Defending the Faith: John Jewel and the Elizabethan Church 9780271083148

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Defending the Faith

Habent sua fata libelli

Early Modern Studies Series

General Editor Michael Wolfe

Queens College, CUNY

Editorial Board of Early Modern Studies Elaine Beilin

Raymond A. Mentzer

Christopher Celenza

Robert V. Schnucker

Barbara B. Diefendorf

Nicholas Terpstra

Paula Findlen

Margo Todd

Scott H. Hendrix

James Tracy

Jane Campbell Hutchison

Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Framingham State University Johns Hopkins University Boston University

Stanford University Princeton Theological Seminary University of Wisconsin–Madison

Mary B. McKinley

University of Virginia

University of Iowa

Truman State University (Emeritus) University of Toronto University of Pennsylvania University of Minnesota University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

D E F E N D I N G T H E FA I T H John Jewel and the Elizabethan Church

Edited by Angela Ranson, André a. Gazal, and Sarah Bastow

The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania

Library of Congress Cata­loging-in-Publication Data Names: Ranson, Angela, 1974– editor. | Gazal, André A., editor. | Bastow, Sarah L., editor. Title: Defending the faith : John Jewel and the Elizabethan church / edited by Angela Ranson, André Gazal, and Sarah Bastow. Other titles: Early modern studies series. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2018] | Series: Early modern studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Brings together scholars from several disciplines in Reformation studies to examine the life, work, and enduring significance of John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury from 1560 to 1571”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018026211 | ISBN 9780271082080 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Jewel, John, 1522–1571. | Church of England—History— 16th century. | England—Church history—16th century. Classification: LCC BX5199.J4 D44 2018 | DDC 283.092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026211 Copyright © 2018 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in The United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: John Jewel and the Invention of the Church of England  1 Lucy Wooding

1 John Jewel’s Early Life: Developing a Community of Reformers  18 Angela Ranson

Part I: John Jewel as Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist

2 The Homiletical Theologian: Jewel’s SelfIdentity as Preacher of the Word  31 André A. Gazal



3 John Jewel at Paul’s Cross: A Culture of Persuasion and England’s Emerging Public Sphere  42 Torrance Kirby



4 “Silence Is a Fine Jewel for a Woman”: Anne Cooke Bacon, Jewel’s Apology, and Reformed Women’s Publications  63 Alice Ferron



5 “A Crime So Heinous”: The Concept of Heresy in John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England 79 André A. Gazal



6 An Apology of the Church of England’s Cathedrals  98 Ian Atherton



7 The Jewel–Harding Controversy: Defending the Champion  119 Angela Ranson

vi  contents



8 Defending the Defender of the Faith: The Use of History in Responses to Queen Elizabeth’s Excommunication  139 Aislinn Muller

Part II: The Impact and Legacy of John Jewel

9 Moses the Magistrate: The Mosaic Theological Imaginaries of John Jewel and Richard Hooker in Elizabethan Apologetics  161 Paul Dominiak



10 The Use and Abuse of John Jewel in Richard Hooker’s Defense of the English Church  183 W. Bradford Littlejohn



11 Redefining Unity in the Jacobean Church: The Legacy of John Jewel  205 Angela Ranson



12 Edwin Sandys and the Defense of the Faith  224 Sarah Bastow



13 Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue: The Role of the Antagonist in the English Church  242 Joshua Rodda



14 A Multifaceted Jewel: English Episcopacy, Ignatian Authenticity, and the Rise of Critical Patristic Scholarship  263 Paul A. Hartog



15 Defending Reformation Anglicanism: The Bishop Jewel Society at Oxford University, 1947–1975  284 Andrew Atherstone

Appendix: The Publications of the Jewel–Harding Controversy, 1560–1640 305 Selected Bibliography 313 List of Contributors 331 Index 333

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Linda Cooper and the staff at Sarum College for their assistance with the conference that inspired this volume. Also, many thanks to Salisbury Cathedral for welcoming us into a Jewelinspired evensong service and providing a tour of the Bishop’s Palace. The University of York, the University of Huddersfield, and Northland International Univesity also provided assistance with the conference packs and provided necessary resources. Finally, we would like to thank the Davenant Trust for their sponsorship and support.

Introduction John Jewel and the Invention of the Church of England

Lucy Wooding In November 1559, John Jewel, the future bishop of Salisbury, preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross in London, which was to have momentous consequences for the Church of England.1 This institution was at the time only an uncertain fledgling church in a country with a young, untried queen and a fearful legacy of religious wrangling and bloodshed. Jewel was to do more than most to give the English church credibility and a coherent Protestant identity. In his sermon, he proclaimed his challenge to the Catholics, charging them to prove their doctrine from “scripture, or some old doctour, or sum ancient councell, or else some allowed example of the primitive church.”2 This Challenge Sermon, as it rapidly became known, was repeated at court and then again at Paul’s Cross in early 1560, and in due course it gave rise to the more comprehensive treatise of 1562, Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, published in its best-known English translation by Anne Bacon in 1564 as The Apology of the Church of England. Jewel’s work provoked an extensive Catholic reaction as well as a number of important defenses of Jewel’s arguments offered by other Elizabethan Protestants. The controversy was perhaps at its most vigorous in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, as the Catholic exile Thomas Harding and his associates replied to Jewel in a rapid succession of books from Louvain: several dozen books were published in the 1560s alone.3 Yet Jewel’s work would remain significant throughout the early modern period; often disputed, but more often considered authoritative. In 1609, Richard Bancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, ordered Jewel’s works

2  Defending the Faith

to be placed in every church across the land.4 After this, Jewel’s reputation as a leading Protestant reformer became established, survived through subsequent centuries, and was revived by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates over the identity and ministry of the Church of England. As this collection of essays suggests, Jewel played a large part in the creation of the new Church of England on every level, from the theological and political to the practical and pastoral. In particular, he helped endow the institution with both ecclesial authority and theological consistency by giving it a plausible claim to the sanction of Christian antiquity. Jewel’s rhetoric, in both his Challenge Sermon and the Apologia, outlined the gulf between Protestants and Catholics, in terms of both belief and practice. It is easy to read this rhetoric as a fairly straightforward account of the two churches, tracing the clear boundaries between unmistakably opposed belief systems. Yet Jewel’s language was not so much descriptive as creative. He was striving with all his might to drive a clear wedge between the youthful and uncertain Church of England and its Catholic opponents. As Mary Morrissey has pointed out, he took what would become the standard approach adopted by these “confutational” sermons at Paul’s Cross: such sermons were concerned with attacking not the fundamental beliefs of the Catholics but rather the beliefs where they could most clearly demonstrate the difference between Catholic and Protestant.5 This was perhaps Jewel’s greatest achievement, to create a clear-cut image of an English Protestant church that was diametrically opposed to its Catholic critics. In so doing, he helped prompt a parallel process on the Catholic side of the argument. Despite the claims on both sides to certainty and consensus, these two churches were both still quite unstable, their loyalties and convictions still fluid, and it was in the debates of the 1560s that the Catholics, just as much as the Protestants, established a clearer sense of self. Therefore, the emergence of confessional identity in the English Reformation owed much to Jewel and the responses he provoked. Jewel’s vision of the church was firmly rooted in antiquity. He held that the doctrine he was upholding “at no point departed from the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers.”6 The foundation of his Apology was his insistence on the continuities between his own time and that of the primitive church.7 Here he reflected a crucial element of the second stage of European Reformation. Protestants had always claimed that their doctrine was rooted in scripture, but the inability of different Protestant

Introduction  3

groups to agree on certain essential doctrines was weakening the practical efficacy of that claim. Catholics, meanwhile, claimed that their doctrine was rooted in scripture as interpreted by the consensus of the church, but this, too, was open to attack on many levels. By the 1550s, controversialists on both sides were increasingly drawing on church history, particularly the history of the early church, in an attempt to sanction their own standpoints by demonstrating a direct inheritance from the apostles. Jewel’s work should be set within the context of the work of the Magdeburg Centuriators and John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments; Catholic works such as Nicholas Harpsfield’s Dialogi Sex and Nicholas Sander’s De Origine Ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani formed the basis of the Catholic response in kind.8 At one level, therefore, both Jewel and his opponents were laying out the same argument. “Our strife is about the Truthe,” wrote Harding. “The waie to shewe it, and prove it . . . is by laying forth the plaine Scriptures, the examples of the Primitive Church, the testimonies of the General Councelles, and ancient Fathers.”9 This was almost word for word what Jewel had claimed. The desperate need for historical sanction and continuity and the need to fashion a form of Elizabethan Protestantism that was not just a protest movement but a framework for a state church meant that these most irate and eloquent of opponents found themselves competing for the same contested territory. Those who preached and wrote on either side had to make out that they wrote with the voice of dignified, beleaguered authority: thus Jewel’s opening gambit in the Apology was to relate the ways in which the bearers of truth had been persecuted in every age, and in return the Catholics lamented their outcast state. Self-presentation in terms of martyrdom also drew a useful comparison with the martyrs of the primitive church and thus helped serve as another badge of authenticity. This kind of rhetoric drew attention away from the fact that the controversy that was unfolding was in fact a highly self-referential argument between quite small groups of academics, all of whom knew one another well. These men had been educated together. They remembered one another’s strengths and weaknesses. This is obvious from their more sardonic comments: Henry Cole, dean of St. Paul’s, in an exchange of letters (subsequently printed) after the first Challenge Sermon, accused Jewel of not playing fair and reminded him of the rules of university debate, commenting, “You have not yet I wene all forgot the trade in Oxeforde which you and I were brought up

4  Defending the Faith

in.”10 This could be cast as a kind of lofty civility: Jewel remarked in an earlier letter, “I can also charitably be contented, as a frend with a frend, or a scholar with a scholar, to conferre with you herein.”11 Not only had all these men been at Oxford together, but Jewel and his chief protagonist, Thomas Harding, in fact lived curiously parallel lives: they had both been born in north Devon, both attended Barnstaple Grammar School, and both studied at Oxford.12 Both had conformed— Harding under Edward, Jewel under Mary—before returning to their final allegiance. In fact, Harding seems in the 1540s and 1550s to have been committed to the evangelical cause. He was made Regius Professor of Hebrew in 1542 and claimed later that reading German commentaries had helped turn his opinions toward Protestantism, although he denied he had ever been fully converted, claiming that “in certaine pointes I was deceived (I confesse) by Calvine, Melanththon and a few others.”13 He served as chaplain to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, later Duke of Suffolk and had Edward VI’s backing for election as Warden of New College. When he returned to the Catholic fold, he received a vitriolic letter from Lady Jane Grey, condemning him “which seemed sometime to be the lively member of Christ, but now the deformed imp of the devil . . . sometime the unspotted spouse of Christ, but now the unshameful paramour of Antichrist.”14 Harding was not the only one who knew what it was to embrace a Protestant understanding of the faith. Thomas Dorman recollected the day when he had first met Harding, arriving at Winchester “a yong novyce of Calvyns relygyon,” before he was “brought home agayn to Chrystes churche from whence I was strayed.”15 Their ability to understand the strengths as well as the substance of one another’s arguments made this debate unusually profound as well as exceptionally fervent. In Jewel’s Apologia, when he offered at the start a caricature of the Catholic attack upon his views, he wrote that “they crye out upon us at thys present every wheare, that we are all heretiques,” adding “also that we are already devided into contrarye partes and opinions, and coulde yet by no meanes agree well amonge oure selves.”16 The Catholics did indeed point to the divisions among Protestants, particularly over the question of the sacrament. Heskins in 1566 wrote, “Look at howe manie citties, howe manie contries, so manie doctrines, so manie faiths, so manie religions: yea almost howe manie heades, so manie opinions. Howe doeth Luther agree with Oecolampadius? Howe doeth Melanchthon with Bullinger?”17 They also made some shrewd comments about Elizabethan difficulties.

Introduction  5

Gregory Martin observed in 1582 that every sect expounds scripture according to its own heresy: “Looke upon the Calvinists and Puritanes at home, the Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists abrode . . . are not their expositions of one and the same Scripture as diverse and contrarie, as their opinions differ one from an other? Let the example at home be, their controversie about the distinction of Ecclesiastical degrees, Arch-bishop, Bishop and minister; the example abrode, their divers imaginations and phantasies upon these most sacred wordes, Hoc est corpus meum.”18 Jewel had an answer for this. As Edward Dering described him, Jewel was “our Alexander in Christian war and godly courage.” This was a war of words, and as it unfolded, the armies on either side began to coalesce. Increasingly, its protagonists felt that they were attacking not just individuals and their work but the massed ranks of opponents and confessional identities became more fixed and more weighty. Jewel’s delineation of the church was magisterial, universalist, and rooted in antiquity. It was with this claim that he pulled the rug out from under the feet of his Catholic opponents and bequeathed to the new and uncertain Church of England the weighty sanction of time and space: “We do beleve that ther is onely one Churche of God, and that the same is not shut up as in time past among the Jewes into any one corner or kingdome, butte is Catholike and universall, and dispersed into all the world.”19

•

In 2014, marking the 450th anniversary of the publication of The Apology of the Church of England, a conference was held in Salisbury that sought to bring together a range of scholars from different disciplines who were interested in Jewel’s work, reputation, and legacy. Crossing the boundaries between history, theology, and the study of literature, the papers given at this conference explored Jewel’s life and work, his cultural setting and historical reputation, and his theological legacy. The first conclusion to emerge from this conference, now enshrined in the essays in this volume, is the importance of Jewel’s work, preached and published at such a crucial psychological moment at the start of Elizabeth’s reign, when there were so many difficulties pressing on every side. It was Angela Ranson who first conceived the idea of an anniversary conference to mark Jewel’s achievement, and her opening chapter here introduces Jewel with an account of his early life, which was almost exactly contemporary with the formative years of the English Reformation. In a subsequent chapter, Ranson then advances an analysis of the famous

6  Defending the Faith

controversy prompted by that sermon, arguing that Jewel had a key role in the Elizabethan church as the linchpin of an influential group of men who took up the task he had begun, using his work as a shared point of reference that gave the group, as well as their written work, its distinctive coherence. Ranson looks beyond the purely theological encounter between Jewel and the Catholics to explore the cultural impact of their exchanges, treating both sides of the controversy as distinct textual communities, whose published and unpublished works need to be studied in a body to understand the common religious language that they were helping create.20 This chapter also emphasizes the connection between the written and spoken word, arguing that the work of Jewel and his community was conveyed as much by preaching as by print and that these Elizabethan churchmen and scholars always intended their books and sermons to complement one another, as Jewel’s Challenge Sermon and his Apology had done from the start. Ranson points out that the intellectual community grouped around Jewel’s works were surprisingly variegated in their roles and convictions, from the radical young preacher James Calfhill to the more conservative head of Magdalen College School in Oxford, Thomas Cooper, the future bishop of Lincoln. Yet they shared a vision of a church that was not only godly but firmly established. Jewel deliberately fostered a sense of unity in order to build a coherent church identity, appealing to certain continental reformers as well as to the primitive church of the time of the apostles in order to give the emerging Church of England its best chance of credibility. Those with dangerously subversive views, such as John Knox, were firmly placed at arm’s length. This attempt to build a solid sense of identity explains why Jewel and his associates tended to argue on the basis of Jewel’s entire thesis, incorporating all twenty-six articles, while his Catholic opponents were content to respond piecemeal to single articles. The legacy of Jewel’s work was of immense importance to the later history of the Church of England. Ranson shows how when the first puritan criticisms began to emerge, Jewel’s work and his leadership helped counter their claims and establish the principle that church unity and stability were more important than debates over distinct points of doctrine. Richard Hooker was famously Jewel’s protégé: he was certainly building on the foundations Jewel had laid when he implored his fellow believers, “Let not the faith which you have in our Lord Jesus Christ be blemished with partialities.”21 Jewel’s work had a sustained relevance after his death

Introduction  7

and was to be found as a core text in most Protestant libraries; Ranson’s study of the marginalia in such copies shows how these books were read, digested, and deployed in argument by his intellectual successors. The impassioned oratory of 1559 had metamorphosed into a foundational document of a national church. Thomas Harding, Jewel’s chief opponent, was frequently scathing about Jewel’s skills as a theologian. In chapter 2, André Gazal suggests that although Harding had used Jewel’s knowledge of rhetoric as a basis for criticism, it was in fact a vital and distinctive feature of his approach. Jewel was not a systematic theologian; rather he was a homiletic theologian, which was precisely what was needed at this point in the Church of England’s history. Gazal argues that the sermon Jewel gave in the University Church at Oxford, upon receipt of his bachelor of divinity degree in 1552, might be held to encapsulate Jewel’s own conception of his ministry. His text was from 1 Peter 4: “If any man speak, let him talk as the words of God.” Here was the foundation of Jewel’s theological success, which lay less in the definition of doctrine than in the practice of preaching. His task was to proclaim the word of God and to defend the truth against its detractors. Long before the Challenge Sermon that was to define him, Jewel had already conceived of his task, and it is striking how most of the works he wrote began as sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, in his cathedral at Salisbury, or at the court of Elizabeth I. His standing among his contemporaries was in large part because they conceived of him first and foremost as a preacher. This emphasis upon the importance of preaching is sustained by Torrance Kirby’s chapter, which focuses in particular on the significance of Paul’s Cross sermons and more generally on the role of the sermon in establishing the Elizabethan church. At a time of limited literacy, the spoken word was enormously influential, and within a Protestant understanding, the sermon had a unique ability to stir up the elect to a realization of divine grace. Paul’s Cross, moreover, was perhaps the single most important pulpit in the realm, with multivalent properties as the conduit of education, religious inspiration, and political control; it was located in Paul’s churchyard, long a traditional site for popular protest, as well as the place of the audience that stood in judgment of whatever was being performed by the Paul’s Cross preacher. Kirby argues that the “culture of persuasion” that revolved around the Paul’s Cross sermon provides an important way into understanding the public enactment and the popular reception of the English Reformation.

8  Defending the Faith

For Kirby, the Paul’s Cross pulpit was one of the key places where the imposition of Tudor political and religious authority intersected with the need for popular validation of both church and state. It can therefore be taken as a key indicator of a public sphere emerging in early modern England where the radical subjectivity inherent in the Protestant message confronted the hierarchical order of the Tudor polity. A close study of the Challenge Sermon of 1559 provides an illustration of the shift toward a different understanding of religious authority, one in which individual judgment played a far greater role than before. By laying out, side by side, the views of the reformers with those of their opponents, Jewel was appealing to popular opinion in a distinctive and innovative fashion. Although the authority of scripture and the primitive church was of paramount importance, the underlying assumption of the sermon was that the public, too, had a role to play. In his reconfiguration of eucharistic doctrine, Kirby argues that Jewel’s ideas played “a decisive role in redefining the relationship between the individual conscience and the communal order.” In essence, Jewel was deploying a new way of thinking about religious authority, with important consequences more generally for the development of later ideas about authority and the self. Another innovative aspect of Jewel’s Apology was its mediation by a female author. It is often forgotten that the Apology of 1564 was translated by a woman—namely, Anne Bacon, née Cooke. Alice Ferron’s chapter explores the way in which Bacon could be said to have “published” the English translation of Jewel’s Apology in 1564. In an opening epistle that prefaced the work, Archbishop Matthew Parker suggested that the responsibility for the publication lay with him and that he was protecting her modesty by printing it on her behalf. This demonstrates the ideas current at the time about a woman’s authorship and how women sought refuge behind the fiction that they had held back from publishing their own work. Anne Bacon clearly intended to publish her translation of Jewel’s Apology with the intention of demonstrating unity within the Church of England and contributing to its defense in the vernacular. Yet like other Tudor women writers, she needed to cast herself as a hesitant, even unwilling, authoress in order to render her work acceptable to a wider audience. This is another example of how the Protestant message encapsulated within Jewel’s work had to accommodate itself to the cultural expectations of the time. This concealment of a radical and unusual

Introduction  9

message within a more traditionalist justification might also be taken as a metaphor for Jewel’s own work. André Gazal has also written chapter 5 in this volume, on the theme of heresy in Jewel’s Apology, arguing that the concept of heresy was at the heart of this work. Jewel was not only refuting Catholic allegations of heresy cast against the Elizabethan church; more importantly, he was developing the case for casting the Roman church as heretical and the pope as the “contumacious heresiarch.” Jewel’s achievement here was not only to give a detailed definition of what constituted heresy and how it differed from dissent but also to turn the tables of doctrinal debate and put the Catholic Church on the defensive. Gazal here demonstrates the intellectual confidence and polemical courage that Jewel showed in denouncing on the international, as well as the domestic, stage the claims to antiquity and authority customarily claimed by Rome. The boldness of this strategy helps explain the lasting force of Jewel’s arguments in the years that followed. The conference that gave rise to this book was hosted by Sarum College and thus took place a stone’s throw from the cathedral in which Jewel had served as bishop of Salisbury and where in his will he asked to be buried. Ian Atherton’s chapter examines the role of England’s cathedrals within the Elizabethan church. Jewel himself had the characteristic attitude of an Elizabethan bishop toward cathedrals, being at once highly critical of perceived abuses inherited from their Catholic past and yet optimistic about their potential role in a Protestant future. Importantly, however, his Apology was published in 1564 with an appendix, probably written by Archbishop Matthew Parker, which explained the governance of the English church, including the place of cathedrals. Atherton suggests that the role of the Elizabethan and Jacobean cathedrals deserves closer attention and that we should not be too quick to dismiss them as the “spiritual leftovers of the Reformation,” inadvertently preserving a sticky residue of traditionalism that would be the future inheritance of Anglo-Catholicism. Historians have been puzzled by the survival of England’s cathedrals in the Reformation, given the redundancy of the liturgical offices within Protestantism. Other Protestant countries did away with their cathedrals while church endowments seemed indefensible on both moral and practical grounds, given the desperate need of the Elizabethan polity for money. All of these issues were pointedly emphasized by puritan critics

10  Defending the Faith

in a way that has obscured the more positive view of cathedrals also current at the time. Henry VIII, it should be remembered, created six new bishoprics, emphasizing the extent to which all cathedrals should be centers of charity, preaching, and learning, as well as diocesan government. Elizabethan debates, explored here in a rich array of printed and manuscript sources, continued to revolve around these possibilities, and the Presbyterian attacks of the 1580s prompted churchmen like Whitgift to insist on the value of cathedrals, in particular as “a stay from barbarisme, a bridle to sects & heresies, & a bulwarke against confusion.”22 The argument in favor of cathedrals was never entirely consistent or entirely convincing, and yet their survival was not merely inadvertent; most of all, perhaps, that argument should be explained in terms of their relationship to the universities. Cathedrals helped maintain scholars, libraries, scholarships, and intellectual networks, just as Jewel’s own intellectual achievements and his bishopric were inextricably involved. The survival of the church that Jewel was attempting to establish and strengthen hinged on the survival of Elizabeth I, the “Defender of the Faith” herself. Aislinn Muller’s chapter looks at the response to the papal excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570, focusing on the arguments from history that were deployed to denounce the practice of excommunication and defend the queen’s authority. Many of these arguments were not new, but they were deployed with a new urgency in response to the considerable risk of Catholic opposition abroad and Catholic dissent at home. Muller argues that the papal bull’s potential to destabilize the English polity has been overlooked by historians and needs to be given greater weight. She suggests that the preoccupations of those responding to the papal bull indicate the high levels of anxiety within England in particular and Europe more generally, about the threat posed by Rome to temporal rulers. Elizabeth’s defenders recalled the excommunication of King John by Pope Innocent III and other similar confrontations to make Elizabeth’s own situation seem less precarious, recasting it as part of an ongoing battle between the English monarchy and the presumption of Rome. It meant a significant addition by John Foxe to his second edition of the Acts and Monuments of 1570, laying new emphasis on the historical perfidy of the popes through the ages in their opposition to legitimate rulers. English examples were interwoven with those from other countries to emphasize the threat from Rome, although an evident unwillingness to dwell on the circumstances of Henry VIII’s excommunication may

Introduction  11

indicate a desire to avoid any discussion of Elizabeth’s parentage and the painful issue of her potential illegitimacy. That Jewel and others sought out Heinrich Bullinger to write a response to the bull indicates the extent to which they sought to make this a European question, again trying to limit the sense of Elizabeth’s isolation. Jewel himself contributed to this polemical effort with a sermon preached in 1570. This was later printed in response to the reissue of Regnans in Excelsis in 1580 by Pope Gregory XIII, which inspired a second wave of such literature. The fears of internal dislocation that were stirred up by these papal initiatives extended to include anxieties about Protestant dissent, as well as Catholic opposition; it is in this context that much of Jewel’s rhetoric about the unity of the church needs to be placed.

•

The second part of this book turns to a closer examination of Jewel’s theological achievement through an evaluation of his intellectual legacy. Paul Dominiak’s chapter looks in detail at the theological justification advanced by Jewel and his pupil Richard Hooker in defense of the royal supremacy, in particular through developing the idea of Moses as an exemplar of lay ecclesiastical supremacy. The Old Testament related the story of the formation of Israel under Moses, a state bound together by the rule of divine law: this was to prove an important influence in the shaping of Protestant political theory. For Jewel, Moses as “a civil magistrate and chief guide of the people” was the starting point for a biblical doctrine of supremacy. Hooker was perhaps more cautious, taking the example of Moses as a more practical illustration of the “conveniency” of the supremacy. Yet both of them in separate but related ways developed the idea of the “Mosaic Constitution,” or Mosaic theological imaginary, to provide both a defense and an aspirational model for Tudor church politics. The degree of creativity required to arrive at these theories suggests the novelty of the situation, however loudly Tudor apologists for the royal supremacy insisted that it had the sanction of antiquity. Dominiak suggests that this was more than just the investiture controversy in modern garb or Tudor Erastianism: this was rather an attempt to sacralize Tudor political power, and both Jewel and Hooker in their different ways brought a new dimension to the concept of royal supremacy. The initial attempts by early Elizabethan churchmen to defend the Church of England were made in the face of determined and extensive opposition by English Catholics revivified by the reform and renewal

12  Defending the Faith

of Mary I’s reign. Over time, however, apologists for the Church of England found themselves confronting the criticism of other more radical Protestants instead. Richard Hooker in many ways inherited John Jewel’s role as the champion of the Elizabethan church but faced a rather different set of challenges. Brad Littlejohn’s chapter explores Hooker’s role, the way in which he appropriated and developed Jewel’s work as he fought his own distinctive battles, and the way in which his moderate puritan critics used Jewel’s work to criticize Hooker’s stance. Littlejohn’s analysis confirms Jewel’s stature as a leading figure in Elizabethan theology, demonstrating how appeals were made to his work from all sides in the intricate and every changing Elizabethan debates. The altered circumstances in which Hooker wrote, however, required less the vigorous denunciations of the 1560s and more the careful distinctions and definitions so characteristic of Hooker’s work. Hooker in many ways stayed faithful to the principles established by his former patron. Yet the world had changed, and if the threats to the Elizabethan church had perhaps been moderated, they had also been rendered more complicated. Jewel’s legacy may have been lasting, but it was also required to be malleable. Angela Ranson has a third chapter in this second part of the book, in which she examines Jewel’s legacy for the Jacobean church. She shows that Jewel’s achievement in helping establish the Church of England is demonstrated not just by his own work during Elizabeth’s reign but equally in the way his work was deployed by Jacobean clerics and theologians working toward a more unified church. Jewel’s trenchant assertion of the “catholicity” of his faith, based on scripture, the first four general councils and the example of the early church, became a foundation for Jacobean attempts to build a consensus, spearheaded in part by the monarch himself, James VI and I. Ranson argues that the controversy over the oath of allegiance, often interpreted by historians in primarily political terms, illustrates this conception of the English church at work. Jewel’s claims to antiquity, and therefore catholicity, from 1559 took on new resonance in the controversy over the oath, as did his delineation of a church that was at the same time national and universal. It is this context that helps explain the first edition of Jewel’s collected works published in 1609, the new edition of his Apology in 1600 (with a Latin edition in 1606) and new editions of his sermons published in 1603 and 1607. It informed the idealism of those who aimed at the reconstitution of Christian unity,

Introduction  13

taking Jewel’s arguments on beyond the limits of his own conclusions and yet retaining his understanding of catholicity at the center of their claims. Jewel had provided English Protestants with a satisfying answer to the perennial question, “Where was your church before Luther?” Jewel was not, of course, the only bishop of his time who was fighting to defend his faith. Sarah Bastow’s article looks at the almost parallel life of one of Jewel’s contemporaries, Edwin Sandys, who was successively Cambridge scholar, Marian exile, Elizabethan bishop of Worcester, bishop of London, and finally archbishop of York. She shows how closely Sandys and Jewel were integrated into the European Protestant community, so much so that at the start of Elizabeth’s reign Jewel wrote wistfully of how a returned exile could feel a “stranger at home.”23 It was from this starting point that men like Jewel and Sandys sought to construct a strong and unified English church. This chapter focuses on the demands of this at the grassroots level in the diocese of Worcester, in particular Sandys’s attempts to persuade, confront, and convert a leading Catholic opponent whose stubborn resistance led to much complicated animosity. The attempts of these Elizabethan churchmen to repress the ideas not only of Catholics but of more radical Protestants should not lead us to doubt the strength of their Protestant convictions or assume that they were at odds with the broader currents of European reformation. Sandys was prepared to “defend the faith of Christ even until blood and unto death.”24 Jewel’s challenge to his Catholic contemporaries, declared in his Challenge Sermon and consolidated in the Apology, gave rise to an enormous outpouring of polemic in which each side roundly denounced the corruptions, heresies, and iniquities of the other. Yet this was a debate in which opponents were as essential as allies. Joshua Rodda’s chapter argues that the “enemy” was an essential aspect of Jewel’s work and that the antagonism central to his work was a crucial element that helped him both define his ecclesiology and give it the sanction associated with persecution. In a positive light, having an enemy helped characterize the work of Jewel and others as a mode of engagement driven by enquiry that could only serve to strengthen the church by putting it to the test. This was why the dialogue, both in written form and in open debate, was such an essential aspect of early modern religious encounters. It used to be thought that Jewel’s challenge was just a rhetorical device, a flourish from a stable Protestant establishment that was confident of its own superiority. As older certainties about the English Reformation have

14  Defending the Faith

been called into question, in the context of the instabilities of 1559–60, Jewel’s challenge now appears more genuinely a starting point for debate, albeit a debate he expected to win. Both sides in the debate claimed to be David pitted against Goliath, underscoring their mutual dependence in staging this fight. Truth needed to be validated by the journey from doubt to certainty. Placing Jewel’s debate with the Catholics in the context of the fictional polemical dialogues of the time, Rodda shows how we need to understand both the techniques deployed by these two opposing groups and the ways in which they illustrate early modern conceptions of truth and its relationship with reason. Illustrating another innovative aspect of Jewel’s work, Paul Hartog’s chapter looks at Jewel’s use of the church fathers and suggests that the time is ripe for a reevaluation of Jewel’s contribution to patristic scholarship. Contrary to the claim that Jewel was “ambiguous” in his use of patristic authorities and that he did lasting damage to English patristic studies, Hartog argues that Jewel’s careful but extensive use of the church fathers may have done more to lay the foundations of future patristic study than has yet been realized. Despite the difficulty of appealing to patristic authority from within a Protestant understanding of the church, Jewel took a balanced and creative approach: “The confidence to question the unity of the patristic church without casting aside its inheritance led to creative criticism.” Hartog sees this as a “pioneering perspective” that helped establish a distinctively English approach to scholarly interaction with the church fathers. In his approach to the church fathers, Jewel had to be careful. He sought to verify the authenticity of patristic texts, he focused on questions that they had considered central to Christian doctrine rather than inessentials, and he used testimonies where the patristic authorities displayed both certainty and consensus. He also subjugated their authority to that of scripture. Hartog confronts a long scholarly tradition that has been dismissive about Jewel’s patristic scholarship, as well as evaluating those voices that have been raised in his defense. His conclusion is that “the truth lies somewhere between, that Jewel was neither an amateur seed-picker nor a professional critical scholar but an ecclesiastical leader of his times, a precursor creating tensions to be addressed by subsequent authors.” This is a valuable historical contextualization of a theological debate: Jewel was not a mature scholar setting forth a concept but a leading figure in a raw and untested church fighting to establish its theological

Introduction  15

consistency and credibility. Looking in particular at the debate over Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, both in Jewel’s time and in subsequent centuries, Hartog makes a strong case for a more positive reassessment of Jewel’s contribution. If Jewel swiftly became a rallying point and a champion of the Protestant cause, his reputation as such did not die with him. In 1947, at the University of Oxford, the Bishop Jewel Society was formed to “promote Evangelical Churchmanship.” Andrew Atherstone’s account of the rise and fall of this society gives an insight into the historical memory of Jewel’s achievement as well as the vagaries of postwar Anglicanism as evangelicals sought to respond to Anglo-Catholic dominance and the proselytizing activities of the Plymouth Brethren. Through its twentyeight-year history, the BJS exercised formative influence over future clergy as well as laity. Its attempt to “defend the Gospel from encroaching novelties” and its evocation of the Christian martyrs of the primitive church struck notes that would have resonated with Jewel in his own time. In sales from its bookstall, Jewel’s Apology was a bestseller, alongside Cranmer on the Lord’s Supper, the Homilies, and the Edwardian Prayer Books: clearly the eloquence of the sixteenth century still had important resonance in postwar Britain. Religious tensions in Oxford during these years could run high. In 1957, a speaker meeting had to be halted after a lecture on baptism because of the aggressive questions posed by Anglo-Catholics in the audience. On the other hand, in the atmosphere of religious revival sparked by Billy Graham in 1954, membership of the BJS rose sharply from 40 to 110, peaking in 1957 at 140 members. In the early years of the 1960s, however, membership began to decline with equal speed. The society circulated a statement that spoke of the “confusion and lack of conviction” of the age; nevertheless, it also made attempts to modernize, dropping references to the thirty-nine articles from its term card in favor of a more contemporary message. In 1971, a former president urged the society to become “a little more daring”; signally, however, it was by evoking the example of Jewel, who had sought to return the church to “scriptural purity and simplicity.” The society closed in 1975, no longer able to bridge the divide between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, the memory of Bishop Jewel had made a substantial contribution to the postwar existence of the church he had done so much to found.

16  Defending the Faith

John Jewel, during his lifetime, underwent many transformations, not just as scholar, churchman, exile, and bishop, but in his trajectory from radical outsider to establishment figure. The defensive rhetoric of 1559 was in due course to become the magisterial statement of church identity immortalized in Anglican memory and the venerable bindings of the Parker Society volumes. This book seeks to give depth to this picture, by locating Jewel in his ecclesiastical and cultural context, by probing his theological and ecclesiological convictions and aspirations, and by examining his legacy. Jewel in his lifetime had a great reputation as a preacher, and “woe to me if I do not evangelize” was inscribed (in Latin) on his portrait in the bishop’s palace in Salisbury.25 This volume shows that the words he proclaimed in this sixteenth century can still resonate in the twenty-first, and he should have the last word here, in the speech he reportedly gave on his deathbed, recalling his long battles with Thomas Harding: “I have contended in my writings not to detract from his credit and estimation, nor to patronize any error to my knowledge, nor to gain the vain applause of the world, but according to my poor ability to do my best service to God and his church.”26

Notes 1. At the time of the sermon, he was bishop-elect; he was consecrated in January 1560. 2. Quoted by Thomas Harding in An Answere (Antwerp, 1565), fol. 11r. 3. See Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (London, 1977), 1–24, for a bibliographical account of the controversy. 4. See André A. Gazal, “John Jewel’s Doctrine of Scriptural Infallibility,” Trinity Journal 29 (2008): 84. 5. Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 161. 6. Wyndham Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 120.

7. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 272. 8. Euan Cameron, “Primitivism, Patristics and Polemic in Protestant Visions of Early Christianity,” in Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, ed. K. van Liere, S. Ditchfield, and H. Louthan (2012), 27–51; Rosamund Oates, “‘For the lacke of true history’: Polemic, Conversion and Church History in Elizabethan England,” in Getting Along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England, ed. A. Morton and N. Lewycky (New York: Routledge, 2012), 133–52; Norman Jones, “Matthew

Introduction  17 Parker, John Bale and the Magdeburg Centuriators,” SCJ 12 (1981): 35–49. 9. Thomas Harding, A detection of sundrie foule errours (1568), sig. *****iiij r. 10. John Jewel, The true copies of the letters (London, 1560), fol. 9r. 11. Jewel, fol. 4r. 12. John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 62–82. 13. Harding, A Reiondre to M. Iewels Replie (Antwerp, 1566), sig. CCCi r. 14. H. Robinson, ed., Original Letters relative to the English Reformation (Parker Society, 1846–47), i, 309–11. 15. Thomas Dorman, A proufe of certeyne articles in religion (Antwerp, 1564), sig. A ij r. 16. Jewel, An Apology, sig. A iv v–A v r. 17. Thomas Heskyns, The Parliament of Chryste (Antwerp, 1566), fol. cccxcix v. 18. Gregory Martin, A Discoverie of the Manifold Corruptions (1582), sig. a v r. 19. Jewel, Works, 3, 59. 20. For the concept of a “textual community,” see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh

and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Also see Christopher Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), for an exploration of how Thomas Harding and his Catholic associates functioned in this way. 21. Richard Hooker, Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie eight bookes (London, 1604), sig. B v; Hooker was referencing the Epistle of James 2. 22. Whitgift, The defense of the aunswere (London, 1574), 747. 23. H. Robinson, ed., The Zurich Letters, vol. 1 (London: Parker Society, 1842), 23. 24. John Ayre, ed., The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, by Edwin Sandys (London: Parker Society, 1842), 440. 25. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 26. J. Ayre, ed., The Works of John Jewel, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1850), xxi–xxii.

Chapter 1

John Jewel’s Early Life Developing a Community of Reformers

Angela Ranson By the time of his death in 1571, John Jewel was many things: a polemicist, apologist, education advocate, preacher, bishop, and to some, a bitter enemy. This volume of essays is designed to explore these aspects of Jewel; thus, they concentrate mainly on the last ten years of his life. In contrast, this biography aims to focus on Jewel’s education and early life, with the purpose of providing a background for the essays that follow. It will demonstrate his early association with the reformed cause and how he maintained his beliefs during his years in exile on the continent during the reign of Mary I. In part, his dedication was due to the community of reformers who encouraged him, which he in turn supported and developed. Born in Devon in 1522, Jewel began his studies at Oxford at a time of great religious and social upheaval. Not only was he present during the early years of the royal supremacy, but he also saw the early years of the new college system. The old system whereby undergraduates were taught by regent masters had all but disappeared, and with them disappeared the halls.1 Halls were temporary; they started when a master rented rooms to scholars and ended when the number of students dropped. However, colleges were self-perpetuating “chartered associations of persons,” as Mark Curtis describes them.2 They were prominent features of the university. Joining a college instead of a hall meant that Jewel was educated in a permanent community of fellows who both lived and learned together. Jewel joined Merton College in 1535, and his tutor, John Parkhurst,

John Jewel’s Early Life  19

introduced him to the reforms taking place in the church. Parkhurst actually defended new doctrines in disputations and promoted the reading of “profane” authors.3 He also encouraged the use of the vernacular by giving Jewel the task of comparing Bible translations. Gary Jenkins, in his 2006 biography of Jewel, considers this a “provocative” move, considering how Henry VIII felt about the vernacular Bible in the mid-1530s.4 However, it is doubtful that Parkhurst intended any harm to Jewel by this, since Parkhurst was part of a scholarly network of reformers that Jewel soon joined. This network continued to defend the reformed church once Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, and Parkhurst continued to participate. In the 1560s, he heartily supported Jewel in his controversy with Thomas Harding, in part by promoting Jewel’s work to continental reformers such as Rudolph Gwalter.5

Core Communities In 1539, Jewel transferred to Corpus Christi College on a scholarship and continued studying divinity. Corpus Christi was founded on humanist principles and reflected the different religious landscape that had developed since the foundation of Merton. The study of canon law was not a major feature of this college, as it had been at Merton, and the college aimed to prepare students not to be statesmen but to be sixteenth-century clergymen. Its theology students had the opportunity to examine the church fathers instead of the medieval scholastics.6 This proved beneficial for Jewel: an emphasis on the historical context of the church fathers would later become a distinguishing feature of his polemic and apologetics. Corpus Christi was made up of a president, twenty fellows, and approximately twenty undergraduates. Its size was limited in this way to create a close-knit community of learners. By living and working in such a community, Jewel and his contemporaries developed a network of friends and patrons. This network was equally as valuable as the education itself, as Jewel himself recognized. He was named reader in humanity and rhetoric in 1548, which was a public lectureship open to all the university students, and his Latin oration in 1551 promoted the Oxford network of scholars and patrons, to remind students of their position and responsibilities in an academic community. Jewel reminded the students that they were working together under the glare of public scrutiny “in this bastion

20  Defending the Faith

of talents and the arts” to be worthy of the learning available to them. He also emphasized the importance of the scholars to the reputation of Oxford itself: “The prestige and lustre of the university is based not on the size of its foundations and buildings but in the number of men devoted to study: we in the end are the colleges, we are the schools, we are the university entire!”7 This stirring tribute to the importance of scholars, phrased as if they were a recognizable unit, suggests that Jewel was aware of their interdependence and their distinction as a unique group. He did not refer to it as a community, but he still treated it as one. The relationships that developed in the colleges could turn young men into lifelong friends or lifelong enemies. Jewel earned his bachelor of divinity in 1551; by the accession of Mary in 1553, Jewel had made contact with reformers such as Richard Cox, Laurence Humphrey, William Whittingham, and John Proctor, and these men proved to be consistent sources of support throughout his Elizabethan career. However, Jewel also met the man who would become his nemesis while attending Oxford: Thomas Harding. The two men’s lives developed along remarkably similar lines before they finally faced each other in their fierce polemical battle of the 1560s, as Lucy Wooding has mentioned in the introduction to this volume. On the accession of Mary, Jewel maintained his reforming faith, while Harding recanted and returned to Catholicism. Harding’s decision could have been influenced by his own network of scholars: Henri de Vocht’s biographical article of Harding suggested that he was influenced by several of his college fellows “who were to be among the most learned of the Romanists under Mary and Elizabeth.”8 This included four of the men who would later support Harding in his controversy against Jewel: Nicholas Sander, John Martial, Thomas Stapleton, and John Rastell. Thus it was not only Jewel who developed a network of scholars during his years at Oxford. The foundation of his opposition was laid at the same time.

The Connection to Peter Martyr Vermigli Peter Martyr, as he was commonly known in England, was a reformer who left Italy for exile in 1542 and arrived in Oxford in 1548. He brought Jewel into a circle of foreign and domestic reformers in England whose similar views on doctrine expanded the collaborative reforming community

John Jewel’s Early Life  21

of which Jewel was a part. This circle influenced the direction of the Edwardian Reformation (1547–53), by participating in disputations and assisting Martyr himself in publishing works on the sacrament. Many historians, such as Torrance Kirby and Anne Overell, as well as theologians such as Andreas Löwe, G. W. Bromiley, and Gary Jenkins, all describe Jewel as an admirer or a disciple of Martyr. This implies that Jewel had very few thoughts of his own, and the resulting images are not flattering.9 However, evidence from letters between Martyr, Jewel, and other English reformers, as well as other contemporary accounts of Jewel, do not put Martyr and Jewel’s relationship in that light. It would be far more accurate to describe Martyr and Jewel’s relationship as one of close friends, or even family. Martyr’s biographer, Josiah Simler, dedicated his 1563 Oratio of Martyr’s life to Jewel and, in his Latin dedication, said, “For you [Jewel] accounted him [Martyr] in the place of a father, and he in like manner most willingly confessed you to be unto him in age a son and in dignity a father.”10 This suggests that neither party felt that Jewel was inferior, which would suit their history together. After all, they had begun their relationship as near equals: as Anne Overell points out, in 1547 Martyr was not yet a well-respected giant of theological debate.11 Similarly, Salvatore Corda suggests that Martyr was neither famous nor innovative in his theology before he came to England.12 Martyr’s later reputation as a reformer is often projected backward to this time in Oxford, and it is easy to forget that in 1547 Martyr had only published two short works and that he had only left the Catholic Church five years before. Although we know that Jewel began to appreciate Martyr’s teaching very quickly, there is no evidence that Jewel was, as Gary Jenkins suggests, in thrall to Martyr. Jewel was not a youth when Martyr arrived; he had already established a reputation as a scholar through his studies in Oxford and his position as a teacher. It is easy to find evidence of Jewel’s work with Martyr in Jewel’s later works and assume that it means that Martyr completely changed Jewel’s doctrinal beliefs and made him a sort of miniature version of himself. This does not consider the way Martyr and the reformers worked, which was in a community that shared ideas and aimed for unity and truth. As the theologian and ecumenist Paul Avis argues, the reformers believed that “unity must be in verity,” so they “pitted an apostolic succession of true doctrine against an apostolic succession of unworthy

22  Defending the Faith

prelates.”13 They chose to align their beliefs as much as possible so that they could stand united against the arguments of the Roman church. Within such a community, it is not surprising to find similar ideas shared among contemporaries. Patrick Collinson points out that these reformers “were all reading the same Bible, the same St. Paul, [so] we need to be ultra-cautious in asserting that B was influenced by A.”14 It is far more likely that influence moved horizontally, as ideas and interpretations were exchanged freely between fellow members of the reforming community. The relationship between Jewel and Martyr began early in 1548, soon after Martyr arrived in Oxford. They probably met through John Parkhurst, and the two men developed a friendship that might well have been based on their common interest in education.15 Both were popular lecturers, and both combined their scholarly writings with their teaching. Martyr valued education highly; he preached on the importance of studying theology at least three times while in England, a theme that also frequently appeared in Jewel’s sermons. This reflected their shared belief in the importance of educated preachers in the business of promoting a balanced, reformed faith. Jewel continued to preach about this even after his return from exile and once presented that message to the queen herself.16 Jewel joined the small group of men who gathered at Martyr’s house for private study and lectures, later described by Josiah Simler as all of Martyr’s friends who “loved the pure and true doctrine.”17 During their meetings, members discussed the major religious texts of the day, which were often used to promote the cause of reform. An example can be seen in their work on the Saying of the Sacrament of Thanksgiving, a document on the Eucharist written by Martyr, which the group discussed and adapted to prepare it for distribution. According to Marven Anderson, it was then dedicated to the Duke of Somerset and later used by Cranmer to “guide the Prayer Book through Parliament.”18 Thomas Harding was a member of this group, although he was never at its core. As he said in his 1566 Rejoinder to John Jewel, “You know M[aster] Jewel, no man better, how far I was from [Martyr’s] inward familiaritie whereunto you were admitted.”19 Although it is difficult to determine whether Harding was actually excluded or just perceived himself as such, there is certainly a possibility that the group made enemies out of people whose views did not entirely align with their own. However, Jewel seemed to remember Harding as a member of the reforming

John Jewel’s Early Life  23

community at this point. He later marveled at how Harding’s conversion back to the Roman church coincided perfectly with the death of Edward and the accession of Mary.20 Martyr’s most vocal opponent was Richard Smyth, who had held the position of Regius Professor of Divinity from 1536 until it was transferred to Martyr in 1548. Their conflict came to a head in 1549, when Smyth demanded that Martyr face him in a debate, to which Martyr agreed. Soon after, Smyth fled the university, but the disputation still took place. Significantly, Jewel was part of it: he acted as a notary for Martyr, which meant that he was tasked to write down what was being said while people were speaking and to act as a legal witness that what was written down was a true representation of what had occurred. Martyr acknowledged a debt to him in the published version of the debate: in the preface, he praised Jewel’s work and expressed gratitude for Jewel’s help in preparing the manuscript for publication.21 Being Martyr’s notary for this disputation put Jewel at the forefront of developments in the reformation of the church. It showed him how to apply scriptural knowledge to real-life issues and how to argue from a historical context. This would later help him fullfil his tasks as defender of the Elizabethan church. The 1549 disputation greatly enhanced Martyr’s reputation as a reformer, and he was involved in even more projects from 1550 to the death of Edward in 1553. Perhaps the most significant of these was the rewriting of the ecclesiastical laws.22 This project brought Martyr into closer contact with other members of the reforming community: it was probably then that he met the prominent reformer Walter Haddon, the future martyr Rowland Taylor, and William Cecil, who would become Elizabeth’s secretary of state.23 These connections proved beneficial not only to Martyr but also to Jewel. Jewel had the opportunity to go to court with Martyr during this time and gained his first preferment as a rector in Sunningwell, a parish approximately four miles south of Oxford.24 After Mary took the throne in 1553, Peter Martyr’s influence in the upper echelons of government vanished. He went into exile almost immediately, while Jewel remained in Oxford. He still had a reputation as a scholar and a lecturer, but once Martyr was disgraced, that very reputation became a liability. It was, after all, built on an association with the reforming community.25 Jewel was almost immediately expelled from Corpus Christi, but he did not actually leave Oxford. He was accepted into Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) and managed to continue

24  Defending the Faith

working at Broadgates without open conflict until 1554. Then, Cranmer and his friends Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley, bishop of London, were compelled to participate in the Oxford disputation. Jewel acted as notary for Cranmer and Ridley by recording their arguments and ensuring that they were represented faithfully in the official record.26 With this connection, it is not surprising that when royal visitors came to Oxford later that same year, Jewel was among the first to be presented with articles to sign that supported the Roman church. According to nineteenth-century biographers Charles LeBas and John Ayre, Jewel was given no time to deliberate or consult with his friends. He was told to sign them or be immediately killed by fire.27 This might have been an empty threat, since the Marian burnings had not yet begun in 1554, but Jewel may have believed it. He gave in and signed the articles. Ironically, his subscription seems to have provided him with the impetus to make a stand for his faith. Just a few months after he signed, Jewel fled Oxford. He managed to escape from England early in 1555 and soon found himself in Frankfurt, embroiled in a conflict over liturgy in the English exiles’ church. It was during this conflict that Richard Cox famously insisted that the exile congregation would “have the face of an English Church” and use Cranmer’s liturgy.28 This determination to maintain the standards of late-Edwardian reform shows that there was already a nationalistic element to the reformed faith in England. As the theologian John New suggests, this was reflected in the bitterness of the Frankfurt struggle. There were larger issues at stake than the format of the service: the core of the debate lay in the “contrary notions of the true nature of the church” that were held by different participants.29 Jewel’s views aligned with those of Martyr, Cox, and other members of the reforming community with whom he had worked during the Edwardian Reformation, and he maintained those views throughout his time in Frankfurt. When Jewel left that troubled community, he joined Peter Martyr in Strasbourg and became his amanuensis and study companion. In 1556, he accompanied Martyr to his new post at the university in Zurich, which had a strong but transient population of English exiles. Thomas Lever, Robert Horne, Richard Chambers and others all stopped there at one point or another. Men such as John Parkhurst, and James Pilkington, who were more settled in the area, joined Martyr’s inner circle. They

John Jewel’s Early Life  25

discussed and contributed to Martyr’s work, just as the group in Oxford had assisted with Martyr’s Saying of the Sacrament of Thanksgiving. After the martyrdom of Cranmer, who had been a friend and patron to most of them, these men encouraged Martyr to take up Cranmer’s work against Bishop Stephen Gardiner regarding the Eucharist. They both funded the project and assisted him in the writing of it, which resulted in the Defensio Doctrinae de Sancrosancto, published in 1559.30 By that time, many of the men in that group had already returned to England, including Jewel. Martyr sent him a copy of it, which is still extant in the Magdalen College library in Oxford, in the collection of books that once made up Jewel’s personal library. Martyr’s appreciation of Jewel is shown in the inscription on the title page: “amico suo et hospiti charissimo d[omino] jo. juell A.M. petrus martyr d.d.”31 Jewel’s appreciation of Martyr is shown in his detailed examination of the book itself: he underlined passages arguing against ubiquitarianism, indexed particular arguments using a numbering system, and starred key points. Both the inscription and Jewel’s use of the book further supports the image of Jewel and Martyr as scholarly colleagues and friends who were constantly engaged in exchanging knowledge.

Conclusion Through his community of exiles in Zurich, Jewel developed closer relationships with many of the English reformers he had known while learning and teaching at Oxford. Significantly, many of these reformers became fellow clerics of the Elizabethan Church of England and developed a mutual self-identity that was based on their exile experience. As Philip Hughes notes, the majority of the reformers who had lived in Strasbourg and Zurich emerged from exile “very conscious that they [were] one in faith with those continental theologians who, in Cranmer’s time, had filled the chairs of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge.”32 Part of this awareness involved their unique definition of what constituted the church of Christ and how important it was to convince the Romanists to accept it. The experience of exile thus reinforced Jewel’s sense of community and expanded his scholarly network. It cemented his relationships with the men he had worked with at Oxford and gave him opportunities to develop new relationships with both English and continental reformers.

26  Defending the Faith

New opportunities arose once he returned to England in March 1559: through supporters such as William Cecil and Archbishop Matthew Parker, he soon had the opportunity to take on a leadership role. His first tasks were to preach in the Lenten series of court sermons and then to participate in the Oxford disputation of 1559. Soon after, he was assigned to be a royal visitor, and by July 1560 he was bishop of Salisbury. From there, his contributions as a polemicist, apologist, and preacher began, cementing his reputation as a great defender of the Church of England.

Notes 1. James McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 76. 2. Mark Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 39. 3. R. A. Houlbrooke, ed., The Letter Book of John Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, Compiled during the Years 1571–1575 (Norfolk Record Society, 1974–75), 20. 4. Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 10. 5. Houlbrooke, John Parkhurst, 63. 6. Wyndham Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 4–5. 7. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 4:1302–3. Thanks to Paul Simpson for his help with the translation. 8. Henri de Vocht, “Thomas Harding,” The English Historical Review 35, no. 138 (1920): 233–34. 9. G. W. Bromiley, John Jewel, 1522–1572, the Apologist of the Church of England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1960), accessed November 21, 2010, http://www.churchsociety.org/index

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

.asp; Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 4; William Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), 39; Jenkins, John Jewel, 13, 23; Gary Jenkins, “Peter Martyr and the Church of England after 1558,” in Peter Martyr Vermigli and the European Reformations: Semper Reformanda, ed. Frank James III (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 69; M. A. Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–c. 1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 115. Joseph McLelland and Gervaise Duffield, The Life, Early Letters and Eucharistic Writings of Peter Martyr (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1989), 23. M. A. Overell, “Peter Martyr in England 1547–1553: An Alternative View,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 1 (1984): 88, 90–3. Salvatore Corda, Veritas Sacramenti: A Study in Vermigli’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 57. Paul Avis, “Article Review: John Jewel: Anglicanism’s Bane or Blessing?,” Ecclesiology 4 (2008): 349–50. Patrick Collinson, “The Fog in the Channel Clears,” in The Reception of

John Jewel’s Early Life  27 the Continental Reformation in Britain, ed. Polly Ha and Patrick Collinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 36. 15. John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials; relating chiefly to religion, and the reformation of it, and the emergencies of the Church of England, under King Henry, vol. 2 (London, 1721), 208. 16. See John Everitt Booty, “The Bishop Confronts the Queen: John Jewel and the Failure of the English Reformation,” in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History, ed. Frank Forrester Church and Timothy George (Leiden: Brill, 1979). 17. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2:207; McLelland and Duffield, Life, Early Letters, 63. 18. Marven Anderson, “Vista Tigurina: Peter Martyr and European Reform (1556–1562),” Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 2 (1990): 192. 19. Thomas Harding, A rejoindre to M. Iewels replie (London, 1566), sig. CCCiiir–CCCiiiv. 20. John Jewel, A replie vnto M. Hardinges answered by perusing whereof the discrete, and diligent reader may easily see, the weake, and unstable grounds of the Romaine religion (London, 1565), sig. *1. 21. Joseph C. McLelland, trans. and ed., The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, Peter Martyr Library, vol. 56 (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 2000), 4.

22. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2:365. 23. Overell, Italian Reform, 117. 24. Jewel, Works, 4:ix; Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2:70–71. 25. Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 39. 26. Charles LeBas, The Life of Bishop Jewel, Theological Library 11 (London: Rivingtons, 1835), 31; Jewel, Works, 4:xi; Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 13. 27. Jenkins, John Jewel, 38; LeBas, Life of Jewel, 30; Jewel, Works, 4:xi. 28. Edward Arber, ed., A Brief Discourse of the Troubles Begun in Frankfurt (London: Eliot Stock, 1908), 54. 29. John F. H. New, Anglican and Puritan: The Basis of Their Opposition, 1558–1640 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1964), 38. 30. Joseph McLelland, The Visible Words of God: An Exposition of the Sacramental Theology of Peter Martyr Vermigli (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957), 47. 31. “To his friend and dearest guest, Lord [Bishop] John Jewel Master of Arts, Peter Martyr gave this as a gift.” See Peter Martyr, Defensio Doctrinae de sacrosancto eucharisti (Magdalen College Oxford Library, Shelfmark T.12.44). Thanks to William Grant for his help with the translation. 32. Philip Hughes, Reformation in England, Part Three: “True Religion Now Established” (London: Hollis and Carter, 1954), 69, 71.

Chapter 2

The Homiletical Theologian Jewel’s Self-Identity as Preacher of the Word

André A. Gazal Thomas Harding impugned Jewel’s theological training in his Answer to the bishop’s Challenge Sermon when he wrote, “Deny your private judgment, and estimation of your long study in divinity, which you acknowledge in your replies, and of your great cunning in the same, and you shall evidently see and remember that your time hath been most bestowed in the study of humanity and of the Latin tongue, and concerning divinity your most labor hath been employed to find matter against the church rather than about serious and exact discussing of the truth.”1 Harding sarcastically dismisses Jewel’s formal study of theology as brief and superficial, noting that his primary expertise lay in the areas of Latin literature and humanities, which would have included rhetoric. The remark implies that, at best, the bishop is a theological amateur, and at worst, he is not qualified for his episcopal office. In fact, Harding shows his refusal to acknowledge Jewel’s legitimate occupancy of his office by frequently addressing him as “Master Jewel” rather than “Bishop Jewel.”2 Harding then castigates Jewel’s methodology as being mostly negative in that he uses theological material largely to attack the church rather than to construct doctrine positively. Jewel responds to Harding’s characterization of his theological training accordingly: “And yet I see no great cause why any man should seek so greatly to disadvantage me in respect of mine age and study. For it is well known that I, although unworthy of that degree, proceeded to bachelor of divinity, in the university of Oxford, one whole year and more before Mr. Harding. Indeed, I grant I could not

32  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist

read all the councils, and fathers of the church both Greeks and Latins, in seven days, as Harding could.”3 Responding to what he rightly perceived as a scurrilous attack on not only his theological training but also his experience as a divine, Jewel defends his credentials. He cites his receipt of the bachelor of divinity degree, which he gleefully notes occurred a year before Harding, who was about six years older, attained the same degree. Furthermore, Jewel matches Harding’s sarcasm by acknowledging the latter’s incredibly exhaustive reading of all the church councils as well as the Greek and Latin fathers in one week, a period corresponding to his conversion to Catholicism shortly after Mary’s accession. Despite the highly personal nature of Jewel’s and Harding’s dispute, an issue that becomes apparent throughout this aspect of the debate is Jewel’s standing as a theologian and hence his qualification to be both a bishop and chief apologist for England’s national church. Harding’s comment above draws a connection between Jewel’s use of theology and his training as a rhetorician. Before the commencement of Mary’s reign in 1553, Jewel held the post of reader of humanities and rhetoric at Corpus Christi College at Oxford. As Reader, Jewel would have lectured on the Latin rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian as well as the historians Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Suetonius, along with Pliny for natural history; he was to lecture on these authors Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, beginning at eight in the morning, throughout the academic year.4 On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, Jewel would have taught on Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terrance, or Plautus.5 Furthermore, on feast days he was required to give public readings and lectures on Horace or Persius, as assigned by the president of the college.6 Finally, three times a week during the regular term and on his vacations, Jewel was expected to read privately Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae, Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Atticae, and the Miscellanea by Angelo Polizanio.7 Given the nature of his post and the authors he taught, certainly Jewel was an expert in Latin literature and in the discipline that these specific works supported, rhetoric. However, this humanistic training and instruction served theological ends. At Corpus Christi, every fellow was required to be ordained into the priesthood within a year of obtaining his master of arts degree.8 Jewel, having received his master’s degree in 1544, was not ordained until 1551. Nevertheless, this path from master’s degree to ordination confirmed the ethos of Corpus that the arts course, with its strong emphasis in the

The Homiletical Theologian  33

study of Latin and Greek for the purpose of comprehending the scriptures and the church fathers, served as the best preparation for the study of theology.9 In 1552, Jewel received the degree of bachelor of divinity, for which the master of arts was prerequisite.10 Thus it may be rightly ascertained that Jewel’s education and teaching in the arts actually prepared him for the theological method he would employ. In this regard it should be noted from the outset that Jewel’s method, though theological, is not systematic or scholastic. Rather, Jewel utilizes a method regarded by early modern theologians like George Sohn, the author of De Verbo Dei et Ejus Tractatione (1588), as “ecclesiastical or popular” (ecclesiastica seu popularis).11 Whereas the scholastic approach was used in the academic context of the universities, the “ecclesiastical” or “popular” approach characterized the discourse of preachers who conveyed theological content within the church, therefore addressing a broader audience.12 Because Jewel employs this “ecclesiastical” approach, none of the writings constituting his vast literary corpus are systematic treatises, even though he deals with obviously theological subjects. Rather, they are either sermons or, in the case of the Apology and Defence, polemical works. However, even the polemical works reveal the method Jewel consciously employed, which was this “ecclesiastical,” “popular,” or simply homiletic approach. Jewel enunciates the principles of this methodology in a sermon he preached while still at Oxford, in which the future bishop highlights what he regarded as the minister’s central task, and therefore his own—preaching the word of God. The proceeding discussion will analyze Jewel’s exposition of these principles as outlined in his St. Mary’s Sermon in order to establish his self-understanding as a preacher of the word of God. In so doing, this examination will also demonstrate that Jewel viewed homiletical discourse as his prime means of erecting his theology. Specifically, he treated the homiletical and the theological synonymously. His theology of preaching was in essence the key to his theological method. Upon receiving the degree of bachelor of divinity, Jewel preached a sermon at the University Church of St. Mary’s at Oxford on 1 Peter 4:11: “If any man speak, let him talk as the words of God.”13 Given the text of the sermon as well as the occasion upon which the future apologist preached it, the discourse could be read as Jewel’s own understanding of the theological task.

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After establishing the historical context of the passage, Jewel succinctly states his conception of the purpose of collegiate study at Oxford in relation to the text: “This is the portion of scripture that I judged most fit for this time and place. For, because therefore that partly we are entered into the holy ministry, and partly, as I hope, we have already directed the course of studies to that point, we shall be taught in this place, how the heavenly office is to be garnished, that our labour may in time to come be very profitable to the church of God, and the holy gospel be most largely spread.”14 When read against the context of Jewel’s entire collegiate career as both student and teacher, it becomes apparent that he had in mind here the whole course of university study beginning with the arts course and culminating in the discipline of theology. University study had as its primary objective, then, preparation for the ministry.15 Jewel next elucidates the three points upon which he constructs his sermon: “first, that a preacher should speak; secondly, what he should speak; thirdly, how he should speak, that it may be understanded.”16 All these points refer to the task of preaching. Essentially, Jewel’s sermon is a manifesto of a Christian style or rhetoric.17 Jewel next gives the summary answers to each of the above points: first, that it is not a good preacher “which never speaketh any thing to the congregation”; second, that a preacher must set forth the word of God, rather than “old wives’ fables”; and last of all, that the word of God “must be handled reverently, and worthily, according to the dignity of the matter.”18 For Jewel, the defining feature of the preacher’s task was what he preached—that is, the holy scriptures. Furthermore, preaching entailed not only what was preached but how it was preached. The divine nature or “dignity” of the Word required the preacher to treat it with absolute reverence that involved the complete subordination of his person to the majesty of the text. David Wieser captures Jewel’s attitude toward the person of the preacher in relation to the Word most aptly when he says, “The essence of good preaching, then, is the effacement of the Preacher’s own personality. In his total submission to the precepts of Christ, his personality finds its truest expression. The importance of this to Jewel’s prose style is considerable. He speaks not as a creator but as a messenger, an ambassador, an interpreter of God’s Word.”19 As a preacher, Jewel sternly warns his fellow preachers (e.g., graduates in theology who are also graduates in the arts) that God himself has commanded them in the scriptures to instruct the people in their charge

The Homiletical Theologian  35

concerning the ways of godliness: “all the scriptures do sufficiently warn us of our duty, God himself hath commanded nothing at any time, either more often, or else with more weighty words, than that his people should be instructed to know him, themselves, and godliness.”20 Instruction in biblical knowledge concerning God, self, and godliness has “seemed to God a help both very firm and very great to the making up of his church.”21 A close reading of the sermon suggests that “God,” “self,” and “godliness” represent three broad categories into which Jewel relegates biblical teaching, a scheme not totally dissimilar to the approach John Calvin takes in the first book of his Institutes.22 Furthermore, the preaching of biblical doctrine has as its objective the edification of the church. The preaching of the Word has been God’s means whereby he extricated believers from spiritual bondage and brought them into the freedom of the Gospel.23 Preachers must remain vigilant in their endeavor to preach the Word constantly: “Except we take heed, except we look about, except we put to study and diligence, all things will easily slide and fall into their former estate.”24 For Jewel the main reason for such vigilance in preaching was more than apparent. Satan actively seeks to destroy commitment to God’s Word: “He keepeth scout-watch always, he is never wearied; he hath brought in so many vices, so much ignorance, so great blindness, that there is no place in which a preacher ought to be idle.”25 In fact, the preacher’s active exercise of his vocation restrains satanic activity. The silence of the preacher’s voice results in spiritual degradation: “And as, if the sun were taken away from the world, all things should be left dark, disparkled, and confounded; so if the voice of the pastor be taken out of the church, religion is left at [ages] six and seven; it is left blind, troubled; all things are mingled with error, superstition, and idolatry: of great weight is it to be a steward of the house of God.”26 Given that Jewel was preaching this sermon during the reign of Edward VI, it is likely that he alluded here to the possibility of England returning to the “superstition” of the Roman church in the event the evangelical king died and was succeeded by his Catholic sister, Mary, who would remove the preaching of the Word. Nevertheless, being fully cognizant of the possibility of some reversion to “superstition,” Jewel avers, “The gospel, religion, godliness, the health of the church dependeth of us alone.”27 The well-being of the church depends on the preacher proclaiming the Word—so much so that “except we do this, we do nothing, we serve to no use.”28

36  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist

Furthermore, although as a university don and reader of humanities and rhetoric, Jewel valued the liberal arts as preparation for theological study, he does not conceive of the pastoral task as mere study for its own sake but as an active endeavor of teaching. To this effect the bishop opines, “It belongeth unto a pastor, not so much to have learned many things, as to have taught much.”29 It can be inferred from the larger context of the sermon that Jewel believed learning must serve the purpose of teaching scripture. More emphatically, he declares, “For God would not have us idle bellies, but he would have us both be interpreters of his mind, ministers of Jesus Christ, attornies of the people before the Lord of Sabaoth, the light of the world, salt, angels, and the sons of God to be called; and we are appointed to govern, not dumb cattle, not wild beasts; but the flock of the Lord, but the sons of God, but the brethren of Christ.”30 It should be noted that after vividly describing the nature of the preaching office with these rather striking metaphors above, Jewel connects it with pastoral care. The preacher, as “interpreter” of God’s mind revealed in scripture, representative of Christ to the congregation, and advocate of the latter before the Lord of Hosts, shows himself to be the shepherd of the flock committed to his charge. Jewel implies that preaching the Word enables the pastor to intercede before the Lord on behalf of the congregation. The office of preacher is essential to the welfare of the church. In elaborating on his second point, as to what the minister is to preach, Jewel insists, “The truth must be spoken, not lies; the scriptures, not fables; the precepts of the highest God, and not the dreams of men. For religion is to be ordered, not by our judgment, but by the word of God.”31 He proceeds to demonstrate his conviction that only the scriptures are to be preached by appealing to scripture itself: “The prophets always say, ‘The word of the Lord,’ ‘the vision of the Lord,’ ‘the voice of the Lord’: ‘this saith the Lord’: ‘hear the Lord.’”32 Also in referring to the practice of Jesus in debating with the Pharisees and Saducees, Jewel observes that “he never had recourse unto the rabbis, but always to the word of the Lord.”33 By means of scriptural metaphor, Jewel assigns what seems to be a sacramental quality to scripture itself: “This is that river of water flowing abroad into life everlasting. This is that flesh, this is that blood of Jesus Christ, this is that only both most delicate and most wholesome food of our souls.”34 Also Jewel understands scripture to function offensively:

The Homiletical Theologian  37

“With this only sword the devil is overcome, with this only stone Goliath is laid along, with this only maul the roughness and hardness of hearts is softened and overcome.”35 Without these dual sacramental and offensive functions of the Word, “religion” could not “flourish”; “nor faith be confirmed, or the church kept within the limits of her duty.”36 Neglect of the Word devastates the church.

•

This state of affairs prevailed in England until fairly recently because “religion depended not on the word of God, but on the will of man.”37 For Jewel, this is the basic cause for neglect of God’s Word: the elevation of human judgment over it. So that they may together prevent any reversion to the above apostasy, Jewel urges his fellow preachers “that we neither add any thing to the word of God, nor take ought therefrom, nor that we bow to the right hand or the left.”38 He then goes on to attribute the clergy’s prior claim and exercise of temporal authority to deviation from this principle. Moreover, to reclaim their primary role as preachers of the Word, members of the clergy must repudiate the possession of temporal power in obedience to Christ’s commandment. As ambassadors of Christ, they have only one function: to bring forth God’s Word to God’s people.39 Jewel’s third point, how the scriptures are to be taught, reveals what could be regarded as his methodology for preaching. To teach scripture, “not only wisdom and fidelity, but also wisdom and foresight is to be used.”40 It is to this principle of “foresight” that Jewel relates the last words of his text: “Let him speak as the words of God.”41 Such foresight includes sincerity. The preacher’s character must represent the person of Christ: “But Christ hath not taught dissimulation and hypocrisy. He rather teacheth this, that pastors may have in mind that they represent the person of Christ; that they, being induced through the greatness and worthiness of the thing itself, may so reverently do their office that all men may perceive that it is a heavenly business which they have taken upon them. For the image of God himself must shine in him that is a minister of God.”42 The preacher’s life, as well as his speech, must speak God’s Word: “For, when as we profess God with our mouth, but deny him with our deeds, we fray away the unlearned multitude by our example from religion; and the thing that of all other is most divine we defile, not with unpure hands, but with unpure manners.”43 Hypocrisy corrupts and abuses God’s Word, “for, if we live filthily and wickedly, and bring into the pulpit

38  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist

nothing but a rolling of the tongue and impudency, whatsoever we speak, we speak it not either as it should, or else as the words of God.”44 Correct preaching of the Word involves certifying the contents of scripture with an exemplary life. According to Jewel two other things are requisite to handling the Word “according to the worthiness thereof.”45 The first is “that we be not weakened nor feebled by fear,” and the second “that out of the gospel we reap no jot or piece of praise unto ourselves.”46 Concerning the first, the word of God must be “stiffly and manfully upholden and maintained” in order for it to appear as such.47 Again the character of the preacher corroborates the contents of the Gospel, but specifically by means of his courage. On the contrary, it is error that is rightfully “fearful” as it flees the sight of biblical truth.48 The courage of the faithful preacher is derived from that of scriptural truth that “never abaseth itself, never flattereth any, dissembleth nothing, feigneth nothing, is unfearful, free, bold to shew her face, and high.”49 Specifically, scriptural courage comes to the preacher by way of Christ’s promise to “be the revenger of the injury done to us.”50 The courage and frankness of scripture manifests itself in the bravery of the preacher who preaches its truth.

•

The second prerequisite for preaching the Word of God worthily is humility. A “preacher” must not “have too great a conceit of himself, but that he think that that the function and office happened unto him from above from God, that he should discharge his duty diligently, and with very great fear, and that he should think that he is occupied not in his own business but in God’s business.”51 Jewel supports this self-abasing attitude required for the preacher with the observation that scripture, that which he is to preach, refers to him not as a prince or king but as a minister and servant.52 Hence “the Lord hath not therefore committed his talent unto us, that we should convert it to our own commodity. For he would not have us preachers and criers of our own wit and skill, but of his will; neither do we for any other cause carry about this treasure in earthen vessels, than for that it should be the brightness and clear light of the power of God.”53 Ultimately the preacher is only a steward of the Word of the God and of the gifts conferred upon him by the God of that Word to preach it. Jewel concludes the sermon by admonishing his fellow preachers to have the mind of the apostles.54

The Homiletical Theologian  39

Jewel’s St. Mary’s sermon aids in ascertaining his theological method by revealing how the future bishop and apologist understood himself and his role in the church. He perceived himself as a preacher of the Word. His arts and theological training prepared him for the task of proclaiming this Word uncompromisingly with reverence and humility. What the reader encounters in this sermon is not a statement of rhetorical theory but rather one of rhetorical and homiletic practice. The homiletic function Jewel believed he was performing was one inextricably linked to the subject matter that it served—holy scripture. The act of preaching could never stand apart from it. The divine obligation to preach the Word was the only justification for the existence of the preaching office. Furthermore, for Jewel, the essential connection between the exercise of preaching and the scriptures preached was the character of the preacher himself, which vividly displayed before the congregation the contents of scripture orally averred. Finally, because Satan and his agent, the pope, as the enemies of God, constantly try to bring about the national church’s reversion to Roman superstition by subverting the Gospel, the preacher must steadfastly and vigilantly proclaim and defend the truth. Such offensive action on his part will edify and protect the church. Hence Jewel understood his own role in the national church as one “speaking as the words of God.” Given Jewel’s own assessment of himself and his role as a preacher, it is important therefore to approach his works from the standpoint of his self-understanding. Jewel conceived of himself as a preacher proclaiming and defending God’s Word, and therefore this is the theological starting place from which one should read his works. Most of the writings constituting the bishop’s voluminous corpus are sermons preached at St. Paul’s Cross, in his cathedral at Salisbury or before Queen Elizabeth at court (notwithstanding the St. Mary’s sermon preached at Oxford before theological students and faculty). Even his Apology and Defence of the Apology are sermonic in tone and style. Therefore, Jewel’s method, while somewhat theological given the subject matter that he spoke about, was primarily homiletical and not systematic. Jewel’s own writings do not indicate a distinction between the homiletical and the theological. It was actually the homiletical nature of his works that commended Jewel in the eyes of his contemporaries as an apologist and theologian. Jewel’s exceptional ability to marshal massive material with vigorous eloquence in defense of the Elizabethan settlement earned him, before the

40  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist

end of the sixteenth century, the distinction of the Church of England’s first major apologist, a distinction that led to the official publication of his collected works in 1611. This fact was even recognized by his enemies.55 Jewel’s stature as a theologian and apologist was affirmed by no less a prominent theologian than his mentor, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499– 1562), who, after reading his Apology, wrote him from Zurich on August 24, 1562: As for the Apology, it hath not only in all points and respects satisfied me, (by whom all your writings are so wonderfully well liked and approved), but it appeared also to Bullinger, and his sons and sons-in-law, and also Gualter and Wolfius, so wise, admirable, and eloquent, that they can make no end of commending it, and think that nothing in these days hath been set forth more perfectly. I exceedingly congratulate your talents upon this excellent fruit, the church upon this edifying of it, and England upon this honor; and beseech you to proceed in the same way you have entered.56 Vermigli, in this very telling statement, acknowledges the significant value of Jewel’s Apology not just for England but for the entire church in Europe. Vermigli also indicates that fellow reformers in Zurich such as Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), Rudolph Gualter (1519–1586), and Johann Wolph (1521–1571), who themselves were important theologians in their own right, praised the work as one that completely summarized not only the doctrine of the Church of England but that of contemporary reformed Christianity as well (at least the reformed Christianity established in Zurich). Vermigli, conveying not only his own assessment but also that of other prominent figures, confirms Jewel’s international stature as an apologist and theologian. Thus Jewel, on the basis of his own self-understanding as expressed in his St. Mary’s sermon and the testimony of his contemporaries, was a theologian, but one that most accurately would be called a homiletical theologian.

Notes 1. Cited from John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 1:91–92.

2. For an example of this, see Jewel, Works, 1:89. 3. Jewel, 1:98.

The Homiletical Theologian  41 4. James McConica, “The Rise of the Undergraduate College,” in The Collegiate University, ed. James McConica, vol. 3 of The History of the University of Oxford, ed. T. H. Aston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 21. 5. McConica, 21. 6. McConica, 21. 7. McConica, 21. 8. McConica, 28. 9. McConica, 28. 10. J. M. Fletcher, “The Faculty of Arts,” in The Collegiate University, ed. James McConica, vol. 3 of The History of the University of Oxford, ed. T. H. Aston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 195. 11. Donald Sinnema, “Reformed Scholasticism and the Synod of Dort (1618–19),” in John Calvin’s Institutes: His Opus Magnum: Proceedings of the Second South African Congress for Calvin Research, July 31–August 3, 1984 (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 1986), 473. 12. Sinnema, 473. 13. Jewel, Works, 2:950–64. This sermon was originally preached in Latin. 14. Jewel, 2:951. 15. This was the general attitude of Tudor academicians before and during the Reformation. See S. L. Greenslade, “The Faculty of Theology,” in The Collegiate University, ed. James McConica, vol. 3 of The History of the University of Oxford, ed. T. H. Aston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 295. 16. Jewel, Works, 2:951. 17. David K. Wieser, The Prose Style of John Jewel (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1973), 49. 18. Jewel, Works, 2:951. 19. Wieser, Prose Style, 48–49. 20. Jewel, Works, 2:952. 21. Jewel, 2:953. 22. See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T.

McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I.I.1, 35. 23. Jewel, Works, 2:953. 24. Jewel, 2:953. 25. Jewel, 2:953. 26. Jewel, 2:953. 27. Jewel, 2:953. 28. Jewel, 2:953. 29. Jewel, 2:953–54. 30. Jewel, 2:954. 31. Jewel, 2:955. 32. Jewel, 2:955. 33. Jewel, 2:955–56. 34. Jewel, 2:956. 35. Jewel, 2:956. 36. Jewel, 2:956. 37. Jewel, 2:957. 38. Jewel, 2:957. 39. Jewel, 2:957. 40. Jewel, 2:961. 41. Jewel, 2:961. 42. Jewel, 2:961. 43. Jewel, 2:962. 44. Jewel, 2:962. 45. Jewel, 2:962. 46. Jewel, 2:962. 47. Jewel, 2:962. 48. Jewel, 2:962. 49. Jewel, 2:962. 50. Jewel, 2:963. 51. Jewel, 2:963. 52. Jewel, 2:963. 53. Jewel, 2:963. 54. Jewel, 2:964. 55. Wieser, Prose Style, 1. 56. Hastings Robinson, ed., The Zurich Letters, first series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), 339.

Chapter 3

John Jewel at Paul’s Cross A Culture of Persuasion and England’s Emerging Public Sphere

Torrance Kirby The open-air pulpit in the precincts of St. Paul’s Cathedral known as “Paul’s Cross” can certainly be reckoned among the most influential of all public venues in early modern England. In a world where sermons generally served as the conventional means of adult education, as vital instruments of popular moral and social guidance, not to mention political control, Paul’s Cross stands out as London’s pulpit of pulpits; indeed, it lays claim to being the public pulpit of the entire realm and was arguably just as much a stage as a preaching station. For centuries, Paul’s churchyard had been a favored place for the reading of proclamations and all sorts of public announcements, both civic and religious. Authorized speakers expounded government policy and denounced heresy and rebellion here. Yet unlike the royal Abbey of Westminster, St. Paul’s belonged more to subjects than to princes. And despite official regulation, Paul’s Cross provided a popular forum for the articulation of diverse viewpoints in a restless market of religious and political ideas, a stage on which vital affairs of the nation were enacted. From the thirteenth century onward, Paul’s churchyard was one of the favored settings for popular protest, a place where the grievances of London’s citizenry were aired, and on occasion it was even the site of open rebellion. The historian Sparrow Simpson once observed that “a full history of Paul’s Cross would be a history of religion in England. Every

John Jewel at Paul’s Cross  43

great event, political and religious, whilst the Cross was standing, found here its eloquent defender or denouncer.”1 It was no exaggeration when another observed that “the English Reformation was accomplished from Paul’s Cross.” And to put the significance of this site into modern perspective, it is revealing to consider that the Occupy London encampment of October 2011 was headquartered on this very site in Paul’s Churchyard. So what role did Paul’s Cross play in the transformation of religious and political identities in early modern London? This chapter will approach this question by paying particular attention to the famous Challenge Sermon preached at Paul’s Cross in 1559 by John Jewel, shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth I. This was quite possibly the single most influential piece delivered at Paul’s Cross throughout the sixteenth century. This examination will demonstrate the striking growth in a popular “culture of persuasion” in London in the later sixteenth century, and with it the birth pangs of a modern arena of public discourse—a process the German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas famously described as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,2 although his attention was focused more on the later-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and more on events on the continent. Our claim is that so far as England is concerned, Paul’s Cross stood at the epicenter of this phenomenon of an emerging public sphere, an argument that will contribute to some of the major questions of current Reformation scholarship. Was the English Reformation a religious process or a political event? Was reform of religion and the church forcibly imposed from above, or did it percolate upward from below? Did the consent of individual subjects signify in this process, or was centralized authority the ultimately decisive factor? And was the process swift or slow? Historians of the Reformation have debated these questions heatedly for decades. G. R. Elton and Margaret Aston are for swift from above.3 A. G. Dickens and Diarmaid MacCulloch argue swift from below.4 Patrick Collinson maintains slow from below, while Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy insist upon slow to very slow (and never popular) from above.5 For a long time, the interpretation of the English Reformation has been dominated by a seemingly zero-sum struggle between the lingering influence of Whig historiography and its revisionist critics, with the latter in recent years tending to dominate the field. Some continue to portray the Reformation as religiously and politically progressive, while others

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defend the late-medieval church as vital and widely popular.6 In his splendid new book Liturgy and Literature, Tim Rosendale has recently argued most persuasively that the English Reformation was “simultaneously a vertical and coercive exercise of state power and a horizontal distribution of political and religious authority,”7 and therefore must be viewed as both top-down and bottom-up. Viewed from the standpoint of an emerging public sphere, both positions hold some validity. Tudor religious reform subjected the English people to new, highly centralized, hierarchical structures of authority and, at the same time, acknowledged these same subjects as autonomous. The administration of the oath of supremacy is an instance of synthesis in the expansion of coercive power over individual subjects and the simultaneous validation of individual autonomy. In requiring the oath—for example, in the cases of Thomas More and John Fisher, both of whom refused and were subsequently executed—the state demanded universal submission by individuals to the duly constituted authority of the Crown; yet the very act of demanding that such an oath be taken by the state’s servants contained the even more radical implication that the consent of the individual subject to the constitutional order itself signified. A critical consequence of Reformation was that the spheres of private individual and the public communal interests came to be much more sharply defined over against each other than they had ever been under feudal conditions; and, at the same time, they became more than ever tightly bound together. This paradoxical tension between a radically inward Protestant subjectivity propelled by the soteriology of “justification by faith only” on the one hand, and the absolutist, centralizing hierarchical order of the early modern nation on the other, is worked out hermeneutically and synthesized in the crucible of an emerging public sphere. In short, a public sphere of discourse is called forth as an inevitable and necessary means of negotiating the gap, as it were, between an increasingly autonomous modern self and the ever-growing demands of loyalty placed upon subjects by their rulers. John Jewel’s Challenge Sermon was a crucial episode in this process. England was exceptional in early modern Europe for its high concentration within a single urban location of both the principal instruments of government and a large, relatively well-informed population. Unlike other European capitals, London enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the printing trade, almost entirely concentrated within the precincts of Paul’s

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churchyard. Consequently, it was significantly more feasible to engage and cultivate a sophisticated and active public opinion in London than in almost any other early modern city. Of even greater significance than the medium of print, however, was the spoken word. Many more Londoners heard a sermon at Paul’s Cross than had ever read a book or attended the theater. Throughout the sixteenth century, authorized preachers addressed the topical religious and political questions of the day from the outdoor pulpit of Paul’s Cross, located at the very heart of the city, often in the presence of thousands. These public sermons contributed substantively to the alteration of England’s national identity from a late-medieval sacramental culture into an early modern culture of persuasion, a momentous event that Charles Taylor has described as a revolution in “moral ontology” and the birth of modernity. Briefly stated, this revolution involves a gradual dismantling of the intricate hierarchical structures of late-medieval culture, achieved largely through popular dissemination of all the available instruments of persuasion—that is, by means of discursive argument, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice—through both pulpit and press.8 An emerging culture of persuasion accompanied by a secularizing process of disenchantment came to embody a new, recognizably modern paradigm of communal interaction.9 What we witness in Tudor sermons at Paul’s Cross is England’s gradual transformation from a ritually grounded, feudal representative publicity—that is to say, where public identity is perceived to be an attribute of hierarchical status—toward a recognizably modern, secular public sphere where the essence of publicity resides in an active realm of social discourse, an arena in which the main action is the effort to win over conscientious assent of an audience of discerning individuals to some argument, policy, or communal undertaking. There is in this emerging public sphere a new sense of the presence of the public through discourse rather than through the sanctified identity of an individual who personally embodies the public identity. A peculiarly persistent theme in sermons preached at Paul’s Cross throughout the mid-Tudor period was the sacraments and their significance, which also appeared in Jewel’s famous Challenge Sermon. In attending to Jewel’s sermon, we find ourselves at a critical point of intersection between sacramental culture and an emerging culture of persuasion. Our aim is to explore how such an undeniably esoteric theological discussion came to exert such marked influence on the formation

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of a public sphere of discourse. Jewel’s sermon is uniquely significant for setting out the broad terms of disputation between reformers and traditionalists alike, concerning the definition of England’s religious and political identity in what came to be called the “great controversy” of the 1560s. While Jewel’s formal challenge emphasized the avant-garde humanist reformers’ adherence to the authority of scripture and the traditional teaching of the primitive church up to the sixth century, the main substance of the sermon addresses the hermeneutics of sacramental presence, specifically how to interpret the relation between a sacramental sign (signum) and the mystical reality signified (res significata). Jewel’s Challenge Sermon constitutes an elaborate and, to modern eyes, arcane exploration of the principles of semiotics. His recasting of sacramental hermeneutics provides an impetus for a decisive shift away from medieval sacramental culture toward an early modern culture of persuasion during the Elizabethan period.10 At another level, Jewel’s sermon offers a helpful vantage point for testing the currently disputed question of the role played by the Reformation in the process commonly referred to as the “disenchantment of the world.”11 Finally, this chapter hopes to show that Jewel’s discussion of the hermeneutics of the sacrament can provide insight into the prominent influence that Paul’s Cross came to have in shaping England’s early modern political culture. In short, the claim is that Jewel’s recasting of sacramental hermeneutics served to stimulate an emerging culture of persuasion. And it is by this means that Paul’s Cross, more than any other institution, comes to exemplify the formation of England’s early modern public sphere—to quote Marshall McLuhan, at Paul’s Cross the medium is indeed the message.12 Such a reading of Tudor sermon culture presents a significant challenge to the modern observer. The proposal that religious discourse shapes emerging secular politics challenges deep assumptions that we share concerning toleration, religious pluralism, and also the long-established relegation of religion to the sphere of private interest, both constitutionally and in popular imagination. And yet this is a paradox that must be addressed when we approach the Tudor milieu—namely, that the institutions of modernity are erected on a foundation that would appear to be most profoundly at odds with a key precept of secular discourse, the relegation of religion to the realm of the private. And there is of course the more obvious paradox of a discourse on sacramental

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hermeneutics contributing to the dismantling of a sacramental culture. So in diverse ways Jewel’s Challenge Sermon was not only a challenge to his contemporary hearers; it challenges us, too, in our postmodern time and place.

