Persuasion and Conversion: Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England 9004253653, 9789004253650

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Persuasion and Conversion

Studies in the History of Christian Traditions General Editor

Robert J. Bast Knoxville, Tennessee In cooperation with

Henry Chadwick†, Cambridge Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee Eric Saak, Liverpool Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana Founding Editor

Heiko A. Oberman†

VOLUME 166

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/shct

Persuasion and Conversion Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

By

Torrance Kirby

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013

Cover illustration: Master Hugh Latimer preaching before King Edward VI in the Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall, Westminster. Source: 27 sermons preached by the ryght Reuerende father in God and constant ma[r]tir of lesus Christe, Maister Hugh Latimer. London: John Day, dwelling ouer Aldersgate. Cum gratia & priuilegio Regi[a]e Maiestatis, per septennium, Anno. 1562 (STC 15276); foldout after sig D6. Public Domain. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirby, W. J. Torrance. Persuasion and conversion : essays on religion, politics, and the public sphere in early modern England / By Torrance Kirby. pages cm. -- (Studies in the history of christian traditions general ; v. 166) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25364-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. England--Church history--16th century. 2. Christianity and politics--England--History--16th century. I. Title. BR757.K57 2013 274.2’06--dc23 2013024127

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CONTENTS Acknowledgements�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Abbreviations and Acronyms��������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 1. Religion and Propaganda: Thomas Cromwell’s use of Antoine de Marcourt’s Livre des Marchans�������������������������������������������������������������������9 2. Public Forum and Forum of the Conscience: John Calvin’s Theological Groundwork of the Modern Public Sphere������������������������ 36 3. Lay Supremacy: Tudor Reform of the Canon Law of England������������� 51 4. Public Preaching: Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion������������� 72 5. Public Conversion: Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ at Paul’s Cross, 1547���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 99 6. Political Hermeneutics: John Jewel’s ‘Challenge Sermon’ at Paul’s Cross, 1559����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������114 7. Politics of Religious Identity: John Foxe, Richard Hooker and the Nascent Public Sphere�������������������������������������������������������������������144 8. Politics of Persuasion: ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ in Hooker’s Apologetics�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������161 9. Public Religion and Public Worship: The Hermeneutics of Common Prayer�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������186 Bibliography�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������205 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������219

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thematic collection of essays had its gestation in a series of papers presented at annual meetings of the Sixteenth Century Society Conference (SCSC), the Society for Reformation Studies at Cambridge University, and at the Istituto per la scienza religiosa in Bologna. I am especially indebted to my colleagues in the Richard Hooker and Peter Martyr Societies who foregather annually at the SCSC, and who have offered much valuable criticism, encouragement, and convivial fellowship over the years. In particular I wish to thank Joseph McLelland, Emidio Campi, Jason Zuidema, David Neelands, Rudolph Almasy, Egil Grislis, Charlotte Methuen, Ian Hazlett, and Alberto Melloni. I am very grateful to Diane Desrosiers-Bonin and William Kemp, McGill colleagues in the Department of French, for the opportunity of a fruitful research collaboration on ‘La réforme française avant Calvin’, and for the generous support of this undertaking by le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC). I am much indebted as well to colleagues in a Major Collaborative Research Initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), ‘Making Publics: Media, Markets and Association in Early Modern Europe’, especially to Paul Yachnin (PI), Angela Van Haelen, Bronwen Wilson, and Leigh Yetter. I owe particular thanks to Robert J. Bast, editor-in-chief of the Brill series Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, and also to the anonymous reviewer for meticulous reading and valuable criticism of the preliminary manuscript. Finally I would like to express my sincere thanks to colleagues in the ‘Paul’s Cross’ project, also generously funded by SSHRC, and especially Paul Stanwood, Mary Morrissey, and John King. I acknowledge with gratitude the munificent funding of my research by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture over the past several years. Portions of this study have been published previously in various journals whose permission to reprint them here is gratefully acknowledged: • “Le Livre des Marchans d’Antoine de Marcourt et la théologie politique au temps des Tudor.” Imprimés réformés de Pierre de Vingle (Neuchâtel, 1533–35). Littératures 24.2 (2007) 55–94.

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• “Negotiating the ‘forum politicum’ and the ‘forum conscientiae’: John Calvin and the religious origins of the modern public sphere,” 209–222. In Angela Vanhaelen and Joseph Ward, eds. Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: Publics and Spaces. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. • “Lay Supremacy: reform of the canon law of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (1529–1571).” Reformation and Renaissance Review: 8.3 (2006) 349–370. • “The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1534–1570.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 31.1 (2008) 3–29. • “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 11.1 (2009) 57–89. • “Of musique with psalms: the hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s defence of the ‘sensible excellencie’ of public worship,” 127–151. Lutheran and Anglican: Essays in honour of Egil Grislis. Ed. John Stafford. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2009.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS BL British Library Bodl. Bodleian Library CICan Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg, 2 vols. (1879) Calendar of State Papers CSP The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, FLE  gen. ed. W. Speed Hill, 7 vols. (1977–1998) FSL Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Inst. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis (1559) The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (1845–1850) JW Lawes Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593, 1597) Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of LP  Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (1862–1932); repr. (1965) Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop LS  of Worcester, Martyr, 1555, ed. George E. Corrie (1845) Machyn  The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-taylor of London from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (1848) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2009) ODNB Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, ed. OL  Hastings Robinson (1847) Patrologia cursus completus, series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne PG  (1857–1866) Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne PL  (1844–1864) PRO Public Record Office PS Parker Society RLE Reformation legum ecclesiasticarum, ed. John Foxe (1571) Revised Short Title Catalogue, ed. W.A. Jackson, RSTC  F.S. Ferguson, and K.F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (1976–1991) Statutes of the Realm, London (1810–1828) SR STC A.W. Pollard, G.R. Redgrave, and others, eds., A short-title catalogue of … English books … 1475–1640 (1926)

