The Buggery Act was initially said to have been passed to protect these very boys from the English clergy and other men when they got back. The king had no problems with that since it fit his needs (read the box immediately below). He had previously openly stated to others that he had been molested when he was a child though he never said who had molested him.

It was said that King Henry VIII was actually making a 'hit list' of the clergy he intended to take down one way or another. To make sure it was accurate he personally separated the rumors from the facts in the thousands of various complaints that had been sent to him and were directed against the Catholic clergy from ~1531-1533.

The problem was that without modern recording methods no matter what a person claimed, the priest could counter by saying the person was making it up. No matter how many witnesses King Henry VIII produced in court the clergy could have just brought in more witnesses to counter his claim. Since they were the clergy he would lose no matter what the courts decision was. First it would look like he was persecuting Christianity and the Catholic Church. Even if he obtained even one conviction, which seemed unlikely, then dozens of other perverted clerics would have bombarded their congregation with even worse accusations. King Henry VIII would have had to go after all of them with little results and if he tried it was more likely to bring his own reign down than theirs.

Then he noticed that all those clerics who were making the slanderous statements (except one) about him were the same clerics that he was receiving an increasing number of complaints of child sodomy about.

Then King Henry VIII realized not only what was behind their complaints but he also realized that if he got one molested boy in court it could be much more powerful than any witnesses the clergy could bring into court. It also meant that he never got directly involved so it could not dirty his reputation in any way.

He realized that making Buggery illegal and then prosecuting those same clergy for that crime instead of treason he would still achieve the same ends. It would be a lot more productive than the show trials that would have actually put him on trial more than the clergy.

Once this decision was made and the act passed then the authorities just waited. The Act was not retroactive so they needed fresh charges against the clerics. The guilty clerics just hid, got very quiet and decided to leave the boys alone for awhile. They thought it would cool down within two years but without their vocal complaints English support for the Catholic Church disappeared and within months 'decent deacons' took over. Soon the molesters were all tossed out as the Anglican Church won out.

By the way the one clergy member that was not molesting boys was seducing virgin girls. Also, he was stealing but I forget what funds were involved. I do recall he was also involved in smuggling. The smugglers may have literally bought that Bishopric from Wolsey to keep from getting caught.

...This is also an example of Wolsey extorting the money from these bishoprics, which were bequeathed to foreigners, without their knowing it. Wikipedia

You have heard the complaints about the Catholic Church moving child molesting priests from one church to another? It's nothing new. They used to send them to England where they were less visible. This created a cabal or cult of child molesters in England back in the middle ages.

It was estimated at the time that about 1/4 of the rulers of the clergy in England were homosexuals. King Henry VIII realized these were the same 1/4 that were vocally ambitious and were always causing trouble in England. He thought correctly that the sexual charge they got from the boys which they molested created perverse territorial ambitions and possessive behavior. The Buggery Act drove that quarter of the clergy underground. When they had to chose between being obnoxiously outspoken or having sex almost every one of them chose the later.

Their support for the Catholic Church was less important to them than satisfying their carnal desires.

It was amazing how the pope suddenly and completely lost his support in England. Then the whole apparatus that supported the Catholic Church fell apart. It was also an incredible confrontation to the Pope when it was explained that a relatively small group of brazen homosexuals had taken over the English Catholic Church by very devious methods. They had conspired together to lie to the Vatican and they falsified accusations against competing clergy which included planting gold and money on the innocents which they themselves had stolen from churches. It also included paying off Vatican spies in England to send back false reports. Their purpose was mainly to bugger boys and young men. The English, both clergy and lay people, actually had a term for this exclusive group which was something like 'the buggers network'. And Wolsey was at the top of it.

Another point that needs to be cleared up is that the history books say the ease by which the reformation occurred was only because of Wolsey's absence:

Effectively Wolsey was ruling as a dictator, which caused cataclysmic problems once Wolsey was removed from power, and the church was left without the leader it was dependant upon, with virtually no influence at all. It is hardly surprising that the reformists were met with very little opposition from the weakened body of the Catholic Church. Here

However if that was so then the change would have occurred right away after Wolsey's death in 1530 and before new men were installed. Within a year the Catholic Church had completely recovered from the loss of Wolsey. Instead the change occurred much later, in 1534, which was right after the Buggery Act of 1533.

Doesn't this fill in a lot more gaps and doesn't this scenario sound a lot more plausible than a mean king wanting to divorce his wife.

In case you don't think that Wolsey was gay then you are not alone. Many others thought it when I was writing the plays. In fact just for you I put the homosexual clergy right at the start of one of my plays:

The Life of Henry the Eight
Act 1Scene 1

NORFOLK
All this was order'd by the good discretion
Of the right reverend Cardinal of York. (Thomas Wolsey)

BUCKINGHAM

The devil speed him! no man's pie is freed
From his ambitious finger. What had he
To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder
That such a keech can with his very bulk
Take up the rays o' the beneficial sun
And keep it from the earth.

