‘SIX’ tells the tale of Henry VIII’s wives — without the little-known Jewish history

English monarch consulted Venice Jewish community while trying to divorce his first wife.

English King Henry VIII is known for many things, including his six wives and the English Reformation, which separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. What’s less known is the role the Jewish community played in the palace intrigue involving the king’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his severance of papal authority over the country’s church.

The story of Henry’s wives — albeit without Jewish content — will be retold Oct. 7-12 at the Benedum Center in “SIX,” recast as a musical competition in which each of the king’s six brides sings her tale of woe while married to the English monarch.

Before the staged adaptation captured the attention of the theater world, however, the marriages of Henry VIII were the focal point of English court life, altering the course of the country and its state religion forever.

The tale begins in the first part of the 16th century when Catherine of Aragon married Arthur the Prince of Wales. Arthur died only a few months after the wedding and the widow married his younger brother, Henry VIII. England was a Catholic nation ruled by a Catholic monarch at the time and, according to a July 2023 article by Summer Gallardo on the website Medium, the couple attended daily mass in Latin.

The pair had five children but only one survived — a daughter — leaving the king desperate for a male heir. Henry hoped to marry Anne Boleyn, the sister of his mistress, Mary. The king sought an annulment, arguing his marriage violated Leviticus 20:21, which forbade the marriage of a man to his brother’s widow. The Catholic Church refused the petition, partially due to its loyalty to Catherine and her family, according to Rabbi Eli Brackman oxfordchabad.

Henry, Brackman wrote, sought the assistance of Hebraist Robert Wakefield, whom he hoped would find support for his divorce from rabbinic sources. A young tutor, Thomas Cranmer, also suggested Henry gather scholars from across Europe to support the Leviticus case for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine, including the Jews of Italy.

Why the need to seek out the advice of the Jews of Italy rather than an English Jewish community? Unsurprisingly, the answer is simple: antisemitism.

In 1290, King Edward I expelled all Jews from the kingdom. A Jewish community didn’t gain a foothold in England again until the reign of Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century.

As a result, Henry sought the council of the rabbis in Venice.

According to both Gallardo and Brackman, the Jewish community was unable to offer a definitive answer to Henry’s question. Some agreed with Henry’s interpretation; others felt that Deuteronomy 25:5, which states, “If brothers will live together and one of them dies, and he has no child, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside to a strange man, her husband’s brother shall consort with her, and take her as a wife, and perform levirate marriage with her,” ultimately held sway.

In the end, a Reformation Parliament was created, which passed laws between 1529-1536 abolishing papal authority in England. It declared Henry to be the head of the Church of England and that doctrinal disputes now were the domain of the monarch.

And while the consultation of the Italian Jewish community didn’t solve the dispute between the Catholic Church and Henry VIII, it did forward the cause of Judaism in the country. During this time, the king procured Daniel Bomberg’s nine-volume Talmud, installing it at Westminster Abbey.

The tale of Henry’s wives has outlasted the religious and philosophical arguments, becoming part of folklore, especially the execution of Boleyn, who was beheaded in 1536.

“SIX” retells the trials and tribulation of Henry VIII’s wives in a musical the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust sums up as, “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”

The Tony Award-winning musical was hailed by the Washington Post as “Exactly the kind of energizing, inspirational illumination this town aches for! The Broadway season got supercharged.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.