Cardinal Pole

Reginald Pole, one time “pet” academic of Henry VIII, could not bring himself to support the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn or the Church of England. For his defiance, the pope awarded Pole the preferment of “Cardinal,” and he led the first meetings of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation response to the fast moving train of Reformation that was moving across Europe and England. Under Mary’s reign as Queen, Reginald Pole was brought back from exile, ordained priest March 22, 1556 and two days later enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury. Catholic scholars claim that he was too gentle and kindhearted to support the systematic extermination of evangelicals in England, but in fact this last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury led a cleansing at Cambridge University of the menacing evangelicals January 26, 1557. Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius had been dead and buried for several years in Cambridge, but because they had been substantial contributors to the English Reformation and to the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, Pole excommunicated and anathematized them anyway, and ordered that their bones to be dug up and publicly burned. Almost 300 Protestants were documented killed during the five year’s reign of Bloody Mary with the approving eye of her Archbishop of Canterbury.