x

abbreviations and acronyms

TCR  Tudor Church Reform: the Henrician canons of 1535 and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, ed. Gerald Bray (2000) Wriothesley Sir Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from a.d. 1485 to 1559, 2 vols. (1877) The Works of John Whitgift, DD, ed. John Ayre, 3 vols. WW  (1851–1853)

INTRODUCTION The emergence of the ‘public sphere’ in early modernity owes its genesis, at least in part, to the conspicuous growth of a popular ‘culture of persuasion’ fostered by the Protestant Reformation.1 By the end of the sixteenth century, religious identity could no longer be assumed to be simply ‘given’ within the hierarchically ordered institutions and elaborate apparatus of late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’ which had hitherto mediated between individual Christians and the divine. In contrast with this traditional sacramental model based upon the ontological assumption of a gradual mediation or hierarchical dispositio of reality, the sixteenth-century reformers insisted on a sharply hypostatic demarcation between the inner, subjective space of the individual believer and the external, public space of institutional life, whether ecclesial and political. The reformers’ displacement of late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’ was achieved largely through the instruments of persuasion—that is, by means of argument, textual interpreta­tion, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice— exercised through both pulpit and press in a nascent public sphere. This alternative ‘culture of persuasion’ presupposes a radically distinct notion of mediation. The common focus of the nine essays collected here is the dynamic interaction of religion and politics in the sixteenth century which in turn provided a crucible for an emerging sense of what we have come to regard as the modern ‘public sphere’. Antoine de Marcourt’s Livre des marchans (1533) was translated into English and published on two separate occasions. The first English edition, titled The Boke of Marchauntes, was published by Thomas Godfray in August 1534—the year of Parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy. John Foxe later observed that this text was prohibited in the latter part of the reign of King Henry VIII. A second, inferior translation of a second French edition of 1544 was published by Richard Jugge in 1547, coinciding with the accession of Edward VI. The first essay in this series seeks to address differences between England and France in both the official and popular reception of Marcourt’s satire; the discussion stresses the import of Thomas Cromwell’s patronage in the tract’s publication, and explores a 1 On the close link between the Reformation and an emerging ‘culture of persusion’, see Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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introduction

nascent ‘public’ at the margins of the Tudor court; the argument of the essay challenges received opinion on the supposed opposition between religious radicalism and political conservatism; and examines Marcourt’s appeal to the judgement of his readership by drawing a distinction between two rival political theologies. As we hope to demonstrate, the political theology of the Boke of Marchauntes exudes both popular appeal as well as a distinctly proto-Erastian flavour. In his Institutio Christianae religionis, John Calvin articulates the theological first principles undergirding the development of a public sphere in the emergence of modernity. In his well-known definition of Christian liberty, Calvin distinguishes with great care between the ‘forum conscientiae’ and the ‘forum externum’: ‘in man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bold to perform (Inst. III.19.15).’ According to the systematic argument in the Institutio, the enormous gap between these two fora becomes fully apparent on reflection upon the reformer’s key soteriological claim concerning Justification in the preceding chapters (Inst. III.11–18). Moreover, this distinction of a ‘twofold government’ provides the critical groundwork for Calvin’s political theology in Book IV. In the Institutio Calvin elucidates a vitally important theological presupposition of an emergent ‘public sphere’ of discourse—a sphere of persuasion—as the newfound and necessary means of mediation to bridge the gap between the private, inner forum of the individual conscience and the public, external forum of the common political order. In the second essay we propose to examine how the public religious discourse of the Reformation—persuasion through preaching and teaching—thus establishes an exemplar of a uniquely early-modern approach to negotiating the interaction between the private individual and the wider political community, namely through the instrumentality of an emerging ‘public sphere’ of discourse. In this fashion, Calvin’s account of a twofold government in his definition of Christian liberty contributes to a radical rethinking of the relationship between private and public space and thus to a substantive reformulation of a new ‘moral ontology’ of modern civil society. In 1529, England’s Parliament passed the first in a series of statutes denouncing papal authority as a usurpation of the traditional jurisdiction of the English ecclesiastical courts, and reasserting the doctrine of the late-14th century Statutes of Praemunire. In response, the clergy in Convocation initiated a pre-emptive attempt at a systematic overhaul of