John Jewel’s Challenge Sermon On November 26, 1559, having recently returned to England from almost five years of exile in Strasbourg and Zurich, Jewel preached his notorious challenge at Paul’s Cross. It was certainly the most famous sermon delivered there throughout Elizabeth’s long reign and arguably one of the most influential of all sermons preached at Paul’s Cross throughout the tumultuous course of the English Reformation(s). One contemporary observer, Henry Machyn, recorded that the sermon was attended by “as grett audyense as [has] bene at Powelles crosse” and that numerous courtiers were present.13 Taking as his text the eleventh chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, Jewel employed this decidedly public occasion to take up a topic from among those most hotly disputed in the sixteenth century, and certainly among the most popular at Paul’s Cross since the 1530s; namely, the web of doctrine concerning the hermeneutics of the Eucharist, with the focus of his argument chiefly upon the question of sacramental presence.14 Jewel offered to engage any and all comers in a public trial of the traditional scholastic teaching concerning the sacrifice of the Mass and transubstantiation—as argued recently by Richard Smith in his Book of Traditions and confirmed not long since by decree of the Council of Trent—whether it could be proved “out of any old doctor or father, or out of any general council, or out of the holy Scripture, or any one example out of the primitive church for the space of six hundred years after Christ.”15 Adhering to an Erasmian approach, Jewel’s aim was to distinguish the authority of scripture and patristic tradition from later scholastic dogmatic accretion: as Angela Ranson has argued, Jewel’s purpose was to formulate a durable definition of catholicity.16 The challenge triggered an extraordinary public sensation, with an echoing response elicited in both pulpit and press that was wholly without precedent in both volume and duration. Breaking the usual pattern, Jewel was invited to deliver the sermon a second time before the queen in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall on

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March 17, 1560, and he preached an expanded version a third time at Paul’s Cross two weeks later.17 Henry Cole, dean of St. Paul’s and a leading conservative, immediately took up Jewel’s challenge, and the letters exchanged between the two churchmen were published together with the sermon itself soon afterward.18 This was only the first skirmish. The public disputation sparked by Jewel’s sermon was to consume the theological energies of a small army of scholars and preachers in the course of the ensuing decade. A much expanded, polished, and widely circulated reworking of the sermon, published in Latin, constituted the government’s officially sanctioned response to Pope Pius IV’s invitation to England to send an ambassador to attend the final session of the Council of Trent.19 The enlarged Latin version of Jewel’s Apologia, as it was now titled, was soon translated back into English by the formidable Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon, second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Sir Francis Bacon, and as Lynne Magnusson argues, “The accuracy and stylistic distinction of her work received gratifying and immediate recognition when Archbishop Matthew Parker arranged publication of his manuscript copy, making her words the voice of the established church.”20 The published contributions of Jewel and his supporters, combined with the counteroffensive led by Thomas Harding and the English recusant exiles at the University of Louvain and Douai, led to the publication of more than fifty sermons, treatises, and pamphlets within just eight years of Jewel’s first appearance at Paul’s Cross. For England, such a sustained flood of printed works devoted to a single scholarly disputation was altogether without precedent.21 While the controversy swiftly expanded to include a broad selection of religious and political concerns—Jewel himself enumerated twenty-seven specific topics in his expanded Apology—there was, nonetheless, agreement on all sides that the essential core of the controversy was Jewel’s original question broached in his sermon at Paul’s Cross concerning the nature of sacramental presence. Over the course of the next decade, Paul’s Cross reverberated with repercussions of Jewel’s challenge and the printing houses in Paul’s churchyard were kept busy as never before. On April 30, 1564, Alexander Nowell, Henry Cole’s replacement as dean of St. Paul’s, preached at Paul’s Cross in response to Thomas Harding’s cogent Ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge.22 Attacks on Jewel in print swiftly multiplied and Dean Nowell was in the pulpit once again in November to reply to yet another: Thomas

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Dorman’s Defence of Catholyke Beleef dedicated to his patron Master Harding.23 As a consequence, Nowell and Dorman became involved in an exchange resulting in the publication of five books, with Dorman’s last volley returning to make a direct attack on Jewel’s original sermon. Harding answered Jewel a second time with his Confutation of the Apology, and Jewel preached again at Paul’s Cross in reply to Harding on May 27, 1565.24 At this point, Thomas Stapleton leapt into the fray with the publication of his massive tome Fortress of the Faith. Pulpit and press had become thoroughly intertwined in the furious pace of the great controversy. After being deprived of his prebend at the Cathedral of Chichester for refusal to take the oath of supremacy, Stapleton eventually joined William Allen at the English College in Douai. From there, Stapleton launched yet another salvo attacking Jewel’s reply to Harding, while in the meantime Jewel had begun to pull together his massive Defence of the Apology. As the controversy continued, continental scholars were drawn into the struggle to define England’s religious identity. In an open epistle addressed to Queen Elizabeth, Portuguese bishop Hieronymus Osorius cut to the chase, when he warned that Protestants “go about to pul insondre the fences and inclosures of all lawe and religion.” By breaking long-established theological assumptions and religious custom, “all feare is put to flight, and licentiouse living dothe raigne withoute comptrollment.” By virtue of Jewel’s heretical assertion of justification by faith alone and his repudiation of papal authority, Osorius states the nub of the moral-ontological difficulty: “There shall ryse manyfolde yea infinite religions one contrary to the other . . . for every man wyll invent a churche, according to his own fantasye.”25 Richard Shacklock, another Englishman at the University of Louvain, translated this Latin letter into English for a wider audience. As though it were a tennis match, Osorius was soon answered by the distinguished classicist and civil lawyer Walter Haddon. Such were the escalating stakes in what had plainly become a confrontation of epic proportion. The high profile of Paul’s Cross was not only decisive in precipitating the exchange, but it continued to function ever more prominently in the unfolding Elizabethan struggle to define a religious and national identity, for example, in the annual Accession Day sermons marking, and indeed celebrating, Elizabeth’s accession on November 17, 1558.26 All told, the contributions of Jewel and his allies combined with the counteroffensive led by the English recusant exiles centered at the English

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College in Douai and the University of Louvain produced more than forty treatises and pamphlets within seven years of the original Challenge Sermon at Paul’s Cross, with some contributions numbering in thousands of pages. Throughout this protracted torrent of words preached and published, participants in the great controversy tacitly acknowledged certain common rules of engagement. While the polemical tone from all quarters was almost invariably harsh and abrasive, there was a concerted attempt by all to employ rhetoric in order to persuade, to resolve the conscience through closely reasoned biblical exegesis, cogent argumentation, and especially through judicious interpretation of ecclesiastical tradition. In the context of recently intensified debate about the role of the Reformation in the process of the disenchantment of the world and the consequent emergence of a desacralized, secularized modernity, Jewel’s Challenge Sermon, together with the remarkable public debate it provoked, invites our renewed attention. The discussion of sacramental hermeneutics brings the early modern disenchantment thesis sharply into focus and therefore poses the possibility of shedding light on pivotal questions related to religious identity and the intellectual origins of modernity. When considering the historical significance of the moral-ontological assumptions about enchantment—that is claims regarding immanence in the world of the sacred and the supernatural—the locus par excellence for such a discussion from a sixteenth-century perspective is undoubtedly sacramental theology and more specifically sacramental presence. Jewel’s sermon and the controversy it provoked present a valuable test case to address some of the critical and controversial questions that face the modern historian who seeks to come to grips with disenchantment versus reenchantment, of modernizing versus sacralizing, issues that surround our question concerning a nascent public sphere. The hypothesis underpinning our approach is that we should engage very seriously the alien mentalité of participants in this controversy for whom theological principles and deep ontological assumptions implicit in sacramental hermeneutics play a primary role in shaping their understanding of religious and political institutions and practices.

Religious Identity and the Public Sphere In the thirty years between the launching of Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda campaign in 1533 and the publication of Jewel’s Apologia in 1562,

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the economy of religious discourse in England had undergone a truly remarkable transformation. On a substantive level, traditional common assumptions upheld for centuries concerning the nature of religious identity had been called into question. At the same time, on an instrumental level, the rhetorical means employed in the unfolding of this radical questioning of religious identity in both evangelical challenge and traditionalist response—whether through pulpit or press—were ineluctably bound up with the substantive content of the changes: increasingly the medium was the message.27 The conflict between Jewel and his opponents galvanized an array of issues aired in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross over the previous twenty-five years, and the main effect of the Challenge Sermon was to highlight the tension between two competing “moral ontologies” in a single focused issue.28 The explosive effect of Jewel’s challenge at Paul’s Cross derives from its role in clarifying the stakes. It is precisely the clarity of Jewel’s formulation of the question that sparks the great public debate of the 1560s. Issues that previously had been either largely implicit or disconnected had finally been rendered coherent and explicit. While a variety of questions occupied the preachers at Paul’s Cross in the period 1530 to 1560, we have already observed a recurring emphasis on two questions in particular: first, the nature of sacramental presence and the sacramental itself in terms of the doctrine of the Mass, and, second, the relation between religious and political power in light of the royal assumption of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The impact of Jewel’s challenge is to weave these two primary thrusts of controversy into a single, focused debate. Jewel proposes an explicit link between religious practices and sacramental phenomena, on the one hand, with questions surrounding the axioms underlying the communal framework. The sustained exchange between Jewel and his numerous recusant interlocutors of the Louvain school are evidence of an escalation in the stakes of public persuasion. The great controversy of the 1560s brings the question of religious identities into sharp focus, and both parties to the dispute recognize that the disputed axioms are definitive of a larger framework within which the more specific and particular concerns of religious identity are ultimately to be determined. It is the role of the pulpit in this public trial—within its ever-escalating spinoff through press and print—to employ every possible means of persuasion to bring an ever more discerning public to conscientious affirmation of the religious framework, the moral ontology, the fundamental axioms of interpretation that serve to shape political identity.

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The hermeneutics of the sacrament, its main corollaries and dogmatic supports—such as transubstantiation, veneration of the sacred elements, private masses for the departed, communion under one kind, prayers in the Latin tongue—become, on Jewel’s account, the definitive criteria for addressing, weighing, and finally judging a complete ontological framework. His invocation of a forensic model here is crucial. The challenge is presented rhetorically to the auditory as a judicial proceeding. A charge is leveled, the prosecution makes its case, the defense is heard, and after a final summing up, judgment is delivered—all in the context of a pulpit address in the presence of the citizenry of London. While the conduct of the trial no doubt presupposes the presence of the powerful agents of the Crown, Parliament, the church, the university, and the city—all of them represented in one way or another in the dramatic pageant of a sermon at Paul’s Cross—the real judges in this forensic model are the entire assembled audience. The trial is conducted in the open court of public adjudication. All of the devices of persuasion are aimed ultimately at securing conscientious embrace of the argument by the auditory. The judgment of the learned is certainly of consequence, but ultimate success will depend also on popular embrace of that judgment. Where does this newfound respect for popular judgment come from?

Moral Ontology and Signification The competing claims of traditional scholastic and Protestant humanist hermeneutics are most clearly evident in their respective treatment of the manner of the sacramental “presence” and the mode of its participation on the part of the worshipper. On the scholastic side, the doctrine of transubstantiation placed profound emphasis on the ontological immanence of the holy in the consecrated elements of the sacrament—a sacramental case, one might say, for a radical enchantment. So intimate is the bond between the sacramental sign (signum) and mystical reality signified by it (res significata) that traditional orthodoxy upheld an objectified real presence in the physical elements of the sacrament. In 1546 Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, summarized this doctrine in his tract A detection of the devils Sophistrie: “For what can be more evydently spoken of the presence of Christes naturall bodye and bloud, in the moost blessed sacrament of the aulter, then is in those wordes of scripture whiche oure Sauioure Christ ones said, and be infallible truth, and styl saith, in consecrations of

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this most holy Sacrament, by the common ministre of the churche. This is my body.”29 In the decrees of its thirteenth session in October 1551, the Council of Trent formally defined “that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood—the species [that is, the external appearance] only of the bread and wine remaining—which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation.”30 According to Thomas Harding, Jewel’s principal sparring partner as the great controversy unfolded, “When we speak of this blessed sacrament, we mean specially the thing received to be the very body of Christ, not only a sign or token of his body.”31 Ontological conversion of the physical elements of bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ is the very essence of “enchantment”: the signum becomes the res significata. According to Jewel’s main argument in the Challenge Sermon, this scholastic interpretation could not be sourced in scripture, nor in the teaching of the ancient church; the word “transubstantiation” itself was but “newly deuised and neuer once herd, or spoken of, before the councel of Laterane, holden at Rome, in the yere of our Lorde Mccxv [1215].”32 Jewel’s argument concerning the relative novelty of transubstantiation places the hermeneutics of presence at the forefront of his challenge.33 According to Jewel’s account in his Defense of the Apologie, “Three things herein we must consider: first, that we put a difference between the sign and the thing itself that is signified. Secondly, that we seek Christ above in heaven, and imagine not Him to be present bodily upon the earth. Thirdly, that the body of Christ is to be eaten by faith only, and none otherwise.”34 Here in a nutshell we have a hermeneutics of “disenchantment.” Jewel effectively adopts an Augustinian emphasis upon a figurative interpretation of “presence,” a reorientation that been promoted vigorously by Thomas Cranmer,35 Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Nicholas Ridley in the previous decade.36 Moreover, Jewel’s formulation of “figural presence” is almost word for word that argued by his mentor Vermigli in the Oxford disputation of 1549, a debate that had been precipitated by a challenge issued by Dr. Richard Smith.37 Among English humanist-evangelicals of the 1560s, there was nothing particularly original in Jewel’s interpretation of sacramental presence. Both Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer had been here before. When one considers that among the first polemical responses to Jewel’s sermon

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was Richard Smith’s Confutatio,38 the great controversy of the opening decade of Elizabeth’s reign was evidently a rematch. A decade earlier in 1549, Vermigli had inaugurated his tenure as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford with a set of lectures on the same text Jewel chose for his challenge at Paul’s Cross in 1559. Following his disavowal of his notorious Retractation Sermon, preached in the same pulpit in 1547, on the text “All men are liars,” Smith had been displaced by Vermigli’s appointment to the Regius chair. Jewel’s challenge, delivered just a few months after his return from Zurich where he had accompanied his mentor Vermigli into exile, must have struck at least the learned members of his auditory as a deliberate rekindling of the Oxford disputation of the previous decade. Jewel’s assertion of the distinction between signum and res significata was characteristic of an avant-garde humanist hermeneutics grounded chiefly in the authority of Augustine.39 Adhering to an Augustinian account, Jewel attaches particular significance to the liturgical formula sursum corda—“lift up your hearts”—as representing a preparation of the mind for the act of receiving the sacrament and pointing to its ontological distance; while the “figure” of the thing (the signum) is to be clearly distinguished from that which it represents—namely, the “thing signified” (res significata), nonetheless through a dynamic motion of the mind a connection between sign and signified could be effected through the act of reception. Jewel ties this sacramental hermeneutic to the logic of Augustine’s forensic account of justification, and this becomes the signature teaching of the Challenge Sermon. To explain “figural presence” Jewel quotes Augustine: “‘How shall I hold him,’ saith Augustine, ‘which is absent? How shall I reach my hand up to heaven, to lay hold upon him that sitteth there?’ He answereth, ‘Reach thither thy faith, and then thou hast laid hold on him. Faith had in the sacraments,’ saith Augustine, ‘doth justify, and not the sacraments.’”40 Jewel also cites Augustine in his assertion that Christ offered the “figure” (as distinct from the physical “substance”) of his body and blood at the Last Supper, and that Christ is not eaten with the “bodily mouth,” yet the “thing itself ” (i.e., the “substance”) whereof the bread is a sacrament (namely, the body of Christ) “is received of every man unto life whosoever be partaker of it.”41 Jewel summarizes his Augustinian account of sacramental presence in this manner: “That we be thus in Christ, and Christ in us, requireth not any corporal or local being, as in things natural. We are in Christ sitting in heaven, and Christ sitting in heaven is here in us, not by a natural, but

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by a spiritual mean of being.”42 Jewel’s emphasis on a “spiritual mean of being” as contrasted with “corporal or local being” as the instrument of presence marks the distinctive character of his hermeneutics of the sacrament and the core of his brief. Moreover, it is here that hermeneutics and politics meet; for it is on this ground that Jewel forges a decisive shift in understanding of the nature of communal engagement. Indeed, it is through such a reinterpretation of sacramental presence that the culture of persuasion receives new impetus.

The Medium Is the Message Jewel’s account of figural presence helps explain the popularity and influence of the very pulpit from which he delivered his challenge. By shifting the primary locus of presence away from the physical elements into the inner, subjective experience of the participant, “presence” is construed as a dynamic conceptual synthesis of word and elements situated in the subjective forum of the conscience as distinct from a static, externally localized presence in the Host. By this figural interpretation, presence comes to be viewed as inseparable from an internalized reception of the consecrated elements. As such, Jewel’s sermon came to be viewed as pivotal in the defining the horizon of meaning for Elizabethan religious identity and, by extension, of political and civil identity as well. In both Jewel’s reiteration of Augustine’s figural hermeneutics and in Thomas Cranmer’s reformed liturgy, there is a crucial redefinition of what I would call “the terms of enchantment”; the gap between sacramental sign and the reality signified is no longer understood as mediated primarily by means of theurgical ritual with a real, externally localized presence according to the doctrine of transubstantiation; rather, figural presence depends foremost upon an inward, subjective and (most importantly) interpretative act of remembrance—that is through acknowledgement of presence made real in and through the conscience as the nexus that connects things signified with their signs, in the dynamic action that is the liturgy. This reformulation of the hermeneutics of presence entails a reconfiguration of the relation between the individual and community. As Timothy Rosendale argues, “The internalization of this figural sacrament is necessarily an interpretative act; though it takes place in a communal [i.e., liturgical] context, it ultimately requires a highly individual mode

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of understanding the elements as metaphors whose effectuality is dependent on faithful personal reading.”43 The combining the realist words of administration in the first Edwardine BCP of 1549 (“The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe whiche was geven for thee, preserve thy bodye and soule unto everlasting lyfe”) with the “memorialist” words of the revised liturgy of 1552 (“Take and eate this, in remembraunce that Christ dyed for thee, and feede on him in thy hearte by faythe, with thankesgeving”) in the Elizabethan redaction of 1559 emphasizes even more strongly the marked emphasis on the essential role of the individual subject as the interpreter of the meaning of the sacrament. Without active and conscientious participation in the task of interpretation, there can be no sacramental presence, there can be no link between sign and thing signified. Indeed, if there is to be any presence, interpretation is all! This reconfiguration of sacramental hermeneutics has considerable moral-ontological significance for religious identity, and by implication for a sense of self, and of the relation of self to the communal realm. According to Rosendale, the revised liturgy “in both form and content holds in tension two radically different discourses, out of which it endeavours to construct a productive textual synthesis. It discursively constructs the Christian nation characterized centrally by order even as it elevates individual discretion over that order. Its theology simultaneously legitimates and undermines its political discourse of autonomous hierarchical authority. . . . The BCP officially instituted the individual as a primary component of religion, without abrogating the normative claims of the hierarchical socio-politico-ecclesiastical order that had traditionally been the sole determinant of religious affairs.”44 By sharpening the distinction between the external visible sign and the spiritual reality signified, while at the same time holding them together in accordance with the concept of figural presence, Jewel’s challenge deconstructed the moral-ontological assumption of sacramental culture—the identification of the sign and the signified.45 Figural as distinct from real presence demands a conscientious act of interpretation, a putting together of sign and signified on the part of the participant in the sacramental action. This subtle moral-ontological shift radically redefines the relationship of the individual to the communal order. Human subjectivity is linked to the communal order through the exercise of judgment. Such an emphasis on presence through the instrumentality of subjectivity is intrinsic to the building up of the culture of persuasion.

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As other parts of the argument of the Challenge Sermon reveal, this new hermeneutics entailed a new politics whereby the old representative publicity gives way to a publicity constituted by the social realm—in effect a public sphere—as is suggested by a truly revolutionary icon, the Gipkyn Diptych, where the sovereign is seated among his subjects at Paul’s Cross, in the midst of the theater of persuasion. Jewel proposes a reconfiguration of the distinction between the visible and invisible church, between the historical and the imagined community of the saints, and broadly between individual and community, all viewed by him as corollaries of the core governing logic of the distinction between sign and thing signified in the context of the sacraments. This reconstruction of religious communal identity brought with it a new rhetoric and a new apologetical method deemed necessary to achieve sweeping institutional transformation.46 The new emphasis is evident, for example, in the two most popular late-Elizabethan genres of sermons at Paul’s Cross, identified by Mary Morrissey as “Jeremiads” and “Exhortations to Charity”—the former with their emphasis on the gulf separating the fallen, derelict church in secular history from the splendor of the heavenly city and the latter with their encouragement of the faithful to labor toward a realization of the heavenly promises here and now through a gradual process of habitual sanctification.47 While the church as a mere earthly sign of the heavenly city is distinguished sharply from the mystical reality of the signified community of the saints in the Jeremiad, nonetheless the intrinsic union of sign with thing signified is interpreted as an object of both personal and communal striving in the exhortation to charity; both clarity of distinction between signum and significata and the real possibility of their mediation are proposed by means of Jewel’s hermeneutic of figural presence, with the attainment of the reality of presence posited via inner persuasion of the conscience. In these two genres of sermons, one can perhaps catch a glimpse of the tension between a modern politics of Whiggish optimism and progress on the one hand and that of Tory pessimism and a longing for the tranquility of order on the other.

Jewel’s Contribution Does Jewel contribute to the definition of modern secular identity manifested in an emergent public sphere? It would seem that his treatment of

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the hermeneutics of the sacrament plays a decisive role in redefining the relationship between the individual conscience and the communal order. In his challenge Jewel’s aim was to deconstruct the traditional model of sacramental culture with its moral ontology of hierarchical mediation. In his hermeneutics of figural presence, he proposes an alternative ontology with a sharp demarcating of sign and signified, which brought with it a profound emphasis on the inner subjective forum of the conscience as the dynamic bridge of presence. This marked emphasis on the hermeneutical significance of self is the fulcrum of the emerging culture of persuasion. If communal order is to be achieved and maintained, it will require a new species of publicity. No longer will the external representative publicity of hierarchical structures be sufficient of itself to unite the community. Publicity can no longer simply remain an attribute of feudal status, an aura of authority emanating from the divinely given station. In order to achieve a present communal order, it is no longer sufficient simply to assert ruling authority from above; rather, the inner subjective “forum of the conscience” must be persuaded to acknowledge and embrace the constitutional order in the “external political forum” of a shared existence in both church and commonwealth. The very necessity of mediation between the individual subject and the demands of institutional order calls forth the public sphere and all the instrument of persuasion as the new and indispensable means of bridging this distance. Jewel’s account of sacramental hermeneutics helps us see the vital role played by a public religious discourse in defining an emerging early modern civil society. By setting out concrete terms for a distinctively early modern approach to negotiating the interaction between the conscience of the individual and the wider political community, Jewel’s Challenge Sermon reveals the moral ontology for a structural transformation of the public sphere. And Paul’s Cross itself an instance of this public sphere in action. In his Challenge Sermon, Jewel contributes to the early modern attempt to reinterpret the fundamental assumptions of moral ontology, and in so doing, he reshapes Tudor religious and political identity. By questioning the deepest assumptions of medieval sacramental culture concerning the relation of signs to things signified, Jewel proposes a new mode of thinking about how to negotiate the space between the inner private realm of individual conscience and the external public realm of religious and political community with all of its institutional structures and coercive demands. In the course of the great controversy of the

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1560s, Jewel’s attempt to recast the hermeneutics of sacramental presence contributed to the promotion of a vigorous culture of persuasion that in turn fostered the emergence of a public sphere of discourse as the broadly recognized and necessary means of mediation between individuals and community, between subjects and rulers. By igniting the great controversy of the 1560s in his Challenge Sermon, Jewel also draws fitting attention to Paul’s Cross as one of the most important institutions in the formation of England’s religious and political identity in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Here at Paul’s Cross the medium was indeed the message.

Notes 1. Sparrow Simpson, Chapters in the History of Old S. Paul’s (1881), 211. 2. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991). See also N. Crossley and J. M. Roberts, eds., After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 3. G. R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Margaret Aston, The King’s Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 4. A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (New York: Schocken Books, 1964); Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 5. See also Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Christopher Haigh, The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Compare A. G. Dickens and Eamon Duffy, for example. Timothy Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 3. See Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On Max Weber’s concept of the secularizing process of “disenchantment,” see Charles Taylor’s introduction to Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, trans. Oscar Burge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), ixff. See also Taylor’s A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). See also Peter Lassman and Irving Velody, Max Weber on Science, Disenchantment, and the Search for Meaning, Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” ed. Peter Lassman and Irving Velody, with Herminio Martins (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 3–31, 159ff. See Pettegree, Reformation.

60  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist 11. Alexandra Walsham, “The Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed,” Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (2008): 497–528. See also Robert Scribner, Religion and Culture in Germany (1400–1800), ed. Lyndal Roper (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 98. 12. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, ed. Lewis Lapham (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1994), 7–21. 13. Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Printed for the Camden Society by J. B. Nichols and Son, 1848), 218–19. See Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 70–85. 14. John Jewel, “The copie of a sermon pronounced by the byshop of Salisburie at Paules crosse, the second Sondaye before Ester in the yere 1560” (London, 1560) [STC 14599a]. The sermon is published under a divisional title together with Jewel’s reply to Dr. Henry Cole, The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole vpon occasion of a sermon that the said Bishop preached (London, 1560), fols. 120–77. All references to the Challenge Sermon are taken from this edition. This first published version of the sermon refers to the second occasion when Jewel preached the challenge at court. The epigraph to the sermon refers to I Corinthians 11: “I haue receyued of the lord, that thing whiche I also haue deliuered vnto you: that is, that the Lord Jesus in the nyghte that he was betrayed, tooke breade &c.” 15. Jewel, “Copie of a sermon,” fols. 139–40. 16. Angela Ranson, “The Challenge of Catholicity: John Jewel at Paul’s Cross,” in Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520–1640, ed.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

Torrance Kirby and P. G. Stanwood (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 203–22. Mary Morrissey notes that by “cross-referencing the Register of Paul’s Cross sermons with Peter McCullough’s calendar of court sermons reveals no other coincidences like this except for John Jewel’s repetition of the Challenge Sermon at court in March 1560. This may be due to the fact the bishops were less likely to print their sermons and so we have less information about how often they appeared at Paul’s Cross.” Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 135. See Jewel, True copies (1560). John Jewel, An apologie, or aunswer in defence of the Church of England concerninge the state of religion (London, 1562). For an account of the gestation of the Apology, see John Booty’s introduction to his edition of Jewel’s An Apology of the Church of England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1963, repr. 2002). “Bacon [Cooke], Anne, Lady Bacon (c. 1528–1610),” Lynne Magnusson in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb .com.ezproxy.york.ac.uk/view/article /987. See John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 58–82; see also Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 1–24. Thomas Harding, An Ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge (Louvain: Iohn Bogard, 1564).

John Jewel at Paul’s Cross  61 23. Thomas Dorman, A proufe of certeyne articles in religion, denied by M. Iuell (Antwerp, 1564). 24. Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a Booke Intituled An Apologie of the Church of England (Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1565). 25. Hieronymus Osorius, An epistle of the Reuerend Father in God Hieronimus Osorius Bishop of Arcoburge in Portugale, to the most excellent Princesse Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of England (Antwerp, 1565), 27, 46. 26. See John Whitgift, A Most Godly and Learned Sermon preached at Paules Crosse on 17 November 1583 (London, 1589). A critical edition forthcoming, Torrance Kirby, gen. ed., Sermons at Paul’s Cross, 1521–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 27. McLuhan, Understanding Media, vi; William Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 10, no. 3 (1979): 38. 28. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. 29. Stephen Gardiner, A detection of the Deuils sophistrie wherwith he robbeth the vnlearned people (London, 1546), fol. iv (v). 30. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), vol. 2, session 13, canon 2. 31. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 1:465–66. 32. Jewel, True copies, 139–40. According to the article on “Eucharist” in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., ed. E. A. Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), the earliest known use of the term “transubstantiation” to describe

the change from bread and wine to body and blood of Christ was by Hildebert de Lavardin, archbishop of Tours (died 1133) in the eleventh century, and by the end of the twelfth century the term was in widespread use. 33. Jewel, True copies, 164; Jewel, Works, 1:104. In the latter reference the challenge is issued in the context of the article against “Private Mass.” The latter edition is cited below. 34. Jewel, Works, 1:448. 35. Thomas Cranmer, Tractatio de sacramento Eucharistiae (London, 1549). Also in English, A defence of the true and catholike doctrine of the sacrament of the body and bloud of our sauiour Christ (London, 1550). 36. Nicholas Ridley, A brief declaracion of the Lordes Supper ([Emden], 1555), sig. E2r–E4v. 37. Peter Martyr Vermigli, A discourse or traictise . . . wherein he openly declared his whole and determinate iudgemente concernynge the sacrament of the Lordes supper in the sayde Vniuersitee (London, 1550), fol. 69v. 38. Richard Smyth, Confutatio eorum, quæ Philippus Melanchthon obijcit contra missæ sacrificium propitiatorium (Louvain, 1562). 39. See Augustine, On Christian Teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8–44. 40. Jewel, Works, 3:533–36. 41. Jewel, 3:64; 1:453, 759; 2:1122. 42. Jewel, 1:477. 43. Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 96. 44. Rosendale, 111. 45. Euan Cameron identifies the primary assumption of “sacramental culture” with his observation that “in the medieval West it had become axiomatic to say that the saving work of God was in normal conditions channelled through the rites of the Church. That assumption, inherent in the essence of

62  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist ‘Catholic’ Christianity, became explicit in the work of the Fourth Lateran council in 1215. The spirit-led Church ministered the sacraments that reliably conferred grace on those who sought them worthily.” Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 156. 46. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 249–94. See Torrance Kirby, “Apocalyptics and

Apologetics: Richard Helgerson on Elizabethan England’s Religious Identity and the Formation of the Public Sphere,” in Forms of Association in Early Modern Europe, ed. Paul Yachnin (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). 47. See Mary Morrissey, “Ideal Communities and Early Modern London in the Paul’s Cross Sermons,” paper presented at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Venice, April 2010.

Chapter 4

“Silence Is a Fine Jewel for a Woman” Anne Cooke Bacon, Jewel’s Apology, and Reformed Women’s Publications

Alice Ferron In 1564, Anne Cooke Bacon published a translation of John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae or The Apology of the Church of England. However, it may be incorrect to use the term published here, as Matthew Parker, the first Elizabethan archbishop of Canterbury, insisted that he was the one who saw the translation into print. Significantly, he claimed that he did so without Bacon’s knowledge. In the translation’s opening epistle to Bacon, Parker wrote, “Now to thende bothe to acknowledge my good approbiation, and to spread the benefit more largely, where your Ladyshippe hathe sent me your book written, I haue with most hearty thankes returned it to you (as you see) printed: knowing that I haue therein done the beste, and in this poynte used a reasonable pollicye: that is, to preuent suche excuses as your modestie woulde haue made instaye of publishing it.”1 Parker’s assertion that he protected Bacon’s “modestie” by printing her words of his own accord raises questions both about Bacon’s intended audience for the manuscript translation she had sent Parker and more broadly about the risks women took when they wrote and translated during the English Reformation. Gemma Allen has persuasively argued that Bacon imagined a wide audience for her text, as she undertook her domestic translation, and that her work represented

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an “ability to speak clearly on behalf of her own religious priorities.”2 Yet Parker’s assertion that the text appeared without Bacon’s explicit involvement served to ensure that it did not conflict with societal norms about female silence. As a result of Parker’s participation, it is in fact possible to argue that Bacon’s translation of Jewel was “unauthorized” in two distinct senses. The text was partially “unauthored” because Bacon’s contribution to the circulation of the text was obscured by Parker’s control of the publication process, and it was unofficial because it appeared in print seemingly without Bacon’s consent or involvement. Upon first glance, the concept of unauthorized works could be seen to disadvantage women writers, since these texts were likely heavily mediated or altered in some way before they were published. However female authors in the first half of the early modern period frequently legitimized their entrances into the public sphere by claiming that their works were stolen or printed “against their minde.”3 Bacon’s role in the English translation of Jewel was purposefully left unclear in order to both preserve her character from the stigmas surrounding women entering print culture and also to align her with other reformed authoresses, including, most interestingly, the queen. By considering the ways that mediation and societal notions of silence both harmed and benefitted Bacon as an author, it is possible to create comparisons between Bacon and other women writers. Her relationship to Elizabeth I, another reformed author, is significant since the Apology claimed to defend the queen’s theological and practical policies. Anne Cooke Bacon was most likely born in 1528. She married Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the privy seal and a member of Elizabeth’s privy council. They had two sons, Sir Anthony and Sir Francis Bacon, who would go on to become a scholar and lord chancellor , respectively. Bacon was educated in the humanist tradition, along with her sisters Mildred Cooke Cecil, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby, Katherine Cooke Kiligrew, and Margaret Cooke. Her father, Sir Anthony Cooke, was tutor to Edward VI. Bacon was highly regarded during her lifetime for her knowledge and education. In 1551, John Coke praised Bacon along with Margaret More Roper and her adopted sister, Margaret Giggs Clement, saying, “We have dyvers gentyleowmen in Englande, which be not onely well studied in holy scripture, but also in Greek and Latyn tonges as maystres More, maystres Anne Coke, maystres Clement . . . with others.”4 Furthermore, Thomas Wilcox opened his analysis of the proverbs of Solomon with a

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complimentary epistle addressed to Bacon. He described her as being excellent in “Hebrew, Greeke, Caldee, Siriake, Latin &c, neither yet of sundry arts alone as grammar, rhetoricke, logicke, musicke, arithmetick, geometrie, &c, but of the holy scriptures and Christian religion speciallie [which she uses] for the overthrowe of superstition, idolatarie, and wicked life, and for the advancement of his glorie, and furtherance of men’s salvation.”5 Bacon did indeed view herself as participating in the “overthrow of superstition” and the progression of religious reformation. In 1585 she wrote to Lord Burghley to defend the “faythfull preachers” wrongfully imprisoned under Whitgift’s articles of 1583, arguing that they worked for “right reformation in the ministery of the gospel.”6 Bacon thus used her education to champion reformed causes, but both she and Parker were conscious of ensuring that her writings conformed to contemporary conceptions of female modesty. As we shall soon see, Bacon was able to contribute to literature without stepping outside of her bounds and confronting notions of inappropriate female behavior. Bacon is most famous among scholars for translating Jewel’s Apology, but this was not her first or only foray into Tudor print culture. She also translated the sermons of the Sienese Calvinist Bernardo Ochino, between 1548 and 1551. Thomas Cranmer brought Ochino to England in 1548 to help with the reform of the English church. Bacon published a translation of five of his sermons anonymously.7 However, by 1551, she had translated a further fourteen and went on to publish them with a reprint of six of Ochino’s sermons translated by the physician and schoolmaster, Richard Argentine.8 There were two volumes that year. The second edition contained only Bacon’s fourteen sermons and was published under her name. We know that Bacon was aware of the publication because the edition contained a dedicatory epistle addressed to her “beloved mother” where she described her translation as a “vane studye in the Italyan tonge.”9 However, an unidentified mediator, named G. B. claimed that he had published the collection. He wrote, “When these translated sermons of the famous Barnardine were come tomyne hand, Gentyll Reader, I thought it rete to publysh thé to the ende so Godly Apostolyke doctoryne should not be priuate to those onely which understande the Italian tong, synce shorow the honest trauvel of a wel occupied gentelwoman, and vertuous meyden they speake in Englyshe; whose shamfastnes would rather haue supprest them, had not I to whose handes they were comytted halfe agaynsy hyr wyll put them fourth, bidding them blush that

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desevue blame.”10 Bacon’s role in the text was purposefully ambiguous. She certainly appears to have known that her version of Ochino’s sermons would be published, as she wrote the letter to her mother explaining her motivations for undertaking the translation. However, we cannot be certain that she was involved in its printing and its dissemination, as G. B. claimed that he was the one who decided to publish Bacon’s text. As was the case with Bacon’s translation of the Apology, this involvement of G. B. might have been designed to preserve Bacon’s reputation as a “virtuous” and shamefast “meyden” as she had not the published the text on entirely her own accord. Parker’s letter served an identical purpose in preserving Bacon’s reputation from the stigmas surrounding women’s entrances into print culture. Indeed, scholarship has clearly demonstrated that there was a societal emphasis on female silence and modesty in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and that writing for publication would have conflicted with these values.11 Early modern women therefore would have been aware of the long-established concept that they were meant to be “chaste, silent, and obedient.”12 As 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 stated, “In all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says.”13 Early modern women even repeated these sentiments. Katherine (or Catherine) Parr echoed Paul’s warning in her 1547 book of prayers, The Lamentaction of a Sinner. She wrote, “The true followers of Christes doctrine, hath always a respecte, and an eye to their vocacion . . . if they be women maryed, they lerne of Saynt Paul, to be obedient to theyr husbands, and to keep silence in the congregacion, and to lerne of theyr housebandes at home.”14 The ideal early modern woman was meant not only to be silent in church but also to be “seene and not heard” whenever she was in front of men.15 She was also discouraged from writing for circulation because this was synonymous with speaking publicly. Of course, there were many prominent female patrons and visible learned women during the early modern period, but even they needed to appeal to societal expectations of silence in order to legitimize their literary pursuits. The poet and patron Mary Sidney validated her controversial choice to write by frequently drawing on the psalms and their focus on the sinful nature of speech. She begged God to regulate her words. She wrote, “O god, god of my health, O doe away / my bloodie crime: soe shall my tongue be raised / to praise thy

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truth, enough cannot bee praised. / Unlock my lipps, shut up with sinful shame: / then shall my mouth ô lord thy honor sing.”16 Sidney hinted at her attempts to self-censor, locking her lips to prevent the outpouring of sinful shame. She hoped that God would give her the power to unlock her lips and speak righteously, and she cast God in the role of a censor or editor, noting that only with his management could her “tongue [become] the pen to paynt his praises forth.”17 In this way, Sidney used the image of her tongue to prevent sinful speech. Margaret Hannay and her contributors to Silent But for the Word have argued that sixteenth-century women were only able to break the silence imposed upon them by society to participate in religious works by translating, by becoming patrons to male ecclesiastical writers, and on rare occasions, by writing religious literature themselves. She believes that women only deviated from these norms when “their very lives were at stake.”18 The hesitancy to publish that women writers like Bacon and Sidney expressed and hinted at in their works challenges this assertion because many female writers felt there was no subject appropriate for a woman to publicize, including religion.

•

Bacon was certainly aware of the importance of female silence as she apologized profusely for daring to undertake a translation of Ochino’s sermons. She wrote therefore, “I was not meanynge to take upo[n] me [to] teache, to his high style of theologie, and fearying also, least in enterprisynge to settle forth the brightness of his eloquence, I should manifest my selfe unapte to attaine unto the lowest degree thereof. I descend therefore to the understanding of myne owne debilitye.”19 By acknowledging her own “debilitye” and inaptitude for teaching a man’s “high style of theologie,” Bacon recognized that she was trespassing into the male-dominated worlds of religion and print culture. The fact that Bacon translated two of the most relevant texts on the reformation of Tudor religion speaks to her role as a religious scholar and thinker. However, the purposeful ambiguity of her agency in the dissemination of these works means that we cannot be certain that she chose to undertake the translations of her own accord or whether she was instead asked to engage with Ochino and Jewel for official purposes. In Bacon’s case, her inherent silence in the publication of her works was truly a jewel that implied worth and value. She was a theological thinker, but it was both her doctrinal acumen and her sensitivity to female modesty that ultimately commended her work.

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Parker would also have had a vested interest in protecting Bacon’s reputation from the stigma of print, as he was a lifelong acquaintance and even perhaps a friend of Nicholas Bacon’s.20 The two had met at Cambridge during the 1520s. There is also evidence to suggest that Parker and Bacon had a personal relationship beyond that which was suggested in his opening epistle to the Apology. In 1568, Parker wrote to her to ask if she would intercede on his behalf after a disagreement with Nicholas Bacon.21 Furthermore, Nicholas Bacon and Parker worked together as key advisors to Elizabeth I. Perhaps as a result of their friendship Parker’s explanation of how Bacon’s translation made it into print was easily accepted. John Strype republished Parker’s letter “in remembrance” of the “excellent, pious, and learned” Lady Anne Bacon who had used her “accustomed modesty, in submitting it to [Parker’s] judgment both in the epistle and in the printed text.”22 Parker’s involvement raises interesting questions about how we ought to think about Bacon as an author. Despite Bacon’s perceived limited role in overseeing the publication of her texts, Gemma Allen has made a compelling case for Bacon’s authorial voice. Literary critics such as Mary Ellen Lamb have argued that translation was an acceptable literary activity for women, because it demanded accuracy rather than creativity, which would have gone against societal expectations about female modesty.23 Yet Allen has demonstrated that Bacon’s version of the Apology was original, or something more than just a straightforward word for word translation, as she had intended for it to emphasize the case for unity within the Church of England.24 A less popular translation of the Apology, published in 1562, stated, “Wee belue therefore that there is one divine nature & power, which we do call God.”25 However, Bacon translated this as follows: “This therefore is our Belieffe. We believe that there is one certaine nature and divine power, which wee call God.”26 As Allen argues, Bacon played up the idea of accord within the Church of England using words like “our” and “wee” to “prove to a European audience that the clergy of the Church of England were united in belief and loyalty to the queen.”27 Allen also contends that Bacon imagined a domestic audience for her translation and used conversational language to impart Jewel’s message.28 Parker certainly praised Bacon in his opening epistle for her word choice, complimenting her for defending “the good fame and estimation of your owne native tongue, shewing it so able to contend with a worke originally written in the most praised speeche.”29

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Allen’s detailed reading of Bacon’s translation is convincing, but Bacon’s message was not overly confident. It was, after all, Bacon’s absence from the publication process that validated her message in print and served to ensure that her defense of the Church of England did not contradict with societal expectations of female silence. Bacon certainly prescribed to the idea of silence. A quick look at Bacon’s personal correspondence characterizes her as a woman who worried about the consequences of her words. In June 1594, for example, she advised her eldest son, Anthony, to “burn this, thowgh I wryte tru. Beware of liberall speeches the captious dayes.”30 Bacon frequently asked her son to destroy her letters, though he was not one to follow her advice, since an impressive amount of their correspondence survives today. However, we do not have access to the same amount of letters written to and from her son Francis, suggesting that they destroyed their personal writings. With this hesitancy to express herself freely, Bacon likely delighted in the fact that she could not be held responsible for her translation’s entrance into the public sphere. Of course, in moments like these, Bacon may only have been playing lip service to expectations of modesty. However, it was this reputation as a hesitant writer that legitimized her theological translations. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that not all of Bacon’s writings were easily accepted, as her name was removed from an opening poem she composed to preface a manuscript version of Bartholo Sylva’s book of cosmography or il giardino cosmografico. The text was presented to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the queen’s favorite, by the notorious puritan preacher Edward Dering, as a means of demonstrating his noble connections after his preaching license was suspended by Elizabeth I.31 The translation’s opening epistle was attributed to “Anne Baconia,” but the majority of the letters were soon erased, leaving only A. B. behind.32 This may have been a subtle signal to the early modern reader, as the initials A. B. were the standard way of making something both general and anonymous. The deliberately ambiguous 1641 protestation oath, for example, which asked men over the age of eighteen to pledge allegiance to the interests of the reformed church, used the initials A. B. to denote that the oath takers should insert their own names.33 Regardless of whether or not this was a symbolic choice, Bacon’s husband had the strongest motive to obscure her authorship, because her writing may have impacted his image. Nicholas Bacon had been the chief

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judiciary officer in charge of prosecuting Dering in the Star Chamber so was likely to have been embarrassed by his wife’s support of the controversial minister.34 We can only wonder if Bacon agreed to have her name removed from the text in order to support her husband, or if he did this without her permission. It seems clear, however, that Nicholas Bacon would have played some type of role in determining what his wife could and could not be seen to publish. Therefore, Bacon’s text can be analyzed as an “unauthorized” work. The concept of stolen texts where women’s writings and translations were published without their involvement was after all an established practice by the time Bacon’s translation of Jewel was published in 1564. Margaret More Roper translated a detailed version of Erasmus’s Devout Treatise Upon The Pater Noster in 1524.35 Yet she did not see it in to print. Rather her tutor, Richard Hyrde published it. Furthermore, his epistle dedicatory was almost identical to Parker’s, suggesting that Parker was familiar with Hyrde’s defense of Roper’s translation and of female education in general. Hyrde addressed Roper in his opening letter and sent her the published translation as a compliment. He wrote, “As a token of my goode mynde / and an instrument towarde your successe . . . I sende you this boke.”36 Parker had similarly sent Bacon her published translation “to acknowledge my good approbiation.”37 Roper was not criticized for publishing her translation. Rather Hyrde described her as “virtuous conversacion / lyvyng / and sadde demeanoure / maye be profe Evydente ynough what good learnynge dothe / where it is surely roted: of whom other women may take example of prident / humble / and wifely behaviour / charitable and very christen vertue.”38 Roper’s character and her translation of Erasmus was “virtuous,” “prudent,” and “humble.” Furthermore, Hyrde set her up as a model for other women to “take example.” In this context perhaps, Bacon and Parker hoped that the latter’s mediation of a translation by a female author would similarly set up Bacon as an example of a learned woman. Of course, this kind of mediation may also have had disadvantages. This seems clear from the example of Bacon’s own sister, Lady Elizabeth Cooke Russell, who referred to the practice to defend her only publication, a translation of John Ponet’s Diallecticon viri boni et literati or A way of reconciliation touching the true nature and substance of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament. She wrote that she only pursued the publication of her translation because she feared that “after my death

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it should be printed according to the humours of other, and would be wrong to the dead.”39 The problem, however, was that although having a male friend, tutor, or relative publishing the text of his own accord may have preserved the female author’s reputation from censure, it also exposed her words to mediation and the possibility that the text would be used to push a cause or concept that was not the woman writer or translator’s original intention. This had been the case with the publication of Elizabeth Tudor’s translation of Margaret D’Angoulême’s Miroir de l’âme pécheresse or The Mirror of the Sinful Soul.40 Significantly, the publication of Bacon’s translations echoed the style of mediation that Princess Elizabeth experienced. D’Angoulême was the pious and freethinking sister of the French king, Francois I. The original poem featured her soul emerging from various conversations with the Trinity, where God was described as a father figure being addressed by his daughter, the soul. Elizabeth had presented the text in manuscript as a New Year’s gift to her stepmother, Katherine Parr, claiming that “I . . . translated this little book out of French rhyme into English prose, joining the sentences together as well as my simple wit and small learning could extend themselves.”41 Literary critics agree that Elizabeth was not contemplating publishing the text in 1545, as she had prepared it as a gift for her stepmother. However, despite Elizabeth’s private undertaking, the translation appeared in print just three years later, when John Bale published it in 1548 to further the reformed faith at the beginning of Edward VI’s reign. Bale claimed that Elizabeth herself sent him a copy of her translation, with other scriptural texts rendered in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, “whyche she wrote first with her owne hande” just as Parker would claim that Bacon sent him her translation.42 Patrick Collinson has argued “it is more likely that Bale’s copy reached him from other ladies in the super-aristocratic, crypto-Protestant entourage of the late 1540s.”43 He considers the Duchess of Richmond the likely culprit, since she patronized Bale as soon as he set foot on English soil after exile on the continent. Diane Watt, however, believes that Katherine Parr had a more concrete reason for publishing her stepdaughter’s translation, since she wanted to continue to mother the royal children after Edward VI’s ascension.44 Parr had entered into a scandalous clandestine marriage with Thomas Seymour a scant few months after Henry VIII’s death, and her critics sought to distance her from her stepchildren. Parr perhaps hoped

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that showcasing Elizabeth’s faith would support her case for continued involvement. Regardless of who exactly sent Bale Elizabeth’s translation, the English version of The Miroir served a dramatically different purpose than what Margaret D’Angoulême and Princess Elizabeth had intended. Significantly, contemporaries were reminded of Elizabeth’s unauthorized work when James Cancellar published an authorized version of her translation of The Miroir in 1568 in order to emphasize Elizabeth’s piety.45 Fourteen years later, in 1582 Thomas Bentley reprinted Cancellar’s edition in his Monument of Matrones, a text Collinson has described as “the earliest unrestrained celebration of Elizabeth’s perpetual virginity” because it was published at the end of the French marriage negotiations.46 During key moments in Elizabeth’s reign, her leadership was celebrated through new releases of her unauthorized translation. The Virgin Queen’s legacy as a reformed author was again tied to the fact that she did not disseminate her text. The fact that Elizabeth I experienced the release of an unauthorized text speaks to an important similarity between her and Bacon that Parker hoped to exploit in his preface to the English translation of the Apology. Indeed, Alan Stewart has argued that Parker strategically used Bacon as “a female translator to present the case of a female monarch to other women.”47 Parker suggested that both Bacon and the queen had similar senses of modesty. He wrote, “[Bacon] and ours moste vertuous and learned soveraigne Ladie and Mastres shal see good cause to commende: and all noble gentlewomen shall (I trust) hereby be allured from vain delights to doings of more perfect glory.”48 Parker’s insistence that both Bacon and Elizabeth had bestowed “honour . . . to the kinde of women and to the degree of Ladies” was significant for a variety of reasons.49 Most obviously, he emphasized that both women had used their education to further religious causes by translating key devotional works. Beyond this, though, Parker implied that both Bacon’s and Elizabeth’s writings were appropriate reading material for “noble gentlewomen,” because neither author appeared to have desired to see their works translated into print. In other words, Elizabeth’s religious policies were best publicized by a woman who might have suppressed her work if it had not caught the attention of a male mediator. Because other reformed female translators faced issues with unauthorized publications, it is worth thinking about whether the same was also true for Bacon. As Allen has shown, Bacon and Parker’s agendas

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aligned: they both wanted to impart this message of clerical unity in the Church of England. Yet there are grounds to suggest that Bacon’s translation was mediated. Parker described both himself and Jewel reading and approving of Bacon’s text, but he insisted that the two of them had not made any changes to it: “Bothe the chiefe author of the Latine work and I, the seuerallye perusyinge and conferring youre whole translation, haue without alteration allowed of it.”50 Perhaps Parker and Jewel did not need to make any amendments to Bacon’s manuscript in order to publish it, but this is impossible to confirm without Bacon’s original text. There is also the possibility that Bacon was influenced by the interests of her husband, Nicholas Bacon and her brother-in-law, William Cecil, who was married to Bacon’s sister, Mildred Cooke. J. E. Booty has outlined the circumstances surrounding the composition of Jewel’s defense of the English church in his 1963 version of Jewel’s text. Booty drew on the report of the Spanish ambassador to argue that there was a committee comprising the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of Winchester and Salisbury, Nicholas Bacon and William Cecil, which directed the policy of the Church of England toward the pope and might have initiated the public defense.51 He also contends that this committee heavily edited Jewel’s Apology. Furthermore, Jewel’s work was looked over and approved by both Cecil and the queen before it was published. It would be naïve to think that Bacon’s translation was not similarly reviewed prior to being printed. After all it was not a coincidence that the wife and sister-in-law of two of Elizabeth I’s privy council members ended up publishing the most widely accepted version of Jewel. Indeed, Alan Stewart has argued that “far from being a spontaneous englishing by a pious and leisured lady, this translation ha[d] all the trademarks of an official commissioned work.”52 He points out that the first edition of the Apology even bore “traces of revisions and corrections that must have been officially authorized.”53 Furthermore, her husband appears to have played a role in downplaying Bacon’s contribution to the translation of Sylva’s book of cosmography. Again, we cannot know for certain if Bacon’s husband and brother-in-law played any role in shaping her translation. Yet the legitimacy of her translation hinged on the approval of Parker and Jewel, and perhaps also of Bacon and Cecil, too.

•

Anne Bacon certainly translated Jewel’s apology with a clear purpose in mind: to demonstrate unity within the Church of England and to

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promote her native tongue, as Allen has demonstrated. Yet it might also be unwise to view Bacon’s translation as an example of a confident female voice. Bacon wanted to be viewed as a hesitant author as it was precisely this reluctance to enter print culture without a male mediator that made her translation of Jewel’s Apology acceptable. The success of women like Bacon, Margaret More Roper, and even Elizabeth I found as pious authors went on to be emulated and even mocked by other women writers later on in the period. In 1650, Anne Bradstreet’s brother-in-law John Woodbridge took a manuscript copy of Bradstreet’s poems to London and printed them at his own expense.54 He wrote, “I feare the displeasure of no person in the Publishing of these Poems but the authors, without whose knowledge, and contrary to her expectation, I have presumed to bring to publick view that which she resolved should never in such a manner see the sun.”55 Despite this admission, however, Bradstreet’s readers did not know what to make of her involvement in the publication. The minister Nathanial Ward poked fun at Bradstreet, calling her “a righte du Bartas Girle,” or in the words of the French Calvinist poet Guillaume du Bartas, “wavering, weak, unwise / Light, credulous, news-lover, given to lies.”56 Ward also mocked Bradstreet for venturing into the male domain of poetry: “And chode buy Chaucers Boots, and Homers Furrs, / Let men look to’t, least women weare the Spurs.”57 Interestingly, Bradstreet preempted such criticism by drawing upon the idea that women’s hands and wits better suited a needle than a pen and rejoicing that her readers would likely assume that her text had been stolen and mediated: I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, Who sayes, my hand a needle better fits, A Poets Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong; For such despight they cast on female wits: If what I doe prove well, it won’t advance, They’l say its stolne, or, else, it was by chance.58 It is important to consider the possibility that one hundred years earlier Anne Cooke Bacon took similar pleasure in Matthew Parker’s letter, as she would have realized that his confession that he published her translation of Jewel would spare her reputation from carping tongues. Bacon’s role in the English Apology ultimately reveals that the concept of unauthorized text both benefited and harmed female authors during the course of the

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British Reformation. Parker’s involvement may have preserved her reputation from the stinging stigma surrounding women publishing, but it also would have opened her words up to mediation.

Notes

1.

2.

3.

4.

“Silence is a fine jewel for a woman, but it’s little worn” is a classic proverb derived from the writings of Sophocles and Aristotle: “As the poet said of woman: Silence gives grace to a woman—though that is not the case likewise with a man.” See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 13. “To the right honorable learned and vertuous Ladie A. B.,” in John Jewel, An Apolgie or answere in defence of the Churche in Englande, trans. Anne Bacon (London, 1563), sig. [ii]r. Gemma Allen, “‘A briefe and plaine declaration:’ Lady Anne Bacon’s 1564 Translation of the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,” in Women and Writing, c. 1340–c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne LawrenceMathers and Phillippa Hardman (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2010), 63, 67–76. Lady Mary Wroth, the controversial authoress of The Urania, for example, wrote to George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham alleging that the acts of her play “from the first were solde against my minde I never purposing to have them published,” after her work came under criticism from her contemporaries. See Letter from Lady Mary Wroth to the duke of Buckingham, December 15, 1621, Bodleian Library MS Add. D. III, fol. 173r–v. John Coke, The debate between the Heraldes of England and France (London, 1550), sig. K1r. Quoted in Jane Stevenson, Women, Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 255. T. W., A short, yet sound Commentarie; written on that woorthie worle called: The Proverbes of Solomon (London, 1589), sig. A2r–A4v. Quoted in “Anne Cooke Bacon,” in The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth Century Poetry and Prose, ed. Marie H. Loughlin et al. (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012), 175. “Anne Bacon to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, February 26, 1585,” in The Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Gemma Allen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 87. Bernardino Ochino, Sermons of Barnadine Ochine of Sena godlye, frutefull, and very necessarye for all true Christians (London, 1548). Quoted in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 5. Bernardino Ochino, Certayne Sermons of the rhyte famous and excellente Clark Master Bernadine Ochine (London, 1551), sigs. A3r–A4v. Quoted in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 5. Bernardino Ochino, Fourteene sermons of Barnadine Ochyne, concerning the predestinacion and eleccion of god, trans. A[nne] C[ooke] (London, 1570). Quoted in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 5. Ochino quoted in Allen, 5. See, for example, Sandy Bardsley, Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue; The Politics of Speech in Early New England

76  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Christina Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke”: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2002). 12. Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982). 13. The new Testament as it was written, trans. Tyndale (1534), 1 Corinthians 14.35–35. The 1560 edition of the Geneva Bible similarly stated, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law . . . Women are commanded to be silent in public assemblies, and they are commanded to ask of their husbands at home.” See The Geneva Bible (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). 14. Katherine Parr, The Lamentacion of a Sinner in Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence, ed. Janel Mueller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 481. 15. Robert Cleaver and John Dod, A codly [sic] form of householde gouernement for the ordering of priuate families, according to the direction of Gods word (London: Thomas Creede for Thomas Man, 1598), 95. 16. Mary Sidney, “Psalm 51: Miserere mei Deus,” I: 47–51, in Isabella Whitney, Mary Sydney, and Amelia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets, ed. Danielle Clarke (London: Penguin Classics, 2001), 62–63. 17. Sidney in Clarke. 18. Margaret Hannay, ed., Silent but for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1985), 4. 19. Ochino, Fourteene sermons. Quoted in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 5.

20. For more on their relationship, see Patrick Collinson, “Nicholas Bacon and The Elizabethan Via Media,” in Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 143. 21. See “Matthew Parker to Anne Bacon, 6 February 1568,” in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 61–68. 22. John Strype, Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, 355. 23. Mary Ellen Lamb, “The Cooke Sisters: Attitudes toward Learned Women in the Renaissance,” in Hannay, ed., Silent but for the Word, 116. 24. Allen’s argument complements recent work on early modern translation moving beyond “sense” and word to literal word. See, for example, Early Modern Cultures of Translation, ed. Karen Newman and Jane Tylus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); and Renaissance Cultural Crossroads, ed. Sara K. Barker and Brenda M. Hosington (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 25. Allen, “A briefe and plaine declaration,” 68. 26. Allen, 68. 27. Allen, 68. 28. Allen, 68. 29. “To the right honorable learned and vertuous Ladie A.B.,” in John Jewel, An Apolgie or answere in defence of the Churche in Englande, trans. Anne Bacon (London, 1563), sig. [ii]r. 30. “Anne Bacon to Anthony Bacon” (before June 3, 1594), in Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 180. 31. For more on this, see “A sermon preached before the Queenes Maiestie,” in Patrick Collinson, A Mirror of Elizabethan Puritanism: The Life and Letters of Godly Master Dering (London: Dr. Williams Trust, 1964), 312. 32. “Allen, Letters of Lady Bacon, 10.

“Silence Is a Fine Jewel for a Woman”  77 33. The declaration, or protestation oath, stated, “I, _ A.B. _ do, in the presence of Almighty God, promise, vow, and protest to maintain, and defend as far as lawfully I may, with my Life, Power and Estate, the true Reformed Protestant religion, expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England, against all Popery and Popish Innovations, within this Realm.” See “The Protestation, 1641,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook, ed. David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell (New York: Routledge, 1996), 57. 34. Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 43. 35. Roper’s name does not appear anywhere on the text. We only know that Roper undertook the translation because the printer was questioned about why he had neglected to obtain official approval for the publication. Indeed, Thomas Bartlett confessed “he had printed a certain work called The Treatise of the Pater Noster translated as he said by the wife of Mr. Roper in the vulgar tongue.” For more on this, see Rita M. Verbrugge, “Margaret More Roper’s Personal Expression in the Devout Treatise Upon the Pater Noster,” in Hannay, ed., Silent but for the Word, 37. 36. Desiderius Erasmus, A deuoute treatise vpon the Pater noster (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1526?, 1531?), 7. 37. “To the right honorable learned and vertuous Ladie A.B.,” in Jewel, An Apolgie or answere in defence of the Churche in Englande, sig. [ii]r. 38. Erasmus, A deuoute treatise vpon the Pater noster, sig. A4v–B. 39. Elizabeth Russell, A way of Reconcilliation of a good and learned man, touching the Trueth, Nature, and Substance of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament (London: R.

Barker, 1605), 2. Russell was in her late seventies by 1605 and had been called “our English Sappho” by Thomas Lodge in praise of her manuscript poetry. See Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell: The Writings of an English Sappho, ed. Patricia Phillipy (Toronto: Iter Inc. Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011). 40. For more on this translation, see Anne Lake Prescott, “The Pearl of the Valois and Elizabeth I: Marguerite de Navarre’s Miroir and Tudor England,” in Hannay, ed., Silent but for the Word, 61–91; Maureen Quilligan, “Elizabeth I (with a Note on Marguerite de Navarre),” in Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 33–76; and Marc Shell, ed., Elizabeth’s Glass (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). 41. “Princess Elizabeth to Queen Katherine,” in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 6. 42. John Bale, A godly medytacyon of the Christen sowle (Wesel, 1548), epistle, fol. 41. 43. Patrick Collinson, “Windows in a Woman’s Soul: Questions about the Religion of Queen Elizabeth I,” in Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 99. 43. Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 89. 45. See Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–1589, ed. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 25–39. 46. Collinson, “Windows in a Woman’s Soul,” 105. 47. Alan Stewart, “The Voices of Anne Cooke, Lady Anne and Lady Bacon,”

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48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

in This Double Voice: Gendered Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000), 94. “To the right honorable learned and vertuous Ladie A.B.,” in Jewel, An Apologie for the Church of England, sig. [ii]r. Jewel, sig. [ii]r. Jewel, sig. [ii]r. John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, ed. John Everitt Booty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963), xlvi. Stewart, “Voices,” 93, 94. Stewart, 93, 94. For more on Bradstreet, see, among others, Margaret J. M. Ezell, “Literacy Pirates and Reluctant Authors,” in Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Elizabeth

Wade White, Anne Bradstreet: “The Tenth Muse” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Rosamond Rosenmeir, Anne Bradstreet Revisited (Boston: Twayne, 1991); and Patricia Pender, “‘To be a foole in print’: Anne Bradstreet and the Romance of ‘Pirated’ Publication,” in Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 55. Anne Bradstreet, The tenth muse lately sprung up in America (London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650), fol. A3v. 56. Bradstreet, n.p.; Guillaume Du Bartas, “The II Part of the I Day: The Imposture,” in The Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume Saluste, Sieur Du Bartas, trans. Joshua Sylvester (London, 1605), 421. 57. Bradstreet, Tenth muse, n.p. 58. Bradstreet, n.p.

Chapter 5

“A Crime So Heinous” The Concept of Heresy in John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England

André A. Gazal

Heresy as the Central Concept of John Jewel’s Apology John Jewel begins his Apology of the Church of England with the metaphor of truth sojourning as a stranger. He describes this hapless figure as finding no acceptance even among those who otherwise should be its most intimate familiars. Particularly when uttered by Christ himself, truth consistently draws innumerable detractors who viciously assign it the name of heresy. Jewel goes on throughout much of part 1 of the Apology describing this scenario as most typical of truth’s reception in the course of biblical and early Christian history by Jews, pagans, and even supposed Christians alike. The bishop of Salisbury summarily yet vividly traces the unfortunate history of truth’s hateful repudiation via the constant charge of heresy in order to establish the spiritual lineage of the Elizabethan church, which has been subject to the same slanderous charge leveled by the church of Rome for its refusal to participate in the Council of Trent. Since the initial task of the Apology is to refute the accusation of heresy, it becomes apparent that heresy functions as the operative concept in the work. For in constructing his defense of England’s national church, Jewel does not merely deny Catholic allegations of heresy but rather aggressively employs a particular concept of heresy against the

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Roman church. Specifically, as this essay will argue, in order to vindicate the doctrine and practice of the Church of England, Jewel utilizes as his prime rhetorical and theological device in the Apology a traditional and even canonical concept of heresy that enables him to confirm the orthodoxy of the Elizabethan settlement while casting the church of Rome, and most especially its head, the pope, as the contumacious heresiarch. Reading the Apology as organized around the bishop’s concept of heresy might account well for his seemingly negative use of the scriptures, fathers, first four ecumenical councils, and the example of the primitive church. Rather than simply reductionist means of eradicating ecclesiastical traditionalism with no constructive aim in view,1 these criteria, for Jewel, served to identify heresy, which, he contended, was subsequent development contravening these authorities, a concept, which arguably derived from earlier ecclesiastical tradition. Thus Jewel’s polemical task in the Apology proceeds primarily from a view of heresy, which he appropriates from canonical legal tradition in order to invalidate later medieval doctrines and practices as contrary to antecedent and therefore more authoritative tradition. Specifically, this chapter will examine Jewel’s concept of heresy in the following respects: Jewel’s definition of heresy, his frequent contradistinction between heresy and dissent, and the bishop’s use of the category of heresy to invalidate doctrinal and practical innovations as contrary to earlier canons of authority.

Jewel’s Definition of Heresy Throughout part 1 of the Apology, Jewel rehearses the characteristics of heresy that Rome has imputed to the Church of England in substantiation of its charge: dividing the church, reviving old heresies, creating new sects, disagreeing among themselves, encouraging license, seeking to overthrow the civic order, disrupting the unity and peace of the church, renouncing papal authority “without reasonable cause,” nullifying patristic and other ecclesiastical tradition, appealing to scripture apart from this tradition, and finally, instituting new traditions apart from a general council.2 Afterward, Jewel proceeds to castigate the motives of Catholic accusers as well as the pope’s condemnation of Protestants, without either objectively considering their case or permitting them an actual voice at the Council of Trent, which, for this apologist, justifies her majesty’s government’s rejection of Cardinal Martinegno’s invitation to send

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a delegation to the council.3 It is at this point that the bishop declares the purpose of the Apology as rendering an account of the doctrines of the Church of England, in direct response to the pope’s condemnation of Protestants as heretics “without any good consideration, without any example, and utterly without law or right, only because he heard tell that they did dissent from him and his in some point of religion.”4 Papal denunciation of Protestants as heretics is unlawful according to Jewel. Such a judgment, Jewel contends, defies traditional definitions of heresy and their precedents given in ecclesiastical law. Moreover, the pope, according to Jewel, disingenuously obscures the distinction between heresy and dissent. Shortly thereafter, the bishop identifies the authorities that he deems truly catholic: “God’s Holy Gospel, the ancient bishops, and the primitive church” that “do make on our side.”5 The scriptures, church fathers, and examples from the early church function formally as the criteria for determining heresy, which here in part 1 Jewel applies to the Roman church: “We have not without just cause left these men and rather have returned to the apostles and old catholic fathers.”6 Jewel avers an antithesis between these authorities and the present Roman church, thereby implying that the latter is estranged from the former. To return to the truth is to forsake the present Roman church and return to the ancient authorities. What this fundamentally means for Jewel is that to remain outside the parameters of ancient prescriptions of orthodoxy is to be in the realms of heresy. From here, Jewel transitions specifically to his description of heresy. Affirming heresy as a “crime so heinous,” Jewel describes it as “a forsaking of salvation, a renouncing of God’s grace, a departing from the body and spirit of Christ.”7 This characterization of heresy became a significant subject of dispute between Jewel and his Catholic opponent, Thomas Harding. In his Confutation, Harding takes issue with Jewel’s description of heresy in the Apology, dismissing it as “not sufficient.” He then goes on to say that if this was Jewel’s operating definition of heresy, then every mortal sin committed is heresy. Harding thus accuses Jewel of conflating sin and heresy.8 He then opposes Jewel’s characterization with an official definition: “Heresy is a false doctrine against the right belief, by him that professeth the faith stubbornly either avouched or called in doubt.”9 After quoting this definition against Jewel, Harding proceeds to expound on the element of stubbornness as the defining attribute of heresy, for “it is stubbornness in error that maketh an heretic.”10

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This contumacy stems from sustained resistance to correction by the church, a charge that Harding continues to level against Jewel and other Protestants. Replying to Harding in his Defence of the Apology of the Church of England, Jewel first denied that the description of heresy given in the Apology was a definition of it. “It was not my mind in this place to utter any definition of heresy, either right or wrong”;11 rather, he maintains, “it was not so necessary in this matter so precisely to seek us definitions. I thought it sufficient only to declare the horror of heresy.”12 Instead of a definition of heresy, Jewel’s characterization, he argues, was a description of its deleterious effects. Furthermore, throughout this particular response to Harding, Jewel highlights what he judges to be the nebulous and malleable nature of the concept of heresy as evidenced by the seemingly casual manner in which parties within the Roman church have accused one another of it.13 He further confirms the inherent pliability of the term heresy on the basis of citations of Augustine, Ludovicus Vives, Jerome, Hillary, and Alphonse de Castro.14 Yet although Jewel makes much of the imprecision and fluidity of the term heresy, he nevertheless avers, in his refutation of Harding, formal criteria for determining heresy: “For just proof of heresy three things necessarily are required. First, that it be an error: secondly, that it be an error against the truth of God’s Word; for otherwise every error maketh not an heresy: thirdly, that it be stoutly and willfully maintained; otherwise an error in God’s truth without willful maintenance is not an heresy.”15 These criteria are based on a definition of heresy also formally acknowledged by the medieval church. The definition in its extensive form occurs in Gratian’s Decretum and was succinctly expressed by Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) thus: “A heresy is an opinion chosen by human perception contrary to holy Scripture, publicly avowed and obstinately defended.”16 Also in keeping with traditional categories of heresy, Jewel acknowledges the possibility of one being in error while not obstinately maintaining it; Harding as well as traditional canonists and theologians, in general, also accentuated contumacy as the enabling characteristic of heresy that distinguishes it from mere doctrinal ignorance.17 Even though Jewel, by his own admission in the Defence, does not explicitly give a formal definition of heresy in the Apology, pointing out the pliability of the term due to its inherent imprecision, yet it is apparent that the bishop does not dispense with the concept of heresy as a category

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necessary for defining false doctrine in theological polemic. For in the same reply in the Defence, Jewel clearly annunciates criteria for determining heresy drawn from a traditional, canonical definition of heresy. It is this definition stated by both Gratian and Grosseteste, which portrays heresy as an opinion contrary to scripture and publicly avowed, that Jewel likely assumes and employs throughout the Apology, with which to charge the Roman church with transgressing the ancient parameters of orthodoxy: scripture along with its subservient interpretation and application by the fathers and early church, a restrictive canon also recognized by the medieval church as observed by the late Heiko Oberman as “Tradition 1.”18 While Jewel most likely employs what he expresses as a definite definition of heresy, he does, for his polemical purpose, capitalize on the inherent elasticity of the term, in order to distinguish it from dissent.

Heresy versus Dissent As earlier observed, when Jewel accused the pope of condemning Protestants as heretics apart from any warrant in ecclesiastical law, he also faulted the pontiff with obfuscating the difference between heresy and dissent. Jewel asserts such confusion to be evidenced by the pope’s branding legitimate dissent as heresy. The bishop further alleges that the intrinsic imprecision of the term heresy makes possible the casual and, in this case, tyrannical use of the term to suppress dissent that stems from the proclamation of truth. The sustained application of the criteria for heresy stated above enables the Church of England apologist to distinguish clearly for his polemical purposes between it and dissent. Heresy always entails public propagation of ideas directly contrary to scripture as interpreted and applied by the fathers and the early church. However, dissent is an element that is integral to what the bishop understands as biblical Christianity. Indeed, Jewel, throughout the Apology, presents Christianity as nothing less than a religion of dissent.19 Jewel emphasizes the dissenting element within Christianity at the beginning of part 1, by way of the stranger metaphor. Truth, the personification of Christianity, or, more specifically, Protestant Christianity, endemically contains the element of its own estrangement, the divinely instilled propensity to proclaim itself. Three examples of this phenomenon Jewel highlights are Jesus, Paul, and Stephen. Being the truth itself,

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Jesus spoke truth, only to “be counted a juggler and an enchanter, a Samaritan, Beelzebub, a deceiver of the people, a drunkard, and a glutton.”20 Likewise, Paul, whom Jewel characterizes as “the most earnest and vehement preacher and maintainer of truth,” was accused of sedition, blasphemy, and “a despiser of the fathers’ ordinances.”21 Furthermore, Stephen, “after he had thoroughly and sincerely embraced the truth and began frankly and stoutly to preach and set forth the same,”22 was executed for uttering “disdainful and heinous words against the Law, against Moses, against the temple, and against God.”23 Jewel also observes that the hostility dissent incurs comes about from Satan’s enflaming the opposition to truth. This is because “the devil well seeth that so long as truth is in good safety, himself cannot be safe, nor maintain his own estate.”24 The dissenting element within Christianity also propels it to respond defensively to the accusation of heresy: For Christ, verily, when the Pharisees charged him with sorcery, as one that had some familiar spirits and wrought many things by their help: “I,” said he, “have not the devil, but do glorify my Father; but it is you that have dishonored me and put me to rebuke and shame.” And St. Paul, when Festus the lieutenant scorned him as a madman: “I,” said he, “most dear Festus, am not mad, as thou thinkest, but I speak, but I speak the words of truth and soberness.” And the ancient Christians, when they were slandered to the people for man-killers, for adulterers, for committers of incest, for disturbers of commonweals, and did perceive that by such slanderous accusations the religion which they professed might be brought in question, namely, if they should seem to hold their peace and in manner confess the fault; lest this might hinder the free course of the Gospel, they made orations, they put supplications, and made means to emperors and princes that they might defend themselves and their fellows in open audience.25 Appealing again to the examples of Christ and Paul, Jewel shows how Christianity has consistently defended the truth it initially proclaims upon being attacked with the charge of heresy. When Christ proclaimed the truth to the Pharisees, and they responded with accusations of sorcery and divination, he replied with a vindication of his truth claims, which, among other things, involved impeaching the character of the accusers.

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Here it should be noted that exposing the questionable character of those imputing the name “heresy” to the truth is another aspect of Christianity’s activity of dissent. Paul also defends the truth he spoke to Festus following his slanderous characterization of him. Finally Jewel moves on to the early church, whose declaration of the same truth elicited sundry allegations of murder, adultery, sexual perversion, and sedition. Significantly, Jewel calls attention to the reason for the early church’s response to the charges. He states that failure to answer the slanderous accusations “might hinder the free course of the Gospel.” Thus defense of the truth—that is, the Gospel and hence continuing dissent—is necessary for its further proclamation. Defense of the truth that is the Gospel is an imperative extension of dissent. Jewel then relates this observation to the task of present Protestants in Europe and particularly the Church of England, whose proclamation and practice of the Gospel he seeks to defend publicly before the rulers of Christendom.26 The distinction between heresy and dissent factors prominently in Jewel’s understanding of church history, which he utilizes for polemical purposes. Responding to Harding’s charge that the Church of England and its Protestant allies abroad are reviving ancient heresies heretofore condemned, just as some of the late medieval reformers had allegedly done, Jewel provides an interpretation that incorporates the contrast between heresy and dissent: Touching the Donatists and Manichees, and all other like condemned heresies, we utterly abhor them, even as the gates of hell. As for John Wicliffe, John Huss, Valdo, and the rest, for ought we know, and I believe, setting malice aside, for ought you know, they were godly men. Their greatest heresy was this, that they complained of the dissolute and vicious lives of the clergy of worshiping of images, of feigned miracles of the tyrannical pride of the pope, of monks, friars, pardons, pilgrimages, and purgatory, and other like deceiving and mocking of the people; and that they wished a reformation of the church. We succeed not them, nor bear their names.27 Jewel, clearly in rebuttal to Harding, distinguishes between the ancient heresies of Donatism and Manichaeanism, which were condemned, sharing mutual repugnance for them; however, the bishop unambiguously differentiates these ancient heresies from those late medieval reformers

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who, according to the bishop, are wrongfully relegated to the same category by Rome. Whereas heresies like Donatism and Manichaenism were rightfully condemned by the early church because they plainly contradicted the church’s orthodox doctrine concerning the church, Christ, and redemption, the supposed heresies of Wyclif, Huss, and Valdes did not contradict the scriptures or their interpretation by the church fathers but rather challenged existing corruption in the church. Wyclif, Huss, and Valdes engaged in dissent intended to move the church to reform. Yet Jewel observes, this dissent the Roman church calls “heresy,” again confirming the pliability of the term. Like these reformers, Protestants, who are the successors of “him whose word we profess,” also endeavor by dissent via the Word to effect reform in the church but are instead condemned by Rome “under a color of false translation for heresy.”28 Polemically, the history of the church for Jewel is the history of dissent, which, stemming from the Word, has as its objective the continuous reform of the church in accordance with holy scripture. Those opposing such dissent, seeking to suppress it, artificially and maliciously impugn it as heresy. Throughout Jewel’s polemical narrative, there seems to be present a certain subtext in which dissent is spoken primarily to those possessing ecclesiastical power, whether it be the Pharisees, Roman magistrates acting on the complaints of Jewish religious leaders, or the pope and his officials, who, although should be the guardians against heresy, are in fact, its main perpetrators. This is the case that Jewel will make explicitly, as he applies his concept of heresy to alleged innovations established and defended by the Roman church.

