Anne Boleyn: Ambition or Faith?

Summary

Not Just the Tudors – Anne Boleyn: Ambition or Faith?
Date: June 8, 2026
Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Reverend Martha Tartanek, Rector of St. George’s Anglican Church, author of Anne Boleyn: Reputation, Revolution, Religion, and the Queen who Changed History

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb welcomes Reverend Martha Tartanek for a deeply analytical conversation about Anne Boleyn’s legacy. The central theme: was Anne Boleyn driven more by ambition or by faith? The discussion interrogates decades of common narratives, including themes of female ambition and agency, the impact of Anne’s faith on the English Reformation, and how modern interpretation has often been shaped by sexism, popular media, and persistent misconceptions.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Anne Boleyn as a Complex Inspiration

• Early admiration: Martha shares how Anne inspired her from a young age as a complex, multidimensional female character (05:47).
• Historical female leadership: Martha connects Anne’s 16th-century leadership with ongoing conversations around women’s leadership today, noting, “Women have always been shaping the institutions that we have today…they've always had influence and impact and gifts and talents to share.” (06:38)
• Challenging traditional narratives: Suzannah and Martha reflect on the common morality tale told about Anne—ambitious, manipulative, deserving of her downfall—and question its origins and purpose (07:28, 07:44).

The Enduring Power of Sexism and Stereotype

• Victim-blaming: Martha calls out how even progressive audiences sometimes repeat the trope that Anne “set her sights” on the King, and thus deserved her fate. “It's just such an easy victim blaming trope that I think we slip into without even realizing that we're doing it.” (08:21)

Notable Quote:

“To blame Anne for Henry's uncontrollable desire to have her is both profoundly disturbing and disturbingly predictable.” – Professor Susannah Lipscomb quoting Martha’s book (16:23)

Media Representations and Misconceptions

• The case of Six the Musical: Martha appreciates the musical’s artistic value, but critiques how it leans into stereotypes—“it just validates all of those really common beliefs that are out there anyway and that are so false.” (09:11)
• Pop culture impact: Both speakers agree that the narrative of Anne using her ‘feminine wiles’ comes more from modern anxieties about female power than contemporary evidence.

Faith and Intellectual Formation

• French influence: Martha details the formative impact of Anne’s years at the court of Queen Claude of France and among notable women like Marguerite d’Angoulême, who exemplified learned, faith-driven female leadership (10:45).
• Religious conviction: Anne’s exposure to reformist ideas and advocacy for vernacular Bibles shaped her worldview and later, her conduct as queen (13:20).
• Humanist reform: Anne’s blend of support for social justice and traditional worship reflects her alignment with reforming Catholic thought more than revolutionary Protestantism.

Notable Quote:

“We don't know where Anne might have ended up if she had been able to live out a full life…But certainly it seems…she was very much in that reforming Catholic sort of bent that we see in Marguerite.” – Martha Tartanek (13:57)

Reframing Anne’s Relationship with Henry VIII

• Anne's faith as attraction: Martha proposes that Henry “[valued] her opinion, to think highly of her and her principles…” (17:46) and that Anne was appealing not just as a lover or political pawn, but as a partner in religious reformation.
• Challenging the ‘love story’ trope: The conversation critiques the idea that Henry’s pursuit was pure passion, positing instead that Anne represented a solution to his religious and dynastic dilemmas (29:00).

Agency, Aspiration, and Power

• Anne’s pragmatism: Martha notes that Anne understood the limited space she had as a noblewoman, maneuvering power as best she could, and coming to see her rise as divinely ordained. She draws parallels between Anne and Queen Esther—“perhaps you've been brought to this place for just such a time as this.” (20:07)
• No whitewashing: Martha is careful not to present Anne as a saint, acknowledging her ambition, sharpness, and flaws as essential to her enduring intrigue (27:25).

Notable Quotes:

“I have no interest in whitewashing Anne…I find those [ambitious] qualities really relatable and interesting and part of what makes her fascinating.” – Martha Tartanek (27:45)
“His whole pursuit of Anne was about securing the continuation of the Tudor line…It was not especially ruled by unbridled lust.” – Martha Tartanek (30:46)

Anne and the English Reformation

• Anne as architect, not just catalyst: Martha positions Anne as integral to not just the initial break with Rome, but to shaping the future Church of England through:
  • Normalizing the English Bible (dedicated to Henry and Anne in 1535).
  • Elevation of reform-minded clergy, such as Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker.
• The Anglican ‘middle way’: Anne’s moderate approach to reform prefigured the ‘via media’ tradition of Anglicanism (37:42).