introduction3 the canon law. The third essay addresses the urgency to reform ecclesiastical law as a consequence of Henry VIII’s assumption of headship of the Church of England. Several abortive attempts were made during his reign to establish a committee to set about the task of legal reform. It was not until 1551, however, that Edward VI finally appointed a Royal Commission of 32 under the leadership of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer charged with drawing up a formal proposal for systematic reform of canon law and ecclesiastical discipline. Introduced into Parliament in April 1553, the revised canons were summarily rejected, largely at the instigation of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The Commission’s draft was edited by John Foxe, published under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, and presented to Parliament a second time in 1571. Although published with Archbishop Matthew Parker’s approval, the Reformatio legum was fated to receive neither royal, nor parliamentary, nor synodical authorization. At the time certain members of Parliament contested the royal prerogative to determine matters of faith and discipline. Of what significance was this repeated failure to achieve systematic reform of the canon law and ecclesiastical discipline in defining religious identity in England in the period of the Reformation, as well as in later ecclesiastical historiography? The anti-clericalism of both Edward VI’s and Elizabeth’s parliaments provides added momentum to lay autonomy. The open-air pulpit in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral known as ‘Paul’s Cross’ counts among the most influential of all public venues in early-modern England. In a world where the sermon served as the principal means of adult education, as well as a key instrument of ethical guidance and political control, Paul’s Cross was the pulpit of pulpits, indeed the ‘public pulpit’ of England itself. By long tradition this was a place for the announcement of proclamations both civil and religious. Here authorised spokesmen expounded government policy and denounced heresy and rebellion. Yet, unlike the royal Abbey of Westminster, St Paul’s belonged more to subjects than to princes. Despite official regulation, Paul’s Cross provided a popular forum for the articulation of diverse viewpoints in a turbulent ‘market’ of religious and political ideas. From as early as the thirteenth century the cathedral churchyard had been one of the favoured settings for popular protest, a place where public grievances could be aired, a stage where vital affairs of the nation were enacted. It has been said that ‘the English Reformation was accomplished from Paul’s Cross.’ The fourth essay inquires into the role of the outdoor public sermon in the formation of religious publics and identities in early-modern London. Who were the principal agents and players? Who constituted the

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audiences? What elements of continuity and change can be observed in the employment of this public pulpit in the unfolding of the series of English Reformations from the reign of King Henry VIII through that of Elizabeth I? The fifth essay takes up the individual case of Professor Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’, preached both at Paul’s Cross and later at Oxford in 1547 shortly after the accession of King Edward VI, and published by Reginal Wolfe in the same year. Smith’s recantation was accompanied by the ritual burning of his two books in defence of the traditional account of sacramental presence, viz. Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament of the Alter and Defence of the Sacrifice of the Masse, both published in 1546. There is not only the question of Smyth’s renunciation of this traditional teaching in order to conform to the newly reformed religious settlement established following Edward VI’s accession, but also his later ‘retraction of the retractation’ (sic)—a double conversion, so to speak—which resulted in his ejection from the Regius professorship (then Oxford’s most prestigious appointment) and replacement by Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Florentine divine invited to England by Thomas Cranmer. At the core of this rather complicated episode of Smyth’s retractation and public recantation at Paul’s Cross is the underlying substantive hermeneutical question of how to interpret the mode of ‘presence’ in the sacraments, viz. the how to interpret the semiotic relation between the sign (signum) and the thing signified (res). In his inaugural lectures at Oxford Vermigli took up this same question. Smyth’s challenge to Vermigli to debate the question precipitated the famous Oxford Disputation of 1549, an event which was to exert a decisive influence on the later revision of Cranmer’s liturgy of 1549 resulting in that of 1552 (the Second Edwardine BCP). By tracing the aftermath of Smyth’s 1547 sermon it becomes evident how events at Paul’s Cross played a key role in the unfolding of the English Reformation, and also how the hermeneutics of the sacraments came to be intertwined with the growing influence of an open arena of public discourse. The prominent theme of sacramental hermeneutics in public preaching in London during the mid-Tudor period provides the subject of the sixth essay which focuses on one of the great public events shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, namely John Jewel’s famous ‘Challenge Sermon’ delivered at Paul’s Cross in 1559. Significantly, this sermon sets out the terms of disputation between reformers and traditionalists about England’s religious identity in the so-called ‘Great Controversy’ of the 1560s. While Jewel appealed to the Reformers’ adherence to the authority of Scripture and the primitive Church, the bulk of the sermon concerns

introduction5 the hermeneutics of sacramental presence, namely, how to interpret rightly the relation between a sacramental sign (signum) and the mystical reality signified (res significata). As the ‘Challenge Sermon’ is largely an exploration of semiotic principles, we will examine Jewel’s theory of signs, its antecedents and its consequences for the definition of England’s subsequent religious identity. Considered are implications for ‘moral ontology’ in its shift away from the assumptions of sacramental culture towards what has been termed a ‘culture of persuasion.’ Jewel’s argument offers a helpful vantage point for examining the issue of the ‘Reformation and the disenchantment of the world’ and for revisiting the assumptions of revisionist historiography. Finally, we suggest that Jewel’s approach provides a means of interpreting the key role of Paul’s Cross itself in the public life of the realm and in the emergence of the public sphere. Public religious discourse in Elizabethan England plays a decisive role in defining the ‘moral ontology’ of a newly emergent civil society. In his monograph Forms of Nationhood Richard Helgerson observes that ‘no books, with the obvious exception of the English Bible and Book of Common Prayer, have had a greater part in shaping England’s religious self-understanding than Foxe’s Acts (1563) and Hooker’s Laws (1593).’2 The seventh essays seeks to demonstrate how both works endeavour to reinforce the Elizabethan religious and political settlement from related yet mutually distinctive perspectives. Foxe’s apocalyptic narrative places heavy, scripturally inspired emphasis (Book of Daniel, Revelation) on the negative impact of institutions and hierarchy upon the community of the godly, thus tending to view the religious conscience as standing in conflict with respect to ‘the higher powers’. Hooker’s apologetic discourse, on the other hand, seeks above all to justify the hierarchical order of the established church with a view to securing conscientious obedience to the authority of government. By means of these two very distinct approaches— apocalyptics and apologetics—Foxe the church-historian and Hooker the philosopher-theologian nonetheless express a shared sense of the acute demarcation between the inner subjective ‘forum of the conscience’ and the external ‘political forum’ of common, institutional life (both religious and civil). This gaping divide between the private realm of individual conscience and the public realm of communal authority calls forth an open arena of persuasion—a ‘public sphere’—as the necessary means of

2 Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 253.