Contrary Innovations as the Marks of Heresy Throughout the Apology, it becomes apparent that Jewel’s objective in vindicating the orthodoxy of the Church of England lay in impeaching the Roman church’s claim to the same. To accomplish this, Jewel employed the canonical criteria for determining heresy earlier mentioned: “Heresy is an opinion chosen by human perception contrary to holy Scripture, publicly avowed and obstinately defended.” Specifically, Jewel applied this definition in such a way so as to render developments within Roman tradition subsequent to the early church heretical. In part 1 of the Apology, Jewel’s application of his criteria for heresy is evident in his emphasis on the use of the scriptures by the fathers to

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expose and refute heresy: “For at that time made the catholic fathers and bishops no doubt but that our religion might be proved out of the Holy Scriptures. Neither were they ever so hardly to take any for an heretic whose error they could not evidently and apparently reprove by the selfsame Scriptures.”29 Calling attention to the fact that the fathers resorted to scripture in dealing with heresy verifies for Jewel the patristic basis of the definition from which he derived his criteria for it. Having confirmed the employment of these criteria by way of patristic precedent, Jewel proceeds to apply the definition of heresy to the Church of England’s Roman detractors. By insisting on the scriptures as interpreted by the fathers and applied by the early church as the grounds for orthodoxy and conversely as the means of detecting heresy, Jewel seeks to portray what he perceives as innovations within the Roman church contrary to it as heretical. The principal area where Jewel does this is doctrine. For instance, in the Defence of the Apology, Jewel points out the differences between the Church of England and Rome regarding the doctrine of justification by faith alone. There, the bishop argues that the Church of England subscribes fully to the Pauline doctrine as interpreted by an array of fathers, especially Augustine, alleging the present doctrine of justification in the Roman church with its emphasis on merit as a gross deviation from the canonical criteria affirming the orthodoxy of the Protestant position.30 Moreover, one of the central if not the central object of Jewel’s charge of doctrinal innovation falling short of his canonical criteria for orthodoxy is the Mass. It is with this charge that Jewel begins part 3 of the Apology. There, he points out that since neither Christ, the apostles, nor the fathers established private masses, barred the laity from the chalice, or taught transubstantiation but rather that the Roman church devised these afterward, they must be heretical.31 Jewel applies the definition of heresy to current practices in the Roman church as well. Commenting on the use of holy oil again in the Defence, Jewel notes the various prescribed prayers in the Roman liturgical manuals assign efficacy to the oil to be administered after it is consecrated (especially the promise of remission of sins for the sick who are anointed with the holy oil).32 Afterward, Jewel proceeds to demonstrate how the doctrines conveyed in those prayers associated with the use of oil were not of apostolic origin, corroborating his point with citations from the canonist Panormitanus (1386–1445).33 Jewel’s contention

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in this regard becomes quite unambiguous: although the anointing of the sick with oil is apostolic practice, the inherent efficacy ascribed to it by the liturgical theology of the Roman church constitutes an innovation that does not merely deviate from the custom of the ancient church but contradicts and perverts it. Jewel then applies this same line of argument to the use of holy oil in ordinations, as well as the chrism, and the use of processional candles.34 One of the widely acknowledged characteristics of heresy was the claim by a given sect to be the only true church to the exclusion of the Catholic Church. A trait originally associated with the Donatists, Rome frequently accused Protestant bodies of reviving this ancient heresy. The notion of Donatism, however, factors significantly in Jewel’s application of the canonical criteria in determining heresy, which is predicated upon an understanding of catholicity that is defined exclusively by the scriptures as interpreted and applied by the early church. Replying to Harding’s repetition of the familiar charge of Donatism against the Church of England and other Protestant churches, Jewel deflects it upon his opponent and the Roman Church, which he defends by calling attention to its own claim as the one true church: “The Donatists inclosed the church of God with the bounds of one country, and said there was no church but only their own, which was in Africa. In like sort, and with like truth, M. Harding so often and so constantly telleth us this day, there is no church nor salvation but under the obedience of the see of Rome. It is easy therefore to see who are the children of those fathers.”35 In claiming to be the only church situated around one city to which everyone owes obedience, the Roman church, according to Jewel, shows itself guilty of a heresy that the early church defined and condemned. Among the criteria Jewel gave for determining heresy was that the opinion contrary to scripture was “stoutly and willfully maintained.” Throughout the Apology and Defence alike, Jewel seems to apply this criterion directly to the pope when he accuses him of elevating himself above general councils, “that his bare will must be holden as a law; that whatsoever he do, no man may say unto him.”36 Moreover, this is the manner in which the pope asserts the superiority of his judgment to that of the whole world, or in other words, the whole Christian world. Appealing to Acts 15 (the account of the Jerusalem Council), Jewel shows “that the apostles gave us an example, that in great weighty matters we should call some others to us.”37 As scripture, the precedent in Acts is

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normative for the conduct of future councils in which “inferior priests sat together with the bishops.”38 Furthermore, citing the conciliarist Jean Gerson, Jewel calls for lay participation in church councils (that is. representation and active involvement by magistrates).39 For Jewel, the pope’s apparent dominance of the councils, and the Council of Trent, is probably the most egregious expression of heresy as contrariness to scripture being stubbornly maintained. This is because a council, according to scripture as prescribed by the narrative in Acts 15 and the example of early church councils, served as the universal forum through which the church arrived at understanding truth through dissent. The pope’s unquestioned control of Trent and all general councils, which categorically prohibits all dissent, and thus supplants consensus on the basis of truth with his arbitrary claims. The bishop portrays papal elevation over general councils and undisputed control of them as the most visible manifestation of innovations contravening scripture and the early church’s endeavor to emulate it, and therefore brazen heresy. Jewel further buttresses his case by opposing the more recent councils controlled by the pope with more ancient ones in which bishops and other delegates had an equal voice. Contending with Harding in this regard, Jewel asserts, “Likewise the councils ye mean are very new, and therefore bear the less authority for that they be so many ways contrary to the old.”40 Jewel illustrates this position by contrasting the Council of Nicaea, which granted the bishop of Rome authority equal to that of the other three patriarchs with the Fifth Lateran Council presided over Pope Leo X, which declared that “in the pope there is all power above all powers, as well as heaven as of earth.”41 Councils dominated by the pope to enhance his claims to unwarranted power represent gross innovations directly contradicting the scriptures that the ancient councils followed, therefore rendering them invalid. Among the authors Jewel cites to substantiate his charge of the pope unilaterally controlling councils, as noted above, was the conciliarist Jean Gerson (1363–1429). This is only one of many instances in which Jewel either cites or references Gerson, as well as several other canonists. In addition to Gerson, Jewel quotes extensively two other important conciliarists, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) and Franciscus Zabarella (1360–1417). The writings of Nicholas of Cusa that Jewel cites are his two Epistles to the Bohemians and Catholic Concordance. Jewel quotes each work to accomplish a particular polemical purpose. The bishop

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references Cusa’s Epistles to the Bohemians in order to present the postconciliarist cardinal’s view regarding the relationship between scripture and the church as representative of the errant view propounded by the pope and the magisterium: “Indeed Cardinal Cusanus saith: Veritas adhaeret cathedrae. Quare membra cathedrae unita, et pontifici conjuncta, effciunt ecclesiam: ‘The truth cleaveth fast to the pope’s chair. Therefore, the members united unto that chair, and joined unto the pope, make the church.’”42 The papacy, Jewel contends, is the locus of truth, according to this most esteemed scholar of the church. More directly, Jewel points out, “Cardinal Cusanus therefore hereof saith thus . . . ‘This is the judgment of all them that think rightly, that found the authority and understanding of the scriptures in the allowance of the church; and not contrariwise lay the foundation of the church in the authority of the scriptures. There be no commandments of Christ but such only as so be taken and holden by the church. Therefore, the Scriptures follow the church; but contrariwise the church followeth not the scriptures.’”43 Yet Jewel quotes Nicholas of Cusa as an authoritative interpreter of earlier councils. This use of the fifteenth-century conciliarist, among other things, served Jewel’s purpose in proving that popes had officially sanctioned heresy. In arguing, for instance, that the bishop of Rome had sanctioned the pro-Arian Council of Sardica (343–44 AD), Jewel refers to the section in Cusa’s Catholic Concordance where the cardinal explicitly acknowledges it as fact.44 In so doing, Jewel accomplishes the following with respect to his argument. First, he substantiates the charge of previous papal endorsement of heresy by referencing an authority recognized by the Roman church. Second, and more significantly, the bishop appeals to the historical interpretation of a churchman, who had been a conciliarist but later abandoned the movement in support of the papal opposition, which would make him, at least in Jewel’s estimation, not only a recognized authority but also one who was objective, given his unrelenting loyalty to the papacy. Since Jewel regarded Nicholas of Cusa as an authoritative expert on the councils, he would be even more compelled to cite him and thus his arguments, affirming the necessarily orthodox superiority of a general council to the pope: But, lest you say that all of these bishops and fathers in the councils of Ferraria and Basil were inflamed with schismatical spirits, or possessed with devils, Nicholaus Cusanus, being himself a

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cardinal, and a child of the church of Rome, hath by express words avouched the same. Thus he saith . . . Forasmuch as the popes sitting in the apostolic see of Rome be chosen of men, and be such as may err and sin, and now specially, the world drawing towards as an end, and wickedness increasing, abuse their power to the destruction of the church, that was given them for the rearing up and furnishing of the church, what man having his right wits can doubt but a general council hath authority, as well over the abuse, as also over the pope that hath made the abuse? Universally it may be said, that the universal council is in every respect as well above the pope, as also above his apostolic see.45 Defending the integrity of the bishops assembled at the conciliarist councils of Basel and Ferrara (which Cusa later abandoned to join Pope Eugenius IV’s Council of Florence) against Harding, Jewel quotes Cusa, whom he emphasizes was a cardinal of the Roman church, verbatim to demonstrate the orthodoxy of the conciliarist position of a papacy subordinate to a universal council. The reasons annunciated by Cusa, as given by Jewel, are the fact of human frailty, and hence the propensity to err on part of the cardinals electing the pope, as well as the pope himself, the imminence of the world’s end (which provides something of an eschatological motivation for ecclesiastical reform by conciliar means), and consistent abuse of papal power to the detriment of the church. Throughout this discussion in the Defence, Jewel appropriates Cusa’s arguments, thus relating them to the present state of the church, but now with the view of highlighting the heretical action on part of the pope in dominating what purports to be a general council. The other conciliarist Jewel quotes frequently is Franciscus Zabarella. The bishop’s appeal to Zabarella is noteworthy as he was most likely “the pioneer who paved the way for the Council of Constance,” which resolved the Great Schism (1415).46 Moreover, Zabarella provided the definitive synthesis of the various conciliar approaches to ecclesiastical government. The specific work by Zabarella that Jewel quotes is his Treatise on Schism. Although frequently critical of Cusa, Jewel does not speak negatively of Zabarella. On the contrary, he commends the late medieval canonist as having been one of the “good men” who complained of the pope’s errors and abuse of authority.47 Generally, Jewel cites Zabarella in support of three specific points

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regarding the relationship of the papacy to councils. First, Jewel notes that Zabarella severely criticized papal supremacists who, in both the cardinal’s and bishop’s opinion, unduly exaggerated the nature and extent of papal power: Franciscus Zabarella, a cardinal of Rome, saith thus: Persuaserunt pontificibus quod omnia possent, et sic quod facerent quicquid liberet, etiam illicita, et sint plusquam Deus: “They have made the popes believe that they might do all things whatsoever they listed, yea, notwithstanding they were things unlawful; and thus have they made them more than God.”48 The enhanced power ascribed to the pope by the papal supremacists transgressed canonical limits, thus enabling him to violate other aspects of canonical tradition with impunity. This granting of unsurpassed power to the pope is an act of blasphemy as it elevates him, a mere mortal over God. This illegitimate, overstated power assigned to the pope serves as the grounds upon which he usurps the lawfully constituted authority of other bishops: And therefore Franciscus Zabarella, a notable canonist, and cardinal of the church of Rome, seeing the great enormities that grew hereof, saith this: Papae faciunt quicquid libet, etiam illicita, et sunt plusquam Deus. Ex hoc infiniti sequuti sunt errors; quia papa occupavit omnia jura inferiorum ecclesiarum, ita ut inferiors praelati sint pro nihilo: et nisi Deus succurrat statui ecclesiae, universalis ecclesia periclitatur: “The popes do now whatsoever they list to do, yea, although it be unlawful, and are become more than God. Hereof have followed infinite errors: for the pope hath invaded and entered upon all the right of the inferior churches; so that the inferior bishops may go for nought. And unless God help the state of the church, the universal church is in danger.”49 Jewel cites Zabarella above to demonstrate that the claim and exercise of unbridled power by the pope, in violating heretofore established ecclesiastical law, tramples upon the power incumbent upon other bishops and results in the multiplication of doctrinal errors, as well as practical abuses. Without the accountability to other bishops who represent the whole Christian church, the pope would merely continue his villainy to the lasting damage of the church. Writing within the context of the events leading to the Council of Constance, Zabarella, convinced that three rival popes and their colleges of cardinals were incapable of healing the schism, argued that a general council consisting of bishops representing the

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universal church, alone could correct the error in the head, which, being schism, is tantamount to heresy. Jewel appropriates Zabarella to make the same case concerning the church in the sixteenth century. The pope’s theologians and lawyers justify his otherwise illicit claims to unlimited power, which have only perpetuated departures from, and hence violations of, canonical tradition and thereby resulted in the usurpation of authority that even surpasses that which Zabarella condemned in that the pope unilaterally controls the present council, rendering it utterly useless as a mechanism of reform. Logically following from this is the third instance for which Jewel appeals to Zabarella, and that is to contend for the canonically mandated role of the magistrate in judging ecclesiastical affairs.50 For Jewel, this aspect of the discussion is most crucial because of his doctrine of royal supremacy, which he defends vigorously in part 4 of the Apology.51 The scriptures prescribe royal ecclesiastical authority, and the Christian Roman emperors summoned, as well as presided over, the first four ecumenical councils. For Jewel, the combined force of scripture and early church governance form a canonical tradition in which magisterial ecclesiastical authority is necessarily normative. Thus papal dominance of general councils to the exclusion of secular princes and dissenting bishops is a recent development that contradicts this canonical institution and therefore is an overt manifestation of heresy. Jewel cites Zabarella on this subject to show that magisterial jurisdiction over general councils is a necessary component of canonical tradition recognized by one regarded as a legal authority of the church. It is apparent that Jewel largely held to the conciliar theory of Zabarella that stressed the necessity of a general council representing the universal church called and led by the Holy Roman Emperor, consisting of all the bishops in correcting the pope as an errant head and affecting general reform. However, for Jewel there is a significant caveat. Because the pope singularly controls the current council, excluding other bishops, and usurping what Jewel believes to be the canonical authority of the secular prince over the council, the general council, although a canonically constituted means of correcting heresy and abuse, is no longer a viable avenue of reform. Because papal domination has irreparably compromised the effectiveness of general councils, Jewel makes the radical case for transferring the power of general councils to regional synods for the reformation of the Catholic Church and therefore serves as a central

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part of his justification of Parliament’s enactment of the Elizabethan settlement.52 Other than the specific instances mentioned above, Jewel makes statements in the Apology that appear to show him explicitly applying the criteria for heresy he cited in the Defence, drawn from the canonical definition of heresy, to what he has determined in general to be innovations contrary to the scriptures interpreted and applied by the fathers and early church in order to discredit them as heretical: Wherefore if we be heretics, and they (as they would fain be called) be catholics, why do they not as they see the fathers, which were catholic men, have always done? Why do they not convince and master us by the divine Scriptures? Why do they not call us again to be tried by them? Why do they not lay before us how we have gone away from Christ, from the prophets, from the apostles, and from the holy fathers? Why stick they to do it? Why are they afraid of it? It is God’s cause; why are they doubtful to commit it to the trial of God’s word? If we be heretics, which refer all our controversies unto the Holy Scriptures and report us to the selfsame words which we know were sealed by God himself, and in comparison of them set little by all other things, whatsoever may be devised by men; how shall we say to these folks, I pray you, what manner of men be they, and how is it meet to call them, which fear the judgment of the Holy Scriptures, that is to say, the judgment of God himself, and do prefer before them their own dreams and full cold inventions; and, to maintain their own traditions, have defaced and corrupted now these many hundred years, the ordinances of Christ and of the apostles?53 In a litany of rhetorical questions, typical of Jewel’s oratorical style, the apologist employs the criteria for heresy. If those representing the church of Rome, accusing the Church of England and other Protestant churches, were truly Catholic and hence orthodox, they would presently teach and function in the same manner as the church fathers and the early church, and like the fathers and the early church, they would establish their charge of heresy on the basis of the scriptures, as did also the fathers and the early church. Instead, the church of Rome establishes its authority upon pseudotraditions (in Jewel’s estimate) that result from the flagrant distortion of “the ordinances of Christ and the apostles,” thereby subsequently

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transgressing the ancient parameters of orthodoxy. Thus the accusation of heresy leveled against the Church of England by the church of Rome is false because it is based upon heresy itself—opinions or innovations (i.e., so-called traditions) that are contrary to scripture and stubbornly maintained.

Disputing Tradition with Tradition Despite the appraisal of Jewel’s defense of the Elizabethan church as based on seemingly arbitrarily contrived negative parameters intended to demolish longstanding Catholic tradition, it is quite apparent that the bishop of Salisbury employed criteria for determining heresy whose source arguably was canonical tradition. Even though Jewel frequently excoriates canon law throughout his polemical works, he seems to draw from this same tradition in order to accomplish his apologetic purpose, which was to refute before an international and domestic audience the Roman church’s charge of heresy by deflecting the same upon the accuser. By employing traditional criteria for determining heresy toward this end, Jewel distinguishes between heresy and dissent, maintaining that Protestants and various late medieval reformers engaged in the latter with the view of keeping the church faithful to ancient catholic and orthodox norms. Furthermore, Jewel aggressively applies the criteria for heresy by invalidating much medieval church tradition as contrary to scripture as interpreted and applied by the fathers and early church, therefore rendering it heretical. This is most explicit in the bishop’s treatment of papal dominance of general councils, and particularly the present Council of Trent, which he starkly contrasts with the ancient councils summoned and presided over by the emperors as forums of open debate, leading to consensus on the basis of scripture. The conduct of general councils in this ancient manner constituted for Jewel an integral part of the canonical criteria he employed in determining heresy. However, the bishop applied these criteria as mediated through conciliarist thought, especially that of Zabarella, which ironically made the apologist for the Church of England somewhat reliant on innovation as well. This willingness to alter traditional criteria evidences itself in the bishop’s transferal of authority from a general council to national and regional synods, in order to maintain what he understood as genuine catholic consensus arrived through dissent and debate, under the careful

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supervision of Christian princes. This means that the essential, canonical means of identifying heresy to affirm truth was Christian consensus itself, as expressed by the unanimous, communal voice of magistrates and bishops, whether it took the form of a general council or multiple national synods. Altogether, Jewel’s application of this mediated criteria portrayed the Roman church as the veritable source of heresy, with the pope himself as prime heresiarch, and therefore the antichrist sitting in the temple of God. For Jewel, heresy was truth’s close companion along its wary journey.

Notes 1. Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 73. 2. John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. John Everitt Booty, trans. Anne Bacon (New York: Church Publishing, 2002), 11. 3. John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 38. 4. Jewel, Apology, 16. 5. Jewel, 17. 6. Jewel, 17. 7. Jewel, 17. 8. Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a Booke Intituled An Apologie of the Church of England (Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1565), 24r–v; John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 3:210. 9. Harding, Confutation, 24r–v; Jewel, Works, 3:210. 10. Harding, Confutation, 24r–v; Jewel, Works, 3:210. 11. Jewel, Works, 3:210. 12. Jewel, 3:211. 13. Jewel, 3:211. 14. Jewel, 3:211. 15. Jewel, 3:210.

16. Quoted in Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 5 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1880), v, 400; cf. Gratian, Decretum, C. 24, q. 3, cc. 27–31, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Aemilius Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1879–81), I, cols 997–98; Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 7; R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 292; R. I. Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 3; James R. Ginther, The Westminster Handbook of Medieval Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 80. 17. Corpus Iuris Canonici, I, col. 998. 18. Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1986), 70–71; Heiko Oberman, “Quo Vadis, Petre? Tradition from Irenaeus to Humani Generis,” in Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought, ed. Heiko Oberman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 269–96.

“A Crime So Heinous”  97 19. For an examination of this aspect of Christianity, see Jeffrey B. Russell, Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages: The Search for Legitimate Authority (New York: Twayne, 1992). 20. Jewel, Apology, 8. 21. Jewel, 8. 22. Jewel, 9. 23. Jewel, 9. 24. Jewel, 8. 25. Jewel, 14. 26. Jewel, 14–16. 27. Jewel, Works, 3:161–62. 28. Jewel, 3:162. 29. Jewel, Apology, 19–20. 30. Jewel, Works, 4:244–46. 31. Jewel, Apology, 40. 32. Jewel, Works, 3:178. 33. Jewel, 3:178. 34. Jewel, 3:177–78. 35. Jewel, 3:190. 36. Jewel, 3:205. 37. Jewel, 3:207. 38. Jewel, 3:207. 39. Jewel, 3:207. 40. Jewel, 3:216. 41. Jewel, 3:217. 42. Jewel, 4:720. 43. Jewel, 4:863. 44. Jewel, 4:938. 45. Jewel, 4:922–23.

46. Walter Ulllman, The Origins of the Great Schism: A Study in FourteenthCentury Ecclesiastical History (New York: Archon Books, 1967), 191. Concerning the thought of Zabarella, see Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 220–37; Thomas E. Morrissey, Conciliarism and Church Law in the Fifteenth Century (Farnham: Variorum, 2015). 47. Jewel, Works, 4:828. 48. Jewel, 3:19. 49. Jewel, 4:734. 50. Jewel, 4:979, 1035. 51. For discussion on how Jewel regarded royal supremacy as a biblical doctrine, see André A. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy in Tudor England: The Use of Old Testament Historical Narrative (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), 183–272. 52. Jewel, Apology, 111–14; see also W. M. Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 121–34. 53. Jewel, Apology, 20.

Chapter 6

An Apology of the Church of England’s Cathedrals

Ian Atherton Tudor England’s cathedrals might seem like an odd topic in a volume commemorating the publications of John Jewel, for his 1562 Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae concerned doctrine, not government, and so said not one word about cathedrals. Indeed, throughout his writings Jewel had remarkably little to say about them. Those occasions when he did mention cathedrals seem to show a somewhat contradictory attitude. On the one hand, he criticized cathedrals quite strongly. In November 1559, after an exhaustive stint as a royal commissioner in the southwest, Jewel complained that “the cathedral churches were nothing else but dens of thieves, or worse, if anything worse or more foul can be mentioned,” an analogy that drew on common Protestant tropes of similarities between cathedrals and monasteries, between prebendaries and monks.1 Preaching before Queen Elizabeth on the imperative for a learned ministry, Jewel noted that “cathedral churches, before such times as ignorance and blindness grew over all the world, and brought in an universal corruption, maintained schools of learning,” leaving unsaid the suggestion that cathedrals were no longer places of learning.2 On the other hand, Bishop Jewel showed a marked concern for his own cathedral of Salisbury. The cathedral he gained on his consecration as bishop in January 1560 had the previous year (while he was serving as a royal commissioner for southwestern dioceses including Salisbury) been quickly purged of both the trappings of Catholic worship and seven of its

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forty-six prebendaries, deprived for refusing to accept the new religious settlement. Two of those (Thomas Heskins and Thomas Harding) were to become Jewel’s opponents in the Challenge Sermon controversy.3 That left Jewel with the task of reforming the cathedral fit for a Protestant church, a role he set about energetically. He oversaw significant repairs, all the more necessary since a lightning strike in May 1560 caused a sixty-foot crack in the spire. He also sought to encourage, cajole, and instruct the chapter into more regular preaching and stricter residence at the cathedral. However, he faced continual foot-dragging by the prebendaries, for his scope to mold a chapter in his own image was severely limited by the very many grants of the next presentation to prebends made by his predecessor, Bishop John Capon, which continued to take effect throughout Jewel’s episcopate. Nevertheless, Jewel led by example, frequently preaching in the cathedral, and the place of Salisbury in his thinking is suggested by his will, in which he bequeathed money for repairs and desired burial in the cathedral church.4 Jewel’s apparently contradictory attitude toward cathedrals was not untypical of senior Elizabethan clerics: stinging criticism while also seeing the potential of a Protestant cathedral. In 1564, Bishop John Scory of Hereford described his cathedral as a place where “idelnes, belly chere, co[n]tempt and depraving of true religion and soche like occasions of the sin of sodome do . . . raigne and rule,” but he also saw the cathedral as the means of reforming Herefordshire and being “the light of all the diocese.”5 William Turner published harsh invective against cathedrals as “dens of theeues, nestes for wolues, spyes [sties] for fet hogs, ba[n]ketting houses for couetous glotons,” and proposed their abolition while holding office as dean of Wells.6 Near the end of his life, Jewel made one further comment about cathedrals, as he briefly entered the emerging controversy over church government, answering what he dismissed as “certain frivolous objections against the government of the Church of England.” Deploying the same approach he had used against his Roman Catholic opponents, he challenged Presbyterians to find the grounds of their argument in the New Testament. Conceding Thomas Cartwright’s point that there was neither dean nor prebendary in the primitive church, he asserted the argument of adiaphora, that nonetheless “now, both in ecclesiastical and civil government, all these are thought necessary.”7 If that was all there was to say, then this essay would be this volume’s shortest. But two further aspects make Jewel a good starting point

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for thinking about Elizabethan cathedrals, and particularly about why Protestant England retained its cathedrals with fully functioning chapters and choirs when other Protestant churches either swept them away or left cathedrals as shadows of their former Catholic selves. The first is the appendix to Lady Anne Bacon’s 1564 translation of Jewel’s Apologia, setting out “the manner how the Church of England is administered and governed.”8 That, which Jewel’s nineteenth-century editor called “a curious piece,” detailed the structure of the episcopal Church of England, with each bishop having “their several cathedral churches: wherein the deans bear chief rule,” and in which there were also “other dignities and canonries.” Although anonymous, it was probably written by Archbishop Matthew Parker, who sponsored Bacon’s translation; John Strype, the archbishop’s early eighteenth-century biographer, thought so.9 The authorized English translation of Jewel’s defense of the Church of England thus greeted the world with a clear and public (though short) endorsement of cathedrals in a Protestant church. The second reason for thinking about cathedrals in connection with Jewel is that, in the search for the roots of Anglicanism, both Jewel and cathedrals have been credited as the progenitors of an Anglican identity. From the mid-seventeenth century onward, Jewel has frequently been cast as the father of an Anglican middle way between Rome and Geneva, his Apology creating a justification for a distinctive Anglicanism founded on both scripture and a reasoned interpretation of the writings of the early church fathers.10 That view has come in for much recent criticism: scholars have denied that the Elizabethan settlement represented a conscious attempt to create a via media, have instead placed the late Tudor church firmly within a Calvinist orbit, and have asserted Jewel’s Reformed links and theology.11 Diarmaid MacCulloch has suggested an alternative parentage for at least a part of Anglicanism, arguing that England’s cathedrals were the progenitors of high-church ceremonialism or Laudianism in the early seventeenth century, and hence cathedrals played a major role in the creation of a distinctive Anglican identity.12 Since MacCulloch’s ideas have been enthusiastically adopted by others,13 the implication is that cathedral choirs have replaced the bishop of Salisbury as the wellspring of Anglicanism. It is, however, by no means clear that Jacobean cathedrals were the pointless institutions of MacCulloch’s argument, the spiritual leftovers of the Reformation, passed over by Protestantism and left to stew in

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a time warp of redundant singing and liturgy.14 Cathedrals, like John Jewel, may have been miscast and misrepresented. Even so, England’s post-Reformation cathedrals are typically regarded by historians as indefensible foundations in a Protestant church, institutions that lost their vocation but failed to find a role in the new church, in the judgment of Ralph Houlbrooke.15 That leaves a key question to be answered—how they not only survived the Reformation but persisted a further century before their abolition in 1649. Christopher Haigh has commented that the Reformation “should have killed off cathedrals in England”; why it did not is in Claire Cross’s view “surprising” and in the verdict of MacCulloch, “one of the great puzzles of the English Reformation.”16 Historians’ puzzlement at the survival of cathedrals in post-Reformation England is founded on four threats to cathedrals or questions about their existence advanced in the sixteenth century and later, which meant that the survival of cathedrals often seemed in doubt.17 The first, fundamental but rarely discussed explicitly, concerned the function of a Protestant cathedral. No longer required for the ceaseless round of praise and prayer of the opus Dei, their role and large establishments came under question. Foreign Protestant churches, such as Scotland and Geneva, did away with cathedrals along with bishops; though England kept its bishops, some could envisage systems of primitive or reduced episcopacy without cathedrals.18 The implication was clear: a Protestant church, even an episcopal one, had no need of cathedrals. Second, the dissolution of the monasteries was seen by some as a precedent applicable to cathedrals, and a cash-strapped Crown might be induced to abolish, or at least asset strip, them. A third threat came from the hunters of concealed lands, who persuaded the Crown that a significant slice of the wealth of deans and chapters rightfully belonged to the Crown but was being concealed dishonestly. The fourth challenge came from a puritan assault on their foundations, which emerged during the Admonition controversy of the 1570s and persisted through the Marprelate controversy of the later 1580s.19 Stinging invective focused on alleged abuses. Cathedral clergy were idle pluralists, failing to preach as they grew fat on their wealth. That wealth was often in impropriations, making cathedrals parasitic on the parishes. Cathedral worship, especially their choirs and organs, was popish and idolatrous.20 There is no doubt that many felt the threat to cathedrals as real: in 1575 John Whitgift lamented “what Enemies the most part of Men are to Cathedral Churches,” while well-connected men such as Sir

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Roger Manwood, chief baron of the Exchequer (d. 1592), and Archbishop Richard Bancroft (d. 1610) amended their wills so as not to leave anything to a cathedral, fearing their imminent abolition.21 Nonetheless, historians have been deafened by the shrill and acerbic polemic of puritans and have been blinded to the possibilities of a Protestant defense of cathedrals. It is to the contours and chronology of just such a defense that the rest of this essay will turn, as part of a contribution to answering MacCulloch’s puzzle of the survival of cathedrals. It is one of the ironies of the English Reformation that it witnessed an increase in the number of cathedrals rather than their abolition. Out of the proceeds of the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII founded six new cathedrals. The preamble of the 1539 enabling act (31 Henry VIII, c. 9), drafted by the king himself, set out a grandiloquent vision of their place in the commonwealth.22 New cathedrals were created so that “gods worde myght the better be sett forthe, chyldren broght vp in lernyng, clerecs nuryshed in the vniversites and servantes decayd to have lyfynges, allmeshousys for pour folke to be sustaynyd in, Reders of grece ebrew and latyn to have good stypende, dayly allmes to be mynystrate, mendyng of hyghe wayse, exhybission for mynysters off the Chyrche.” The king’s charters and statutes for his new foundations rehearsed the same ideas.23 None of the ideas were new; they all derived from medieval ideas about cathedrals.24 What was distinctive was the way that four traditional roles of a cathedral (as the bishop’s seat and diocesan center; as a center of charity; of education; and of worship) were combined and emphasized. These competing and overlapping ideas about the role of a cathedral were available for adaptation and reinterpretation by Protestants and continued to lie behind much thinking about cathedrals throughout the early modern period. Nonetheless, all contained possible contradictions and tensions or exposed a gulf between theory and practice, which meant that a single, ringing, comprehensive and convincing defense of cathedrals was difficult to develop. Protestants occasionally explicitly named a cathedral as the bishop’s council or, as Whitgift quoted Jerome, “the senate of the Church.”25 Those ideas were given formal shape in the 1604 canons, which, to meet fears of lordly prelacy advanced at the Hampton Court Conference, directed that in the ordination and deprivation of ministers a bishop should be assisted by grave preachers of the diocese, especially the dean and canons.26 In practice, however, there is little evidence that bishops regularly acted in

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concert with their cathedral clergy in the governing of a diocese, except through the office of an archdeacon, and the role of a chapter as the bishop’s council consisted in little more than the formalities of administering the temporalities of the see during episcopal vacancies, “electing” the Crown’s nominee as bishop, and ratifying all episcopal grants of office or land. The role of a cathedral as a provider of charity and hospitality was set out in cathedral statutes,27 but in practice became, beyond the Christian duty of hospitality enjoined on all clergy (especially wealthy ones such as deans and many prebendaries),28 little more than the discharge of certain works of corporate charity instituted by Henry VIII on his new foundations to spend set amounts on roads, bridges, the poor, and almsmen.29 It was easy for their detractors to find the charitable endeavors of Protestant cathedrals wanting and even for townsfolk (as in Peterborough and Manchester) to contrast the Elizabethan institution unfavorably with its unreformed predecessor.30 A third role—a cathedral as a seat of learning—gave some Protestants much more scope for developing positive claims. Medieval cathedrals had often supported a grammar and song school, while secular (i.e., nonmonastic) cathedrals also held lectures in theology or canon law.31 Occasionally, Protestant plans were floated to give much greater force to these ideas, ranging from Archbishop Robert Holgate’s attempt in 1552 to turn York minster from a liturgical center to one of biblical study (requiring the choir to learn a biblical passage a week) to schemes to refound Ripon minster as a university college.32 Closely linked was the idea that they should be centers of preaching, which became the principal Protestant justification for a cathedral until the 1570s. As the appendix to Jewel’s 1564 Apology explained, in English cathedrals “vpon Sondayes and festiuall dayes, the Canons make ordinarilye special Sermons, wherevnto duely resorte the head Officers of the Cities and the Citizens: and vpon the workendayes thryse in the weeke, one of the Canons doth read and expound some peece of holy Scripture.”33 Royal injunctions stressed the preaching role at all cathedrals,34 and, in the first dozen years of Elizabeth’s reign, most cathedrals established a post of divinity lecturer, fulfilling the claims made in Jewel’s name in 1564.35 As bishop, Jewel was remembered for his “assiduitie in preaching” at court, at Paul’s Cross and throughout his diocese, and it was claimed that his “extraordinary pains in travelling and preaching in all parts of his Diocess” had brought him to an early

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grave, aged forty-nine.36 He also paid particular attention to preaching at Salisbury cathedral. His own sermons there on the sacraments were edited into a treatise and posthumously published,37 but he also sought to make the cathedral a preaching and teaching center by imposing a preaching rota on the prebendaries, trying to impose stricter terms of residence on the cathedral dignitaries, turning one of the houses in the close into a college of prebendaries for nonresident canons, and enjoining daily study on the cathedral clergy.38 Only the preaching rota bore permanent fruit, but all bore witness to the idea of a Protestant cathedral as a hub for learning, teaching, and preaching. A focus on preaching animated some quite radical visions to transform a cathedral into a preaching center. About 1569, Prebendary George Gardiner proposed to make Norwich cathedral “the mother Church of all the holl Dioces . . . to minister vnto hir Children the Foode of gods worde” by placing preaching (to the city, the chapter estates, and the whole diocese) at the heart of the cathedral’s functions.39 A similar scheme proposed by Dean Simon Heynes of Exeter, probably in the 1540s, would have turned that cathedral into a preaching college for city and diocese.40 The need to resource preaching efforts by cathedral clergy led to a royal order in 1547 that every cathedral should establish a library of patristic theology and other books essential in defending Protestantism—an order repeated by Jewel as a royal commissioner in 1559.41 In practice, however, only a handful of cathedral libraries were refounded, though Salisbury was an early example. Jewel found the contents of the fifteenth-century cathedral library “poor” and was later credited with “building a fair Library” at Salisbury (in truth probably no more than repairs to the existing structure). Jewel may have intended it to house his own extensive collection of books, but on his death those were sold and most acquired by Magdalen College, Oxford, leaving Jewel’s successor as bishop, Edmund Gheast, to replenish the cathedral library with books. Such attempts to create cathedral libraries fit for preachers and for combatting the church’s enemies notwithstanding, Oxford and Cambridge college libraries were more important, and after the Reformation clergy were more likely to leave books to their alma mater than to a cathedral library.42 Moreover, the gradual spread of a preaching ministry in the parishes in the late sixteenth century made the preaching role of a cathedral less important, though cathedrals retained a vital role in set-piece sermons (as at St. Paul’s Cross) or to city corporations.43

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Traditionally, the first and most fundamental role and purpose of a cathedral was the worship of God. The idea is repeated in almost all cathedral charters and statutes:44 in Elizabeth’s charter for Manchester collegiate church, 1578, the purpose of her refoundation is said to be that “daily prayers are habitually had; Sacraments and other Divine Services are celebrated; and our subjects the Parishioners there . . . are educated in the duties of piety towards God, obedience towards us, and honest life and conversation amongst themselves.”45 Beyond these claims, however, disagreement set in. What form should that worship take in a cathedral? What should the balance be between preaching and praying? What was the role of music and singing in a cathedral? Protestant rejection of the opus Dei raised significant questions about worship within a cathedral, where congregations were small or nonexistent. Prayer remained central to Protestantism,46 but no special defense of worship in cathedrals was developed until the 1630s when Laudians reemphasized the importance of the round of public prayers and privileged daily cathedral prayers over the less frequent services of parish churches.47 Such was the current of ideas about the role of cathedrals in the sixteenth century: a number of competing ideas leaving a series of questions but no single clearly articulated vision. Those ideas were drawn upon in the Admonition controversy of the 1570s. Cathedrals were never a major focus of the printed controversy, but Cartwright’s 1570 claim that deans, along with bishops and any ministers apart from pastors, doctors, deacons, and elders, should be abolished as unscriptural raised the issue of cathedrals, particularly in three points: the office of a dean; the learning of prebendaries; and the utility of cathedrals.48 To the Presbyterian claim that the office of a dean was neither scriptural nor allowed by the early church, Whitgift replied that deans were acknowledged by the church fathers, and collegiate churches (which Whitgift saw as all of a piece with cathedrals) could be found as early as 235 AD.49 Whitgift (then a canon of Ely) praised the learning of senior cathedral clergy, asserting that “there was neuer time wherein these churches were better furnished with wyse, learned, and godly men, than they be at this day,” and that therefore cathedrals were vital to maintaining the church’s defense against papists and anabaptists.50 Debate about the utility of a cathedral turned on two linked points: their value in promoting learning and their wealth in the form of impropriations. Cartwright emphasized cathedral wealth as “a lure, to draw hirelings into the church” and attacked canons as

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fat pluralists, fearing, with deliberate understatement, that “the greatest good that we can hope of [them] is, that they do no harme.”51 His critics retorted not only with the alleged learning of cathedral clergy but also that much of the wealth of the universities also lay in impropriations, thereby linking the cause of the cathedrals with that of the universities and claiming that the Presbyterians’ real target was learning in general.52 Cathedrals were of “great profite and singular commoditie,” averred Whitgift, “an ornament to the realme, profitable to the Churche, honour to the Prince: but also a stay from barbarisme, a bridle to sects & heresies, & a bulwarke against confusion.”53 Whitgift’s brief claims may be seen as both a retreat from the grander rhetoric of Henry VIII’s refoundations and also a rather less expansive role for cathedrals than envisaged by the proposals of would-be reformers such as Heynes, Holgate, and Gardiner. Nonetheless, they set out a more positive vision in defense of cathedrals than the most developed attempts to defend them made in the reign of Elizabeth, which can be found in a series of manuscript defenses made in the 1580s and 1590s. At least four general defenses were composed; all are anonymous. A deliberation whether it be fitt in a greate distresse of money for warre to pull down Cathedral Churches, that 3000 lances may be maynteyned sought to counter the recurrent suggestion that cathedral wealth would be better spent on paying for soldiers prompted by the opening of war with Spain.54 A date of 1587, 1588, or 1589 is suggested by the text (fol. 30r) but the threat had been apparent by the summer of 1585 during plans for English intervention in the Netherlands, when Whitgift claimed that “some of calling have openlie gyvne yt owt, that these wars must be manteyned by the dissolution of Cathedrall Churches.”55 That Whitgift was in the forefront of the defense of cathedrals in the 1570s and 1580s, and that this manuscript was in the study of the archbishops at Lambeth in the 1630s, suggest that the tract was written for Whitgift’s use.56 Reasons to move her Majestie for the Confirmation of the Cathedrall Churches erected by King Henrie the eight was part of the campaign mounted by a number of cathedrals and some of their tenants to fight off the hunters of concealed lands. Now filed among undated state papers assigned to 1580, it may have been drawn up in support of the successful attempt to secure an act of parliament in 1593 for confirmation of the title of cathedral chapters to their estates.57 A further tract was also directed against the land-hunters, Inconveniences ensuing upon the passing of lands as concealed belonging

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to Churches, whether Cathedrall Collegiate or parish. Two copies survive, one among the state papers and assigned a date of March 8, 1593, with sixteen reasons, and a copy among the miscellaneous ecclesiastical documents collected by William Petyt (d. 1707) and bequeathed by him to the Inner Temple, with the first fifteen reasons. The Petyt copy, which is undated but in a late-sixteenth-century hand, goes on to include further sections on inconveniences of dissolving hospitals, the inconveniences of granting the penalty of statutes, and the inconveniences of granting the goods of men before they be attainted; the state paper copy includes only the reasons against dissolving hospitals.58 Finally, a paper headed Impropriations contains fourteen reasons not to dissolve cathedrals.59 It comes from a volume of Whitgift’s papers, which led Patrick Collinson to suggest that the archbishop was the author, though it is just as likely that he copied out the treatise of another for his own reference.60 That copies of two of these tracts are associated with Archbishop John Whitgift and two are now found among the state papers suggests that these were ideas considered in circles of or around the privy council, even if authorship cannot be ascribed to those connections. That idea receives further support from a second copy of A deliberation among papers of Sir Christopher Hatton (lord chancellor, 1587–91) and his descendants.61 It was copied after 1603 for it is described “as a proiect in Q. Eliz. Time” but it may derive from a now lost further copy of the same tract that perhaps belonged to Hatton, a great ally of Whitgift.62 Two further copies of Reasons to move her Majestie for the Confirmation of the Cathedrall Churches are known, one in Archbishop William Laud’s papers,63 the other among state papers of indeterminate date.64 Those copies further indicate that both the threat to cathedrals and the defense of them as institutions persisted until the 1640s, when the Elizabethan debate about cathedrals can be compared with the arguments laid out in the early years of the Long Parliament.65 In addition to these general defenses of cathedrals in Elizabethan England, a couple of institutions drew up their own defense, drawing on a similar range of arguments. St. Patrick’s cathedral, Dublin, faced repeated attempts at dissolution, usually to establish a university in Ireland; in response the archbishop of Dublin and cathedral clergy drew up sets of arguments deployed between 1563 and 1566 and later between 1583 and 1585.66 Since the Church of Ireland was the twin sister of the Church of England with some overlap of personnel, and since the Dublin clergy were petitioning the same privy councilors in London who helped direct policy

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toward cathedrals in England (including Hatton, who proved one of their most influential supporters), there was overlap between arguments in Ireland and those in England.67 There are also two defenses of Southwell minster’s right to its lands, which, in asserting the rights of a collegiate church, drew on a similar set of arguments as defenses of cathedrals, for cathedrals and collegiate churches were sister institutions, frequently lumped together or even confused by contemporaries.68 One is from the late sixteenth century and is among Whitgift’s papers.69 The other dates from the beginning of James’s reign, shortly after the king’s letters patent of July 1604, confirming the church. Titled Simposion, it unfolds in dialogue form a defense of the minster in the face of rumors “that a new plot is laid for the better demolishing of o[u]r church” devised by “so many sacrilegious Caterpillers” who “doe soe ravenously gape after the spoile” of Southwell.70 The ideas in all these manuscripts deserve closer attention than hitherto paid to them by historians, for they reveal much about the trajectory of the debate concerning the place of a Protestant cathedral in England and Ireland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The essence of all of these defenses was legalistic, practical, and often materialistic. Dissolving cathedrals was said to be impossible,71 impractical, and unnecessary. Since many of the dissolution proposals promised to convert cathedral wealth into soldiers, a key objection was that cathedral estates would be insufficient to maintain the number of troops proposed (typically three thousand): they were not particularly valuable, they were subject to a number of pensions and other charges, and they could not, even if sequestered by the Crown, be sold off fast enough to meet the present crisis.72 In the case of St. Patrick’s, it was claimed that a university in Ireland would be “but of smale profytt.”73 The most significant argument of all was that most of the wealth was in the form of impropriations—hence the title of one defense, Impropriations.74 Perhaps the strongest argument against dissolving St. Patrick’s was believed to be that all its wealth was in tithes, though effort was also taken to show the cathedral’s poverty.75 This was the same tactic that had apparently saved Cambridge colleges from dissolution fifty years earlier.76 Paradoxically, the same argument—that cathedral wealth lay mainly in impropriated tithes—was used by puritans to attack cathedrals, since prebendaries allegedly grew fat while parishes were served by lean curates.77 The defenses drew a parallel with the dissolution of the monasteries, with the emphasis that little of benefit then came to the commonwealth: towns had decayed, both the realm and the

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prince were weakened, and poverty had increased.78 That was an early example of what was to become a familiar Laudian trope, decrying the spoliation of the church at the dissolution of the monasteries, though it lacked the ideological freighting of those latter claims.79 The arguments also rehearsed familiar themes about the wrongs of spoiling the church that were similarly to be amplified and developed half a century later into a Laudian emphasis on the dangers of sacrilege.80 The defenses urged that the church had biblical precedent for holding possessions, good title in law to its lands, and the prince’s coronation oath that its liberties and estates would be protected.81 Not only would the dissolution of the cathedrals be wicked; it would be impolitic. The war would last for only a time, but the spoil and destruction of cathedrals would be irreversible. The queen’s enemies would be encouraged to see her resort to such a desperate measure, while her armies would be weakened, for, it was claimed, deans and chapters already found more men and horses than it was proposed to maintain out of their revenues. The queen’s own subjects, meanwhile, would be disheartened with the thought that “if thinges consecrate to god and holy vses be not free what defence shall protect private mens possessions.”82 A number of defenses also emphasized that these were royal foundations and so their abolition would be a great dishonor to the Crown.83 Many of the defenses played on a close connection between cathedral and bishop by stressing that the overthrow of cathedrals would lead to the collapse of episcopacy, while the proposals were but the device of those who wished to bring in Presbyterianism, popularity, and confusion. Moreover, the downfall of cathedrals would call into question grants of offices and lands made by deans and chapters or bishops as well as judgments in peculiar courts, “to no small garboyle [confusion] in the Com[m]onwealth”; the whole realm would be “filled w[i]th suites and troubles.”84 A similar argument was raised in disputes over the dean and chapter of Norwich’s title to its lands in 1598, when it was argued that “many great inconveniences would follow,” if Norwich cathedral lost its endowment.85 There was comparatively little said about the positive benefit of cathedrals, and what was urged for their utility was typically on practical and materialistic grounds. The charitable endeavor of cathedral foundations was emphasized,86 with one calculation that England’s cathedrals relieved as many poor folk as it was proposed to fund soldiers out of their

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abolition.87 Moreover, if cathedrals were dissolved, many singing men, choristers, poor ministers, and almsmen would be “vtterlie vndone, and turned abegginge.”88 Little was said about the essential purpose of cathedrals. They were “dedicated to the service of God, the mayntenance of learning, Musique, and hospitalitie and the releife of poore and maimed Souldiers” or, as the St. Patrick’s prebendaries phrased it, “for the mayntenance of godes devyne service, kepinge of hospitallety for the relief of the poore and preachinge of gods worde.”89 Even these seemingly grand justifications proved to be distinctly limited. Cathedrals were seen as upholders and promoters of learning not so much for the schools that they supported but because a prebend was a sinecure for a scholar, a reward for a life devoted to study, “some special reward for lernyng in civill and quiet places,” as Archbishop Loftus of Dublin explained.90 The role of cathedrals in providing a pool of patronage for the Crown was undoubtedly important but by no means restricted to clerical preferment: Elizabeth regularly used deaneries to support key lay officials.91 While cathedrals were thus made more valuable to the Crown, it was only at the expense of their standing in the eyes of many critics. Defenders of cathedrals, meanwhile, preferred to recall only the learned clergy who were appointed. The preaching role of cathedrals was mentioned,92 but greater effort was put toward showing that cathedrals were “the Chief mainteyners” of religion because the prospect of a cathedral appointment was the carrot that induced many young men into the ministry. The decay of cathedrals would be the decay of learning and religion: “For who will putt his Childe to Schoole, or whoe will applie himself to the studdie of divinitee when all hope of sufficient rewarde is taken away? for there are verie fewe Benefices besydes able to fynde a learned man in anye tollerable sorte, no not to buye him books.”93 Few would have disagreed with this assessment of a poorly paid parochial ministry; as a remedy, however, others proposed the dissolution of cathedrals and the application of their revenues to augment poor livings.94 These justifications of cathedrals are as notable for what they left out as for what they said. Both worship and music gained barely a mention: “In these Churches god is daily served morninge and eveninge . . . musick likewise onely is in them manteyned.”95 Only in Laudian thinking in the 1630s would there be a significant emphasis in their defense on cathedral worship—when cathedrals were stressed as mother churches, liturgical

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exemplars for parishes to follow.96 The squeamishness of even moderates about cathedral music meant that it was usually a topic best avoided. Andrew Willet, canon of Ely, allowed church music only if the words were both scriptural and easily heard, later adding that, to his regret, even England’s cathedrals had not altogether abandoned “the tedious Church songs vsed in popery, full of long and vaine repetitions, and dismembered sentences.”97 Even defenders of cathedrals against the threat of abolition in 1641 hoped that the “superexisiteness” of cathedral music might be reduced and “framed with lesse curiosity, that it may be more edifying.”98 Any specific defense of cathedral music was omitted from claims made about cathedrals and left to musical treatises, usually as an aside to wider defenses of church music,99 though one manuscript defense of cathedral music was presented to James I complaining of the decay of music in cathedrals.100 If these seem, as Patrick Collinson has suggested, weak arguments for the perpetuation of foundations that consumed such a large slice of the church’s wealth or if, to use the language of Tudor religious debate, these are principally arguments of carnal judgment and fleshly reason,101 it is nonetheless important to pay close attention to the textures and chronologies of these defenses to consider how the apology for Tudor cathedrals was made. It is worth bearing in mind that the cathedrals were not able to determine the grounds of the debate but were ever responding to the criticisms of others, unlike Jewel, who set the grounds of his debate in his Challenge Sermon. The brief account of the place of cathedrals within the English church added to the end of the 1564 English translation of the Apology helps understand several aspects of these debates about cathedrals. First, the defense of cathedrals grew more muted over time, until the Laudians controversially reframed the debate to make particular arguments about cathedrals as mother churches. “The manner how the Church of England is administered and governed” with its brief defense of cathedrals was dropped from later editions of the Apology. It was not included in the 1600, 1635, or 1685 English editions of the Apology, nor in the 1609 edition of Jewel’s collected works, sinking without trace until reprinted in 1711 by Strype, as one of the materials for his life of Archbishop Parker.102 The 1600 and 1635 editions were commercial ventures designed to meet the demands of placing a copy of Jewel’s work in every parish church; the 1609 edition of his works was specifically arranged by Archbishop Richard

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Bancroft of Canterbury in anticipation of his order the following year that every parish should buy a copy.103 These editions were designed to instruct individual parishioners for whom an account of the governing structures of their church was presumably deemed superfluous. The 1685 edition was a new translation prepared by Edmund Bohun explicitly to defend the Church of England “in this her great danger” not only from Catholics but also from Dissenters and positioned the Anglican church as the only European church to have had “the Blessing and singular Favour of God to reform with Prudence, Moderation, and an exact and regular Conduct.” The place of cathedrals within the church was not a major concern for Bohun in his battles with nonconformists.104 Second, under Elizabeth the rhetoric in defense of cathedrals retreated from grand claims about their role in society to attempts to show how impolitic and difficult their dissolution would be. John Jewel’s limited published engagement with any questions concerning the role or purpose of a cathedral was, therefore, entirely typical of the Elizabethan defense of cathedrals. His argument to Cartwright that they existed under the law of England and were “thought necessary” was typical of much of the attempt to defend cathedrals, seeing them as a thing indifferent.105 The brief mention of cathedrals in the 1564 appendix was also characteristic of these defenses, for it stressed that deans were “chosen both for their learning and godliness,” while prebendaries were “no idle or unprofitable persons, but such as either be preachers, or professors of the sciences of good learning,” following the emphasis on cathedrals as places of preaching, learning, and education.106 Such ideas were not, however, developed. Jewel’s adiaphora claim left a later Elizabethan argument that cathedrals should exist, but with little coherent attempt to explain fully what they were for. That had the unintended consequence of leaving rhetorical space for Laudians in the 1630s to make their own highly contentious claims about the role of cathedrals.107 Finally, setting Jewel’s statements on the cathedrals in a wider context shows that finely worked out arguments did not always carry the day. Elizabeth’s cathedrals survived, even though the intellectual arguments put up in their name were weak and insubstantial, and certainly lacked the vehemence and rhetoric of their enemies. Nonetheless, “the manner how the Church of England is administered and governed” gives a significant clue to answering the conundrum of why cathedrals survived. In setting out the structure of the Church of England, that tract devoted far

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more space to the two universities than it did to either bishops or cathedrals. In placing cathedrals in the contexts of Cambridge and Oxford universities, it contained an essential truth missed in institutional histories of cathedrals: that they were considered as a branch of learning and an adjunct to the universities.108 Cathedral stalls were occupied by former and current university fellows; chapter libraries were similar to college libraries; colleges and cathedrals alike promoted clerical sociability; a number of Oxbridge colleges maintained a choral tradition. Viewed thus, Whitgift’s claim that cathedrals were “the chiefe and principall ornaments of this Realme, and next to the vniuersities, chiefest mainteyners of godlinesse, religion, and learning” was entirely conventional.109 It was not the intellectual arguments about their roles that saved cathedrals during the English Reformation, it was their kinship to the universities.

Acknowledgments Some of the research for this essay was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. I am grateful for the helpful comments made by the Revd. Dr. Preb. Jane Tillier and participants in the Defending the Faith Conference held at Salisbury, September 16–17, 2014.

Notes 1. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1845–50), 4:1217. Compare Jewel, Works, 4:800; James Pilkington, Aggeus and Abdias Prophetes (London, 1562), sig. [E vii verso]; Martin Luther, Thirty-Four Sermons (London, 1816), 297. 2. Jewel, Works, 2:1011. 3. Christopher Wordsworth, Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), 306; Joyce M. Horn, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541–1857: Volume 6, Salisbury Diocese (London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 1986).

4. Wyndham Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 71–73; Jewel, Works, 2:1098–1139, 4:1234; Walter H. Frere and William Paul McClure Kennedy, eds., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, 3 vols., Alcuin Club Collections, vols. 14–16 (London: Longmans Green & Company, 1910), 3:30–43, 94, 122–30, 201–6; Horn, ed., Fasti, ix–x; National Archives, Kew [NA], PROB11/53/494. 5. British Library, Harleian MS 6990, fol. 64r; Mary Bateson, ed., “A Collection of Original Letters from the Bishops to the Privy Council, 1564,” in Camden Miscellany Volume the Ninth, Camden

114  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist Society, 2nd series, vol. 53 (London, 1895), 19–21. 6. William Turner, The Hunting of the Fox and the Wolfe (London, c. 1565), sig. Eiiir; compare William Turner, The Hunting of the Romyshe Vuolfe [Emden, 1555?], sig. Fii. 7. Jewel, Works, 4:1299–1300; Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 199–201. 8. Jewel, Works, 3:109–12. 9. Jewel, 3:51; John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1711), 179. Gemma Allen, “‘A briefe and plaine declaration’: Lady Anne Bacon’s 1564 Translation of the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,” in Women and Writing, c. 1340–c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne LawrenceMathers and Phillippa Hardman (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2010), 62–76, does not consider this appendix. 10. E.g., Southgate, John Jewel; John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), ix; Frederica Thompsett, Living with History (Boston: Cowley, 1999), 107. 11. Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1988); Michael Brydon, The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 115–16; Jenkins, Jewel, 3, 233–35 and passim. 12. Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Myth of the English Reformation,” History Today 41, no. 7 (July 1991): 30; Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Myth of the English Reformation,” Journal of British Studies 30 (1991): 8–9; Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603,

13.

14.

15.

16.

2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 79–81, 85; Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Putting the English Reformation on the Map,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 15 (2005): 90–92; Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Latitude of the Church of England,” in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke, ed. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 47–48. Patrick Collinson, “Elizabeth I and the Verdicts of History,” Historical Research 76 (2003): 476; Graham Parry, The Arts of the Anglican Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 51; Peter Marshall, Reformation England 1480–1642 (London: Arnold, 2003), 133. Ian Atherton, “Cathedrals, Laudianism, and the British Churches,” Historical Journal 53, no. 4 (2010): 895–918; and Ian Atherton, “Cathedrals,” in The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume 1: Reformation and Identity: The Early Struggle for Anglicanism c. 1520–1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 228–42. Ralph Houlbrooke, “Refoundation and Reformation, 1538–1628,” in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese, 1096–1996, ed. Ian Atherton et al. (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), 538. Christopher Haigh, Why Do We Have Cathedrals? A Historian’s View, St. George’s Cathedral Lecture, no. 4 (Perth, 1998), 2, 4, 6; Claire Cross, “‘Dens of Loitering Lubbers’: Protestant Protest against Cathedral Foundations, 1540–1640,” in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. Derek Baker, vol. 9 of Studies in Church History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 237; MacCulloch, Later

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17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

Reformation, 79. See also Jonathan Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 133. For these threats, see Atherton, “Cathedrals.” British Library, Additional MS 48066, fols. 8–11; NA, State Paper [SP] 12/222/70. See Cross, “Protestant Protest.” Albert Peel, ed., The Seconde Parte of a Register, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 1:151, 178, 199; 2:8, 18, 44, 211; Jewel, A Briefe and Plaine Declaration, Concerning the Desires of all those Faithfull Ministers (London, 1584), 67–68; Walter H. Frere and Charles E. Douglas, eds., Puritan Manifestoes: A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt (London: SPCK, 1954), 33. White Kennett, The Case of Impropriations (London, 1704), appendix, 22; Thomas Park, ed., Nugae Antiquae, 2 vols. (London, 1804), 2:5–7; Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), Lancashire, 112. British Library, Cotton MS Cleopatra E iv, fol. 366r. For the new cathedrals (later reduced to five when Westminster was downgraded to a collegiate church), see Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society, 1485–1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 84–90. William T. Mellows, ed., Peterborough Local Administration: The Foundation of Peterborough Cathedral A.D. 1541, Northamptonshire Record Society, vol. 13 (Northampton, 1941), 104; George W. Kitchin and Francis T. Madge, eds., Documents Relating to the Foundation of the Chapter of Winchester A.D. 1541–1547, Hampshire Record Society (1889), 145; Cheshire Record Office, EDD 3913/10/5.

24. Kathleen Edwards, The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967); David Lepine, A Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995). 25. John Whitgift, The Defense of the Aunswere (London, 1574), 652; Edward Coke, The Reports (London, 1658), 195–99; [Francis Bacon], Certaine considerations touching the better pacification, and edification of the Church of England (London, 1604), sigs. C–C2r. 26. Gerald Bray, ed., The Anglican Canons 1529–1947, Church of England Record Society, vol. 6 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 311, 317, 331, 423, 821. 27. Mellows, ed., Peterborough Local Administration, 78, 105, 109; Kitchin and Madge, eds., Winchester, 120, 146. 28. Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 257–99. 29. Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, 296; Ian Atherton, Eileen McGrath, and Alannah Tomkins, “‘Pressed Down by Want and Afflicted with Poverty, Wounded and Maimed in War or Worn down with Age’? 2 Cathedral Almsmen in England 1538–1914,” in Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid: The Consumption of Health and Welfare in Britain, c. 1550–1950, ed. Anne Borsay and Peter Shapely (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 11–34. 30. William T. Mellows and Daphne H. Gifford, eds., Elizabethan Peterborough: The Dean and Chapter as Lords of the City, Northamptonshire Record Society, vol. 18 (Lamport Hall, 1956), 34–35; Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 144, fols. 56v, 59r. As a collegiate church, Manchester bore many similarities to a cathedral.

116  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist 31. Edwards, Secular Cathedrals, 185–205; Lepine, Brotherhood of Canons, 172–73; Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, 60–62, 297–98. 32. Claire Cross, “From the Reformation to the Restoration,” in A History of York Minster, ed. Gerald E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 200–201; Frederick Bussby, “An Ecclesiastical Seminarie and College General of Learning and Religion, Planted and Established at Ripon,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1953): 154–61. 33. John Jewel, Apologie (London, 1564), sig. Rir. 34. Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, 160–61. 35. James Saunders, “The Limitations of Statutes: Elizabethan Schemes to Reform New Foundation Cathedral Statutes,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997): 458–59; Ian Atherton, “The Dean and Chapter, Reformation to Restoration: 1541– 1660,” in A History of Ely Cathedral, ed. Peter Meadows and Nigel Ramsay (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 175. 36. John Jewel, Workes (London, 1611), sig. [¶¶5v]; John Jewel, The Apology (London, 1685), 24, 42. 37. Jewel, Works, 2:1098–1139. 38. Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, Salisbury: The Houses of the Close (London: HMSO, 1993), 23, 179; Dora Robertson, Sarum Close: A History of the Life and Education of the Cathedral Choristers for 700 Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1938), 129–30, 133–34. 39. British Library, Stowe MS 128, especially fols. 5–6; Norfolk Record Office, DCN29/1, fol. 38v. 40. George Oliver, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter (Exeter, 1861), 477–83. 41. Frere and Kennedy, eds., Visitation Articles, 2:136, 3:30–31.

42. Jewel, Works, 4:1273; Jewel, Apology (1685), 45–46; Neil Ker, “The Library of John Jewel,” Bodleian Library Record 9, no. 5 (1977): 256–65; C. B. L. Barr and David Selwyn, “Major Ecclesiastical Libraries: From Reformation to Civil War,” in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland Volume 1: To 1640, ed. Elisabeth LeedhamGreen and Teresa Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 364–65, 379–83. 43. Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 44. E.g., Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 120, nos. 2, 15, 18, 20, 35, 39; Brotherton Library, Leeds, MS Dep 1980/1 1.1. 45. Thomas Turner, The Second Appendix to Mr. Turner’s Letter to the Bishop of Manchester (London, 1850), xxxvi. 46. Sharon L. Arnoult, “‘Spiritual and Sacred Publique Actions’: The Book of Common Prayer and the Understanding of Worship in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church of England,” in Religion and the English People 1500–1640, ed. Eric Josef Carlson (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998), 25–47. 47. Worcester Cathedral Library, A75, fol. 102r; Robert Shelford, Five Piovs and Learned Discourses (Cambridge, 1635), 45. 48. John Strype, The Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, John Whitgift (London, 1718), appendix, 10; D. J. MacGinn, The Admonition Controversy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949); Dan Eppley, “Defender of the Peace: John Whitgift’s Proactive Defense of the Polity of the Church of England in the Admonition Controversy,” Anglican and Episcopal History 68 (1999): 312–35.

An Apology of the Cathedrals  117 49. John Whitgift, An ansvvere to a certen libel intituled, An admonition to the Parliament (London, 1572), 225. 50. Whitgift, Ansvvere, 206, 225. 51. Thomas Cartwright, The Rest of the Second Replie (Basel, 1577), 74; Thomas Cartwright, A Replye to an Ansvvere ([Hemel Hempstead?], 1573), 164. 52. Whitgift, Defense, 347, 744–45, 748; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (London, 1725–31), 2:201–2. 53. Whitgift, Defense, 747–48. 54. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fols. 25–34. 55. British Library, Lansdowne MS 45, fol. 99r. 56. Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 88, fols. 20–60. 57. NA, SP12/146, fol. 236. For the 1593 act, 35 Eliz. c. 3, see The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. in 12 (London, 1810–28), 4(2):846–47. 58. NA, SP12/244/68; Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS 538/38, fols. 95–96. 59. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93. 60. Patrick Collinson, “The Protestant Cathedral, 1541–1660,” A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay, and Margaret Sparks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 156n13; Saunders, “Limitations of Statutes,” 455n34. 61. Northamptonshire Record Office, Finch-Hatton MS FH/N/C/0105, fols. 1–3. 62. For Hatton and Whitgift, see their entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 63. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 943, fols. 389–92. 64. NA, SP9/210/4. Although that places it among papers known as Sir Joseph Williamson’s collection, that group has been added to by later archivists

65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

from a number of sources and hence the tract probably does not date from Williamson’s time in government service (1660–79). For the 1640s debates, see Ian Atherton, “Cathedrals and the British Revolution,” in The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 96–116. James Murray, “St Patrick’s Cathedral and the University Question in Ireland c. 1547–1585,” in European Universities in the Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, ed. Helga Robinson-Hammerstein (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), 1–33; NA, SP63/11, fol. 22, SP63/112, fols. 9–10, SP63/113, fols. 120–26, SP63/118, fols. 123v–4r. For Hatton’s role, see Murray, “University Question,” 31–32. Atherton, “Cathedrals, Laudianism,” 896–97. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fols. 118–19. Nottinghamshire Archives, SC/01/101, printed (with some orthographical errors and without the copious marginal notes of the manuscript) in W. A. James, ed., “Manuscripts of the Collegiate Church of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Southwell. Number CI,” Transactions of the Thoroton Society 25 (1921): 1–48. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fol. 25r. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fols. 25r, 26r. NA, SP63/11, fol. 22r; Nottinghamshire Archives, SC/01/101, fol. 21r. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93. NA, SP63/11, fol. 22r, SP63/113, fol. 120v, SP63/118, fol. 124. Christopher Brooke, A History of Gonville and Caius College (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985), 47.

118  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist 77. Peel, ed., Seconde Parte, 1:178, 255; 2:12, 17–18, 195, 199. 78. NA, SP16/146, fol. 236r; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fol. 26v; Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93. 79. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 333–34. 80. Nottinghamshire Archives, SC/01/101, fol. 1; NA, SP12/244/68; Ian Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: The Career of John, 1st Viscount Scudamore (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 58–67, 143. 81. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fols. 30v, 31v, 33v. 82. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fol. 29v. See also NA, SP63/113, fol. 121r, and SP12/244/68. 83. NA, SP63/112, fol. 9v, SP63/113, fol. 121r, SP16/146, fol. 236r. 84. NA, SP16/146, fol. 236r. 85. Coke, Reports, 198. 86. NA, SP63/113, fol. 120v, SP12/244/68; Nottinghamshire Archives, SC/01/101, fol. 21v. 87. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fols. 25–34. 88. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fol. 27v. 89. NA, SP16/146, fol. 236r, SP63/113, fol. 120r; compare Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2016, fol. 25v. 90. NA, SP63/112, fol. 9r; compare NA, SP16/146, fol. 236r. 91. Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, 257–58. 92. NA, SP63/112, fol. 9, SP12/244/68. 93. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93r. 94. Jewel, Briefe and Plaine Declaration, 67; An Humble Motion vvith Svbmission ([Edinburgh], 1590), 96–98; NA, SP16/535, fol. 282.

95. Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 93r. Music was also mentioned in NA, SP12/146, fol. 236r and Westminster Abbey Library, Muniment Book 15, fol. 119r. 96. Atherton, “Cathedrals, Laudianism,” 905–18. 97. Andrew Willet, Synopsis Papismi (London, 1592), 490; Andrew Willet, Thesaurus Ecclesiae ([London], 1604), 132. 98. John Hacket, A Century of Sermons (London, 1675), xviii; A Copy of the Proceedings of Some Worthy and Learned Divines (London, 1641). 99. The Praise of Musicke (Oxford, 1586), 139–40. 100. British Library, Royal MS 18 B 19. 101. Collinson, “Protestant Cathedral,” 157; e.g., The Second Tome of Homilies (London, 1571), 139, 230, 299; John Rastell, The third booke (Antwerp, 1566), fols. 4r, 193r. 102. John Jewel, The Apologie of the Church of England (London, 1600); John Jewel, The Apology of the Church of England (London, 1635); John Jewel, The Works (London, 1609); John Jewel, The Apology of the Church of England (London, 1685); Strype, Parker, appendix, no. xxxii, 58–63. 103. Frere and Kennedy, eds., Visitation Articles, 3:299; Kenneth Fincham, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, 2 vols., Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994–98), 1:96–97. 2:1, 99, 131, 252. 104. Jewel, Apology (1685), sigs. [A8r]–a4r; S. Wilton Rix, ed., The Diary and Autobiography of Edmund Bohun (priv. print., 1853), 68. 105. Jewel, Works, 4:1300. 106. Jewel, 3:109. 107. Atherton, “Cathedrals, Laudianism,” 900–918. 108. Atherton, “Cathedrals,” 237–39. 109. Whitgift, Ansvvere, 206, 225.

Chapter 7

The Jewel–Harding Controversy Defending the Champion

Angela Ranson The description of John Jewel as the champion of the Church of England was attached to him very quickly after the accession of Elizabeth, and it is still used in modern historiography. What is not usually discussed, however, is what it meant to be a champion of the church. Some historians suggest that Jewel’s task was merely to destroy the old church: Philip Hughes, for example, calls Jewel’s work “a masterpiece of the art” of destructive propaganda.1 In contrast, Michael Pasquarello suggests that Jewel’s work was essentially constructive, saying that Jewel’s methodology was “sufficient to build consensus among the faithful to form a Protestant commonwealth.”2 However, both possibilities fail to consider one aspect of Jewel’s role as champion: Jewel as a leader of a distinct and dynamic community. Jewel was not only acknowledged as a champion by an influential group of English divines; he was admired. This assisted in the dissemination of his work and increased his status in Elizabethan intellectual culture. This chapter will explore Jewel’s leadership role by examining the work of the men who rallied around him after his 1560 Challenge Sermon, when he demanded that the adherents of the church of Rome prove the legitimacy of their church traditions—namely, John Barthlet, James Calfhill, Thomas Cooper, Edward Dering, and Alexander Nowell. First, it will discuss the similarities and differences between their work and Jewel’s, to see the extent to which these men emulated their leader. Then it will investigate how they presented Jewel himself as a champion against

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the enemies of the church and how they saw themselves in relation to him. Finally, it will look at how Jewel’s leadership was received in the wider community of scholars, by examining some of the marginalia and memorials that demonstrate the development of Jewel’s reputation after his death. Studying Jewel in this way requires taking a fresh approach to the controversy that arose after the Catholic controversialist Thomas Harding became the main respondent to Jewel’s challenge, and twenty divines began to support them in the decade-long polemical battle that is now called the Jewel–Harding controversy. This approach places the controversy in its social context and also recognizes the importance of its theological arguments for the development of the church. It involves treating both sides of the controversy as distinct textual communities, a term coined by Brian Stock in his book on reading practices of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, The Implications of Literacy. He looked at how literacy and textuality influenced other aspects of culture, basing his argument on the development in literary culture that took place after the year 1000. At that time, “oral discourse effectively began to function within a universe of communications governed by texts.”3 Stock’s chosen period was a time of church reform, which intersected with the rising culture of literacy and changed how people established their personal identity. This influenced the development of controversy over the Eucharist and the sudden appearance of distinct groups of people who were labeled as heretics, due to their different interpretive strategies or their “parallel use of texts,” to use Stock’s term.4 The same kind of developments occurred in the Elizabethan period. Church reform, the advancement of the printing press, and changes in people’s religious self-identity due to their separation from the Roman church inspired similar questions about the Eucharist and similar diversions in the interpretation of particular texts. Communities developed that shared a common language and a common method of interpreting patristic and biblical sources, often in contrast with other communities. Although it is necessary to be cautious when comparing such different time periods, the existence of such parallels does make the term suitable to describe the men who became involved in the Jewel–Harding controversy. One aspect of Stock’s study of textual communities emerges as particularly useful for this argument: the central role of a charismatic leader

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who is often (though not always) the author of the texts that form the core of the group’s method of interpretation. This aspect of Stock’s work has been applied to several different figures of the medieval and early modern period, as can be seen in the work of Kirsty Campbell, Devorah Greenberg, Patrick Collinson, and Christopher Highley. Campbell examines the self-awareness of textual communities, using the textual community that revolved around Reginald Pecock. She recognizes that these textual communities describe both the gathering of a specific group of people brought together by the texts and the “communal gestation” of the work itself, which is the result of this focused community.5 Thus she applies many different aspects of Stock’s original study to the dissemination of Pecock’s work, while Greenberg and Collison are more concerned with one aspect: the interplay between the leader and the community. Greenberg plays down the role of the leader in her examination of the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments. She chooses to emphasize the collaborative textual community that brought this important work together, referring to Foxe himself as an “author-compiler,” rather than an author, in part because the community had more of a role in the creation of the text than in most textual communities.6 However, she does not fully distinguish between the community of Marian exiles on the continent and Foxe’s actual textual community. Since many Marian exiles had nothing to do with Foxe’s work, this raises the question of how distinct Foxe’s textual community became. It is a question not fully answered in Patrick Collinson’s treatment of Foxe as the leader of a textual community, rather than the sole author of the Acts and Monuments. This is due to Collinson’s focus on how Foxe’s leadership was perceived, rather than on Foxe’s personal leadership. Foxe’s stories were internalized by a wide segment of the English population, showing that the influence of written texts could extend “far beyond those capable of reading them for themselves.”7 More recently, Christopher Highley has done further exploration into the role of the leader in textual communities, in his Catholics Writing the Nation.8 Highley is unique in describing the divines who wrote in support of Thomas Harding as an active textual community, one that not only accepted Harding’s interpretation and leadership but “produced a steady stream of theological, ecclesiological and polemical works” to support it.9 No one else has studied the collaboration of Harding’s supporters in that way, and no one has yet treated the group of divines who were inspired to join the controversy by Jewel as a textual community at all. Highley’s

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work provides both a precedent and an avenue of exploration for the study of Jewel’s supporters. In Stock’s definition of textual communities, a particular collection of texts defines the group of people involved in it, and these people internalize the text to the point where it becomes part of their culture. They can reference the texts in their lives and writings without feeling the need to explain them, because within their community everyone knows them.10 Once that has occurred, the community members can then apply the texts to circumstances that lay beyond the texts’ original scope. This occurred both during and after the Jewel–Harding controversy, as various divines simply referred their challengers to Jewel’s writings, rather than arguing with them in detail. They treated Jewel as the acknowledged learned authority, especially in matters relating to the history of the church. One example of this can be found in 1566, when Robert Horne published An Answer Made by Robert Bishop of Winchester, in response to a book written by Abbot John Feckenham to justify his own refusal to swear the oath of supremacy. In this work, Horne defended the royal supremacy and the legitimacy of the oath, and he treated Jewel as the ultimate authority. Significantly, Horne referred to a meal at his home with Feckenham that took place in 1565, where Feckenham “railed” against Jewel, declaring that he was unlearned and could not win against Harding. That outburst was the final straw for Horne: he put Feckenham under house restraint until he could be transferred to the Tower, taking Feckenham’s rejection of Jewel as final damning proof that Feckenham was sunk deep in theological error and planned to subvert the power of the queen’s majesty.11 Stock’s community members also shared the texts with people who were not fully part of the community. This gave people who did not have the opportunity or the ability to read them a chance to participate in literate culture. The listeners were told to which text the preachers referred, and by applying their own knowledge and experience to that text, they could evaluate the preacher’s interpretation of it.12 This aspect of textual communities has real relevance, because the writers of the Jewel–Harding controversy consistently acknowledged the importance of supporting their written works with preaching. Studying the role of the audience in accepting the community’s message shows how influential the controversy was, both during its active period and after it ended. It also supports the work of scholars such as Carl Truman, Arnold Hunt, Mary

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Morrissey, and Susan Wabuda, who all examine how important verbal persuasion was to the acceptance of the Elizabethan settlement. Truman and Wabuda both claim that the vernacular sermon moved into a central place in worship.13 Hunt, in his The Art of Hearing, describes how actively the people of the later Elizabethan and Jacobean ages listened to sermons, employing several strategies to help them remember and evaluate the sermons they heard.14 Morrissey connects the importance of the sermons at Paul’s Cross to the exploration of political and religious controversies.15 An examination of the textual communities in the Jewel–Harding controversy engages with all of these aspects of early modern audiences. One immediate difficulty that must be addressed is that of terminology. Fourteen divines supported Harding by answering Jewel’s challenge to prove the legitimacy of the Roman church, and five divines defended Jewel. There was a clear line between these two groups that would develop into a confessional divide, but it is still not entirely accurate to label them as “Catholic” and “Protestant.” The most appropriate label for Harding’s supporters seems to be “Louvainist,” given that the majority of the men in this group were exiles who had gathered together at the University of Louvain. Many of them were drawn together due to their common educational experience at New College Oxford, a bond enhanced by the plight of one of their fellow New College men, Henry Cole. He was the first respondent to Jewel’s challenge, and his attempt to refute Jewel was not successful.16 This may have been due to his lack of resources; he was imprisoned soon after Elizabeth’s accession and never managed to escape into exile. The Louvainists were angry at his imprisonment, in part because of his academic status. In 1564, the Louvainist John Rastell argued that Cole, as one of “the good and lerned Catholikes, which continue in indurance,” should be regarded as more than a common Englishman. In fact, Rastell felt that Cole should be held above Jewel, because Jewel spoke “so loulie and baselie, that it may be wel marueiled, why such a Catholike would submitt hym selfe vnto a protestant.”17 Beginning with his 1566 book Rejoinder to John Jewel, Harding spoke proudly of the group of Catholic men with whom he worked. These included John Rastell, Nicholas Sander, and Thomas Stapleton, who were all associated with Oxford House in Louvain.18 Their close proximity made this group very self-aware and close-knit, and their works reflect that. Indeed, their work aligned with one another so precisely that their opponents accused the Louvainists of parroting one another. Alexander

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Nowell frequently noted how the Louvainists seemed to borrow from each other’s work and provided evidence in his Reproof (1565). According to Nowell, the Louvainist Thomas Dorman had taken his arguments directly from Harding, who had taken his arguments directly from the Polish cardinal Stanislaus Hosius.19 Finding a label that would apply to all the members of the other side of the debate is more difficult, since they did not work out of one location or under a single commission. The Louvainists gave them several labels, such as “heretics,” “adversaries,” and (rather more creatively) “wicked Philistines” and “beginners of schisms,” but these terms were used to discredit rather than describe, making them inappropriate.20 The most neutral label comes from Harding himself, who often referred to them as “gospellers.” Although these men have a range of names in modern historiography, such as “conformists” and “evangelicals,” “gospeller” was a label that Jewel himself accepted. He pointed out more than once that while Harding used the term mockingly, it was actually a compliment. In his 1565 Reply to M Harding’s Answer, Jewel said that “it misliketh [Harding] that we builde the vnitie of the Churche vpon Christe onely, and not also vpon the Pope: and this he calleth these New Gospellers Doctrine. God be thanked: these Gospellers haue good warrant for their Doctrine.”21 Other reformers seemed to accept the term as well: John Parkhurst used it in his correspondence with friends in Zurich, and James Pilkington used it in a sermon he preached in 1563.22 Both of these men were part of Jewel’s textual community, so it seems appropriate to use it to refer to the community itself. The gospellers were all divines who lived in England and worked for the Crown in some capacity. The majority of them were indirectly involved in the controversy as supporters or patrons and included Archbishop Matthew Parker, the future archbishop Edmund Grindal, and William Cecil. Grindal gave his official approval to some of the contributions to the controversy and may have considered writing for it himself, especially after the Louvainist John Martial tried to draw him into the debate.23 Cecil commissioned Jewel’s seminal work, the Apology, and edited it before it went to the printers. Parker supervised its translation into English.24 However, the gospellers who most concern us here are the five men who contributed to the controversy’s corpus directly. They held a range of beliefs, from the radical young preacher James Calfhill to the conservative Thomas Cooper, who was head of Magdalen College School at Oxford

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when he wrote in defense of Jewel and was promoted to the bishopric of Lincoln in 1571.25 Despite this diversity, each one wrote as if they considered themselves spokesmen for the wider group of clergy in the Church of England, and they all defended the same basic points of doctrine. They showed a similar concern for the unity of the church and an awareness of their own role within it. Most of these writers had been active in the church during the reign of Edward VI, and their work during the controversy shows a certain continuity with the argumentative strategies of that time, which were based on their university training in rhetoric. The purpose of their persuasion, however, is not entirely consistent. Where Edwardian publications aimed to persuade a wide audience of the legitimacy of reform, the works of the controversy show that the gospellers became concerned not only with the work of conversion but also with imposing the balanced religious view that they felt they represented. The significance of the Marian exile for the distinct direction taken by the Elizabethan church has been explored by several historians studying the phenomenon of religious exile in the early modern period. Peter Marshall, for example, considers it significant that the Marian exiles were one of the few exile groups during the Reformation that had the opportunity to return in force to their home country.26 Torrance Kirby calls the Marian exile a “crucible” that led to the Elizabethan settlement in its eventual form.27 However, the influence of exile on polemics has not been fully studied. In the Jewel–Harding controversy, the old rhetorical strategies were employed for a new purpose: to firmly and permanently establish the “true catholic church,” as the gospellers defined it, which was universal in beliefs though not as an institution. To the gospellers, the true catholic church maintained the faith of the primitive church by the right use of the sacraments and the centrality of scriptural authority. It was an invisible church, defined by the personal faith of people throughout the world, rather than by physical universality. Significantly, the returning Marian exiles worked in community toward this goal, which demonstrates the great potential of sixteenth-century polemic for Tudor scholarship. As Lucy Wooding notes, it is too easy to “lose sight of the Reformation as a corporate endeavor, a widespread desire for a purified faith,” and see only the conflict that occurred.28 To focus instead on consensus and collaboration is a valuable exercise. It shows how particular ideas took hold in the minds

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of the leaders of the church and were then passed on to its members. This particular study of Jewel’s textual community shows that the gospellers were aware of their own connection to the invisible universal church, in part because most of them had been exiles or friends of exiles. Their experience on the continent had forged connections between them and their fellow reformers, as evidenced by The Zurich Letters. These letters show that for years after the exiles returned to England, they sought advice and encouragement from the reformers they met on the continent.29 Jewel deliberately fostered such a sense of catholicity by aligning his works with particular reformers of the country and the continent. This comes through most clearly in Jewel’s response to Harding’s taunt about John Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet, which clearly did not support the rule of Elizabeth. Jewel denied any connection with this work, deciding that Knox had to deal with the consequences of that on his own. Instead, Jewel aligned with other reformers by pointing out that “M. Caluine, M. Martyr, M. Musculus, M. Bullinger, and others, whom you cal the Faithful Brothers of Englande, misliked that enterprise, and wrote againste it.”30 Jewel’s textual community was based on particular doctrine, inner faith, and loyalty to the godly magistrate rather than location or institutional universality. Jewel intended to represent a properly balanced faith, which separated his community from both papists and extremists such as John Knox but maintained unity with like-minded reformers on the continent. Little of what the gospellers wrote went beyond the arguments of Jewel in either content or rhetorical style. They maintained the same themes as Jewel, and even employed the same imagery. For example, James Calfhill, Edward Dering, and Thomas Cooper all defended the unique direction taken by the English church by claiming that the sheep responded to the voice of the true shepherd and the shepherd knew which of the sheep were his own. While this image was not unique to Jewel, it was one of his favorites, and the gospellers used it in much the same way as he did. Calfhill and Dering used this imagery defensively, to support the Church of England’s reliance on scripture instead of tradition.31 Cooper used it as an offensive weapon, arguing that “if your mother the Churche of Rome be the fold of Christ, and if the sheep thereof be his sheep, they will hear his voice and obey his word. If they do not, alledge the name as oft as you will, I will say you be sheep of another fold and not of his.”32 The major difference between the works of the gospellers and those of Jewel was not in either their content or style but in their scope. The

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Louvainists tended to respond to particular parts of Jewel’s challenge, not all of the sermon’s twenty-six articles. For the most part, the works addressed the real presence in the Eucharist, the legitimacy of the private mass and receiving communion under one kind, and the supremacy of the pope. However, there were exceptions. John Martial argued for the legitimacy of the crucifix, images, and prayers for the dead, and Thomas Stapleton focused his argument on the correct interpretation of—and translation of—the word of God. The most famous divine to contribute to the debate, the future cardinal William Allen, argued for the doctrine of purgatory and in support of the status of the priesthood. He was one of the two who did not work out of Louvain, but he certainly aligned his work with the Louvainist response to Jewel’s challenge, referring to Jewel as “our English bragger.”33 Due to this narrower focus, the gospellers’ answers to the Louvainists could provide further examples to support Jewel’s points. Their contributions show that they incorporated Jewel’s texts into their own and expanded upon them according to their own peculiar focus. Nowell, for example, thought that Jewel was overzealous to maintain brevity in the discussion of the royal supremacy. He found several places in the Apology where Jewel was correct in his statements but did not say enough to block the attacks of the Louvainists. One such place was in Jewel’s use of the third Constantinopolitan council to support the rule of magistrates in ecclesiastical matters. Nowell said that Jewel treated the matter in “onely three lynes,” leading the Louvainist Thomas Dorman to claim that Jewel treated the matter “slenderly” because the evidence did not support him. Nowell responded by talking about the matter in detail, showing how the proceedings of that council provided even more proof than Jewel had mentioned.34 Throughout the controversy, the five writers of the gospellers’ side consistently held Jewel up as an example to be emulated and an authority to be accepted. Dering referred to him as “our Alexander in Christian warre and godly courage,” and Nowell said that Jewel’s “worthinesse . . . deserveth the state and name of a bishop and of a juell.”35 They also occasionally imitated him. For example, Nowell echoed Jewel’s style and format. He took on Jewel’s self-portrayal as a representative of a wider movement by using “we” in his arguments rather than “I” and maintained Jewel’s insistence on individual participation in the faith.36 Cooper used Jewel’s strategy of comparing the English reformers to Christ and his

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persecuted apostles in his work of 1562, which was published just a few months after Jewel’s Apology.37 Most importantly, the work of the gospellers shows that they took up the challenge to defend the English church due to Jewel’s inspiration. John Barthlet said that he included the “New Sacramentaries” in his list of heresies in part because he respected Jewel’s authority regarding a similar heresy, that of the ubiquitarians.38 Dering and Calfhill echoed the resonating phrase of Jewel’s Challenge Sermon by issuing challenges of their own that they would yield and subscribe if their opponents could prove them wrong.39 Nowell describes Jewel’s work as his motivation for writing The Confutation, explaining that since he had preached about Dorman’s work already, he had intended to let Jewel finish defending their position in print, since Jewel would respond better than he could. However, Nowell changed his mind when the publication of Jewel’s Reply to Harding was delayed, since he did not want to leave the position undefended for any longer than necessary.40 The Louvainists also recognized how inspirational Jewel was to the gospellers. Robert Pointz called Jewel the gospellers’ “proud champion.”41 The anonymous writer of An Apology of Private Mass, which was refuted by Cooper, directed his work to Jewel because he was “counted the greatest clarke on [their] side.”42 Dorman said that there were some in England with whom Jewel was “in such credite, that they beleue verily each worde that proceedeth from [his] mouthe, to beare for truthe the weight of the Ghospell.”43 Of course, the Louvainists did not have such a high opinion of Jewel. Often they refused to name him at all, calling him the Proclaimer, the Author, or the Defender. John Rastell wrote three works in which the words “beware of M Jewel” are repeated dozens of times, all in very dramatic capital letters. Robert Pointz decided that Jewel was demonic, because “Iuel [Jewel] lacketh but one letter of Diuel.”44 This particular argument might be considered more creative than convincing. The gospellers viewed their adversaries as conspirers against queen and country, and themselves as the reformers who were continuing what the leaders of the Henrican and Edwardian reforms had done. To them, their doctrine was as old as the faith itself, but their collaboration was more recent. Specifically, it reached back to the break from Rome. James Calfhill claimed that the doctrine maintained by the Elizabethan church had begun in England with Latimer and Cranmer, who had been raised up by God “to beate downe the walles of the malignant Church.”45 To hold

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Cranmer and Latimer in such esteem was not unusual among the gospellers; in that, they followed Jewel’s example. However, Calfhill’s particular argument opened him up to challenge by the Louvainists. They immediately claimed that such a recent beginning meant that the English church was not legitimate and could claim no authority. Nowell defended Calfhill by arguing that the Louvainists were deliberately misinterpreting the work of Calfhill, Jewel, and himself. He pointed out that the work of his fellow divines in England was original, but their message was ancient.46 Nowell’s defense of Calfhill was an example of how the gospellers were aware of themselves as a group. Their textual community revolved around Jewel, who seemed to be simultaneously part of and separate from them. He may not have known some of them personally at all. John Barthlet, for example, wrote his contribution to the controversy soon after being released from house arrest over the issue of the vestments, and Edward Dering spent the majority of the 1560s as a fellow of Christ’s College Cambridge, somewhere Jewel does not seem to have visited.47 There is little evidence to suggest that either man ever met him. However, Jewel most likely did know Alexander Nowell, since Nowell spent the majority of his Marian exile in Strasbourg, at the same time as Jewel was there. Both men were present when Peter Martyr Vermigli lectured on Judges.48 Nowell was also prolocutor of the lower house during the 1563 Convocation, which Jewel attended. Being the bishop of Salisbury, Jewel was part of the upper house, but since Nowell frequently reported the decisions of the lower house to the upper house, he would have been more likely to come into contact with him.49 Both Nowell and Jewel were popular preachers at court and at Paul’s Cross and were often chosen to contribute to the Lenten sermon series. Whether or not Jewel knew the members of his textual community personally, he certainly was aware of the wider controversy surrounding his work, and he occasionally weighed in on another debate. In his Defence of the Apology, for example, he refuted the Louvainist Thomas Dorman at the same time as he refuted one of Harding’s points.50 Jewel also challenged Harding’s claim that the anonymity of the Apology meant that the clergy was ashamed of it, by pointing out that the Apology of the Private Mass was not signed either, even though it claimed to represent the Roman point of view. Thus unless that anonymous author was ashamed of his work, a lack of signature was not necessarily an indicator of shame.51

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Thomas Cooper’s response to the Apology of the Private Mass showed how he, too, considered himself part of a community that was defending Jewel. He claimed that “this is a common quarell, touchinge not only him that is named, but all other that either teacheth or beleueth as he doth.”52 Nowell showed a similar sense of community in his Reproof of 1565. He said that while Dorman seemed to be responding to Jewel himself, anything “in name and woorde . . . written againste the saide bishop onely, yet be they in deede and meaninge writen againste vs all, as well as him . . . they doo oppugne and assaulte the cause, whiche is common to vs all with him.”53 Nowell’s preface to this book also pointed out the errors of Rastell and Harding, showing an awareness of the wider controversy and its influence on the people of England. Edward Dering took this further. To him, the community was geographically larger than England. He showed this when he said, “We contemne therfore these vyle reproches against the B. of Sarisbury, Luther, Zuinglius, Galuin, Peter Martir, Beza and such other, and pray vnto the liuing Lord, if it be his good will and pleasure, to mollifye the hartes of our enimyes.”54 This connected the gospellers with the reformers on the continent, both living and dead. The exchange between the Louvainists and the gospellers, and their perceptions of themselves and each other, both encouraged their enmity and developed their sense of community. This, according to Jesse Lander, was part of sixteenth-century polemic. Polemic was both the verbal equivalent of war and the “attempt to consolidate as a particular community of conviction.”55 Thus it is not surprising that the divisions between them were clarified over the course of the controversy, especially when they had the literal and symbolic leadership of Jewel and Harding. The writings of both men inspired and sustained the work of their supporters and encouraged them to incorporate their work into their own publications and take it further. In the case of the gospellers, they expanded upon Jewel’s points rather than using his work to come up with their own unique ideas, and thus a core set of beliefs was clarified and defended. This had an effect on arguments over the authority of the church for the rest of Elizabeth’s reign, especially once the puritan movement began to gather force. Jewel led the defense against nonconformity in a 1571 parliamentary sermon, in which he firmly supported the vestments, the episcopacy, and ordination. Using his extensive knowledge of the early church, he provided a short and pointed summary about the roles and titles of its early leaders and told his opponents that they should look

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to the early church. If they did, they would find that “the substance of religion is the same now, that it was then.”56 The underlying theme of this sermon was that the puritans were wrong to break the unity of the church over such trifles, and the defenders of the established church would repeatedly return to that theme in various controversies for the rest of Elizabeth’s reign. In his controversy with the puritan Thomas Cartwright, John Whitgift warned that the English church was in danger of losing its unity, just as it had achieved fellowship with the universal church. Therefore, “let none trouble the gospell amongst you, or set you at strife and variaunce.”57 More than twenty years later, Richard Hooker maintained much the same message: in the preface to his Laws, he said, “Let not the faith which ye haue in our Lord Iesus Christ, be blemished with partialities.”58 Thus Jewel’s textual community continued long after the active phase of the Jewel–Harding controversy in the 1560s. This was not only because of his skill in polemics and apologetics but also because of his guidance and example, which had a wide-ranging influence. This can be seen quite clearly in the response to his 1571 sermon. The puritan speakers John Field and Robert Wilcox decreed that Jewel was no longer a reformer, saying that while he had done well in his works against the papists, he was in error by defending episcopacy and the vestments: “Even so Mr. Jewel, in defending Christ’s church against the open papist . . . is much to be commended, but now, being an enemy to sincerity and the truth of Christ’s gospel, he does evil and is worthy to be reproved.” Evidently, these men had decided to challenge the champion. This would seem to be a definitive rejection of all that Jewel had worked to defend. However, in the very same address, Field and Wilcox also acknowledged Jewel’s learning and addressed him as a “beloved father in Christ Jesus.”59 This contradictory response demonstrates the extent of Jewel’s influence and status in Elizabethan intellectual culture. Even those who did not agree with him could acknowledge and admire him as a leader, a champion of the church. It is not certain what Jewel’s response to this challenge would have been, because he died during a preaching tour around his diocese a few months later. The popular balladeer William Elderton immediately published an epitaph to Jewel’s memory, which mourned his loss in intensely dramatic terms. He proclaimed that “the Iuell of our ioye is gone,” compared the tears of the grieving to running streams, and decided that

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Jewel’s death was akin to the worst plague England had ever seen. Beneath the flowery language lay an underlying message of true concern that the church had lost its best defender and there was no one who could take his place. One line especially brings that poignantly home: “That wee haue such a Shepard gone: God helpe the selie sheepe.”60 The question of who would defend the church seemed to be at the forefront of many of the gospellers’ minds after Jewel’s death. When Edmund Grindal informed Heinrich Bullinger of the news, he called Jewel the “singular ornament of the church, as his name implies.”61 Ten years later, Thomas Cooper was using much the same imagery, referring in his writings to “that Jewel of England.”62 Richard Cox wrote to Rudolph Gwalter in 1573 to tell him that a new collection of articles had been published, which required an official response, but “our friend Jewel is dead, and has left among us but few equal to him.” The only answer was that they themselves would have to do the best they could: “It is therefore both your concern and mine, to cut off the heads of this hydra.”63 Out of this mourning period arose a new phase for Jewel’s textual community, in which his work was more widely dispersed and intimate knowledge of his texts became more common. Some of the private libraries of the 1560s and 1570s, particularly the inventories of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, shows how effectively Jewel’s message was disseminated. In the mid-1570s, many young men at the universities died due to an epidemic, and their private libraries were itemized after their deaths. The records of these libraries show that the divinity students tended to collect copies of the controversy’s corpus of works, supplementing Jewel’s own works with those of the gospellers. The most popular work to have was the Apology, closely followed by the Reply to M Harding’s Answer. These were often kept with James Calfhill’s work against Martial’s The Treatise of the Cross, and Nowell’s Reproof against Thomas Dorman.64 Notably, these two divines were constantly preaching at Paul’s Cross: Calfhill had prefaced his work against Martial with a sermon that was, if not famous, at least notorious, and Nowell was well known for his work at Paul’s Cross. That it was Nowell and Calfhill’s books that could be found most often in these libraries suggests a connection between the verbal aspects of the controversy and its written counterparts. Perhaps those books were purchased after the students had listened to Calfhill or Nowell preach, or because they had heard about two men’s sermons.