Anne’s Downfall: Agency, Faith, and Political Dangers

• Against Wolsey: Martha contests the view that Anne turned against Cardinal Wolsey out of personal pique; rather, Anne was holding Henry to his religious-political commitments (40:50).
• No true allies: Despite reforming ambitions, Anne and Thomas Cromwell weren’t true allies; Cromwell’s loyalty was to Henry, not Anne (42:30).
• Causes for Anne’s fall: Debate covers the multiple, tangled factors in Anne’s downfall:
  • Catherine of Aragon's death altering political alliances.
  • Anne’s influence growing inconvenient for Henry.
  • Religious and political rivalries, culminating in Anne’s final confrontation over monastic wealth with Cromwell shortly before her arrest (43:52).

Notable Quote:

“She saw herself in a political role…She didn't ever seem to shy away from having her opinions known.” – Martha Tartanek (45:16)

Gender, Fate, and Fatalism in Tudor Society

• Sin and infertility: Professor Lipscomb highlights the era’s belief that “physical qualities of a person [represent] their character,” so that failures to produce heirs testified to spiritual failings (46:53).

Henry VIII’s Pursuit: Desire and Violence

• From desire to destruction: Citing Natalie Grueninger, Martha observes that Henry pursued Anne’s execution with the same vigor he once pursued her in love—illustrating the “very common narrative…of how powerful men can desire women and hunt them in equal measure, target them with desire, and then target them with violence.” (48:53)
• The chilling love letters: Martha describes reading Henry’s so-called love letters as chilling, considering his later orchestration of Anne’s execution (49:29).

Notable Quote:

“Almost justifying in his mind that getting rid of her was, was okay as long as he was fancy about it.” – Martha Tartanek (49:57)

“When they captured the deer, they killed it.” – Professor Susannah Lipscomb, referencing Thomas Wyatt’s poem (50:16)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 05:47 – Martha on Anne as inspiration and role model for women’s leadership
• 07:44 – Discussion of the morality tale and victim-blaming tropes
• 09:11 – Impact & critique of Six the Musical’s portrayal of Anne
• 10:45 – Anne’s years in France and her education in faith and reform
• 16:23 – Lipscomb’s quote about victim-blaming Anne for Henry’s actions
• 20:07 – Anne’s sense of divine purpose and the Esther parallel
• 29:00 – Power, love, and the myth of the romantic narrative
• 33:41 – Anne’s influence on the creation of the Church of England
• 40:50 – Why Anne turned against Wolsey
• 42:30 – Anne and Cromwell: not true allies
• 43:52 – Interwoven causes for Anne’s downfall
• 48:53 – Henry’s pursuit in love and violence; the narrative of hunting women

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “Women have always been having an impact on our history.” – Martha Tartanek (06:18)
• “To blame Anne for Henry's uncontrollable desire to have her is both profoundly disturbing and disturbingly predictable.” – Lipscomb, quoting Tartanek (16:23)
• “His whole pursuit of Anne was about securing the continuation of the Tudor line…It was not especially ruled by unbridled lust.” – Tartanek (30:46)
• “We have the Cinderella version of the story where a man in power picks a girl from the kingdom and they live happily ever after. But we also have…history of how powerful men can desire women and hunt them in equal measure.” – Tartanek (48:54)

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Tone and Language

The tone throughout is thoughtful, compassionate, and deeply engaged, reflecting both scholarly rigor and a personal, almost confessional perspective, especially on female ambition, faith, and agency. Both host and guest speak with clarity, nuance, and an easy rapport, bringing a feminist and reformist perspective to Tudor history.

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Summary

This episode moves beyond the simplistic portrayals of Anne Boleyn as either seductress or victim, and instead offers a view of her as a principled, educated, religiously motivated—and sometimes pragmatic—female leader at a pivotal moment in European history. The conversation insists we reconsider not just Anne’s reputation, but why those old, reductionist stories continue to haunt both history books and popular imaginations.