I meant that no man's 'pie' (bum) was safe from Wolsey's molesting finger. The slang for pie has only changed slightly in 450 years from meaning both male and female to only meaning female genitals. here. finger pie Noun. The act of manually stimulating of the female genitals. Well for the passage of 450 years that slang hasn't changed that much and is still pretty close to the original meaning.

In any case I expanded on his molestation. 450 years ago the kind of molestation was considered of the utmost importance. Touching and penetration were in different categories. The first, fingering, was seen more as a violation of ethics and and a severe corruption of a child's morals (which was usually thought to cause a permanent change for the worse). Penetration was seen in the same category as an unjust assault and battery on an unarmed person causing grievous physical injury,

So in the next part of the dialogue of the play I clarify that far more than touching had gone on.

I wonder
That such a keech can with his very bulk
Take up the rays o' the beneficial sun
And keep it from the earth.

I explained in greater detail that Wolsey was also putting his keech where the sun doesn't shine. A keech is a rolled up lump of fat-a cylinder of fat, I.E. his penis. We use the slang salami and sausage. Same thing.

What part don't you understand?

The 'no man's pie is free' is a reference to King Henry VIII. When Henry VIII was a child he apparently was also molested by Wolsey (who was his father's personal chaplain) and other clerics. Other's have observed and commented often about the strange power that Wolsey held over King Henry VIII. Now you know why. [Though the records state that Wolsey was only introduced to King Henry VII about 1503 when Henry VIII was at least 11 I seem to recall that Wolsey had known Henry VIII for about five years prior to then.]

In the plays it is well known that all the parts for women were played by 'boys'. The boys were actually Castrati and not children. I explain it here.

There are numerous ways to prove all this information. Court record, church records and Parliamentary debates when passing the Buggery Act. I think that Wolsey targeted Canterbury to get at his biggest enemy William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, There was a big tie in to Canterbury but it's such a vague memory that I can't remember what the tie in was. I'll see if I can find something on it. Warham probably recorded everything that went on during those years. That would certainly remove a stain on both King Henry VIII and the Anglican Church.

Why a split with the Catholic Church could not have been over a divorce.

First, having a male heir was not worth the destruction of England so the split with the Catholic Church could not have been because of that issue.

It is now generally thought that back then male heirs were considered to be essential but they weren't (except where matriarchal rule was illegal as it was in France).

It was apparently not that essential for England to have a male heir because when Henry VIII died (and then Edward) they did without one for fifty years and England is now doing quite well with a second Queen named Elizabeth. In fact King Henry VIII had placed women in his will as his successor over many men. That included Queen Elizabeth and my own mother. Here

According to the will of Henry VIII, Ferdinando (my brother) was second-in-line heir to Elizabeth I following after his mother. But he predeceased his mother by two years and the queen by nine years. Wikipedia

What most people don't realize is that the Holy Roman Empire and other European countries often went to war for less than what King Henry VIII did.

The other European countries had larger populations and massive well equipped armies compared to what England had. France was still aching to get even from the last war, the Hundred Years War.

Spain was especially powerful and it's coffers were filled with the gold of the new world. It had recently terminated the last Moslem remnants of that big slug fest called the Crusades by slitting tens of thousands of Moslem throats. Spain had just taken over most of the New World so they were especially looking for another good fight.

If the split from the Church had been anything other than fully justified then all of Europe would have gone to war against England and that would have made the concept of a Tudor male heir a very mute point.

This was the political situation when Henry VIII made that split with the Catholic Church. Just the fact that no war was declared when he split from the church tells you there must have been much more to it than just a divorce.

Really what it boiled down to was going to war for Florences right to castrate boys and no one could have abided that.

Since the conflict was over the castration of young nobles the Catholic Church could not find very many people who would have sided with them in a war. I recall reading what the Spanish royalty thought in a report sent by our spy in Spain who was either the wife of the Netherlands ambassador or the German ambassador to Spain and was related only one or two steps from Henry VIII. (It was blood and not through marriage as I recall. She may have been a distant cousin. Why have I gotten sidetracked on this?) The Spanish royals and their 'assemblage' had discussed the situation and decided that if it had been done to their children then they would have been unanimous in their decision to declare war against Florence but they were split, about sixty percent in favor of also declaring war on the Vatican.

Had that been the case then it is likely that the rest of Spain would have fallen in line with those 60% and destroyed the Catholic Church.

* The Pope's initial statement was that others prevented him from learning about the boys complaints but he was well known for hiring only people that block important information.

However, those under him did not intercept the information because none was ever sent from the church that did the castrations. Had any been sent then it may have been intercepted and prevented from getting to the Pope but it never even got to that. Had the information been sent the Vatican clergy would have acted on it and immediately prevented the castrations because it was in their best interest. Complaints by the boys did get sent to the pope but it was intercepted and suppressed.