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It must be acknowledged that the purchase of these books does not necessarily prove that they were read. However, there are 163 extant copies of the works of the controversy, and upon studying the marginalia of approximately half of them, it is possible to argue that they were. Indeed, it seems that they were studied carefully. The notes that still survive are long and detailed, but unfortunately the majority of these books have been given modern bindings. Thus many of the notes written in sixteenth-century secretary hand have been cut off or mangled. Of the surviving notes, most were biographical, regarding figures named in the work, or cross-references, which put the work in context with others. On one copy of Dering’s A Sparing Restraint, for example, the reader wrote “vid M Hooker” next to a passage that claimed that the Church of England service is good and godly.65 Also common were organizational marks used to help make particular passages easier to find, such as chapter headings or a makeshift index. One reader seemed to be trying to keep track of the various works of the controversy and had a numbering system for them: on the title page of a 1568 copy of A Sparing Restraint was written “this answer is to the book 34.9.”66 Such cross-referencing and organizational notes suggest that these books were read actively, that the readers evaluated and absorbed what they read, and that some tried to study them in order. The continuing use of Jewel for the expansion of his textual community can also be found in works intended for the public. In the controversy regarding church government between John Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright (1570–75), Whitgift used Jewel’s work as evidence for his points. He also refused to discuss some issues, referring Cartwright instead to Jewel’s Apology and The Defence of the Apology.67 Later in the century, Andrew Willet published anti-Roman works such as The Four Principal Pillars of Papistry, using Jewel’s scholarship as evidence. He fully engaged with the Jewel–Harding controversy and seemed to consider Jewel triumphant due to both his superior style and wit and his superior scholarship and faith.68 Similarly, Richard Hooker called Jewel “the worthiest Diuine that Christendome hath bred for the space of some hundreds of yeres” and used him as an example of learning and piety in contrast to the apostasy of Harding. He also used Jewel as an authority on the rhetorical strategy of arguing from the negative and referred to the Apology when discussing the nature of the sacraments and the early church.69

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A final example can be found in the Marprelate controversy. In 1588 and 1589, a group of men who wanted further reform for the Church of England collaborated on a series of tracts, assigning authorship to “Martin Marprelate.” These tracts rejected the national church in favor of “the body of Christ.” They insisted that the queen and council did not have the right to control the body of Christ, and only pastors, elders, doctors, and deacons had a biblically based role in its function. Their roles were legitimate because they were members of the body, while bishops and civil magistrates were not, and “maim and deform the body of Christ” by keeping out lawful officers and putting the episcopacy in their place.70 Joseph Black, in his 2007 annotated edition of the Marprelate tracts, points out that Martin Marprelate attempted to claim the support of many reformers, including not only well-known radical reformers such as Dudley Fenner and Thomas Cartwright but earlier reformers such as William Tyndale, John Frith, Robert Barnes, John Hooper, James Pilkington, and John Foxe.71 At the same time, Marprelate attacked a work by the gospeller Thomas Cooper. Cooper, who had become bishop of Lincoln by the time the tracts first appeared, responded to the Marprelate tracts a year later. He maintained the same point of view as he had in the works he had published during the Jewel–Harding controversy and used some of Jewel’s rhetorical strategies.72 This included connecting the Elizabethan church with the early church to provide evidence of its legitimacy. He sorrowfully asked how the Marprelate men dared to disparage the leadership of the church, considering that they had the example of such good leaders to show them the right way: Cranmer, Ridley, and Jewel.73 This placed Jewel once again in the position of champion of the established church, and Cooper in the place of Jewel’s defender. Cooper suggested that Marprelate should read a sound and true confession of the faith of the Church of England, Jewel’s Apology. Wherein they shal finde all parts of Christian religion confessed and proued, both by the testimony of the canonicall scriptures, and alsoby the consent of all learned and godly antiquitie for the space of certain hundred yeres after Christ. For the integrity and soundnes, for the learning and eloquence shewed in the same Apologie, they (that contemne that notable learned man because hee was a Bishoppe) may haue very good testimonie in a litle

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Epistle, vvritten by Peter Martir vnto the said bishop, and nowe printed, and in the latter edition set before the same Apologie: where they shall finde that heespeaketh not for himselfe onely, but for many other learned men of the church of Tygure, and other places.74 In this passage, Cooper’s approach reflects Jewel’s promotion of church unity and catholicity, in part by acknowledging the connection between the English reformers and their counterparts on the continent. It also shows how well known Jewel’s texts had become. Rather than summarizing Jewel’s argument, Cooper chose to refer his challengers to the relevant passage, thus assuming that it would be, if not familiar to them, at least readily accessible. Cooper was one of the last of Jewel’s core gospellers to publish, and it is possible to see how he attempted to maintain the same continuity and consensus as they had all promoted while publishing for the controversy. This self-identity and purpose made the gospellers a textual community, one that internalized a set of texts and used them to clarify and expand upon their own core beliefs. They also held up the author of those texts as a leader, allowing his Challenge Sermon to inspire and unite them. Even after Jewel’s death, his textual community continued to uphold him as an authority and a role model, which allowed his legacy to become part of the mythology of the Church of England. It also encouraged the continued expansion of the community itself, bringing in such divines as John Whitgift, Andrew Willet, and Richard Hooker. Thus Jewel did not earn his exalted reputation based on his learning and his dedication to Elizabeth’s church alone. In part, he gained it due to his role as the admired leader of a distinct and dynamic community, whose members never stopped defending their champion.

Notes 1. Philip Hughes, Reformation in England, Part Three: “True Religion Now Established” (London: Hollis and Carter, 1954), 101. 2. Michael Pasquarello, “John Jewel: Preaching Prelate,” Anglican and Episcopal History 69, no. 3 (2000): 293.

3. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 3. 4. Stock, 4. 5. Kirsty Campbell, The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 18.

136  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist 6. Devorah Greenberg, “Community of the Texts: Producing the First and Second Editions of the Acts and Monuments,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005): 695–96, 706. 7. Patrick Collinson, “John Foxe and National Consciousness,” in Foxe and His World, ed. Christopher Highley and John N. King (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 14, 19. 8. Christopher Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4, 28. 9. Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, 37. 10. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 91. 11. Robert Horne, An answeare made by Rob. Bishoppe of Wynchester, to a booke entituled, The declaration of suche scruples (London, 1566), 129. 12. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 90–93. 13. Carl Truman, “Preachers and Medieval and Renaissance Commentary,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Peter McCullough (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 68; Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 12. 14. Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audience, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 114. 15. Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xii. 16. John Jewel, The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole (London, 1560), fol. 9v. 17. John Rastell, A replie against an answer (Antwerp, 1565), 4. 18. John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 59–60.

19. Alexander Nowell, A reproufe, written by Alexander Nowell (London, 1565), sig. A3v. 20. See Thomas Dorman, A proufe of certeyne articles in religion, denied by M. Iuell (Antwerp, 1564), 5, 10; John Martial, A treatyse of the Crosse (Antwerp, 1564), 58; Thomas Stapleton, Apology of Fridericus Staphylus (Louvain, 1565), 6. 21. John Jewel, A replie vnto M. Hardinges answeare (London, 1565), 256. 22. Hastings Robinson, ed. and trans., The Zurich Letters, Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with some of the Helvetian Reformers, During . . . The Reign of Queen Elizabeth, first series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), 29; James Pilkington, The burnynge of Paules church in London (London, 1563), sig. C7. 23. John Strype, The History of the Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal (London, 1710), 111, 112. 24. John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1711), 99, 179. 25. Margaret Bowker, “Cooper, Thomas (c. 1517–1594),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, accessed September 26, 2012, http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .york.ac.uk/view/article/6229. 26. Peter Marshall, “Religious Exiles and the Tudor State,” in Discipline and Diversity, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Chippenham: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), 263, 267–68. 27. Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 25.

The Jewel–Harding Controversy  137 28. Lucy Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 2. 29. Hastings Robinson, ed. and trans., The Zurich Letters, Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others with some of the Helvetian Reformers, During . . . The Reign of Queen Elizabeth, first series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842). 30. John Jewel, A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London, 1567), 206. 31. James Calfhill, An aunswere to the Treatise of the Crosse (London, 1565), 23; Edward Dering, A sparing restraint, of many lauishe vntruthes (London, 1568), 46. 32. Thomas Cooper, Answer to an apologie of priuate masse (London, 1562), 58–59. 33. William Allen, A defense and declaration of the Catholike Churchies (Antwerp, 1565), 53. 34. Alexander Nowell, The reproufe of M. Dorman his proufe (London, 1566), fol. 250v. 35. Alexander Nowell, A confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last boke entituled a disproufe (London, 1567), fol. 6v. 36. Nowell, A reproufe, 83–83v; Nowell, Confutation,*2; Nowell, Reproufe of M Dorman his proufe (1566), fol. 1–2, 175v. 37. Cooper, Answer to an apologie of priuate masse, fol. 93v. 38. John Barthlet, The pedegrewe of heretiques (London, 1565), 54. 39. Dering, A Sparing Restraint, 5; Calfhill, An aunswere to the Treatise of the crosse, fol. 123v. 40. Nowell, Confutation, 27. 41. Robert Pointz, Testimonies for the real presence (Louvain, 1567), 143. 42. Cooper, Answer to an apologie of priuate masse, fol. 2v. 43. Thomas Dorman, A Request to M Jewel (Louvain, 1567), 2. 44. Pointz, Testimonies, fol. 158v.

45. Calfhill, An aunswere to the Treatise of the crosse, fol. 17v. 46. Nowell, Confutation, sig. B1v–B2. 47. “Bartlett, John (fl. 1562–1567),” Brett Usher in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford: Oxford University Press, accessed October 29, 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy .york.ac.uk/view/article/1576; Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 5. 48. Ralph Churton, The Life of Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul’s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1809), 23. 49. Stanford Lehmberg, “Nowell, Alexander (c. 1516/17–1602),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, accessed December 1, 2012, http://www.oxford dnb.com.ezproxy.york.ac.uk/view /article/20378. 50. Jewel, Defence 1567, fol. A2v, B2v. 51. Jewel, fol. 28v. 52. Cooper, Answer to an apologie of priuate masse, sig. E3. 53. Nowell, A reproufe, sig. A4. 54. Dering, A Sparing Restraint, 51, 23. 55. Jesse Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 16. 56. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 4:1300. 57. John Whitgift, The defense of the aunswere to the Admonition against the replie of T. C. (London, 1574), sig. A3v. 58. Richard Hooker, Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie eight bookes (London, 1604), sig. A1.

138  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist 59. Albert Peel, Second Parte of a Register, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 79–81. 60. William Elderton, An epytaphe vppon the death of the right reuerend and learned father in God I. Iuell, doctor of diuinitie and bishop of Sarisburie (London, 1571). 61. Robinson, Zurich Letters, first series, 260. 62. Thomas Cooper, An Admonition to the People of England wherein are answered, not onely the slaunderous vntruethes, reprochfully vttered by Martin the libeller, but also many other crimes by some of his broode (London, 1589), 66. 63. Robinson, Zurich Letters, first series, 281–82. 64. See R. J. Fehrenbach and E. S. Leedham-Green, eds. Private Libraries in Renaissance England, vols. 4, and 5 (Marlborough: Adam Matthew, 1992). 65. Dering, A Sparing Restraint (London, 1568), 5 (Bodleian Library Tanner Shelfmark 255 (2)). 66. Dering, A Sparing Restraint, title page (British Library Shelfmark C. 143.c.3).

67. John Whitgift, An answere to a certen libel intituled, An admonition to the Parliament (London, 1572), 169; Whitgift, The defense of the aunswere (London, 1574), sig. A2r. 68. Andrew Willet, The foure principal pillers of papistrie (London, 1593), see especially 3–4, 19, 124. 69. Hooker, Lawes of ecclesiasticall politie, 110–12. 70. Martin Marprelate, Hay Any Work for Cooper (London: John Petherham, 1845), 30, 33. 71. Joseph L. Black, ed., The Martin Marprelate Tracts: A Modernized and Annotated Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), xxix. 72. Cooper, An Admonition to the People of England, fol. A2v. 73. Cooper, 10–11. 74. Cooper, 66–67.

Chapter 8

Defending the Defender of the Faith The Use of History in Responses to Queen Elizabeth’s Excommunication

Aislinn Muller In the summer of 1570, John Jewel took to his pulpit in Salisbury Cathedral to preach a sermon against the papacy.1 This was no ordinary sermon: Jewel used the whole of his speech to condemn a bull issued by Pope Pius V a few months before, entitled Regnans in Excelsis. In this bull, the pope proclaimed Queen Elizabeth I of England excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, deprived her of her right to rule, and commanded her subjects to cease obeying her, lest they face excommunication themselves.2 A copy of Regnans in Excelsis had been posted outside the bishop of London’s palace on May 25, to the great consternation of the government and the leaders of the recently reformed English church. As one of the church’s principal defenders, Jewel felt compelled to compose a response.3 During his sermon, Jewel stood before his congregation, reading each sentence of the bull aloud in Latin, translating it into English, and dismantling each accusation that the pope made against Elizabeth.4 Using examples from biblical and medieval history, Jewel lambasted the pope’s attempt to meddle with the sovereignty of the English queen and attacked the foundations of papal authority. His sermon would set the tone for many of the responses to Elizabeth’s excommunication among Protestants that would appear in the following decades.

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The excommunication of Queen Elizabeth from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius V provoked a storm of protest in England. Issued in February 1570, the bull placed England in an awkward position with respect to its Catholic neighbors, who were now expected to reclaim the country for the Roman faith at the first opportunity. The bull also rendered any English subject with Roman Catholic sympathies a potential rebel and traitor to the government. In practice, the excommunication provoked myriad responses with varying degrees of political and religious fervor among the English people, but its potential to reignite confessional resistance in Elizabeth’s realm remained a constant source of anxiety for her ministers throughout the rest of her reign. Aside from its capacity to provoke religious resistance, the excommunication signified a direct attack not just on Elizabeth but also against those she relied upon to rebuild the English church after 1558. Pius V had condemned the queen for having “removed the royal Council consisting of the English Nobility, and filled it with obscure men being Heretics . . . placed dishonest Preachers, and Ministers of impieties . . . commanded Books to be read in the whole Realm containing manifest heresies, and impious mysteries and institutions” and “presumed to throw Bishops, Parsons of Churches, and other Catholic Priests, out of their Churches and Benefices, and to bestow them and other Church-livings upon Heretics.”5 The bull constituted a personal affront against England’s Protestant leadership, one that implicated them in part for Elizabeth’s ostracization from Rome and one that this leadership consequently felt compelled to answer. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medium of print. In the wake of the bull’s publication, ballads, pamphlets, and books of religious polemic poured forth from the presses in London to condemn the pope’s actions and persuade the public of their futility. Leading reformers in the English church and abroad took up their pens to defend the queen’s supremacy and castigate the papacy for attempting to depose and anathematize a divinely appointed temporal monarch. The confirmation of the bull by Gregory XIII in 1580 and the subsequent arrival of the Jesuits in England inspired a second wave of similar attacks against the papacy. The responses of the queen’s supporters to her excommunication were part of the wider, ongoing debate over supremacy in the church. While there was disagreement among English Protestants over what forms the leadership of the church should take and what the monarch’s role in that

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leadership should be, writers generally appealed to the same examples from English and European history to defend their sovereign from the papacy’s attempts to subjugate them.6 The convention, long established in English confessional polemic, was adopted by Henry VIII and writers such as Thomas Swinnerton to challenge the validity of excommunications issued against the king by Clement VII and Paul III in the 1530s.7 A revival of interest in this history may also have been the consequence of a challenge John Jewel presented to English Catholic controversialists in 1559. In a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross and afterward printed, Jewel challenged his adversaries to find the justification for any contemporary Roman Catholic practice in the scriptures, councils, and writings of the church fathers, and to prove that any of these practices had been in use in the first six hundred years of Christianity. His challenge provoked over a decade of debate between English Catholic scholars and Protestant defenders of Jewel’s position.8 The conflict he inspired was still playing out in a series of polemical replies and rebuttals among Catholic and Protestant scholars at the time Regnans in Excelsis was issued and continued after his death in 1571. The influence of this theological struggle is clear in the way that Protestant writers used the examples of medieval kings and popes to respond to Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication, to prove that there was no earlier basis for the deposition of monarchs. This chapter will explore how supporters of Elizabeth used examples from the past to defend the queen’s defiance of the papacy and justify the harsh laws passed against Catholics following her excommunication. It will also consider the influence that Jewel may have exerted over the development of these responses. In his View of a Seditious Bull Sent into England, Jewel attacked each of the reasons listed by Pius V for throwing Elizabeth out of the Roman Catholic Church, quoting each objectionable passage before dismantling it, and referring to historical episodes when they helped his case.9 In response to an accusation in Regnans in Excelsis that Elizabeth had “monstrously usurped the authority and jurisdiction” of the church, Jewel referred to the examples of early Christian emperors and biblical figures, declaring that “Queene Elizabeth doth, as did Moses, Iosua, Dauid, Salomon . . . as Constantine, Valentinian, Gratian, Theodosius, Arcadius, Honorius, and other godly Emperors haue done.”10 Jewel also questioned the authority with which Pius V claimed the right to depose Elizabeth, implying that earlier popes had invented and usurped this power. He

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referred to Pope Adrian IV (incidentally, the only English pontiff) and quoted his letter to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, in which Adrian warned him that “what soeuer the Emperour hath, he hath it of vs. . . . Behold it is in our power to bestowe the Empire vpon whome we list. Therefore are we appointed by God ouer nations, and kingdomes, to pul downe, to roote vp, to build and to plant againe.”11 While Frederick was later excommunicated by Pope Alexander III, and not by Adrian, the use of his remarks on the scope of papal power implies that Jewel was wrestling with some uncomfortable truths in this passage. By referring to Adrian’s letter, Jewel also raised an example that reveals certain misgivings about the implications of his own queen’s excommunication. The anecdote served as a reminder that difference in opinion over the legitimacy of certain papal powers still existed among Elizabeth’s subjects.12 The allusion to Adrian underscored the troubles exacerbated by the bull’s publication and belied the confidence with which Jewel attacked the condemnation of Pius V. Assured as Jewel may have been of the excommunication’s invalidity and eager as he and Elizabeth’s Protestant defenders were to denounce it, the very fact that they found it necessary to do so suggests a significant dichotomy between how they wrote about the excommunication and what they feared about its potential to incite unrest. In the immediate aftermath of the bull’s publication, concerns over its ramifications were also tied to the aftermath of the Northern Rebellion of 1569, which broke out a few months before it was issued. Indeed, the news of the rebellion had been what inspired Pius V to issue the excommunication against Elizabeth, in the hope that it would strengthen the uprising. Led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, the rebels carried banners bearing the five wounds of Christ and called for the restoration of the Catholic Mass in England.13 Although the insurrection was suppressed before the bull was even published and over six hundred of its participants were executed, the proximity of these events cemented the causal links between Catholicism and treason in the minds of many of Elizabeth’s ministers and influenced the use of precedents in some of the early reactionary prose. The homelie against disobedience and wylfull rebellion, published in 1570 as an individual sermon and later as part of the Second Book of Homilies for the English church, shared Jewel’s approach in its use of examples from the English past to defend Elizabeth against the papacy.14 It made reference to King John’s

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excommunication to illustrate the parallels between his situation and that of the queen, claiming that the threats and curses of Pope Innocent III against John were likewise responsible for a rebellion. The homily noted that “as they [the popes] had before done against their soueraigne lords the Emperours,” so Innocent “proceedyng euen by the same wayes and meanes, and likewise cursing kyng Iohn, and discharging his subiectes of their othe of fidelitie vnto their soueraigne lorde.”15 Had English subjects known their duty, the sermon rhetorically asked, woulde a great meanie of the nobles, and other Englishmen, natural subiectes, for this foraigne and vnnatrual vsurper his vayne curse of the kyng, and for his faygned discharging of them of their othe of fidelitie to their natural lorde, vppon so sclender or no grounde at all, haue rebelled against their soueraigne lorde the kyng. . . . Woulde they haue sent for, and receaued the Dolphin of Fraunce with a great armie of Frenchmen into the Realme of England, would they haue sworn fidelitie to the Dolphin of Fraunce, breaking their othe of fidelitie to their natural lorde the kyng of England, and haue stande vnder the Dolphins banner displayed against the kyng of Englande?16 From then on, according to the text, the kings of England were forever subject to the pope’s tyranny, and papal interference was directly culpable for later uprisings against Henry VIII and his son Edward.17 This reflection upon earlier instances of papal meddling in English affairs, preceded by a lengthy discussion of papal interference in France and the Holy Roman Empire, was meant to persuade the audience that such intervention in England was not uncommon. It demonstrated that Elizabeth was by no means exceptional as an English monarch who had incurred the wrath of the papacy and implied that such struggles were in fact a relatively normal occurrence in the history of Christianity. The homily’s association of the papacy and Catholicism more generally with treason and rebellion, however, did more than simply reflect a sentiment that would shortly be made law.18 While it rearranged events to place the blame for civil unrest more squarely on the papacy’s shoulders (King Philip’s invasion of England occurred after John had already formally reconciled with Rome and the interdict had been lifted), this alteration illuminated subconscious anxieties about Elizabeth’s contemporary conflict with Rome.19 After proclaiming Regnans in Excelsis, Pius

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V attempted to persuade other Catholic rulers to invade England or, at the very least, cut off diplomatic and trading relationships with their obstinate neighbor.20 In England itself, the bull appears to have provoked enough unrest to have merited the consternation of local bishops and officials. Jewel’s View of a Seditious Bull had alluded to this discord, declaring that the pope “spreadeth rumors, styrreth sedition, raiseth subiects againste their Princes, and forceth Princes to plague their subiects” and that “[the pope] hath conference with Traytours in Englande, wyth Traytours in Irelande, with Traitours in Germany, with Traitours in Heluetia, with Traitours in Denmarke, wyth Traitours in Polelande.”21 Similarly, a letter from the bishop of Carlisle to the Earl of Sussex described how “in Lancashire all thinges savered of open rebellion” after the bull’s publication in England, and how “in most places the people fell from theire obedience vtterlie refusyng to come to anie divine service said in the englishe tongue.”22 In this context, it is perhaps less surprising that fears about the bull’s ramifications for England surfaced in sermons. The need to emphasize continuity between the circumstances faced by Elizabeth and other excommunicated monarchs suggests that the publication of Regnans in Excelsis was much more troubling to Elizabeth and her government than they were willing to concede publicly. It suggests that the queen’s supporters feared that the consequences of her excommunication would in fact differ from those of her predecessors and implies that the bull could potentially incite more resilient resistance and disruption than other royal excommunications previously had in England. Although Jewel’s View of a Seditious Bull and the Homelie against Disobedience both referred to examples of papal meddling from the English past, it was unusual for writers to defend Elizabeth from her excommunication without reference to episodes of conflict between the papacy and other European powers. As Julian Lock has pointed out, the use of English history in antipapist narratives was typically part of a broader appeal to medieval history that relied heavily on precedents of papal conflict with France and the Holy Roman Empire.23 News of Elizabeth’s excommunication reached England as John Foxe was readying a new edition of the Acts and Monuments for publication, and he seems to have added a section to the sixth book, entitled “The Proud Primacy of the Popes,” to the text at the last minute to strengthen the attacks on papal supremacy that were included in other sections of the book.24 The “Proud Primacy” also appeared in subsequent editions of the Acts and

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Monuments, published in 1576 and 1583, and offered a condensed summary of the many abuses committed by the papacy against temporal rulers. Foxe recapitulated short narratives of the excommunications of Holy Roman Emperors Henry IV (1076 and 1080), Frederick Barbarossa (1160), and Frederick II (1239), as well as that of King Philip IV of France (1303), all of which were discussed at greater length in other sections of the Acts and Monuments, before turning to the controversy between King John and Innocent III.25 The Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV became a popular figure to compare with Elizabeth in responses to her excommunication. In his View of a Seditious Bull, Jewel had made reference to a rebellion against Henry that was led by his son, asking, “Who was it that gaue dispensation to Henrie the fifth to rise vp against Henry the fourth his own father, and put him from the Empire?”26 His allusion implied that the pope had encouraged Henry’s son to rebel against him and invoked parallels between Henry’s struggles and the pope’s supposed role in encouraging the Northern Rebellion against Elizabeth. Henry IV had also been excommunicated twice by Pope Gregory VII, first in an investiture dispute and then again in the midst of a civil war in which the pope supported Rudolf of Swabia, who hoped to displace Henry and claim the empire for himself.27 Henry’s second excommunication was considered by many Protestant scholars as the first precedent for joining the deposition of a monarch with excommunication, and consequently it became prominent in debates over Elizabeth’s excommunication and its validity.28 In the wake of the Northern Rebellion and the bull’s publication, the parallels between Henry’s situation and that of Elizabeth might have been especially appreciated by English readers. It is worth considering why Foxe would have gone to so much trouble to incorporate the “Proud Primacy” into the book when most of its contents already appeared in books 4 and 5. Indeed, the “Proud Primacy” had to be printed separately and inserted by hand into each copy of the 1570 edition.29 It is possible that Foxe intended this section as a convenient reference for anyone who wished to access a summary of papal corruption with relative speed: because the Acts progressed chronologically, Foxe’s more detailed histories of the conflicts between the papacy and Henry IV, Frederick Barbarossa, Henry II of England, and King John were interspersed with tales of the Norman conquest of England, the Albigensian Crusade, and the schism between the Greek and Roman churches.30

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Clearly Foxe thought these precedents were important enough to merit repeating, and the insert acted as a helpful reminder to readers of the succession of rulers who struggled with the papacy for supremacy in their territories, among whom Queen Elizabeth took her place.31 Elizabeth’s excommunication did not appear in the “Proud Primacy,” or indeed in any later editions of the Acts and Monuments, but the implicit association of Elizabeth with the rulers mentioned in the “Proud Primacy” would have been clear to readers familiar with the political and religious tensions of the day. The debate surrounding Elizabeth’s excommunication spread beyond the confines of Protestant circles in England. At the behest of several English bishops including John Jewel, James Pilkington, and Richard Cox, Heinrich Bullinger wrote a defense of Elizabeth against the excommunication that targeted both a European and an English audience.32 His Confutation of the Pope’s Bull, subsequently published in Latin in 1571 and translated into English in 1572, systematically denounced each accusation against Elizabeth listed in Regnans in Excelsis. Bullinger included a summary of disputes between the Holy See and various medieval monarchs, among which Philip IV of France and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV figured prominently.33 These monarchs were excommunicated in circumstances similar enough to those of Elizabeth to resonate with readers. Philip, for instance, was thrown out of the church for trying to limit the papacy’s administrative role in church governance in France and attempting to establish an independent Gallican church. Henry, as we have seen, had been excommunicated in the midst of civil unrest in his kingdom.34 It is somewhat surprising that the English bishops looked to Bullinger, rather than to someone like John Jewel, to undertake this project. Jewel had established himself as the principal champion of the English church in his debates with Catholic controversialists, like Thomas Harding and Thomas Stapleton in the 1560s.35 As such, he would have seemed the ideal candidate to construct a formal refutation of Regnans in Excelsis. In spite of his reputation within England, however, Jewel never gained the kind of international recognition and influence that Bullinger possessed among reformed scholars, and it is possible that the bishops and Elizabeth’s ministers believed that a response from Bullinger would appeal more broadly both within England and without. Indeed, Jewel himself wrote to Bullinger on behalf of the bishops to request his assistance.36 The application to a reformer as eminent as Bullinger underscores how worried the

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Elizabethan regime became about the papal bull’s accusations and how people would react if the government left them unanswered. It also suggests that Jewel and his colleagues felt that the need to appeal to a higher scholarly authority on the question of Elizabeth’s excommunication than they felt they could provide. Pope Gregory XIII’s confirmation of Regnans in Excelsis in 1580 provoked similarly vociferous responses from English Protestants that continued to appeal to medieval history to justify Elizabeth’s defiance of her excommunication. The energy with which polemicists produced a fresh stream of anti-Catholic literature had much to do with a sense of impending religious crisis for England on the international stage. The renewal of the bull followed closely the outbreak of the second Desmond rebellion in Ireland, led by James Fitzgerald with papal support, as well as a bull that formally sanctioned a holy war in Ireland to throw off the tyranny of a heretical queen’s rule. Indeed, Elizabeth’s excommunication became a critical component of Fitzgerald’s justification for the rebellion.37 In the Low Countries, the defection of the Roman Catholic Walloon provinces from their alliance with the Dutch Protestant states in the north weakened their resistance against Spanish rule, allowing forces led by the Duke of Parma to reclaim the southern territories.38 Negotiations pertaining to the French Anjou match had begun to falter, despite Elizabeth’s apparently serious intention to marry, and the revival of the Catholic League, led by the Guise family in France, sparked renewed tensions between Huguenots and Catholics, as authorities placed increasing restrictions on Huguenot worship.39 Philip II had also renewed the Holy League to combat heresy with Gregory XIII, and while he sent most of the forces he assembled in the early 1580s to Portugal to resolve a succession dispute, correspondence in the English state papers suggests many officials worried that they would be sent to invade Ireland or even England itself.40 The arrival of the Jesuit mission in England in 1580 further escalated a sense of impending confessional crisis. The Jesuits’ role in promulgating the papal excommunication to the English people has yet to be fully explored, but their directives from the pope certainly included instruction concerning the implications of Regnans in Excelsis and how Elizabeth’s subjects should proceed.41 The prospect of a band of trained priests, who could explain the full ramifications of Pius V’s curse against the English queen and all who remained loyal to her, secretly roaming

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the countryside and spreading their message of resistance, was especially troubling to Elizabeth’s ministers, and in the months preceding their arrival the Privy Council received numerous letters reporting their movements toward England. Many of the precedents that appeared in polemical works responding to the bull’s confirmation were the same ones that authors used to respond to the initial proclamation of 1570. In many ways, the anxieties of Elizabeth’s supporters in the wake of the bull’s renewal originated from the same sources as those inspired by Pius V’s first sentence: fears of foreign invasion and a religious climate at home that harbored enough dissent to make a declaration by the papacy a potentially formidable source of inspiration for resistance to government authority. Gregory XIII, however, issued his renewal of Regnans in Excelsis in an international context that was more politically and confessionally volatile than it had been ten years before. In this environment, it became all the more important to persuade the public of the ultimate futility of papal machinations against the queen, and the use of the past endured as an important part of this strategy. Although Jewel had died in 1571, the influence of his early challenges to the history of the papacy persisted in responses to the renewed excommunication. One of the first to revive this approach was John Foxe in his book The Pope Confuted, published in 1580. While Foxe emulated his predecessors in his reliance on examples from the Holy Roman Empire to examine and attack papal usurpation of authority, he also incorporated more examples from English history. He recalled the dispute between King Henry II, Thomas Becket, and Pope Alexander III over the prosecution of clergy, the excommunication of King John by Innocent III, and the conflict between Henry III and the English barons over England’s assumption of financial responsibility for the papal wars in Sicily: “Henry the second did set himself against the Pope, in more forcible maner. But Pandola the Popes Legate forthwith qualified the king. Not long after succeeded Iohn king of Englande, who was much more eagerly sharpened agaynst the Pope: but this force preuailed nothing at al. After them reigned Henry the thirde of that name, who mightily laboured to stay the Romishe money markettes. . . . But the insatiable pride of the Pope gate the vpper hande notwithstanding.”42 While only one of the English monarchs Foxe referred to was actually excommunicated, their presence in the text reinforced the frequency and normality of conflict between the papacy and temporal monarchs, as well

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as this quarrel’s recurring themes. The incident during Henry II’s reign which Foxe mentioned involved an argument with Becket over whether clergymen should be prosecuted in royal courts when they committed civil crimes. Foxe may have been alluding to their reconciliation via the mediation of Alexander III or to Henry’s plea for a papal pardon after Becket was murdered in questionable circumstances, for which Henry agreed to do public penance at Becket’s tomb.43 Foxe evidently employed creative license with the story of Henry III. Henry’s reign coincided with an expansion of papal power and financing under Alexander IV. With Henry’s acquiescence, England assumed the heavy financial burdens of the papacy’s war with Sicily, and Henry was forced to sell off most of his hereditary lands in France to cover the debts. In retaliation, the English barons forced Henry to establish a council to approve all of his governing decisions, presumably the council that Foxe described in the passage. When the council’s authority collapsed, civil war broke out and Henry temporarily lost control of the country.44 King John, however, was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III in 1209, in an investiture dispute over the vacant seat of the archbishopric of Canterbury. The pope also placed England under an interdict, and John eventually relented and accepted the pope’s candidate in exchange for absolution.45 Foxe used these precedents to establish how detrimental papal interference had been to England over the centuries. They primarily served to defend monarchical resistance to papal sanctions like excommunication and intervention from the Vatican that might result in harm to the commonwealth. Nevertheless, his unease with the potential repercussions of Elizabeth’s excommunication simmers below the surface. All of the examples from English history that Foxe included in the book may also be read as cautionary tales of the possible repercussions of contradicting the pope’s will. Foxe neglected to mention that the Angevin and Plantagenet kings bowed to the Vatican’s wishes to avoid incurring the displeasure of their subjects. Implicit here was the possibility that Elizabeth may have had to follow a similar course of action and, by extension, that a significant part of her realm may have considered the bull legitimate.46 Many discussions of monarchical excommunication and conflict with the papacy that appeared in the 1580s occurred alongside attacks against the recently arrived Jesuit mission, as well as fears of an imminent Spanish invasion, provoked by the renewed deposition of the queen. Percival Wiburn’s Reproofe of Master Howlet was an official disputation

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of the Jesuit Robert Persons’s Brief Discourse on Catholic refusal to attend church, but it also dealt extensively with the bull pronounced against Elizabeth, invoking parallels between the queen and the struggles of King John with the papacy.47 Thomas Lupton’s Persuasion from Papistrie, printed in 1581, appealed to similar stories in a summary of clashes between the Holy See and various monarchs of France and the Holy Roman Empire.48 Lupton also recalled the story of King Ethelwulf, comparing English appeals to the Danes for assistance against the king to contemporary English Catholic schemes to obtain papal support for an invasion and uprising in England. He warned that just as the Danes had “cruelly murdered” the nobles and “wickedly oppressed” the commons who appealed to them for help, so, too, would the foreign Catholics persecute all Englishmen, if they invaded England.49 In light of the renewed Holy League formed between Spain and the papacy, as well as the outbreak of the second Desmond rebellion in Ireland in 1579, which received papal financing and military support, we can see why this stories would have resonated with Elizabethan readers. Concerns about an impending Catholic invasion of England peppered the correspondence of ambassadors and envoys in the state papers from the early 1580s, and it is clear that many of the queen’s ministers feared the renewal of the excommunication would add legitimacy to any plans for resistance.50 The connections made between conflict with the papacy and invasion of the realm reflected an underlying anxiety about contemporary circumstances in England. Lupton’s Persuasion from Papistrie was an appeal for religious unity as a means of preserving peace and stability: throughout the text he repeatedly asserted that anyone who did not obey the queen, her laws, and her religion should be considered “England’s Enimies,” and he challenged Catholics to “proue that any one prince of your religion hath raigned so royally, so quietly, so peaceably, so plentifully, so prudently, so politikely, so prosperously, and so mercifully . . . as our worthy Quéene (a professour, maintainer and defender of the word of God) hath done.”51 Thus in Lupton’s treatise, obedience to the queen’s laws and religion was paramount for national prosperity and ensured providential protection for England.52 Lupton invoked a similar strategy to that which Jewel had employed to persuade his audience of the good fortune they enjoyed under Queen Elizabeth in the View of a Seditious Bull. Jewel pointed out that the pope “blessed Philip King of Spaine: he hath bin wonderfully troubled by the Moeres at home, and liueth in continuall

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turmoyle with his subiectes in other his dominions abroade. He blessed the states of Venice: they are still disquieted by the Turke. On the other side, he hath accurssed England: thankes be to God it was neuer better in worldly peace, in health of bodie, in abundance of corne and victuals.”53 In contrast, Jewel’s account of the northern rebels highlighted how “most miserable are they which through his [the pope’s] wicked persuasions . . . séeke howe their country may be brought vnder the subiection of foreine enemies, into bondage and miserie.”54 Using examples from the more recent past, Lupton, like Jewel, implied that Elizabeth enjoyed providential favor and that any attempts against her would therefore inevitably be unsuccessful.55 It may have been continuing anxiety about the Jesuit mission and the prospect of a Spanish invasion that prompted the publication of Jewel’s View of a Seditious Bull at last in 1582. The publication of the sermon was overseen by John Garbrand, a prebendary in Jewel’s diocese for whom the bishop had acted as a mentor, and who inherited all of Jewel’s papers.56 In the epistle to the reader published with the View, Garbrand wrote that “the present state of these our dayes, and the honourable, and reuerent loue, that euery one of vs subiectes oweth to so gratious a Prince, as GOD in mercy hath set ouer vs: hath caused this small worke to be persented vnto thee (gentle Reader.) For, it carrieth in it selfe, and bringeth vnto thee a ripping vp, and an vnfoulding of that seditious BVL of Pius Quintus.”57 Garbrand declared that by reading Jewel’s sermon, “thou shalt soone espie the daunger of all such practises towardes disloialtie, aud rebellion, whereto the BVL driueth thee.”58 Garbrand published Jewel’s sermon in the aftermath of the execution of Edmund Campion, one of the first Jesuits to come to England, and several other Catholic priests.59 His epistle reflected widespread anxieties that the missionary priests had come to England to strengthen Catholic resistance and a hope that one of the English church’s ablest defenders could persuade Elizabeth’s subjects to remain obedient. Republishing Jewel’s sermon in this context served as a reminder of the roots of the political and religious unrest that had begun to trouble the kingdom again in the 1580s, or at least what Jewel and other English Protestants had perceived to be the roots. The polemical struggle revived by the bull’s republication and the arrival of the Jesuits continued well into the 1580s, with prominent figures including William Cecil weighing in to vilify the sentence. The Execution of Justice, published by Cecil in 1583, appealed to common examples of

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excommunicated monarchs from the medieval period, as well as events from the more recent past. Cecil’s invective against the papacy owed a clear debt to the earlier works of Jewel and other polemicists discussed here. Cecil blamed the Jesuits for persuading Elizabeth’s subjects “to allow of the Pope’s foresaid bulls” and “bring the realm not only into a dangerous war against the forces of strangers . . . but into a war domestical and civil, wherein no blood is usually spared, nor mercy yielded.”60 He also made use of the familiar story of the emperor Henry IV, declaring that “this kind of tyrannous authority in Popes to make wars upon emperors and kings and to command them to be deprived took hold at the first by Pope Hildebrand [Gregory VII], though the same never had any lawful example or warrant from the laws of God of the Old or New Testament.”61 Like Jewel, Cecil also included anecdotes of recent events to argue against the excommunication, but he included examples of Catholic monarchs successfully defying the papacy, rather than those who suffered for bending to the pope’s will. Cecil observed that Emperor Charles V “was not afraid of his [the pope’s] curses,” and even took the pope hostage in 1527.62 He described how “neither was Queen Mary . . . so afraid of the Pope’s cursings but that both she and her whole council . . . did forbid the entry of his bulls and of a cardinal hat at Calais.”63 Burghley’s reference to Mary, an English Catholic monarch still alive in the memories of Elizabeth’s older subjects, as an example of a devout queen who unabashedly defied papal instructions, would have resonated much more with his readers than Hammond’s older anecdotes. His allusion to Charles would have served the same purpose for older members of his audience.64 The purpose of these stories appears to have been to reinforce that defying the Holy See carried no significant spiritual ramifications. Cecil’s list of devout Catholic monarchs who subverted or even attacked the papacy outright in the sixteenth century implied that if pious Catholic rulers dismissed their pontiff ’s policies and authority, then Protestant princes like Elizabeth had no reason to behave any differently. These allusions to recent history demonstrated a reality in which monarchs possessed more control over the fate of the papacy than the pope did in the temporal affairs of Christian kingdoms, and implied that if this was so, Elizabeth and her subjects needed neither heed nor fear Regnans in Excelsis.65 In all but one of the works discussed thus far, there has been a conspicuous silence with respect to the excommunication of Henry VIII by

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Paul III, and the relative absence of this story from the polemic assessed above further illuminates the sense of apprehension that runs through these texts. As the most immediate precedent for an excommunicated monarch in England, it might seem curious that few authors referred to his own ostracization from Rome in any detail, but when we compare the terms of Henry’s excommunication with those of his daughter’s, we can perhaps appreciate why authors may have been reluctant to reflect too closely on the sentence proclaimed against him. Paul III’s proclamation against Henry actually opened with praise for the king, making reference to his “Pious, and Learned Book against that son of Perdition Martin Luther,” for which Pope Clement VII “thereupon wrote back to the said King Henry the Eight, and styled him The Defender of the Faith.”66 The passage transitioned immediately from this compliment to a list of the king’s crimes, beginning with Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and portrayed his association with Anne as the first of many misdeeds that prompted his excommunication. The pope declaired that Henry “unworthily repudiated our dear Daughter in Christ, Queen Catharine a Princess of high blood and extraction, to whom he was lawfully married . . . and hath contracted Wedlock with one Anna Bulleyn an English Woman . . . from this step of impiety he hath gradually proceeded to the perpetration of more enormous and heinous Exploits.”67 While Regnans in Excelsis did not explicitly recapitulate the story of Henry and Anne’s illicit union, their relationship colored the language of illegitimacy with which Pius V described Elizabeth: he referred to her as “the pretensed Queen of England” and “the servant of wickedness” who “seazed on the Kingdome” and “monstrously usurped” the supreme headship of the church, while her sister Mary enjoyed the distinction of “lawfull Queene of famous memory.”68 The rhetoric used here suggested that the excommunication of Elizabeth was as much pronounced for who she was as for what she had done by restoring a Protestant English church. It is possible that the authors who took up her defense against the papal bull may have been wary of reminding their audiences of questions about her legitimacy by remarking on her father’s own precedent for excommunication. In conclusion, the level of attention given to historical precedents of monarchical excommunication in English confessional polemic printed after the publication of Regnans in Excelsis and its confirmation in 1580 speaks to the persistent power of this sentence against rulers in the late

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sixteenth century. While allusions to the history of the early church were not an unusual occurrence in Reformation polemic, the fact that they were perceived to be one of the more effective means of engaging with Elizabeth’s excommunication in print merits further reflection. Many of the authors discussed here appealed to the past in the context of a wider struggle faced by many temporal leaders in Europe, in order to construct a narrative of continuity and reassure the public that England and Elizabeth would emerge from the present conflict unscathed. This strategy suggests the urgency and necessity with which authors felt compelled to quell concerns about the excommunication’s power to provoke resistance, and betrays deep anxieties about the security of the realm and the state of the Reformation in England. Another important theme in this chapter has been the influence of John Jewel over the development of responses to Elizabeth’s excommunication. Jewel was one of the first clergymen to challenge the accusations made against Elizabeth by Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis, in the sermon that he preached in 1570. The connections he made between the papacy and civil unrest, and his support of his criticisms with examples from medieval and recent history, were all adopted by polemicists in subsequent attacks on the excommunication. The impact of Elizabeth’s excommunication in print, especially the way it inspired contemporary authors to reflect upon other historical incidents of monarchical excommunication, highlights its ability to affect political developments and discourse in post-Reformation England. It also shows the continued influence of Jewel on how reformers commented on the queen and her place in the English Church for years after his death.

Notes 1. The exact date of this sermon is not known; a transcript was not published until 1582 by John Garbrand. See John Jewel, A Viewe of a Seditious Bul Sent into Englande (London: Newberie and Bynneman, 1582). 2. A transcript and translation of the bull are available in Geoffrey Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 423–28. 3. See J. H. Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London:

Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920), 152–54. 4. Judging from the descriptions of the bull made in this sermon, it is possible that Jewel actually had a copy in his hand while speaking and held it up for his parishioners to see. See Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, 5–10. 5. Elton, Tudor Constitution, 426–28. 6. See Julian Lock, “Plantagenets against the Papacy: Protestant England’s Search for Royal Heroes,” in Protestant History and Identity in

Defending the Defender of the Faith  155 Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon, vol. 1 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 153–73; see also, in the same volume, Alec Ryrie, “The Problem of Legitimacy and Precedent in English Protestantism,” 78–92. 7. See, for instance, Thomas Swinnerton, A mustre of scismatyke bysshopes of Rome, otherwyse naming them selues popes, moche necessarye to be redde of al the kynges true subiectes (London: Johan Byddell, 1534); and Henry VIII, A protestation made for the most mighty and moste redoubted kynge of Englande. [et]c. and his hole counsell and clergie (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1537). 8. See John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963); Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 9. Gary Jenkins has discussed how this sermon also set out Jewel’s views about the role of the godly prince in the commonwealth and its church. See Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 105–11. 10. Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, 50–51. 11. Jewel, 71–79. 12. Peter Marshall, Reformation England, 1480–1642 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), chapters 5–7. 13. Krista Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics, and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 57–67. 14. W. J. Kirby, Richard Hooker: Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 97 fn. Alexandra Gillespie and David Crankshaw suggest that Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, was most likely the author of the Homelie. See David J. Crankshaw and Alexandra Gillespie, “Parker, Matthew (1504– 1575),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2004), accessed January 22, 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view /article/21327,. 15. An homelie against disobedience and wylfull rebellion (London: Richard Jugge and John Cawood, 1570), 68. 16. Homelie, 68–69. 17. Homelie, 70–71. 18. Elton, Tudor Constitution, 428–32. 19. W. L. Warren, King John (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 201–3. 20. See J. M. Hicks, ed, Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally at Rome in the Vatican Archives and Library, Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1916), 332–36. 21. Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, 22. 22. The National Archives (TNA), SP 15/19 fol. 39. 23. Lock, “Plantagenets against the Papacy,” 153–73. 24. I am grateful to Thomas Freeman for alerting me to the publication history of this part of the Acts and Monuments. Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas Freeman, “Print, Profit, and Propaganda: The Elizabethan Privy Council and the 1570 Edition of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’”. English Historical Review 119, no. 484 (2004), 1288–1307 25. John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments (Sheffield: HRI Online Publications, 2011), 783–85, available from http//www.johnfoxe.org. 26. Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, 103. 27. See I. S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143–210. 28. Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 21–23. 29. Evenden and Freeman, “Print, Profit, and Propaganda,” 1288–1307. 30. Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments (1570 edition), books 4–5. 31. See Andrew Hiscock, “‘Writers to Solemnise and Celebrate . . . Actes and Memory’: Foxe and the Business

156  Theologian, Polemicist, and Apologist of Textual Memory,” Yearbook of English Studies 38, no. 1 (2008), 68–85, for a discussion of the importance of memory to Foxe’s work. 32. See Hastings Robinson, ed., The Zurich Letters, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846), 221–66. 33. Heinrich Bullinger, A Confutation of the Popes Bull, trans. Arthur Golding (London: John Day, 1572), 38–39. 34. See Joseph Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); and Alister McGrath, Christian History: An Introduction (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 119, for more on this controversy. 35. Peter Milward, “The Jewel-Harding Controversy,” Albion 6, no. 4 (1974): 320–41; Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church; John Craig, “Jewel, John (1522–1571),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed September 7, 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view /article/14810. 36. Robinson, Zurich Letters, 1:229–39. 37. Hiram Morgan, “Faith and Fatherland in Sixteenth-Century Ireland,” History Ireland 3, no. 2 (1995): 13–20. 38. Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1977), 187–224. 39. Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 98–120. 40. See, for instance, Henry Cobham’s letter to the privy council from February 1580. Kew, The National Archives, SP 78/4A. 41. Thomas McCoog’s The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541–1588 (New York: Brill, 1996) and Thomas Clancy’s Papist Pamphleteers: The Allen-Persons Party and the Political Thought of the CounterReformation in England, 1572–1615 (Chicago: Loyola University Press,

42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

1964) have argued that the Jesuits interpreted Gregory XIII’s instructions concerning the excommunication as a revocation of Pius V’s initial binding of all English Catholics in Regnans in Excelsis. See also Arnold Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979); Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978); Elliott Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). John Foxe, The Pope Confuted (London: Thomas Dawson, 1580), 13–14. Anne Duggan, “Henry II, the English Church and the Papacy, 1154–76,” in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 173–82; Thomas Keefe, “England and the Angevin Dominions, 1137–1204,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Michael Luscombe, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 567–68; Robinson, “The Papacy, 1122–1198,” in Luscombe, ed., New Cambridge Medieval History, 4:355–59. D. A. Carpenter, “The Plantagenet Kings,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. David Abulafia, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 335–42. Carpenter, 319–20. See Patrick Collinson, “The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I,” in his Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 31–58; and Ethan Shagan, “The Two Republics: Conflicting Views of Participatory Local Government in Early Tudor England,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, ed. John McDiarmid (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 19–38.

Defending the Defender of the Faith  157 47. Percival Wiburn, A checke or reproofe of M. Howlets vntimely shreeching in her Maiesties eares (London: Thomas Dawson, 1581), 84–87; see also C. S. Knighton, “W. Wiburn, Percival (1533/4–1606),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed August 26 2014, http://www .oxforddnb.com/view/article/29346. 48. Thomas Lupton, A Persuasion from Papistrie (London: Henry Bynneman, 1581), 84–85. 49. Lupton, 47–48. 50. See Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors (London: Penguin, 2001), chapters 7–9; also Stephen Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Allen Lane, 2012). 51. Lupton, Persuasion from Papistrie, 20. 52. G. K. Hunter, “Lupton, Thomas (fl. 1572–1584),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/arti cle/17204, accessed January 20, 2015. See also E. Rose, “Thomas Lupton’s Golden Rule,” in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays in Honor of G. R. Elton, ed. DeLloyd J. Guth and John. W. McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 53. Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, 83–84. 54. Jewel, 106. 55. See Alexandra Walsham, “A Very Deborah? The Myth of Elizabeth as a Providential Monarch,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 143–68. 56. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 4:xxiv–xxvii. 57. John Garbrand, “Epistle to the Reader,” in Jewel, Viewe of a Seditious Bul, iv. 58. Garbrand, v.

59. On whom see Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), ch. 11. 60. William Cecil, The Execution of Justice in England, ed. Robert Kingdon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 8–9. 61. Cecil, 25. 62. Cecil, 27; Frederic Baumgartner, “Henri II and the Papal Enclave of 1549,” Sixteenth Century Journal 16, no. 3 (1985): 301–14. 63. Cecil, The Execution of Justice, 28; see also Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 71–74; David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government, and Religion in England, 1553–1558 (London: Routledge, 1991), 362–67. 64. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, for instance, recounted the Protestant burnings during Mary’s reign and was accessible to subjects in churches, cathedrals, schools, and many other public places. See John King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1. 65. Henry VIII relied on similar French struggles with the pope to help legitimate the royal supremacy in 1533. See John Guy, “Monarchy and Counsel: Models of State,” in The Sixteenth Century, ed. Patrick Collinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 114–42. 66. Two Bulls Roaring Out Excommunications, Anathemas, and Total Deprivations (London: Francis Smith, 1674), 2–3. 67. Two Bulls, 2–3. 68. William Camden, Historie of the Reign of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, trans. R. N. Gent (London: Thomas Harper, 1635), Book 2, 125.

Chapter 9

Moses the Magistrate The Mosaic Theological Imaginaries of John Jewel and Richard Hooker in Elizabethan Apologetics

Paul Dominiak Graham Hammill’s The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton acts as a useful heuristic foil to discuss the Mosaic theological imaginaries of John Jewel and Richard Hooker (1554–1600) in their respective apologetic works for the Elizabethan royal supremacy. In The Mosaic Constitution, Hammill argues that the formation of Israel under Moses as a people bound by the rule of law was “one of the founding fictions of early modern political life.”1 Hammill takes the term “Mosaic constitution” to mean two things. First, the phrase describes how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers used the Mosaic narrative to theorize political community. Eric Nelson similarly argues that the academic revival of the Hebrew language in the early modern period helped transform political discourse because Christians turned to the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution.2 Second, Hammill’s phrase includes the use of Moses to flag up a conceptual problem—namely, how religious belief intersected with early modern notions of the secular state. In both cases, the Mosaic constitution forms a “theological imaginary” through which early modern writers, whether confessional or atheistic, could “explore the potential of religion for reimagining political community.”3 Throughout his work, Hammill traces how, in overlapping ways, “the project of managing the theological imaginary is what makes up early modern political theology.”4

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This essay examines in turn the different ways John Jewel and Richard Hooker appealed to the Mosaic theological imaginary in order to constitute the binding power of Elizabethan lay ecclesiastical supremacy. Jewel wrote his Apology for the Church of England against the recusant Catholic claims of the papal plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis). For him, Moses (as “a civil magistrate and chief guide of the people”)5 constituted both the historical civil and religious order of Israel and also, through the primacy of the scriptures, the archetypal constituting power of all godly commonwealths, including the royal supremacy. On the other hand, as Hooker later wrote Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity against both Catholic and radical disciplinarian attacks on the royal supremacy, he also appealed to Moses. Yet, for Hooker, Moses only acted as an “example or patterne” that showed the “conveniency” of royal supremacy.6 Rather than a divinely mandated order constituted by scriptural narrative, Hooker suspended the historically contingent royal supremacy from the transcendental principles of law and public consent, giving it a post-hoc (but not inherent) divine approbation.

Prolegomena: The Mosaic Theological Imaginary Before turning to Jewel and Hooker there are, however, two important prolegomena to note. The first turns on Hammill’s phrase “theological imaginary.” The term shares some similarity with Charles Taylor’s idiom of the “social imaginary.”7 Taylor’s social imaginary describes “the way people imagine their social existence” through popular images, stories, and legends. Taylor recognizes that the term does not act as a monolithic singularity: numerous western modernities signal multiple social imaginaries that constitute them. Similarly, then, Hammill’s phrase “theological imaginary” remains better couched as a plural. In their mythic themes (such as found in their Mosaic theological imaginaries), Jewel and Hooker addressed what Debora Shuger calls an “imagined community” that overlaps with but also stretches beyond the seen, visible order, uniting mythic ideas and supernatural order with the political realm.8 Jewel and Hooker clearly received the constituted social imaginary of supremacy, yet their apologetic works also subtly sought to influence and cocreate its meaning. Indeed, both Jewel and Hooker used Mosaic theological imaginaries as part of what Hammill describes as “constituting power.” Hammill

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borrows this term from the eighteenth-century writer Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836): “constituting power” refers to the power to make a new political order.9 The problem with constituting power is that, as it constitutes power, it must also constitute overarching conceptions that transcend the immediate political community in order to justify that community. In other words, “political making assumes supplemental discourses—myths and founding fictions—that play the role of the transcendent for particular political communities.”10 Mosaic theological imaginaries offer one such supplemental discourse. The distinct Mosaic theological imaginaries of Jewel and Hooker therefore show that the idea of royal supremacy itself masked plurality. Accordingly, Jacqueline Rose writes about multiple “Royal Supremacies” across official and popular spheres,11 while John Guy demonstrates the bifurcation of Henrician supremacy into notions of imperial monarchy and counternotions of the crown-in-parliament.12 Furthermore, Claire Cross recognizes the tension between Hooker’s constitutionalist account of supremacy and Elizabeth’s own more imperial view of it.13 As a constituting power, the distinct Mosaic theological imaginaries of Jewel and Hooker inhabited and sought to shape, then, the elite and popular negotiations of living under royal supremacy. The second prolegomenon turns on the history of the Mosaic theological imaginary itself. As Jewel and Hooker inhabited their Mosaic theological imaginaries, they also entered into a multivalent and somewhat protean discourse with an already complex and disjunctive history. As such, Moses represented a multivocal character. In the medieval and early modern period, Moses variously acted as an exemplary moral and religious teacher, as an image of spiritual progress (epektasis), as constitutive of good government, and as a divine lawgiver.14 He also existed as a contested polemical figure in the medieval political conflicts between three forces: the pope, local ecclesiastical institutions, and temporal powers.15 It is this latter set of political conflicts over the Mosaic theological imaginary into which Jewel and Hooker stepped. A brief, heuristic history given below demonstrates how the Mosaic theological imaginary became and remained a topic of political controversy. While there was constant conflict between popes and emperors, Gregorian reforms from the eleventh century onward led to the protracted quarrel over lay investitures. In 1075, Pope Gregory VII issued twenty-seven theses, the dictatus papae, in which he claimed papal

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sovereignty (plenitudo potestatis, the plenitude of power) even over investitures, in effect establishing both the autonomy and the superiority of the church over temporal powers. The conflict over plenitudo potestatis shaped much of medieval political discourse and drew the Mosaic theological imaginary into conflict. On the one hand, the twelfth-century English antipapal polemics of Norman Anonymous (fl. ca. 1100) radically asserted the supremacy of royal over ecclesiastical power since (like the paradigmatic Israelite kings) earthly kings ruled over the entire life of Christians.16 On the other hand, Honorius Augustodunensis (ca. 1080/90–ca. 1156) espoused hierocratic radicalism in his Summa Gloria of the same period. In the Summa, Honorius used Moses to argue for the higher dignity of the priesthood and its jurisdictional superiority: God instituted priestly rule over Israel through Moses who sets “up not a king but a priest to govern them.”17 In similar fashion, Giles of Rome (ca. 1243–1316) in his fourteenth-century De ecclesiastica potestate (On Ecclesiastical Power) used the Old Testament and Moses to contend that all divinely sanctioned kingship is created by or dependent upon clerical authority.18 Papal confidence led to Boniface VIII’s 1302 bull, Unum sanctum (One Holy), which likewise asserted the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal. In the fifteenth century, Jean Gerson (1363–1429) in turn offered a counternarrative of Mosaic government in a series of works that advocated conciliar government in the church.19 Gerson’s conciliarism appealed to Aquinas’s reading of the Mosaic constitution through the lens of Aristotle’s Politics. For Aquinas and Gerson, Moses instituted a judiciously mixed constitution of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.20 Writing for the Council of Constance, Gerson used Moses to argue for conciliar rule as a limit on papal authority. For Gerson, Moses spoke with God “as a man speaks to his friend.”21 Similarly, then, “how much more obediently should the Supreme Pontiff attend to the decision of the whole church or of a General Council called in its name”? In response, apologists for papal supremacy simply asserted a more absolute version of Mosaic authority. In 1439, the papal bull Moyses vir Dei (Moses the Man of God) condemned conciliarism using Moses’s punishment of Korah (Numbers 16.1–40), as a precedent for the papal plenitude of power in all matters. The following century witnessed a number of reprints of earlier papal apologetic works such as that of Augustinus Triumphus (1243–1328), who, in his Summa de potestate ecclesiastica (Summary on the Power of the Church), gave a fourteenth-century hierocratic interpretation

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of history in which Moses acted (in effect) as the pope avant la lettre and so gave a divine mandate for papal sovereignty.22 Jewel and Hooker faced these papal claims to the plenitude of power in Roman Catholic polemics against the royal supremacy, such as those found in Thomas More23 and Thomas Harding. Jewel and Hooker took their place among conformist apologetics for the royal supremacy that typically argued that it was not a novelty but was a restoration of early Christian polity and reestablished proper limits on papal jurisdiction, as well as pure doctrine. Such conformist apologetics regularly used Old Testament narratives: Moses and the Israelite kings, in particular, were widely invoked as exemplars of lay ecclesiastical supremacy.24 Yet Jewel, Hooker, and other conformist writers were not alone in reimagining the Mosaic theological imaginary in this polemical Elizabethan context. As Avraham Melamed notes, the “Puritan movement in England . . . while attempting to reform all aspects of Christian life, [also] turned to the Old Testament and to the Talmud for models of the ideal society they wanted to establish in England.”25 Thomas Cartwright, for example, upheld the “perpetual equity” of certain Mosaic judicial laws and that the presbyterian polity best represented the “mixed” Mosaic political economy of monarchy (Christ), aristocracy (the “assemblies of elders”), and democracy (congregational assent).26 As such, the polity of the radical disciplinarians reinforced rather than threatened the English civil polity. When Jewel and Hooker entered into the Mosaic theological imaginary, they then also entered into the long and still contested normative role of the Old Testament for constituting political power. The figure of Moses and Old Testament narrative became of critical polemical importance in order to establish which of his many historical iterations should constitute the power of supremacy in Elizabethan England.

“Moses, a Civil Magistrate and Chief Guide of the People”: John Jewel and the Old Testament Doctrine of Royal Supremacy In Scripture and Royal Supremacy in Tudor England, André Gazal shows the hermeneutic priority of the Old Testament in conformist accounts of the royal supremacy, as well as in polemical controversies between conformists, recusant Catholics, and radical disciplinarians. Like Gary Jenkins,27 Gazal sees two categories as propping up the Elizabethan

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settlement for John Jewel: “the primacy of Scripture and the primacy of the godly prince.”28 While Jenkins claims these two categories were “mutually incompatible beliefs and conflicting absolutes,”29 Gazal rightly sees that the former implies the latter since “the defense of the Royal Supremacy was grounded in theological considerations stemming from a certain understanding of Scripture that were not just pragmatic and political.” For Gazal, Jewel accordingly offered a “biblical doctrine of Royal Supremacy.” On the one hand, then, Jewel’s A Treatise of the Holy Scriptures from 1570 contained the doctrine of verbal infallibility, a doctrine that Gazal shows Jewel consistently upheld in his other works and that placed scripture as the determinative voice in Christian life.30 On the other hand, John Garbrand (1542–1589) originally published the Treatise as an appendix to Jewel’s A View of a Seditious Bull, in which the bishop preached against Pope Pius V’s 1570 bull of excommunication against Elizabeth I. In that bull, Pius claimed the fullness of the apostolic power as the reason he could and should excommunicate Elizabeth as a heretic. As Gazal points out, when the Treatise and View are seen together, Jewel can be seen to imply that, against Pius’s claim to absolute power, “reading the infallible Scriptures according to their literal sense consequently leads to a correct biblical understanding of royal authority, especially in the church, and elicits obedience to the monarch in both civil and ecclesiastical affairs.”31 Indeed, Jewel wrote that “Queen Elizabeth doth as did Moses . . . God hath given charge to her of both tables.”32 As such, the Old Testament narratives of Moses and of the kings of Israel and Judah remained of central exegetical importance to Jewel’s defense of the royal supremacy. As Jewel wrote in the Apology of 1562 (translated into English by Lady Anne Bacon in 1564), “We truly grant no further liberty to our magistrates than we know hath both been given them by the word of God and also confirmed by the examples of the very best governed commonwealths.”33 Indeed, the primary duty of a monarch was to enforce “both tables committed to him by God,” a direct allusion to the Mosaic Decalogue and its twin roles of governing worship and regulating society.34 Jewel remained clear that the monarch did not have the power of orders (potestas ordinis), only the power of authority (potestas jurisdictionis) to see that religious duties “be done, and orderly and truly done, by the bishops.”35 Only the pope, with his claims to the plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis), confused potestas ordinis with potestas jurisdictionis. Indeed, papal apologists made the pope “heir apparent unto the empire,

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and have armed him with all manner authority, spiritual and temporal, and have given him the right of both swords.”36 For Jewel, Moses played a central role as the first historical example in the Old Testament of the constituting power of lay ecclesiastical supremacy. Jewel first appealed to the constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary in part 6 of the Apology. Jewel’s Apology dealt at length with the authority of councils, the Council of Trent, and the rejection of papal authority. Part 6, in particular, tackled the Catholic claim that the English had no right to act as they did in the Reformation without the consent of a general council of the church. While Jewel did not mention the royal supremacy explicitly in part 6, it is clear that his concern was to defend it. He therefore turned to examples from the Old Testament and the early church in order to assert the right of princes to govern religious matters in their realms. For Jewel, God immediately and directly constituted the power of Moses over both lay and ecclesiastical affairs as “a civil magistrate and chief guide of the people.”37 Part 6 of the Apology here paralleled Jewel’s account of the royal supremacy in a sermon on Haggai 1.2–4. In the latter, he wrote of the Mosaic constitution as it pertained to lay ecclesiastical supremacy: “For the prince is keeper of the law of God, and that of both tables, as well as of the first, that pertaineth to religion, as of the second, that pertaineth to good order: for he is the head of the people, not only of the commons and laity, but also of the ministers and clergy. By that authority Moses, being amagistrate, rebuked Aaron the bishop for making the golden calf.”38 In his View of the Seditious Bull, Jewel similarly claimed for Elizabeth I that “God hath given charge to her of both tables. In the first she hath charge of religion, in the other of civil causes.”39 In all cases, the constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary to create magisterial authority flowed out of the normative status of the scriptures for the visible church. Earlier in the Apology, Jewel did not sharply distinguish between ancient Israel and his contemporary church: “lest some man should say that the foresaid things happened in the time of the Law only, of shadows, and of infancy . . . Eusebius also saith, All the faithful even from Adam until Christ, were in very deed Christians.”40 As such, the people of God continued in and shared “the same doctrine” and “same covenant.” The Mosaic constitution, as it established lay ecclesiastical supremacy, also established that such magisterial ecclesiastical authority remained a binding biblical doctrine and covenant that papal claims to power had corrupted.

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The status of Moses as a magistrate remained pivotally important for Jewel, therefore, and it was one that he had to defend. As Gazal demonstrates, the idea of Moses being a civil magistrate was not new or unique to Jewel. Earlier apologists also made the claim, and Bullinger’s Confutation of the Popes Bull in 1572 acted as a contemporary parallel.41 Yet Jewel had to show that Moses was indeed a magistrate and not a priest, as papal apologists claimed in their attacks upon the Apology. In the Defence of the Apology of the Church of England, Jewel turned his attention, therefore, toward the Catholic argument that “Moses, being a civil magistrate or a prince, had also the priesthood and was a priest.”42 This proposition entailed the summa summarum that “the Pope must needs be a king” with the requisite plenitudo potestatis. Accordingly, Jewel attacked his opponents who used as a proof-text Psalm 99.6 (Psalm 98.6 in the Vulgate), which read, “Moses et Aaron in sacerdotibus ejus (Moses and Aaron among his priests).” Jewel claimed, however, that his opponents “well knoweth that the Hebrew word there is doubtful, and signifieth as well a prince as a priest. And therefore we cannot necessarily conclude by force of these words that Moses was a priest: it is sufficient that he was the captain and prince, and had the leading of the people.” Jewel did not explicitly refer to the Hebrew phrase translated in the Vulgate as in sacerdotibus ejus. The Hebrew phrase in Psalm 99.6 is ‫( בְּכ ֹ ֲה נָיו‬bə·ḵō·hă·nāw), which Jewel (among others) argued referred to “princes” rather than “priests,” in certain contexts. André Gazal exhibits how Jewel rather superficially relied on secondary sources, not all of which supported his case in this argument: Vermigli’s commentary on Samuel (where he discussed the phrase in relation to 2 Samuel 8.18), Paul Fagius’s humanist, exegetical work on the Hebrew language, Jerome’s commentaries on Psalm 98 from the Vulgate, the prophet Micah, and commentators such as “Sanctus Pagninus, David Kimchi, Nicholaus Lyra, &c.”43 Despite the exegetical weakness of his case, Jewel pressed that if Moses was “neither born a priest, nor made a priest, nor ever known by office to be a priest, then he was, I trow, a very strange priest.”44 Jewel instead appealed to 1 Peter 2.9 in which the whole church is a “kingly priesthood.” For Jewel, that phrase established that the papacy must preclude supreme temporal authority, since it referred to both the common baptismal vocation of Christians and also “the kingdom of heaven” rather than “the kingdom of this world.”45 The lay magisterial authority of Moses, then, formed the center of Jewel’s Mosaic theological imaginary, which in turn acted as the scriptural

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warrant and constituting power for lay ecclesiastical supremacy in the English context. The rest of Jewel’s biblical and historical examples of royal supremacy in the Apology flowed out of this Mosaic theological imaginary. After Moses, Jewel listed Joshua, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, Josiah, Joash, and Jehu as continued examples of lay magistrates who also purified religious practice, punished wickedness and heresy, and ruled over clerical orders.46 Turning from “examples out of the old law,” Jewel then extended the “Gospel’s time” to include the early Christian emperors Constantine, Theodosius the First and Second, and Marcian as further examples of the continuing constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary in which the lay magistrate exercised supremacy and called the councils of the church.47 Jewel also mentioned Jerome’s letters about the involvement of emperors in calling councils as further evidence. Throughout his works, Jewel repeatedly contrasted contemporary egregious papal actions with the earlier imperial power over patriarch, pope, and council, rooted in the constituting power of Moses as magistrate.48 The continuity of the Mosaic theological imaginary flowed out of what Jewel saw as the continuity of the “same covenant” between Old and New Testaments.49 Thomas Dorman attacked Jewel on the priority given to Old Testament narrative. Jewel quotes Dorman as writing, “If we would in these days . . . use in all points the examples of the old law, there would follow an huge number of inconveniences.”50 Jewel accused Dorman of political subversion, distinguishing between Christ’s abolition of Mosaic law and the continued biblical basis for the royal supremacy. For Jewel, Dorman seemed to suggest that Christ’s sole purpose had been “to repress and pull down the seat of kings.”51 In the Apology, Jewel continued the Mosaic theological imaginary into early Christian history in order to emphasize, then, its perpetually normative and binding status. Indeed, the constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary remained the temporal mirror of God’s willed order. Just as Constantine historically reestablished the divine, constituting power of Moses, so, too, had the Tudor monarchs responded justly to the papacy, which has erroneously annexed jurisdictional power, the “common right to all princes.”52 In order, however, to avoid casting the monarch simply as a temporal equivalent of the pope’s plenitudo potestatis, Jewel situated doctrinal authority within the context of the monarch-in-parliament. Gary Jenkins erroneously suggests, then, that “Jewel’s commonwealth appears

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seemingly a prototypical divine right monarchy.”53 Indeed, Jewel limited the imperial aspect of the Mosaic theological imaginary under the constraints of constitutional law. On the one hand, then, Jewel attacked papal supremacy as capricious and unfounded, caricaturing the supposed inerrancy of the pope. In the prefatory epistle to the Defence of the Apology, Jewel argued that “the main ground of [Harding’s] whole plea is that the bishop of Rome . . . can never err.”54 Jewel characterized papal claims to inerrant authority as arbitrary and contrary to any law: it would mean that the pope is “tied to no law, neither of God nor of man.”55 Jewel quoted from Gregory the Great (whom Calvin saw as the last moderate pope)56 in order to show the danger of such lawlessness: “Whosoever calleth himself universal bishop, or desireth to be so called, is in his pride the forerunner of antichrist, because in his pride he setteth himself before others.”57 The papal invocation of the Council of Trent illustrated for Jewel the travesty of papal claims to the plenitude of power. In the early church, the bishop of Rome “had authority neither to summon councils, nor to be president or chief in councils, nor to ratify and confirm the decrees of councils.”58 Yet “we now marvel the more,” Jewel wrote, “at the unreasonable dealings of the Bishop of Rome . . . in summoning a general council.”59 As it attempted to inhabit the Mosaic theological imaginary with all of its constituting power, the papacy therefore suffered Jewel’s scorn. He argued the papacy resembled the corrupt scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament who “sometimes sat in Moses’ chair.”60 For Jewel, the royal supremacy explicitly exhibited the divine constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary and yet also implicitly mirrored the judicious, mixed Mosaic constitution of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy with the king-in-parliament. Civil authority came directly from God: “Touching the prince’s power, we are certainly assured by God’s holy word it is from God” rather than “by the positive law of nations.”61 Jewel therefore interpreted Romans 13.1 as addressing obedience to the civil magistrate: “The word of God chargeth all estates to be subject to their prince or higher power.”62 Yet royal power was limited by order and by constitutional arrangement. The civil magistrate cannot “bind or loose, or minister sacraments, or preach the gospel, or sit down and hear confessions.”63 Rather than coming immediately from the Mosaic authority of the magistrate, the authority for the English Reformation was mediated through “open parliament, with long consultation, and before a notable synod and convocation.”64 Indeed, Jewel declared that “in these

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cases of religion there was nothing at any time done either hastily and upon the sudden, or by any small assembly; but in the open parliament of the whole realm, with great and sober deliberation, with indifferent and patient hearing what might be said and answered and replied of both sides, and at last concluded with public authority, and consent of all states and orders of this most noble kingdom.”65 The constituting power of the Mosaic theological imaginary established immediately the authority of lay ecclesiastical supremacy, but such supremacy was mediated through the monarch-in-parliament. Unlike the arbitrary claims of papal plenitude, the royal supremacy exhibited a form of rationality for Jewel. While parliament could err, Jewel trusted that “the hearts of princes and determinations of parliament are in God’s hands.”66 Indeed, when thoroughly presented with all available arguments, Jewel claimed the right decision could reliably be made. As a result, in W. M. Southgate’s words, Jewel “accepted the prince in Parliament as a practical authority in the Church.”67

“Conveniency” and “Patterne”: Hooker and the Mosaic Theological Imaginary By the 1590s, Richard Hooker faced a more complex polemical debate over the Mosaic theological imaginary than did Jewel in earlier decades.68 Whereas Jewel largely addressed the Catholic recusants at Louvain between 1564 and 1568, Hooker had also to tackle the radical disciplinarian movement that entered into the fray from the Admonition controversy of the 1570s onward, especially in the thought of Thomas Cartwright (ca. 1535–1603) and Walter Travers (ca. 1548–1635). As Peter Lake states, unlike recusant Catholics the radical disciplinarians claimed to believe in some version of the royal supremacy.69 The author of the Admonition to Parliament claimed, for example, that a presbyterian polity would not “take away the authority of the civil magistrate and chief governors, to whom we wish all blessedness, and for the increase of whose godliness we pray.”70 Nevertheless, the version of supremacy that they advocated strongly differed from that of the conformist apologists. Cartwright and his allies suggested that the godly magistrate ought to establish what they claimed to be a divinely mandated presbyterian ecclesiology and then, in effect, step away from ecclesial governance.71 Indeed, Cartwright denied that anyone except Christ could act as the “head” of the church.72 The

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godly magistrate compelled subjects to godly religion, but the divines of the church should determine autonomously what this might be. Cartwright and his allies drew polemical criticism from Elizabethan conformists such as Archbishop John Whitgift (ca. 1530–1604), John Bridges (1536–1618), Hadrian Saravia (1532–1612), Thomas Bilson (1547– 1616), and Matthew Sutcliffe (ca. 1550–1629), although the latter group varied in seeing episcopal order as either adiaphorous or apostolic and dominical. Yet both radical disciplinarian and conformist alike used scriptural narrative, especially from the Old Testament, in order to contest the claims of the theological and political opponent. The Mosaic theological imaginary was accordingly drawn into the fray. One particular contest between Cartwright and Whitgift, for example, centered on how the authority of the civil magistrate related to Mosaic law. Whitgift attempted to buttress a conformist account of the royal supremacy by appealing to the traditional threefold division of Mosaic law into ceremonial, moral, and judicial.73 While Christ abrogated ceremonial law, the moral law remained unaltered. In turn, for Whitgift, God “hath lefte the Judiciall lawe to the discretion of the Magistrate,”74 whose only limit was the moral law. The adiaphorous matters of church governance and worship therefore remained under the civil discretion of the godly magistrate. Cartwright contrarily claimed that judicial laws only remained open to the discretion of the magistrate when they were not subject to the principle of equity.75 In the case of “blasphemers . . . idolaters murderers adulterers incestuous persons,” for example, the magistrate must act “according the worde and by it.” In turn, as the magistrate related to the church, he was a “greate ornamente” but still only “a member of the same.”76 Indeed, Cartwright used Exodus 18 to demonstrate the relative, reduced role of the magistrate in religious governance.77 The devolved plurality required in church government could be seen, then, in the fact that “Moses dyd appoint unto the people Princes and Captaines ouer thousands and hundreths.” Yet the magistrate was only the “moderatoure in that election,” since “the people dyd chuse them and presented them to Moises.” There remains, then, a fascinating parallel between such debates over the Mosaic theological imaginary and the earlier controversies with Catholic recusants. As already shown, in the Apology Jewel listed biblical kings and historical emperors who inhabited the Mosaic theological imaginary of lay supremacy against papal claims. So, too, do conformists such as Matthew Sutcliffe employ similar genealogies against radical

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disciplinarian claims.78 The Mosaic theological imaginary turned from being a crucial constituting power for lay supremacy in general into being a contested space for what kind of supremacy the English church should have. In comparison, Richard Hooker’s cautious and sparse use of the Mosaic theological imaginary in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity makes him stand out from his contemporaries. Unlike Jewel, Hooker did not give hermeneutic priority to scripture in his defense of lay ecclesiastical supremacy. In doing so, he disarmed, in effect, his radical disciplinarian adversaries who insisted on the omnicompetency of scripture in all matters, including those of ecclesial polity. Thus Hooker avoided the interminable wrangling over the Mosaic theological imaginary, placing Moses as a convenient “patterne or example” of lay supremacy in book 8 of the Laws but not as the indefatigable constituting power for it. As Daniel Eppley recognizes, in book 8 Hooker outlined a theory of royal ecclesiastical dominion that depended upon principles laid out in earlier books of the Laws.79 Indeed, Hooker planned in the Laws to move from “general meditations” in books 1 through 4 onto the “particular” points of controversy over the Elizabethan religious settlement in books 5 through 8.80 Eppley notes that among Hooker’s foundational principles are law, the notion of the visible church as a political body, and consent, each of which politically act as constituting powers rather than scripture, as developed below. For Hooker, law acted as a constellating category to understand how contingent human laws (such as those that established the royal supremacy) were suspended from a higher, transcendent constituting power. Book 1 detailed, then, how various laws (natural and supernatural) participated in eternal law, coidentical with God’s voluntary purpose in creation and ultimately with the divine nature itself.81 For Hooker, different legal genera had distinct, if overlapping, ends. Natural laws were the intrinsic, rational principles of action that drove created forms to participate in God’s goodness and so grow toward the telos (end) of formal perfection.82 Hooker included the law of reason and derivative positive laws as human species of this natural law genus.83 Supernatural laws, by comparison, represented the extrinsic, remedial, and supernatural self-revelation of God because of the damage that sin inflicted on natural capacities.84 Scripture published such supernatural laws and had as its end salvation in Christ. Book 1 gave Hooker the metaphysical grounds, then, to undercut the

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radical disciplinarian insistence on the omnicompetency of scripture in all matters.85 Appealing to the wisdom literature of Proverbs in book 2, Hooker wrote of divine Wisdom that “some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature.”86 In book 3 of the Laws, Hooker therefore distinguished between necessary matters of salvation (those “meerely of fayth”) and indifferent matters “accesorie and appendent onely,” such as forms of government.87 While scripture contained all that was necessary for salvation, it left matters of visible church order and political regiment in general as accessory—that is, as indifferent or adiaphorous.88 Indeed, the visible church, like any temporal community, was a political body that contingently required government of some kind.89 Positive human laws, derived from the law of reason or divine law,90 therefore expressed the natural liberty to establish the contingencies of government, even in ecclesial affairs. Two factors militated against the possibility of tyranny in such contingency. First, historic acts of public consent to particular forms of polity cast political constitution as a self-determined, voluntary, and binding public act.91 Second, law limited and ordered the political acts of rulers: “Limited power is best . . . [as] tyed unto the soundest and perfectest and most indifferent rule; which rule is the law.”92 Hooker therefore implicitly suspended the contingencies of episcopal regiment and the royal supremacy from a participated transcendent source—namely, eternal law. All forms of government, even those of the visible church and lay supremacy, were matters of positive law and remained subject to change. On the other hand, God ratified episcopacy,93 as well as monarchy, as divinely authored, even if in a post-hoc manner.94 The “competent authoritie” of Parliament established the royal supremacy, which was therefore grounded upon binding legal consent and worked through law, parliament, and convocation.95 While lay ecclesiastical supremacy appeared within the contingencies of history, the implication remained clear: God loosely could be said to author and ratify it, just as much as episcopacy and monarchy, because it providentially shared in the ratio of eternal law. As Hooker turned, then, from general principles to his particular defense of the episcopacy and the royal supremacy, he appealed to Old Testament narrative and the Mosaic theological imaginary on reduced grounds. Yet the Mosaic theological imaginary still had strident polemical power for Hooker. In the preface to the Laws, Hooker impugned the supporters of further reform who “in the crasednes of their mindes . . .