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Recommended further reading:
Anne Boleyn: Reputation, Revolution, Religion, and the Queen who Changed History by Martha Tartanek

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For more stories and deeper dives, subscribe to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

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[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. There are many narratives about why Amberlynn became Henry VII's second wife. If you were to believe the films and the TV series Natalie Dormer as Anne, for example, you'd think it was all about her beauty and sex appeal, and certainly contemporaries did record her attractive dark eyes and the way she had of wielding them. Their power was such that many a man yielded to her his obedience, wrote Lancelot Ducas. But that's not all we're also told that she was ambitious, that she sought to be queen. Here's an extract from a children's book quoted by my guest today. This is from the Ladybird history books on which so many of us in Britain were raised. She had been well educated, partly in France, and was a good musician, but she was ambitious and unscrupulous. When she realized that she had attracted the attention of Henry, she was determined to become queen at any cost. Perhaps if she had known that the cost was to be her head, she might have hesitated. We're told that in the years of waiting to marry Henry, Anne held out on him, physically alluring him with the promise of her body and her son she would deliver one only after marriage and the other, as it turned out, not at all. And then, more recently, the sixth, the musical and the enormous impact that that has had, which today's guest will assess for me. There seems to be an undeniable current that belongs to a century other than our own, and I don't mean the 16th, but the 20th century, that Anne used her feminine wiles. There's often some dark allusion to sexual tricks Anne had learned at the French court, as if Anne had access to some esoteric knowledge the rest of us have not rediscovered in the last 500 years. And that she overreached herself, got too big for her boots, was ambitious, a dirty word for a woman, was manipulative, and that when she did become queen, she was stormy, sharp tempered, that she, in other words, deserved everything she got. My guest today has sought to unpick that tangled knot of biases and prejudices and downright sexism in her book. But as a priest in an Anglican church in Canada, she's also alive and alert to a question that hasn't been posed enough about Anne, where I think she's really onto something. We're not talking necessarily about new sources today. My guest has drawn on existing scholarship, but her position as a female minister and her astute insight brings a fresh, revelatory quality to thinking about Amberlynn that is exceedingly welcome. My guest today is Martha Tartanek, rector of St. George's Anglican Church in Saint Catharines, Ontario. She's a contributor to Christian Century, a blogger on Medium, and a co host of the Future Christian podcast. And she is the author of Reputation, Revolution, Religion, and the Queen who Changed History. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb. Welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Welcome to the podcast. I don't know whether I should call you Reverend Tatonik or Martha, but welcome all the same.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Please just call me Martha.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Welcome, Martha.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

It's great to be here, Susanna.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, let's start, shall we, Talking about the popular perceptions of Anne Boleyn. You say something at the beginning, which I think actually lots of people would chime with. You write that from a young age, Anne inspired you. She made you want to be more yourself. How and why do you think Anne inspires people today?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

I think what drew me to her as a young person, as a child was this complex female character. I think that we don't have enough of those complex female characters. I think that we enjoy seeing someone who isn't just one dimensional, who speaks up for herself, who has ideas that she wants to fight for, who doesn't just conform to the boundaries that might be expected of her. I think what I have come to realize, especially in terms of her inspiration today has a lot to do with leadership. And, you know, we keep talking about women breaking through glass ceilings and women in positions of leadership and power. For the first time as a priest in the Anglican Church here in Canada, we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women this year in the Anglican Church of Canada. There can be a tendency to think that female leadership is a new thing. But to be able to go back to 500 years ago, to different points in history, to see someone like Anne, who very clearly is a leader, and to realize that women have always been having an impact on our history. Women have always been shaping the institutions that we have today. We might be giving women new opportunities and new visibility, but they've always been there. They've always had ideas. They've always had influence and impact and gifts and talents to share.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But that's not the way Anne's story has traditionally been told. You know, often we get this idea of it as a morality tale, that she was asking for it, that she was over ambitious and deserved her downfall. Why?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, I think that Anne Boleyn makes such an interesting mirror for us to look within and to interrogate some of those assumptions, some of those really common ways we have of talking about women. I mean, you quoted that ladybird history in the opening introduction. That is just such a telling commentary about, you know, women who. Who grab too high and want too much. But, you know, over the course of working on this book and telling people that I'm writing about Anne Boleyn, I have been stunned by the number of times that people who, you know, are, I think, would define as quite progressive leaning, maybe would probably even call themselves feminists. Have said things to me about Anne Boleyn. Like, she did try to land the king though, didn't she? She did set herself in his sights, didn't she? And then the implication is, therefore she deserved what she got. It's just such an easy victim blaming trope that I think we slip into without even realizing that we're doing it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And why did six the Musical incense you?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yes. So the genesis of the book does come out of a conversation with my brother about the musical 6. I realized later, you know, as I went to do some digging about that musical, I realized that the creators of six were not actually suggesting that all of these terrible tropes about Anne Boleyn are true. They define themselves as feminists. They were presenting her in a much more ironic way. But the problem is, is that Anne's political acumen, her religious principles, her intelligence, those routinely surprise people in the the popular consciousness of who Anne Boleyn was. Those aren't things that people think they know about Anne Boleyn. They think that they know that she was someone who weaponized her sexiness in order to get herself into a position of power. So unfortunately, the musical six, which I think is delightful in all kinds of ways, it leaning into this idea of Anne as someone who just climbed her way to the top and was pretty promiscuous along the way, unfortunately, it just validates all of those really common beliefs that are out there anyway and that are so false.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

