1921 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 425 In order to enlighten the English, many debates were held at the university on moot points. The first of these, at which Barnes and the Scotsman Alesius took part, was on the occasion of granting the doctorate in theology to Cruciger, Bullinger, and Aepinus, on 16 June 1533. 1 A debate especially for the benefit of the English delegation, on the subject of private masses, was held on 29 January 1536, or possibly a week later. In this Fox took part by recalling the words of the prophet,
- I have kept seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee
to Baal ', which words Luther approved. 2 A debate on the subject of justification was also held expressly for the benefit of the visitors. 3 By 28 .March a series of articles of faith had been decided upon and drafted, 4 though Luther was doubtful whether Henry would accept them. 5 As a matter of fact the negotiations continued for some years, the Germans sending ambassadors to Henry and his theologians. 6 The Lutheran pro- positions had considerable influence on the men who drafted the Book of Articles of Faith and Ceremonies handed by Fox to Convocation on 1 1 July, 7 and also on the Institution of a Christian Man, published by the English government in 1537. By these channels they emerged to some extent in the Forty-two Articles of Edward VI and in the Thirty-nine Articles of Elizabeth. Until the death of Catharine of Aragon one of the main subjects of discussion between the reformers and the English envoys was the royal divorce, 8 but after that the common cause 1 P. Drews, Disputationen Dr. M. Luthers, 1895, p. xv ; Corpus Reformatorum, xii. 517, 519 f. 2 Disputationen, pp. 69 ff. ; for the date see also p. 905. One account assigns the debate to 29 January, another to the nones of February. 3 Ibid., p. 33, 14 January 1536. 4 Mentz, Wittenberger Artikel. Preliminary articles had been mentioned by Barnes to Cromwell on 5 October ; see appendix. 8 Luther to Elector John Frederic, 28 March 1536. The articles themselves state that they were signed 8 April. Cf . Prince George of Anhalt to Helt, 3 June 1536, Helts Briefwechsel, p. 103. 6 On the visit of the German envoys see Merriman, i. 220 ; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xin. ii. 741 ; Cranmer, Works, ii. 397 ; Burnet, i. 408 ; Strype, Eccle- siastical Memorials, i, appendix, nos. 94-102. Henry himself wrote a reply to the Germans on theological matters, which is extant in a manuscript at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is printed, from a different manuscript, in Pocock's edition of Bumet, iv. 373. 7 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 803 ; P. Smith, The Age of the Reformation, 1920, p. 301. 8 On this ante, xxv and xxvii, ubi supra. I may add the following details to what I there advanced. Erasmus wrote the Responsio ad Disputationem cuiusdam Philostomi de Divortio on 19 August 1532 (Erasmi Opera, ed. le Clerc, ix. 955), appa- rently with Henry's case in mind. There was an early English translation of this, on which see Bibliotheca Erasmiana, 1897, i. 174. Erasmus's amanuensis, Gilbert Cousin, wrote against the divorce a tract dated ' ex aedibus Erasmicis ' (i. e. 1530-5), but first published in his De Us qui Romae Ius dicebant olim, Lyons, 1559. I owe this reference to Professor Edna V. Moffett of Wellesley College. Andrew Fritsch (on whom see Pamietnik Literacki, Lemberg, 1905, p. 512) wrote to John a Lasco from Cracow on