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imagine that the Scripture every where speaketh in favour of that sect.”96 Hooker ridiculed that such minds are “forestalled” and “perverted” into thinking that “by mysticall resemblance mount Syon and Jerusalem are the Churches which admit . . . the said forme of regiment.”97 Hooker here subtly scorned the writers of the Admonitions to Parliament, Thomas Cartwright, Walter Travers, and other radical disciplinarians. Travers drew a parallel between the Old Testament restoration of the Temple on the example of Moses and the need for further reform in England: “Wherfore also Ezra and Nehemiah exacte all there reformation to the paterne off Moses, David, and Ezechiel. . . . And how absurd and unreasonable a thing it is . . . to thincke the love and care off God to be demynished towards his churche when he had testified yt . . . by the sendyng off his online-begotten sonne.”98 Cartwright similarly took up the restoration of the Temple on Mosaic principles in order to stress the “mysticall resemblance” between Jerusalem and “the discipline the lorde appointed”; that is to say, a presbyterian polity.99 For Hooker, such an extended Mosaic theological imaginary in favor of radical disciplinarian reform represented culpable delusion. In book 7, Hooker again called into question, this time directly, Walter Travers’s use of the Mosaic theological imaginary. As Travers attacked the civil power and authority given to bishops, he appealed to the distinction between Moses and Aaron. Hooker paraphrased Travers’s argument: “But in the Old Testament the two Powers Civil and Ecclesiastical were distinguished, not onely in nature, but also in person, the one committed unto Moses, and the Magistrates joyned with him, the other to Aaron and his Sons. Jehosophat in his Reformation doth not onely distinguish causes Ecclesiastical from Civil, and erecteth divers Courts for them, but appointeth also divers Judges.”100 Hooker contested that “with the Jews these two Powers were not so distinguished,” giving Eli and Ezra as examples of clerics holding political power. Hooker then turned the tables on Travers: “If it be against the Jewish precedents for us to give Civil power unto such as have Ecclesiastical; is it not as much against the same for them to give Ecclesiastical power unto such as have Civil?”101 Whatever protestations of loyalty to supremacy the radical disciplinarians gave, Hooker cut to the quick: any simple division of powers suggested dissent from the royal supremacy. Indeed, “their proofs . . . make no less against the power of Civil and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in one person, for of these two Powers Jehosaphats example is.”102

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Finally, even if he sidelined the hermeneutic priority of scripture, Hooker still used Old Testament narrative and the Mosaic theological imaginary as a “patterne” and “example” of lay ecclesiastical supremacy in book 8 of the Laws. Hooker opened book 8 with David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah as “the patterne of which example the like power in causes Ecclesiastical is by the Laws of this Realme annexed unto the Crowne.”103 Monarchs delegated civil coercive powers to bishops, but bishops remained jurisdictionally subordinate to monarchs. The proper relationship between sacred and temporal power, then, was that monarchs should take counsel from clergy, especially on matters of piety and religion, and use their coercive power accordingly.104 When he considered Christian kings and “their maner of holding dominion,” Hooker wrote that “the end whereunto all government was instituted was bonum publicum, the universall or common good.”105 The sole dominion of kings exhibited a “conveniencie” for this end, since “the multitude of supreme commanders is troublesome,” and “no man (sayth our Saviour) can serve two masters.”106 The joining of civic and ecclesiastical powers in the royal supremacy followed the “example or patterne” of Moses who “deriving so great a part of his burden in government unto others did notwithstanding retain to himself universall supremacie.”107 The reduced ground upon which Hooker stood his Mosaic theological imaginary did not take away its force. Conveniency and patterne were terms freighted with divinity for Hooker. Hooker followed Aquinas’s thought, in which both conveniency (convenientia, fittingness) and pattern (paradeigma) expressed the aesthetic quality of how contingency relates to transcendence. In both instances, Hooker linked the terms to divine Wisdom. First, like Aquinas, Hooker wrote of the Incarnation that, while God could have ordered the economy of salvation differently, “in the wisdom of God it hath not bene thought convenient [conveniens] to admit anie way of saving man but by man him selfe.”108 Second, just as Aquinas appealed to the Platonic language of paradeigma in order to describe the unchangeable and eternal ideas of the divine mind as the source of created forms, for Hooker the eternal law represented “that order which God before all ages hath set down with himselfe, for himselfe to all things by,” while divine Wisdom was the “patterne [παράδειγμα] to make, and is the card to guide the worlde by.”109 When Hooker used “conveniency” and “pattern” in relation to the royal supremacy and the Mosaic theological imaginary, then, these terms

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therefore described how human history displayed the textures of divine providence at work. Both the royal supremacy and Mosaic theological imaginary were historically contingent and bore no necessity in themselves. Yet they demonstrated an aesthetic fittingness in accordance with the rational character of eternal law and so shared in the binding character of divine wisdom. Gazal remains correct in assessing that “Hooker recast Royal Supremacy as a reasonable, divinely sanctioned doctrine.”110 Gazal perhaps overstretches the point, however, when he also immediately claims that Hooker thereby sees lay ecclesiastical supremacy as having “no need of Biblical support.” The aesthetic confirmation of lay ecclesiastical supremacy given by the Mosaic theological imaginary retained its polemical power, even if it no longer had an inherent, constituting power of its own. Similarly, Frank Furedi misses the mark when he claims Hooker as part of the “secularisation and politicisation of power” in the Elizabethan period.111 Hooker’s participatory metaphysics of law allowed for no created reserve of autonomy or authority without divine presence.112 Hooker’s argument ex convenientia from the Mosaic theological imaginary fitted into his wider insistence that God ordered even contingency: as human political making shared in divine wisdom, it unveiled God’s will. Only when this participatory cord was cut by others in the seventeenth century, as Hans Boersma imagines it, could political life become truly secular and atomistic.113

Constituting Power: Doctrine, Exemplar, and Supremacies Hammill’s claim that the Mosaic theological imaginary represents a significant constituting power in early modern political thought finds clear support in the apologetic works of Jewel and Hooker for the royal supremacy. Their respective imaginaries variously placed Moses as central to lay ecclesiastical supremacy. For Jewel, Moses acted as the original locus constituting a biblical doctrine of supremacy. For Hooker, Moses offered an aesthetic exemplar bound up alongside the royal supremacy within the constituting power of eternal law as it causally yielded and suspended contingent political participation in the divine government of creation. In their different ways, then, Jewel and Hooker offered their Mosaic theological imaginaries as constituting powers for Tudor politics. That they were constituting powers, rather than constituted, suggests something about their shared creativity: they imagined and negotiated

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what the royal supremacy ought to be, as much as what it was. As already noted, it thereby remains best to talk about “royal supremacies” rather than a monolithic “royal supremacy.” That such supremacies needed constituting power suggests something about their novel context, whatever the apologetic defenders for the antiquity of lay ecclesiastical supremacy might have claimed. Gary Jenkins therefore overemphasizes that Jewel and the Reformers “replayed the Investiture Contest” of the earlier centuries.114 As Jewel and Hooker sacralized, in their own way, temporal power, they showed how the conflict between papal and temporal sovereignty had changed from the investiture controversy. Rémi Brague skillfully suggests that, while the medieval conflict was a vertical one between secular and sacred powers that attempted to define themselves in terms of hierarchical ordination, the early modern paradigm saw the two powers struggling for the same prerogatives as horizontal equals, which ended any possibility of resolution.115 The papal claims to the plenitude of power and the claims of the godly magistrate to supremacy could ultimately share no ground. Whatever the differences in their respective Mosaic theological imaginaries, both Jewel and Hooker rejected papal claims and yet envisaged a royal supremacy couched within a nascent constitutionalism, either as a practical authority or as the very essence of government. Neither Jewel nor Hooker accepted a purely Erastian vision of lay supremacy: divine power ultimately remained the preserve of God, echoing in the voice of the scriptures or in the voice of law.116

Notes 1. Graham Hammill, The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 2. 2. Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 3. 3. Hammill, The Mosaic Constitution, 68. 4. Hammill, 283. 5. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 3:115. 6. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books 6, 7, 8, vol. 3 of the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981), VIII.3.3-4; 3:349.1-355.4. 7. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 23–30. 8. Debora Shuger, “‘Societie Supernaturall’: The Imagined Community of Hooker’s Lawes,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction

Moses the Magistrate  179 of a Christian Community, ed. A. S. McGrade (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), 307–29. 9. Hammill, The Mosaic Constitution, 4. 10. Hammill, 5. 11. Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 20–25. 12. John Guy, “Tudor Monarchy and Its Critiques” and “Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution,” in The Tudor Monarchy, ed. J. Guy (London: Arnold Readers, 1997), 78–109, 213–32. 13. Claire Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), 47–68. 14. See Jane Beal, ed., Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2013), esp. 81–102, 237–62, 353–406. On the understanding and role of Mosaic law in the Reformation, see Paul Avis, “Moses and the Magistrate: A Study in the Rise of Protestant Legalism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26, no. 2 (1975): 149–72. 15. See Rémi Brague, The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 127–45. 16. Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, eds., From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 250–59. 17. O’Donovan and O’Donovan, 264. 18. O’Donovan and O’Donovan, 362–78. 19. Gerson’s main conciliarist works are De auctoritate concilii (On the Authority of the Council), De unitate ecclesiae (On the Unity of the Church), De auferibilitate Papae ab ecclesia (On the Church’s Deposition of the Pope) and De potestate ecclesiae

(On Church Power). See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 2:39–40. 20. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.II.105.1. See also Douglas Kries, “Thomas Aquinas and the Politics of Moses,” Review of Politics 52 (1990): 84–104. 21. O’Donovan and O’Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius, 522. 22. See Michael Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages: The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 538–41. William Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (University of California Press, 1992), 312, writes that the work of Augustinus Triumphus became a “standard repository of papalist arguments” in the sixteenth century. 23. Hooker, Laws, VIII.4.12; 3:380.14-17. 24. In addition to Jewel, see John Bridges, The Supremacie of Christian Princes (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1573), 199–200, 216, 296–97, 282–83; and Alexander Nowell, The Reproufe of M. Dorman (London: Henry Wykes, 1565), fol. 146v–168v, 177v–179r. 25. Avraham Melamed, “Jethro’s Advice in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish and Christian Political Thought,” Jewish Political Studies Review 2, nos. 1–2 (1990): 3–41, quotation from 20–21. 26. See Reply to an Answer, Second Reply to an Answer, and Rest of Second Reply to Second Answer in O’Donovan and O’Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius, 702–10. 27. Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer

180  Impact and Legacy (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 242–43. 28. André A. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy in Tudor England: The Use of Old Testament Historical Narrative (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), 16. 29. Jenkins, John Jewel, 243. Jenkins never explains exactly how these two categories were incompatible. 30. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy, 141–81. 31. Gazal, 164. 32. Jewel, Works, 4:1145. 33. John Jewel, Apology of the Church of England, ed. John Everitt Booty, trans. Anne Bacon (New York: Church Publishing, 2002), 3:115. 34. Jewel, Apology, 3:115 and Works, 4:976. 35. Jewel, Works, 4:959. Sacred kingship made the distinction between potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis a somewhat gray area even in the English Reformation. See Brague, Law of God, 136–40. Also see Malcolm B. Yarnell, Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 12, 41–84, 123–50. 36. Jewel, Works, 4:958. 37. Jewel, Apology, 3:115. 38. Jewel, Works, 2:997. 39. Jewel, 4:1145. 40. Jewel, Apology, 3:70–71. 41. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy, 252. 42. Jewel, Works, 4:982. 43. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy, 254–55. 44. Jewel, Works, 4:982. 45. Jewel, 4:984–85. Jewel quotes Thomas Dorman’s contrary claim for hierocratic supremacy using 1 Peter 2.9: “You are a kingly priesthood, as who would say, the priesthood before was not kingly, for that then kings ruled over priests; but now is the priesthood

kingly, for that to it be subject even kings themselves.” 46. Jewel, Apology, 3:115–16. 47. Jewel, 3:116–17. 48. Jewel, Works, 1:396, 415; 3:98–99, 167; 4:992, 1009, 1027, 1033. 49. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy, 243–46. 50. Jewel, Works, 4:990. 51. Jewel, 4:990. 52. Jewel, Apology, 3:117. 53. Jenkins, John Jewel, 246. 54. Jewel, Works, 3:116. 55. Jewel, 2:919. 56. Jean Calvin, Institutes, 4.12–13. See Lester K. Little, “Calvin’s Appreciation of Gregory the Great,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 2 (1963): 145–57. 57. Jewel, Works, 1:344. 58. Jewel, 1:413. 59. Jewel, Apology, 3:117. 60. Jewel, Works, 1:32, 49, 399, 402, 431; 3:32. 61. Jewel, 4:1037. 62. Jewel, 2:997; 4:959. 63. Jewel, 4:976. 64. Jewel, Apology, 3:104. 65. Jewel, Works, 2:629. 66. Jewel, 4:905. 67. W. M. Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 215. 68. It seems likely Jewel would have continued his appeal to the Mosaic theological imaginary and the biblical basis of royal supremacy against the radical disciplinarians. In his Answere to a Certen Libell intituled An Admonition of 1573, Whitgift prints “the judgment of that reverend father Jewel, sometime bishop of Sarum, on this assertion of Cartwright’s.” In response to the claim that the “ecclesiastical and civil government may not be founded,” Jewel there responds, “Both these governments

Moses the Magistrate  181 were confounded in Moses.” See Jewel, Works, 4:1299–1300. 69. Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Harper Collins, 1988), 51–52, 75–76. 70. See Iain H. Murray, ed., The Reformation of the Church: A Collection of Reformed and Puritan Documents on Church Issues (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), 93. 71. Thomas Cartwright, The Second Replie of Thomas Cartwright against Maister Doctor Whitgiftes Second Answer, touching the Church discipline (Heidelberg: Michael Schirat, 1575), 100, 234. 72. Cartwright, 411–12. 73. John Whitgift, An Answere to a Certen Libell Intituled, An Admonition to the Parliament (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1573), 60. 74. Whitgift, 60. 75. Thomas Cartwright, A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor Whitgifte Against the admonition to the Parliament (Hemel Hempstead: John Stroud, 1573), 22. 76. Cartwright, 35. 77. Cartwright, 29. 78. Matthew Sutcliffe, A Treatise of Ecclesiastical Discipline (London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberry, 1590), 488–89. 79. Daniel Eppley, “Royal Supremacy,” in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. T. Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 503–34. 80. Hooker, Laws, I.1.2, 1:57.29–32. 81. Hooker, I.1.3, I.2.2, 1:58.10–19, 1:59.5–12. 82. Hooker, I.3.4–5, I.4.1, I.5.1–2, 1:66.27– 69.20, 1:6 9.30–71.3, 1:72.27–23. 83. Hooker, I.6.2–5, I.10, 1.75.6–76.23, 1:95.23–110.20. 84. Hooker, I.11, 1:110.21–119.23.

85. Hooker, I.16.5, II.1.1–2, 1:138.21–22, 1:144–45. Hooker subtitles the second book “Concerning their first position who urge reformation in the Church of England: Namely, That Scripture is the onely rule of all things which in this life may be done by men.” 86. Hooker, II.1.4, 1:147.27–148.1. 87. Hooker, III.3.2–4, 1:210.3, 1:211.24–25. 88. Hooker, III.2.1–2, III.4.1, III.9.1–3, VII.5.8, VIII.3.1, 1:207.7–10, 1:208.7–8, 1:212.26–213.7, 3:167.7–17, 3:335.5–336.6. 89. Hooker, I.15.2, III.1.14, III.11.14, 1:131.10–20, 1:205.19–206.6, 1:261.28–30. 90. Hooker, I.3.1, 1:63.14–29. 91. Hooker, I.10.4, VIII.6.7/8; 1:99.5–23, 3:393.8–21. 92. Hooker, VIII.2.12, 3:341.19–25. Hooker consistently appeals to philosophical and legal precedents for this premise in Book Eight of the Lawes. See A. S. McGrade, “Classical, Patristic, and Medieval Sources,” in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. T. Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 51–88, esp. 77–82. 93. Hooker, Laws, VII.5.10, VIII.8.2.6, 3:170.17–20, 3:335.5–10. 94. Hooker, VIII.3.1, 3:335.5–336.6. 95. Hooker, VIII.6.10–11, 3:401.4–405.25. 96. Hooker, preface, 3.8–9, 1:16.4–17.14. 97. Hooker, preface, 3.9, 1:17.2–5. 98. Walter Travers, A full and plaine declaration of ecclesiastical discipline owt off the word off God and off the declininge off the churche of England from the same [Declaration], trans. Thomas Cartwright (Heidelberg: M. Schirat, 1574), 8; compare 9–12 on Christ leaving “so parfecte a rule and Discipline.” 99. Cartwright, Second Replie, preface. 100. Hooker, Laws, VII.15.10, 3:236.34–237.4 (Hooker’s italics). See Travers, A full and plaine declaration, 81: “For that ther is a great difference betwene the cyvill magistrate and them that have charge off ecclesiastical matters / That sufficiently dothe prove/that whereas first off all both powers were

182  Impact and Legacy confounded together in Moses / The lord leaving him only the charge off the commonwealth / committed the governance off the churche to Aaron his brother . . . So they were divided a sonder not only in ther own persons / but also by families and by tribes.” 101. Hooker, Laws, VII.15.10, 3:237.14–16. 102. Hooker, VII.15.10, 3:237.19–22. 103. Hooker, VIII.1.1–2, 3:316.9–317.21. 104. Hooker, VII.18.5, VIII.3.4, VIII.6.11, 3:256.28–35, 3:354.14–355.4, 3:403.13–17. 105. Hooker, VIII.3.4, 3:349. 20–21. 106. Hooker, VIII.3.4, 3:350. 1–2. 107. Hooker, VIII.3.5, 3:350. 11–19. 108. Hooker, V.51.3, 2:210.21; compare Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III.2 resp. See F. C. Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 161. 109. Hooker, Laws, I.2.5, 1:62.6–7, 63.1–3 (my emphasis); compare Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.44.3.

110. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy, 517. 111. Frank Furedi, Authority: A Sociological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 161. 112. See W. J. T. Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 51–52, 74–79, 111–16. 113. Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 68–83. See also John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 128–36. 114. Jenkins, John Jewel, 108–12. 115. Brague, Law of God, 140. 116. Compare Nelson, Hebrew Republic, 94–97, who firmly places Hooker as an Erastian thinker.

Chapter 10

The Use and Abuse of John Jewel in Richard Hooker’s Defense of the English Church

W. Bradford Littlejohn

A Contested Legacy As the 1570s turned into the 1580s, and thence to the 1590s, apologists for the Church of England had to execute an uncomfortable about-face; instead of justifying their church’s very existence, vis-à-vis the church of Rome, now they were justifying the form of its existence, vis-à-vis more ardent reformers, the radical puritans and disciplinarians, such as Thomas Cartwright, Walter Travers, and Dudley Fenner. Although the conformist polemicists sought to maintain as much continuity as possible with the earlier anti-Catholic apologists, their puritan opponents missed no chance to exploit any shift of emphasis and discredit these later apologists as traitors to the legacy of Elizabeth’s early churchmen, subtly compromising on key Protestant doctrines. No author’s writings were so likely to get drawn into this new battleground than those of John Jewel, whom Richard Hooker would call “the worthiest Divine that Christendome hath bred for the space of some hundreds of yeres.”1 Jewel’s pastoral and administrative labors, not to mention his tireless polemical exchanges with Catholic Thomas Harding, had won him pride of place among the early foundation stones of the Elizabethan church. His Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae served as a semiofficial doctrinal statement for a church that lacked a comprehensive confession.2

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Given that Hooker’s magnum opus, the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, would come to supersede Jewel’s Apology in this position of authority, an examination of the use and abuse of John Jewel in Richard Hooker’s work provides a case study in how the polemicists of the second generation of the Elizabethan church jostled for theological position. Given Jewel’s prominent role in Hooker’s own theological development, as his early patron who helped him to a place at Oxford, one might expect to find extensive evidence of Jewel’s influence in the text of the Lawes. However, Hooker is notoriously chary of explicitly invoking either Continental or English Reformed authorities, leaving it to the interpreter to trace subtler evidences of theological influence. References to Jewel within the Lawes are extremely sparse: the words of praise cited above, a brief allusion to a misuse of Jewel by Thomas Cartwright in book 4, chapter 4, and an extended engagement with what Hooker takes to be a misuse of Jewel at the very end of the Lawes, book 8, chapter 9. However, the latter offers an intriguing opportunity to assess the ambiguities in the attempt to enlist Jewel’s authority in later Elizabethan controversies. So, even more clearly, does the invocation of Jewel in A Christian Letter of Certaine English Protestants, the anonymous critique of Hooker’s work published in 1599. The first part of this article, accordingly, will examine Hooker’s use of Jewel; in the second part, the use of Jewel against Hooker by his moderate puritan critics.

Excommunication and Royal Supremacy: Fenner, Harding, and Hooker’s Invocation of Jewel The question at hand in book 8 concerns the royal supremacy over the Church of England, a doctrine that nearly all Elizabethan Protestants were willing to affirm in principle, while hotly disagreeing on its meaning and implications.3 Thus in chapter 9, Hooker turns to perhaps the thorniest of the problems with the doctrine: the question of whether it implies that the monarch is immune to excommunication. On the one hand, how could the monarch indeed exercise earthly supremacy over the church’s discipline if she were simultaneously subject to it? On the other hand, how could the clergy exercise genuinely independent spiritual authority under Christ if they did not have the power of excommunication? The issue raised important questions about the meaning of spiritual versus temporal authority.

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This section of book 8, which Hooker never completed, is fragmentary, so the discussion of Jewel appears without any real antecedent. Hooker simply introduces a quote from Dudley Fenner’s Counter-poyson, a 1584 polemical text responding to the conformist Richard Cosin. Fenner complains, “His second point, whereby he would make us odious, is, that we think the prince may be subject to excommunication; that is, that he is a brother, that he is not without but within the Church. If this be dangerous, why is it printed and allowed in the famous writings of bishop Jewel?”4 Here Fenner tries to discredit Cosin by ranging him against the venerable late bishop, whose writings served as a touchstone of orthodoxy for the divided church. The passage from Jewel from which Fenner goes on to quote can be found in Jewel’s Defence of the Apology against Harding. Harding had objected, unsurprisingly, to the ringing affirmation of the royal supremacy over the church in part 6 of Jewel’s Apology. Drawing upon many Protestant commonplaces when discussing the subject, Jewel had declared in the Apology that “a Christian prince hath the charge of both tables committed to him by God, to the end he may understand that not temporal matters only, but also religious and ecclesiastical causes, pertain to his office.”5 Harding objected that this confused temporal and spiritual offices. He would go so far as to say that the prince’s “place is chief among the lay, even when they are in the church at the service of God; and without the church in all temporal things and causes he is over the priests themselves”6; but he could not meddle with the priest when it came to the performance of the priest’s spiritual duty. Now this was a distinction that Protestants themselves would accept (for instance, they would frequently affirm that the clergy alone were authorized to administer sacraments and preach), but they drew the line between spiritual and temporal in a different place. Accordingly, Jewel conceded, “Indeed in that the priest doth his office, in that he either openeth God’s will, or declareth his threats, or rebuketh sin, or excommunicateth, and cutteth off a dead member from the body, so far forth the prince, be he never so mighty, is inferior unto him.”7 But Jewel goes on to point out that even a simple parish priest bears as much authority as the pope himself in this sense, so he argues that Harding’s larger intention (as Jewel sees it) of carving out autonomous space for the pope to dictate religious affairs to the prince falls flat.

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Accordingly, in taking up Fenner’s objection in the Lawes, Hooker naturally lays stress on the original polemical context. Clearly, he shows, Jewel’s main point was to minimize clerical jurisdiction vis-à-vis the monarch, not, as the Presbyterians were trying to do, maximize it. As a point about context, this is certainly fair enough, and to this extent, Fenner might be accused of abusing Jewel’s argument somewhat by making it into a positive statement of clerical power. However, the fact remains that Jewel did seem willing to concede such power to the clergy, in a context where it would have been easier for him to deny it altogether. How would Hooker deal with this? To be sure, Pope Pius’ IVs excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570 had transformed the issue from a theoretical to a very practical and political question, leaving many conformist writers rather more ambivalent about the power of excommunication than formerly. Also, in 1568, the Erastian controversy in Heidelberg had sharpened the battle lines on the question of excommunication, with Erastus’s Zurich allies supporting him in his claim that excommunication was ultimately a civil power rather than one belonging to spiritual authorities. Given these considerations, Jewel himself (an avid disciple of the Zurich reformers) might, for all we know, have reconsidered his views on the subject somewhat, and it is not difficult to understand why later conformist writers like Hooker took a different tack. But was the new emphasis reconcilable with the earlier teaching? Or were the puritans right to claim here the authority of Jewel and authentic English Protestantism?

Hooker Defines the Question To answer this question, it is necessary to delve a bit deeper into the theology of the question. We can do this by looking more closely at Hooker’s response to Fenner. While Hooker does first appeal to the context of the Jewel quotation, he recognizes that this is not enough. He must also redefine the question more precisely. Accordingly, he contends that “there is not in the place alleaged [in Jewel, that is] any one word or syllable against the king’s prerogative royall to be free from the coercive power of all spirituall, both persons and Courtes, within the compass of his own dominions.”8 Hooker wants to be very clear about what is at stake here: his position (and, he would say, that of the English church) is simply that no spiritual authorities have coercive power over the monarch. Indeed, he would insist that this is true by definition, since spiritual authorities

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can only exercise spiritual, which is to say, noncoercive, power. But this does not mean, Hooker goes on, that clergy cannot excommunicate magistrates in any sense. Hooker sheds light on the matter by considering closely the famous example of the excommunication of Theodosius by Ambrose of Milan, which both Catholic and puritan polemicists commonly drew attention to. He argues on several grounds that Ambrose did not, by this act, seek to exercise any regular judicial punishment over the emperor; all he did was make a pastoral decision in the moment to withhold the sacrament from a gross sinner. This paves the way for Hooker’s remarkable concession, “but concerning excommunication, such as is only a dutiful, religious, and holy refusal to admit notorious transgressors in so extreme degree unto the blessed communion of saints, especially the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, till their humbled penitent minds be made manifest: this we grant every king bound to abide at the hands of any minister of God wheresoever through the world.”9 One might wonder just why Hooker has gone to such pains to take away with one hand what he is willing to give back with the other. After all, he would seem to have conceded the point that the disciplinarians were campaigning for. More was at stake, however. For Hooker, as for John Whitgift, the great political danger, as well as the great theological confusion, in the disciplinarian platform was that they claimed an independent juridical authority for the ministers of the church, which is to say the power over an outward organized community of believers to establish laws of structure, order, and right behavior, and to police these laws with penalties, up to and including excommunication. This they construed as the power to cut someone off entirely from the body, just as banishment cut one off from the civil body.10 In modern situations of de jure or de facto disestablishment, it may be difficult to see why this would be quite such a problem. But for Hooker’s chief disciplinarian opponents, the church they envisioned was not simply a church, what today would be called a “denomination,” but the church in England; there would be only one. Thus to be excommunicated was to be cast out of the only Christian fellowship that existed, with social and political consequences not unlike banishment. Not only that, but for the disciplinarians, this church was not merely a human institution, not merely the Church of England. It was the Church, the earthly manifestation of Christ’s true body, and its ministers held their authority as his emissaries, so that excommunication testified that one no longer had any share in Christ.

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It is not difficult to see why, for Hooker and other conformists, excommunication conceived this way could not possibly be exercised by ministers over magistrates. Indeed, it was Hooker’s contention elsewhere in the Lawes that inasmuch as they exercised any lawgiving or enforcing power, or excommunicated as a “judicial punishment,” they did so not by virtue of their spiritual power as ministers but by virtue of a temporal power delegated from the prince.11 Naturally, then, it stood to reason that such power, derived as it was from the prince, could not be turned against the prince, both logically (as Hooker saw it) and as a matter of political necessity. At stake in this dispute with Fenner, then, were fundamental differences in how the “mutual subjection” of magistrate and minister (the very issue Harding and Jewel had debated) was conceived. Although both conformists and puritans, not to mention Catholics, could agree in principle on such a “mutual subjection” whereby the ministers submitted to magistrates in temporal matters, and the magistrates to ministers in spiritual matters, they did not agree on the definitions, particularly the definition of the ministry’s “spiritual power”; hence the tediousness of the disputes and the ease with which both parties could appeal to the same authorities. For Hooker, the church’s spiritual power was its power to preach the Word and administer the “visible words,” the sacraments,12 but for disciplinarians such as Cartwright (Hooker’s most frequent interlocutor in the Lawes), “our saviour Christ sitteth wholly and fully not only in his chair to teach but also in his throne to rule, not alone in the hearts of everyone by his spirit, but also generally and in the visible government of his church, by those laws of discipline he hath prescribed.”13 Accordingly, it is no wonder that when Hooker heard disciplinarians arguing for their minister’s power to excommunicate the monarch, he heard disconcerting echoes of Cartwright’s declaration that civil magistrates “be servants unto the church and as they rule in church so they must remember to subject themselves unto the church, to submit their sceptres, to throw down their crowns, before the church, yea, as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the church.”14

Jewel’s Theology of Excommunication What then of Jewel? Where would he stand in this controversy? Unfortunately, Jewel himself does not address the subject of excommunication in great detail; it was not one of the topics of the Challenge

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Sermon, and Harding did not really engage the one passage in the Apology chiefly relevant to the question—part 2, chapter 7, in which Jewel discusses the power of the keys. Jewel, however, appears at first glance to support Hooker’s position, glossing the keys as the authority of preaching the Word. The office of “loosing,” he says, consists in “offer[ing] by the preaching of the Gospel the merits of Christ and full pardon, to such as have lowly and contrite hearts, and do unfeignedly repent themselves, pronouncing unto the same a sure and undoubted forgiveness of their sins, and hope of everlasting salvation.”15 On the other hand, “the minister doth execute the authority of binding and shutting, as often as he shutteth up the gate of the kingdom of heaven against the unbelieving and stubborn persons, denouncing unto them God’s vengeance, and everlasting punishment: or else, when he doth quite shut them out from the bosom of the Church by open excommunication.”16 There is some room for ambiguity here, given that Jewel appears to describe excommunication as a distinct power above and beyond the mere preaching of judgment. To “quite shut them out from the bosom of the Church” sounds a lot like banishment, to which Cartwright compared the power of excommunication. And yet Jewel concludes by treating this, too, as simply an extension of the power of the Word; the whole power of the keys, he says, is that “minds of godly persons being brought low . . . might be opened with the Word of God, even as a door is opened with a key. Contrariwise, that the wicked and wilful folk . . . should be left still as fast locked, and shut up.” Although, he says, “the priest indeed is a judge in this case,” nonetheless, he “hath no manner of right to challenge an authority, or power” for since “the key whereby the way and entry to the kingdom of God is opened unto us, is the word of the Gospel, and the expounding of the law and Scriptures; we say plainly, where the same word is not there is not the key.”17 Since judicial power is the power to objectively change a person’s status based on a human determination of truth, it is clear that Jewel denies such power to ministers, since their word is not efficacious unless it corresponds to the Word.

Vermigli’s Theology of Excommunication Jewel’s position here becomes even clearer when one examines the teaching of his great mentor, Peter Martyr Vermigli. Jewel had been Vermigli’s student at Oxford at the early 1550s, and then followed him into exile first in

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Strasbourg, then in Zurich, and maintained a vigorous correspondence with him in the early years of Elizabeth’s church.18 It is Vermigli who addresses the concept of the “mutual subjection” of minister and magistrate with his characteristically penetrating clarity in a seminal text De Magistratu, which appeared in his 1554 Commentary on Judges and was reprinted in book 4 of his Common Places. The passage is of particular interest given that Vermigli gives prominent attention to excommunication as one of the ways in which the magistrate is “spiritually subject” to the minister.19 Vermigli begins by stating that although in one respect, the ecclesiastical power might be said to be supreme, since it preaches the Word of God, which governs all things, yet on the other hand the civil power, governed by the word of God, has jurisdiction over all things, in an external and temporal mode: So that the ecclesiasticall power after this manner comprehendeth all thinges, because out of the word of God it findeth how to give counsell in all thinges. For there is nothing in the whole world whereunto the word of God extendeth not it selfe. . . . Doubtless it is his [the minister’s] part to correct sinners, not in deede with the sword or punishing by the purse, not by imprisonment, not by banishment, but after his own manner, that is by the might and power of the word of God. Againe, the Politicall power is extended to all things which pertaine to political power. But after what manner? Shall civill power require good motions of the minde and inward repentance? It cannot cause these things: yet it must wishe they were had, and use those meanes whereby they may be had. . . . Wherefore either power extendeth most amply, and comprehendeth all thinges, but not after one and the selfe same manner.20 He goes on to clarify further that there are two subjections, one is politicall and civill, whereunto all men are subject: who if they offend in any thing against the lawes, do looke at the just Magistrate’s hand for imprisonment, punishment by the purse, banishment, death, and externall punishment: nevertheless if they doe well, honours, rewardes, dignities, and prayse. In this sort the civill power is not subject unto the Ministerie of the word, because it cannot in this manner be punished. The other subjection is spirituall, that is, of faith and

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of obedience. For straightway, as soone as men hear of their duetie out of the word of God . . . they give place, beleeve, and obay, because they perceive that it is the word of God which is spoken.21 To this point, Vermigli’s exposition seems to support Hooker’s contention clearly; the ministers cannot enact any judicial punishments upon the prince but only rebuke using the spiritual power of the word. But what, Vermigli asks, if princes do not listen? He answers that Ambrose excommunicated Theodosius, citing a synodal decree: “And if that princes would hinder them, let them be excommunicated.”22 This might sound like a verdict in favor of Fenner. But Hooker would insist that the key question is what we mean by “excommunicate.” Vermigli goes on to describe excommunication as an extension of the power of the Word—a specific admonition to an unrepentant sinner that his actions stand condemned by the Word of God and he should not commune in his current state. After having given examples of early church excommunication, he declares, “Wherefore, the civill power ought to be subject to the Word of God which is preached by the Ministers,” and he goes on to say, in terms reminiscent of Jewel’s reply to Harding, “The popes boast that they have great power: but if the same be anie it consisteth wholie in the word of God. Let them teach, preach, and admonish, if they will exercise their power, otherwise the civill and temporall power, which they so much boast of is farre from the Ecclesiastical Ministers.”23 It would appear then that Jewel, Hooker, and their mutual theological forefather, Vermigli,24 despite differences of emphasis originating from their different settings, share a common perspective on the crucial and slippery issue of “mutual subjection.” This must not be understood, as Cartwright and Fenner did, as the intersection of two different jurisdictions, properly speaking, in which magistrates or ministers may each pass judicial sentence on one another and exclude one another from their respective polities upon due cause. Rather, it is the intersection of two wholly different kinds of authority, one human, outward, and coercive, and the other divine, inward, and persuasive. As a ministerial power, then, excommunication was fundamentally a proclamation, nothing more. From this standpoint, then, while Hooker might have seemed to be making a mere sophistical dodge of Jewel’s authority, in order to protect his more fully developed Erastianism, he, not Fenner, had the better claim to continuity with the great apologist.

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However, Hooker’s own readers were not about to concede this claim so readily. Given the different polemical context of Hooker’s writing from Jewel’s, it was not difficult to find apparent signs of discord when their works were set side by side.

The Status of the Church of Rome: The Charge of A Christian Letter The second part of this investigation accordingly considers not how Hooker himself made use of Jewel against his opponents but how his opponents, notably the author of A Christian Letter of Certaine English Protestants (usually identified as Andrew Willet, a moderate puritan and noted anti-Catholic controversialist)25 made use of Jewel against Hooker. Of course, Jewel is far from the only early English Reformed theologian that Willet makes use of in this polemic; rather, he seeks to set Hooker in contrast to what he treats as the unified testimony of earlier English Reformed theologians, and the thirty-nine articles itself. Jewel, however, is summoned as witness more frequently than any other authority. Although the issue of excommunication never arises in this critique (book 8 of the Lawes being published posthumously much later), there is one sticking point that is quite relevant, concerning as it does questions of ecclesiology and the proper boundaries of the visible church. This is the question of the status of the church of Rome, on which Hooker had confessed “we gladlie acknowledge them to be of the familie of Iesus Christ.”26 The author of A Christian Letter seeks to discredit Hooker’s position by contrasting it first to the Thirty-Nine Articles, then to several passages from Jewel’s writings, each of which we shall look at closely in the following pages: The Churche of Englande doeth confesse, That the church of Christ is a companie of faithfull people, among whom the pure worde of God is preached, and the Sacraments rightlie administred according to Christes institution, etc. and that the church of Rome hath erred, not onely in maners and ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.27 Which by the Reverend Fathers of our Church is expounded thus: Without Christ the church is no church, neither hath anie right or claim without his promise; nor anie promise without his worde.28 The church of Rome being as it

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is now utterlie voyd of Gods word, is as a lantern without light.29 We have departed from that church which they have made a denne of theeves, and in which they have left nothing sound, or like to a church; and which them selves did confesse to have erred in manie things, even as Lot in olde time out of Sodom, or Abraham out of Chaldea, etc.30 . . . Now we finde in you these peremptorie affirmations: [Willet rehearses quotes from Lawes III.1.10 (FLE 1:202.14–18, 201.28–30), V.68.9 (FLE 2:355.10–13), and V.68.6 (FLE 2:352.5–8).] Heere you seeme unto us to come foorth, as an other Elias, to bring againe the people, unto the God of their Fathers. They say that the church of Rome hath erred, not onely in manners, but also in matters of fayth. You; you call them backe and say: Sundrie grosse and grieuous abhominations. They say that the church of Rome, as it is nowe, is utterlie voyde of Gods word; as a lanterne without light, and that it is a denne of theeves, in which they have left nothing souund, or like a church, but is like Sodom. &c. You call them backe, and say: That they have mayne partes of christian trueth wherein they constantlie persist.31 This charge is of particular interest because Willet was neither the first nor the last to call attention to Hooker’s apparent softness on Rome. Hooker’s famous controversy with Walter Travers had revolved around much the same point. Travers was scandalized at Hooker’s willingness to extend the possibility of salvation to Roman Catholics, exclaiming that “the like to this . . . have not ben heard in publick places, with in this land, synce Quene Maries daies.”32 Of course, the same lines that prompted this apoplectic reaction from Travers has had quite a different impact on later generations of readers, who have admired Hooker’s protoecumenism and charitable spirit.33 On the other hand, Richard Bauckham has argued quite conclusively that the responses of both Travers and modern admirers are overblown. In point of fact, Bauckham shows that Hooker’s main point in his sermon series was to deliver fairly standard antipapist polemic, and he was by no means unusual among English Protestant apologists in believing that it was possible for some of their papist forefathers to have been saved. He merely carved out a somewhat larger exemption, based on a more finetoothed parsing of the differences between Protestants and the church of Rome.34 However, given the high profile of the public controversy between

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Hooker and Travers (which was decided by none other than the privy council), it is unimaginable that Willet was unaware of it, and highly probable that he shared the general perception among puritans (using that term in the broadest sense) that Hooker was going soft on Rome.

Hooker’s Distinction of Visible and Invisible Churches The passages that Willet targeted, though, were from the text of the Laws, and the issues at stake there were slightly different than those in the Temple sermons. There the chief issue had concerned the bounds of the invisible church: could individual papists truly be united to Christ by faith and under what circumstances? Here the issue concerned the bounds of the visible church: could the church of Rome be counted as any part of the visible body of Christ? These issues were related, for it made little sense to designate a communion as part of the visible church if there were no members of the invisible church within it, or, as Travers thought, if those that were truly regenerate were only so by virtue of not really communing with the faithless body of which they were a part. On the other hand, the questions remained (to Hooker’s mind at least) quite distinct, for the main burden of the passages that Willet quoted here was not to rehabilitate Roman Catholicism but simply to define, in radically minimalist terms, what qualified as the “visible church.” What was at stake was a clearer definition of the practical application of the term church.35 Hooker, unlike his puritan opponents, was keen to draw a fairly radical distinction between the visible and invisible churches, instead of assuming that the former need come close to the purity of the latter. This was not because he had no interest in the rites and ceremonies of the visible church; quite the contrary. But as far as the membership of the two bodies were concerned, he had no interest in the puritan quests for both individual and corporate assurance that sought to determine with something close to certainty those who were and were not truly disciples of Christ.36 Indeed, Hooker had stated his principles on this point fairly clearly from his earliest published work, First Sermon Upon a Part of Saint Jude: “Who be inwardly in heart the lively members of this body . . . coupled and joined to Christ . . . none can tell, save he whose eies doe behold the secret disposition of all mens hearts. We, whose eies are too dimme to behold the inward man, must leave the secret judgment of every servant to his owne Lord, accounting and using all men as brethren

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both neere and deare unto us, supposing Christ to love them tenderly, so as they keep the profession of the Gospell and joyne in the outward communion of Saints.”37 These latter, the profession of the Gospel and the outward communion of saints, marked for Hooker the practical boundaries of the visible church. Indeed, in the Laws, Hooker would go further and insist that even a heretical distortion of the Gospel and a schismatic violation of the communion of saints did not cut one off from the visible church in every sense, so long as one still professed faith in Jesus Christ, this being the distinctive mark of the Christian religion.38 Hooker’s concern here was practical and pastoral: he wanted to resist the busybody pastoral practice in which excommunication was necessary to police the boundaries of the true visible church against “outsiders,” as seen in the first part of this essay. Indeed, the latter two passages quoted by Willet come from this context: in V. 68 of the Lawes, Hooker is rebutting the charge that the English Eucharistic service was corrupt on account of its lax policy toward so-called church papists and other ungodly communicants. Hooker wanted to show here that for purposes of pastoral practice, one ought to treat those as brethren who present themselves as such. It is in this sense, therefore, as a body of baptized people professing faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God as Savior, that Hooker wants to contend that Rome counts as a part of the visible church. Of course, this is where Travers’s objections at the Temple become important, for these concerned what it meant to really profess faith in Christ; was the Romish doctrine so corrupt that it could not really count as such a profession? This will be considered a bit further on, but for now, let us consider more closely the passages in Jewel that Willet alleges against Hooker.

“Without Christ and Thus No Church”: Jewel on the Church of Rome The first two of Willet’s three quotations from Jewel are taken from Jewel’s Reply to Harding, both in the context of debates over Eucharistic presence. In both cases, Harding charged the Protestants with arrogantly ignoring the constant teaching the authoritative church, so Jewel must respond by discounting this authority. The first passage reads, “Neither doo wee here condemne the Church . . . but wee wishe, and pray to God, that his whole Churche may once be reformed after the example and Institution of Christe: without whom the Churche is no Churche: neither hath any

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right, or claime without his promisse: nor any promisse without his woorde.”39 Of course, in itself, this does not state that the church of Rome is entirely without Christ and thus no church; Willet relies rather on the remark that it has no “promisse without his woorde,” taken together with the second passage, where Jewel says that “Your Churche, beinge as nowe utterly voide of Goddes woorde, is as a Lanterne without light.”40 At the very least, these two statements taken together imply that the church of Rome has no promise of Christ’s authority, lacking as they do his Word. On the other hand, it may be a bit questionable to use two such widely separated passages to interpret one another, especially as the latter comes in a context rhetorically charged and rich in metaphor. After all, Jewel might be going a bit far if “utterly voide of Goddes woorde” is taken literally, given that the holy scriptures were still maintained, read, and indeed preached in Catholic churches (although not necessarily in the vernacular). What he means by this becomes clear in other passages—namely, that the lifegiving power of the Word has been quenched by its mingling with human authority, so there is no effective presence of God’s Word. However, had Willet wanted, he could have quoted much more from this latter passage, where Jewel says, “As there be two sortes of Faithes, so are there two sortes of Churches: the one True, the other False . . . Ye arme your self with the name of the Churche: and yet ye fight against the Churche. S. Iohn in his Reuelations saith, They name them selues Iewes, that is, The people of God: but they are the Synagoge of Satan.”41 Such language, taken at face value, suggests that as the pope is the antichrist, so the Catholic Church has become the antichurch, opposed to, rather than in some way still related to, the true church of God. The last passage Willet quotes from Jewel’s Apology would seem to largely confirm this impression. It is an extended, and again a highly rhetorically charged passage, in which Jewel, once again, is contesting the Roman claim to infallible authority. Not only can they err, he says, but they “hath shamefully and most wickedly erred in very deed.”42 Accordingly, says Jewel, the Protestants have departed from a church where they were hungering and dying of thirst for lack of the Gospel, a church where “went they scattering about, seeking some spark of heavenly life to refresh their consciences withal: but that light was already thoroughly quenched out, so that they could find none.”43 In this passage, he again uses a good deal of language that suggests that all traces of the church have perished from the church of Rome: “The Church may not

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only err, but also utterly be spoiled and perish”; “It was a misery to live therein, without the Gospel, without light, and without all comfort.”44 The examples Jewel appeals to—Abraham leaving Ur, Lot leaving Sodom, the Israelites leaving Egypt, Paul leaving the Pharisees—all reinforce the impression that we are dealing essentially with a contrast of Christianity and pure unbelief now, not a better and worse church. And yet toward the end, Jewel uses more qualitative language to describe the contrast, as a contrast between corrupted and reformed, worse and better: We truly have renounced that Church, wherein we could neither have the Word of God sincerely taught, nor the sacraments rightly administered, nor the Name of God duly called upon: which Church also themselves confess to be faulty in many points. . . . To conclude, we have forsaken the Church as it is now, not as it was in old times past. . . . And we are come to that Church, wherein they themselves cannot deny (if they will say truly, and as they think in their own conscience) but all things be governed purely and reverently, and, as much as we possibly could, very near to the order used in the old times.45 A final example of Jewel’s attitude toward the church of Rome (though not one that Willet quotes) can be found in a series of passages from his Defence of the Apology. Here, once again the question is one of authority, and he wants to dispute Harding’s claim that “your Churche hath authoritie aboue Goddes Woorde.” On the contrary, “it is plaine, that the Churche of God is knowen by Goddes Woorde onely, & none otherwise.”46 Here again he focuses on the fact that the Word has been rendered ineffectual by its mingling with tradition, so that the papists “have damned up the Springes of the Water of Life.”47 In summary, “ye saye, They haue forsaken the Catholique Churche: They went from vs. who were not of vs. Nay rather, M. Hardinge, wee are returned to ye Catholique Churche of Christe, & haue forsaken you, bicause you haue manifestly foresaken the wayes of God.”48 On the basis of these passages, Peter Milward declares that Jewel “maintains that the Church of Rome, in view of her many corruptions can no longer be called the Church of Christ,”49 apparently corroborating the interpretation of A Christian Letter. Is this a fair conclusion, then? And if so, does it show Hooker to be fundamentally out of step with Jewel’s understanding of the church of Rome?

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“Some Beames or Small Joystes”: An Ambiguous Legacy On the contrary, it ought to be obvious that Hooker and Jewel are answering very different questions in very different rhetorical contexts for very different purposes. For Jewel, the question is, “Does the Roman hierarchy have authority as a church of God, such that Protestants are condemned as schismatics?” For Hooker, the question is, “Should Roman Catholics be treated as enemies and unbelievers or as erring brothers in need of repentance?” Indeed, even that question, for Hooker, is secondary to the definitional question, by which he simply wants to be clear about how much we can and cannot say about the true bounds of the visible church. Such a question of scholastic definition is far from Jewel’s mind in these passages against Harding. He is clearly concerned to vindicate the Church of England against a hostile accuser and hence adopts very strong language in condemning the corruptions of the church of Rome; Hooker, on the other hand, is concerned to vindicate the Church of England against those who want to equate her corruptions with those of Rome, and so he wants to forestall any hasty rushes to judgment. Given these widely divergent contexts and concerns, it might not be unreasonable to simply say that Hooker’s and Jewel’s arguments are incommensurable rather than contradictory; indeed, although Jewel accuses Rome of being a “synagoge of Satan,” Hooker will say in the Laws that it is possible to be “imps and limmes of Satan” and still members of the visible church.50 Nor is this ambiguity something new. Paul Avis has traced the regularly paradoxical language that the Reformers used in describing the status of the church of Rome, noting that most magisterial Reformers seemed willing to say that Rome both was and was not a church, depending on the sense and the context.51 To the testimonies that Avis collates, we might add another, drawing again on Jewel’s mentor Peter Martyr Vermigli. In a lengthy polemical section of his Common Places, “Whether we or the Romanists be in schism,” he seems to dance around on either side of the question, finally saying, Therefore when it is demaunded by the adversaries, whether their congregation advaunced by the Popedome were the Church: I aunswere that it was then exceedingly fallen to decay, and dayly more and more ruinated, so as now amongest us, there is no more left but certaine rubbish, and peeces of walles, together with some beames or small joystes, so as it is not properly the

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house of God: howbeit as yet it retaineth certaine steppes, although they be slender. Wherefore we acknowledge the baptisme that is there given, neither doe we rebaptise those which come from them to our Churches: and we reverence and reade the selfe same holy bookes which they use. And by this reasone we understand Antichrist to sit in the temple of God, because undoubtedly such a one he was in times past, and so by many he is esteemed and called: & because he stil retaineth (as I have sayd) some steppes of the Church.52 To be sure, this sounds like a decidedly harsher judgment than Hooker’s, but on the other hand, this perhaps ought not to surprise us, given that Vermigli’s polemical context here is much more similar to Jewel’s; indeed, Vermigli uses many of the same biblical parallels as Jewel to make his point in this section.

“Maine Partes of Christian Trueth?”: The Church of Rome and the Gospel However, we need not simply let the matter rest at a declaration of incommensurability. After all, Willet’s charge in A Christian Letter was a bit more specific than simply acknowledging Rome as a church. Rather, he singled out Hooker’s statement “that they have maine partes of christian trueth wherein they constantlie persist.” Hooker could include Rome as part of the church, thought Willet, only by minimizing the extent of her errors and maximizing the extent of her agreement with Protestantism, and Hooker could only do this, Willet thought, if he secretly sympathized with various Romish doctrines, or at least did not feel particularly committed to Protestant doctrines. Willet’s objection, in short, was much the same as Travers’s at the Temple. The question really came down to whether the Gospel was available in any form in the Catholic Church; Jewel seemed to clearly say no, whereas Hooker seemed willing to say, with some qualifications, yes; in the Learned Discourse on Justification, he carefully develops the argument that although Catholic doctrine does deny salvation by Christ alone “by consequent,” it does not do so “directly,” and so there is still room for saving faith (and hence for the presence of the church). This was, as Bauckham has noted, something of a novel argument,53 though it is not so much denied by earlier thinkers, as simply not directly envisioned. In

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the first years after the split, when many Protestant writers had seen the fires of persecution firsthand, it was natural to emphasize, as Jewel did, the wholesale darkness from which they had departed. But Hooker was hardly unique in nuancing this judgment somewhat as the passing decades cooled off a bit of the heat of controversy. On the contrary, in his Learned Discourse on Justification, he appealed to the testimony of three continental Reformed theologians, Calvin, Philippe Du Plessis Mornay, and Jerome Zanchi, in defense of his judgment of the church of Rome. The last testimony is by far the most interesting and compelling, supporting as it does Hooker’s contention about the “maine partes of christian trueth”: I acknowledge the churche of Rome even att this present daie for a churche of Christe, such a churche as Israell under Jeroboam, yett a church. His reson is this, Every man seeth exepte he willingly hoodwinck him self that as alwaies so nowe the churche of Rome holdeth firmely and stedfastly the doctrine of truth concerning god and the person of our lord Jesus christe and baptizeth in the name of the father the sonne and the holy goste, confesseth and avowcheth Christe for the onely Redeemer of the world and the Judge that shall sitt upon quick and dead receyve true belevers into endless joye, faithles and godles men beinge caste with sathan and his aungells into flames unquenchable.54 The quotation here is from the preface of Zanchi’s important treatise De Religione Christiana Fides, which had just been circulated (though not yet published), and when one consults the Latin, the passage Hooker quotes is faithfully translated and not torn out of context. However (and here the plot thickens), when one consults the English translation of the De Religione, the Confession of Christian Religion published in Cambridge in 1599 (the same year the Christian Letter appeared, incidentally), the sentences Hooker quotes are neatly omitted.55 All the previous sentences are translated, Zanchi describing the church of Rome as being “buried or drowned” in “great darkenesse and blindnesse,” and the translation picks up again immediately after the sentences explaining in what sense she is nevertheless a Christian church. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this analysis was simply too charitable for the publisher’s English (especially Cambridge) context, where the reigning puritan ethos insisted on condemning Rome in unequivocal terms.56

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The fact that no less a Reformed stalwart than Jerome Zanchi suffered the same kind of censorship that Willet would no doubt have liked to exercise upon Hooker suggests that scholars like Peter Lake are quite right to point to Hooker’s idiosyncrasy in his late Elizabethan English context, dominated as it was by a moderate puritan ethos.57 However, it also shows, at the same time, that scholars like Torrance Kirby are quite right to insist that Hooker really is not that idiosyncratic when measured against his continental Reformed contemporaries.58 These, too, had advanced beyond the apocalyptic polemics of Jewel’s era into a phase of more careful scholastic definition.

Conclusion: Continuity Amid a Changing Landscape What do we learn, then, from these two case studies? Clearly Jewel’s stamp of authority, even a quarter century after his death, was deeply coveted by all sides of the controversies then tearing the English church—presbyterians like Fenner, conformists like Hooker, and moderate puritans like Willet. However, it is clear that enough had changed in that quarter century that it was not easy to simply call Jewel in as a witness on one side of the argument. Both the context and the terms of debate had changed radically. Although Roman Catholicism was still, from the standpoint of some of more radical Protestants, a dire threat to be opposed at every turn, for others, the divide between conformists and nonconformists, bishops and disciplinarians, loomed larger. For Hooker in particular, who could lay some fair claim to inheriting the mantle of Vermigli and Jewel, the greatest threat was no longer the Catholic claim to be the only true church and the authorized interpreters of scripture, as Harding had repeatedly insisted against Jewel. Rather, it was the disciplinarian claim (as he saw it at least) to be the only true church and the authorized interpreters of scripture. This led Hooker to pull back on aspects of Jewel’s thinking that seemed to support, even in very attenuated fashion, the forceful policing of the boundaries of a pure Protestant church, whether by excluding the church of Rome from the definition of the church or by excommunicating godless rulers. That said, it is not clear that Hooker dramatically modified Jewel’s thought on these issues. The rhetorical contrast between their writings makes any such comparison quite difficult, as we have seen. Where Jewel is much more interested in vigorous biblical imagery and metaphor, indeed

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in thundering denunciations when he thinks Harding needs them, but not so much in the kind of careful scholastic distinctions and definitions that characterize Hooker’s discussions of ecclesiology and excommunication. On both issues, it would seem that Hooker is willing to affirm what Jewel wants to affirm: there is a time and place for suspending even a ruler from the Eucharist, and the church of Rome is in a certain sense “the imps and limmes of Satan.” But he also wants to be very careful about what these assertions do not entail, lest he provide a weapon for radical puritans to start lopping off the church of England itself and its members as a branch of the true church. Of course, this is not to return to some kind of “Calvin versus the Calvinists” narrative,59 in which a firm line is drawn between the humanism of the mid-sixteenth century and the scholasticism of the later sixteenth century. Rather, scholastic thinkers like Vermigli predated Jewel, so it is less a matter of timeline than a matter of genre and pastoral/ polemic context. Indeed, from what we have seen, both Jewel and Hooker each pick up on different aspects of Vermigli’s complex legacy. Jewel’s dark portrait of the church of Rome matches much of Vermigli’s, but Hooker’s careful account of “mutual subjection” in the Christian commonwealth owes much to Vermigli’s own scholastic formulations. That Hooker is closer than his contemporaries to Vermigli’s friend Zanchi on the status of the church of Rome is also telling. Although the puritans of the 1580s and 1590s might have justly claimed to be carrying on the legacy of John Jewel’s anti-Catholic polemic, then, there is little evidence that they, not Hooker, were the only ones seeking to remain faithful to his Reformed theological commitments.

Notes 1. Hooker, Lawes, II.6.4 (Folger Library Edition [henceforward FLE]) 1:171.3–5. 2. For a summary of the controversy, see Peter Milward, “The Jewel–Harding Controversy,” Albion 6, no. 4 (1974). A recent biography of Jewel can be found in Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); for a critical perspective on this biography, see

André A. Gazal, Scripture and Royal Supremacy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), chs. 4–6. 3. A good summary of Hooker’s doctrine can be found in Daniel Eppley, “Royal Supremacy,” in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. W. J. T. Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 503–34. 4. Dudley Fenner, A Counter-poyson modestly written for the time [ . . . ]

The Use and Abuse of John Jewel  203 (London: Robert Waldegrave, 1584), 165. 5. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 3:98. 6. Jewel, 4:990. 7. Jewel, 4:991–92. 8. Hooker, Lawes, VIII.9.4 (FLE 3:440.1–4). 9. Hooker, VIII.9.6 (FLE 3:44.27–33). 10. Thomas Cartwright, Rest of the Second Replie (Basel, 1577), 151–52. More generally, see Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Theology of Law and Authority in the English Reformation, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), ch. 8. 11. For a full explication of the logic of Hooker’s position on this point, see W. J. Torrance Kirby, “The Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy in the Thought of Richard Hooker.” PhD diss., University of Oxford, 1987. 12. See, for instance, Lawes, VIII.4.9 (FLE 3:376–78). 13. Cartwright, Replie, 155; John Whitgift, Works of John Whitgift, ed. John Ayre, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1849–51), 3:315. 14. Cartwright, Replie, 144; Whitgift, Works, 3:189. 15. Jewel, Works, 3:60. 16. Jewel, 3:60. 17. Jewel, 3:61. 18. No less than nineteen letters from Jewel to Vermigli appear between 1559 and 1562 in Hastings Robinson, ed. and trans., The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bishops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1579, first series (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1842). 19. For a thorough discussion of the logic of this passage, see Torrance Kirby, “Peter Martyr Vermigli and Pope Boniface VIII: The Difference between

Civil and Ecclesiastical Power,” in Peter Martyr Vermigli and the European Reformations, ed. Frank A. James III (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 291–304. 20. Peter Martyr Vermigli, “Of a Magistrate,” in Political Thought of Peter Martyr Vermigli, ed. Robert M. Kingdon (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1980), 33. 21. Vermigli, 34. 22. Vermigli, 34. 23. Vermigli, 35. 24. For Vermigli’s influence on Jewel and Hooker generally, see Gary Jenkins, “Peter Martyr and the Church of England after 1558,” in Peter Martyr Vermigli and the European Reformations, ed. Frank A. James III (Leiden: Brill, 2004). For his influence on Hooker’s political thought in particular, see W. Bradford Littlejohn, “More than a Swineherd: Hooker, Vermigli, and the Aristotelian Defense of the Royal Supremacy,” Reformation and Renaissance Review 15, no. 1 (2014): 78–93. 25. The case for Willet’s authorship is made in FLE 4:xix–xxv. For a good summary of the tract, see Peter Lake, “Business as Usual? The Immediate Reception of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 3 (2001): 457–62. 26. Hooker, Lawes, III.1.10 (FLE 1:202.14–18). 27. Art. 19 of the Thirty-Nine Articles. 28. Jewel, Works, 1:207. 29. Jewel, 1:500. 30. Jewel, 3:90–91. 31. Christian Letter, art. 11 (FLE 4:28–29). 32. Travers, A Supplication, FLE 5:208. 33. Specifically, the passage toward the end of the Learned Discourse on Justification that ends, “yf it be an error to thincke that God maye be mercifull to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error” (FLE 5:165). In English Literature in the

204  Impact and Legacy Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama, C. S. Lewis writes, “If this is arrogance, it might be wished that divines of all three camps had more often spoken arrogantly” (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1954, p. 452). 34. See Richard Bauckham, “Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29, no. 1 (1978). 35. See Paul Avis, “The True Church in Reformation Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 30, no. 4 (1977): 341–43; Paul Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), 68–73. 36. See Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology, 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), ch. 3; also W. Bradford Littlejohn, Richard Hooker: A Companion to His Life and Work (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), chs. 7 and 10. 37. FLE 5:25–26. 38. Hooker, Lawes, III.1.13. 39. Jewel, Works, 1:207. 40. Jewel, 1:500. 41. Jewel, 1:500. 42. Jewel, 3:91. 43. Jewel, 3:91. 44. Jewel, 3:90, 91. 45. Jewel, 3:92. 46. Jewel, 3:153. 47. Jewel, 3:157. 48. Jewel, 3:175. 49. Milward, “Jewel–Harding Controversy,” 338. 50. Hooker, Lawes, III.1.7 (FLE 1:198.22).

51. Avis, “True Church.” 52. Peter Martyr Vermigli, The common places of the most famous and renowmed diuine Doctor Peter Martyr[ . . . ], trans. and ed. Anthonie Marten, 2 vols. (London: Henry Denham and Henry Middleton, 1583), 2:92. 53. Bauckham, “Hooker, Travers, and the Church of Rome,” 48. 54. Hooker, Learned Discourse, II.27 (FLE 5:148.10–21). 55. Jerome Zanchi, De Religione Christiana Fides—Confession of the Christian Religion, ed. Luca Baschera and Christian Moser, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 56–57. 56. I am grateful to the editor of the modern edition of this work, Luca Baschera, who has corroborated this assessment in private correspondence. 57. See, for instance, Lake, “Business as Usual?” 58. So in numerous publications. But see, for instance, W. J. Torrance Kirby’s “Richard Hooker as an Apologist of the Magisterial Reformation in England,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, ed. A. S. McGrade, 219–33 (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997). 59. For a survey of this important debate, see Martin I. Klauber, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology: An Evaluation of the Muller Thesis,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 33 (1990): 467–75.

Chapter 11

Redefining Unity in the Jacobean Church The Legacy of John Jewel

Angela Ranson In 1609, King James published a treatise in which he proudly claimed to be a catholic Christian. It was intended to enhance the legitimacy of his position in the Church of England, but in an age of rabid anticatholicism, just four short years after the Gunpowder Plot, this seems a foolhardy strategy. The nation was deeply divided, and new political theories constantly came to light, testing the limit of the divine right of kings. It seems that James would have done better had he claimed to be an English Christian, or even simply a Christian, than to associate himself with such an enemy. However, James’s claim was actually anchored in a definition of “catholic” that had been gradually gathering force in early modern England since the Jewel–Harding controversy. Jewel famously challenged Romanists to prove the catholicity of their faith through evidence from scripture, the first four general councils and the ancient church, using that criteria to question the legitimacy of many Roman traditions, including papal authority. James presented a similar set of criteria: to him, being a catholic Christian meant adhering to the creeds and the first four general councils, basing his faith on the scriptures, and accepting the authority of the early church fathers. In his 1609 publication, An Apology for the Oath of Allegiance . . . Together with a Premonition, James advocated respecting the saints without recognizing the authority of their legends or their intercessory powers and limited the status of the Virgin Mary.1 He insisted

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that “since I believe as much as the scriptures do warrant, the creeds do persuade, and the ancient councils decreed, I may well be a schismatic from Rome, but I am sure I am no heretic.”2 This 1609 publication was a justification of James’s first defense of the oath of allegiance, published in 1607. Significantly, the long and detailed description of what it meant to be “catholic” in the 1609 Apology cannot be found in the 1607 version. In the two years since his original publication, James was driven to clarify his own concept of catholicity by the resistance of men such as Cardinal Bellarmine and the Jesuit Robert Parsons. As further clarification, he styled himself as not only “Defender of the Faith,” in the 1609 preface, but “Defender of the True, Christian, Catholic and Apostolic Faith,” which had been “professed by the ancient and primitive Church, and sealed with the blood of so many holy bishops and other faithful crowned with the glory of martyrdom.”3 Through this bold claim, James demonstrates an important aspect of the oath of allegiance controversy that has not yet been fully studied: the link between the Church of England and the early church. This chapter will argue that the oath’s defenders forged this link using the perceived authority and legitimacy provided by the church’s recent history. A distinct self-identity had been developing in the Church of England since the 1559 religious settlement, and the debate that arose from the oath of allegiance controversy clearly demonstrates the connection between it and the polemics of the early Elizabethan church. However, current historiography tends to approach the controversy from a political rather than a religious point of view, which means that much of the most recent work on the subject focuses on the power struggle between King James and Pope Paul V. John Spurr’s work on the post-Reformation era considers the oath a legitimate means of separating religious and civic loyalties for English Catholics.4 J. P. Sommerville looks at the situation rather more cynically, suggesting that the oath was designed precisely to discover who believed that the pope could depose monarchs, so that steps could be taken.5 Similarly, a century ago, Charles McIlwain argued that the oath of allegiance had a single goal: to divide and conquer the English Catholics. This view was recently supported by Michael Questier, who argued that the oath had a “devastating effect” on the structure of Roman dissent. He called it a “a diabolically effective polemical cocktail, which did not have to rely merely on the mechanics of a bureaucracy to work its intended course against the Romanist faction within the English state.”6

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However, as this chapter will show, the oath of allegiance controversy was not just about the rights of the pope versus those of the monarch. Nor was it entirely about controlling, or even converting, the Roman Catholics of England. Rather, it was concerned with legitimacy, which led its defenders to redefine the nature of the true church and determine what that definition might mean for the Church of England. This definition required expanding upon their Elizabethan heritage to suit their changing circumstances, which included a renewed concern for Christian unity. Where Jewel and his fellows had attempted to distinguish the Church of England from all others, James and his supporters aimed for international unity between churches, and this redefinition put new emphasis on inner motivation as a means of proving true catholicity. This chapter will examine how the concept of catholicity evolved in the early seventeenth century and then explore how the new emphasis on motivation for true catholicity influenced the self-identity of the Church of England. Finally, it will place the controversy in its wider context, by demonstrating its connection to John Jewel’s famous defense of the church. Significantly, the nature of the true church is rarely listed as a topic in any of the works of the oath of allegiance controversy. Instead, it informs sections on the duties of monarchs, the power of the pope, and the status of episcopacy. Catholicity provides the foundation upon which these topics built, and its definition was constantly being explored and clarified throughout the works of the controversy. This was not a random occurrence. As Lori Anne Ferrell has argued, “little in an early Stuart polemical text got there by accident: seemingly insignificant words and phrases represented a considered application of the art of persuasion.”7 That catholicity was omnipresent and yet so implicit shows the depth of subtlety in this sort of polemic, which is sometimes difficult for modern scholars to identify. According to Anthony Milton, participants in this polemic saw stark divisions between themselves and their enemies that are not as readily obvious today.8 Catholicity is one of those minute divisions within these texts that has not been drawn out and examined, despite its contemporary significance. The oath of allegiance controversy is made up of a corpus of over 150 works, written in several languages, but the sources for this chapter are limited to the works of the controversy written in English. This choice was made because this chapter aims to examine the oath of allegiance controversy in its historical context, as one battle in a vast and enduring

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book war that had been raging since the Jewel–Harding controversy in the 1560s. The debates between John Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright, Thomas Cooper and the fictional Martin Marprelate, and Andrew Willett and Richard Hooker, as well as many others, can all be included in this book war. Each of these had argued for the legitimacy of the Church of England. Each began with a particular catalyst and mutated into a vehement dialogue. In each, the constant opposition forced both sides to clarify and refine their beliefs, which resulted in further polarization between them. The oath of allegiance controversy followed this pattern and reached levels of loquaciousness and ferocity that rivaled all its predecessors. Its catalyst was the question of authority, manifested in the debate over whether or not the pope had the power to depose a monarch. This was an even more complicated question in England than in other countries: the English church was “dually established” due to the royal supremacy, making it partly spiritual and partly temporal. As Charles Prior has described it, it “had its being in the Word and in the World,” which made it all the harder to determine where the church ended and the state began.9 Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the issue of catholicity became so essential to a debate over papal and royal authority. True believers were supposed to be unified in the faith: both sides of the oath of allegiance controversy agreed that such unity was a sign of the true, catholic, apostolic church, even though they could not agree on the nature of the true, catholic, apostolic church. However, simply by engaging with the debate over definition, the controversy continued a vital argument that had arisen in the Jewel–Harding controversy.

Overview The controversy began in 1606, when a statute passed through Parliament that gave bishops and justices of the peace the authority to tender the oath of allegiance to English recusants. This oath required acknowledging James as a lawful king, denying the pope the right to depose him, and promising to defend James and disclose all treasonous plots against him. It ended with a highly controversial statement: “And I do further swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may be deposed or murdered by their

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subjects or any other whatsoever.”10 Since this limited the power of the pope to depose and even, some argued, to excommunicate, Pope Paul V responded with a pair of breves that ordered the Catholics of England not to take the oath. This brought George Blackwell, the Catholic archpriest in England, into the argument. He advised the English Catholics to accept the oath, which inspired Cardinal Bellarmine to write a letter attacking his decision. Blackwell responded with a remarkably practical defense that centered around the danger that the breves might cause the English Catholics to suffer. At this point, the king himself got involved. He wrote an anonymous apology of the oath, using the authorial voice of a deferential, supportive, and concerned subject. James’s reasons for writing anonymously are unclear, but it may have been an attempt to encourage debate. Marcy L. North suggests that “anonymity was not so much a mask that James sought to hide behind as it was a convention that asked readers . . . to see the text as part of a theological conversation in which the author’s logic would be as persuasive as his social standing.”11 Unfortunately, this proved a double-edged sword. His anonymity opened the king up to more ferocious debate than he may have faced had he claimed authorship. Cardinal Bellarmine, for example, seized the opportunity to speak rather more harshly than one traditionally did when dealing with kings. James was goaded into publishing a further defense under his own name, which resulted in the 1609 Apology with Premonition mentioned in the introduction. He also commissioned Lancelot Andrewes to respond. Andrewes published his answer to Bellarmine in 1609 and joined a growing group of polemicists who did not appreciate Bellarmine’s aggression. Virtually all of the men who published books in the oath’s defense engaged with Bellarmine’s argument, whether or not he became their main opponent. William Barlow, the bishop of Lincoln, answered Bellarmine even while he focused on responding to Robert Parsons’s Judgement of a Catholic Englishman. The dean of Gloucester, Richard Field, wrote his massive tome Of the Church (1606) in response to both Thomas Stapleton and Bellarmine. This led the convert-to-Catholicism Theophilus Higgons to protest against Field’s interpretation, which then inspired Field to add a fifth book to Of the Church by way of a response. Meanwhile, the Jesuit Thomas Fitzherbert took it upon himself to respond to Lancelot Andrewes, and his book was then answered by one of Archbishop Bancroft’s chaplains, Samuel Collins. A controversial

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preacher and former chaplain to the Earl of Essex, Richard Harris, wrote against Martin Becan’s book, The English Jar. Other authors did not engage in direct controversy with Roman enemies in their works but protested against their stance in general. This included John Donne, who wrote directly to English Catholics, the French controversialist Pierre Du Moulin, and the future bishop of Chichester, George Carleton.

Redefining Catholicity Where their Elizabethan predecessors had argued over which church represented the true catholic church, the participants in the oath of allegiance controversy aimed to identify themselves with the pure catholic church. This allowed the polemicists of this controversy to discover new answers to the age-old question of how to distinguish the catholic church from all the other churches. Significantly, their strategies were influenced by both the polemicists’ Elizabethan heritage and their new circumstances, reflecting Lori Anne Ferrell’s argument that polemicists capitalized on the “received ideas” of the society they wished to engage and skillfully combined the familiar with the transformatory.12 Claiming catholicity without including the Roman church was not new: it was part of the debate between Jewel and Harding, which was still at the forefront of religious controversy in the early 1600s. A new edition of Jewel’s sermons was published in 1603 and 1607, and Jewel’s collected works were published for the first time in 1609, followed by a second edition in 1611. These followed a new edition of Jewel’s famous Apology of the Church of England, which had been published in English in 1600 and in Latin in 1606. As Kenneth Fincham suggests, during this time Jewel was generally accepted as a model to emulate for clerics and scholars. This was partly because of the divines’ personal backgrounds: in the early years of King James, his prelates were men who had been born and raised in the Elizabethan church, making it only natural for them to aspire to match the achievements of an earlier generation of Protestant bishops. They were given extra incentive through the publication of a new biography of Jewel, written by Daniel Featley and included in the 1609 Collected Works of John Jewel. It encouraged many clerics to be the sort of preaching pastor Jewel had been, explaining at least in part why the defenders of the oath of allegiance strove to create a concept of the Church of England that

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both honored Jewel’s definition and answered the new challengers who questioned its legitimacy.13 The conflict between Jewel and Harding informed much of the oath of allegiance controversy. Jewel had portrayed the Church of England as a national universal church, both part of the “catholic” church and distinct from it. Through this paradox, Jewel successfully infused catholicity with allegiance to the monarch, making his work very useful for defenders of the 1606 oath.14 For Jewel, this had involved redefining the term catholic by emphasizing catholicity in the sense of universality rather than uniformity; or as “a body of beliefs rather than a body of people,” as John Bossy phrased it.15 Jewel defined the universal church as the people who followed the doctrine of the primitive catholic church and emphasized the responsibility of each individual to contribute actively to his or her own spiritual development and education. Jewel then connected this responsibility to the expectation of loyalty and obedience to the English monarch, by advocating the authority of the godly magistrate. Thus he made the Church of England both part of the universal church and yet distinct and unique. As we will see, the defenders of the oath took this concept further, emphasizing both individual beliefs and the worldwide body of people as a means of establishing their self-identity as a “catholic” church. Jewel’s great challenger, Thomas Harding, had argued that Christian unity could be found only through the traditions and customs of the Roman church, including its seven sacraments, saints, miracles, and unbroken succession. Harding saw the institution of the Roman church as the seat of all authority, and membership in it as the only sure path to salvation. During the oath of allegiance controversy, the Romanist side maintained much the same arguments. They also showed equal loyalty to the theory of papal infallibility. This may be because they faced a similar challenge: the authority of their church was under question, and they had to answer similar charges of novelty and corruption. Notably, even when Romanists faced new divisions due to the phrasing of the oath itself and the burgeoning conflict between the regular clergy and the Jesuits, their response remained the same. They continued to define Christian unity from within the context of the pope’s authority. Ironically, their great enemy King James was not entirely against this idea. James himself desired unity; in part, because he saw himself as a peacemaker and hoped to be the catalyst for a Europe-wide reconciliation

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of the churches. To aim for unity by insisting on his own supremacy via an oath of allegiance is something uniquely suited to James: like Jewel, he did not shy away from promoting a paradox. Kenneth Fincham attributes this tendency to James’s style of ambiguity and compromise, which allowed him leeway in diplomacy.16 Arnold Hunt calls it James’s “element of pragmatism”: unity and order, after all, do make a king sit rather more easily on his throne.17 However, it may also be due to the idealism inherent in James’s dream of a reunited Christendom. As Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake have noted, James fought passionately for this cause, regarding the campaign for conformity in England as a necessary step to establishing genuine unity. He also appealed to the pope for a general council and attempted to play down doctrinal differences in order to reconcile Romanists to his church. He did not think that papists were divided from the faith of the Church of England over beliefs that were central to the faith. Instead, according to Fincham and Lake, “He distinguished between core Catholic doctrines to be held de fide and other issues on which debate and disagreement were acceptable among Christian brethren.”18 This may have encouraged the Protestant defenders of the Church of England to place more focus on Christian unity as well. Sommerville has described internationalism, not nationalism, as the keynote of ecclesiastical thought in the Jacobean church, and the works of the controversy bear that out. In 1610, John Donne claimed that his entire reason for engaging in the debate over the oath of allegiance was to promote the unity and order of Christ’s church.19 William Wilkes, in his 1608 defense of the power of the magistrate, considered unity a sign of the existence of the orderly church of God, as opposed to the chaos of Babel.20 Therefore, to the defenders of the oath, finding true Christian unity in the English church was a sign of genuine catholicity, which had the potential to bring the church into agreement. This potential was all the more important due to the internal conflict taking place in the church during the years of the controversy. Establishing true unity would allow the church to meet the renewed challenge of puritan agitation, which was dividing congregations, causing problems between bishops and their clergy, and resulting in disciplinary action and deprivations. It would also influence the debate that was under way regarding the legality of the high commission and support the major changes taking place in the church regarding pluralities and the distribution of wealth.21

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As Richard Field noted in his 1606 treatise Of the Church, such spiritual unity was more to be desired than the physical unity that the Roman church affirmed as a sign of its “true and catholic profession.” This was an argument that can also be found in Jewel’s answers to Harding, but Field took the idea to a new level by analyzing different types of division. Where Jewel had downplayed the disunity in the various Reformed churches, Field argued that the motivation for division made a difference. For example, he argued that papal divisions arose out of malice, while divisions in the English church arose out of debate and were submitted to the judgment of legitimate authority based on the written word of God.22 This criteria for unity led Field to define catholicity in three parts. First, it had to extend to all times, places, and sorts of men. Second, it was not limited to one church, in respect to either time or place. Third, it was found within Christians themselves, who were living out their faith. To Field, this meant that the reformed churches represented the catholic church due to their lack of novelty and their inner morality.23 Like Jewel, Field developed the notion of a visible church that was not reliant on a physical institution but on the differences in how faithful Christians lived, as opposed to unbelievers. However, he took this argument further than Jewel, thus demonstrating the development in the self-identity of the English church since Jewel first defined the reformed churches as the true catholic church. As Paul Avis has suggested, Field expanded the circumference of the universal church, where Jewel had placed limits around it. Jewel had emphasized the Church of England’s antiquity and scriptural basis with the aim of proving the Roman church illegitimate, but to Field there was more room for variation.24 He recognized that some people professed the truth, but only in part, making them heretics. Others professed the whole truth, but not in unity, making them schismatics. Still others professed the whole truth in unity, but not in sincerity, making them hypocrites. All these people, along with those who professed the truth in unity and sincerity, were “partakers of the heavenly calling” and consequently part of that ancient society “whom God calls out to himself . . . which is rightly named the Church.”25 After Field’s work, the defenders of the oath of allegiance consistently presented the same message. Like Jewel, they rejected the idea that the physical universality of the church of Rome made it “catholic.” Nor was the headship of the pope sufficient grounds for catholicity. Instead, they focused on people rather than places. Samuel Collins used a biblical

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standard—namely, Christ’s statement that “by this shall all men know you to be my disciples: if you love one another,” to determine a truly catholic group.26 George Carleton insisted that the true catholic church was the company of all faithful believers, which supports Darren Oldridge’s recent portrayal of religion in the context of early Jacobean society. To Oldridge, the reduction in the sacred status of the physical church and its clergy allowed a new emphasis on the invisible church and its members.27 This reflects the arguments of many defenders of the oath, for whom the definition of “catholic” continually returned back to the question of inner motivation. If there was no purity of faith, there was no catholicity. George Carleton’s work effectively demonstrates the unique emphasis that was part of the oath of allegiance controversy: he argued that purity is necessary for holiness, and a true church must be holy. Thus “the Church of Rome, seeking a title of holiness without holiness of life . . . is assuredly fallen away also from being a Church.”28 This built on Field’s argument in Of the Church: the Roman church erred in the substance of the faith and thus was not part of the catholic church, “for there is no . . . Church to be found where that sincerity and purity of profession is not.”29 This emphasis on purity demonstrates how the concept of catholicity was changing to suit the circumstances of the Jacobean church. As the next section will demonstrate, this emphasis also influenced the development of religious self-identity in two main ways: first, by creating an expectation of edification. Legitimate authority was marked by its intention to improve rather than destroy, and people were expected to consider whether their faith was governed by legitimate authority. Second, it created a subtle acceptance of variation in religion. This is not meant to suggest that this controversy created toleration in England, since that was some way into the future. However, it may well have helped the process along, if only by giving the church’s defenders a chance to practice walking the fine line between condemning their enemies and cautiously acknowledging their almost enemies.