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mediation between the heightened disparate demands of the seemingly opposed fora. This essay shows how Foxe and Hooker contribute in diverse but nonetheless complementary ways to a distinctively early-modern negotiation of the space between the private individual and the wider political community, namely through the instrumentality of the emerging ‘public sphere’. Much of Richard Hooker’s career was spent in theological and consti­ tutional controversy concerning the provisions of the Elizabethan Settle­ ment of 1559. From the very outset the question of the coherence of key ‘reformed’ theological premises with the Erastian presuppositions of the Settlement, specifically the unification of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Crown, lay at the very heart of these disputes. The eighth essay traces two features of Richard Hooker’s theory of princely sovereignty which stand at the centre of a long-standing debate over the basic coherence of his thought. First is his theological justification of the claim that the power of ‘Supreme Jurisdiction’ over the Church or ‘Ecclesiastical Dominion’ rightfully belongs to the ‘Civil Prince or Governor’ to ‘order and dispose of spirituall affayres, as the highest uncommanded Commander in them’; the second is the distinctively dialectical manner of his assertion of the divine right of sovereigns as ‘Godes Lieutenants’ who, nonetheless, should ‘attribute to the law what the law attributes to them, namely power and dominion’. How does Hooker construe the theological tension between the divine and human sources of princely authority? The laicization of ecclesiastical authority goes hand in hand with the consciousness of the care of religion as a collective ‘publique’ office and a constitutional responsibility. In the prolegomenon to the fifth book of the Lawes Richard Hooker lays out a set of general propositions as a sort of groundwork preliminary to his systematic exposition of the ‘publique duties of religion’ as embodied in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.3 He formulates his first axiom governing the ordering of religious rites and ceremonies with the following observation: that which inwardlie each man should be, the Church outwardlie ought to testifie. And therefore the Duties of our Religion which are seene must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be. Signes must resemble the 3 See John Booty’s ‘Introduction to Book V’ in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 6(1), gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 183–231. See also Torrance Kirby, ‘Angels descending and ascending: Richard Hooker’s discourse on the ‘double motion’ of Common Prayer,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 111–130.

introduction7 thinges they signifie. If religion bear the greatest sway in our hartes, our outwarde religious duties must show it as farre as the Church hath outward habilitie. Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them accordinge to our power, a sensible excellencie, correspondent to the majestie of him whome we worship. Yea, then are the publique duties of religion best ordered, when the militant Church doth resemble by sensible means, as it maie in such cases, that hidden dignitie and glorie wherewith the church triumphant in heaven is bewtified.4

Signs are to resemble things signified; public religious acts ought to testify to inward dispositions of the heart; human sensible means to show forth hidden divine glory; things visible to correspond to things invisible; the church militant to emulate the church triumphant: such is Hooker’s ‘first proposition’—or perhaps we might call it a fundamental hermeneutical premise—concerning the judgment of what is convenient and appropriate in what he calls ‘the outward public ordering of Churchaffairs’, chiefly with regard to the external forms of divine worship.5 Hooker’s distinction between ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ worship, between what is ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’, between the disposition of ‘hartes’ and the performance of ‘publique duties’ is framed according to a logic closely analogous to both Calvin’s treatment of the distinction between the ‘forum conscientiae’ and ‘forum politicum vel externum’ and Jewel’s sacramental hermeneutics of ‘signum’ and ‘res significata’. In this fashion the communality of common prayer reflects a new sense of public identity. Throughout the Lawes Hooker continually employs arguments and images which support the view that the church, her orders of ministry, government, sacraments and ceremonies are all modelled on an exemplar of a cosmic order epitomized by the hierarchy of the angels: ‘For what is thassemblie of the Church to learne, but the receivinge of Angels descended from above? What to pray, but the sendinge of Angels upward? His heavenly inspirations and our holie desires are as so many Angels of entercorse and comerce betwene God and us. As teachinge bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledg him our soveraigne good.’6 For Hooker, the full actualisation of the human is to be achieved through a full participation of the divine nature— or as he himself puts it ‘then are we happie therfore, when fully we enioy 4 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, vol. 2 of the Folger edition, cited hereafter as Lawes. Book, chapter, and section numbers are followed by volume, page, and line numbers in the Folger edition (FLE). V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added). 5 Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24. 6 Lawes V.23.1; FLE 2:110.7–16.