You think instead we need to focus more on her faith. I really agree. So let's dig into that a bit. Who were her role models? What was her vision, do you think?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Well, I think that we need to particularly look at her time being raised in the court of Queen Claude of France. Of course, she did spend a bit of time with Margaret of Austria as well. And Margaret of Austria is a fascinating character. But the formational years that she had in France with Queen Claude, also in the company of people like Louise de Savoy and Marguerite d'. Angouleme, I think that those influences and role models are so important and we can draw so many through lines from the queenship that Anne exercised to the way in which she saw these women in leadership in France. Claude was a really interesting person for Anne to learn from. She was very education forward for women. She really valued being able to access the Bible in the vernacular and encouraged the ladies of her court to read the Bible in French. She offered support for reformers. She had intellectual curiosity, a love of reading, a love of books. We can see how all of those Things were so important for Anne as well when she was in a position of power and how she was able to draw on this amazing education. Marguerite d'. Angouleme. We know that Anne admired Marguerite in some pretty elevated ways. Marguerite was later, I think, correctly labeled as a reforming Catholic. So she was someone who embraced a lot of the aspects of reform that were starting to percolate around Europe, but in quite a different way from say, Martin Luther or John Calvin, some of the other reformers who became a lot more prominent. Her focus seems to have been a lot more around social reform and social justice being tied to cleaning up corruption in the Church. She had a real humanist bent, I think is fair to say. And she wrote about a very personal relationship with Jesus. That idea that the individual can read the Bible and have a personal relationship with God and with Jesus at the same time. She doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of rejecting a lot of the traditions that are handed down in the life of the church. And we can certainly see that kind of mixture in Anne as well, in terms of where she puts her priorities and how she centers access to the Bible in English, how she champions education and some alleviation of poverty. We don't know where Anne might have ended up if she had been able to live out a full life, if she had continued to engage with the different reform ideas that were circulating. But certainly it seems from her actions and activities that she was very much in that reforming Catholic sort of bent that we see in Marguerite.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And you think that Anne's faith was actually a key ingredient of Henry's desire for her?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, and again, that isn't normally how the story is formed. We know that Henry believed that his marriage with Catherine Veragon was ultimately being judged as being against God's will. He believed that he was on God's wrong side for having married Catherine. The proof was in the procreational pudding. There were no sons and Henry was interpreting that as God's judgment against him. So we can see how a woman with strong religious principles, who's first in Scripture, who is reading about religious matters, how that would be appealing to Henry, how then they get locked into this six year fight with splitting the English church from the authority of Rome to. And how they get to, you know, really be at one another's side through this massive religious project that we have reason to understand. Henry believed would write his relationship with God and therefore England's relationship with God. He and Anne would very much have subscribed to that vision. Of the monarchy that was so entrenched at that time, that the people of England, their relationship with God was in a pretty critical way dependent on the monarch's relationship with God. Of course, that's not usually what we hear. We hear instead that Anne was angling for the crown and she refused sex with Henry until she got what she wanted.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, you're right. We absolutely get a very different picture. And of the many powerful lines in your book, this one I found perhaps especially potent, but speaks to how this story is normally told. You say to blame Anne for Henry's uncontrollable desire to have her is both profoundly disturbing and disturbingly predictable. Talk me through that.