Catholicity and Religious Self-Identity Much of the claim to papal supremacy rested on the commission of Peter by Christ before His ascension. Defenders of the Roman church claimed that Christ first promised to build his church upon Peter and then gave Peter authority when he asked him to “feed my sheep.” The defenders of

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the oath of allegiance insisted that this provided Peter with spiritual, not temporal, power. As Samuel Collins explained it, this request on the part of Christ was connected to Peter’s declaration of love: “So, as everywhere, unity and love is aimed at, which is the bond that couples Christ and his Church.” Peter was a proxy for the church in this situation, representative of the body, not a newly appointed head. To Collins, it is significant that this occurred because of Peter’s internal motivation of love.30 Similarly, William Warmington also limited the meaning of this event. He found it important that the word Christ used was pascare, to feed, not dommari, to rule.31 This, too, suggested that Peter was given spiritual, rather than temporal, authority. It was not new for the defenders of the Roman church to use this verse: Harding had repeated it frequently, and Jewel’s response was that it was not only Peter but all the disciples who were given this task. Also, Jewel pointed out that sheep do not necessarily belong to the person who feeds them, so trying to gain ownership in that way is a false usurpation of power.32 However, Jewel did not examine the internal motivation of this verse as the Jacobean defenders did. They came to the conclusion that the attempt to take on temporal jurisdiction through a spiritual approach was not only false power but diminished the original spiritual authority Christ gave the church. George Carleton argued that the spiritual power that had established the church in the first place sprung from internal faith, and it had once allowed the church to spread the Gospel throughout the world. When the popes abandoned that spiritual power for temporal jurisdiction, they lost both their spiritual and temporal authority.33 Thus, as Carleton argued, the pope’s usurpation of the role of head of the church caused division where there should have been unity.34 Even Blackwell accepted this interpretation, although he attempted to make it more safely ambiguous, saying, “We conclude . . . the Bishop of Rome hath not either actually, or habitually, a temporal jurisdiction, over the whole world, no not over Christians themselves, further then may be necessary for the more . . . easy use of spiritual jurisdiction and power.”35 What this meant for the defenders of the oath was that spiritual authority had been established with the commission to teach, not to control. As the bishop William Barlow phrased it, God’s providence for the government of the church was operative, not vindictive.36 The right to exercise spiritual power was based on a divine commission to edify, so

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the pope’s power should not be used to ruin the power of kings or take away the material goods of a kingdom. Using power in this way meant that the sheep were neither fed nor guided, but punished and robbed. As Lancelot Andrewes put it, “This confusion of spiritual jurisdiction with secular or material power, in fact, reduces a Christian king’s position to an absurdity. The king will be in worse case than his meanest subject.”37 Thus if the pope’s internal motivation was not to edify and help the spiritual lives of his people, he did not have the right to interfere. To a certain extent, this explained the attitude of Jacobean clerics to the role of bishops as well as the role of the king. As Kenneth Fincham has argued, they wanted their prelates to be pastors, focused on teaching and feeding the sheep to the extent that they ignored their own material comfort. This is one reason Jewel remained in such an eminent position: Daniel Featley’s 1609 biography made the story of Jewel’s death into a legend. He said that when people around Jewel worried that another preaching tour would kill him, he responded, “It well becomes a preacher to die in the pulpit.” George Abbot quoted this statement with approval in a speech to the House of Lords in 1610, and it remained a part of Jewel’s growing legacy.38 He was held up as an example of a prelate who focused on his duty to edify rather than on his own profit. Notably, the defenders of the oath considered the duties of the people in the pure catholic church as well as the duties of their pastors. This brings us to the second way that the defenders of the oath of allegiance used internal motivation to limit papal power, which was through a tentative acceptance of variations in religion. Roger Lockyer suggests that this acceptance started at the top with James, who believed that persecution would “merely serve to harden Catholics in their faith, whereas a lighthanded approach might win them over initially to outward conformity and . . . prepare the ground for their ultimate conversion.”39 Many of the defenders suggested that invisibility of the pure catholic church made it vital for people to fully participate. As Carleton said, the catholic church is “known to God, not to man,” arguing that it was through the faith of its members that the invisible church continued, operating through the grace of God in visible churches.40 Similarly, Edmond Richer, the French theologian who encouraged English Catholics to take the oath, acknowledged the role of national churches within the pure catholic church and longed for a general council that would bring them together.41 Lancelot Andrewes took that idea further still and incurred the wrath of

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Thomas Fitzherbert for saying that the continuation of the faith in the catholic church was the responsibility of all men. To Andrewes, this meant that everyone had to live out their faith, but to Fitzherbert this meant that priests and pope had lost their authority over the physical institution of the church.42 These arguments opened the door to accepting variations in faith because they emphasized personal belief over outward forms. Living out the faith was consistently part of Samuel Collins’s argument: he acknowledged that even the pope could be catholic if he had faith, but qualified that by saying that faith did not make one catholic in the Roman sense.43 Similarly, Richard Field defined the church as a blessed company of the truly faithful, not as the members of any one particular church.44 Perhaps the most significant piece for this aspect of the controversy was John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr. As Douglas Trevor and Victor Houliston have both argued, Donne carefully placed himself between the extremists on both the Roman and Protestant sides of the debate.45 To Trevor, this self-positioning “suggests that the model of authority to which [Donne] subscribes is far more flexible” than might be expected. Also, since Donne’s work was approved by James despite its different style and argument than other defenders of the oath, this provides evidence that James aimed to gain obedience rather than uniformity of opinion.46 Trevor supports this argument by referring to letters Donne wrote at approximately the same time, in which he seemed to hold an idea of catholicity “that envisions Church unity as an ideal, but not one that should be pursued with abandon.”47 In contrast, Victor Houliston sees a rather greater desire for religious reconciliation in Donne’s work. He suggests that Donne saw the legitimacy of both the Roman and the English church’s points of view, perhaps due to the Donne family’s Catholicism.48 There is a certain logic to Houliston’s point of view, but at the same time, Donne seemed to be hovering closer to the Protestant than the Roman side in Pseudo-Martyr. As Donne said, “So to offer our liues for defence of the Catholique faith hath euer beene a religious custome; but to cal euery pretence of the Pope Catholique faith, and to bleede to death for it, is a sickenesse and a medicine, which the Primitiue Church neuer vnderstood.”49 This suggests a division between the pure catholic church and the Roman church in Donne’s thinking that reflects one of Jewel’s arguments. Jewel considered the Church of England to be the heir of the primitive apostolic church, in part because it had rejected the traditions of the Roman church.

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Donne, however, applied this argument to the recent papal claim regarding the authority to depose, advising his readers not to believe in such claims to temporal power. Such a belief could harm their inner faith, because “the purest and acceptablest Sacrifice which we can offer to God, which is our liues, may be corrupted . . . with distastefull mixtures.”50 He then went on to praise the monarch’s claims to spiritual power: “For God hath now so farre enlightned vs to the vnderstanding of morall vertue, that we see thereby, that after God hath infused Faith, wee make sure our saluation by a morall obedience to the kings Gouernement.”51 It seems that Donne desired reconciliation, but not at the expense of the royal supremacy. He also emphasized the importance of internal motivation in one’s religious choices. Essentially, he was willing to accept variations in faith, but his willingness had limits. This is a similar point of view to David Owen, who declared that the reason he was writing in defense of the oath of allegiance was to follow men such as John Jewel in “defend[ing] the Princely right against disloyall and vndutifull opponents.” He was willing to ignore variations in the Protestant faith but would not allow anyone to challenge the king’s prerogative.52

John Jewel and the Oath of Allegiance The extent of the controversy over the oath of allegiance, and the emphasis on motivation that it inspired, shows that the controversy was about more than deposing power. It was about the religious self-identity of the members of the English church, who saw their membership in the catholic church as derivative of their own purity of faith. They did not arrive at this conclusion merely from a study of the church fathers or the scriptures, despite the importance of these sources to their arguments. Rather, it was built up from the Elizabethan debates over the nature of the church and the legitimacy of the Church of England, with one of the most important sources being the works of Bishop John Jewel. Other Elizabethan reformers appear in the works of this controversy, such as Hooker, Reynolds, Foxe, and Parker, but their works are included neither as consistently nor as reverently. During the controversy, Jewel was acknowledged as an authority by a majority of the oath’s defenders. William Barlow, Daniel Price, David Owen, Edmond Richer, Richard Harris, and Samuel Collins all referred

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to Jewel’s authority as a historian of the early church and treated him as a model to emulate. John Overall, who wrote the preface to Jewel’s 1609 Collected Works, pointed out that Jewel had shown how the Church of England was connected to the true, catholic and apostolic church. Richard Field used Jewel as a reference, saying that Jewel had already proved that the Roman church did not have reason, the scriptures, or the fathers on its side.53 This was not acceptable to the Romanists, who were scornful of Jewel as both a scholar and a theologian. Robert Parsons dismissed Jewel because he felt that Harding had effectively answered him, making any return to his thought unnecessary. Fitzherbert deliberately quoted from Harding regarding the visible succession. Higgons said that Jewel had helped Laurence Humphrey develop his defense from the fathers against Campion, hinting that if Jewel had not served as Humphrey’s Achates, Humphrey would have had nothing to say.54 It may not be fair to say that the Jacobean polemicists continued where Jewel had left off, but they did take Jewel’s definition of the Church of England as both universal and uniquely English to a new level. This provides an interesting case study for Anthony Milton’s argument that it is possible for historians to learn a lot about the condition of a culture by examining its perception of its own past.55 In this case, Jewel’s challenge had placed the English church on the offensive against the Roman church. His assumption of authority had allowed both him and his supporters to reject Roman traditions and customs as novelties and innovations rather than proof of its catholicity. The defenders of the oath of allegiance also took on Jewel’s persona of authority. John Overall pronounced the English church to be “now more sound, entire and perfect, both for a body of a particular Church within itself, and a true member of the universal catholic church, than it was before.”56 This is reminiscent of one of Jewel’s final sermons, in which he argued that his challengers should compare the Church of England’s faith to the early church. If they did, they would soon find that “the substance of religion is the same now, that it was then.”57 Similarly, Richard Field aligned himself with Jewel in a ringing defense of the Church of England’s origins. He declared, “[I] say with Bishop Iewell in his worthy challenge, that all the learned Papists in the world cannot proue [that] eyther of them held any of those twenty seauen Articles of popish religion

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mentioned by him.”58 To Field, Jewel’s scholarly examination of the early church and his logical approach to the question of evidence gave further legitimacy to his conclusions.59 As Paul Avis suggested, this allegiance with the universal church gave the English defenders a definitive response to the perpetual question of “where was your Church before Luther?”60 Their answer involved a definition of catholicity based on apostolic purity, which gave the Church of England the authority to determine its own identity, in association with other reformed churches. Catholicity and unity became the basis for the English church’s self-identity as catholic Christians, which James had so dramatically claimed in the preface to his 1609 Defence. He reemphasized this connection later in the same document, saying, “And I will sincerely promise, that whenever any point of the religion I profess shall be proved to be new, and not ancient, catholic and apostolic . . . I will as soon renounce it . . . I will never refuse to embrace any opinion in divinity necessary to salvation, which the whole catholic Church with a unanimous consent, have constantly taught even from the apostles’ days, for the space of many ages thereafter without interruption.”61 This not only established his self-identity as a catholic Christian but further emphasized the purity of his beliefs through their alignment with the apostolic church.

Conclusion W. B. Patterson has called the oath of allegiance controversy one of James’s “conspicuous achievements,” because it brought English Protestants together in a common front. To Patterson, the years of the controversy over the oath marked “the coming of age of the Church of England.”62 Similarly, Roland Usher has identified the years between 1604 and 1619 as the years in which the Church of England was finally fully reconstructed after the chaos of Reformation.63 This may be overstepping the mark, but it is valid to say that the oath of allegiance controversy marks a significant period in the history of the Church of England. The polemicists involved in the controversy created a distinct self-identity for their church, by defining Christian unity in a way that allowed them to reinterpret and refocus the Elizabethans’ claims to catholicity. They used their own recent history to connect to the ancient church, often using John Jewel as a stepping stone to that connection.

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Inner motivation was emphasized even more than it had been in the Jewel–Harding controversy: thus, people who could not be included in Jewel’s definition of the true catholic church could legitimately be included in the definition of the pure catholic church. This was a subtle and complex strategy, which enabled them to maintain their individuality, and yet still remain part of the purified catholic church.

Notes 1. James VI and I, An apologie for the oath of allegiance . . . together with a premonition (London, 1609), 33. 2. James, Premonition, 39. 3. James, sig. DI 3. 4. John Spurr, The Post-Reformation: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 1603–1714 (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), 42. 5. J. P. Sommerville, “Papalist Political Thought and Controversy over the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,” in Catholics and the Protestant Nation, ed. Ethan Shagan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 177. 6. Charles McIlwain, The Political Works of James VI and I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), xxvi; Michael Questier, “Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,” Historical Journal 40, no. 2 (1997): 311. 7. Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of Conformity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 18. 8. Anthony Milton, The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought: 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4. 9. Charles Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3.

10. McIlwain, Political Works, li. 11. Marcy North, “Anonymity’s Subject: James I and the Debate over the Oath of Allegiance,” New Literary History, 33, no. 2 (2002): 215–16. 12. Ferrell, Government by Polemic, 18. 13. Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 275–76. 14. Angela Ranson, “‘Because Thy God Loves England’: Bishop John Jewel and the Catholicity of the Church of England 1535–1599” (PhD diss., University of York, 2013), 84. 15. John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 171. 16. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I,” The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (London: Macmillan, 1993), 24. 17. Arnold Hunt, “Review Article: A Jacobean Consensus? The Religious Policy of James VI and I,” The Seventeenth Century 17, no. 1 (2002): 135. 18. Fincham and Lake, “Ecclesiastical Policies,” 26–28. 19. J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (Taylor and Francis, Kindle Edition), Kindle Locations 2086–2088; John Donne, Pseudo-martyr Wherein out of certaine propositions and gradations, this

222  Impact and Legacy conclusion is euicted. That those which are of the Romane religion in this kingdome, may and ought to take the Oath of allegiance (London, 1610), sig. DI9. 20. William Wilkes, A second memento for magistrates (London, 1608), 45. 21. Roland Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1910), 198, 248. 22. Richard Field, Of the Church five books (London, 1606), 164–65. 23. Field, 169. 24. Paul Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (London: Marshall Morgan and Scott, 1981), 7. 25. Field, Of the Church, 11–12. 26. Samuel Collins, The defence of the Right Reuerend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Elie (London, 1617), 8. 27. Darren Oldridge, Religion and Society in Early Stuart England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 5–6. 28. George Carleton, Directions to know the true Church (London, 1615), 91–92. 29. Field, Of the Church, 32. 30. Collins, Defence of Elie, 7–8. 31. Warmington, A moderate defence of the Oath of Allegiance (London, 1612), 94. 32. John Jewel, A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London, 1567), 20. 33. George Carleton, Iurisdiction regall, episcopall, papall Wherein is declared how the Pope hath intruded vpon the iurisdiction of temporall princes, and of the Church (London, 1610), 39–40. 34. Field, Of the Church, 28. 35. George Blackwell, A large examination taken at Lambeth, according to his Maiesties direction (London, 1609), sig. DI 21. 36. William Barlow, Answer to a Catholic Englishman (London, 1609), 43. 37. Robert Ottley, Launcelot Andrewes (London: Methuen, 1894), 64. 38. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 84, 87.

39. Roger Lockyer, James VI and I (London: Longman Limited, 1998), 133. 40. Carleton, Iurisdiction, 5. 41. Edmond Richer, Treatise of Ecclesiastical and Politic Power (London, 1612), 46–47. 42. Thomas Fitzherbert, An adioynder to the supplement of Father Robert Persons (St. Omer, 1613), 48–49. 43. Collins, Defence of Elie, 482. 44. Field, Of the Church, 11. 45. Douglas Trevor, “John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr and the Oath of Allegiance Controversy,” Reformation 5 (2001): 103; Victor Houliston, “An Apology for Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr,” Review of English Studies 57, no. 231 (2006): 475. 46. Trevor, “Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr,” 107. 47. Trevor, 136. 48. Houliston, “An Apology,” 475, 482. 49. Donne, Pseudo-martyr, sig. DI 113. 50. Donne, 118. 51. Donne, 190. 52. David Owen, Herod and Pilate reconciled: or The concord of papist and puritan (London, 1610), sig. DI 7. 53. Barlow, Answer, 326, 328; Collins, Defence of Elie, 492–93; Field, Of the Church, 749–50; Richard Harris, The English concord in ansvver to Becane’s English iarre (London, 1613), 16, 17; John Overall, Preface, The works of the very learned and reuerend father in God Iohn Ievvell, not long since Bishop of Sarisburie (London, 1609), sig. ¶2; Owen, Herod and Pilate, sig. DI 17; Daniel Price, David His Oath of Allegiance (London, 1613), 35; Richer, Treatise, sig. DI 17. 54. Theophilus Higgons, The first motiue of T. H. Maister of Arts, and lately minister, to suspect the integrity of his religion which was detection of falsehood in D. Humfrey, D. Field, & other learned protestants (1609), 12.

Redefining Unity in the Jacobean Church  223 55. Anthony Milton, “The Church of England, Rome, and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus,” The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (London: Macmillan, 1993), 187. 56. Overall in The works of the very learned and reuerend father in God Iohn Ievvell, not long since Bishop of Sarisburie (London, 1609), sig. ¶3. 57. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 4:1300. 58. Field, Of the Church, 769. 59. Richard Field, Of the Church (London, 1628), 749–50. 60. Avis, Church, 2. 61. James, Premonition, 51. 62. W. B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 122. 63. Usher, Reconstruction, 265.

Chapter 12

Edwin Sandys and the Defense of the Faith

Sarah Bastow

I think it my duty to exhort you . . . defend the faith of Christ even until blood and unto death. —Edwin Sandys, The Sermons of Edwin Sandys1

In 1583, the archbishop of York, Edwin Sandys, wrote to the bishop of Chester, lamenting “the course and condition of this world lost in impiety.” A contemporary of John Jewel, Sandys had risen through the ranks of the church from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, becoming bishop of Worcester, bishop of London, and then archbishop of York. By the 1580s, Sandys was still fighting a battle against what he called the “tyranny of antichrist,” the “papal stragglers, the firebrands of seditions, and the pests of the church.”2 In each of his ecclesiastical roles, he saw the fight for the “true” church as a very real one. While he was involved in the shaping of the new regime in words, writing part of the Bishop’s Bible, he was more often involved in the less academic battles at ground level, taking words and putting them into action, fighting for the Elizabethan church against the “enemies” he categorized as little papist foxes who were destroying the godly vineyard. This chapter will examine the defense of faith both in words and in actions, focusing on the differing approaches of Sandys and John Jewel in their roles as Elizabethan bishops. While Jewel focused on battling opponents through academic writings, becoming what Peter Milward

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described as the “literary champion of the Anglican cause against the displaced Catholics,” Sandys became increasingly concerned with the battles at diocesan level.3 In particular, the outright opposition he faced in Worcestershire saw him drawn into real battles with local Catholics, while Jewel faced less Catholic opposition in his Salisbury bishopric, though he took on the conversion of the area with an equal amount of vigor. The chapter will begin with an examination of the continuities in Sandys’s faith from his beginnings in Edwardian academia, through exile and return. Then, it will examine his actions in the diocese of Worcester where Sandys took up arms against the papist foes in 1559 and show how the words he wrote in 1583 were a reflection of the defense of his faith from beginning to end, as he sought out “destroyers and subverters of the Lord’s vineyard.”4 Current historiography has emphasized the continuity between medieval and reformed religion and rejected the simplified “disenchantment” thesis, but as this chapter will show, Jewel and Sandys shared a common agenda to ensure that the Elizabethan church was a reformed church in the truest sense. For Sandys, there was a clear line to be drawn between papists and reformed.5 Both he and Jewel were striving to break from the past and promote reformed ideas. As Torrance Kirby has argued in this volume, both these men were working “at a critical point of intersection between ‘sacramental culture’ and an emerging ‘culture of persuasion.’”6 Although they operated in the same broad religious environment, the two men were to face differing challenges in implementing this common goal.

Background At first glance John Jewel and Edwin Sandys had much in common. Both were educated in England prior to their exile, Sandys at Cambridge and Jewel at Oxford, and both engaged with the theology of the foreign reformers who came to the universities during Edward’s reign.7 It was at Oxford that Jewel formed a close bond with Peter Martyr, who had accepted Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s invitation in 1547 to become Regius Professor of Divinity.8 Martyr “gathered a small circle of devotees around himself in this largely unreformed university,” and the link between Jewel and Martyr became a strong one.9 It transcended national boundaries, with the two staying in touch via letter long after this period.

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Jewel described Martyr as my “father and most esteemed master in Christ,” and his “pride and the better half of my own soul.”10 Cambridge, too, had links with key theologians of the continent; in 1549, Martin Bucer left Strasbourg for exile in England.11 Because he took up the role of Regius Professor of Divinity there, Bucer and Sandys were likely to have had contact.12 Bucer had clear views on the role of the church, which he had tried to implement in Strasbourg; he believed in a church rooted in history where secular rulers did have a role but where the church was responsible for control of the ecclesiastical personnel and discipline.13 As Cornelius Augustijn has argued, Bucer’s notion of “a historical precedent that allowed for a dominant monarchical role vis-à-vis the Church and state supremacy over the Church” was one that was to be important to the Elizabethan church settlement.14 Bucer’s influence on the development of the English church and, in particular, on Matthew Parker has been discussed elsewhere, but his connections with Cambridge where Sandys was incumbent may explain why, when fleeing via Antwerp, Sandys headed for Strasbourg, which had been Bucer’s former home.15 Sandys was forcibly removed from Catherine’s College during the reign of Mary I, as Fuller’s history of Cambridge relates.16 Fuller tells how John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had arrived in Cambridge on July 15, 1553, and dined with Sandys and other heads of Cambridge houses. Dudley was making a stand for his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, as the new Queen of England, supplanting Mary from the line of succession. He called upon Sandys to preach for him the following day, which would demonstrate support for his cause. Fuller recorded that Sandys prayed and trusted that the Bible would fall open on a relevant verse, saying it was this he would take up in his sermon. The verse was Joshua 1:16: “And they answered Josua, saying, All that thou biddest us, we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go.”17 This illustrates that Sandys was politically astute; although his commitment to his faith was strong, he was also very aware of the consequences of his words. However, this did not prevent his arrest by the triumphant Marian regime nor his subsequent imprisonment. Fortunately, he was able to escape from prison and, like Jewel, he went into exile. Sandys settled at Strasbourg. Peter Martyr had also relocated there, and at Martyr’s invitation, Jewel had joined him. This brought Jewel and Sandys into the same direct orbit around Martyr, where they were joined by other notables such as Edmund Grindal, John Cheke, and Anthony

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Cooke.18 It is here that these men refined and shaped their views, which was important, as they were all to go on to play significant roles in the Elizabethan church. Jewel argued for the “Augustinian emphasis upon a figurative interpretation of ‘presence’” in his sermons, and Sandys said that the “graces of God” were offered to all by the word but were “most lively and effectually” by the two sacraments left by Christ, those of baptism and the Lord’s supper.19 Martyr advocated for the significance of the preached word and, as Michael Pasquarello has argued, “by Jewel’s own admission, Vermigli’s role as a mentor and example was significant for his development into a preaching prelate who united eloquence with scriptural and patristic learning.”20 Jewel and Sandys formed a similar reformed theology while in exile, and over time, both had to determine how to apply that theology, while still accommodating their responsibilities and their queen.

The Return to England Sandys and Jewel seem to have experienced similar hopes and fears on their return to England in 1559. Strype recorded that, upon his return from the continent, John Jewel was reliant on the goodwill of others to support him as he “was harboured about three months with Nicolas Culverwel . . . then the lord Williams, of Thame, being sick, sent for him; and with him he abode some time.”21 Jewel himself, writing to Martyr from London in an undated letter that he noted as the fifth he had sent, stated that in England the returned exiles are “strangers at home.”22 The disconnection he felt due to a lack of his own residence and the necessity of relying upon others was a sentiment echoed by Sandys, who recognized that he needed a position and a home—not least because he had a wife and family to consider. Sandys complained to Parker in 1559 that he felt he had been brought lower on his return to England than he had ever been in exile and that “he rightly considered, that these times were given to taking, and not to giving; and that he had stretched forth his hand [in liberality] further than all the rest.”23 Jewel’s letter also informed Martyr that some of their friends had already been marked as bishops but makes no mention of himself or Sandys in this regard. He did note that both he and Sandys had been appointed to the commission to enforce the establishment of religion. These commissions were part of the royal visitation of 1559 designed

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to assess the state of religion. Haugaard has argued that the visitation was designed to “win the loyalty of the English clergy to the religious settlement and to deprive the obstinate of their benefices.”24 Jewel was bound for Devonshire (on the southern circuit) while Sandys was to go to Lancashire and Yorkshire (on the northern circuit).25 Later in 1559, Jewel and Sandys both appeared on the list of clerics who had been earmarked for the vacant bishoprics. After this point, it is difficult to trace direct contact between the two men, beyond that they were both appointed to bishoprics and had contact with Parker, the court, and Elizabeth I. Yet it is clear that Sandys continued to hold Jewel’s opinions in high regard, as Sandys made Hooker tutor to his son, following the recommendations of Jewel.26 Whether or not they were in personal contact, the two men were still working for much the same goal. Their common desire was to ensure that the new Elizabethan church was successful and remained true to the principles of reformed religion. Sandys was sure that unity against the Roman church was needed to combat their threat to reformed religion; throughout the 1560s and into the 1570s, Sandys argued that the greatest threat came in the form of the papist antichrist. Meanwhile, in 1562 Jewel published the Apology, commemorated in this volume, which was an avocation of the stance of the Church of England. Peter Martyr wrote to Jewel congratulating him on its publication, saying that John Alymer, then bishop of London, had sent him a copy; Bishop Cox also wrote to William Cecil noting his approval, for he felt it would be of benefit to Christians throughout Europe.27 The Apology clearly stated that the Elizabethan church, though reformed, was not something new but rather a return to the old, true Christian practice. Significantly, Jewel, too, was concerned with the threat Catholicism posed, noting, “Antichrist is not overthrown but by the brightness of Christ’s coming. As for us, we run not for succour to the fire, as these men’s guise is, but we run to the Scriptures; neither do we reason with the sword, but with the Word of God.”28 This aligned with Sandys’s view that godly religion was a return to the true church and that it was the word of God via the scriptures that would lead people to the light, but Sandys’s exaltation to “defend the faith of Christ even until blood and unto death” suggested he also saw the defense of faith as an active task that required direct intervention.29 By looking at Sandys’s time in Worcester, where he took up office as bishop in 1559, it is possible to see his attempts to turn his congregation to the word of God.

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It is also possible to see that reliance on the Word alone was not enough. While Jewel was conducting a battle for reform though words, Sandys felt the need to take up the fight in a more literal sense.

Defending Faith in the Localities Both Sandys and Jewel expressed initial reluctance to accept an episcopal office, yet both desired a position in the new regime that would allow them to play a significant role in shaping and spreading reformed religion. Prior to accepting the bishopric of Worcester, Sandys had rejected Carlisle and noted he had only accepted Worcester for fear of displeasing the queen if he once again refused.30 Jewel’s acceptance of Salisbury was equally reluctant; in a letter to Martyr in 1559 he noted that “this burden I have positively determined to shake off.”31 However, despite this early resistance, Jewel and Sandys both faced challenges to their faith in their new roles and were robust in responding, albeit via different media. In taking up his first ecclesiastical position as bishop of Worcester, Sandys made attempts to ensure that the diocese was reformed in a true sense. Sandys was very active in the defense of both himself and his faith throughout his career in his preaching and through the courts.32 He prioritized access to the word of God in sermon and book, actively tried to remove all physical reminders of Catholic practice and began to implement a shift in what was expected of clerical personnel. Corruption was to be purged while married clergy were to be supported and encouraged. Thus his words were backed up with deeds and the fight was brought to his door. Here Sandys’s stance desiring a true transformation was slightly at odds with the Elizabethan religious settlement. While it was undoubtedly Protestant in nature, it required minimal conformity rather than any forthright commitment to reformed religion.33 Sandys was not content to allow a surface compliance and was certainly not willing to turn a blind eye to continuing Catholic practice. He wanted to see an abandonment of old superstitious practice and expected nothing less than a true commitment to what he viewed as the true faith. This was to bring him into direct conflict with the Catholics in his diocese. Worcester had once been the sites of early radical reformation, best illustrated by the significant change to the physical fabric of the Cathedral Church building. The records show that on “12 August [1552] the high alter was taken downe to the grownd. Also all the Quire

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with the busshopes stall was taken downe to the stalles, and the great payr of organs were taken downe 30 August.”34 Edwardian reformers had tried to significantly change the physical environment of worship, preempting national changes, and even removing the church organs. As MacCulloch has noted, Worcester was a key church under the Edwardian Protectorates, acting as a “showcase for liturgical change.”35 However, this was short-lived and religious conservatism once again took hold. The bailiff ’s records chronicle that in 1554 a process of restoration began in the cathedral.36 The “whole quire of the college was removed from the clocke howse unto the highe Altar with closure of carved bordes round about the quire” and on the north side “a payre of organs” was reinstated.37 The chronicler also noted that “the chappell in the east parte of the colledgee was goodly prepared, first the Alter, with a picture of our lady with her sonne in her armes.” Thus the Virgin Mary had been reinstated to prominence in the reign of Queen Mary. The position, both spiritually and physically, of the Virgin Mary was to remain a source of contention during Elizabeth’s reign. Jewel faced similar challenges in his diocese of Salisbury. There, Nicholas Shaxton’s early evangelicalism had targeted the veneration of images. While the establishment of the royal supremacy in the reign of Henry VIII had provoked opposition, the diocese had seen stability and acquiescence to the varying regimes under the leadership of John Capon. After his death in 1557, the see was left unoccupied until Jewel took up office.38 Once there, Jewel wrote to Peter Martyr, commenting that “the cathedral churches have become dens of robbers or more wicked.”39 Like Sandys, Jewel found “very many things amiss . . . which we took much and grievously to heart” during his first visitation as bishop of his new diocese in 1562.40 Like Sandys, Jewel faced opposition to the dismantling of ceremonial aspects of the old Catholic Church. They both had to actively remove and destroy images, as the early English reformers had.41 For Sandys, this involved the dismantling of church decoration and the trapping of Catholicism; it was recorded that “the crosse and the image of our Ladie were burnt in the churchyard.”42 Diarmaid MacCulloch and Philip Hughes have speculated that this could have been the image of Mary from the rood screen, but it could also have been an image of Our Lady of Worcester, who had played an important role in the religious life of the medieval city.43 In either case, it signaled the active approach of Sandys;

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he was determined to replace the old ways and turn the attention of his flock away from the trappings of the old religion and toward the word of the Gospels. The new regime under Sandys was to prove rigorous in its searching out those who failed to comply; Worcester received two visitations in close proximity. The first was carried out by the order of the new archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, and the second was done at Sandys’s own wish. The findings apparently “gave the new archbishop some disgust” as he routed out corruptions and errors.44 Both men found themselves unpopular as a result of their reformed credentials and the visitation process. Jewell had the cathedral cannons of Salisbury grant him the five days he was entitled to complete his visitation yet noted that his coming was not universally well received. Salisbury’s spire had been struck by lightning and Jewel famously noted that it was good “this happened before I arrived in Salisbury, or it would have been ascribed to my coming.”45 Both he and Sandys faced similar issues in terms of a dearth of educated clergy and the need for the repair of ecclesiastical properties.46 Yet there was one significant difference: the presence of Catholics. Scott Wenig’s work on diocesan reform observed the absence of Catholicism in Jewel’s diocese after the royal and archiepiscopal visitations of 1559–60.47 Yet this was not the case in Worcester, which had an “active catholic element” and it was through the visitation process that Sandys first found himself in direct conflict with those who opposed reform.48 In his case this was a local gentleman, Sir John Bourne, who was a Catholic and an ardent supporter of the old ways. Relations between Sandys and Bourne show the difference between Jewel’s and Sandys’s strategies for reform, especially regarding emphasis and approach. The conflict began on his first visitation of the Worcester diocese. Sandys had ordered that an altar stone should be removed and broken up. Sir John’s men had removed the stone but had not broken it up. Sandys claimed that they had taken the stone to Sir John’s house, and the church wardens were willing to affirm this. Sir John defended himself by saying that he had reused the materials in the pavements.49 This was only the first major conflict between these men; in April 1563, Sandys testified to the privy council that Sir John Bourne was the patron of obstinate papists in the county, especially two men by the names of Arden and Norfolk.50 Sandys had deprived these two men of their office in 1560 for failing to acknowledge the queen as governor of the church and their refusal to use the Book of Common Prayer.51 This action was in itself a cause of

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contention, and Archbishop Matthew Parker had rebuked Sandys for his aggressive approach to reforming Worcester and his confrontational methods of removing Catholicism. Sandys responded by saying that in depriving them he “neither followed affection, nor sought any private gain.”52 By 1563, Sandys was making the point to the Council that Sir John’s status in the county meant that his failure to conform was of particular significance. As he explained, “In reasoning against true religion & in sclandering [sic] of the ministers in the notable hindrance to the gospel for the simple have some opinion of his learning & hange more upon him.”53 Jewel, too, faced problems with unseemly behavior and was forced to take action in the Cathedral Church, where Thomas Symth (teacher) and Robert Chamberlayne (organist) were involved in violent quarrels.54 However, where Jewel followed the moderate approach of the religious settlement, which reflected what Peter Marshall has termed Elizabeth’s idiosyncratic Protestantism, Sandys had sterner requirements for conformity.55 In order to inspire conversion to the reformed faith, it was necessary to have access to the unconverted as audience. Sandys sought to do this by inviting conversation with Sir John Bourne, his main opponent, in a more social environment. Bourne’s account of events in Worcester recorded that he had frequently been invited to dine with Sandys, but circumstances had prevented him coming “oftener.” The “circumstances” were presumably motivated by the fact that Bourne disagreed fundamentally with Sandys on points of religion and did not see dining together as a welcome experience. Sandys himself recorded that his motivation in inviting Sir John and entertaining him so fondly was “to wynne his favour and confirme me his oppynyon in Religion.”56 The concept of hospitality was significant in the early modern psyche and both Sandys and Jewel took their duties as a host seriously. Accounts of Jewel’s hospitality to Zurich student Herman Folkerzheimer attest to the welcome he was provided at the episcopal palace in Salisbury and to the gentlemanly pursuits on offer there, including hunting and sightseeing in the local area.57 However, providing hospitality to those of reformed religion and hosting those of an opposing religion were different prospects. When Sandys found his offers of hospitality to Sir John spurned, he took offense. These rejections also meant that he had lost the opportunity to try to convert his guest to godly religion though conversation and persuasion.58

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Sandys went so far as to invite Sir John to join him for Christmas and was offended that Bourne instead “made his abode” with his own brother-inlaw, who was reported to spend more on the Christmas festivities. Sandys asserted that “I trust my house keeping will be better reported than his.”59 Attempts to persuade Catholics to convert through conversation and teaching were common throughout the Elizabethan era. While this was most frequently a technique applied after imprisonment, Sandys was attempting to engage Bourne by conversing with him gentleman to gentleman.60 Sandys’s attempt was unsuccessful but did illustrate that he was making a concerted effort to reason with Bourne. Gentry resistance to religious reform was indeed to prove greatly significant in maintaining Catholicism throughout the Elizabethan era and a considerable hindrance to Sandys in his attempts to reform religion in Worcester, London, and York.

Clerical Marriage It was not only in the area of iconoclasm that Sandys met opposition in his diocese but also upon the issue of clerical celibacy. This was a more public argument, in part due to Sandys’s sermons on the matter. On inheriting the throne, Elizabeth I immediately made a proclamation to forbid preaching until such time as matters of religion were settled.61 The queen and her regime knew the power of the preacher and recognized the need to control the spoken word. Both Jewel and Sandys also knew the power of the Word, both written and spoken. Like Jewel, Sandys, too, spoke at the Cross and gave numerous sermons throughout his career.62 It was a sermon that triggered the next stage of the disputes in Worcester. Strype’s stylized version of events recorded that Sandys had discovered five of six priests in the city of Worcester keeping whores and this “was so notoriously scandalous” that he spoke of it in a sermon at the cathedral a few days after. He also “took occasion thence to shew how necessary it was to allow priests to marry,” thus linking Catholic celibacy with corrupt practice.63 This is an example of Sandys’s belief that the rooting out of corruption was the duty of a bishop, and indeed of his overly antagonistic approach. Again, Jewel’s approach was vastly different. His second visitation of 1568 “revealed serious charges of adultery and incontinence against both canons and vicars as well as much fighting, drinking, and quarrelling.”64 It is perhaps due to this that the corrupt nature of the

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Catholic clergy became a theme addressed in Jewel’s Apology. Jewel wrote, “The old council of Rome decreed that no man should come to the service said by a priest well known to keep a concubine.”65 Moreover it stated in no uncertain terms that married clergy were not just acceptable but also honorable: “We say that matrimony is holy and honourable in all sorts and states of persons, in the patriarchs, in the Prophets, in the Apostles, in holy martyrs, in the ministers of the Church, and in bishops; and that it is an honest and lawful thing . . . for a man, living in matrimony, to take upon him therewith the dignity of a bishop.”66 Peter Martyr had also written extensively on the subject of marriage, addressing the directly the circumstances, nature, and legality of marriage.67 Sandys shared Jewel’s desire to purge his diocese of corruption while advocating and supporting the situation of new married clergymen in local parishes. Sandys was also personally motivated to ensure the acceptance of married clergy, as he himself was a married man, having taken Cicely Wilford in February 1559 as his second wife. Sandys’s wife was to come under direct criticism during his time in Worcester; again, Sandys was opposed by Sir John Bourne. The sermon delivered by Sandys on clerical marriage acted as a trigger to Bourne: Sandys’s account to the privy council in April 1563 indicated that it had been the most recent source of tension between himself and Sir John, stating that preaching on the subject of marriage that had aggrieved Bourne.68 Here again, we can see the influence of Martyr’s thinking in Sandys’s sermonizing. Martyr saw marriage as a “carefully planned alliance of families,” playing down the role of romantic love and arguing for only a very limited superiority for virginity.69 The sermon Sandys gave elucidated on the evils of children marrying without their parents’ consent, which he argued Sir John should have no complaint about given that this point was supported by “many of the scriptures and authorities.” Sandys’s testimony also stated that Sir John had charged him with making the status of virginity equal to that of marriage in his sermon, which Sandys argued he never did.70 Bourne’s account to the council went into much greater detail on the points of dispute between the two men. Bourne stated that Sandys’s sermon asserted that “betwixt matrimony and the virginall state, there was no impartie, but the virtue and dignitie of bothe was equall, and equally esteemed in the sight of god, Indede he praised both estates well and further that ‘yf I wold beleve hym, I could not finde three good virgins since Chrites tyme, leving the matter with out exerctaton to all

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men to marry, marry / And for proof that single living men that is to saie unmarried men, and special unmarried priests.’”71 Sandys stated that Sir John “favoured not priestes marriages” and that he “mysliketh all priestes wifes and dare call them howers.” Moreover, he noted that Sir John regularly brought the topic of Sandys’s wife into the conversation “to speake ill of her if he coulde,” with the implicit subtext that a woman who married a cleric was not to be respected.72 Although Sir John’s objections were at first about the theological points regarding the comparative status of marriage versus virginity, they soon related back to Sandys’s enthusiasm for promoting the marriage of the clergy. Sir John’s views of married clergy were in line with his wider adherence to Catholic belief. They also echoed the views of his former mistress Queen Mary, who stated in her royal articles that a married priest was polluted and “his sacraments consequently also polluted, although not necessarily invalid.”73 Thus Sandys and Sir John Bourne were once again in conflict. The dispute over married priests spilled out into violence when there was an attack on two ministers’ wives whom Sandys recorded were “honest and sober” gentlewomen. The incident took place on the river Severn. As the two women were crossing in their own boat they came across the wife of Sir John Bourne, Bourne’s eldest son, and some of his serving men. Sandys recorded that the son of Sir John, one Anthony Bourne, was “blaspemyng and swearing” and saying “nowe you art amoungst papistes.” Anthony Bourne continued to insult the ministry of the women’s husbands and the women themselves saying, “Mrs Wilson your husband is a good fellowe ye can want no help if ye doo sende for me.” Sandys attributed Anthony Bourne’s behavior to his upbringing, noting that Sir John “somie use suche talke for he hym self termeth the mynysters wives whores,” thus setting the worst example for his son to follow. The incident then escalated into physical violence. One of the serving men who was part of the Bourne party caught or hit (depending on how the evidence is read) another of the minister’s wives, a Mistress Lyvys, on the shoulder, tearing her coat and piercing her to the skin. Sandys noted that this “hurt her and putt them both in great fear.” He went on to elaborate that her coat was torn “almost a fote long,” but not down to the skirt. Thus the promotion of married men, both to their office and in words via Sandys’s sermons, had made the appearance of clergy wives a topic of concern. The implementation of reformed religion and the defense of reformed faith were having violent consequences.

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The disputes continued with a further outbreak of violence at Sandys’s home and further court cases ensuing. The incident on the river had exacerbated existing tensions and one of Sandys’s servants, who was a “cosin” of Mrs. Wilson, was involved in an altercation where swords were drawn to defend both faith and honor. Sandys recorded that his servants met one of Sir John Bourne’s servants, a man called Jones. Sandys’s man called Bourne’s man a knave for being one of the party who had “used a gentlewoman” ill. At this point both men drew their swords and Sandys’s unnamed servant “smote his [Jones’s] sword out of his hande at the first blowe” but “bade hym take it upp agayne,” saying, “I might kill them if I woulde but fight.” It should be noted here that the traditional defender of a wife’s honor was her husband, but the difficult position of married ministers created something of a quandary in terms of asserting and defending their manhood and their wives. On one hand they were husbands, but on the other hand they were also men of God and therefore asserting their manhood in traditional ways was problematic. Mervyn James stated that in the pre-Reformation world the “distinction made in matters of honor, between clergy and laity” was more easily defined as the boundaries that separated them created an “apartness.”74 This apartness was not so distinct in Elizabeth’s reign, but still it was Sandys’s brother who entered the story and intervened to end the “braye,” not Sandys.75 This dispute illustrates that relations in Worcestershire were certainly strained. While neither dispute was framed in terms of religious discussion, both derive from a fundamental disagreement in theological outlook that was connected to background and experience. Seen in terms of older historiographical interpretations, Sir John Bourne represented the old world of Catholicism and honor-based society structured around titles and status.76 While this may be an oversimplification of a paradigm that presented Catholicism as regressive versus a progressive Protestantism, it is undeniable that Sandys and his party represented change. For Sir John, as for many throughout the country, the new world of reformed religion and married clergy was not welcomed. The charges in this case center on name calling and a failure to properly acknowledge status and hierarchy but underlying these are challenges from the old Catholic regime to the new Elizabethan settlement. In Worcester, unlike Salisbury, it seemed that there was a critical mass of the population who favored the old religion. This meant they were ambivalent, if not in outright opposition, toward

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the new regime.77 Sandys may have been concerned about the willingness of the bailiffs in Worcester to take action against Bourne. Among the men who were bailiffs of the city were Robert Jowle and his son-inlaw John Rowland, alias John Steynor, both of whom seem to have been conservative in religion.78 Jowle was bailiff in 1559 and was described by John Davies (one of Worcester’s early Protestants) as “a joly Catholik.”79 If the forces of the law were unwilling to act against fellow Catholics, then this left Sandys and his newly appointed ministers isolated in their attempts to implement even the basic requirements for conformity to the new settlement.

Conclusion The issues facing the bishops installed by Elizabeth I’s new government were numerous, and although they shared some of the same challenges, the picture was not consistent throughout the country. These new bishops should also be viewed as individuals with priorities determined at least in part by the specific localities and shaped by their personalities. Jewel’s writings show us that he was at heart an academic and thus his responses occurred through written combat. Sandys had much the same task as Jewel, to establish the church, but he was more aggressive in his approach and faced more ardent Catholic opposition in his diocese. The task of making the sources of local authority take actions against those who did not subscribe to the settlement, or reformed religion more widely, was a trial that Sandys faced throughout his ecclesiastical career. In Worcester, it was ensuring the bailiffs took actions against those that opposed the changes in religions and personnel. Later, in York, it would be the challenge of purging a judicial bench dominated by Catholic influence. As he progressed through his career his experiences did lead him to a harder line against Catholics, while moderating his calls for further reform, desiring instead a consolidation of the status quo. By the 1580s, his advice to the bishop of Chester was that it was the minister’s duty to “stablish by diligent preaching the Kingdom and dominion of the Son of God,” but that to “defend the faith of Christ” was a difficult task that may require “blood and . . . death.” Sandys’s epistle to Dr. Chaderton, the bishop of Chester, reflected the frustrations he felt as a reformed archbishop in a country that was still not truly reformed, even twenty years after the Elizabethan settlement. There had been concerted efforts made

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in Chester to root out recusancy with the sheriff, William Mutton, pulling down crosses at key locations in the city.80 For Jewel, the production of key texts such as those produced as a result of the controversies with Harding saw him fighting the battle for conversion through the written word. This battle continued after Jewel’s death, taken up by those who continued to subscribe to Jewel’s theological interpretations and who were keen to continue the defense of the reformed faith against both papist and puritan challenges.81 All the attempts to ensure conformity were perhaps not as effective as may have been hoped. Sandys’s letter in the 1580s, mentioned in the introduction, was an exaltation for further actions to be taken to root out the “numerous and crowded . . . wicked assemblies of ungodly men” and “to shake down with utmost vigor the cruelty and tyranny of antichrist.” For both Jewel and Sandys, commitment to their faith was consistent and unwavering. Their defense of this faith was based upon shared ideals and beliefs. They believed in the reformed church, advocated a return to an original and pure faith, and believed that redemption was to be achieved via the Gospels. For Sandys, though, the defense of faith did sometimes mean taking up the fight not just in words but also in deeds.

Notes 1. Edwin Sandys, The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, ed. John Ayre (London: Parker Society, 1842), 440. 2. Sandys, 440–41. 3. Peter Milward, “The Jewel-Harding Controversy,” Albion 6, no. 4 (1974): 320–41. 4. Milward, 67. 5. Alexandra Walsham, “The Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed,” Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (2008): 497–528. 6. See chapter 3. 7. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, unsurprisingly given their purpose as training colleges for the prominent ecclesiastical of Tudor England, saw some of the leading lights of the new movement among their ranks.

8. John Craig, “Jewel, John (1522–1571),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, accessed March 19, 2015, http://www .oxforddnb.com/view/article/14810. 9. Craig, “Jewel, John.” 10. Craig. 11. Kenneth F. Thibodeau, “Science and the Reformation: The Case of Strasbourg,” Sixteenth Century Journal 7, no. 1 (1976): 35–50. 12. E. Duffy, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Penguin, 2003), 179–89. 13. Cornelis Augustijn, “Bucer’s Ecclesiology in the Colloquies with the Catholics, 1540–41,” in Martin Bucer:

Edwin Sandys and the Defense of the Faith  239

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

Reforming Church and Community, ed. David F. Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 107–21. Thomas Dandelet, “Creating a Protestant Constantine: Martin Bucer’s De Regno Christi and the Foundations of English Imperial Political Theology,” in Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires, Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr., ed. Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko, and Peter Wallace (Boston: Brill, 2007), 541. Mark E. VanderSchaaf, “Archbishop Parker’s Efforts toward a Bucerian Discipline in the Church of England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8, no. 1 (1977): 85–103; Patrick Collinson, “Sandys, Edwin (1519?–1588),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, accessed March 30, 2015, http://www .oxforddnb.com/view/article/24649. Thomas Fuller and James Nichols, The History of the University of Cambridge and of Waltham Abbey (London, 1840), 185–86. Joshua 1:16 and Joshua 1:18. William Tyndale (translated), Tyndale’s Old Testament: Being the Pentateuch of 1530, Joshua to 2 Chronicles of 1537 and Jonah a Modern Spelling Edition with Introduction by David Daniell (London: Yale University Press, 1992), 310. Craig, “Jewel, John.” Sandys, “We therefore as Helpers,” Sermons, 302; see also Kirby, “Jewel at Paul’s Cross.” Michael Pasquarello, “John Jewel: Preaching Prelate,” Anglican and Episcopal History 69, no. 3 (2000): 280, 276–94.

21. John Strype, Annals of Reformation, vol. 1, part 1 (Oxford, 1824), 192. 22. Hasting Robinson, ed., The Zurich Letters, first series (London: Parker Society, 1842), 23. 23. Robinson, 194. Strype recorded that Sandys wrote, “They never asked them in what state they stood, nor considered what they wanted: so that, as he protested, in the time of their exile they were not so bare as they were now brought.” These words of Sandys were occasioned by a kind letter of Dr. Parker to him, together with some gratuity sent at the same time. 24. William Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 135. 25. Robinson, Zurich Letters, 23. 26. Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1999), 101. 27. NA, SP12/21 fol. 40, “Bishop Cox to Cecil” (January 19, 1562); Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580, ed. Robert Lemon (London: Longman, 1856), 192; Robinson, Zurich Letters, 339. 28. John Jewel, The Apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (London: Cassell, 1888), part 4. 29. Sandys, Sermons, 440. 30. “Bishop Sandys to Peter Martyr (April 1560),” in Robinson, Zurich Letters, 97. 31. John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel Bishop of Salisbury, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1850), 4:1215. 32. Sarah Bastow, “An Abortive Attempt to Defend an Episcopal Reputation: The Case of Archbishop Edwin Sandys and the Innkeeper’s Wife,” History 97, no. 327 (2012): 380–401. 33. Michael Questier, “Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England,” Journal of

240  Impact and Legacy British Studies 52, no. 2 (2013): 290– 316. Questier notes on page 291 that the extent to which people’s conscious was troubled by the new settlement may have been limited. 34. Diarmaid MacCulloch and Pat Hughes, “A Bailiffs’ List and Chronicle from Worcester,” Antiquaries’ Journal 75 (1995): 247. 35. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 1999), 82. 36. MacCulloch and Hughes, “Bailiffs’ List,” 248. 37. MacCulloch and Hughes. 38. Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 203–6; Angelo J. Louisa, “Capon [Salcot], John (d. 1557),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2009, accessed March 14, 2016, http://www.oxforddnb.com /view/article/4592. 39. “The Cathedral of Salisbury: From the Reformation to the Restoration,” in A History of the County of Wiltshire, ed. R. B. Pugh and Elizabeth Crittall, vol. 3 (London: Victoria County History, 1956), 183–97, accessed February 25, 2016, http://www.british-history.ac.uk /vch/wilts/vol3/pp183-197. 40. Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society, 1485–1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 268. 41. See Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation (Reading: University of Reading, 1986), for a discussion of the shift in emphasis over the early

modern era. For Jewel’s destruction of images, see Jenkins, John Jewel, 211. 42. MacCulloch and Hughes, “Bailiffs’ List,” 249. 43. MacCulloch and Hughes, 249n88. 44. John Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, the First Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford, 1821), 78. 45. “The Cathedral of Salisbury,” 3:183–97. 46. Jenkins, John Jewel, 209. 47. Scott A. Wenig, Straightening the Altars: The Ecclesiastical Vision and Pastoral Achievements of the Progressive Bishops under Elizabeth I, 1559–1579 (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 145. 48. Wenig, 155. 49. National Archives [NA], State Paper [SP] 12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. The disagreement over the fate of attars had been played out on a larger scale as it was not entirely clear that Elizabeth saw the necessity of riding all churches of their Catholic trappings. Fincham and Tyacke acknowledge that “In the post-Marian context of mid-1559 Elizabeth apparently intended originally that the restored altars should remain”; Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547– c. 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 33. 50. NA, SP12/28, fol. 152, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April (?) 1563. 51. NA, SP12/28, fol. 152. 52. “Bishop Sandys of Worcester to Archbishop Parker, October 1560,” in Correspondence of Matthew Parker, ed. John Bruce and Thomas Thomson Perowne (Oregon: Parker Society, 1853), 125. 53. NA, SP12/28, fol. 152, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April (?) 1563.

Edwin Sandys and the Defense of the Faith  241 54. NA, SP12/28, fol. 152. 55. Peter Marshall, Reformation England 1480–1642 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 129. 56. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. 57. Jenkins, John Jewel, 217. 58. Felicity Heal, “The Idea of Hospitality in Early Modern England,” Past and Present 102 (1984): 66–93, 389. 59. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. 60. Questier, “Sermons, Separatists,” 290–316. 61. “Queen Elizabeth’s Proclamation to Forbid Preaching (1558),” in Documents Illustrative of English Church History, ed. Henry Gee and William John Hardy (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 416–17. 62. Sandys, Sermons. From the published sermons of Sandys eight were preached at St. Paul’s, two of these were preached inside St. Paul’s itself with the other six delivered at the Cross. 63. Strype, Matthew Parker, 78. 64. “The Cathedral of Salisbury,” 3:183–97. 65. Jewel, Works, 4:801. 66. Jewel, 801. 67. Joseph McLelland, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1980), 112. 68. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. 69. McClelland, Peter Martyr Vermigli, 115. 70. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563; SP12/28, fol. 135, “Declaration of the matters wherewith the Bishop

of Worcester has charged Sir John Bourne,” April ? 1563. 71. NA, SP12/28, fol. 135, “Declaration of the matters wherewith the Bishop of Worcester has charged Sir John Bourne,” April ? 1563. 72. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. 73. D. Loades, “The Personal Religion of Mary I,” in The Church of Mary Tudor, ed. Eamon Duffy and David Loades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 19. 74. Mervyn James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 317. 75. NA, SP12/28, fol. 141, “Bishop of Worcester to the Council,” April 1563. 76. Discussion of the development of society from a feudal, violent medieval past to a modern, civilized society begun in Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford: Wiley, 1939; 2000), have been taken up by many others, including James, Society, Politics and Culture; and Stuart Caroll, ed., Cultures of Cultures of Violence: Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 77. Wenig, Straightening the Altars, 159. 78. MacCulloch and Hughes, “Bailiffs’ List,” 235–53. 79. MacCulloch and Hughes, 237. 80. Keith R. Wark, “Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire,” Chatham Society 3, no. 19 (1971): 47. 81. See chapter 7.

Chapter 13

Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue The Role of the Antagonist in the English Church

Joshua Rodda This chapter considers the role played by the enemy in fortifying Jewel’s church: how an imagined or preemptive defense served as genuine validation, and how the needs of both personal certainty and popular polemic were addressed by a complex characterization of—and a fundamental reliance upon—the Catholic opposition. The intention here is to examine a particular, dialogic mode of controversial writing, and to address two questions that are vital to our understanding of the way in which it operated, and the way in which controversy ought to be read. The first question concerns the relationship between religious writing and the human instruments of argument: formal logic and natural reason. The second, not unrelated, concerns the enemy in controversy: how religious dissent could be applied and depicted in justifying a position of religious certainty. With the prominent exception of Peter Lake’s work on the dialectical nature of Protestant polemic and the role of the adversary as contrast, the latter question remains largely unexplored by historians detailing the polemical output of post-Reformation English writers.1 Cultural and intellectual historians have long considered the background of Renaissance humanism and philosophical thought against which religious discourse took place, and there have been calls since the 1990s for studies of the “mechanics” of religious controversy—calls that have, for particular periods, and varieties of writing, been answered with a growing momentum.2 But a tendency to emphasize the subjective, rhetorical, and polemical aspects of controversial writing has at times threatened to

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minimize the theological absolutes upon which these works were built. Greater attention is needed to the ways in which those absolutes were theorized and buttressed against opposition. This chapter will therefore explore the positive role of the enemy in post-Reformation controversy. Its starting point is the opening salvo of Elizabethan confessional debate: the Challenge Sermon delivered by John Jewel at court and from the pulpit at Paul’s Cross from November 1559 into the spring of 1560. It will be argued that these sermons were a genuine call to debate and that in this they match the ethos behind controversy as a whole—a mode of engagement driven by enquiry, intended as a real and thorough test of the church. This test, it is argued, was seen as the best defense. Building on a reading of Jewel’s challenge, the chapter will then present some hypotheses as to the manner in which notions of reasoned argument and necessary opposition informed the fictional polemical dialogue. This form, above all others, aimed at unity through conflict, and thus was a mirror and synecdoche to controversy as a whole. The examples cited come from a selection of predominantly anti-Catholic dialogues, from the reign of Elizabeth through the early Stuarts, and although they range from antipapal polemics written in response to Jesuit missionaries to puritan dialogues produced in the context of the Arminian controversy, the authors are all, in their own minds, defenders of the English church. This chapter will concentrate on Catholic antagonists and the Protestant works that feature them, but it may further be said that a broader study of the post-Reformation dialogue will offer conclusions that cross the confessional spectrum. Antoinina Bevan Zlatar produced an invaluable introduction to the key Elizabethan Protestant examples in 2011, but the roots of the religious dialogue in contemporary assumptions, methods, and authorities still require comprehensive discussion.3 John Jewel’s method in his challenge, it is argued here, is that of the controversial dialogist. But this is because the dialogists’ methods speak to a much more fundamental approach to cross-confessional discourse.

The Challenge Unmasked? Jewel is eminently suitable as a starting point for this discussion, not only because of his role in defending the Elizabethan church but because both his attitude toward reason and his approach to his opponents in

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controversy have long been subject to debate. In the 1960s, the “challenge” in his sermons was revealed—apparently—to be rhetorical posture. Its assertion that Catholics could produce nothing from the early church or scripture to support their innovations was no challenge at all, simply observation, intended to uphold the accepted Elizabethan settlement. The argument presented was in the negative, the criteria of proof assigned were contentious and—for the most part—secondary, and the errors and innovations named excluded points of fundamental difference.4 This was, however, to make a strong assumption about the language of the challenge, as it survives in the printed version of 1560, and to minimize the role Jewel assigned to both the inevitable Catholic response and the approaches to be applied in the ensuing confrontation.5 It can, in fact, be argued more convincingly that the challenge was entirely genuine; that it was intended as a starting gun for debate.6 To support this, and to examine the role Jewel assigns to his Catholic opponents, the methodology described in the challenge will be grouped under three headings: inquiry, fair trial, and structured argument. These will be considered in turn, before their implications are carried into the wider realm of Elizabethan and later controversy and into the construction of anti-Catholic dialogues. Jewel’s challenge is founded in certainty. In attacking the Mass and other innovations, he quite naturally has himself arguing for “Goddes cause, and the truth of God”; in reiterating his challenge, he finds himself “well assured of the truthe therein.”7 This certainty is contrasted with the doubts inherent to Catholic doctrine, but it is not intended to exclude an examination.8 Rather, Jewel welcomes this. As W. M. Southgate argued in relation to his rationalism and zeal for education, Jewel “had faith enough in the rightness of his position to trust . . . free inquiry.”9 Moreover, in the defense of the church and in duty to God’s truth, free inquiry was a necessity, theologically and philosophically ingrained into educated divines. The challenge presents an ideal of inquiry: Jewel’s adversaries, those who refuse reformed communion, will not “harke[n], or inquire to come to knowledge”; his cause will be plain to those who “wyl be moved with truth or reason.” The certainty that Jewel presents is to be sought and found, tried and accepted: the abuses named are “so playne and so manyfeste, that no man, that hathe reason, and wyll consyder therin, can denye it.”10 As much as rhetoric or polemic, what can be seen in the sermon is a vision of collective wisdom; of faith through education, guided inquiry, and acceptance of knowledge.11 This matches what John Booty identified

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as Jewel’s adherence to the working of the Spirit in the collective judgment of the church, and it hints at the driving force behind all controversial endeavors.12 The search for truth is presented as a continuous, necessary effort, with correct understanding of scripture and the light of God as its object.13 Southgate found this same emphasis in Jewel’s Defense of the Apology (1567): “Saie not, Thou arte settled in thy Beliefe, before thou know it. . . . Let Reason leade thee: let Authoritie move thee: let Truthe enforce thee.”14 These elements have thus been touched on by those considering Jewel and his challenge, but they have yet to move the consensus on the sermons away from accusations of mere rhetorical posture.15 The next step, toward a genuine desire for debate, is to be seen in Jewel’s handling of his adversaries, prior and anticipated. In the examination for which he calls, heresy and innovation are presented as a test of his church and of the faith of true believers. This is a defining characteristic of post-Reformation controversy and also a primary motivation behind it.16 Jewel’s challenge is steeped in the language of equitable trial. Having taken 1 Corinthians 11:23 as the text for his sermon (“I have received of the Lord, that which also I delivered unto you”), Jewel takes these words of St. Paul as an “infallible” rule: “Hereby your doinges may best be tryed.”17 The challenge refers to past instances where trial by heresy had maintained true doctrine—“when the mat[t]er came to profe” with the Pelagians, and “in trial” with Helvidius. Equally, when the Catholics’ innovations are “called to trial, to shew their profes, they shall open their handes and fynde nothynge.”18 The judgment of those observing is invoked: on the errors in the Catholic Mass, the printed sermon offers examples “geving you occasion, by these few thinges the better to judge of the rest.”19 The balance inherent to the process is laid out in clear terms: “After ye have once taken aswell summe tast[e] of theyr argumentes, as ye have of ours: ye may the better, and more indifferentlye, judge of bothe.”20 The enemy is thus an integral part of the test. For one thing, their testimony is more valuable than that of Jewel himself: “What if the verye maainteyners, and proctours of the masse, confesse playnely unto the worlde, in theyr bookes openly prynted, & set abrode, that there have ben, and be abuses and errours in the Masse?”21 But Jewel’s adversaries are not only valuable when arguing, despite themselves, for his cause. He also affords them “scope to replye” against him.22 The imagery that underscores his manner of controversy is that of David and Goliath. This—as Booty observed—is precisely how Jewel would later present himself in response to a charge

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of braggadocio from Thomas Harding, tying the figure of David to truth: “Who so avoucheth the manifest, and knowen Trueth . . . ought not therefore to be called Goliath.”23 It is Jewel who makes the analogy a measure of the test.24 In later controversial encounters, writers and disputants on all sides would raise their adversaries up before besting them. Thus the Jesuit John Percy states that his opponent Francis White is “accounted a prime Protestant Controversist” in 1626. A similar approach was taken, briefly, with the imprisoned Edmund Campion in 1581.25 The perceived weight of opposition against Jewel is of value, because it is the severity of the test that validates the outcome. The image of God’s David, or less than David, successfully opposing a flawed but powerful Goliath will be returned to in relation to the controversial dialogue. The intent in Jewel’s challenge is further evident in the manner of test he sets out. This was drawn from his academic background: those inherited means by which truth might be put to trial.26 The challenge places emphasis on the forms of reasoned disputation while emphasizing the sophistry in Catholic arguments.27 Its points are pursued by induction and by things that logically follow—by that same progression of evidence that characterizes all formal debate.28 These efforts are directed against accusations of private interpretation, as St. Paul himself had applied his rule or test: “I gave you not ani pha[n]sie, or devise of mine owne, but that thing only that Christ had before delyvered me.”29 The forms of reasoned debate and the notion of collective wisdom, grounded in scripture and thus set in contrast to Catholic error, similarly separate Jewel’s church from human invention.30 Jewel believed both explicitly and implicitly in the role of reasoned interactions in the search for truth—it is from this that he draws his emphasis on knowledge and faith in the judgment of his hearers.31 As Mary Morrissey points out, his work stands on scripture but also relies on arguments derived from it. This is no contradiction. His truth is an attainable, consistent whole.32 Thus Jewel is eager for the test and demonstration. Most telling of all is the structure of his printed sermon, which following the challenge is set out as a dialogue or debate, with a clear pattern of opposition and response.33 The sermon adopts the forms of disputation in calling for a disputation, and must be interpreted within the context of that practice—a practice that was, in religious controversy, built upon certainty, that relied for polemical and practical reasons upon

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its status as a thorough test, and that separated itself from invention—and accusations thereof—through rigorous performance. To give an example of how such a reading might assist in our understanding of his challenge, the rhetoric and the mechanics of disputation explain Jewel’s negative approach. The role of opponent in a formal debate, which required the production of positive points, was often assigned as an accusation and consequence of innovation, not least by Jewel’s own antagonists.34 In a work of 1623, the Oxford Protestant Henry Rogers made this connection: “In those points in variance betweene us, they are to prove; because they are affirmative, we negative.”35 Just so, Jewel, as respondent and challenger, is formally allowed to set the ground for the dispute and to dismiss or question the affirmative points put forward. This interpretation counters Harding’s criticism of the challenge: “Is not your profession onely to stande upon the negative, to denie, and disprove?”36 Jewel’s call to debate is not undermined in the contemporary practice of disputation by argument in the negative. Nor are his criteria of proof restricted to authorities. The sermons, then, are categorically more than a matter of rhetoric. Jewel wants a real test, knows exactly, formally, how to go about it, and believes it to be the best way to defend his church. Like all educated divines and controversialists, he is at once a man of faith and heir to Renaissance habits of thought and ancient systems for the attainment of truth, methods intrinsically tied to an imperative to rigorous, dialogic argument. David must be confronted by Goliath.

The Dialogic Culture The pattern for this tradition was a journey from certainty, through doubt, back into certainty.37 For Plato and Aristotle, the route to truth was through dialectic; through the clash of opposing arguments. Logical debate—either with an opponent or with one’s self—would produce certain resolution.38 Their certainty that truth could be attained was to be called into question by the New Academy and Cicero—whose dialogic arguments instead emphasized rhetoric, persuasion, and the pursuit of that which was probable. The significance of this will be discussed momentarily, but here it is enough to say with K. J. Wilson that Cicero “lost faith in the absolute irresistibility of dialectical argument.”39 Instead of certain truth, attained through logical debate, the New Academy posited uncertain probability, determined through persuasive discourse. But

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dialogue, the balanced testing of ideas, remained at the forefront. This uncertainty ended with Augustine and with the advent of the Christian faith.40 Now there was an absolute truth, which was in danger of being lost to probabilities and which ought to be defended by means of a reinvigorated rational argument. Once certain truth had been established, the conclusion of any successful discourse had to be consistent with it. As John O’Meara puts it, Augustine “was persuaded . . . that as God was the source of both the way of reason and the way of authority, there could be no possible conflict between these two ways.”41 Thus probability became attainable, Catholic certainty. And again, this was to be achieved through reasoned debate—whether turned inward or directed to examine heresy.42 This pattern was to repeat itself in the decades prior to and during the Reformation. Medieval scholastic logic relied heavily on Aristotle and increasingly on the assumption that mechanical debate could produce truth, to the point where it came under fire for preferring method over accurate conclusions and for giving the “show” of reason to heretics who might apply it to their own ends.43 With the rediscovery of works by Cicero, the notion of absolute truth again gave ground to persuasive ability and the probable.44 But each of these phases had undergone a theological refinement, which would affect its influence in controversy, and would inform the use of the opposition in controversial dialogues. Scholastic reasoning had been called into question by the humanists on the grounds of misuse and clarity and by clergymen concerned with the capacities of fallen man, but there remained the founding principle of Aristotelianism and the driving force behind the medieval tradition: open, equitable debate.45 Although the ability of the individual was suspect, collective reasoning and the formal structure of pro and contra still held weight.46 The double convert Thomas Bell, in his Christian Dialogue of 1609, invoked precisely this approach: “I have deemed it a labour very necessary for the common good, to dispute those most intricate points pro & contra Dialogue-wise; that so all difficulties therein may bee cleered.”47 In fact, an examination of Reformation and post-Reformation controversial dialogues suggests that even the idea of individual reason was no stranger. The Augustinian–Thomist efforts of medieval scholasticism to harmonize faith and reason had not, it is clear, been abandoned.48 K. J. Wilson found this impulse in Thomas More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies, no less, and it can be traced in later works.49 In a dialogue of 1581, the Protestant protagonist tells his opponent, “I knowe there is no

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reason that is contrary to the scripture . . . what ever you saie touching these matters, although it seeme never so reasonable, if it agree not with the worde of God, it is altogether without reason.”50 Controversial dialogists use reason as the measure of their characters’ arguments: those things that “follow,” that “agreeth best with the truth,” are taken to be conclusions, and “better reason” is consistently called for.51 These works indicate a reliance upon a discursive “science” of divinity, whose principles differed but whose apparatus was common to all involved.52 Meanwhile, Cicero’s most important contribution to the post-Reformation dialogue was not the injection of doubt or “credibility,” which was incompatible with Christian truth, nor the renewed emphasis on persuasion, whose limits Jewel had spoken of as reader in humanity and rhetoric at Corpus Christi.53 Rather, it was the literary feature that had encouraged doubt: the creation of independent, authoritative characters on both sides of a given question.54 In Wilson’s view, this rendered the Ciceronian dialogue more exploratory than conclusive.55 But where truth was known, the best efforts of the enemy—precisely what Jewel demands in his challenge—became an extension of Aristotelian integrity in its defense and demonstration.56 The arguments introduced by the heretical other must be as strong and consistent as possible, and thus heresy serves its function as a test of true belief.57 A polemical dialogue of 1581 assures us, “here is as much sayde for them, as they can say for themselves”; “say what ye can,” “doe your worst,” challenges another.58 As a result of these classical, medieval, and Renaissance influences—which, as James McConica has demonstrated, were not so mutually exclusive in the English education system as once was assumed—the Christian humanist synthesis that produced a great many defenders of the English church was at once concerned with reaching truth through Aristotelian conflict and ready to allow for a complex, Ciceronian portrayal of the enemy to reinforce the conclusions made.59 Alexander Cooke sets this out in his 1610 dialogue Pope Joane: “The reason why I have framed it in way of Dialogue, was, that I might meete more fully with all the cavils which thy Proctors use in pleading of this case.”60 The controversial dialogue is held up as the ideal vehicle for a full test and comprehensive disproof. In microcosm, it is controversy itself, the fulfillment of Jewel’s conception of the process. This habit of thought and intellectual rigor encouraged—and was itself encouraged by—a family tree of controversial genres. The central

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branch, perhaps the most obvious, was the practice of public disputation, derived from the examinatory methods of the universities.61 Formal debate with imprisoned or sheltered Catholics was undertaken and reported across the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—often at the behest of the state and church, to be printed for a wide audience. The otherwise partial, polemical accounts that followed are generally written in dialogue fashion and allow the adversary room to be heard, maintaining at least outward reverence for the formal construction and testing of arguments. It is from this practice that Jewel’s method in offering his challenge becomes apparent. The procedures of formal disputation, which included defined roles of opponent and respondent (positive and negative), and use of syllogistic reasoning, were a refined survivor of medieval scholasticism, and have been recognized as offering a model for the controversial variety of dialogue.62 The second branch of the tree was the habit of printing passages of an opponent’s work for refutation, allowing the whole exchange to be read in a single treatise, in utramque partem. Jewel is again characteristic of his time: “In his great controversial works, [he] quoted a large portion of his opponent’s work, confident that his own arguments and the weight of the evidence presented in their support would convince the reader.”63 This goes beyond—though it is based in—certainty. The academic origins and textual implications of the phenomenon have been detailed by Alexandra Walsham, and it, too, displays some cross-pollination with the fictional dialogue.64 In one dialogue, the Catholic participant makes reference to an unanswerable tract, which the author proceeds to oppose through interactions with his character—this fictional adversary follows a real writer’s chain of argument.65 On the other side of the connection, George Gifford’s “Protestant”—in a dialogue of 1583—repeats his opponent’s points in summary throughout their fictionalized debate.66 Walsham traces this habit of repeating opposing arguments to the instruments of classical rhetoric and early Christian writings against heresy (and thus to Augustine), and also finds it reflected in scholastic disputation.67 The aim, again, was legitimacy, and a full presentation and confirmation of the truth—allowing the reader to “judg . . . in differentelie.”68 In other words: Aristotelian integrity. Thomas Harding, through portions of his written exchanges with Jewel, follows this same universal instinct and method, urging his readers to “let both writinges be layd in balance . . . to be weighed.”69

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The fictional polemical dialogue, emerging from a genre that had by this period grown beyond “investigative discussion,” was a third branch or expression of this family tree.70 Like Jewel’s challenge, these works are not just rhetorical constructs. They are genuine expressions and rigorous fortifications of a faith the authors know they can defend. And this has implications for their fictional other. If their antagonists are intended purely as contrast, if the names Babylonius or John Neverbegood represent the limit of their characterization, these dialogues could not be a true defense, a full, scholarly or authoritative test.71 Thomas More had urged his young Messenger in the Dialogue Concerning Heresies to argue as well as he was able for the other side.72 As Alexander Cooke put it in his dialogic Pope Joane of 1610, “Who but a foole would appeale to one of his owne fellowes for triall of his truth?”73 Harding mocks, but also confirms, this intellectual instinct in his answer to Jewel: “What, feared you reproche of dastardnes, if you had called forth no more but one learned ma[n] of all your adversaries, and therefore to shew your hardynesse, added more weight of wordes to your proclamatio[n], and chalenged all the learned men that be [alive]?”74

The Role of the Antagonist The first place to look for this deployment of the opposition is in the dialogists’ own descriptions of their purpose and intent. The Stronge Defence of the Maryage of Pryestes, disputed against “Robin Papyste” in the 1560s, describes itself as an exercise in evidentiary proof, through the clash of arguments.75 Gifford’s contest between papist and Protestant is clearly presented as a disputation, with all that entails in terms of purpose and method—although Gifford further intends to direct the unlearned in debate: “to put the stone & sling into [the] ha[n]ds of little David, to conquere great Goliah withal.”76 Thomas Bell—in a dialogue he introduces with the commandment in Ecclesiasticus 4:28 to strive for truth—has his reformed interlocutor tell his Catholic opponent, “I would have you to put forth plainly and at large, all such doubts as any way doe trouble you: for that I hold to be the best course, for your full satisfaction and confirmation in the truth.”77 Here is another echo of Jewel, another invocation of Aristotelian integrity, reminiscent of Augustine, that further serves to describe form and function.78

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In tending to Christian resolution, the dialogues are generally presented as a fair trial: if not balanced in personality or illumination, at least in setting and opportunities to speak. As Zlatar has noted, Gifford’s Dialogue of 1583 is consistently set out in these terms. The papist is allowed to offer extensive argument, and balance in the roles of examiner and defendant is assumed: “Are yee content to make tryall who bring strongest proves[?] . . . let me heare howe yee can disproove our faith, and afterward I will shewe what I have to disprove yours, and so it shall bee seene which hold the Catholike faith: and which be heretikes.”79 This same concern for equity could be placed in the mouths of the Catholics themselves, in reproof or in praise: Robin Papyste rounds on his adversary with an “I praye you, g[i]ve me a litell leave to speake,” while Bell’s Catholic is more appreciative: “I see and finde you willing to discover every thing truly, & to conceale nothing that seemeth to make for [the opposition].”80 But more surprising than this emphasis on good order and a full examination is how often such equity extends to the abilities of the characters. Gifford’s Catholic is educated and active—a fact that Zlatar attributes to the connection between this dialogue and the 1581 disputations against the imprisoned Campion, of which Gifford’s work was a partial restaging.81 However, this intellectual competition runs deeper than Zlatar’s otherwise detailed analysis observes and further than her sharp delineation of contrasting scholastic (Catholic) and rhetorical (Protestant) approaches allows.82 Both sides in the dialogue can be seen to deploy the mechanisms of scholastic logic, and “reformed” reason plays a large part in Protestant argument more generally. The balance in this case is in fact a measure of equity and challenge common to polemical dialogues and public debates, based in those heterogeneous influences detailed above. Gifford’s papist is versed in scripture and trained in producing formal arguments, and he maintains a degree of intellectual confidence through much of the exchange.83 Nor is he alone among Catholic characters in demonstrating learn84 ing. Jeremy Corderoy, in his Short Dialogue of 1604, describes a church papist who is ready with scriptural citations and prepared with “shrewd” Catholic reasoning—although much of this is shown to be surface-level as the debate progresses.85 Were such inferences not enough to suggest the acknowledged necessity of balance in this variety of controversial dialogue, the Catholic in a work of 1581 objects more directly, legitimizing the exchange of which he is a part: “So simple a scholler as you make me,

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I know so much.”86 Thus when challenges are issued by the Protestant side, the reader is assured that failure to perform them stems neither from impartial conditions, nor from a disparity in skill, but from error.87 Where evidence is offered on the Protestants’ part, meanwhile, the conditions and abilities of the Catholic other assure the reader that this has been tested in rigorous debate. A taste of the arguments on both sides has been had. Victory in the dialogues, then, is not a matter of ability or intellectual standpoint but is simply the result of having the truth on one’s side. Where the Catholic is routed or falls silent, or—as in a few cases—where he sees the error of his ways, this is wholly to be expected. If a dialogue is, as Wilson (from Torquato Tasso) has it, a literary imitation of reasoning, then these controversial religious dialogues show those ancient systems and formulae working as they should.88 The authors are bound to do right by their Catholic speakers in so far as they are in thrall to their educational heritage and accepted dialectical procedures. Moreover, like Jewel, their faith reassures them that they have nothing to fear in doing so. On the reverse, being in error ultimately means that logic is of no help to the Catholic participants, and their abilities fail them when pressed to defend the indefensible. This is why Gifford’s papist withdraws toward the close of his Dialogue with nothing to resort to save for repetitive assertions of points already overturned. Having accused the Protestant of following his own private interpretation, he gradually gives up hope of persuading him to accept the Catholic Church: “I see more and more that I can not prevaile by speaking, and therefore I will give ye over, say even what ye list.”89 The papist tries to claim stalemate: “I see that I cannot remoove you, nor you shall not remoove mee.”90 But the victory Gifford’s Protestant aims at is not a conversion but a comprehensive demonstration of the truth. Zlatar finds his victory in rhetoric and personal intensity, making a compelling argument for the aggressively anti-Catholic undertones of the work in the context of the Catholic threat of the 1580s, but the lasting victory lies in irrefutable evidence and unanswerable arguments, underpinned, in Gifford’s eyes, by God’s grace.91 Victory in the trial is a central concern—particularly in the aftermath of the Campion debates.92 It is further to be remembered that Augustine described personal victory as secondary to the discovery of truth.93 Gifford’s Protestant states, “I may not bee removed from that which I knowe most certainely to be the truth, unto that which is most cursed

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lies,” and the previous 226 pages of detailed, referenced, quasischolastic debate are there to back this assertion up.94 Indeed, wherever the papist accuses the Protestant of empty rhetoric or railing, the response is academic—a return to the matter at hand, a list of scriptural citations, a counter challenge, or an accusation of misguided reasoning.95 Reasoning itself gradually drains from the papist’s arguments. Similarly, Corderoy’s church papist wearies of the debate after an oration composed of distinction, citation, and—eventually—outright polemic.96 In a work of 1581, another Catholic character is told, “If this be al that you can say, master Parson, I perceive you want skill to defende so bad a cause, yea and so doe they that thinke them selves beste able to say moste in the matter.”97 Goliath, put simply, is not the chosen of God. Of course, in the tradition of Plato and the moral and active focus of the humanists, “the goal of dialectic . . . is revelation,” and where conversions are described in the dialogues, these show the format working and offer an example of prudent adherence to it.98 Robin Papyste proves an admirable role model in assuring his “true Christian” opponent, “I do not intend to set my selfe styflye agaynst the truth.”99 Bell’s Catholic “Theophilus” is in search of resolution and at times admits arguments he cannot answer or find fault with.100 Toward the end of the dialogue he is convinced, but he continues to urge arguments for the sake of comprehensive disproof. He, too, sees the benefit of a full test and examination: “Let me still reason for the Papists, as if I were one of them; for when all difficulties are answered, I shall be the stronger in the truth.”101 Here are examples of those who have heeded the call to indifferent study. For the reader, the capitulation of these Catholics offers a further sign of the soundness of the points proved, and confirmation of an (inevitably) successful trial. For “that is a strong proofe which is wroong out of the adversarie, when the enemies of truth are driven to beare witnesse unto the truth.”102

The Use of Intellectual Instruments Of course, a dialogue is not a disputation account—these works are not intended for the same audience as a longer tract, and their trials have to be related in an accessible manner.103 In part, they make an effort to ameliorate academic forms—sometimes by repetition, as in A Stronge Defence: “For to helpe the weake memory of the simple and unlearned, I

Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue  255

wyl beginne againe mine argumente.”104 Gifford’s participants, as Zlatar has noted, eschew complex doctrinal debate in favor of topics more relatable. The distance between this work and accounts of the Campion disputations is, in terms of content, immediately noticeable.105 Gifford himself gives a nod to more consciously academic efforts in his epistle dedicatory: his purpose is, as stated, to arm the unlearned against the Roman Goliath.106 Neither do these dialogues explicitly describe or stage the process of disputation in the way that academic tractates and debate accounts do— their imitatio, following Lucian or Augustine, is of chance encounters on the road or exchanges between friends.107 However, the participants are generally educated—or show signs of education while claiming humility—and although the terminology of disputation is often absent, its purpose and procedures are still identifiable. For a great many religious dialogues, the form retains its role as an imitation of the process of reasoning: the back-and-forth of objection and answer, however polemicized and framed within the characters’ positions, is still a truth engine geared toward Christian resolution.108 Moreover, the detailed apparatus of formal disputation is on display more often than one might expect. A Stronge Defence of the Maryage of Pryestes combines its dialogic structure with a process of objection and answer, making reference to a disputant’s need for strict adherence to the question at hand.109 The process is signposted like an academic debate, and there is use of syllogistic reasoning, explained for the sake of the reader: “I denye the minour or second part of your argument.”110 Gifford’s Dialogue contains a similar explanation: “I confesse your Major, or first propositio[n] of your argument to be true.”111 Jeremy Corderoy’s Short Dialogue includes a statement of hermeneutic principles for the interpretation of scripture and, later, a progression of evidence from scripture to the church fathers that is reminiscent of formal, clerical debate.112 The authors of these works share their educational influences with Jewel, and they display the same assumptions about the value and efficacy of the formal process. As has often been noted of the dialogue form, these works permit an author to include opposing arguments while maintaining a protective distance from them: a questioning of theological positions is allowed, while certainty is maintained.113 But this same protection extends to the integrity of the arguments—it is the dialectic process that offers distance from

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private interpretation. Human agency is minimized by the mechanics of formal disputation and the necessary conclusions of Aristotelian rigor, grounded—for the authors—in the first principles of scripture. “I have sayde nothing of my selfe,” the “virtuous gentleman” insists, in another echo of Paul, while the Protestant in a work of 1610 finds arguments “framed out of [the Catholic’s] fingers ends.”114 Gifford’s papist, blind to his adversary’s method, exclaims, “You judge of al things after your owne reason,” where in fact it is he who has, by Gifford’s process, been driven back to defending absurdities.115 The dialogue form offers accessibility and license. But in addition, a retention of the methodology of disputation, of balanced trial, of a challenge performed, offers a counter to accusations of private interpretation. Integrity, rigor, and reliability—impossible without a worthy opponent.

Challenges Performed The dialogue format is a model and symptom for controversy as a whole, and attention to its application on matters of religious difference can reveal a great deal about the way in which controversial arguments were formed. Moreover, the defense of Jewel’s church, and the discussions that persisted through the Elizabethan height and Stuart extension of theological controversy, represents an important stage in the cultural history of dialectic, disputation, and the role of oppositional debate in European thought.116 Here it is suggested that the controversial examples of this era do not reflect a didactic collapse of the dialogue form in the face of religious retrenchment but rather the repurposing of a varied mental and literary toolbox, in order to test and defend Christian truth.117 And thus the role of the adversary, beyond that of cautionary tale, needs to be reconsidered. In these works, the Catholics offer a moral contrast, but balanced opposition is maintained.118 The relative learning of the speakers could play a role in dealing with specific controversies—provision for an educated ministry, for example, or the charge that Catholics purposefully kept the laity in ignorance—but a lack of learning is not the stereotype that dominates, because this would be contrary to the writers’ purpose.119 The test is the defense, and Gifford’s Dialogue points to it being a continuous one, as his papist departs with the warning, “Another time I wil be better provided for yee.”120 To defend the church and demonstrate God’s promise, David, armed by God (but—and this is a discussion for another

Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue  257

time—using the tools of man), must defeat a suitably imposing Goliath. Like Jewel, venturing his allegiance from the pulpit at St. Paul’s, these writers want that challenge, for personal assurance and for confirming polemic. A claim answered in Pope Joane is that the Protestants “are afraid to reason with common Catholicks; and that when we do reason, the common sort of Catholickes are able to answer all our arguments, and to say also more for us, [than] we can say for our selves: as though ye were the people onely, and wisedome must die with you.”121 This, for the author of the dialogue, as for Jewel, could not stand.