The English thought that the Pope must have known. All denials fell on deaf English ears. Most Englishmen did not believe that the information did not get from Siena to the pope, a distance of less than 100 miles.

Clement VII

What was underlying the Pope not reacting to this and lots of other issues? The invention of an opium extract, laudanum, which was 20 times as strong as what had been around for thousands of years. When he had been imprisoned earlier in 1527 they made him addicted to it so he would comply with their wishes. It didn't work since he escaped in spite of his drug addiction. Pope Clement VII reigned for another 11 years and during that time he was hopelessly opiated beyond feelings or emotions (but he even looked good even with those laud-numbed smack smashed eyes, right?).

Some people lose a home when they use drugs but Pope Clement lost an entire country, England. That new opium extract created a need for a new word 'addiction' which the bard promptly invented and inserted in one of the plays, King Henry V.

All the English knew is that the pope just didn't seem to care about England and therefore he was undeserving of their devotion or support.

Those directly beneath the Pope tried to state that the English boys did not complain which nobody who knows the English ever believed. Then they said their English was not understood. However, of the boys who were aristocrats about half were fluent in Latin and/or Italian and they stated they had complained endlessly, as the English are known to do whenever wronged. The boys stated to their butchers that they were not to be made Castrati but their crying and screaming was just ignored.

The church in Italy castrated around 10,000 boys a year to produce only one or two hundred that would eventually be good singers. It had been an established secret practice for over 200 years so those in Italy were long since made insensitive to the damage they were doing. They saw what they did to the English boys as being of little consequence.

Instead of the Italians saying it was a mistake or that it was done to the wrong boys they mainly tried to ignore the English complaints. That does not work with the English as they can complain more effectively by which I mean more convincingly, louder and more often when they put their unified minds to it than just about anyone else on the face of the earth.

Since England's diplomats warned all of Europe at least a million people knew about this hidden crime. Since about three quarters of these million people were outside England it should be easy to locate proof in numerous countries. Some of the German states that endorsed Luther will have the most information about Catholic castrations and there are possibly even some indicting sermons that have survived. The Catholic's probably covered this event up where ever and when ever they could.

This information got out and brought this previously secret practice out into the public eye more and more.

The church kept right on defending the practice. Then it began to be considered to be supportive of the Catholic Church to put in writing which churches used Castrati in their choirs. Finally it came to a head when the Pope issued a bull in 1589 which reorganized choirs to include Castrati. Here. That had the powerful effect of endorsing mass castration in the same way as would happen if the Mexican government offered to buy cars stolen in the U.S.

Of a hundred castrated boys who could sing only about 2% became successful in choirs. The other 98% of the castrated boys whose voices were inadequate for singing usually had very short difficult lives of endless abuse (as did the successful 2% after their voice wore thin in about 15 years). Half were dead within a few years.

Only the testimony of men was accepted in most European courts. After these boys were castrated they would never mature to men and hence they could not testify. (However they could testify in England to a crime if they were a victim of that crime but not in someone else's case. Oop's, as I recall in parts of England they could. Wales and Scotland were different in regards to this but Wales laws were often different than English or Scottish laws. Never mind.) So in the end the effect was that there were very few ways to find the castrators guilty.

Writing it down and having the authorities find the writing was one of the few ways a conviction could reliably be obtained. Writing about it and not telling the legal establishment constituted a written admission of complicity or involvement in a heinous crime of a grievous physical assault causing permanent physical disability.

So nobody wrote anything about it until the Pope's bull.

The wholesale castration of boys was a topic that was not talked about much but was an accepted practice within the Catholic Church until the 1800's.

**I have two problems here. First, this is not what I experienced but only what I was told in that life. So what I am doing is remembering what someone told me 430 years ago. Hence, it's a little vague but surprisingly these memories are often stronger than my memories of my present life.

This event happened long before I was even born in that life and it was all gossip, rumor and story. The numbers may be off but everyone knew about it so I am almost certain the story itself was very true. Many of the boys who were castrated went to work for the government at the Tower of London. When I was a small child we lived just west of the Tower of London at the 'downs' (and stables) and I often brought horses to the tower. I often talked with these kindly beardless men with high voices who were all the same age and who seemed to run the tower. I liked them a lot because without the maturity caused by hormones they were still mentally almost like us children and they understood us in a way that adults never could. They were not guards but worked there as administrators, receptionists and cooks.

***Divorce was not the only route taken in cases like this. Queen's who didn't produce male heirs, like Catherine of Aragon, were sometimes tossed off the castle wall but they were more often poisoned. In these cases the murder was covered up.

It's hard to defend this practice of murder but this was often considered the down side of being royalty. Not having an heir affected the lives of millions of people and determined the future of a country, You might think it is not that important but when you have France and Spain eager to take over and strip you of your rights, land and property, believe me, you would think differently about it.

It was usually accepted that either you functioned in all aspects as the queen or your reign ended one way or the other so that someone else could do what was needed and that included producing an heir and a spare.