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[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

I mean, when we look at Henry's letters to Anne, when we look at Henry's personality as revealed right across his reign, we know that he was someone who got what he wanted and at the cost of a lot of people's heads. And yet to turn that into something that Anne did to him, that she was in some sense responsible for, that just really pains my heart. But unfortunately, as I said in the book, it's just an all too familiar narrative that we buy into. She was the problem.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So instead, you're painting a picture of Anne appealing to Henry because of the profundity of her faith, Is that right? What did she offer him? Why did she appeal?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, it really seems like for those early years of their relationship, that he set her on quite a pedestal. He sought out her opinion. He was willing to read materials that he had previously banned that had been judged as heresy, written by people who were living in exile from England because their opinions had been so contrary to the party line of England prior to Anne. He really seemed to value her opinion, to think highly of her and her principles. And obviously there was an upside to his high opinion of her, but it's also really hard to fall off of those high pedestals that you get put on. And we can see how, as highly as he thought of her, that ends up being to her detriment when he turns on her.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can we talk about Anne's desire, her inner life? I know that we're short on sources, but what do you posit and to what extent did Anne have freedom to choose?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

I think that Anne was pretty pragmatic in terms of understanding that power is negotiated. She would have seen that from Queen Claude of France. Queen Claude had quite a bit of intellectual freedom and an ability to read and to seek out new ideas, but she was able to do that because she also turned a blind eye to her husband's philandering, and she had lots of babies. I think that Ann understood that she didn't exactly have the luxury of being able to marry for love. She knew what was expected of her as a noble daughter, that she would marry in a way that would advance her family's position. And then when she gets into this very strange situation of attracting the attention of the king. You're right, we don't have a lot of access to her inner life, but we do have a number of instances where it is clear that she comes to interpret Henry's interest in her and the position that it affords her as having been ordained by God. And toward the end of her life, she is part of drawing a really interesting parallel between herself and Queen Esther from the Bible. And the verse associated with Queen Esther is, perhaps you've been brought to this place for just such a time as this. In other words, maybe God has brought you into this position of power so that you can help your people, so that you can make a difference. And I think it is fair to posit that Anne understood that in a very deep way, that she understood that she needed to use this position of power in order to do good and to help her people and to stand up for what she believed in.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, I mean, I really think that you're onto something with that. I think that's really strong. And following Professor Tracey Adams's work, you make an interesting point about the timeline of Henry and Anne's relationship. Can you talk me through this?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Okay. So I found this just so exciting and compelling as I was working on this book. And again, it is the work of Professor Adams. So I want to make sure I'm representing it accurately. We don't have official records noting Henry's interest in Anne until May of 1527, I believe. And then by August, it seems to be clear that he is pursuing an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and that it is becoming known that the woman that he wants to marry is Anne. Of course, we also have all of these love letters. Love, I would put in quotation marks, these letters from Henry to Anne that aren't dated. And historians have done a lot of arguing about how we should understand the chronology of those letters. The dating of those letters has often hinged on the idea that in the one letter, he seems to be offering to make Anne his mistress. And so it has been assumed that that must have happened before the decision that he was going to marry her, that he offered to make her his mistress. She refused and so he upped the ante and offered to marry her instead. But Adams argues that this letter is written in French and that the French word metresse in 1527 was not a word, but that means mistress in the modern sense that we think of it. That in fact it was a word that was used for a man to describe his intimate partner and even his wife. So she argues that the timeline is actually quite different, that Henry in 1527 went very quickly from noticing Anne to deciding that he was going to marry Anne, and that in fact this lines up better with some of the other information that we know to be so essential at this time, which is that Henry wasn't particularly in the market for more mistresses and illegitimate children. The lack of male offspring for Henry was a religious problem, and he was in the market for a wife that was going to right his relationship with God and who was going to provide him with legitimate offspring, especially boys. That would be the proof that his relationship with God was on a better track. Mom, can you tell me a story?

