The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story from Inside the Vatican (2012)

I discovered this book through a post on the History Matters blog, "How Book Covers Sell History". The book was originally titled Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador, with a cover image of a man's hands leafing through a book on a table, a small folded document lying next to the book. But for the US edition and for the UK paperback, the title was changed to The Divorce of Henry VIII: the untold story from inside the Vatican, and the cover art is now a portrait of Henry.

The change was a mistake. This is not just another "Henry divorces Catherine to marry his bimbo and creates the Church of England" book. It's really the story of Gregorio Casali, Henry's ambassador at the Vatican, and Renaissance diplomacy in general, seen through the lens of Henry's "great matter". I'd likely have skipped this one if I'd just seen the later title, and I expect that some people drawn to the book by that title may be disappointed, though one hopes that others will find an interesting new field to explore.

One must have needed strong nerves to serve as an ambassador at this time. Communications - yours to your prince and your prince's to you - took time, assuming they arrived at all; your messengers might succumb at any time to bandits, kidnapping, illness, or sheer exhaustion. You had to expect that your letters would be intercepted. You might need to act on your own, and hope that your actions would meet with your prince's approval. And in a time when the great powers of France and the Holy Roman Empire won and lost allies as those allies' interests changed, you could never be sure who was your friend and who your enemy.

The story of Gregorio Casali is also one of the importance of family in this time. His own career was aided by family ties to the Vatican and Roman nobility. Because of those ever-shifting alliances, and (to borrow one of Fletcher's chapter titles) the ingratitude of princes, it helped to have multiple irons in the fire. So Gregorio did his best to find posts for his brothers that would tie the family to other European powers in the event that his connection with England collapsed.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and learned a great deal. Though I have read a fair bit about this period, I am by no means a Renaissance scholar. I did not know, for instance, how common it was for countries to be officially represented abroad by non-citizens, something that would raise eyebrows today. Nor did I know that there was a serious suggestion that Henry be allowed to commit bigamy (an idea he quite reasonably rejected on the grounds that it would cast doubt on the succession).

So come for the divorce and stay for the diplomacy. You won't be sorry.

Other recommended reading: Letters of Henry Viii, 1526--29: Extracts from the Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII

The period of Henry the VIII has always held a fascination for me so I was excited to get this book. The nice thing about this book is that it is covering an area of the period that is not often covered. It is packed with information and took a bit to get into for me but I did enjoy it. It is a scholarly work and as such would not recommend it to all readers interested in the times. I was fascinated by all of the facets of politics that were occurring at the time and the level to which diplomats worked on their own. ( )

I have been an avid reader of the story of Henry VIII and the Tudor dynasty since the tender age of ten. My mother gave me my first book about The War of the Roses at that age. (I was a precocious reader. ) I wanted to know more about these Lancasters I was reading about and this lead to Henry.

In all my reading I have not come across a book the focused on the subject told from the viewpoint of Henry's diplomatic corps.

I learned from Ms. Fletcher's tome a great deal about how diplomacy worked during this time period. There was new insight into how/why some decisions were taken. I found myself often feeling like I was re-reading a familiar scene from the other side of a mirror.

I have put the hardcover non-advanced readers version on my holiday gift list. ( )

If it's English History, then I am in. This book however struck a new chord in my repetoire of English stories because the view is from the eyes of an Italian diplomat. The story maintains a very good amount of drama as it unfolds the story of the role that Gregorio Casali played in the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Ms Fletcher holds the book together with not just the widely known facts of the divorce but she introduces many obscure yet interesting facts. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in English history, anyone wanting to learn about how the Vatican sometimes manouvers in the background of Global politics or someone who just likes a good drama. We all knew the outcome, but Catherine Fletcher brings us there along an entirely new road. Great book! ( )

Like a lot of folks I have a bit of "Tudor fever," so I was excited when I received this book. What a well written and researched account of a side you don't hear much about, the Vatican's side, especially in historical fiction. It was fascinating to read the accounts of Gregorio Casali (and he was no saint), whom I never heard of before, and his role in the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. While the book was more about Casali's background/life and family and not as much about the divorce itself, I did glean some new bits of Tudor history from its pages. ( )