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God, as an obiect wherein the powers of our soules are satisfied euen with euerlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being vnto God vnited, we liue as it were the life of God.’7 Public or common prayer is a dynamic ‘double’ motion which links the divine and the human together dialectically and whose goal is the mutual indwelling of God and man. To give a full account of this goal it is necessary to understand ‘how God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, and [finally] how the sacramentes doe serve to makes us pertakers of Christ.’ The ultimate aims of public prayer and theological reason are on this view one and the same. The purpose of this final essay is to explore Richard Hooker’s conception of Christian worship as simultaneously an inward motion of the individual conscience and an outward public action of instruction and common prayer. Through this dynamic interaction of persuasion and conversion a public sphere begins to emerge in early modern England.

7 Lawes I.11.2; FLE 1:112.17–20.

CHAPTER ONE

RELIGION AND PROPAGANDA: THOMAS CROMWELL’S USE OF ANTOINE DE MARCOURT’S LIVRE DES MARCHANS Antoine de Marcourt’s Livre des marchans (1533) was translated into English and published on two separate occasions. The first English edition, titled The Boke of Marchauntes, was published by Thomas Godfray in August 1534—the year of Parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy. A second, inferior translation of a second French edition of 1544 was published by Richard Jugge in 1547, coinciding with the accession of Edward VI. This essay seeks to address differences between the reception of Marcourt’s satire in England and France; first, it stresses the import of Thomas Cromwell’s patronage in the tract’s publication; secondly it challenges received opinion on the supposed opposition between religious radicalism and political conservatism; and finally it examines Marcourt’s appeal to the distinction between two rival political theologies at the dawn of modernity. Forty years ago in his magisterial study English Humanists and Refor­ mation Politics, James McConica observed that the English reform movement under Henry VIII and Edward VI is closely bound to the complexities of continental reform currents: ‘The closer the examination,’ claims McConica, ‘the more apparent is the difficulty of separating English developments from those on the Continent.’1 Particular support for this claim can be discerned in the history of the publication in English translation of tracts by the radical French reformer Antoine de Marcourt. The first wave of French radical evangelical propaganda swept across La Manche and up the Thames estuary in the summer of 1534. On the 24th of August an anonymous English translation of Marcourt’s rollicking spoof on ecclesiastical abuses was published in London by Thomas Godfray under the title The Boke of Marchauntes.2 This was almost twelve months to the day from the publication of the original French text of Le Livre des marchans by Pierre de 1 James Kelsey McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 6. 2 The Boke of Marchauntes, right necessarye vnto all folkes. Newly made by the lorde Pantapole, right expert in suche busynesse, nere neyghbour vnto the lorde Pantagrule (printed at London by Thomas Godfraye, cum priuilegio Regali, 1534).

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Vingle in Neuchâtel.3 Without any doubt 1534 was an altogether momentous year in the course of the Reformation for both France and England. Just two months after the appearance of Godfray’s translated edition— in the so-called Affair of the Placards—Marcourt’s full-frontal assault on the doctrine of the Mass precipitated a controversy which was to alter decisively (and perhaps irrevocably) the course of the Reformation in France.4 Prior to the publication of the Placards Francis I had shown considerable favour towards les évangéliques and the reforming humanists of the groupe de Meaux; both he and his sister Marguerite of Navarre had shown marked support for Erasmus, Lefèvre d’Étaples, and Gérard Roussel and their followers, while Francis had even exiled the conservative Noël Béda to Mont-St-Michel in May of 1533. After the Placards, a veritable sea-change in the climate of religious reform in France can be discerned. Sharper lines of distinction emerge between the moderate humanism of the Erasmian reformers and more radical ‘sacramentarian’ Protestants. As Francis Higman has demonstrated, two quite distinct species of religious reform were at work in France during the early 1530s, with the complex consequence of producing in effect ‘two catholicisms and two protestantisms.’ The affair of the Placards served to highlight certain key differences among the humanists and reformers such that Marcourt’s tactic, in Higman’s view, should be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to subvert the moderate Erasmian reform or ‘reforme douce’ which was progressing all too well in France at the time.5 Moreover, Marcourt’s 3 The original text was published by Vingle on 22 August 1533 under the title Le Livre des marchans, fort utile a toutes gens nouvellement composé par le sire Pantapole, bien expert en tel affaire, prochain voysin du seigneur Pantagruel. According to Gabrielle Berthoud, ‘le Livre des Marchans est l’œuvre la plus poplaire et, apparemment, la mieux connue de l’auteur des Placards.’ See Antoine Marcourt : Réformateur et Pamphlétaire du «Livre des Marchans» aux Placards de 1534 (Genève : Droz, 1973), 111. 4 The placard was formally titled Articles veritables sur les horribles, grandz et importa­ bles abuz de la Messe papalle, inventee directement contre la saincte Cene de Jesus Christ, and was printed by Pierre de Vingle: Neuchâtel, 10 October 1534. Marcourt’s sharp polemic against the Catholic doctrine of the Mass was posted throughout Paris as well as at the château of Amboise where Francis I was residing. See Francis Higman, ‘De l’affaire des Placards aux nicodémites: le movement évangélique français sous François Ier,’ Lire et découvrir: la circulation des idées au temps de la Réforme (Genève: Droz, 1998), 619–625. 5 Francis Higman, Lire et découvrir: la circulation des idées au temps de la Réforme (Genève: Droz, 1998) 622, 623. According to David Nicholls, ‘Looking for the origins of the French Reformation,’ Power, Culture, and Religion in France, c. 1350–1550, ed. Christopher Allmand (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1989) 141, ‘Humanism did not lead inexorably to Protestantism, but humanist reforms continued alongside the new religion until the outbreack of civil war imposed often unpalatable choices. The concern for the right ordering of religion could not now be separated from doctrinal matters …’