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

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[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So two thoughts in response to that. One is that Henry says in those letters that he has been struck for a year by the dart of love, which obviously post dates the beginning of that relationship and puts it back. I mean, historians have argued possibly to Shrovetide, that is February 1526 as you say, the letters are undated. And it is entirely possible that those letters have been muddled in terms of the order. It's hard to know. But certainly in the time that he's writing the letters, he is seeming to say that he has loved her for a year, which makes the sort of immed or lightning speed of the decision to marry slightly less immediate, or lightning speed. So these are just sort of challenges, really, for you to think about. The second is, and I'm interested in your response, is there a danger, do you think, of trying to present Anne as whiter than white? One of the reasons we love her is that she is complex. And do you think there's a possibility here that we're whitewashing her?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, I mean, I think those are two interesting points. So, again, I'm. I'm presenting what I have heard Adams, Professor Adams talk about. And she, I believe, argues that that letter referring to the one year is probably more accurately dated to 1528. That is, like, well into the annulment slash marriage conversation at that point. So that's her argument, and I think it's an interesting one. I have no interest in whitewashing Anne, and I do kind of address that at various points throughout the book because there has been a tendency at times, it never seems to have gotten a lot of ground, but almost to cast Anne Boleyn as a saint of the Reformation or a martyr of the Reformation. And I think that that doesn't do anybody a particular service to try to edit out her feistier and more ambitious sorts of qualities, because, you know, I find those qualities really relatable and interesting and part of what makes her fascinating. So certainly I did try to balance out any of the challenges to some of those prevailing narratives about Anne with also some of the reports of her behavior that is a little less than palatable.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

You've already alluded to the fact that calling these letters love letters may be a misnomer. You say that Anne's was not a love story. It's a story about power. What do you mean?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

I think that there are a couple of things that I mean, and it has to do with Anne, and it has to do with Henry, and it has to do with all of the people who were a part of their story in one way or another. I think that there's something really interesting and problematic about how we have framed stories of a powerful man's desire for a woman as being the ultimate love story. You know, that if the man wearing the crown picks you, then you have reached the highest female pinnacle and have achieved that fairytale ending. I think that's problematic in general, but it sure is problematic when we're talking about a woman who is ultimately killed by her husband. That he was just in love with her in this unbridled way, I think, is a really toxic way of framing a story about a man who had to have this woman and then had to get rid of this woman. I think, too, it's been maybe unwise for us to think of Henry as this sort of foolish, obese, silly king who married all these women and killed a few of them and just sort of followed his whims. And sometimes I think we've let him off the hook for some of the decisions that he's made because we've sort of framed it as being the machinations of people around him. And, you know, at the end of the day, Henry was no puppet of anyone. Henry was a man who was used to getting his way. And again, I think that there's an argument for saying that his whole pursuit of Anne was about securing the continuation of the Tudor line. It was about how he stacked up in the eyes of God, and it was not especially ruled by unbridled lust or feelings that were out of control. It was about securing his reign in the way that he believed was the best way possible.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I mean, isn't it possible that it's both. That it's both lust and conviction?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, of course it is. Maybe he did spend those six years lusting after Ann, couldn't wait to consummate this relationship. Maybe there's something there. I find it interesting that questions of impotency haunted him throughout his reign. I find it interesting how insecure he was about his lack of offspring. I find it interesting that a man who got what he wanted in just about every other instance would have been willing to just put this supposed unbridled lust on the back burner for six years while he waited around for Anne. I think that there were more important things to him than his sexual desire, and I think that we've maybe gotten that story a little bit skewed.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes. But it does feel interesting for me to say to a priest that it's. Presumably it is possible to have really strong sexual desire, but have it held in check by beliefs that are more important to you than the fulfilling of that desire.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Right, yeah. No, you're absolutely right. That's definitely true. I just. I've taken in combination with some of the other things that we know about Henry and his reign. I just wonder Whether he was maybe not quite the lover boy that we've assumed him to be.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes. And he certainly has far fewer mistresses than, say, Francis I or Franco I. Yes. Doesn't seem to be a priority in so much as it is elsewhere. Let's move on then, to talk about the break with Rome and the creation of the Church of England. How much does this have to do with Anne?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

