How Did The Protestant Reformation Affect Foreign Relations

How the Protestant Reformation Affected Foreign Relations. At a time when the only Christian religion was Catholicism, all of Europe was Catholic. That is until Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation with his ninety-five suggestions on how the church could be reformed. Once Henry VIII decided to divorce Catherine of Aragon and create the Anglican Church, he effectively cut Great Britain off from the rest of Europe. This severing of religious ties with other nations was both beneficial and a hinderance to the success of Great Britain as a nation.
By creating his own church, Henry VIII had minimized, if not destroyed altogether, Rome and the pope’s influence in Great Britain. After leaving the Catholic Church, the British monarch became the head of the church as …show more content…
The changing of religions in Great Britain did not only affect its leaders, but also its ordinary citizens. The abrupt change in religion resulted in the loss of property, and many times, life for those who did not quickly convert to the newly established Anglican Church (“Impact of the Reformation”). Most citizens depended on the land for farming, which was often times their main source of income. Income was only one part of life that was changed under the new church. The people of Great Britain been Catholics all their lives as had their ancestors before them. Catholic holidays were the only days that people would be free from work. Therefore, when the king decided to break with the Catholic Church, it had a great impact upon the lives of these citizens. Another loss to the British people was in education was when the monasteries were closed. The closing of monasteries forced monks to leave the countryside and making it nearly impossible to continue to educate the average citizen (“Dissolution of the Monasteries”). The changes in economics and education was something that the British citizens had to grow accustomed to as the new religion was here to