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attack on the Mass and, in particular, the doctrine of the Real Presence was widely interpreted as undermining the monarchy; thus the heresy of the ‘lutheriens’6 as the radical evangelicals were (somewhat ironically) called, came to be identified with sedition.7 Francis turned his back on les evangeliques, and the resulting repression was sharp and swift; for many exile or execution followed. Calvin, who had only recently been in contact with Lefèvre d’Étaples, Guillaume Briçonnet, and other moderate Erasmians in the groupe de Meaux, fled to Basel in the aftermath of the Placards and there proceeded to compose his influential Institutio chris­ tianæ religionis (1536).8 In England, 1534 marked an equally highly charged turning point in the association between humanism and religious reform, although with a somewhat different result both theologically and politically as compared to what was then occurring in France. Under the talented direction of Thomas Cromwell, the Reformation Parliament had been steadily dismantling the jurisdiction of the papacy in England. As early as 1529 Jean du Bellay, French ambassador to England, interpreted the fall of Wolsey as the beginning of a concerted attack by Parliament on the independent jurisdiction of the Church.9 It had become evident by 1533 to ambassador Chastillon that the die had been cast; in a letter to du Bellay, now bishop of Paris, he reported that King Henry had ‘made up his mind to a final and complete revolt from the Holy See. [The King] says that he will have the holy word of God preached throughout the country; and our Lord, he 6 ‘In the eyes of the Sorbonne doctors, all of those involved in activities such as the Meaux experiments constituted what the Sorbonniste Noël Béda called ‘Luther’s confraternity’.’ Philip Benedict and Virginia Reinburg, ‘Religion and the Sacred,’ in Mark Holt, ed., Renaissance and Reformation France, 1500–1648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 136–137. It was ironic that the radicals were called ‘lutheriens’ since Marcourt’s Articles veritables reveal that he and others among his supporters ‘had gone beyond Lutheran ideas and [Erasmian humanist] anti-clericalism to adopt the more radical doctrine of the Swiss Protestants,’ notably by their embrace of Huldrych Zwingli’s denial of the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. See Frederic J. Baumgartner, France in the sixteenth century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995) 137–140. 7 See Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: the Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist and the symbolization of power in sixteenth-century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) 27–55. Donald R. Kelley, The beginning of ideology: consciousness and society in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)13–19, argues that Placards episode transformed French Protestantism in minds of many contemporaries into a clearly defined ‘religion of rebels’ which had to be stamped out. 8 See Philip Benedict and Virginia Reinburg, ‘Religion and the Sacred,’ 138, 139. 9 Letters and Papers, Foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie, 22 volumes (London 1862–1932), iv (3), 6011: 17 October 1529. Cited by McConica, English Humanists, 108.

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believes, will aid him in defending his rights.’10 It was in fact the labour of the parliamentary sessions of 1533–34 that saw the decisive moves against the papacy with the formal enactment of the Royal Supremacy. In strictly constitutional terms, a series of statutes beginning with the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1533 and concluding with an Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome (1536) accomplish the revolution which established Henry VIII’s headship of the Church. The preamble of the former famously declares that England is an ‘empire,’ governed by one Supreme Head, namely the king, and that under his rule the Church was wholly self-sufficient ‘without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons,’11 principal among them the ‘Bishop of Rome’ as he was now officially designated.12 In November 1534, just weeks after the Day of the Placards in Paris, the Reformation Parliament broke England’s ties with the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff by declaring in the single short paragraph of the Act of Supremacy that Henry VIII was ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England.’13 It is remarkable and indeed ironic that in England the evangelical radicalism of Marcourt’s Boke of Marchauntes should be enlisted in support of a royally sanctioned propaganda campaign of reform, whereas in France the same position is relegated to the extreme fringes of political subversion. What are we to make of this extreme divergence of view on opposite shores of the Channel with respect to the reception of Marcourt’s text? In her landmark study Antoine Marcourt: reformateur et pamphlétaire, Gabrielle Berthoud observes that Le Livre des Marchans is Marcourt’s most 10 Chastillon’s letter of 17 November 1533 is cited in William Thomas, The Pilgrim: a dialogue on the life and actions of King Henry the Eighth, ed. J.A. Froude (London: Parker and Bourne, 1861) 99. See Richard Rex, ‘Crisis of Obedience,’ 889. 11 24 Henry VIII, c. 12. This Act prevented legal appeals from English ecclesiastical courts to Rome as final arbiter, and thus solved the difficulty of potential appeals against his divorce of Katherine of Aragon. See Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (London: MacMillan, 1993). 12 For discussion of the progression of the revolutionary legislative agenda of the Reformation Parliament see Richard Rex, ‘The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation,’ The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff. 13 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1: ‘Albeit, the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and oweth to be the supreme head of the Church of England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in their Convocations; yet nevertheless for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ’s religion within this realm of England, and to repress and extirp all errors, heresies and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same, Be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament that the King our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England.’