Notes 1. Peter Lake, “Anti-popery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (Harlow: Longman, 1989), 73–74; Peter Lake, “Anti-Puritanism: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke, ed. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 90. 2. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4; Lake, “Anti-Puritanism,” 89–90. More recently, see Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory, Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009); Susan Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 3. Antoinina Bevan Zlatar, Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For other examples, see Roger Deakins, “The Tudor Prose Dialogue:

Genre and Anti-Genre,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 20 (1980): 5–23; Joseph Puterbaugh, “‘Your Selfe Be Judge and Answer Your Selfe’: Formation of Protestant Identity in A Conference Betwixt a Mother a Devout Recusant and Her Sonne a Zealous Protestant,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 419–31; Cathy Shrank, “Disputing Purgatory in Henrician England: Dialogue and Religious Reform,” in Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andreas Höfele, Stephan Laqué, Enno Ruge, and Gabriela Schmidt (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007), 45–62; Cathy Shrank, “Stammering, Snoring and Other Problems in Early Modern Dialogue,” in Writing and Reform in Sixteenth-Century England: Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. John Blakeley and Mike Pincombe (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2008), 99–120. 4. John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 29–30, 126–28, 128–29, 148–49; Brett Usher, “John Jewel Junked,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59 (2008): 507; Mary Morrissey, “The ‘Challenge Controversy’ and the Question of Authority in the Early Elizabethan

258  Impact and Legacy Church,” in The Search for Authority in Reformation Europe, ed. Helen Parish, Elaine Fulton, and Peter Webster (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 148, 153. See André A. Gazal, “John Jewel’s Doctrine of Scriptural Infallibility,” Trinity Journal 29 (2008): 84–85. 5. The last of the sermons was printed as John Jewel, The Copie of a Sermon Pronounced by the Byshop of Salisburie at Paules Crosse the Second Sondaye before Ester in the Yere of our Lord. 1560 (London, 1560); reproduced in John Jewel, The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), 1:3–25. Quotations from the 1560 edition. 6. See Peter Milward, “The JewelHarding Controversy,” Albion 6, no. 4 (1974): 321; Alexandra Walsham, “The Spider and the Bee: The Perils of Printing for Refutation in Tudor England,” in Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning, ed. John N. King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 166–67; Morrissey, “‘Challenge Controversy,’” 153. 7. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. F.viii v, G.iiii r; Booty, John Jewel, 144–45. 8. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. C.ii r, D.v v. 9. W. M. Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 143. 10. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. A.viii r, B.vii v, H.ii r–v. 11. Puterbaugh, “‘Your Selfe Be Judge,’” 423. 12. Booty, John Jewel, 144. 13. Gazal, “Jewel’s Doctrine,” 89, 92. 14. Jewel, A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London, 1567), sig. Bvi r–v; Southgate, John Jewel, 139–43.

15. Booty, John Jewel, compare 122, 141–48 with 148–49. 16. 1 Corinthians 11:19. See R. R. McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue: The Humanist Approaches of Erasmus and More,” Viator 24 (1993): 364; Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 23. 17. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sig. A.v r; Booty, John Jewel, 137, 141, 148. 18. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. G.iii v–G.iiii r. 19. Jewel, sig. C.iiii v. 20. Jewel, sig. D.vi v; see sig. E.ii r–v. 21. Jewel, sigs. B.v v–B.vi r; see sigs. B.vi r–v, C.ii r, C.vi v, D.iiii r, E.vii v. 22. Jewel, F. viii v. 23. John Jewel, A Replie unto M. Hardinges Answeare (London, 1566), sig. ¶4 r–v; Thomas Harding, An Answere to Maister Juelles Chalenge, by Doctor Harding (Louvain, 1564), fol. 1r; Thomas Harding, A Rejoindre to M. Jewels Replie (Antwerp, 1566), sig. C.iii r; Booty, John Jewel, 127; Milward, “Jewel–Harding Controversy,” 325. 24. Harding, Rejoindre, sig. C.iii v. 25. A. C., True Relations of Sundry Conferences had between Certaine Protestant Doctours and a Jesuite called M. Fisher (then Prisoner in London for the Cathlique Fayth:) togeather with Defences of the Same (St. Omer: English College Press, 1626), 22; John Field, The Three Last Dayes Conferences Had in the Tower with Edmund Campion Jesuite, the 18: 23: And 27. of September. 1581 (London: Christopher Barker, 1583), sig. Z.iii v; see Milward, “Jewel–Harding Controversy,” 332, for an example of Jewel being subject to this elevation. 26. Southgate, John Jewel, 3–9; Booty, John Jewel, 8–12; Gazal, “Jewel’s Doctrine,” 85–86.

Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue  259 27. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. C.viii v, D.vi v–E.ii v. 28. Jewel, sigs. C.viii r, E.iii v–E.iiii r, F.i v, F.v r–v, G.vii v–G.viii r. 29. Jewel, sig. A. v r; see sigs. A.vii r, D.iiii r, F.i r, G.viii r, H.ii r. 30. Booty, John Jewel, 143–44, 147. 31. Southgate, John Jewel, 135, 139, 145. 32. Morrissey, “‘Challenge Controversy,’” 154. See Booty, John Jewel, 122, 129–30. 33. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sigs. A.vii iv, F.iir v, F.iiii v, G.iiii r–G.viii v. 34. Booty, John Jewel, 126, 148; Morrissey, “‘Challenge Controversy,’” 153, 158; see John Jewel, The True Copies of the Letters betwene the Reverend Father in God John Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole, upon Occasion of a Sermon Preached before the Quenes Majestie, and Hyr Most Honorable Cou[n]sayle. 1560 (London, 1560), sig. B.ii v. 35. Henry Rogers, An Answer to Mr. Fisher the Jesuite. his Five Propositions Concerning Luther (1623), 7. 36. Harding, Rejoindre, fol. 314r; Booty, John Jewel, 127. 37. McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 367. 38. Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine against the Academics, ed. John J. O’Meara (Westminster MD: Newman Press, 1950), 15; K. J. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions: The Formation of the English Renaissance Dialogue (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1985), x. 39. Augustine, Against the Academics, 15; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 44. 40. Augustine, Against the Academics, esp. 17, 149; McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 362. 41. Augustine, Against the Academics, 22, 150; Charles H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1886), 23. For a more negative perspective, emphasizing Augustine’s

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

introspection: David Marsh, The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 3–4, 11–12; David Marsh, “Dialogue and Discussion in the Renaissance,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ed. Glyn P. Norton, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 270. Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 5, 225. Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 1–2, 94–95; James McConica, “Humanism and Aristotle in Tudor Oxford,” English Historical Review 94 (1979): 291, 294; Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?, 214–15. Deakins, “Tudor Prose Dialogue,” 7–8. Jewel had spent hours as a student performing the part of Cicero on woodland walks: Southgate, John Jewel, 5. McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 359–60. See John Morgan, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 41; John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 43. See Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 24, 51, 156; Alex J. Novikoff, “Anselm, Dialogue, and the Rise of Scholastic Disputation,” Speculum 86 (2011): 394, 417–18. Thomas Bell, A Christian Dialogue, betweene Theophilus a Deformed Catholike in Rome, and Remigius a Reformed Catholike in the Church of England (London: Nicholas Okes, 1609), sig. A3 r, 121.

260  Impact and Legacy 48. Augustine, Against the Academics, 150; Morgan, Godly Learning, 41; Novikoff, “Anselm,” 387, 394, 397. 49. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 148, 154, 169. 50. I. B., A Dialogue, betweene a Vertuous Gentleman and a Popish Priest (London, 1581), sig. E v. 51. John Veron, A Stronge Defence of the Maryage of Pryestes, agaynste the Pope Eustachians, and Tatanites of our Time, Made Dialogue Wise by John Veron, betwixte Robin Papyste, and the True Christian (London: Thomas Marshe, [1562]), fols. 11v, 19v; B., Dialogue, sigs. B.iiii v–B.v r, C.iiii v–C.v r, F.iiii v; George Gifford, A Dialogue betweene a Papist and a Protestant, Applied to the Capacitie of the Unlearned (London: for Tobie Cook, 1583), fols. 5v, 40v–42r, 57v–58r; Alexander Cooke, Pope Joane. A Dialogue betweene a Protestant and a Papist (London: R. Field, 1610), 2, 10, 23–24. 52. Compare McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 373–74, and Gifford, Dialogue, fol. 5r–v, with Veron, Stronge Defence, fols. 10r, 48v; B., Dialogue, sig. C.ii r; Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 8r, 15r, 28v, 50v, 61r, 100r; The State of the Church of Englande, Laide Open in a Conference betweene Diotrephes a Byshop, Tertullus a Papist, Demetrius an Usurer, Pandocheus an Inne-keeper, and Paule a Preacher af the Worde of God (London: R. Waldegrave, 1588), sig. E3r; Bell, Christian Dialogue, sig. A3v; H. B., A Plea to an Appeale: Traversed Dialogue Wise (London, 1626), 2, 10, 59–60. See Rodda, Public Religious Disputation, 48–54. 53. Southgate, John Jewel, 7–8; and see Booty, John Jewel, 9; Marsh, Quattrocento Dialogue, 14. 54. Marsh, Quattrocento Dialogue, 2, 9; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 28–31; McCutcheon, “Heresy and

Dialogue,” 374; Marsh, “Dialogue and Discussion,” 265. 55. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 29, 178. 56. Wilson, 34–35; McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 374. 57. B., Plea to an Appeale, sig. ¶ r; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 31. 58. B., Dialogue, sig. A.iii r–v; Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 5r, 32r. 59. McConica, “Humanism and Aristotle,” 292–93, 296–98; Shrank, “Stammering,” 100, 102; Willem J. van Asselt, “Scholasticism Revisited: Methodological Reflections on the Study of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought,” in Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, ed. Alister Chapman, John Coffey and Brad S. Gregory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 156, 162. See Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 23, 47–50. On the changing construction of the dialogue, see Herford, Studies, 21–22, 27; Virginia Cox, The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in Its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 99. For the synthesis of Plato, Cicero, and Christian ideas, see Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 142. 60. Cooke, Pope Joane, sig. A4 v. 61. See the author’s own Public Religious Disputation, 9–13, 37–67; William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 14–31; Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, 88–89; Debora Shuger, “St. Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere,” Huntington Library Quarterly 72 (2009): 314, 337–46; Keith D. Stanglin, The Missing Public Disputations of Jacobus Arminius: Introduction, Text and Notes (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 12–28; Novikoff, Medieval Culture, esp. 1–2, 7.

Defense, Dialectic, and Dialogue  261 62. Herford, Studies, 40–41; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 51, 55, 60; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 19, 114–23, 159–60, 206; Rodda, Public Religious Disputation, 30–32. 63. Southgate, John Jewel, 140n; Milward, “Jewel-Harding Controversy,” 329–30. 64. Walsham, “Spider and the Bee,” 165–66, 169–70. 65. Veron, Stronge Defence, fol. 1r. Similarly, Cooke, Pope Joane, esp. 27, 74. 66. Gifford, Dialogue, esp. 89. 67. Walsham, “Spider and the Bee,” 165. 68. Jewel, Copie of a Sermon, sig. E.ii r–v; Walsham, “Spider and the Bee,” 169–70. 69. Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a Booke Intituled An Apologie of the Church of England, by Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinitie (Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1569), sigs. ! r, !2 v, !4 v–!5 r; Harding, Rejoindre, sigs. **ii r, **ii v. 70. Marsh, Quattrocento Dialogue, 2. 71. B., Plea to an Appeale, 1; B., Dialogue, sig. B v. 72. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 138, 139–40; McCutcheon, “Heresy and Dialogue,” 376. 73. Cooke, Pope Joane, 54. 74. Harding, Answere, fol. 1r; see Thomas Harding, A Briefe Answere of Thomas Harding Doctor of Divinitie, Touching Certaine Untruthes, with which Maister John Juell Charged Him in His Late Sermon at Paules Crosse the VIII. Of July. Anno. 1565 (Antwerp, 1565), sigs. A.ii r–v, A.viii r; Harding, Rejoindre, sig. **iv v. 75. Veron, Stronge Defence, sigs. A.ii r–v, C.ii r, fol. 2v. 76. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. ¶ r, 3v; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 116. 77. Bell, Christian Dialogue, sig. A2r, 10. 78. Augustine, Against the Academics, 64, 72–74, 98, 142. 79. Gifford, Dialogue, fol. 3v; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 116. See B.,

Dialogue, sigs. D.vii r, F.iiii r–v; B., Plea to an Appeale, 9. 80. Veron, Stronge Defence, fol. 34 v; Bell, Christian Dialogue, 32. 81. Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 4, 116. On the Campion debates, see Alexander Nowell and William Day, A True Report of the Disputation or Rather Private Conference Had in the Tower of London. with Ed. Campion Jesuite, the Last of August. 1581 (London: Christopher Barker, 1583); Field, Three Last Dayes; Thomas M. McCoog, “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, ed. Thomas M. McCoog (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), 119–39; James V. Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debates at the Tower of London in 1581 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999); Peter Lake and Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 587–627; Rodda, Public Religious Disputation, 82–97. 82. Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 82, 121–22, 203. On the contemporary modelling of opposing voices after false philosophical concepts, see Peter Burke, “The Renaissance Dialogue,” Renaissance Studies 3 (1989): 8–9. 83. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 3v–4r, 7r–v, 33v–35r, 40v, 55r, 63r, 68r–v, 81v–82r. 84. Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 24–25, 128. 85. Jeremy Corderoy, A Short Dialogue, wherein is Proved, that No Man can be Saved without Good Workes (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1604), 62–63, 64–65, 73, 79–80, 83, 90. 86. B., Dialogue, sig. Fv v. 87. Veron, Stronge Defence, fols. 16r, 18v, 46r, 51v; B., Dialogue, sigs. B.iiii r, B.iii

262  Impact and Legacy iv–B.v r, B.vii r–v, D.vii r, H v; Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 3v, 4v, 5r, 17v, 31v, 45r, 46r, 55r, 58r, 61v, 72v, 74v, 78v, 92r, 105v; Anon, State of the Church, sigs. E v–E2 r; Bell, Christian Dialogue, 9, 18, 24, 69, 78, 110; Cooke, Pope Joane, 10, 33, 40, 43, 58, 64, 87, 89, 118. 88. Torquato Tasso, Tasso’s Dialogues: A Selection, with the Discourse on the Art of the Dialogue, trans. Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 19, 23, 27, 29; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 13–14. See Novikoff, Medieval Culture, 223. 89. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 100r, 102r. 90. Gifford, fol. 114r. 91. Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 122–23. 92. Rodda, Public Religious Disputation, 83–85, 93–95, 99–100. 93. Augustine, Against the Academics, 44. 94. Gifford, Dialogue, fol. 114r; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 122–23. 95. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 16v, 17v–19r, 21v–22r, 28r. 96. Corderoy, Short Dialogue, 98–105. 97. B., Dialogue, sig. E.iiir; compare Harding, Rejoindre, sigs. ***Ii v–***iii r. 98. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 16, 26–27; Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 270–71, 274–75, 277; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 15–16. 99. Veron, Stronge Defence, fols. 4v, 64v–65r. 100. Bell, Christian Dialogue, 1, 10, 11, 17, 43, 65, 73, 107, 111. 101. Bell, 75, 91, 102. 102. Novatian, cited in Cooke, Pope Joane, sig. A4 r. 103. On the question of disputation as an appropriate mode for dialogue, see

Marsh, Quattrocento Dialogue, 4–5; Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 14, 51–52, 53; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 6; Novikoff, “Anselm,” 402. Further, see Cooke, Pope Joane, sig. A4 v. 104. Veron, Stronge Defence, 22v. 105. Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 116. 106. Gifford, Dialogue, sig. ¶ r. 107. Marsh, Quattrocento Dialogue, 7. 108. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 13–14. 109. Veron, Stronge Defence, sig. B.ii v, fol. 37v. See B., Dialogue, sigs. B.vii r–v, F.iiii r–v; Bell, Christian Dialogue, 15, 107; B., Plea to an Appeale, 12. 110. Veron, Stronge Defence, fols. 20r, 21r, 22v, 49r. 111. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 3v–4r. See Bell, Christian Dialogue, 35, 62; Cooke, Pope Joane, 34–35, 97, 104–5, 125. 112. Corderoy, Short Dialogue, 17–19, 70. See B., Plea to an Appeale, 21, 48. 113. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions, 147; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, vii, 27–28. 114. B., Dialogue, sig. C.ii v; Cooke, Pope Joane, 71. 115. Gifford, Dialogue, fols. 5r–v, 100r. 116. Novikoff, Medieval Culture, 3. 117. Deakins, “Tudor Prose Dialogue,” 23; Burke, “Renaissance Dialogue,” 3; Cox, Renaissance Dialogue, 99–113; Marsh, “Dialogue and Discussion,” 268–69. 118. B., Dialogue, sig. A.iii r; Corderoy, Short Dialogue, 60, 96–97; B., Plea to an Appeale, 7–8, 9; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 18, 116. 119. B., Dialogue, from sig. B v; Gifford, Dialogue, fol. 57r; Anon, State of the Church, sigs. G3 v–H v; Zlatar, Reformation Fictions, 24. 120. Gifford, Dialogue, fol. 115r. 121. Cooke, Pope Joane, 107.

Chapter 14

A Multifaceted Jewel English Episcopacy, Ignatian Authenticity, and the Rise of Critical Patristic Scholarship

Paul A. Hartog In his 2009 monograph The Church of England and Christian Antiquity, Jean-Louis Quantin declared that “the development of English patristic scholarship,” as contextualized by the nascent Anglican debates, “calls for future investigation.”1 Perhaps this future summons is a moment whose time has come. This essay will specifically argue that the appreciative, yet reasoned, approach exemplified by John Jewel, among others, served as a prism through which English debates about the early church fathers were refracted, leading to modern critical patristic scholarship.2 According to Gary Jenkins, Jewel’s influence upon the Church of England was ambiguously uneven, specifically arising from his “ambivalent use” of the church fathers.3 Jenkins maintained that Jewel’s via negativarum canonum bequeathed an unstable legacy to the English church.4 Jewel’s combination of a firm Erastianism with “strongly evangelical faith” led to deleterious results: “The theology of the Church of England was subject to the prevailing theological winds, and repeatedly the object of multiple ones.”5 According to Jenkins, this uneasy settlement formed a weak foundation for future patristic studies: “Put another way, in challenging the idea that a Catholic consensus can be found in the Fathers, and by only applying the Fathers in haphazard and duplicitous ways, Jewel muted (if not destroyed) the patristic heritage in the English Church indefinitely.”6

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This chapter resists this negative assessment of John Jewel’s influence upon English patristic studies. Jewel was certainly “a calculating rhetorician” mired in a “politically imprecise world.”7 He was often motivated by political realities and prompted by sociorhetorical strategies.8 Undoubtedly, Jewel did not advance his polemical agenda without “occasionally twisting his sources to suit his purposes and indulging in some most vulgar personal abuse of his opponents.”9 Like many of his contemporaries, he misquoted, misinterpreted, and ridiculed his challengers.10 It is also evident that his modus operandi was often “destructive and negative rather than constructive and positive” and not infrequently entailed a minimalist reading of the early church fathers.11 Moreover, Jewel did not devise a systematic hermeneutic for interpreting the patristic sources.12 But did Jewel really mute and possibly even destroy the patristic heritage within the English church? One could alternatively argue that the very tensions found in Jewel set into motion a trajectory that eventually led to critical patristic scholarship as we know it. As an early luminary, he was one among numerous Anglicans (especially bishops) to light the way along a path that led to a critical ressourcement.13 The confidence to question the unity of the patristic church without casting aside its inheritance led to creative criticism.14 The pioneering perspective of Jewel (and similar leaders of the broader era such as Richard Hooker) formed a “singularly English point of view.”15 As William Haugaard has affirmed, “The era of the English Reformation laid the foundations for the flowering of English patristic scholarship through the troubled years of the next century.”16 Even as the Elizabethan settlement had codified a blend of Protestant doctrine with episcopal polity, the English context became a greenhouse for a curious hybrid—a historical-critical yet appreciative interaction with the church fathers.17 In particular, fiery debates regarding English episcopalianism sparked a renewed interest in the writings ascribed to Ignatius of Antioch, the second-century martyr and associate of Polycarp. The conflagration threatened to devour the extant Ignatian materials, as some believed the whole lot was entirely spurious or hopelessly interpolated. In the end, a purified recension of the Ignatian works survived, yet so as by fire. John Jewel’s patristic argumentation helped spur on this series of events.

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Jewel on the Fathers John Jewel wielded an enormous influence upon the developing Anglican church. In 1609, Richard Bancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, ordered Jewel’s works to be placed in every church across the land.18 According to Jewel’s influential vision, the Church of England was “the true possessor” of the patristic heritage.19 As such, maintained Jewel, the English position “at no point departed from the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers.”20 Therefore, the appeal to the authority of the ancient church was a core argument of his Apology of the Church of England.21 And in his Defense of the Apology of the Church, Jewel (like many others) claimed to be a conservative returnee to early tradition rather than a modern innovator.22 To facilitate his argument, he committed himself to the study of the precedents of early Christianity.23 Jewel manifested an “immense erudition” on the patristic materials, and his debate tactic of choice was “to leap off from a Scriptural spring-board and dive into the Fathers of the first six centuries.”24 Therefore, his polemical methodology was entwined with the history and the theology of the ancient church.25 Jewel challenged the Roman church by throwing down the patristic glove: “In like sort do we also this day allege against you the manifest and undoubted and agreeable judgments of the most ancient learned holy fathers; and thereby, as by approved and faithful witnesses, we disclose the infinite follies and errors of your doctrine.”26 Jewel judged the Roman church to be “the more blameworthy” for renouncing “the judgment and orders of the primitive church and ancient fathers,” while yet vaunting antiquity and making a show of the “old fathers.”27 According to David Manning, “The credibility of Jewel’s discursive reasoning was significantly reliant upon the ideology of primitivism.”28 In short, the Roman church had “forsaken the fellowship of the holy fathers.”29 By contrast, Jewel claimed to “take them and embrace them as the witnesses of God’s truth.”30 According to Jewel, the church of Rome did not possess the true tradition nor had the Church of England departed from the patristic essence. The title page of Jewel’s Challenge Sermon included two mottoes, the second being “Let the ancient customs prevail or be maintained.”31 The sermon itself, first preached at Paul’s Cross in 1559, posited four authorities: the scriptures, the “old doctors,” the general councils, and the

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example of the primitive church.32 The Apology of the Church of England and the Defence of the Apology were founded upon this same fourfold approach, grounded in the final authority of scripture.33 But this reliance upon the patristic inheritance was not without its inherent difficulties, and Jewel recognized that a careful analysis of the corpus of the fathers revealed that they did not speak una voce. As Wyndham Mason Southgate explains, “The very characteristic of the literature which appealed most to him as an apologist and controversialist, its tremendous range and variety, could be a source of grave weakness.”34 In order to buttress his argumentation from the complex patristic literature, Jewel applied several tests in a discerning “exercise of judgment.”35 In order to ensure interpretive stability and trustworthiness, he insisted that “even the most carefully verified teachings of the fathers be further tested.”36 First, Jewel sought a general agreement among the fathers. Second, he required that the fathers evidence a certainty regarding their own conclusions. Third, he insisted that they consider the matter under discussion to be essential to Christian doctrine. The determination of a patristic consensus played a major role in Jewel’s exegesis.37 Therefore, concludes Haugaard, “Jewel reinforced the notion among English churchmen that the early church provided a reasonable norm for determining legitimate developments from scriptural standards.”38 At the same time, he supported a form of sola scriptura in matters of religious authority. In his Treatise of the Holy Scriptures, Jewel said of the early fathers: “We may not build upon them: we may not make them the foundation and warrant of our conscience: we may not put our trust in them.”39 Patristic sources were usually studied not for their own sake, but for the sake of ammunition in contemporary disputes.40 The use of the fathers (for both negative rebuttal and positive support) centered upon the theological and ecclesiastical controversy between the churches of Rome and England.41 Four specific topics of focus were the canon of scripture, the nature of the Eucharist, the claim to papal supremacy, and the organization of the church.42 Moreover, as time progressed, the Church of England’s establishment had to repel opposition from puritan divines, placing “a spotlight on the church fathers that both drew attention to them and illuminated the theological significance of their writings.”43 As Quantin notes, “The Fathers were thus drawn into endless contemporary controversies, and their testimonies often adapted to party-interests.”44

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Jewel’s Scholarship As argued by Southgate, Jewel exhibited “sound knowledge” of patristic literature and its historical background, and also “an unusual fund of commonsense.”45 Jewel objected to the reliance upon secondhand sources, the misquotation of the fathers, and the penchant to quote out of context. Furthermore, he questioned the genuineness of certain works that had long been accepted merely based upon attribution to some patristic author.46 He thus functioned as a harbinger of modern historical-critical scholarship on the fathers.47 Arthur Middleton highlights Jewel’s bent toward the historical-critical endeavor “so that the historical context, the circumstances surrounding the composition of the work, had to be studied in relation to the author’s life and the wider context of all his writings.”48 On the one hand, Jenkins negatively asserts that Jewel’s works give “a pedestrian reading of scriptural texts, a prosaic use of the early Church, and a banal approach to its theological topics.”49 On the other hand, Southgate positively describes Jewel’s appropriation of the fathers in this manner: “The writings were the work of men about whom some facts were known, the product of periods historically clearer than apostolic times. They therefore lent themselves readily to the type of historical and textual criticism in which [Jewel] excelled. The fathers represented a congress before which a problem could be presented, considered, and argued, the verdict being reached by a process of reason.”50 The truth lies somewhere between, that Jewel was neither an amateur seed picker nor a professional critical scholar but an ecclesiastical leader of his times functioning within his contemporary context, a precursor creating tensions to be addressed by subsequent authors. A powerful force was being unleashed with such appropriation, and soon critical examination would focus upon the topic of Anglican episcopacy, encompassing Ignatian and therefore Polycarpian studies.51 Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England mentioned Polycarp in passing, in reference to the play on the word atheists within the narrative of the Smyrnaean bishop’s martyrdom.52 With anti-Catholic intent, Jewel’s treatise contested the view that “one should preach or teach nothing without the bishop’s consent.”53 The language opposed actually echoes Ignatius of Antioch, who counseled not to do anything without the bishop’s consent (Ign. Smyrn. 8–9; Magn. 3–4; Eph. 4; Trall. 2–3, 7; Polyc. 4). As noted by

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Peter Doll, Jewel “did not defend episcopacy on the basis of its divine institution but on the basis of its historic pedigree and effectiveness.”54 Although Ignatius is quoted only once within the Defence of the Apology, he appears numerous times in the other works of Jewel, who obviously used the long recension of the Ignatian correspondence.55 Regarding episcopal and related matters in particular, Jewel cited Ignatius in his disputations with Thomas Harding. Jewel claimed that Harding supported Roman supremacy “with such untruth, and so often corruption of the holy fathers.”56 Jewel argued that Harding distorted patristic exhortations for united submission to the bishop into evidences for Roman supremacy. According to Jewel, the disputed patristic materials meant “there ought to be only one bishop within one diocese, and not one bishop to rule over all the world.”57 Within this polemical context, Jewel cited the long recension of Ignatius’s Epistle to the Trallians: “And therefore Ignatius saith, ‘The bishop in his church is the form of God the Father of all; and, so much as is possible, resembleth (in his office) Christ our God.”58 Jewel also quoted the long recension of the Epistle to the Philadelphians: “So likewise Ignatius, ‘They that be of Christ are with the bishop.’”59 A few paragraphs later, Jewel returned to the long recension of the Epistle to the Trallians, to contend that a single congregation could be described as “all” or “the whole church”: “In these places every particular church is called the whole church. And therefore Ignatius saith: ‘What is a bishop, but one having all rule and power over all?’”60 Furthermore, in opposition to Harding’s understanding of the private Mass, Jewel noted that presbyters accompanied the bishop in the Ignatian description of ministry: “That there was then a great number to serve in the ministry, it may diversely well appear. Ignatius calleth presbyterium, ‘the sacred college,’ the council and company of the bishop.”61

Centuries of Debate Jewel was able to quote the Ignatian literature (and the so-called long recension at that) with mere passing comments.62 Similarly, both Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes quoted from the long form.63 In fact, about a third of Hooker’s references to Ignatius come from interpolations or spurious epistles.64 Torrance Kirby remarks that “Hooker is happy to quote Ignatius (in what are now known to be spurious epistles and later

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interpolations as well as authentic texts) and other fathers in exaltation of the episcopal office.”65 But a firestorm was about to engulf ecclesiastical scholarship. The flames would consume both ink and paper, until the scholarly landscape was burned over and a critically accepted recension of Ignatius was left standing. By passing through this fire, a purified form of patristics would be born—modern, critical scholarship. In 1886, W. D. Killen explained, “The question of the genuineness of the Epistles attributed to Ignatius of Antioch has continued to awaken interest ever since the period of the Reformation. That great religious revolution gave an immense impetus to the critical spirit; and when brought under the light of its examination not a few documents the claim of which had long passed unchallenged were summarily pronounced spurious.”66 But Killen’s summary would not be the last word. A contemporary Englishman, Joseph Barber Lightfoot (the bishop of Durham) was changing the course of scholarship yet again. Our narrative, however, must first reverse for the sake of moving forward. According to S. L. Greenslade, the Reformers held tenaciously to sola scriptura but also argued extensively from the early church fathers.67 In the centuries after Jewel, the eye of the storm was the Ignatian controversy.68 Jewel’s contemporary, John Calvin (1509–1564) had questioned the authenticity of the available Ignatian correspondence—“the vile absurdities which have been put forth under the name of Ignatius.”69 In his commentary on Philippians 4:3, Calvin noted how some opponents used the epistles of Clement and Ignatius to argue that the Apostle Paul was married. Calvin replied, “If they quoted correctly, I would not certainly despise men of such eminence. But as writings are brought forward from Eusebius which are spurious, and were contrived by ignorant monks, they are not deserving of much credit among readers of sound judgment.”70 In the first book of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin wrote, “With regard to what they pretend as to Ignatius, if they would have it be of the least importance, let them prove that the apostle enacted laws concerning Lent, and other corruptions. Nothing can be more nauseating, than the absurdities which have been published under the name of Ignatius; and therefore, the conduct of those who provide themselves with such masks for deception is the less entitled to toleration.”71 The mention of Lent in Ignatius is probably a reference to the spurious Epistle to the Philippians 13 (a comment on observing “the period of forty days”).

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In the subsequent decades, both Cambridge and Oxford widely employed Calvin’s Institutes as a textbook.72 In 1623, Nicolaus Vedel, a professor at Geneva, tried to discriminate between the genuine and spurious epistles bearing Ignatius’s name but without a sure footing.73 Further north and decades prior, the Magdeburg Centuriators (1559–74) had already questioned the authenticity of the Ignatian letters, pointing out a seeming incoherence in the works.74 In the Eucharistic debates stemming from the Reformation, sparring partners could highlight Ignatius’s labeling of the Eucharist as “the medicine of immortality.”75 But the focus of conflict usually centered upon the ecclesiastical polity mirrored in Ignatius’s epistles.76 The emphasis upon the episcopacy and the reverence for bishops within the Ignatian letters are well known to historians.77 The Ignatian correspondence is the first explicit testimony to a three-tiered episcopal polity, with clear distinctions between a body of deacons, a council of elders, and a single bishop.78 According to Quantin, “The 17th century undoubtedly marked the summit of Anglican patristic scholarship.”79 Supporters of episcopal polity such as Richard Hooker highlighted the Ignatian letters as early evidence of episcopacy in the face of puritan resistance.80 For example, Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) published five books tracing the early roots of episcopalianism, being opposed by John Milton (1608–1674).81 The dispute between Ussher and Milton triggered a sustained focus upon Ignatius, raising public awareness of and interest in the Ignatian epistles as ostensibly early evidence of episcopalianism.82 Milton claimed that the surviving Ignatian literature was adulterated, to the extent that one simply could not know what was truly “authentick.”83 In response, Ussher defended the authenticity of the middle recension of the Ignatian correspondence (minus the epistle to Polycarp).84 Ussher’s edition of the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp has been called “the masterpiece of 17th century Anglican scholarship.”85 His work was “triumphantly corroborated” by Isaac Voss’s edition of the Greek text of the “middle” recension.86 In the mid-seventeenth century’s debates concerning the nature of the church and its polity, many churchmen prided themselves in an episcopal polity rooted in the patristic heritage. As Quantin has quipped, “Laud had died on the scaffold but Ignatius had been resurrected.”87 Bishop Joseph Hall (1574–1656) judged the case to be closed, boasting that Ignatius the blessed martyr had defended the episcopal cause “so sagaciously.”88 The English high churchmen vigorously published “their prodigious efforts in

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patristic scholarship.”89 Not all were convinced, however, as Jean Daillé (a French Protestant) published sixty-six arguments against the genuineness of the Ignatian letters.90 The “Ignatian spectre” also led scholars to evaluate the supplemental witness of Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians, which refers to Ignatius and his letters in chapters 9 and 13.91 While the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74) expressed doubts about the authenticity of Polycarp’s letter, Caesar Baronius (an Italian cardinal), James Ussher (archbishop of Armagh), Henry Hammond (an Anglican theologian), and Philippe Labbe (a French Jesuit) accepted its genuineness.92 Even David Blondel (the combative French Protestant) accepted the authenticity of Polycarp’s Philippians, although he denied the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles.93 In 1666, Daillé (another Huguenot and a resolute opponent of episcopacy) not only opposed the authenticity of the Ignatian correspondence but also rigorously challenged the integrity of Polycarp’s Philippians.94 Daillé noted that the verb tense of the extant Latin in chapter 13 implies that Ignatius was still alive: Ignatius et qui cum eo sunt (“Ignatius and those who are with him”). Yet the rest of the epistle (particularly chapter 9) seems to assume Ignatius’s martyrdom, who was in his “due place in the presence of the Lord.” Daillé reasoned that chapter 13 was an interpolation in an otherwise authentic letter and that the entire Ignatian correspondence was spurious. In 1672, however, John Pearson (later to become the bishop of Chester) argued that behind the present-tense Latin of Polycarp’s chapter 13 (“Ignatius and those who are with him”) lies the Greek tenseless phrase Ἰγνάτιος καὶ τῶν μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ (“Ignatius and those with him”).95 Pearson’s Vindiciae Ignatianae maintained that Polycarp wrote after he had heard of Ignatius’s martyrdom (chapter 9) but before he had received any exact details (chapter 13).96 Pearson’s work has been described as “the culminating achievement of Ignatian scholarship in the seventeenth century.”97 Quehen adds that “nothing comparable was produced for the next two hundred years.”98 Armed with this simple coup de grace, supporters of the integrity of Polycarp’s epistle seemed to prevail. Anglophone defenders eventually found their crowning achievement in the extensive scholarship of Joseph Barber Lightfoot, bishop of Durham (1828–1889). Lightfoot devoted years of effort to the study of the apostolic fathers, thereby stemming the growing tide of the Tübingen School and its radical reconstructions of the early church.99

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Bishop Lightfoot’s scholarship “marks a watershed in the debate about Ignatius and Polycarp,” “so cogent and compelling were his arguments as a whole.”100 Lightfoot even swayed Adolf von Harnack, the famous German scholar of early Christianity, who praised the English bishop’s work as “the most learned and careful Patristic monograph which has appeared in the nineteenth century.”101 Supporters of episcopacy had survived the siege upon Ignatius, largely aided by the works of English scholar bishops in the pedigree of Jewel, including Ussher, Pearson, and Lightfoot.102 And critical patristic scholarship had been forged upon the anvil of Ignatian and Polycarpian problems.103 Gregory Vall even asserts, “Anyone who doubts the value of historical-critical research . . . ought to look into what has been accomplished in the case of Ignatius of Antioch.”104

English Episcopacy and Ignatian Authenticity The ramparts yet remain. The vast majority of contemporary scholarship still accepts the so-called middle recension of the Ignatian epistles, as established by Bishop Lightfoot and his contemporary Theodor Zahn (a German scholar).105 The short recension, as found in a Syriac version and defended by William Cureton in the 1840s, has been identified as a summarization rather than the original.106 And the long recension has been universally dismissed as spurious, even by more tradition-minded Roman Catholic historians. Admittedly, a few scholars continue to argue that the middle recension was forged as well.107 Recent examples include the studies of Reinoud Weijenbourg, Josep Rius-Camps, Robert Joly, Thomas Lechner, and Reinhard Hübner.108 But one should not be misled by the length of this list, as mainstream scholarship overwhelmingly supports the Ignatian middle recension.109 Only the dating of the Ignatian and Polycarpian correspondence and the unity of Polycarp’s epistle seem generally unsettled in the contemporary scholarly consensus.110 The foundations of this edifice were laid in the times of John Jewel. In the generations emerging from the Reformation, the questionable authenticity of the Ignatian and Polycarpian letters was never simply an antiquarian interest.111 English episcopacy and Ignatian authenticity were inevitably intertwined, because embattled Anglican bishops found an ally in the ancient bishop of Antioch. Neither the episcopalians nor their adversaries functioned as disinterested observers, yet their biased

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interest in the apostolic fathers can now be viewed as a stimulus that forged modern, critical patristic scholarship. The road to a critical and objective patristic scholarship has been a long and arduous one.112 Patristic studies in early modern England were hampered by “the non-availability of patristic texts, the simultaneous publication of genuine and spurious patristic literature without distinctions, and the limited historical knowledge of the patristic period.”113 But facing such hurdles matured and strengthened the scholarly guild, and one can trace a developing methodology used to address the IgnatianPolycarpian problems. The analyses became more detailed, the arguments became more elaborate, and further evidences were cited.114 One may summon the recent work of Allen Brent, professor of early Christian history at King’s College, London, as chief witness. In 2007, Brent published his second book-length Ignatian study, entitled Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the Origin of Episcopacy.115 Brent, a Plymouth Brethren turned Anglican (and now Catholic) argued for Ignatius’s innovation in support of the bishop’s role.116 While Brent’s theory that Ignatius borrowed heavily from pagan mysteries and imperial cult practices seems overstated to some scholars, his conclusion that Ignatius’s episcopal views were novel for his time seems to raise few if any eyebrows.117 And Brent’s summation of the authenticity of the middle recension demonstrates that the “modern consensus” still holds firm, in spite of recent detractors.118 Just three years ago, Vall confidently declared, “This Lightfoot-Zahn consensus has been challenged several times, including very recently, but appears to be more securely founded than ever.”119 This brief journey through English Ignatian and Polycarpian studies has revealed the long-term effect of Jewel’s sixteenth-century approach to the fathers. The trajectory rooted in Jewel and his times neither muted nor destroyed English patristic scholarship.120 Rather, the appreciative yet reasoned judgment modeled by John Jewel (even to the point of tension within his writings) motivated debates that sharpened historical and textual skills, thus providing a tool set for the critical investigation of the fathers.121

Notes 1. Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity

in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 405. 2. For two classic studies on the career of John Jewel, see John Ayre,

274  Impact and Legacy “Biographical Memoir of John Jewel, Sometime Bishop of Salisbury,” in The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, ed. John Ayre, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850), v–xxx; and Charles Webb Le Bas, The Life of Bishop Jewel, Theological Library 11 (London: Rivingtons, 1835). For a recent summary of Jewel’s diocesan ministry, see Scott A. Wenig, “John Jewel and the Reformation of the Diocese of Salisbury, 1560–1571,” Anglican and Episcopal History 73 (2004): 141–68. 3. Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 5. 4. By citing Jewel’s via negativarum canonum, Jenkins references “Jewel’s negative canon whereby he excised the Fathers of Romish notions” (Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 246). “Jewel produced not a single assertion of how the Fathers could be used in a normative way, for the whole goal of his enterprise was to rid the Fathers of any normative, authoritative consensus” (Jenkins, 74). Therefore, Jewel was “wholly consumed by delineating what the ancient Church did not teach” (Jenkins, 74). 5. Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 248, 250. “But in what then does Jewel’s significance consist? It goes back to Jewel’s use of the Church Fathers . . . In this regard Jewel’s ambivalent use of the Fathers, a via negativarum canonum, a minimalist patristic hereditament, seems more aleatory than purposeful, stochastic than precise” (Jenkins, 5). 6. Ryan M. Reeves, Review of Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church, Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (2006): 115. 7. Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 243. See also Rudolph P. Almasy, “‘To

prove good . . . before the world, or at least to . . . cloak it . . . more cunningly’: Textual Desire in John Jewel and Richard Hooker,” Anglican and Episcopal History 77 (2008): 379–401. The political climate should not overshadow other influences, including devotional spirituality. See John Everitt Booty, Three Anglican Divines on Prayer: Jewel, Andrewes, and Hooker (Cambridge: Cowley, 1978). 8. On Jewel’s rhetoric, see David K. Weiser, The Prose Style of John Jewel (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur Universität Salzburg, 1973). 9. Tindal A. Hart, Review of John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England, Modern Churchman 7 (1964): 249. Yet Jewel’s appropriation of patristic sources manifests much that is commendable. See Arthur Pierce Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy (Leominster: Gracewing, 2001), 45–49; Wyndham Mason Southgate, John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 175. 10. Richard A. Crofts, “The Defense of the Elizabethan Church: Jewel, Hooker, and James I,” Anglican Theological Review 1 (1972): 30. 11. André A. Gazal, Review of Gary W. Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church, Trinity Journal 27 (2006): 334. According to Gazal, Jenkins “overstates his case in some instances by alleging Jewel’s approach to have been totally negative” (Gazal, 335). 12. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 45. Jenkins insists that Jewel was “neither a theologian nor a systematic thinker, nor even a dialectician” (Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 249). Therefore, “there is no Jewellian theology” (Jenkins, 4).

A Multifaceted Jewel  275 13. On Jewel and the Elizabethan settlement, see John Everitt Booty, “The Bishop Confronts the Queen: John Jewel and the Failure of the English Reformation,” in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History, ed. Frank Forrester and Timothy George (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 215–31; Arnold Hunt, “Preaching the Elizabethan Settlement,” in Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Peter E. McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Ratigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 366–86. For a more critical assessment of Jewel’s relationship to any purported via media, see Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 3–5. Nevertheless, according to Quantin, “It was commonly believed, at least in France, that Church of England divines had developed a specific style of theological reasoning” (Jean-Louis Quantin, “The Fathers in Seventeenth Century Anglican Theology,” in Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 987). See also the “distinctive English position” in Crofts, “Defense of the Elizabethan Church,” 31. 14. See William P. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England,” Sixteenth Century Journal (1979): 37–60; A. A. Benton, “The Work of the Fathers,” Sewanee Review 3 (1895): 477–502. 15. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 120; cf. Crofts, “Defense of the Elizabethan Church,” 20. Southgate himself argues for a lineage of Cranmer—Jewel—Whitgift— Hooker—the Caroline divines (cf. Paul Ayris, “Continuity and Change in Diocese and Province: The Role of a Tudor Bishop,” Historical Journal 39 [1996]: 312). Richard Hooker called Jewel “the worthiest divine

that Christendom had bred for some hundred years” (quoted in Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 230). On Hooker’s use of Ignatius of Antioch, see Charles R. Henery, A Speaking Life: John Keble and the Anglican Tradition of Ministry and Art (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1995), 69. In John Luoma’s view, Hooker “represents a real advance in patristic scholarship,” as he used the fathers “consistently and critically” (John K. Luoma, “Who Owns the Fathers? Hooker and Cartwright on the Authority of the Primitive Church,” Sixteenth Century Journal [1977]: 59). Cf. Arthur B. Ferguson, “The Historical Perspective of Richard Hooker: A Renaissance Paradox,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1973): 17–49. Nevertheless, although Hooker “relied heavily on patristic sources in his own argumentation,” he accepted the “long” recension of Ignatius (W. J. Torrance Kirby, A Companion to Richard Hooker, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 8 [Leiden: Brill, 2008], 75, 361). 16. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 60. 17. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, vii. According to Middleton, “The presence and voice of the Fathers at the heart of Anglicanism” granted the Church of England its “peculiar character” (Middleton, 7). As Quantin remarks, one of the main features of this English context “was a much greater consideration of the Fathers than that which was commonly associated with continental Protestantism” (Quantin, “Fathers,” 987). Cf. Arthur Michael Ramsey, “The Ancient Fathers and Modern Anglican Theology,” Sobornost 4 (1962): 289–94. 18. See André A. Gazal, “John Jewel’s Doctrine of Scriptural Infallibility,” Trinity Journal 29 (2008): 84. 19. Jenkins, Jewel and the Church, 91.

276  Impact and Legacy 20. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 120. 21. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 272. 22. See Geoffrey W. Bromiley, John Jewel, 1522–1572, the Apologist of the Church of England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1948). 23. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 203. 24. J. C. Sladden in Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 39; cf. J. C. Sladden, “The Appeal to the Fathers in John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, 1560–1571,” Studia Patristica 9 (1966): 594. For Jewel, the “primitive church” was found in the first five hundred or six hundred years of ecclesiastical history (John C. English, “The Duration of the Primitive Church: An Issue for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Anglicans,” Anglican and Episcopal History 73 [2004]: 36, 36n3). See also Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 46. 25. Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 2. 26. Jewel, Defence of the Apology, Works, 3:229. Jewel quotations and paginations come from the multivolume edition of John Ayre, ed., The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50). 27. Jewel, Defence, Works 4:901. See David Stephen Manning, “‘That Is Best, Which Was First’: Christian Primitivism and the Reformation Church of England, 1548–1722,” Reformation and Renaissance Review 13 (2011): 157. 28. Manning, “‘That Is Best,’” 178. 29. Jewel, Defence, Works 3:299. 30. Jewel, 4:901. 31. See Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 40–41. On the return to the

primitive church within the English Reformation, see Robert D. Cornwall, “The Search for the Primitive Church: The Use of the Early Church Fathers in the High Church Anglican Tradition, 1680–1745,” Anglican and Episcopal History 59 (1990): 303–29; English, “Duration of the Primitive Church”; John K. Luoma, “The Primitive Church as a Normative Principle in the Theology of the Sixteenth Century: The Anglican-Puritan Debate over Church Polity as Represented by Richard Hooker and Thomas Cartwright” (PhD diss., Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1974); Manning, “‘That Is Best.’” “The ideology of primitivism helped the Church of England appropriate the primitive Church in such a way that it could claim to have undertaken a theologico-historical re-appropriation of true Christianity” (Manning, 186–87). 32. See Gazal, “Jewel’s Doctrine,” 83; Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 40. Lancelot Andrewes summarized the five sources of Anglican theology as the one Canon, the two Testaments, the three Creeds, the first four Councils, and the five Centuries of the early Fathers. Quantin, “Fathers,” 989. See also F. J. Taylor, “Scripture and Tradition in the Anglican Reformation,” in Scripture and Tradition, ed. F. W. Dillistone (London: Lutterworth, 1955), 53–108. Arthur Michael Ramsey argues that the Caroline divines allowed their theological exposition to be formed by the patristic inheritance, rather than merely searching for patristic proofs as many of their predecessors had done (Ramsey, “Ancient Fathers,” 289–94). 33. Gazal, “Jewel’s Doctrine,” 86. “The councils, Fathers, and early church were authoritative because they agreed with Scripture. Scripture’s authority was supreme” (Gazal, 86).

A Multifaceted Jewel  277 34. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 183. It is, of course, difficult to synthesize or generalize the patristic positions as the Fathers did not speak una voce. 35. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 183. 36. Southgate, 183. 37. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 183. But see Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 234–35, 244–45. 38. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 53. 39. Jewel, Treatise of the Holy Scriptures, Works 4, 1173. 40. “An examination of Anglican roots will demonstrate that the Anglican study of the Fathers was primarily in relation to controversies that Anglicanism had to face in the aftermath of the Reformation and the struggle for Anglican identity, rather than for their own sake” (Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 6). Of course, such a mining of the Fathers for the sake of argumentation was common in the period (among both Roman Catholic and Protestant partisans). 41. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 18. 42. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 176. 43. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 60; cf. 57. See also Quantin, “Fathers,” 1000. 44. Quantin, “Fathers,” 1004. 45. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 180. 46. Southgate, 180. 47. Of course, the historical-critical posture found precursors in the Christian humanists. 48. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 47. 49. Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 245. 50. Southgate, Jewel Doctrinal Authority, 176. 51. “Bishop Jewel had laid out the common line of defense for the

52.

53.

54.

55.

English Church in his assertion that it was reforming itself along the lines of the primitive church. But as the English reformers began to argue among themselves, the argument that Jewel directed at Catholicism was turned against the defenders of the Elizabethan settlement: the English Church was not yet in correspondence with the primitive pattern” (Luoma, “Who Owns the Fathers?,” 45). Cf. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 54n59. “And, when Polycarpus stood to be judged, the people stirred up the president to slay and murder all them which professed the gospel, with those words, Αἶρε τοὺς ἀθέους, that is to say, ‘Rid out of the way these wicked and godless creatures.’ And this was not because it was true that the Christians were godless, but because they would not worship stones and stocks, which were then honoured as God” (Jewel, Apology, Works, 3, 70). Jewel mentions a few times in his Defence of the Apology (Works, 3:321, 437, 624; 4:1043). See also Works, 1:144, 146, 273, 364; 2:695–96, 722, 884. On the Catholic-Protestant debates of the time, see Gary W. Jenkins, “Whoresome Knaves and Illustrious Subjects at the 1559 Westminster Disputation: The Intent and End of an Ecclesio-Political Exercise,” Anglican and Episcopal History 75 (2006): 315–39. Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745–1795 (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 2000), 18. See Jewel, Works, 1:116, 197, 349, 350, 473; 2:588, 636, 727, 898, 926, 989, 1116, 1128; 3:163, 271, 392, 404, 414, 421, 470, 593; 4:778. That Jewel was using interpolations from the “long” recension can be demonstrated by

278  Impact and Legacy comparing Ign. Trall. 3 with Jewel, Works, 1:349; Ign. Trall. 2 with Jewel, Works, 3:470–71, 593; Ign. Philad. 4 with Jewel, Works, 1:116; 2:588, 636; and Ign. Philad. 8 with Jewel, Works, 2:926. Compare also the discussions of Ignatius on Paul and marriage in Jewel, Works, 2:727, 883, 989, 1128; 3:391–92, 414, 421 with the “long” recension of Ign. Philad. 4. Jewel quotes the spurious Ign. Antioch. 8 and 12 in Works, 3:271–72. See John Everitt Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 106–8. 56. Jewel, Reply to Harding’s Answer, Article 4, Works, 1:347. Quotations come from Ayre, Works of John Jewel. 57. Jewel, 1:348. 58. Jewel, 1:349. Cf. Ign. Trall. 3. 59. Jewel, 1:349. Cf. Ign. Philad. 3. 60. Jewel, 1:350. Cf. Ign. Trall. 7. 61. Jewel, Reply to Harding’s Answer, Article 1, Works, 1:197. See Ign. Trall. 2. 62. In 1633, Pierre Halloix (a Jesuit) still declared the genuineness of the extra letters in the “long” recension to be “not improbable” (see Hugh de Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship in the Ignatian Controversy,” The Seventeenth Century 13 [1998]: 70). Quehen also notes that Archbishop John Whitgift (1530–1604) “attached great significance” to Ignatius’ letters (70). 63. J. H. Srawley, Epistles of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (London: SPCK, 1919), 11. 64. Kirby, Companion to Hooker, 75. Hooker cited the (pseudo-)Ignatian materials in order to establish bishops as functioning imago Dei in the administration of “holy things” (Kirby, 453). 65. Kirby, 75. Cf. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship,” 57; Luoma, “Who Owns the Fathers?,” 59; Ferguson, “Historical Perspective of Richard Hooker,” 17–49.

66. William D. Killen, The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious (London: T & T Clark, 1886), ch. 1. 67. S. L. Greenslade, The English Reformers and the Fathers of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), v. Cf. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 17. Middleton summarized six points concerning the Reformers’ ressourcement (Middleton, 17–19). 68. See Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 69–84. 69. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.13.29. English translation from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster, 1960), 158. 70. Calvin, Commentary on Philippians, 4:3. English translation from John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 113. Ironically, Jewel used the Ignatian literature to argue that the Apostle Paul was married (contra Calvin). See Jewel, Works, 2:727, 883, 989, 1128; 3:391–92, 414, 421, in comparison with the “long” recension of Ign. Philad. 4. 71. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.13.29. English translation from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 88. 72. Killen, Ignatian Epistles, 95. 73. Nicolaus Vedel, S. Ignatii episcopi Antiocheni et martyris quae exstant omnia (Geneva, 1623). 74. Magdeburg Centuriators, Ecclesiastica Historia (Basel, 1559–1574), Cent. II, Cap. X, col. 173–74. 75. Ign. Eph. 20.2. Cf. Cyril Charles Richardson, The Christianity of Ignatius of Antioch (New York: AMS, 1967), 55–59; John E. Lawyer,

A Multifaceted Jewel  279 “Eucharist and Martyrdom in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch,” Anglican Theological Review 73 (1991): 280–96. For studies of Jewel on the Eucharist, see Peter Iver Kaufman, “Jewel on the Eucharist,” Anglican and Episcopal History 69 (2000): 421–42; Gordon E. Pruett, “A Protestant Doctrine of the Eucharistic Presence,” Calvin Theological Journal 10 (1975): 151–54; W. J. Torrance Kirby, “Signs and Things Signified: Sacramental Hermeneutics in John Jewel’s ‘Challenge Sermon’ and the ‘Culture of Persuasion’ at Paul’s Cross,” Reformation and Renaissance Review 11 (2009): 57–89. For the social context of this sermon, see W. J. Torrance Kirby, “The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1534–1570,” Renaissance and Reformation 31 (2008): 3–29. 76. On the polity mirrored in Ignatius’s letters, see Maurice F. Wiles, “Ignatius and the Church,” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 750–55. On the possible opposition faced by Ignatius’s episcopal views, see Christine Trevett, “Prophecy and Anti-Episcopal Activity: A Third Error Combatted by Ignatius?,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34 (1983): 1–18. 77. See Eduard Lohse, “Die Entstehung des Bischofsamtes in der frühen Christenheit,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 71 (1980): 58–73; Alvyn Pettersen, “Sending Heretics to Coventry? Ignatius of Antioch on Reverencing Silent Bishops,” Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990): 335–50; Alvyn Pettersen, “The Laity—Bishop’s Pawn? Ignatius of Antioch on the Obedient Christian,” Scottish Journal of Theology 44 (1991): 39–56; Ritva H. Williams, “Bishops as Brokers of Heavenly Goods: Ignatius to the Ephesians,” Proceedings 19 (1999): 119–28. On reverencing

“silent” bishops in Ignatius, see Henry Chadwick, “The Silence of Bishops in Ignatius,” Harvard Theological Review 43 (1950): 169–72; L. F. Pazzolato, “Silenzio del vescovo e parola degli eretici in Ignazio d’Antiochia,” Aevum 44 (1970): 205–18; Harry O. Maier, “The Politics of the Silent Bishop: Silence and Persuasion in Ignatius of Antioch,” Journal of Theological Studies 55 (2004): 503–19. There is a difference between monepiscopacy and a full-blown monarchical episcopacy. See Allen Brent, “Ecumenical Reconciliation and Cultural Episcopates,” Anglican Theological Review 72 (1990): 266–69. 78. James F. McCue, “Bishops, Presbyters, and Priests in Ignatius of Antioch,” Theological Studies 28 (1967): 828–34. While one may interpret elder and bishop as synonymous in 1 Clement and even apply such an understanding to Polycarp’s Philippians, this approach cannot hold any ground in Ignatius. See Andrew M. Selby, “Bishops, Elders, and Deacons in the Philippian Church: Evidence of Plurality from Paul and Polycarp,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 39 (2012): 79–94. For the shifting understanding of “bishop” in the early church, see Jean Zizioulas, “Épiskopè et épiskopos dans l’église primitive: Bref inventaire de la documentation,” Irénikon 56 (1983): 484–502; Peter Meinhold, Studien zu Ignatius von Antiochien (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), 2–8. On the patristic development of the episcopacy, see Francis A. Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York: Newman, 2001). 79. Quantin, “Fathers,” 994. Cf. Cornwall, “Search for the Primitive Church,” 304–5, 315. See also Leslie W. Barnard, “The Use of the Patristic Tradition in the Late Seventeenth and Early

280  Impact and Legacy Eighteenth Centuries,” in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason: A Study in the Criteria of Christian Doctrine, ed. Richard Bauckham and Benjamin Drewery (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 174–203; G. V. Bennett, “Patristic Tradition in Anglican Thought, 1660– 1900,” in Tradition in Luthertum und Anglikanismus, ed. Günther Gassmann and Vilmos Vajta, Oecumenica 1971/72 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1972), 63–87; D. W. Dockrill, “The Fathers and the Theology of the Cambridge Platonists,” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 427–39; Bruno Neveu, “L’érudition ecclésiastique du XVIIe siècle et la nostalgie de l’antiquité chrétienne,” in Religion and Humanism, ed. Keith Robbins, Studies in Church History 17 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 195–223; Thomas M. Parker, “The Rediscovery of the Fathers in the 17th Century Anglican Tradition,” in The Rediscovery of Newman: An Oxford Symposium, ed. John Coulson and A. M. Allchin (London: SPCK, 1967), 31–49. 80. See Rodney Hacking, “St. Ignatius of Antioch and the Renewal of the Anglican Episcopate,” Project Canterbury, accessed June 6, 2016, http://anglicanhistory.org/essays/hack ing1.html. According to Jenkins, John Jewel himself was “lauded and blessed by both sides of this English dilemma; a bipartisan Jewel appealed to by both Puritan and conformist” (Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church, 247). As such, Jewel was “an iconoclast in a prelate’s vestments,” being “both a Puritan and a Prelate” (Jenkins, 245–46). On Jewel as a prelate, see Michael Pasquarello, “John Jewel: Preaching Prelate,” Anglican and Episcopal History 69, no. 3 (2000): 276–94. On the ecclesiastical polity and related debates, see Douglas Stoute, “An Anglican Understanding of Ministry and Church Polity in the 16th Century,” Consensus 12 (1986):

71–83; Martin Ohst, “Von Tyndale zu Laud: Ein problemgeschichtlicher Durchgang durch die Frühgeschichte des englischen Protestantismus,” in Luthers Erben: Studien zur Rezeptionsgeschichte der reformatorischen Theologie Luthers, ed. Notger Slenczka and Walter Sparn (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 137–67. For a placement of Jewel between Roman Catholic and Puritan views within the debates on ecclesiastical polity (as they developed), see Crofts, “Defense of the Elizabethan Church.” 81. John Milton, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and Whether it may be deduc’d from the Apostolical times by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleg’d to that purpose in some late Treatises (London, 1641). 82. Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 69. 83. See Quehen, 71. 84. James Ussher, Polycarpi et Ignatii epistolae (Oxford, 1644). Quantin’s discussion of Ussher confuses the “short” and “middle” recensions (Quantin, Christian Antiquity, 267). As Candida Moss notes, “the royalist pro-episcopacy archbishop James Ussher” first sought out and published the “middle” recension. Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 54. 85. Quantin, “Fathers,” 996. 86. Quantin, 997. Cf. Isaac Vossius, Epistolae genuinae S. Ignatii Martyris (Amsterdam, 1646). Ruinart added the Greek text of Ign. Rom.; see Theodoricus Ruinart, Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (Paris, 1689). 87. Quantin, Christian Antiquity, 404. 88. See Quantin, 267. For representative defenses of episcopalianism in the previous decade, see Joseph Hall,

A Multifaceted Jewel  281 Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted (London, 1639); Jeremy Taylor, Of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy (Oxford, 1642). 89. Cornwall, “Search for the Primitive Church,” 315. For a summary of the “extensive” patristic scholarship published between 1680 and 1745, see Cornwall, 315–22. 90. J. Dallaeus, De Scriptis quae sub Dionysii Aeropagitae et Ignatii Antiocheni nominibus circumferuntur (Geneva, 1666). 91. The phrase “Ignatian spectre” was employed by J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, vol. 2.1 (London: Macmillan, 1889), 237. 92. William R. Schoedel, “Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, vol. 2.27.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 276–77. On Henry Hammond’s emphasis upon Ignatius of Antioch as a defender of episcopacy, see Henry R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Scribner, 1965), 358–68; Thomas Arthur Middleton, “The Study of the Fathers in the Anglican Tradition, 16th–19th Centuries,” MLitt thesis, University of Durham, 1995, 116. 93. Claude Saumaise also denied the authenticity of the Ignatian letters, which he believed were then later interpolated as well (see Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 73, 77). 94. Joannes Dallaeus, De Scripti quae sub Dionysii Areopagitae et Ignatii Antiocheni nominibus circumferuntur (Geneva, 1666). Cf. Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 75. 95. See also Paul A. Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen

Testament 2.134 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 161–65. See the parallel verbless Greek construction in Pol. Phil. inscr.; cf. 9.1. 96. Matthieu de Larroque responded in his Observationes in Ignatianas Pearsonii vindicias (Rousen, 1674). 97. Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 74. Richard Bentley, a contemporary scholar, praised Pearson’s work—“the very dust of his writings is gold” (see Quehen, 78). 98. Quehen, 74–75. 99. Contrast Ferdinand Christian Baur, Ignatianischen Briefe und ihr neuester Kritiker (Tübingen: Fues, 1848); Adolf Hilgenfeld, Die Apostolischen Väter: Untersuchungen über Inhalt und Ursprung der unter ihrem Namen erhaltenen Schriften (Halle: Pfeffer, 1853). 100. Schoedel, “Polycarp of Smyrna,” 278. 101. Adolf von Harnack, “Bishop Lightfoot’s ‘Ignatius and Polycarp,’” Expositor 2 (1885): 402–14. See Schoedel, “Polycarp of Smyrna,” 288–89. 102. According to J. H. Srawley, “The subject is of special interest to Englishmen, as the discussion of the genuineness of these letters found a place in the religious controversies of England . . . ” (Srawley, Epistles of St. Ignatius, 9). Srawley highlights the pivotal roles played by Archbishop Ussher, Bishop Pearson, and Bishop Lightfoot. 103. Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament, 3. 104. Gregory Vall, Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 52. Cf. Hammond Bammel, “Ignatian Problems,” Journal of Theological Studies 33 (1982): 62–79. 105. Theodor Zahn, Ignatius von Antiochien (Gotha: Perthes, 1873).

282  Impact and Legacy 106. William Cureton, The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans (London: Rivingtons, 1845); William Cureton, Vindiciae Ignatianae (London: Rivingtons, 1846); William Cureton, Corpus Ignatianum (London: Rivingtons, 1849). For a response, see Julius Heinrich Petermann, S. Ignatii patris apostolici quae feruntur epistolae (Leipzig: Vogel, 1849). 107. For a historical overview, see Charles Munier, “Où en est la question d’Ignace d’Antioche? Bilan d’un siècle de recherches 1870–1988,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, vol. 2.27.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 359–484. 108. Reinoud Weijenborg, Les lettres d’Ignace d’Antioche. Étude de critique littéraire et de théologie (Leiden: Brill, 1969); Josep Rius-Camps, The Four Authentic Letters of Ignatius, the Martyr: A Critical Study Based on the Anomalies Contained in the Textus Receptus, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 213 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1979); Robert Joly, Le dossier d’Ignace d’Antioche (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1979); Thomas Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochen, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Reinhard M. Hübner, “Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochien,” Zeitschrift für antike Christentum 1 (1997): 44–72; Reinhard M. Hübner, Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert. Mit einem Beitrag von Markus Vinzent, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); cf. Markus

Vinzent, “‘Ich bin kein körperloses Geistwesen,’” in Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert. Mit einem Beitrag von Markus Vinzent, by Reinhard M. Hübner, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 241–86. 109. Srawley, Epistles of St. Ignatius, 14–15; Paul A. Hartog, Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Oxford Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27–32. 110. Hartog, Polycarp’s Epistle, 33–45. Some scholars still follow P. N. Harrison, Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), which argued that our extant epistle of Philippians is a conflation of two distinct letters. For recent summaries of the status of Ignatian scholarship, see Paul Foster, “The Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Paul Foster (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 81–107; Hermut Löhr, “The Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction, ed. Wilhelm Pratscher (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 91–115. For recent summaries of the status of Polycarpian scholarship, see Michael W. Holmes, “Polycarp of Smyrna, Epistle to the Philippians,” in The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Paul Foster (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 108–25; Boudewijn Dehandschutter, “The Epistle of Polycarp,” in The Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction, ed. Wilhelm Pratscher (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 117–33. 111. Srawley, Epistles of St. Ignatius, 18. 112. On the difference between objectivity and neutrality in historical scholarship, see Carl Trueman, Histories and

A Multifaceted Jewel  283 Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). 113. Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans, 18–19. 114. See Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 75. 115. Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the Origin of Episcopacy (London: T & T Clark, 2007). 116. See also Judy Schindler, “The Rise of One-Bishop-Rule in the Early Church: A Study in the Writings of Ignatius and Cyprian,” Baptist Reformation Review 10 (1981): 3–9. 117. See Stuart G. Hall, Review of Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the Origins of Episcopacy, Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008): 331–33. On the possible influence of the imperial cult, see also Allen Brent, “Ignatius of Antioch and the Imperial Cult,” Vigiliae Christianae 52 (1998): 30–58.

118. Brent, Ignatius of Antioch, 95–143. The label “modern consensus” in this context seems to have been coined by William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 4–7; cf. Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship,” 75. 119. Vall, Learning Christ, 53. 120. Contra Jenkins, John Jewel and the Church. 121. I express my gratitude to Prof. Philip Harrold of Trinity School of Ministry for his helpful comments upon a draft of this essay. I also wish to thank Prof. Raymond Mentzer of the University of Iowa for instructing me in the English Reformation and for sponsoring me as a Visiting (Independent) Scholar with the Department of Religious Studies (2005, 2008).

Chapter 15

Defending Reformation Anglicanism The Bishop Jewel Society at Oxford University, 1947–1975

Andrew Atherstone

In the autumn of 1947, seven young men (five undergraduates and two junior clergymen) met at Brasenose College, Oxford, and agreed to establish an evangelical fellowship for members of the University of Oxford who were also members of the Church of England.1 It was to be called the Coverdale Society, after the Bible translator and Edwardian bishop of Exeter, Miles Coverdale, but when it was discovered that he was in fact a Cambridge graduate, the name was swiftly changed to the Bishop Jewel Society.2 John Jewel, Elizabethan bishop of Salisbury, had the perfect credentials. He was not only an Oxford scholar but one of the Church of England’s foremost Reformation champions, author of the Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana (1562), and a hero of the evangelical movement. The society named in his honor had three aims, focused upon Anglicanism’s Reformation formularies: (i) To provide instruction in those wholesome and Scriptural doctrines of the Reformation, contained in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer (1662); and in the polity of the Church of England. (ii) To exhort unto the full and effectual use of the means of grace.

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(iii) To provide, once a term, a Service in full accordance with the Prayer Book rite.3 Put more succinctly, for the benefit of the university proctors, its aim was “to promote Evangelical Churchmanship.”4 These two emphases were equally important—evangelicalism and Anglicanism. The Bishop Jewel Society (BJS) was founded in a context of Anglo-Catholic dominance in the Church of England, and of Plymouth Brethren ecclesiology among evangelical students, but was to play a part in the widespread resurgence of Anglican evangelicalism in the postwar decades.5 There were two pilot events in the spring of 1948, at which Gordon Savage (general secretary of the Church Association) spoke on canon law revision, and L. F. E. Wilkinson (principal of Oak Hill theological college) on “churchmanship: its relevance and responsibilities.”6 Then, after a year of careful planning, the society was formally launched on November 5, 1948, Bonfire Night, an auspicious date. Borrowing the language of the Book of Common Prayer liturgy for the day, the society’s minute book proclaimed with a flourish that it was the anniversaries of “the happy Deliverance of King James I, and the Three Estates of England, from the most traitorous and bloody-intended Massacre by Gunpowder,” and of “the happy arrival of his Majesty King William, for the Deliverance of our Church and Nation,” and furthermore “the happy day of Official Inauguration of the Bishop Jewel Society.”7 They spoke of Jewel’s “inestimable qualities,” especially his crucial role in the Elizabethan settlement, and his “eminent suitability” to have a society named after him.8 The committee considered a “Protestant Pilgrimage” to Sunningwell, near Oxford, where Jewel was briefly vicar in the 1550s.9 They were also delighted to discover his portrait in the senior common room at Merton College and copied his coat of arms from Merton dining hall for their term card.10 Jewel resonated with these young evangelicals because of his articulate defense of Reformation doctrine, especially in the light of Catholic advance. This chapter examines the role and significance of the Bishop Jewel Society during its twenty-eight-year history. It assesses its strategy in training undergraduates in Reformation Anglicanism and its emphasis upon intelligent evangelical engagement with the wider Church of England at both local and national levels. It shows how the society negotiated its relationship with other Christian organizations in Oxford and how the trend toward nondenominational pan-evangelicalism ultimately

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contributed to its demise in the 1970s. The BJS educated some of the future leadership of the Church of England, both lay and ordained, and played an important part in shaping Anglican evangelicalism for a generation.

Training Soldiers for Christ The Bishop Jewel Society was run by undergraduates for undergraduates, but for most of its existence it benefitted from the guiding hand of one of its founder members, John Reynolds (1919–2009), an evangelical clergyman and graduate of St. Edmund Hall, who served on the committee as vice president. He was a lover of Anglican evangelical history, known to a wider audience for his books The Evangelicals at Oxford (1953) and Canon Christopher of St. Aldate’s, Oxford (1967). The undergraduate officers of the BJS changed every year, but Reynolds was a fixture during his long association with Oxford, first as curate-in-charge of All Saints (the City Church) until 1949 and then as rector of Besselsleigh and Dry Sandford from 1956. In the intervening years, when Reynolds was rector of a parish in Northamptonshire, the role of BJS vice president was filled by Savage (later an archdeacon and diocesan bishop), but Reynolds was the presiding genius. According to a tribute in 1950, the BJS “owes its inspiration, inception and continuation entirely to his zeal and knowledge.”11 Twentyfour years later, the success of the BJS compared to similar societies in other universities was attributed to Reynolds’s longevity and “firm guiding hand.”12 His former tutor at St. Edmund Hall, the patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly, was the official university sponsor of the BJS, though Kelly’s involvement was limited to occasional scrutiny of the financial accounts.13 At one of the first BJS events, Reynolds spoke of the need for “a strong Evangelical witness” within the Church of England and for the laity in particular to be educated in evangelical ecclesiology and history that they might be properly equipped to exercise influence in the church’s councils and assemblies.14 The aim was not only to promote Anglican evangelicalism within the university but to prepare students for church life after graduation. As one BJS president put it in 1954, their purpose was to equip Oxonians to play their part in parish life by teaching them the Reformed doctrine of the Church of England, and the beauty of its liturgy, and by demonstrating that of all denominations the Church of England was “the most scripturally based although unhappily corrupted.”15 Their purpose was “positive teaching,” not the “philosophical discussion” found in other

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university societies.16 Nevertheless, the tone could sometimes be defensive and combative. Colin Buchanan (undergraduate at Lincoln College and BJS president 1958–59) proclaimed the need for well-instructed Anglicans, both lay and ordained, who were able to “defend the Gospel from encroaching novelties current in our day.”17 In a paper circulated to the BJS Prayer Fellowship in 1961, Buchanan acknowledged that the context had “vastly changed” since Cranmer’s day and yet defended his preference for the 1662 Prayer Book rite of confirmation against modern alternatives as “neither obscurantism nor legalism, but a sober wariness in the face of unscriptural or inconsistent intrusions.”18 The BJS could appear both embattled and triumphalistic. It was “an effective weapon in the Lord’s service,” like the Christian martyrs of old, wrote one president.19 “The state of our church is one of confusion as to what is the truth and of weakness against the attacks of Satan,” a prayer letter announced. “Let us pray that the Lord will use the society to impart true wisdom, that the Church of Christ may be victorious in our land.”20 It was said to be part of the divine plan “for training soldiers for Christ in the university.”21 There were typically two meetings per term, usually addressed by a leading Anglican evangelical spokesman, including prominent clergy, scholars, and theological college tutors from across the country. Among the recurrent themes were baptism, confirmation, holy communion, prayer book revision, the thirty-nine articles, vesture, canon law, church government, ceremonial, ordination, intercommunion, and church authority—major issues of debate in the mid-twentieth century but also subjects that had been of direct concern to Bishop Jewel himself four hundred years earlier. There were also informal study groups, run by the undergraduates themselves, first pioneered by Colin Buchanan in 1958 at the suggestion of an Australian clergyman, Noel Pollard (later master of New College, University of New South Wales), who was studying in Oxford.22 Pollard and Buchanan also generated the initial idea for a research center in Oxford that would help halt “the drift in the Church of England away from Reformation standards” by stimulating serious evangelical thinking and writing about Anglican doctrine and policy.23 It opened its doors in 1960, called “Latimer House,” though the first suggestion had been “Bishop Jewel House”—another sign of Jewel’s iconic status as an evangelical hero.24 The Latimer House staff acted as senior advisors to the BJS and their aims were closely aligned. In other ways, too, the BJS was a forerunner. It was replicated by Anglican evangelical

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undergraduates in other universities, with the launch of the Cranmer Society at Cambridge in 1950 and the Bishop Ryle Society at Durham in 1958, both copies of the Oxford model.25 One of the ways that the BJS aimed to promote intelligent evangelical churchmanship was by persuading undergraduates to read widely in Anglican evangelical theology and history. By this means they hoped to establish “a firmer foundation of scriptural doctrine.”26 In the mid-1940s J. I. Packer, a young convert at Corpus Christi College, had his theological vision revolutionized when he discovered the puritans via an old collection of books inherited by the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU), of which Reynolds was senior librarian.27 The BJS likewise knew the untapped potential of neglected Anglican writings. Reynolds was delighted in 1948 to purchase at Blackwell’s bookshop the complete works of Bishop Jewel in the four-volume Parker Society edition, excellently bound, for two guineas. Amid joyful congratulations from the BJS committee it was suggested, in jest, that Jewel’s works should lie upon the table at every meeting.28 These volumes formed the nucleus of the small BJS library. Other texts, purchased or donated, included the complete works of Richard Hooker and the volume of Jewel’s writings in the Religious Tract Society series on The British Reformers (1831). There were eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classics, such as Joseph Butler’s Analogy, Thomas Wilson on the Lord’s Supper, Daniel Wilson on the Lord’s Day, William Goode on infant baptism, Alexander Forbes on the Nicene Creed, J. H. Blunt on church law, E. A. Litton on dogmatics, and volumes from J. C. Ryle. Twentieth-century texts included Neil and Wright’s Protestant Dictionary (1904), a gift from the Protestant Reformation Society, and Neil and Willoughby’s Tutorial Prayer Book (1912).29 The most precious part of the collection was a set of thirty Parker Society volumes, gifted in 1958, but they mysteriously went missing in the mid-1960s and were never found.30 Despite the committee’s persistence, the library project was considered a failure, because very few undergraduates were tempted to sample its theological delights. Its dense tomes with their dull covers were unappealing, especially in the age of the paperback. Indeed, one BJS librarian called the volumes “physically repellent.”31 Another mourned that they were “objects of humour rather than of assiduous study.”32 These ancient books of heavyweight Reformation and Victorian theology did nothing to dispel the society’s image as backward-looking antiquarians. Perhaps it was simply too

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strong meat. One bookish undergraduate blamed the literary neglect on Oxford University’s “lack of mature Anglicans.”33 Although the library was too specialist, the BJS bookstall was far more successful in disseminating attractively produced books, booklets, and modern reprints aimed at the popular market. To avoid overlap with the OICCU bookstall, it did not stock Bible commentaries or general introductions to evangelical doctrine and devotion but focused exclusively on Anglican questions. Four Reformation texts were perennial favorites—Jewel’s Apology, Cranmer’s treatise on the Lord’s Supper, the Homilies, and the Everyman edition of the Edwardian prayer books— supplemented by G. W. Bromiley’s Baptism and the Anglican Reformers (1953) and Thomas Cranmer: Theologian (1956). Reprints of Ryle’s Knots Untied (1874) and George Salmon’s The Infallibility of the Church (1888) also sold well, as did the Great Churchmen series of booklets, especially Bromiley on Bishop Jewel (1948). Classic Anglican doctrine was supplied by W. H. Griffith Thomas’s The Catholic Faith (1904) and The Principles of Theology (1930), an exposition of the thirty-nine articles. The most popular historical surveys were G. R. Balleine’s History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (1908) and Marcus Loane’s two volumes on the evangelical succession at Oxford and Cambridge (1950–52). There were several booklets to strengthen Anglican undergraduates in their defense of infant baptism, a controversial topic among the OICCU, including Frank Colquhoun’s Infant Baptism: A Scriptural Justification (1944), J. Stafford Wright’s The Child’s Right to Baptism (1951) and Philip E. Hughes’s The Public Baptism of Infants (1959). Other publications tackled contemporary Anglican controversies, like Hughes on Canon Law and the Church of England (1955) and The Position of the Celebrant at the Service of Holy Communion (1957). The BJS bookstall was happy to sell materials from the Church Pastoral Aid Society (especially its Falcon booklets), the Church Society (including its journals The Churchman and the Church Gazette), and the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (the Christian Foundations series 1964–67), but it refused to stock the Church of England Newspaper, believing it to be of “somewhat dubious churchmanship” and insufficiently evangelical.34 This wide dissemination of literature was central to the BJS agenda to bolster Anglican evangelical churchmanship, especially an evangelical interpretation of the historic formularies of the Church of England. There was occasionally a wider view, for example, when the bookstall briefly sold copies of

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the Westminster confession, part of a growing interest in puritan studies.35 But the BJS imprimatur was reserved for the giants of Reformation Anglicanism, especially Cranmer, Jewel, and their modern exponents. They believed that Jewel’s theology fitted hand in glove with their contemporary evangelical concerns.

Wider Relationships By its emphasis on Reformed theology, the Bishop Jewel Society positioned itself firmly within the more conservative wing of Anglican evangelicalism. It was affiliated to a national network, the Fellowship of Evangelical Churchmen (FEC), founded in 1918 in reaction against the spread of “liberal evangelicalism” within the Church of England, and every member of the BJS committee was required to assent to the FEC doctrinal basis. This basis affirmed the “absolute authority” of the Bible as “the inspired Word of God, our One Rule of Faith, and the Final Court of Appeal in all matters of doctrine and practice,” as well as the “absolute infallibility” of all Jesus Christ’s utterances as recorded in scripture. In the language of the thirty-nine articles and the Book of Common Prayer, it affirmed justification by faith alone and substitutionary atonement, while steadfastly rejecting the theories of “sacerdotalism” and “a sacrificial priesthood,” including Anglo-Catholic rituals such as the “eastward position” at holy communion.36 Most BJS members felt at home at St. Ebbe’s Church, the largest conservative evangelical congregation in the city, and looked askance at St. Aldate’s Church, its more liberal evangelical neighbor. The Oxford Pastorate, which had supported Anglican evangelical undergraduates since the 1890s, was connected to St. Aldate’s, and the BJS offered an alternative while trying to avoid the impression of rivalry.37 These sensitivities were never dispelled. In the early 1960s, for example, the BJS were reluctant to ask the rector of St. Aldate’s, Keith de Berry, to advertise their events, in case he asked them to reciprocate by advertising St. Aldate’s events!38 When considering one candidate for the committee, it was remarked that “the fact that he attended St. Aldate’s might count against him.” Nevertheless, it was agreed that undergraduates at that church were precisely the sort of people the BJS should be trying to help.39 Most evangelical students in Oxford were part of the Oxford InterCollegiate Christian Union, the largest university society, which had

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branches in every college and was affiliated to the Inter-Varsity Fellowship. As an interdenominational evangelical movement, it focused upon evangelism not ecclesiology, and discipleship not historical doctrine. The BJS saw itself not as a rival to OICCU but a necessary complement. At a meeting in May 1957 at which Hugh Jordan (principal of the London College of Divinity) expounded the Anglican doctrine of confirmation, one undergraduate professed Christian conversion, which the BJS welcomed as “a rather unexpected seal on our work,” but this was a unique instance.40 They purposefully left OICCU to the work of mission and instead offered converts an Anglican education. However, the relationship between the two societies could be tricky, as one early BJS member wrote in 1950: “The Society sails, a trifle uneasily perhaps, between a species of Scylla & Charybdis; between being, on the one hand, a purely OICCU affair, and, on the other, a net attempting to sweep too wide a fishing-ground in its efforts to attract non-OICCU Protestant Anglicans. . . . In averting the twin tragedies of being either spiked or engulfed, let us pray rather that it may gain the double victory of winning the support of OICCU and non-OICCU alike.”41 Within the OICCU, even among OICCU Anglicans, there were “misgivings and misapprehensions” that the BJS placed an unhealthy emphasis upon denominational loyalties instead of a broad pan-evangelicalism.42 To present a less austere image, the term card was revamped in 1953— the word polity, too ecclesiastical, was changed to practice; and mention of the Reformation Homilies, too obscure, was dropped.43 Yet the BJS faced a constant struggle to dispel the impression that they were “the intellectual elite” with only an “antiquarian interest.”44 For many young evangelicals in Oxford, the finer details of sixteenth-century theology and ecclesiology held few attractions. At Cambridge, the Cranmer Society faced similar difficulties in throwing off their backward-looking image and announced, “Who are we? Well, we exist for the promotion of Reformation Anglican truth in the university. We are not a society of antiquarians. Our future does not lie in the past. We believe that Evangelical Anglicans are not to aim at an archaeological reconstruction of the 1552 Church. We aim at a Church continually reformed by and conformed to the authority of Jesus Christ through His Spirit in the Word.”45 Such protestations were not always believed. It was widely rumored that the BJS was “solely for the Anglican intellectual clientele of OICCU”46 and “little more than an ecclesiolatrous, hyper-Anglican clique.”47

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Several members of the OICCU committee previously served their apprenticeship on the BJS committee, including Harold Harland, Trevor Lloyd, and Tom Wright, who were presidents of both societies. Nevertheless, the OICCU got first pick of the undergraduate evangelical leadership in Oxford and the BJS was frustrated to be left with the second string.48 Sometimes the OICCU committee actively discouraged evangelicals from attending BJS events, and in 1968 the OICCU president, Chris Sugden (undergraduate at St. Peter’s College), requested that the BJS hold fewer meetings.49 Yet Colin Matthews (undergraduate at Jesus College and BJS president 1966–67) insisted that evangelicals must engage properly in questions of ecclesiology and not simply choose their denomination on the basis of good preaching. “Evangelism is not the whole of Christianity,” he explained. ‘“Do this’ is as much a command as ‘Go ye.’”50 For this reason, the first BJS meetings after the OICCU triennial missions in 1967 and 1973 were on “Church Membership.” The topic was chosen with new converts in mind, because “many of the keen OICCU/ BJS members who fall away after going down do so because they have never been involved in a local Church.”51 One supporter observed, “There is still a frightening drop-out of Christian graduates, who do not know how to become involved in an ‘ordinary’ church; and an almost equally depressing drift to find ‘another St. Ebbe’s,’ often many miles distant from where they live, allowing them to sit bloated rather than give a lead.”52 The BJS offered a “church-finding” service, to connect undergraduates with lively Anglican evangelical churches in their home towns.53 If the BJS relationship with their evangelical friends at the OICCU was sometimes sensitive, their interaction with nonevangelical Anglicans was doubly so. The Oxford University Church Union (OUCU) was dominated by Anglo-Catholics, to whom the BJS’s Reformation emphasis was antithetical. Indeed, the BJS invested much of their energies trying to prove that Anglo-Catholicism was contradicted by the historic formularies and was an illegitimate intrusion upon the Protestant Reformed Church of England. Reynolds refused to contribute to the OUCU journal, Oxford Vanguard, for fear of being associated with “heretical” opinions.54 Nevertheless, BJS open meetings attracted undergraduates from a range of theological perspectives, Anglo-Catholics especially. Some came to learn, or to argue, others merely “to giggle.”55 Occasionally, the speaker was “harangued by opposing view-points,” or accused of “bias and narrow-mindedness.”56 In November 1957, for example, Alan Stibbs

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(vice-principal of Oak Hill College) spoke on “Baptism and the New Birth” but was challenged so aggressively by Anglo-Catholics in the audience that the president intervened to put a stop to the questions.57 Anglicans of all traditions were welcome, the committee declared, but they were nervous about advertising events to ordinands in Oxford’s four Anglican theological colleges for fear of “interrupters and filibustering questioners.”58 The Prayer Fellowship was asked to intercede especially for Anglo-Catholics who attended BJS meetings, and “any who are muddled or who disagree with us . . . that Anglican doctrine might be presented in a clear and scholarly manner and might convict, convince and inspire.”59 The tone was usually that of careful persuasion, and the committee asked that Ryle’s tract, What Do We Owe to the Reformation? (1877), be removed from the bookstall, since “it might cause needless offence.”60 Jewel’s Apology, though fiercely anticatholic, was approved as a classic text. But Ryle’s polemic, republished by the Protestant Truth Society, cut too close to the bone, denouncing Anglo-Catholic ritualism in colorful language as the ruin of England that was leading people back to papal tyranny, degradation, superstition, and “abominable immorality.”61

Active and Informed Church Membership In May 1954, Billy Graham paid a flying visit to Oxford, fresh from his twelve-week Greater London Crusade at Harringay Arena. Over one and a half million people had heard him in London, and the nation was said to be on the brink of revival.62 Oxford University vetoed use of the Sheldonian Theatre, but undergraduates and dons packed out St. Aldate’s Church, standing six deep in the aisles, for a special service opened by the bishop of Dorchester, at which Colin Cowdrey (captain of the university cricket team) read the lesson. Graham spoke of the need for a “spiritual renaissance” if humanity was not to destroy itself with nuclear weapons, urging that “the trouble with the world today was not the hydrogen bomb, but human nature.” The congregation was “completely engrossed” by his message. “No actor could have achieved a more striking effect,” reported the Oxford Mail, “and Mr. Graham wasn’t acting.” Two hundred people responded to the evangelist’s call to “give themselves to Christ.”63 In this wider context of religious fervor, membership of the Bishop Jewel Society shot up dramatically in 1954, from 40 to 110. This was primarily a result of their concerted advertising campaign, but they interpreted the boom as

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a revival blessing, believing it to be “another sign that God is bringing an awakening to the Church of England.”64 The society entered a period of unprecedented growth. Membership peaked in 1957 at 140.65 There were regularly one hundred at the meetings and forty at the termly communion services.66 In 1959, over 150 heard John Stott (rector of All Souls, Langham Place) expound the doctrine of justification from the thirty-nine articles and Alec Motyer (vice principal of Clifton theological college) expound the Anglican doctrine of confession and absolution.67 Numbers in the Prayer Fellowship, former members of the BJS who promised to pray for its ministry, peaked in 1960 at 110.68 The society’s reach extended beyond Oxford’s dreaming spires as some of its proceedings were published for a wider readership in the Church Gazette (magazine of the Church Society) and reported in the Church of England Newspaper (whose editor 1960–68, John C. King, had been BJS president 1950–51).69 These years of dynamic growth vanished as quickly as they had arrived. By the early 1960s, the BJS had entered steady decline. In 1961 attendance at the communion service fell to just fourteen, perhaps a result of competition from St. Ebbe’s Church, which also held a traditional Prayer Book rite.70 The BJS constitution was revised so that the termly service became annual, and in 1964 it was dropped completely.71 The committee repeated their complaint at “the general vague impression among many OICCU Anglicans that BJS exists for historians and theologians.”72 To revitalize their flagging fortunes, and better to articulate their raison d’être, they circulated a statement that began by surveying the contemporary religious scene: The columns of national as well as Church newspapers reveal considerable uncertainty and confusion existing as to what people should believe and be taught. Indeed, it is apparent that many are in doubt on basic articles of belief, and that yet others canvass for the abandonment of binding standards of orthodoxy altogether. At the same time few University men and women can fail to see the spiritual apathy of many baptised, even confirmed, members of our Church here in Oxford as everywhere. Intellectually there is confusion and lack of conviction; not surprisingly we see moral failure and the increase of secularism also. They reckoned the BJS had the answers to meet the crisis: “Only as a Church of the Bible, we believe, can we meet the spiritual vacuum, and

Defending Reformation Anglicanism  295

secular opposition of these days . . . we seek to be certain of our faith, confident in the expression of it.” The study of Reformation Anglicanism was not “purely academic,” they insisted, because they sought to apply sixteenth-century principles to twentieth-century problems.73 While some in the church wanted to throw off the legacy of the Reformation, the BJS believed, on the contrary, that Bishop Jewel and his allies could provide much-needed theological resources for the modern age. The BJS aims on the term card were rewritten wholesale in an attempt to capture the imagination of a new generation of undergraduates. All mention of the thirty-nine articles and the Book of Common Prayer was erased, replaced by aims with an explicit contemporary and activist ring: “To uphold the distinctive Biblical doctrines of the Church of England; to examine their relevance for Church life today; and to encourage active and informed Church membership.” Despite this rebranding, numbers continued to slide. In 1964, there were less than sixty members and only forty at the main meetings.74 Soon the society was praying for “a vital transfusion of fresh blood to revive our dwindling numbers.”75 President Graham Dow (a student at Queen’s College) complained that Anglican evangelical undergraduates in Oxford had a “weaker appetite for doctrine” than their forebears and showed “little desire to wrestle with the issues of their church.”76 It was a pattern mirrored across the country. In 1965, both the Cranmer Society in Cambridge and the Ryle Society in Durham closed down through lack of support.77 Nevertheless, though the boom years were past, the BJS continued its work in Oxford for another decade. The BJS prioritized not only the teaching of Anglican doctrine but the need to prepare undergraduates for “the far greater part they will be called upon to play in the church—both local and national—when they go down.”78 They adopted playful nicknames prescient of the adult world. Committee members were called “bishops,” each with a group of Oxford colleges or “parishes” under their oversight, known as a “diocese.”79 Many committee members went on to ordination in the Church of England. BJS presidents included, in later life, a handful of bishops (Colin Buchanan, Graham Dow, Richard Inwood, Tom Wright), archdeacons (Tom Walker, Trevor Lloyd), and theological college educators (Geoffrey Shaw, William Challis, Michael Vasey). Walter Moberly, later professor of theology at Durham University, served on the committee. The BJS proved to be a fruitful training ground.

