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 KATHARINE OF ARRAGON. 265 impose on her, took the vows of a monk, could not afterwards have a dispensation from the said vows from the pope, so as to be able to contract a second marriage ; nay more, whether he might not be the husband of two living wives ? to such lengths did his crafty mind and crooked policy carry him. Many were the hours which he devoted to the pages of Thomas Aquinas, in order to discover how far the Levitical laws could be turned to his advantage ; and he was not a little pleased when he found in them that the dispensation from the pope for his marriage with Katharine could not hold valid against the right divine, by the reason that for dispensing with a law it is necessary that he who does so should be superior to him who made it. This decision of Henry's favorite theologian encouraged all his hopes, and he addressed himself to the Archbishop War- ham, who had formerly declared against the legality of the marriage with Katharine, to consult the bishops of England on the point. The writings of Luther had even then, lately as they had appeared, considerably lessened in England the general opinion of the papal power ; and as the validity of Henry's marriage rested solely on the dispensation for it ac- corded by Julius the Second, people hitherto devoted to the court of Rome now openly disputed whether a marriage wholly con- trary to the law of God could be permitted by His vicegerent on earth. The result of the appeal to the bishops was a paper signed by the whole bench, in which they declared that the marriage was contrary to divine law and public morals. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, alone refused to sign this paper ; but it is asserted that Archbishop Warham, unknown to him, put his name to it. The only opposition to the divorce anticipated by Henry was that of Charles the Fifth, and this he determined to brave. The imprisonment of the pope, who could look only to the kings of France and England, now united, for aid, strengthened his hopes ; but his strongest claim for the divorce, namely, that the dispensation granted by Julius the Second for the marriage with Katharine was contrary to divine laws, could hardly be urged to another pope, each papal sovereign wishing to main- tain the inviolability of the power and acts of his predecessor, and the impossibility of his committing an error. In this dilemma the only expedient that offered was to prove that the bull of Julius the Second -was rendered null by that pontiff's having been surprised into granting it, which made it revocable