In 1517, the German monk Martin Luther attacked the corruption of the Catholic Church, sparking the beginnings of a Protestant movement that sent shock waves across Europe.
Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey were united in their horror at Luther's heretical attack on the Church. In May 1521, Wolsey condemned Luther's works in a great book burning at St Paul's Cathedral in London, while Henry wrote a reply to Luther called the Assertio Septum Sacramentorum (Defence of the Seven Sacraments). With this work, he became the first English king since Alfred the Great to have written a book, although how much of a hand Henry's friend and intimate counsellor Sir Thomas More had in its creation is still debated. The Assertio was written in Latin and set in the latest roman type for circulation to a sophisticated, select European audience.
Henry started to write the Assertio in 1518 while reading Luther's attack on the sale of indulgences, which was a corrupt way of reducing the amount of punishment that might ensue for having sinned. By June of that year, he had shown it to Wolsey, but it remained private until three years later, when the earlier manuscript became the first two chapters of the Assertio, the rest consisting of new material relating to a later work of Luther's.
Henry's book was so loud in its defence of the papal supremacy over the Church that More warned him that, since his good relations with Rome might change in the course of time, he should 'leave that point out or else touch it more slenderly'. But Henry was adamant in his championship of Rome, and was rewarded with the title 'defender of the faith' from a grateful Pope Leo X.
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 Defence of the Seven Sacraments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_
the_Seven_Sacraments
Wikipedia entry on the book written by Henry VIII in 1521, with links to Martin Luther, Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More.
The City Recovers
www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exh
ibit/a-vatican_lib/City_recovers.html
This exhibition from the Vatican Library includes a page from the Assertio Septum Sacramentorum showing how Henry signed it himself and added a couplet presenting the book to the pope.
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