In the Renaissance, starting in the early 1500s, English authors began rediscovering their Anglo-Saxon heritage. When Henry VIII dissolved the Church's monastic holdings, the monks' great and ancient libraries were destroyed, most of them burned, although valuable-looking books were sold. Although England never recovered from this devastation, there is a sense in which the destruction was responsible for the recovery of Old English. Anglo-Saxon books had been out of use for centuries, and their language was not recognized by any except a few scholars. However, it was enough that a few readers could see England's origins in these books, chronicles and histories in particular, and then want to save them from being sold abroad or destroyed.
Some of the reformers of Henry's church found that the Anglo-Saxon texts supported certain views of the King's and seemed to contradict those of the Pope. For example, the Anglo-Saxons had allowed priests to marry, just as Henry wanted to do, although the Church in the 16th century no longer permitted that. There were other issues, such as Transubstantiation (the belief of the Divine Presence in the Eucharist), involved.
How had these views of the early Church, which conformed to reformation ideas, become corrupted? Major literary historians of the Renaissance, including the notorious polemicist John Foxe, wrote that after the Norman Conquest (1066), Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury and others destroyed the authentic Latin sources of the Anglo-Saxon Church. "Studying by al means how to preserve and further this their newcome doctrine," Foxe wrote, these conspirators "did abolish and rase out of Libraries and Churches, all such bookes which made to the contrary" of their views (Foxe, Acts and Monuments 1141).
According to Foxe, all "heresies," including celibacy of the clergy, Transubstantiation, worship of the Blessed Sacrament, auricular confession, and Masses of satisfaction (another potential source of magic), among others, were "new nothynges lately coyned in the minte of Rome without any stampe of antiquitie" (Acts and Monuments iiiia). Foxe raised this matter of forgery, heresy, and "newcome doctrine" in his discussion of the "Statue of Six Articles" of 1539, also known as "An Act Abolishing Diversity in Opinions," which supplemented earlier definitions of heresy--a topic always closely connected to magic, as we saw above, and considerably strengthened the hand of Henry VIII in enforcing ecclesiastical conformity. (See John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 1135-1137 for the Acts.) For the text of the Acts, see G. R. Elton, Tudor Constitution, 389-392; there is a good discussion by J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents: Documents and Commentary. Cambridge, 1965. 95. See the Act against Superstitious Books and Images of 1550 (Edward VI), printed by J. R. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents, A.D. 1485-1603 . Cambridge, 1948. 113-14. Tanner's documents have been revised by Elton, The Tudor Constitution.
There is a general discussion of the rediscovery of Old English books, with particular reference to Bede, in Frantzen, Desire for Origins.
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