"Most contemporaries would have argued that it was a king’s job to put in peril his soul for the good of his Church and of his people. But Henry was too self-obsessed to do that, too determined to live a life of a confessor saint and thereby join the mystical body of Christ in heaven and so be revered by the faithful in this world. In an age when the cult of royal saints was in the ascendancy, Henry’s ambition is understandable, but it was hardly justifiable and it was certainly not heroic."
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Stephen Church
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