So she's often, as we sort of go into the history books in the Church, when we study Church history, she is often discussed as a catalyst of the English Reformation. But I think that those who have looked at her influence a little more closely are right instead to frame her as an architect of the Church of England. And I think that we can point to a couple of particularly important contributions that she makes that are of great significance and lasting impact. So I've already sort of mentioned her reading material that she was able to pass along to Henry viii, that he was open to this reading material in ways that he hadn't been prior to Anne. And there's one story in particular

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

of

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

her passing along a treatise by William Tyndale that helps to shift the conversation from one of convincing the Pope in Rome to annul the marriage instead to a conversation about challenging the authority of the Pope in Rome and splitting the Church of England from the Pope's authority. So that's the spark that lights the fire that becomes the English Reformation. But then there are two really important contributions that we can ascribe, particularly to Anne and her influence and to her time in power that have that lasting impact. So the first is the normalizing of an English Bible. So over the course of Anne's time at Henry's side, we go from English Bibles being burned and those who publish them and circulate them being brought up on charges. So we go from that to 1535, the year before she dies, the first published English Bible, and it's dedicated to. To King Henry VIII and to Queen Anne. That is a pretty remarkable shift in terms of that key piece of the evangelical agenda, which is access to the Bible for all people in their own tongue, in their own language. Probably the more significant place where we see Ann in that architect role is personnel. She has an eye for talent, she has an interest in education, and she seeks out people who are on the rise, who are talented reformers, and she is able to get them into positions of power in really consequential ways in the English Church. And, you know, we could list a remarkable resume of people that she got into different positions and that kind of thing. But I would name especially Thomas Cranmer, who becomes the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the new Church of England, the writer of the Book of Common Prayer, which is still used in the global Anglican Communion today, and Matthew Parker. And Matthew Parker and Thomas Cranmer are named as two of the three theologians who are responsible for developing a distinctive Anglican thought. And two of those three people were Anne Boleyn Hires. They were people that she identified as talented and she helped to maneuver into positions of power. Quite an incredible legacy that, that we can see in terms of how the, the Church of England and its thought and its theology would be formed. My last point is a delicate one because by no means is there any sort of straight line that you can draw between the beliefs of Anne Boleyn and the Anglican Church that we have today. It's obviously been such a twisty, turny road. But I do find it interesting that what the Anglican Church of today is known for is being that sort of middle way between reform and Catholicism. And I find it interesting that that is a version of the Church that Anne Boleyn certainly would have recognized and even practiced herself. That she was someone who continued in the traditions and sacraments of the church and embraced the spirit of reform alongside those traditions.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

That's so interesting. Thank you for that. You also have a different way of seeing her character in certain ways that she has been traduced. You think the motive for Anne's turn against Cardinal Woolsey is not the one that Woolsey's servant, George Cavendish servant and first biographer, imputes to her. What do you think it was that turned her against Woolsey?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

It seems to have been that for a number of years, Anne and Henry did see Woolsey as someone that they could work with, who was going to help them in their goal of splitting the Church, of being able to get married, but that there were various points at which Henry was the one who was waffling, particularly on splitting from the authority of the Pope. And we've definitely noted that Henry was a lot less certain about those reform principles that than Anne or some of the other movers and shakers in the English Reformation. He seems to have gotten cold feet at various points about making that final split. So it seems as if the move against Wolsey was really about holding Henry's feet to the fire on pursuing that schism with Rome. And she had a lot of allies in getting rid of the Cardinal as well, because he had held such a great position of power, taking up all kinds of room at Henry's side. And the power vacuum that getting rid of him would leave was appealing to a variety of people in that inner circle, including a few people who never worked with Anne or sided with Anne again after getting rid of Woolsey.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Cromwell is normally portrayed as Anne's ally, but you don't think so.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