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popular and best-known work.14 In addition to the 1533 edition there was another, substantially revised edition in 1534, also published by Vingle in Neuchâtel followed by further editions in 1541,15 1544 (this time with Marcourt identified as the author),16 1548, 1555, as well as several other editions without dates. Marcourt’s work was translated into German and Dutch as well as English.17 It should also be noted here that several other works published by Vingle in the period 1533–35 also appeared in English translation. Among them were Marcourt’s Petit traicté tres utile, et salu­ taire de la Sainte Eucharistie de nostre Seigneur Jesuchrist (1534) which appeared again shortly thereafter in another edition prepared by either Pierre Viret or Vingle himself under the title Declaration de la Messe.18 This work was published in English translation in 1547 by John Day, the same year that saw publication of the second English edition of the Boke of Marchauntes.19 In early 1534 Vingle published a French translation of De nova et veteri doctrina (1526) by the Augsburg humanist and evangelical reformer, Urbanus Rhegius.20 Not long afterwards the same treatise was published again, on this occasion in an English translation by the eminent botanist William Turner.21 Finally, in an instance which reverses 14 Antoine Marcourt: reformateur et pamphlétaire du ‘Livre des Marchans’ aux Placards de 1534 (Genève: Droz, 1973) 111 and 149 ff. 15 Le liure des marchans. Reueu & augmente par sont [sic] premier autheur (Genève: [Jean Michel], 1541). See Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 127. 16 Le Livre des marchans … Nouvellement revue et augmenté, par son premier autheur M. Anthoine Marcourt, bien cognoissant telles affaires (?1544). This is the only edition known to carry the name of the author. See Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 128. 17 Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 140. 18 The second edition of Marcourt’s Petit traicté de la Saincte Eucharistie was issued under the pseudonym Cephas Geranius with the altered title Declaration de la messe : le fruict dicelle, la cause et le moyen pourquoy & comment on la doibt maintenir (Neuchâtel: Pierre de Vingle, 1534). See G. Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 244–251. 19 A declaration of the masse, the fruite thereof, the cause and the meane, wherfore and howe it ought to be maynteyned. Newly perused and augmented by the first author therof. Maister Anthony Marcort at Geneue. Tra[n]slated newly out of French into English (Wittenberge [i.e. London]: H. Luft [i.e. John Day], 1547). 20 La Doctrine nouvelle et ancienne (Neuchâtel: Pierre de Vingle, 1534?). On the translation see the as yet unpublished essay by Isabelle Crevier-Denommé and William Kemp, ‘La traduction et l’adaptation de la doctrine nouvelle et ancienne de Rhegius (Genève, 1542–44, Neuchâtel vers 1534),’ Cinq siècles d’histoire religieuse Neuchâteloise; approches d’un tradition Protestante, delivered at the l’Institut d’Histoire de Neuchâtel in 2005. 21 A co[m]parison betwene the olde learnynge [and] the newe, translated out of latin in Englysh by Wyliam Turner (Southwarke: James Nicolson, 1537). As were both of Marcourt’s tracts—The Boke of Marchauntes and A declaration of the masse—Turner’s translation was republished after the accession of Edward VI. See The old learnyng and the new, compared together. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Turner (London: R. Stoughton, 1548).

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the cross-Channel evangelical influence, just weeks after the Day of the Placards Vingle published the short Traicté du Purgatoire usually attributed to Guillaume Farel, and which owes something to the English reformer and martyr John Frith’s exchange on the doctrine of Purgatory with Sir Thomas More.22 The revised French edition of the Livre des marchans (1544) provided the base text for a second, though somewhat inferior English translation published by Richard Jugge in 1547, the year of the death of Henry VIII and the accession of the Edward VI.23 Referring to the first English translation of the original text of 1533, Berthoud remarks that although Godfray’s edition of the Boke of Marchauntes is mentioned in the bibliographies, it remains ‘quasi ignoré.’ Berthoud then puts some questions which are well worth taking up: One is curious, however, to know the reasons for his business [viz. Godfray’s]. Personal initiative? Access to a press, a reformed group, official patronage? Nothing is clear, but we admit that The boke of Marchauntes was certainly timely. 1534 is the year of the King’s final break with Rome, when the campaign resumes against the excesses and the wealth of the clergy, a campaign that will culminate in 1540 with the total suppression of the monasteries.24

In attempting to address Berthoud’s question concerning the initiative behind the translation and publication of Marcourt’s satire it is well to recall certain critical circumstances of the book trade of the period. Andrew Pettegree has recently pointed out that ‘printers, authors, and members of the Privy Council operated within a tightly knit circle of Turner’s most famous contribution to the literature of religious reform was The huntyng & fyndyng out of the Romishe fox (Basle [in actuality Bonn: L. Mylius], 1543). 22 [Guillaume Farel], Sumaire & briefuve declaration d’aucuns lieux fort necessaires a ung chascun chrestien pour mettre sa costace en Dieu et ayder son prochain ; Item ung Traicte du purgatoire, nouuelle met adiouste sur la fin ([Neuchâtel: Pierre de Vingle], 1534). John Frith, A disputacio[n] of purgatorye made by Iohan Frith which is deuided in to thre bokes (Antwerp: S. Cock, 1531). 23 The Booke of Marchauntes, very profitable to all folks … (London, 1547) was one of Jugge’s first publications. Jugge was appointed to the office of Queen’s Printer in 1560, months after the accession of Elizabeth I. For a discussion of the differences between this text and the first English edition by Godfray as well as divergences of both English editions from the French editions upon which each is based, see Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 142–146. 24 Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 142. ‘On serait curieux, cependant, de connaître les motifs de son entreprise [viz. Godfray’s]. Initiative personnelle? Commande d’un imprimeur, d’un groupe réformé, d’un pouvoir plus official? Rien ne le révèle, mais on admettra que The boke of marchauntes venait à son heure. 1534, c’est l’année de la rupture definitive du roi avec Rome, le moment où reprend la campagne contre les excès et la richesse du clergé, campagne qui aboutira, en 1540, à la suppression totale des monastères.’