296  Impact and Legacy

The society’s emphasis upon “active and informed Church membership” chimed well with a new mood sweeping through the wider Anglican evangelical movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. Participation, not separation, was the keynote. The Oxford University Church of England Council (OUCEC) was set up in 1961 as an umbrella organization for Anglican societies in the university, sponsored by the college chaplains. The BJS were nervous about involvement with such a doctrinally mixed body, but J. I. Packer encouraged them to embrace the opportunity. He explained, “These days, Evangelicals are turning from their ‘isolationist policy’, and are raising their voices from within, rather than from without . . . if we go on pursuing our policy without a backward glance at the other parties, we may well find ourselves outside the Ecclesiastical pale within ten years or so.”80 Packer advocated an “active evangelical witness” on all occasions, even if it led to controversy with fellow Anglicans, and Brian Burnett (undergraduate at St. Peter’s College and BJS president 1961–62) commented, “Frankly, this appeals to me, since it would inject new life into the BJS, and be a stimulus to us to hold fast the ‘faith once delivered’ in the thick of conflict, rather than from our ivory tower.”81 Likewise, the BJS sent delegates to the Anglican Student Federation, a national body, to ensure that an “evangelical witness” was upheld, believing it to be “a particularly strategic place where Evangelicals could play a full part.”82 They were more cautious about the Joint Christian Societies Committee (JCSC) at Oxford, an ecumenical collaboration including Roman Catholics, and initially agreed upon a “boycott” but soon backtracked and sent a representative.83 The constant dilemma was how to maintain a “distinctive Evangelical emphasis . . . without being needlessly separatist.”84 Barry Ashdown (undergraduate at St. Peter’s College and BJS president 1963–64) urged the society to work hard at relationships with nonevangelicals “to correct misconceptions of the evangelical position.”85 They drew the line, however, at supporting the university missions run by the college chaplains.86 During 1965, Gervase Duffield (former BJS member and an energetic young layman on the Church Assembly) hosted two gatherings of evangelical undergraduates at his home in Appleford, near Oxford, to encourage them to play a full part in the councils of the church.87 Likewise, after listening to Peter Johnston (vicar of St. Mary’s, Islington) in January 1966 on the positive contribution evangelicals could make to the Church of England nationally, Richard James (BJS prayer secretary

Defending Reformation Anglicanism  297

and undergraduate at Merton College) reported, “Evangelical Anglicans in Oxford are beginning, albeit slowly, to wake up to the fact that these are momentous days in the Church, that Anglicanism is in the melting-pot, that Evangelicals have a vital part to play in the running of the Church and that, as Mr Johnson [sic] said, we are actually being asked to join in at all sorts of levels and have our say.”88 Johnston was one of the principal architects, alongside John Stott, of the National Evangelical Anglican Congress (NEAC) at Keele University in April 1967, attended by almost a thousand clergy and laity. The Keele statement publicly articulated the need for greater evangelical involvement in the wider Church of England, through its committees and councils, and decried evangelical isolationism and parochialism.89 This enthusiasm was echoed in Oxford, from where Tony Lowman (undergraduate at Merton College) wrote to the BJS Prayer Fellowship, “Very many Anglicans are members of OICCU yet their Anglican experience hardly extends beyond one attendance at Morning Prayer per week. . . . The spiritual future of this country will, I believe, be largely influenced by the present undergraduate generation, let us, therefore, earnestly pray that people at University may develop a real thirst to study the Biblical Doctrines of the Church of England and that they will no longer stay in the ways of non-involvement.”90 Thirty undergraduates met together in Trinity term 1967 to discuss the Keele statement, and BJS speakers continued to hammer home the urgency of evangelical involvement in wider Anglican affairs. Colin Brown (vice principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol), speaking on church unity, stressed the need for evangelicals to play a full part in ecumenical dialogue.91 In Hilary term 1969, Timothy Royle, addressing the responsibility of laymen, urged “full participation in diocesan committees” not just parish activities.92 A decade earlier, Herbert Carson (vicar of St. Paul’s, Cambridge) had cautioned the BJS against seceding too quickly from the Church of England, only then to jump ship himself.93 But the Keele Congress decried secession, and in 1971, Peter Dawes (vicar in Romford and later bishop of Derby) taught the BJS that it was wrong for evangelicals to leave their denominations, under the headline “Anglican, with a Clear Conscience.”94 Nevertheless, it was difficult to enthuse many undergraduates with these wider national issues, which appeared to belong to a postuniversity world beyond finals. At a period when Anglican evangelicals boasted in their growing numbers and future prospects, the BJS worried that within the universities there remained an attitude of “indifference.”95

298  Impact and Legacy

The Reformation for Today? One of the dilemmas for the Bishop Jewel Society was how much to focus upon the heroic personalities of Reformation Anglicanism when the contemporary church faced so many new and pressing issues. On WhitMonday 1955, the Church Society organized a Protestant pilgrimage to Oxford to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the burning of the Marian martyrs. Despite the railway strike, it was attended by a large crowd gathered from parishes across England, swelled by senior members of the university and Oxford’s civic dignitaries. Over a thousand people walked in solemn procession, headed by seven bishops and two hundred robed clergymen, from St. John’s College to the martyrs’ memorial and the cross in Broad Street, before proceeding to the University Church where Christopher Chavasse (bishop of Rochester) exhorted an overflowing congregation to imitate the Oxford martyrs in their defense of “Scriptural and Primitive Truth.”96 The BJS took part in these “memorable and impressive” proceedings, laying a wreath on the steps of the martyrs’ memorial.97 This Reformation emphasis frequently recurred in BJS pronouncements. Brian Burnett admitted that he “was not sure whether the Church of England was ‘on the move,’ but trusted that the wind of change would not blow out Latimer’s candle.”98 John Cheeseman (undergraduate at Oriel College and BJS president 1971–72) spoke of his conviction that the society was more important than ever: “In an age of compromise and woolly thinking, even (dare I say it?!) in some evangelical circles, we need to maintain a firm, thoroughly Protestant and Reformed witness to Biblical Truth.” He prayed that the BJS would continue “to play its part in keeping alight that candle, which has been burning in Oxford since the Reformation.”99 In the face of high-profile ecumenical agreements, like the Anglican—Roman Catholic International Commission’s statement on the eucharist, Cheeseman wrote, “In the C of E we are in danger of losing our Reformation heritage . . . The Reformers would roll out of heaven, if they knew of such compromise regarding truths, for which they laid down their lives. May the BJS continue to witness to the historic truths of the Reformed faith.”100 Nevertheless, constantly looking back to the sixteenth century, while trying to engage with the twentieth, could lead to blurred vision and conflicting priorities. It was a tension the BJS found difficult to resolve. Cheeseman’s successor as president, William Challis (undergraduate at Keble College), promised that the BJS had no

Defending Reformation Anglicanism  299

intention of becoming “a trend setting society” and was resolved to hold firmly to the doctrine of the thirty-nine articles, and yet “God has placed us in 1973, not 1550.”101 Senior friends of the society urged it to cast off its antiquarian outlook. After surveying the BJS program cards in 1968, Duffield cautioned that they had “rather an old worldy look about them. Why not keep up with current C/E problems?”102 Three years later, Stewart Symons (vicar of St. John’s Waterloo in Liverpool and former BJS president 1954–55) urged the new committee to be “a little daring” by tackling new questions that the Anglican reformers had not faced, like the admission of children to communion. Bishop Jewel had sought to return the Church of England “to scriptural purity and simplicity,” Symons argued, so a society named in his honor should be fearless in applying the Bible to contemporary issues.103 Geoffrey Hart (rector of Cheltenham and former BJS secretary 1950–51) advised the society to “loosen its backward-looking stance,” because a repeated emphasis on sixteenth-century Anglicanism gave the impression of an “antiquarian outlook.” Perhaps a name change was even necessary, Hart hinted, to cut the connection with “the great Jewel himself,” because it was difficult to prove the immediate relevance of an Elizabethan bishop to the 1970s.104 The BJS tried to keep abreast of modern developments but was resolved not to be a campaigning society. Sometimes they dodged issues, most notably the ministry of women, one of the most contentious debates in the Church of England in the last half of the twentieth century. At first, in the 1940s, the BJS decided it was wisest not to invite women to their meetings, “because of their tongue-tying effect upon the men.”105 From 1952 a “women’s representative” was added to the committee to bring closer connection with the five women’s colleges, though she was a lonely voice. Sometimes it was difficult to recruit to the post, and the minutes wryly record, “The committee showed a disturbing ignorance of suitable women.”106 They refused in 1966 to organize a meeting about the place of women because “few men would be enthralled by such a subject”—a decision taken, the minutes again reveal “not without protest,” perhaps from the only woman in the room.107 Four years later, Ann Williams (undergraduate at St. Hugh’s College and BJS treasurer 1970–71) broached the topic again, arguing that “the Ministry of Women” could be safely tackled by a speaker who had “no strong views on the subject.”108 Eventually John Stott was invited to address the question in February 1972, attracting the

300  Impact and Legacy

largest audience for several years.109 It was doubly memorable because he spoke by candlelight during a power cut, and he later reflected, “Perhaps it was a divine providence to hide my blushes while speaking on such a delicate subject!”110 The silver jubilee of the BJS marked its demise. By 1973 membership had fallen to just twenty-eight and never recovered.111 The committee complained at Oxford’s “apathetic” undergraduates who were only attracted by controversial topics and famous speakers.112 There were only fourteen people at the main meetings (nearly half of them on the committee), only twenty-four in the Prayer Fellowship, and the society was “in dire straits financially.”113 After long service as vice president, John Reynolds stood down in 1973 and was replaced by former president Tom Wright, a research student thirty years his junior.114 But the BJS was a sinking ship. Various diagnoses were offered. Was it because evangelicals were only interested in “the Gospel pure and simple,” not in ecclesiology? Or because local church life seemed too distant from undergraduate horizons? Maybe a change of program would do the trick, by inviting more “progressive Evangelical thinkers” to speak?115 By 1975, it was impossible to find any competent undergraduate willing to serve as BJS president. Wright and Challis met at a Church Society conference and agreed that “it is better to kill BJS off rather than let it die a painful and lingering death, which will bring no glory to God.”116 The committee decided that “it was pointless to prolong the present state of affairs just to keep up appearances.”117 Lance Pierson (former BJS president 1968–69) believed that “the writing has been on the wall ever more legibly over the past 7 or 8 years.”118 Wright wrote to various evangelical leaders in Oxford explaining the situation. There were fewer and fewer undergraduates for whom issues of ecclesiology and sacraments were “live issues,” and among evangelicals in particular, “non-denominationalism, pragmatism and unthinking pietism often reign unchallenged.” The outlook was very different to the 1950s and therefore the BJS was no longer “the right means by which to turn evangelical Anglican undergraduates into well-educated Churchmen.” Wright hoped that the evangelical congregations in Oxford, especially St. Ebbe’s and St. Aldate’s, would pick up the baton, since the obvious place to learn about churchmanship was not from a university society but from the local church itself.119

Defending Reformation Anglicanism  301

Conclusion The Bishop Jewel Society opens a window upon a new dimension of the Anglican evangelical movement in the mid-twentieth century—the preparation of undergraduates for church life after finals. As the pioneer and model of similar societies in England’s leading universities, the BJS trained and equipped a generation of students for intelligent and articulate engagement in the Anglican project at a local and national level. It brought together a group of evangelical students whose concerns stretched beyond evangelism and biblical exposition, to the doctrines of church and sacraments. They sought to connect their evangelicalism to their Anglicanism, and their love of sixteenth-century Reformed theology to contemporary questions. In so doing, they helped extend and promote John Jewel’s reputation within the modern evangelical movement. As junior champions of the Reformed Church of England, especially its historic formularies, it was natural that the hero of the Bishop Jewel Society should be the Church of England’s Reformation champion par excellence.

Notes 1. BJS committee minutes, October 13 and 21, 1947, Oxford, Bodleian Library [Bodl.], MS Eng.d.4281. 2. BJS committee minutes, March 13 and June 14, 1948. 3. BJS constitution, November 5, 1948, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/1. 4. BJS committee minutes, November 5, 1948. 5. See further Andrew Atherstone and John Maiden, eds., Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014). 6. BJS committee minutes, March 13 and May 3, 1948. 7. BJS committee minutes, November 5, 1948. 8. BJS enthusiasts meeting, February 8, 1949, Bodl. MS Eng.d.4281. 9. BJS committee minutes, October 21, 1948.

10. BJS committee minutes, February 7, 1949, and May 19 and June 10, 1953. 11. John Billinghurst to John Reynolds, “Bishop Ryle Fellowship” (February 1950), Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/3. 12. BJS prayer letter, January 1974, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/2. 13. BJS committee minutes, January 24 and February 7, 1949, and October 21, 1965; AGM minutes, March 9, 1966, Bodl. MS Eng.d.4281. 14. BJS enthusiasts meeting, February 8, 1949. 15. BJS college representatives meeting, June 15, 1954, Bodl. MS Eng.d.4281. 16. BJS committee minutes, May 28, 1956. 17. BJS college representatives meeting, May 19, 1958. 18. Colin Buchanan, “Anglican Confirmation: An Historical Interpretation” (1961), unpublished typescript, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/3.

302  Impact and Legacy 19. “A personal letter to members of the Church of England in the OICCU” (October 1953), Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/1. 20. BJS prayer letter, December 1964. 21. Martin Kettle, president’s report for AGM, March 13, 1974, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/2. 22. BJS committee minutes, May 26, 1958; Colin Buchanan, Taking the Long View: Three and a Half Decades of General Synod (London: Church House Publishing, 2006), 1. 23. John W. Wenham, “Latimer House,” Discipulus: The Student Magazine of Tyndale Hall (Advent, 1960), 19. 24. BJS committee minutes, February 26, 1960; Oxford Evangelical Research Trust executive committee minutes, February 27, 1960, Latimer Trust archives, London. 25. The Cranmer Society papers, 1950–65 and 1975–83, are at Cambridge University Library, University Archives, Soc.73. Its undergraduate presidents included John B. Taylor (later bishop of St. Albans) and John W. Gladwin (later bishop of Chelmsford). 26. BJS prayer letter, July 1959. 27. Alister McGrath, To Know and Serve God: A Life of James I. Packer (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997), 24–25. 28. BJS committee minutes, November 5, 1948. 29. For library purchases, see BJS committee minutes, February 7, 1949; October 16, 1953; October 15, 1956; May 4, 1959; May 3, 1960; and March 6, 1961. 30. BJS prayer letter, December 1958; BJS committee minutes, May 25 and June 13, 1966, and May 6 and June 18, 1968; AGM minutes, March 13, 1974. 31. BJS committee minutes, March 11, 1965. 32. BJS AGM minutes, March 9, 1973. 33. BJS AGM minutes, March 10, 1972. 34. For bookstall stock, see BJS committee minutes, January 17, 1949; June 1 and

November 5, 1954; October 10, 1955; April 30 and May 28, 1956; February 22, 1957; November 16, 1959; May 1, 1962; April 29, 1963; May 20, 1965; and June 2, 1967; BJS prayer letter, August 1954. 35. BJS committee minutes, February 23, 1954. 36. “The Fellowship of Evangelical Churchmen: The Terms of Basis,” Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/1. On the FEC, see further Andrew Atherstone, “Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the Inter-War Church of England,” in Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United Kingdom during the Twentieth Century, ed. David Bebbington and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 55–75. 37. BJS committee minutes, October 21, 1947. On the Pastorate, see further Ian Thomson, The Oxford Pastorate: The First Half Century (London: Canterbury Press, 1946); Mark Smith, “A Foundation of Influence: The Oxford Pastorate and Elite Recruitment in Early TwentiethCentury Anglican Evangelicalism,” in The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism, ed. Deryck Lovegrove (London: Routledge, 2002), 202–13. 38. BJS committee minutes, November 16, 1961. 39. BJS committee minutes, February 18, 1963. 40. BJS prayer letter, June 1957. 41. John Billinghurst to John Reynolds, “Bishop Ryle Fellowship” (February 1950). 42. BJS committee minutes, May 19, 1953. 43. BJS committee minutes, June 10, 1953. 44. BJS committee minutes, March 11, 1963. 45. Cranmer Society prayer letter, September 1963, Cambridge University Library, University Archives, Soc.73.2.1(1).

Defending Reformation Anglicanism  303 46. BJS committee minutes, March 9, 1964. 47. BJS prayer letter, November 1970. 48. “President: BJS,” confidential briefing note (no date), Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/1. 49. BJS committee minutes, December 2, 1968, and February 17, 1969. 50. BJS AGM minutes, March 9, 1967. 51. D. Neil Weston to Peter Johnston, May 14, 1972, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/4. 52. Lance Pierson to Bob Slade, December 7, 1975, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/7. 53. BJS AGM minutes, March 9, 1967, and March 13, 1970. 54. BJS committee minutes, June 14, 1949. 55. BJS committee minutes, January 21, 1957; BJS prayer letter, June 1957. 56. BJS committee minutes, May 30, 1955, and April 28, 1958. 57. BJS prayer letter, January 1958. 58. BJS committee minutes, April 24, 1961; AGM minutes, March 9, 1966. 59. “Some topics for prayer,” with BJS prayer letter, January 1960. 60. BJS committee minutes, November 16, 1959. 61. J. C. Ryle, What Do We Owe to the Reformation?, new edition (London: Protestant Truth Society, 1947), 17–24, quotation 19. 62. Frank Colquhoun, Harringay Story: The Official Record of the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade, 1954 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1955); Billy Graham, Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 207–38; Mark D. Chapman, “Billy Graham in a Secular Society: The Greater London Crusade of 1954,” in The Legacy of Billy Graham: Critical Reflections on America’s Greatest Evangelist, ed. Michael G. Long (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 125–39. 63. “Billy Graham Preaches in Oxford,” Oxford Mail, May 24, 1954, 5; Desmond Graves, “Billy Graham at

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

Oxford,” The Spectator, May 28, 1954, 652–53. BJS prayer letter, August 1954. BJS prayer letter, June 1957. BJS prayer letter, June 1958. BJS prayer letter, July 1959. BJS committee minutes, March 5, 1960. R. J. Coates, “The Place of Ritual in Worship,” Church Gazette and Intelligencer 54 (September–October 1955): 9–18; Thomas Hewitt, “Canon Law Revision,” Church Gazette and Intelligencer 56 (November–December 1957): 18–22; M. Guthrie Clarke, “The Evolution of the Prayer Book,” Church Gazette and Intelligencer 57 (May– June 1958): 17–22; “Predestination: A Warning,” Church of England Newspaper, February 2, 1962, 2. BJS committee minutes, February 14 and June 5, 1961; college representatives meeting, May 20, 1963. BJS committee minutes, December 4, 1961, and May 21, 1964. BJS prayer letter, July 1963. “The Bishop Jewel Society: Our Aims” (October 1963), Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/1. BJS prayer letter, December 1964. BJS prayer letter, June 1965. BJS committee minutes, March 11, 1965. The Cranmer Society was later resurrected, 1975–83. BJS prayer letter, July 1963. BJS committee minutes, April 28, 1967, and May 6, 1968. J. I. Packer, in conversation, reported in Brian Burnett to John Reynolds, November 8, 1961, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/3. Brian Burnett to John Reynolds, November 8, 1961. BJS committee minutes, January 22, 1962 and March 9, 1964. BJS committee minutes, January 23 and October 23, 1961, and May 10, 1962.

304  Impact and Legacy 84. BJS prayer letter, February 1962. 85. BJS committee minutes, March 9, 1964. 86. BJS committee minutes, February 12, 1962, and May 25, 1966. 87. BJS prayer letters, June 1965 and January 1966. 88. BJS AGM minutes, March 9, 1966. 89. Andrew Atherstone, “The Keele Congress of 1967: A Paradigm Shift in Anglican Evangelical Attitudes,” Journal of Anglican Studies 9 (November 2011): 175–97. 90. BJS prayer letter, May 1967. 91. BJS prayer letter, November 1967. 92. BJS prayer letter, June 1969. 93. Herbert Carson, “The Holy Catholic Church” (October 1959), unpublished typescript, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/3. See also Herbert Carson, Farewell to Anglicanism (Worthing: Walter, 1969). 94. Peter Dawes to Stephen Ridd, April 15, 1970; Andrew Biro to Peter Dawes, June 3, 1970, Bodl. MS Eng.c.3891/4. 95. BJS prayer letter, May 1967. 96. Christopher M. Chavasse, The Oxford Martyrs (London: Church Book Room Press, 1955), 9. See also “Commemoration of the Oxford Martyrs,” Oxford Mail, May 31, 1955, 5; Commemoration of the Reformation Martyrs: Oxford Pilgrimage, Whit Monday, May 30th, 1955: Programme & Order of Service (London, 1955), copy at Oxfordshire History Centre. 97. BJS committee minutes, May 30, 1955. 98. BJS committee minutes, March 14, 1962. 99. John Cheeseman, president’s report for AGM, March 10, 1972, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/2. 100. John Cheeseman to Walter Moberly, July 7, 1973, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/5.

101. William Challis, president’s report for AGM, March 9, 1973, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/2. 102. Gervase Duffield to David G. Jones (postcard), c. July 1968, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/4. 103. Stewart B. Symons to BJS committee, November 8, 1971, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8388/1. 104. Geoffrey Hart to Bob Slade, November 7, 1975, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/7. 105. BJS committee minutes, January 17, 1949. 106. BJS committee minutes, May 1, 1962. 107. BJS committee minutes, December 5, 1966. 108. BJS committee minutes, April 27, 1970. Ann Williams, later Mrs. Ann Templeman, became headmistress of Durham High School for Girls and was ordained in 2005. 109. BJS AGM minutes, March 10, 1972. 110. John Stott to Bob Slade, December 3, 1974, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/4. 111. BJS AGM minutes, March 9, 1973. 112. BJS prayer letter, January 1973. 113. BJS prayer letters, April 1971; January and June 1974; and February 1975. 114. BJS committee minutes, October 29, 1973. 115. Martin Kettle, president’s report for AGM, March 13, 1974. 116. William Challis to Bob Slade, November 14, 1975, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/7. 117. Tom Wright to John Reynolds, June 21, 1975, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/3. 118. Lance Pierson to Bob Slade, December 7, 1975, Bodl. MS Eng.c.8391/7. 119. Tom Wright to John Reynolds, June 21, 1975.

Appendix The Publications of the Jewel–Harding Controversy, 1560–1640

The following provides a comprehensive list of the major works written by Jewel in defense of the Church of England, including both first and subsequent editions. It also places these publications in context with the other works of the Jewel–Harding controversy. 1560

Jewel, John

London The true copies of the letters betwene the reuerend father in God Iohn Bisshop of Sarum and D. Cole vpon occasion of a sermon that the said Bishop preached before the Quenes Maiestie, and hir most honorable Counsel.

1562

Cooper, Thomas

An apologie of priuate masse spred abroade in writing without name of the authour: as it seemeth, against the offer and protestacion made in certayne sermons by the reuerent father Bisshop of Salsburie: with an answer to the same Apologie, set foorth for the maintenance and defence of the trueth

London

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

Jewel, John

An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande.

London

1563

Jewel, John

The seconde tome of homelyes of such matters as were promised and intituled in the former part of homelyes, set out by the aucthoritie of the Quenes Maiestie

London

1564

Dorman, Thomas

A proufe of certeyne articles in religion.

Antwerp

Harding, Thomas

An answere to Maister Iuelles chalenge.

Louvain

306  Appendix

1565

Jewel, John

An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande.

London

Martiall, John

A Treatise of the Cross.

Antwerp

Rastell, John

A confutation of a sermon, pronou[n]ced by M. Iuell, at Paules crosse, the second Sondaie before Easter.

Antwerp

Nowell, Alexander

A reproufe, written by Alexander Nowell.

London

Allen, William

A defense and declaration of the Catholike Churchies [sic] doctrine, touching purgatory, and prayers for the soules departed.

Antwerp

Barthlet, John

The pedegrewe of heretiques.

London

Calfhill, James

An aunsvvere to the Treatise of the London crosse wherin ye shal see by the plaine and vndoubted word of God, the vanities of men disproued

Dorman, Thomas

A disproufe of M. Nowelles reproufe.

Antwerp

Evans, Lewis

A briefe admonition vnto the nowe made ministers of Englande wherein is shewed some of the fruicte of this theyr late framed fayth.

Louvain

Evans, Lewis

Certaine tables sett furth by the right reuerend father in God, William Bushopp of Rurimunde, in Ghelderland.

Antwerp

Harding, Thomas

A briefe answere of Thomas Harding Doctor of Diuinitie touching certaine vntruthes with which Maister Iohn Iuell charged him in his late sermon at Paules Crosse the VIII of Iuly, anno 1565

Antwerp

Harding, Thomas

A confutation of a booke intituled An apologie of the Church of England.

Antwerp

Jewel, John

A replie vnto M. Hardinges answeare by perusinge whereof the discrete, and diligent reader may easily see, the weake, and vnstable groundes of the Romaine religion.

London

Appendix  307

1566

Nowell, Alexander

A reproufe, written by Alexander London Nowell, of a booke entituled, A proufe of certayne articles in religion denied by M. Iuell, set furth by Thomas Dorman

Rastell, John

A replie against an answer (falslie intitled) in defence of the truth.

Antwerp

Shacklock, Richard

A most excellent treatise of the begynnyng of heresyes in oure tyme.

Antwerp

Stapleton, Thomas

The apologie of Fridericus Staphylus.

Louvain

Stapleton, Thomas

A Fortress of the Faith.

Antwerp

Stapleton, Thomas

The history of the Church of Englande. Compiled by Venerable Bede, Englishman.

Antwerp

Harding, Thomas

A Reioindre to M. Iewels replie.

Antwerp

Heskyns, Thomas

The parliament of Chryste auouching and declaring the enacted and receaued trueth of the presence of his bodie and bloode in the blessed Sacrament.

Antwerp

Jewel, John

A replie vnto M. Hardinges ansvveare by perusinge whereof the discrete, and diligent reader may easily see, the weake, and vnstable groundes of the Romaine religion

London

Martiall, John

A replie to M. Calfhills blasphemous answer made against the Treatise of the crosse.

Louvain

Nowell, Alexander

The reproufe of M. Dorman his proufe of certaine articles in religion and continued by Alexander Nowell.

London

Poyntz, Robert

Testimonies for the real presence of Christes body and blood in the Blessed Sacrame[n]t of the aultar.

Louvain

Rastell, John

The third booke, declaring by examples out of auncient councels, fathers, and later writers, that it is time to beware of M. Iewel.

Antwerp

Rastell, John

A treatise intitled, Beware of M. Iewel.

Antwerp

308  Appendix

1567

1568

1570

Sander, Nicholas

The supper of our Lord set foorth according to the truth of the Gospell and Catholike faith.

Louvain

Stapleton, Thomas

A returne of vntruthes vpon [M. Jewel]les replie.

Antwerp

Allen, William

A treatise made in defence of the lauful power and authoritie of priesthod to remitte sinnes.

Louvain

Dorman, Thomas

A Request to M Jewel that he keep his promise made by solemn protestation in his late sermon at Paul’s Cross the 15 June 1567.

Louvain

Jewel, John

A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande conteininge an answeare to a certaine booke lately set foorthe by M. Hardinge.

London

Nowell, Alexander

A confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last boke entituled a disproufe.

London

Rastell, John

A briefe shew of the false wares Louvain packt together in the named, Apology of the Churche of England.

Sander, Nicholas

The rocke of the Churche

Louvain

Sander, Nicholas

A treatise of the images of Christ.

Louvain

Stapleton, Thomas

Of the expresse worde of God.

Louvain

Dering, Edward

A sparing restraint, of many lauishe vntruthes.

London

Harding, Thomas

A detection of sundrie foule errours, lies, sclaunders, corruptions, and other false dealinges, touching doctrine, and other matters.

Louvain

Jewel, John

A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande conteininge an answeare to a certaine booke lately set foorthe by M. Hardinge. Whereunto there is also newly added an answeare vnto an other like booke, written by the saide M. Hardinge, entituled, A detection of sundrie foule errours &c.

London

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilees of suche matters as were promysed, and intituled in the former part of homilees. Set out by the aucthoritie of the Queenes Maiestie

London

Appendix  309 1571

Jewel, John

A defense of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande Conteininge an answeare to a certaine booke lately set foorthe by M. Hardinge, and entituled, A confutation of &c. Whereunto there is also newely added an answeare vnto an other like booke, written by the saide M. Hardinge, entituled, A detection of sundrie fowle errours &c.

London

1574

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of suche matters as were promised, and intituled in the former part of homilies. Set out by the aucthoritie of the Queenes Maiestie:

London

1577

Fulke, William

Two treatises written against the papistes the one being an answere of the Christian Protestant to the proud challenge of a popish Catholicke

London

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of suche matters as were promised, and intituled in the former part of homilies. Set out by the aucthoritie of the Queenes Maiestie.

London

Jewel, John

Ioannis Iuelli, Sarisburiensis in Anglia nuper Episcopi adversus Thomam Hardingum volumen alterum, in quo viginti septem quaestiones & seripturis, & omnium conciliorum ac patrum monimentis

London

1579

Fulke, William

D. Heskins, D. Sanders, and M. Rastel, accounted (among their faction) three pillers and archpatriarches of the popish synagogue . . . ouerthrowne, and detected of their seuerall blasphemous heresies.

London

1581

Allen, William

An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endeuours of the two English colleges.

Rheims

Fulke, William

A reioynder to Bristows replie in defence of Allens scroll of articles and booke of purgatorie

London

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

310  Appendix Jewel, John

A sermon made in latine in Oxenforde in the raigne of King Edwarde the sixt

London

Jewel, John

A viewe of a seditious bul sent into England, from Pius Quintus Bishop of Rome, anno. 1569.

London

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of suche matters as were promised, and entituled in the former part of homilies. Set out by the authoritie of the Queenes Maiestie

London

Jewel, John

A viewe of a seditious bul sent into England, from Pius Quintus Bishop of Rome, anno. 1569.

London

Jewel, John

Certaine sermons preached before London the Queenes Maiestie, and at Paules crosse, by the reuerend father Iohn Iewel late Bishop of Salisburie.

Jewel, John

An expositio[n] vpon the two epistles of the apostle S. Paul to the Thessalonians.

London

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

Jewel, John

An expositio[n] vpon the two epistles of the apostle S. Paul to the Thessalonians

London

1587

Jewel, John

The seconde tome of homilies Of such matters as were promised, and entituled in the former part of homilies. Set out by the authoritie of the Queenes Maiestie

London

1588

Jewel, John

Ioannis Iuelli, Sarisburiensis in Anglia nuper episcopi adversus Thomam Hardingum, volumen alterum in quo viginti septem quaestiones & scripturis

London

1591

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

1594

Jewel, John

An expositio[n] vpon the two epistles of the apostle S. Paul to the Thessalonians.

London

1595

Jewel John

Deffynniad ffydd Eglwys Loegr lle y ceir gweled, a gwybod, dosparth gwir Grefydd Crist, ag anghywirdeb creyfydd Eglwys Rufain (The Apology in Welsh)

London

1582

1583

1584

Appendix  311 Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of suche matters as were promised, and entituled in the former part of homilies. Set out by the authoritie of the Queenes Maiestie

London

1599

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

1600

Jewel, John

The apologie of the Church of England With a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professed and vsed in the same.

London

1603

Jewel, John

Certaine sermons preached before the Queens Maiestie, and at Paules crosse, by the reuerend father Iohn Ievvel late Bishoppe of Salisbury. Wherunto is added a short treatise of the sacraments

London

1606

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

1607

Jewel, John

Seuen godly and learned sermons preached by the Reuerend Father in God Iohn Iuel, late bishop of Salisburie. Neuer before imprinted

London

1609

Jewel, John

The vvorks of the very learned and reuerend father in God Iohn Ievvell, not long since Bishop of Sarisburie. Newly set forth with some amendment of diuers quotations: and a briefe discourse of his life

London

1611

Jewel, John

A view of a seditiovs bull sent into England, from Pius Quintus Bishop of Rome, 1569

London

Jewel, John

The vvorks of the very learned and reuerend father in God Iohn Ievvell, not long since Bishop of Sarisburie. Newly set forth with some amendment of diuers quotations: and a briefe discourse of his life

London

1614

Jewel, John

Apologia tes Anglon Ekklesias Hellenisti metaphrastheisa. = Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae Graecè versa

Oxford

1623

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of such matters as were promised, and entituled in the former part of homilies

London

312  Appendix 1626

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

1633

Jewel, John

The second tome of homilies of such matters as vvere promised and entituled in the former part of homilies.

London

1635

Jewel, John

The apology of the Church of England With a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professed and vsed in the same

London

1637

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

1639

Jewel, John

Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae

London

Selected Bibliography

Archival and Manuscript Sources Bishop Cox to William Cecil, January 19, 1562. National Archive, State Papers 12/21 fol. 40; 12/28 fol. 135. The Bishop of Worcester to the Council, April 1563. National Archive, State Papers 12/28 fol. 152. Declaration of the matters wherewith the Bishop of Worcester has charged Sir

Charles Bourne, April 1563. National Archive, State Papers 12/28 fol. 141. Letter from Lady Mary Wroth to the Duke of Buckingham, December 15, 1621. Bodleian Library MS Add. D. III, fols. 173r–v. Secretaries of State. National Archive, State Papers, Domestic.

Printed Primary Sources Allen, William. An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endeuours of the two English colleges. Rheims, 1581. Aristotle. Politics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine against the Academics. Edited by John J. O’Meara. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950. B., H. A Plea to an Appeale: Traversed Dialogue Wise. London: W. Jones, 1626. B., I. A Dialogue, betweene a Vertuous Gentleman and a Popish Priest. London: Robert Waldegrave, 1581. Bacon, Anne. The Letters of Lady Anne Bacon. Edited by Gemma Allen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Bale, John. A godly medytacyon of the Christen sowle concerninge a love towards God and hys Christe, compiled in Frenche by Lady Margret queene of Navere and aptely translated into Englysh by the right virtuous lady Elyzabeth doughter to Kynge Henri the viii. Wesel, 1548.

Barthlet, John. The pedegrewe of heretiques. London, 1565. Bell, Thomas. A Christian Dialogue, betweene Theophilus a Deformed Catholike in Rome, and Remigius a Reformed Catholike in the Church of England. London: Nicholas Okes, 1609. Black, Joseph, ed. The Martin Marprelate Tracts: A Modernized and Annotated Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Bonner, Edmund. A profitable and necessarye doctrine with certayne homelyes adioyned therunto set forth by the reuerend father in God, Edmunde Byshop of London. London: John Cawood, 1555. Bradstreet, Anne. The tenth muse lately sprung up in America or severall poems, compiled with great variety of vvit and learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse and description of the four elements, constitutions, ages of man, seas ons of the year. Together

314  Selected Bibliography with an exact epitomie of the four monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious poems. By a gentlewoman in those parts. London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650. Bridges, John. The Supremacie of Christian Princes. London: Henrie Bynneman, 1573. C., A. True Relations of Sundry Conferences had between Certaine Protestant Doctours and a Jesuite called M. Fisher (then Prisoner in London for the Catholique Fayth:) togeather with Defences of the Same. St. Omer: English College Press, 1626. Calfhill, James. An aunswere to the Treatise of the Crosse. London, 1566. Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians. Translated by John Pringle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948. ———. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. 2 vols. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006. ———. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008. Caraman, Philip, trans. The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest. New York: Image Books, 1955. Cartwright, Thomas. A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor Whitgifte Against the admonition to the Parliament. Hemel Hempstead: John Stroud, 1573. ———. The Reste of the Second Replie: Agaynst Master Doctor Whitgifts Second Answer Touching the Church Discipline. Basel, 1577. ———. The Second Replie of Thomas Cartwright against Maister Doctor Whitgiftes Second Answer, touching the Church discipline. Heidelberg: Michael Schirat, 1575.

A chayne of twelve links. To wit XII Catholick conditions concerning certain graces & indulgences, of christes Catholick church . . . Translated out of Italian and into English by I.W. Whereunto are annexed, the indulgences graunted unto the Society of the Rosary . . . together with those that are geven to holy grayness, crosses & medals of the English pardon, & the pardon of Boromeus. 1617. A Christian Letter of certaine English Protestants . . . unto that Reverend and learned man . . . Mr. R. Hoo[ . . . ]. Middelburg: Holland, 1599. In The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 4, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie: Attack and Response. Edited by W. Speed Hill and John Everitt Booty. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982. Clapham, Henoch. Errour on the Left Hand, through a Frozen Securitie: Howsoever Hot in Opposition, when Satan So Hears Them. London: N. Okes, 1608. Cleaver, Robert, and John Dod. A codly [sic] form of householde gouernement for the ordering of priuate families, according to the direction of Gods word. London: Thomas Creede for Thomas Man, 1598. Coke, John. The debate between the Heraldes of England and France. London, 1550. Cooke, Alexander. Pope Joane. A Dialogue betweene a Protestant and a Papist. London: R. Field, 1610. Cooper, Thomas. An Admonition to the People of England. London, 1589. ———. An answer to an apologie of priuate masse. London, 1562. Corderoy, Jeremy. A Short Dialogue, wherein is Proved, that No Man can be Saved without Good Workes. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1604. Council of Trent. Session 13, Canones de sacramento confirmationis, November 3, 1551.

Selected Bibliography  315 Cureton, William, ed. The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. London: Rivingtons, 1845. ———, ed. Corpus Ignatianum. London: Rivingtons, 1849. ———, ed. Vindiciae Ignatianae. London: Rivingtons, 1846. Dering, Edward. A sparing restraint, of many lauishe vntruthes. London, 1568. Dorman, Thomas. A disproufe of M. Nowelles reproufe. Antwerp, 1565. ———. A proufe of certeyne articles in religion. Antwerp, 1564. ———. A Request to M Jewel that he keep his promise made by solemn protestation in his late sermon at Paul’s Cross the 15 June 1567. Louvain, 1567. Du Bartas, Guillaume. “The II Part of the I Day: The Imposture.” In The Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume Saluste, Sieur Du Bartas. Translated by Joshua Sylvester. London, 1605. Elderton, William. An epytaphe vppon the death of the right reuerend and learned father in God I. Iuell, doctor of diuinitie and bishop of Sarisburie. London, 1571. Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Edited by Leach S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Erasmus, Desiderius. A deuoute treatise vpon the Pater noster, made fyrst in latyn by the moost famous doctour mayster Erasmus Roterodamus, and tourned in to englisshe by a yong vertuous and well lerned gentylwoman of. xix. yere of age. Translated by Margaret More Roper. London: Thomas Berthelet, [1526?], [1531?]. Fehrenbach, R. J., and E. S. Leedham-Green, eds. Private Libraries in Renaissance England. Vol. 1. Marlborough: Adam Matthew, 1992. Fenner, Dudley. A Counter-poyson modestly written for the time [ . . . ]. London: Robert Waldegrave, 1584.

Field, John. The Three Last Dayes Conferences Had in the Tower with Edmund Campion Jesuite, the 18: 23: and 27. of September. 1581. London: Christopher Barker, 1583. Frere, Walter Howard, and William Paul McClure Kennedy, eds. Visitation Articles and Injunctions. 1559–1575. Vol. 3. London: Longmans Green & Company, 1910. Friedberg, Aemilius, ed. Corpus Iuris Canonici. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1879–81. Gifford, George. A Dialogue betweene a Papist and a Protestant, Applied to the Capacitie of the Unlearned. London: for Tobie Cook, 1583. Harding, Thomas. A Confutation of a Booke Intituled An Apologie of the Church of England. Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1565. Hill, W. Speed, and John Everitt Booty, eds. The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker. Vol. 4, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie: Attack and Response. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982. Holleran, James V., ed. A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debates at the Tower of London in 1581. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. The Holy Bible. King James Version. London: Robert Barker, 1611. Hooker, Richard. The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker. Vol. 1, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Preface, Books I to IV. Edited by W. Speed Hill. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977. ———. The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker. Vol. 3, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books VI, VII, VIII. Edited by W. Speed Hill. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981. ———. Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie eight bookes. London, 1604. ———. The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With an Account of His Life and

316  Selected Bibliography Death. Vol. 1. Edited by Izaak Walton and John Keble. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1841. Horae Eboracenses: The Book of Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Surtees Society, 132. Durham: Surtees Society, 1920. Hoskins, Edgar, ed. Horae beatae Mariae virginis or Sarum and York primers with kindred books and primers of the reformed Roman use. London, 1901. Jewel, John. An Apolgie or answere in defence of the Churche in Englande, with a briefe and plaine declaration of the true religion professes and used in the same. Translated by Anne Bacon. London, 1564. ———. An Apology of the Church of England. Edited by John Everitt Booty. Translated by Anne Bacon. New York: Church Publishing, 2002. ———. The Apology of the Church of England by John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, Part 4. London: Cassell. 1888. ———. Certaine frivolous obiections against the government of the Church of England answeared by John Jewel. London, 1641. ———. The Copie of a Sermon Pronounced by the Byshop of Salisburie at Paules Crosse the Second Sondaye before Ester in the Yere of our Lord. 1560. London: John Day, 1560. ———. A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande conteininge an answeare to a certaine booke lately set foorthe by M. Hardinge Defense. London, 1567. ———. A replie vnto M. Hardinges answeare by perusinge whereof the discrete, and diligent reader may easily see, the weake, and vnstable groundes of the Romaine religion. London, 1565. ———. The Works of John Jewel. Edited by John Ayre. 4 vols. Cambridge: Parker Society, 1845–50. King James Bible. “Authorized Version.” Cambridge Edition.

Lemon, Robert, ed. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580. London: Longman, 1856. Lightfoot, J. B., trans. The Apostolic Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Vol. 2.1. London: Macmillan, 1889. Loughlin, Marie, Sandra J. Bell, and Patricia Brace, eds. The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth Century Poetry and Prose. London: Broadview Press, 2012. Marprelate, Martin. Hay Any Work for Cooper. London: John Petherham, 1845. Mirk, John. Instructions for Parish Priests. Edited by Edward Peacock. London: Early English Texts Society, 1902. Murray, Iain H., ed. The Reformation of the Church: A Collection of Reformed and Puritan Documents on Church Issues. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987. Nowell, Alexander. A confutation, as wel of M. Dormans last boke entituled a disproufe. London, 1567. ———. The reproufe of M. Dorman his proufe of certaine articles in religion and continued by Alexander Nowell. London, 1566. ———. A reproufe, written by Alexander Nowell. London, 1565. Nowell, Alexander, and William Day. A True Report of the Disputation or Rather Private Conference Had in the Tower of London, with Ed. Campion Jesuite, the Last of August. 1581. London: Christopher Barker, 1583. Ochino, B. Certayne Sermons of the rhyte famous and excellente Clark Master Bernadine Ochine. London, 1551. ———. Fourteene sermons of Barnadine Ochyne, concerning the predestinacion and eleccion of god. Translated by Anne Cooke. London, 1551. ———. Sermons of Barnadine Ochine of Sena godlye, frutefull, and very necessarye for all true Christians. London, 1548. O’Donovan, Oliver, and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, eds. From Irenaeus to

Selected Bibliography  317 Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Paris, Matthew. Chronica Majora. Edited by Henry Richards Luard. 5 vols. Rolls Series. London, 1880. Parr, Katherine. The Lamentacion of a Sinner. In Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence, edited by Janel Mueller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Parsons, Robert. A Christian Directory, Guiding Men to their Eternal Salvation. Orig. 1582, repr. Dublin, 1767. ———. The First Booke of the Christian Exercise. Rouen, 1582. Peel, Albert, ed. Second Parte of a Register. Vols. 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915. Pilkington, James. The burnynge of Paules church in London in the yeare of oure Lord 1561. and the iiii. day of Iune by lyghtnynge. London, 1563. Ponet, John. A way of Reconcilliation of a good and learned man, touching the Trueth, Nature, and Substance of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament. Translated by Elizabeth Russell. London: R. Barker, 1605. Poyntz, Robert. Testimonies for the real presence of Christes body and blood in the blessed Sacrame[n]t of the aultar. Louvain, 1566. Radford, John. A Directorie Teaching the Way to the Truth in a Brief and Plaine Discourse against the heresies of this time. England, 1605. Rastell, John. A briefe shew of the false wares packt together in the named, Apology of the Churche of England. Louvain, 1567. ———. A confutation of a sermon, pronou[n] ced by M. Iuell, at Paules crosse, the second Sondaie before Easter. Antwerp, 1564. ———. The third booke, declaring by examples out of auncient councels, fathers,

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Moss, Candida R. Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Munier, Charles. “Où en est la question d’Ignace d’Antioche? Bilan d’un siècle de recherches 1870–1988.” In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.27.1, edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, 359–484. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993. Nelson, Eric. The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Neveu, Bruno. “L’érudition ecclésiastique du XVIIe siècle et la nostalgie de l’antiquité chrétienne.” In Religion and Humanism, edited by Keith Robbins, 195–223. Studies in Church History 17. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Novikoff, Alex J. “Anselm, Dialogue, and the Rise of Scholastic Disputation.” Speculum 86 (2011): 387–418. Oberman, Heiko. Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1986. ———. “Quo Vadis Petre? Tradition from Irenaeus to Humani Generis.” In Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought, edited by Heiko Oberman, 269–96. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992. Ocker, Christopher, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko, and Peter Wallace, eds. Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires, Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr. Boston: Brill. 2007. O’Donovan, Joan Lockwood. Theology of Law and Authority in the English Reformation. Emory University Studies in Law and Religion 1. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991.

Selected Bibliography  327 Oxford English Dictionary Online. December 2012. Oxford University Press. Parker, Thomas M. “The Rediscovery of the Fathers in the 17th Century Anglican Tradition.” In The Rediscovery of Newman: An Oxford Symposium, edited by John Coulson and A. M. Allchin, 31–49. London: SPCK, 1967. Pasquarello, Michael. “John Jewel: Preaching Prelate.” Anglican and Episcopal History 69 (2000): 276–94. Pazzolato, L. F. “Silenzio del vescovo e parola degli eretici in Ignazio d’Antiochia.” Aevum 44 (1970): 205–18. Petermann, Julius Heinrich. S. Ignatii patris apostolici quae feruntur epistolae. Leipzig: Vogel, 1849. Pettersen, Alvyn. “The Laity—Bishop’s Pawn? Ignatius of Antioch on the Obedient Christian.” Scottish Journal of Theology 44 (1991): 39–56. ———. “Sending Heretics to Coventry? Ignatius of Antioch on Reverencing Silent Bishops.” Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990): 335–50. Pollen, J. H. “Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, 1584–1603.” Catholic Record Society 5 (1908). Pruett, Gordon E. “A Protestant Doctrine of the Eucharistic Presence.” Calvin Theological Journal 10 (1975): 142–74. Puterbaugh, Joseph. “‘Your Selfe Be Judge and Answer Your Selfe’: Formation of Protestant Identity in A Conference Betwixt a Mother a Devout Recusant and Her Sonne a Zealous Protestant.” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 419–31. Quantin, Jean-Louis. The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. “The Fathers in Seventeenth Century Anglican Theology.” In Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists,

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330  Selected Bibliography England.” In Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning, edited by John N. King, 163–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. “Yielding to the Extremity of the Time: Conformity, Orthodoxy and the Post-Reformation Catholic Community.” In Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, edited by Peter Lake and Michael Questier, 211–36. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000. Wark, Keith Robert. Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire. Vol. 3, pt. 19. Manchester: Manchester University Press for the Chatham Society, 1971. Watt, Diane. Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Weijenborg, Reinoud. Les lettres d’Ignace d’Antioche. Étude de critique littéraire et de théologie. Leiden: Brill, 1969. Weiser, David K. The Prose Style of John Jewel. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur Universität Salzburg, 1973. Wenig, Scott A. “John Jewel and the Reformation of the Diocese of Salisbury, 1560–1571.” Anglican and Episcopal History 73 (2004): 141–68. Whiteman, Anne. “The Protestation Returns of 1641–1642: Part I, The General Organisation.” Localpopulationstudies.org, accessed December 4, 2014, http://www.localpopulation studies.org.uk/PDF/LPS55/LPS55 _1995_14-26.pdf. Wiles, Maurice F. “Ignatius and the Church.” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 750–55.

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Contributors

Andrew Atherstone is Latimer research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of Oxford University’s Faculty of Theology and Religion. His research and writing focuses upon Anglicanism and Evangelicalism from the eighteenth century to the present. His books include Archbishop Justin Welby: Risk-taker and Reconciler (DLT, 2014) and, as coeditor, Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Boydell, 2014). Ian Atherton is a senior lecturer in history at Keele University who has published on a variety of aspects of Tudor and Stuart religion and politics, including essays on cathedrals in early modern Britain. He has coedited three books, including Norwich Cathedral, 1096–1996: Church, City and Diocese (Hambledon, 1996). He is currently working on British cathedrals between the Reformation and the Restoration and, in parallel, on the commemoration of battlefields from the middle ages to the modern era. Sarah Bastow is head of history at the University of Huddersfield. She has produced work on the activities of both Catholics and Protestants in this era, reflecting her interest in the religious conflicts but also in the concept of religious toleration in the sixteenth century. Her publications include The Catholic Gentry of Yorkshire, 1536–1642: Resistance and Accommodation and work on early modern masculinity in the north of England and the importance of reputation in early modern society. Paul Dominiak is dean of chapel, fellow, and director of studies in theology at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is also an affiliated lecturer in the faculty of divinity. Alice Ferron completed her PhD in history at University College London. Her research centers on the censorship and mediation of women’s writing in the first half of the Early Modern Period. She is currently an Associate Professor of history at Lone Star College. André A. Gazal (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is assistant project editor for the Reformation Commentary on Scripture (IVP Academic), and teaches on the faculties of North Greenville University and Nicolet Bible Institute. He is the author of Scripture and Royal Supremacy in Tudor England: The Use of Old Testament Historical Narrative (Edwin Mellen Press, 2013). He has also a contributed to the Encyclopaedia of Christianity in the United States and Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation.

332  Selected Bibliography

Paul A. Hartog (PhD, Loyola University Chicago) is a professor and director of library services at Faith Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Polycarp and the New Testament (Mohr Siebeck, 2002) and Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp (Oxford University Press, 2013). Torrance Kirby is a professor of ecclesiastical history at McGill University, Montreal. He received a DPhil degree in modern history from Oxford University in 1988. Recent books include Persuasion and Conversion: Religion, Politics and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (2013), The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (2007), and Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (2005). He is also the editor of A Companion to Richard Hooker (2008) and coeditor of Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion, 1520–1640 (2014). W. Bradford Littlejohn (PhD, University of Edinburgh) serves as president of the Davenant Trust and director of the Davenant Latin Institute and teaches philosophy part-time at Moody Bible Institute. He is the author of Richard Hooker: A Guide to His Life and Work (Cascade, 2015) and The Freedom of a Christian Commonwealth: Richard Hooker and the Problem of Christian Liberty (Eerdmans, 2016). Aislinn Muller is a research fellow at Boston College. She completed her PhD in 2017 at the University of Cambridge, where she wrote her thesis on the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I. She has previously published articles in British Catholic History and Studies in Church History. Angela Ranson graduated with her doctorate from the University of York in 2014. Her research focuses on the establishment of the Church of England during the English Reformation, and she has published articles about early modern religious identity in Sin and Salvation in Reformation England (Routledge, 2015) and Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion (Brill, 2013). Joshua Rodda is the Rhinehart Postdoctoral Fellow at Appalachian State University, North Carolina for 2018–19, having completed his doctorate at the University of Nottingham in 2012. His first book, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626, was published with Ashgate in 2014, and he has also published on the Jesuit doctrine of equivocation. He is currently pursuing a project examining the religious dialogue in post-Reformation England. Lucy Wooding is Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College Oxford and Clarendon Associate Professor in Early Modern British History at the University of Oxford. Her publications include Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Henry VIII (Routledge, 2009).

Index

Admonition to Parliament, An (Field, John and Wilcox, Thomas), 101, 105, 171, 175 Allen, Cardinal William, 49, 127 Andrewes, Lancelot, 209, 216–17, 268 Anglicanism, 285, 289, 290–91, 297 Anonymous, Norman, 164 Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (Jewel, John), 1, 2, 4, 48, 50, 63, 98, 183, 284 Apology of the Church of England, The (Jewel, John). See also Bacon, Anne audience, 63, 68, 132 authorship, 73 and the Bishop Jewel Society, 289, 293 and cathedrals, 9, 100, 103, 111–12 and Catholic clergy, 234 concept of Christianity, 83–84, 228 editions, 12, 210 and the godly magistrate, 89, 93, 96, 166–69, 172–73, 189 heresy, 79–80, 82, 88, 94 introductory letter, 63, 68, 72 in the Jewel-Harding controversy, 127, 129, 133 patrons, 124 portrayal of the Church of Rome, 9, 86–87, 196 and the power of the pope, 80, 88–90, 92–93, 162, 167 and the primitive church, 134, 265–66 purpose, 8, 33, 81 significance, 40 structure, 48, 266 style, 39 translation (1564), 1, 68, 70, 73 Aristotle, 164, 247–48, 249, 256 Augustine, Saint, 54, 55, 82, 87, 248, 250, 253, 255 Augustodunenis, Honorius, 164

authority, papal, 266 and councils, 88–89, 91–92, 96 and the early church, 94, 170 and English polity, 10–11, 148 infallibility, 211 and monarchs, 139, 146, 163, 207–8, 218 and Protestants, 80 supremacy of, 127, 191, 215 authority, political. See also authority, spiritual versus temporal Biblical foundation, 163, 170–71, 173 and the Elizabethan Church of England, 51, 93 and the Jacobean Church of England, 12 and Paul’s Cross, 8, 42, 44 purpose, 176 and Regnans in Excelsis (1570), 11, 139, 146, 148 use of history, 148–50, 152, 154, 165, 226 authority, religious. See also authority, spiritual versus temporal and the church fathers, 14 and the ‘disenchantment of the world’, 46 and the Eucharist, 188 and the Elizabethan Church of England, 2, 3, 134, 175–76, 195 and individual participation, 44, 56, 58, 173 and the Jacobean Church of England, 207 and the modern Church of England, 287 origin of, 248 and Paul’s Cross, 8 authority, spiritual vs temporal, 154, 166–68, 175, 178, 186 and the Apology of the Church of England, 189 and excommunication, 187–89, 190

334  Index and clergy, 103, 112 defence of, 108–109, 111–12 English minsters, 103, 237 Exeter, 104 Norwich, 104, 109 and parliament, 106–107 and patronage, 110 Bacon, Anne (Cooke), 8, 48, 63, 100 Protestant, 99, 103–104 and the Apology of the Church of purpose, 101–102, 105–106, 110 England, 1, 66, 70, 73 Salisbury, 9, 26, 98–99, 104, 231, 232, 236 authorship, 68, 72 survival, 101, 112 background, 64–65 threats to, 101, 106 and Bernardo Ochino, 66–67 unreformed, 98, 230–31 reputation, 65, 72 Worcester, 229, 231–32 significance, 67 Carleton, George, 210, 214–16 sons, 48, 64 Cartwright, Thomas use of the vernacular, 74 and church government, 105, 165, 183, Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 48, 64, 68–70, 73 188, 191 Bale, John, 71 and John Jewel, 99, 112, 184, 189 Bancroft, Archbishop Richard, 1, 102, 112, and John Whitgift, 131, 133, 172, 208 209, 265 and Martin Marprelate, 134 Barlow, Bishop William, 209, 215, 218 and Richard Hooker, 171, 175 Baronius, Cardinal Caesar, 271 and the royal supremacy, 171–72 Barthlet, John, 119, 128, 129 Catholics, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9–11, 13, 48–49, 79–80, Bell, Thomas, 248, 251, 252, 254 and celibacy, 233, 235–36 Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert, 206, 209 as characters, 252–53, 254 Bilson, Thomas, 172 conversion, 233, 238, 250, 253 Blackwell, Archpriest George, 209 and Edwin Sandys, 229, 231, 233, 236–38 Blondel, David, 271 Jesuits, 147–48, 151–52, 211, 243 Boleyn, Queen Anne, 153 the ‘Louvainists’, 123 Bourne, Sir John, 231–32, 234–35, 236–37 and the oath of allegiance, 209 Anthony Bourne (son), 235 and Regnans in Excelsis, 140, 150 Bridges, John, 172 Buchanan, Colin (Bishop Jewel Society), 287 threat, 201, 242, 257 treason, 143, 155 bull, papal (1570). See Regnans in Excelsis catholicity, 12–13, 47, 81, 88, 126, 134, Bullinger, Heinrich, 4, 11, 40, 126, 132, 205–206 146–47, 168 definition, 213–14, 220 and religious identity, 211 Calfhill, James, 6, 119, 124, 126, 128–29, 132 and unity, 212–13 Calvin, Jean, 4, 35, 170, 200, 202, 269–70 Cecil, Mildred (Cooke), 64, 73 Cambridge, University of, 13, 25, 68, 104, Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 23, 26, 73, 108, 113, 129, 132, 200, 225–26, 270, 124, 151–52, 228 284, 297 Certain Frivolous Objections to the Cranmer Society, 288–89, 291, 295 Government of the Church of England Campion, Edmund (saint), 151, 219, 246, 252, (Jewel, John), 99, 219 253, 255 Chambers, Richard, 24 Capon, John, 99, 230 Chamberlayne, Robert (organist), 232 cathedrals, 9–10 Cheke, John, 226 benefits of, 109–110 authority, spiritual vs temporal (continued) and loyalty, 206, 208 and the oath of allegiance, 208, 215 and the royal supremacy, 184–85 Aylmer, John, 228

Index  335 church, primitive, 2, 3, 6, 8, 46, 79–80, 83–85, 89, 133, 217 councils, 89–90, 91, 127 and heresy, 85–86, 88, 95 liturgy, 88 and the pope, 94, 141, 170 and the royal supremacy, 93, 143, 166–69, 187 and scripture, 88, 90 church, universal (catholic), 12, 81, 87, 93, 94, 125, 131, 196–97, 252 and the Church of England, 220 duties for members, 216–17 and John Jewel, 219 pure, 210, 214, 216, 218, 221 true, 207–208, 214, 221, 228, 245 unity of, 217 church, visible and invisible, 194, 198, 216 Cicero, 32, 247–48, 249 Cole, Henry, 3, 48, 123 Collins, Samuel, 209, 213, 215, 217, 218 communities, textual, 120 corpus of works, 133 definition of gospellers, 124 definition of Louvainists, 123 inspiration, 128, 132 and John Jewel, 122, 126, 127 self-awareness, 12, 129, 130, 135 controvery, Jewel-Harding, 13–14, 31, 46, 48–49, 99, 119 audience, 122–23, 133 and catholicity, 210 and the church, 126, 128, 205 inspiration, 128 marginalia, 133 and the Oath of Allegiance, 211 preaching, 132 strategies, 125–27 Cooke, Alexander (polemicist), 249, 251 Cooke, Anthony, 64, 226–27 daughter Margaret, 64 Cooper, Thomas, 6, 119, 124, 126, 127–30, 132, 134, 208 Corderoy, Jeremy (polemicist), 253, 254, 255 Cosin, Richard, 185 Coverdale, Miles, 284 Cox, Bishop Richard, 20, 24, 132, 146, 228 Cranmer, Archbishop Thomas



and the Book of Common Prayer, 22, 55, 287 and the Church of England, 128 and continental reformers, 65, 225 Cranmer Society (Cambridge), 288, 291, 295 and the eucharist, 15, 25, 53, 289 legacy, 129, 134, 290 and the Oxford Disputation, 24 Cromwell, Thomas, 50 Daillé, Jean, 271 Defence of the Apology of the Church of England, A (Jewel, John), 49, 129, 133 and church government, 268 and the Church of Rome, 87, 170, 197 genre, 33 and heresy, 82–83, 88, 91, 94 and the royal supremacy, 168, 185 and the scriptures, 266 style, 39 Dering, Edward, 5, 69–70, 119, 126, 127–30, 133 Donne, John, 210, 212, 217–18 Dorman, Thomas, 4, 49, 124, 127, 128–29, 130–32, 169 Du Moulin, Pierre, 210 Dudley, John (Duke of Northumberland), 226 Dudley, Robert (Earl of Leicester), 69 Edward VI, King, 4, 23, 64, 71, 125, 143, 225 Elderton, William (balladeer), 131 Elizabeth I, Queen, 43 and Anne Bacon, 64 author, 71–72 and cathedrals, 105, 109 Defender of the Faith, 10 and Edwin Sandys, 228–29, 231 excommunication, 10, 139, 145–47, 149, 152–54, 186 and John Jewel, 47, 73, 139, 228 legitimacy, 153 and preaching, 233 supremacy, 11, 162, 166, 185 enemy, use of the, 13, 150, 214 characterization, 242, 249, 251, 253, 256 positive, 243, 254

336  Index England, Church of, 2, 5. See also cathedrals adiaphora, 172, 174 as the Body of Christ, 192, 195, 197–98 Book of Common Prayer, 56, 231, 284–85, 289–90 and the Church of Ireland, 107 clergy, 125, 134, 187, 228, 229, 236 defence of, 35,80, 84–85, 183, 187, 198, 228, 238, 243, 246–47, 249, 256 episcopacy, 101, 109, 172, 174, 237, 264, 267, 270, 272 and the excommunication of Elizabeth I, 11, 147, 152 Jacobean, 12, 100, 108, 210, 214, 216, 219–20, 270 legitimacy, 134, 183, 195, 206–208 liturgy, 24, 56, 286 and the Marian exile, 125–26 and national identity, 12, 16, 39, 49, 58, 79, 100, 134, 211 patristic heritage, 265, 270, 271. See also fathers, church political body, 174 and the primitive church, 206, 217 and recusancy, 238 reform of, 125, 230, 236–37 and religious education, 103–105, 113, 286 theology, 12, 263 Thirty-Nine Articles, 192, 284, 287, 290 threats to, 147–48, 202, 266, 272 unity of, 8, 11, 12, 13, 21, 73, 124–25, 131, 135, 150, 213, 228 Erastian, 11, 178, 186, 191, 263 eucharist, 4, 5, 8, 22, 36, 45–46, 104 and the Bishop Jewel Society, 287 and the Church of Rome, 87 hermeneutics, 52, 54, 58 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 127, 133 and Marian exiles, 227 and polemics, 266, 270 real presence in, 47, 55 Eusebius, 167, 269 evangelism, 15, 16, 51, 284–85 exiles, Marian, 25, 121, 125–26, 129 fathers, church and the Admonition controversy, 105



and authority, 144, 191, 205 and the Church of England, 218 and heresy, 80, 86–87 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 3, 14, 94–95, 141 modern use of, 264, 269, 273 and puritans, 266 and scholarship, 263, 269 and the scriptures, 83 Featley, Daniel, 210, 216 Feckenham, John, 122 Fenner, Dudley, 134, 183–86, 188, 191, 201 Field, John, 131 Field, Richard, 209, 213–14, 217, 219–20 Fisher, John (saint), 44 Fitzherbert, Thomas (Jesuit), 209, 217, 219 Folkerzheimer, Herman, 232 Foxe, John, 3, 10, 121, 134, 144–46, 148–49, 218 Garbrand, John, 151, 166 Gardiner, George (prebendary), 104, 106 Gardiner, Bishop Stephen, 25, 52 Gerson, Jean, 89, 164 Gheast, Edmund, 104 Gifford, George (polemicist), 250–53, 255–56 Giles of Rome, 164 Graham, Billy (evangelist), 15, 293 Grindal, Edmund, 124, 132, 226 Gunpowder Plot, 205, 285 Gwalter, Rudolph, 19, 40, 132 Haddon, Walter, 23, 49 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 270 Hammond, Henry (theologian), 271 Harding, Thomas, 16, 183, 188 and the Challenge Sermon, 247 and the church, 197, 201, 211 and dialogue method, 250–51 and the early church, 91, 215 education, 4, 20 and heresy, 81–82, 85, 88 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 1, 48–49, 53, 120, 124, 129, 130 and John Jewel, 7, 31–32, 126 and patristic study, 268 preferments, 98–99 and the royal supremacy, 165, 185–86

Index  337 and textual community, 121, 123, 130, 133 and truth, 3 von Harnack, Adolf (Christian scholar), 272 Harpsfield, Nicholas, 3 Harris, Richard, 210, 218 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 107–108 Henry VIII, King, 10, 71, 102, 106, 141, 153, 230 heresy, 9, 49, 83, 258, 250 and the Church of Rome, 87, 94–95 defined, 81–82, 88, 94 and dissent, 80–81, 83, 85, 95 and Gratian, 82–83 and the Jacobean Church of England, 206 and schism, 92–93 and truth, 79, 83–84, 96 Heskins, Thomas, 4, 99 Heynes, Dean Simon, 104, 106 Higgons, Theophilus, 209, 219 Holgate, Archbishop Robert, 103, 106 Hooker, Richard, 6, 11, 12, 133, 135, 264, 268, 270, 288 and Andrew Willett, 192–201 and the Church of Rome, 193, 197–99, 200 and continental reformers, 200 and the invisible church, 194 and John Jewel, 171, 183–84, 186, 198, 201–202 law, 173–74, 176–78 and the Oath of Allegiance, 218 and Peter Martyr Vermigli, 191, 201 polemics, 171, 177 and the power of clerics, 186–87, 195 rhetoric, 201–202 and the royal supremacy, 162, 165, 171, 174 and scripture, 174, 176 and temporal versus spiritual authority, 188 and theological imaginaries, 161, 173 Horne, Bishop Robert, 24, 122 Humphrey, Laurence, 20, 219 identity confessional, 2, 6, 57, 100, 140, 206–207, 213

religious, 43, 46, 51, 55, 58, 79, 120, 214 Ignatius of Antioch, 15, 264, 267, 268–73 imaginary, theological, definition, 162 individuality, 8, 44, 51, 55–56, 58, 127, 173–74 and participation, 211, 214, 218, 245 and reason, 248–49 James VI and I, 12, 208, 216 and the Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, 205, 209 and catholicity, 205 controversy, 217, 220 Defender of the Faith, 206 and the unity of the church, 211–12, 220 Jewel, John apologist, 26, 39, 83, 95, 161, 177 Bishop of Salisbury, 9, 26, 103, 129, 216, 229 as host, 232 pastoral, 36, 98 Challenge Sermon, 1–3, 6–8, 13–14, 31, 43–44, 111, 219 authority, 265 and the call to debate, 243–44, 247, 250 and Henry Cole, 48 and Henry Machyn, 47 and heresy, 245 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 119, 128 as a quest for truth, 245 and reason, 246, 250 and the sacraments, 45–46, 52–54, 58 and the public sphere, 52, 57–58 significance of, 50–51, 59, 141 church champion of, 26, 119, 131–132, 134, 146, 284, 290, 300–301 clergy, 37, 132, 210 definition of, 195, 197, 201 fathers, 263–66, 273 of Rome, 193, 196–97, 213 unity of, 213 conformity, 4, 20, 23 death, 131–32, 216 and ecclesiastical government, 99, 268 editions of his works, 16, 39, 111, 210, 288 education, 3–4, 7, 18–20, 31–32

338  Index Jewel, John (continued) educator, 34–35, 38, 104 interest in, 22 exile, 13, 23–25, 47, 129, 227 and the godly magistrate, 126, 127 and catholicity, 211 excommunication, 145, 189 powers of, 166–68, 170–71, 186 and iconoclasm, 230 leadership, 6, 14, 34–35, 119 Jewel-Harding controversy, 120–21, 126, 127 and the Oath of Allegiance, 218 and the puritans, 130–31, 184–85, 192 and Regnans in Excelsis, 148, 152, 154 as scholar, 267 significance, 120 and the textual community, 129, 135 legacy challenge to Rome, 47, 57, 141, 148, 219 and the contributors to the controversy, 6, 127, 132–33 and the Elizabethan church, 5 intellectual, 11, 15 and the Jacobean church, 207 limitations to, 146, 184, 299 modern, 15–16, 284–85, 287, 299 and the puritans, 183, 185, 186, 201–202 and Regnans in Excelsis, 139, 151, 154 and Richard Hooker, 12 role model, 135, 210, 216, 218, 266 of scholarship, 264–65, 267, 270, 272 and marriage of clergy, 234 and the Northern Rebellion, 151 and Peter Martyr Vermigli, 21–22, 23, 25, 189–90, 225–26 polemics, 264 approach, 33, 39 dialogue form, 249 and heresy, 9, 83, 85–86, 96 negative method, 31, 80, 95, 133, 244, 247, 263 and papal supremacy, 165, 170 patristic, 268 and Regnans in Excelsis, 11, 146 and the unity of the church, 13

and the pope, 124, 170–71, 178, 185 and civil unrest, 144, 145, 150–51 and Protestants, 80–81, 83 Regnans in Excelsis (1570), 141–42, 154 restoration of ancient faith, 165 sermons, 39, 139 and the true church, 197 preaching and the Apology, 6 audience, 20, 34, 45, 48 characteristics, 37–38 influence, 227 and Regnans in Excelsis, 139, 142 reputation as, 7, 16, 103, 216 Salisbury, 104 and scripture, 233 sermons, 22, 26, 33–35, 38–39, 98 style, oratory, 34, 36, 94 reformer, 18, 126, 186, 130 and the reforming community,18–19, 20–25, 40, 119, 225, 245 rhetorics, 7, 11, 13, 16, 19, 32, 34, 51, 80, 201, 264 and royal vistations, 227–28, 230–31, 233 scholar, 246 disputation, 247, 251, 255–56 Oxford, 21–22, 26, 54 patristic, 14, 130, 265, 267 reputation as, 122, 127, 185, 219, 265 succession, apostolic, 215 Sunningwell, 23, 285 theology, 11, 32–34, 39 and heresy, 80 methodology, 33, 38 and Mosaic imaginaries, 161 and Thomas Harding, 22–23, 31–32 use of history, 85, 89, 141, 167 use of scripture, 34–36, 38, 53, 83, 86, 93, 166, 169, 177, 246, 265 and the Church of Rome, 189, 196 and the true church, 197, 201, 213 use of the vernacular, 8, 19 and the via media, 100 Kiligrew, Katherine (Cooke), 64 Knox, John, 6, 126

Index  339 Packer, J. I. (theologian), 288, 296 papists, church, 195 Parker, Archbishop Matthew and Anne Bacon, 48, 63–64, 68, 70, 75 and the Apology of the Church of England, 8, 100, 111, 124 and Elizabethan bishops, 227, 231–32 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 124, 228 Marprelate, Martin, 101, 134, 208 and John Jewel, 26, 73 Martial, John, 20, 124, 127, 132 and Martin Bucer, 226 Martin, Gregory, 5 and the preface to the Apology, 9, 65–66, martyrdom, 3, 217, 267, 270, 287, 298 72, 74 Mary I, Queen, 20, 23, 32, 35, 152, 193, 226, Parkhurst, John, 18–19, 22, 24, 124 230, 235 Parr, Katherine, Queen, 66, 71–72 Mary, Virgin, 205, 230 Parsons, Robert, 150, 206, 209, 219 Melanchthon, Philip, 4 Paul’s Cross (pulpit), 1, 7, 8, 42–45, 46, 57, 59, Milton, John, 270 123, 129, 132, 141, 233, 257, 265 modernity, origins of, 45–46, 50 Pearson, Bishop John, 271–72 More, Thomas (saint), 44, 165, 248, 251 Percy, John (Jesuit), 246 Moses, 11, 84, 141, 177 Persons, Robert. See Parsons, Robert and the papacy, 165 persuasion, culture of, 7, 43–45, 249 political leader, 161, 166, 175–76 and the eucharist, 55, 56 and the puritans, 171–72 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, teacher, 163 50–51 and participation, 58 National Evangelical Anglican Congress, Pilkington, James, 24, 124, 134, 146 297 Plato, 176, 247, 254 Nicholas of Cusa, 89–91 Pointz, Robert, 128 Northern Rebellion, 142, 145, 151 Nowell, Alexander, 48–49, 119, 124, 127–29, polemics, seventeenth-century, 256 and catholicity, 207, 220 130, 132 and Elizabethan reformers, 206, 210, 220 and John Jewel, 219, 221 Oath of Allegiance, 12, 205, 208, 212 and patristic scholarship, 270 and authority, 215–16 polemics, sixteenth-century, 125, 130, controversy, 207 140–41, 153, 201 defenders, 212–13 and the Jewel-Harding controversy, 211 and adiaphora, 174 antipapal, 193 Owen, David, 218 context, 192 Oxford, University of, 3–4, 7, 15–16, 18–20, and dialogue form, 243, 246, 248, 251, 23, 31–33, 270, 286–89, 296, 300 254 Church of England Council, 296 and disputations, 246–47, 250, 255 and the gospellers, 124 foundation, 243, 247–48, 249 Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, motivation, 245 290–94, 297 Joint Christian Societies Committee, 296 purpose of, 251–52, 255 and the royal supremacy, 172 library of John Jewel, 104 strategies, 242, 246, 249, 256 and the Louvainists, 123 and the use of the church fathers, 266, 273 University Church Union, 292 Labbe, Philippe (Jesuit), 271 Latimer, Hugh (martyr), 24, 128–29, 287, 298 Lever, Thomas, 24 Lightfoot, Bishop Joseph Barber, 269, 271–72 Lupton, Thomas, 150–51 Luther, Martin, 4, 13, 130, 153

340  Index polemics, sixteenth-century (continued) and the use of history, 154 and the use of reason, 252, 254 and the use of scripture, 163, 165–66, 172, 177 Polycarp, 15, 264, 267, 270–73 Ponet, John, 70 Price, Daniel, 218 printing, importance of, 45, 48, 120, 140 providence, 177 Protestants, 1, 2, 4, 6–9, 11, 94–95, 193, 196, 201, 264 hermeneutics, 52 radical, 12, 13, 49. See also puritans and Regnans in Excelsis, 140, 147 and the royal supremacy, 185 as successors to early church, 86 tropes, 98 and truth, 85 puritans, 6, 9, 12, 229, 243, 266, 288, 290 and cathedrals, 101–102, 105 and the Church of England, 183, 202 and the Church of Rome, 194, 200 and John Jewel, 186 and the Oath of Allegiance, 212 and the primitive church, 165, 175 and the royal supremacy, 171, 175 Rastell, John, 20, 123, 128, 130 Reformation, English, 2, 5, 7, 9, 43 and cathedrals, 102 and the Church of Rome, 167, 170 collaboration of reformers, 125, 130, 146–47 defense of, 238, 245 and the ‘disenchantment of the world’, 46, 50 Edwardian, 21, 35, 56, 128, 230 and eucharistic change, 270 and the European Reformation, 11, 40, 126, 135 Henrican, 128 and the Jacobean Church of England, 206–207, 210, 218 legacy of scholarship, 269, 272 medieval heritage, 100–101, 110–11 and modern Church of England, 295, 298

and scriptures, 249 and the use of history, 149, 206 and women, 63–64, 66 Regnans in Excelsis (1570), 10–11, 139, 143, 153–54 audience, 151–52 and European powers, 144 and Jesuits, 147–48 and rebellion, 144, 151 response, 146–47, 151–52 Replie Unto Mr Harding’s Answer, A (Jewel, John), 132, 195 Reynolds, John (Bishop Jewel Society), 286, 288, 292 Richer, Edmond, 216, 218 Ridley, Nicholas, 24, 53, 134 Rogers, Henry, 247 Rome, Church of, 192–93 and innovation, 245 and James VI and I, 212 and John Jewel, 246, 265, 267 and salvation, 194, 199, 211 threat to Church of England, 228 and the true church, 195, 198–201 Roper, Mary More, 64, 70 Russell, Elizabeth (Cooke Hoby), 64, 70 Sander, Nicholas, 3, 20, 123 Sandys, Edwin, 13, 224 as bishop, 233 and Church of Rome, 228, 231, 237–38 and clerical celibacy, 233, 234–35 and the early church, 228 and the Elizabethan settlement, 229 exile, 225–27 as host, 232–33 and iconoclasm, 230–31 and John Bourne, 231–35, 237 and Lady Jane Grey, 226 and Martin Bucer, 226 marriage, 234–36 preaching, 229, 233, 234, 237 and religious education, 229 and scriptures, 228–29, 234 theology, 227 visitations, 227, 231 and Worcester, 229, 233, 235, 236 Saravia, Hadrian, 172

Index  341 schism, ecclesiastical, 92, 206 Second Tome of Homilies 1563 (Jewel, John), 142–44, 289 sermons, public, 45, 51, 57, 123 settlement, religious (1559), 39, 94, 125, 206, 226, 229, 237, 244, 263, 264, 285 Shacklock, Richard, 49 Shaxton, Nicholas, 230 Sidney, Mary, 66–67 Simler, Josiah, 21, 22 Smyth, Thomas (teacher), 232 Society, Bishop Jewel, 15 and Anglo-Catholics, 292–93, 298 and Book of Common Prayer, 285, 287, 294 dissolution, 300–301 evangelism, 285–86, 287, 289, 291–92, 295–97, 300 events, 285, 287, 294–96, 298 founding, 284–85 goals, 284–85, 287, 295, 299 image, 288, 291, 294, 299 legacy, 286, 295, 300–301 library, 288 membership, 293–95, 300 notable members, 292–97, 298 prayer fellowship, 287, 293, 297, 298, 300 and religious education, 287–289 and scriptures, 290, 294, 299 sphere, public, 8, 43–44, 59 and Gipkyn Diptych, 57 participation, 45 and women, 64 Stapleton, Thomas, 20, 49, 123, 127, 209 Stott, John (theologian), 294, 297, 299 succession, apostolic, 21, 88, 211, 214–15 supremacy, royal, 18, 122, 171, 178, 184 and the Apology of the Church of England, 93, 162 defence of, 166, 174 establishment of, 230–31 and the monarch, 184, 205 and the Oath of Allegiance controversy, 208, 218 and the oath of supremacy, 44 and political community, 163 and the pope, 165, 167–69 power of, 51, 164, 176–77

and Regnans in Excelsis (1570), 140–41, 154 Sutcliffe, Matthew, 172 Taylor, Rowland (martyr), 23 Travers, Walter, 171, 175, 183, 193–95, 199 Treatise of the Holy Scriptures (Jewel, John), 166, 266 Trent, Council of, 47, 53, 79, 80, 89, 167, 170 Turner, William, 99 Ussher, Archbishop James, 270, 271–72 ubiquitarianism, 25, 128 Vedel, Nicolaus, 270 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 21–22 and Apology of the Church of England, 40, 228 background, 20 and the Church of Rome, 198–99, 202 and clerical marriage, 234 and Edwin Sandys, 225 and the eucharist, 53, 54 and excommunication, 189–90 exile from England, 23 and the godly magistrate, 168 and John Knox, 126 and sacraments, 227 and Strasburg, 24, 226 and Richard Smyth, 23–24 writings, 21, 22, 25 and Zurich, 24 View of a Seditious Bull (Jewel, John), 139, 141, 144, 145, 150–51, 166–67 Warmington, William, 215 White, Francis, 246 Whitgift, Archbishop John and cathedrals, 10, 101–102, 106–108, 113 defending the Church of England, 65 and John Jewel, 135 and presbyterians, 105, 187 and Thomas Cartwright, 131, 172, 208 Whittingham, William, 20 Wilcox, Robert, 131 Wilford, Cecily (wife of Edwin Sandys), 234 Wilkes, William, 212

342  Index Willet, Andrew, 111, 133, 135, 192–97, 199, 201, 208 women expectations for, 67–68, 70, 72, 74 and silence, 64, 66 Wright, Tom (theologian), 292, 295, 300

Zabarella, Franciscus, 89, 91–93, 95 Zanchi, Jerome, 200–202