It's easy to think that they would have been allies because they were both reformers. And Cromwell really did end up being the fixer in terms of securing the break from Rome and securing the marriage that Henry and Anne both had been working towards. So I think it's been easy to conclude that of course they would have been natural allies. But there isn't really any evidence to suggest that Cromwell ever saw himself as anything other than Henry's man. He doesn't seem to have forgotten what happened to Woolsey, who was his original employer. And it seems telling that he was not knighted at Anne's coronation. I understand there were a lot of people who were knighted at that time of her coronation and he was not among them. So the fact that they ended up being enemies in a very public Way maybe wasn't as surprising as it seemed.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, well, I mean, that is one of the things that's sort of disputed. And of course, you and I both know that we could spend the next four hours talking about the next question, so I'm going to. Let's not do that. But why, at core, do you think that Anne fell?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah, so definitely a lot of tangled up reasons, which is why we could spend the next four hours talking about it. There were reasons why Henry was newly insecure. Certainly Catherine of Aragon dying in January of that year was no help to Anne. Henry was somebody who liked to have someone to blame. And having Catherine no longer available to be that target, that was a problem. Of course, that also shifted a lot of the political discussions and the discussions that were going on at all times with Spain and France and all of those European alliances. But I think that there really is a religious reason at the heart of Anne's fall as well. I think that it is knotted up in that very public showdown between her and Cromwell about a month before she was arrested, where she is getting her oar in about the dissolution of the monasteries and how those resources are to be used. That would be a continuation of, of a way of operating that we see throughout Anne's reign, which is that she saw herself as sharing in power and decision making with Henry. She saw herself in a political role. She didn't ever seem to shy away from having her opinions known. But of course, also earlier that year was one more miscarriage and three years into her marriage with Henry, and again, there are no princes, there's just a girl. I think that all of those things contribute to Anne falling off that pedestal that we talked about earlier, where Henry had set her up on such a high place of esteem, that she was this principled good woman who was going to fix his relationship with God. And then three years in, it's still not happening. And she is becoming more and more inconvenient and less and less aligned with what Henry sees himself wanting. And it's so easy for Henry to cast her not just off the pedestal, but right into the pit of being charged with the most sinful, immoral, embarrassing, humiliating, awful kinds of accusations that he could throw her way.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, it's so interesting, isn't it, for an age that thought about the physical qualities of a person representing their characters who had looked on Henry's height and good looks and strength as an indication that he was born to be king, then they would transfer that to this idea of relationship between physicality and morality. Or sinfulness to the fact that Catherine had not had sons or the fact that Anne didn't. It becomes very fatalistic quite quickly, doesn't it? The physical, how these things manifest in the physical realm testifies apparently to a deeper moral or spiritual truth according to 16th century ways of seeing things. And that means that things go wrong and they're quite easily determined in their minds as being the cause of sinfulness.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Yeah. And you know, I think that that points to one of the other just fascinating things about this time and maybe why it continues to be so captivating, is that it really is a hinge time in terms of like those older ways of thinking still prevailing in so many ways, even as we see the seeds of modernity beginning to be sown. And I think it's easy to kind of get tricked into overlooking those very deep seated pre modern ways of, of thinking that really did continue to hold so much currency for Anne and for the people at that time.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And as we come towards the end, you quote and follow the line of thinking of Natalie Grueninger, a friend of the podcast, who said that Henry pursued Anne's death with the same kind of vigor he pursued marrying her. This is certainly a different take on the story. Can you explain more?

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Well, unfortunately, this is a tale as old as time as well. We have the Cinderella version of the story where a man in power picks a girl from the kingdom and they live happily ever after. But we also have a very common narrative across history of how powerful men can desire women and hunt them in equal measure, target them with desire, and then target them with violence. And you know, you can see that language of hunting. You can see this threatening tenor into those so called love letters that he wrote to her. I find it quite chilling to read those letters knowing how the story ends. And I find it chilling to consider the sort of care and attention that Henry poured into details around how the scaffold was going to be built and what French swordsman was going to be hired to kill Anne. Almost justifying in his mind that getting rid of her was, was okay as long as he was fancy about it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yes, that does put a different spin on Wyatt's line. Whosolista hunt. I know where his unhind because actually, of course, in the end when they captured the deer, they killed it. Well, Reverend Martha Tartanek, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast and talking through your really profound and interesting thinking about Anne's life and death. And those who would like to read more should pick up a copy of your book. Anne Boleyn, Reputation, Revolution, Religion, and the Queen who Changed History. Thank you for making the time to speak to me.

[Reverend Martha Tartanek]

Thank you so much. I enjoyed our conversation very much.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a [e-mail] and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit.

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