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friendship, patronage and personal connection.’25 Moreover, the close linkage of the publishing trade to the corridors of power was intrinsic to the success of Henry’s revolution. Throughout England’s radical constitutional transformation of the 1530s, Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell simultaneously managed both the intricacies of the legislative programme and a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign through the press in support of the constitutional agenda before Parliament.26 It has been argued that the substance of the pamphlets of the early 1530s in many respects epitomizes the legislation passed by the Reformation Parliament.27 Thomas Godfray’s list of published titles suggests that he was evidently an important player in Thomas Cromwell’s circle. Godfray published numerous books which contributed directly to the advancement of Cromwell’s propaganda campaign and was associated with some of the principal prophets and propagandists of the Tudor revolution, including William Tyndale, John Frith, Christopher St German, and William Marshall.28 By reviewing some of these titles, their authors and translators, we can begin to gain some intimation of the impetus for the publication of Marcourt’s work and we may even be able to offer some speculation as to the possible identity of the translator. Thomas Godfray published over twenty titles sporadically between the years 1530 and 1536. Among the titles which link him in diverse ways to the reforming interest are two important works by William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man and Pathway into the Holy Scripture, both unequivocally evangelical pieces by the great translator of the Bible.29 25 Andrew Pettegree, ‘Printing and the Reformation: the English Exception,’ in Peter Marshall and Alex Ryrie, editors, The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 173. See also Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 26 G. R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1977) 157: ‘Cromwell obtained a grip on the press in latter part of 1533. Under his patronage a very different body of writers and writings took over the task of discussing the issues of the day; production turned from controversy to constructive thought.’ 27 According to Franklin Le Van Baumer, Henry VIII and Cromwell devoted almost as much attention to the printing press as to the parliamentary session. See The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966) 35–84. See p. 39: ‘Henry VIII exercised a dictatorship of the press which, judged by its results, was just about as effective as any western Europe has ever seen. The opposition, denied the use of the English printing press, was either driven abroad to publish, or else forced to circulate its views in manuscript.’ 28 Also an unattributed ‘panegyric of King Henry VIII as the abolisher of papist abuses’ (1536?) is identified in the Short Title Catalogue (2nd ed.) 13089a as published by Thomas Godfray; Bodleian Library, Douce Fragm. f.51 (10). 29 William Tyndale, The obedyence of a Chrysten man: and howe Chrysten rulers ought to gouerne, wherin also (yf thou marke dilygently) thou shalte fynde eyes to perceyue the craftye

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Tyndale’s treatise on obedience draws an explicit connection between the evangelical teaching concerning justification by faith alone and the divinely derived authority possessed by the godly prince over both church and commonwealth. Richard Rex has shown that Tyndale had a serious influence on the chief propagandists of the Henrician regime, especially in his demonstration of the theological ground of the Royal Supremacy.30 Rex maintains that ‘Tyndale’s primary motive in writing Obedience was to defend the new learning against the charge that ‘it causeth insurrection and teacheth people to disobey their heads and governors, and moveth them to rise against their prince’.31 In a vein not at all dissimilar to Tyndale’s, the Boke of Marchauntes launches an impassioned appeal to the secular rulers to correct the abuses of the clergy. In a clear shift of mood from the satirical to the apologetic towards the latter part of Marchauntes, Marcourt makes the case for both key theological claims, viz. the passive righteousness of faith and the royal headship of the Church. In a direct appeal to the reformed doctrines of ‘grace alone’ and ‘justification by faith,’ Marcourt states Than one may see these hypocrites these … marchauntes of good works and merites: as if thei had such plenty for to sell at their pleasures. And they have given to understande/ that the frendes and benefactours of their order/ for the merits of these holy fathers have clene gotten heven/ quenching the faith/ putting in darknes/ the right holy name of Jesu/ and blasphemynge openly the grace and mercy of the lorde god/ the which is nat to be gotten bi merites or other workes or elles it shulde be no grace.32

In his assumed Rabelaisian identity—viz. ‘the lorde Pantapole, right expert in suche busynesse, nere neyghbour vnto the lorde Pantagrule’— Marcourt sets himself up as the one who sells all—celui qui ‘vend de tout’33—the wholesaler, as it were, who seeks to undercut the ecclesiastical ‘middleman.’ In this allusion Marcourt’s satirical form and the conueyaunce of all iugglers (London: Thomas Godfray?, 1536); A Pathway i[n]to the Holy Scripture (London: Godfray, 1536?) and a modern edition of the latter ed. P.E. Satterthwaite and D.F. Wright (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). 30 Richard Rex, ‘Crisis of Obedience,’ 863–867. 31 Richard Rex, ‘Crisis of Obedience,’ 866. 32 Boke of Marchauntes, Cv r°. See also Av v°: ‘These avaricyouse marchauntes covetouse of glory/ paynt their workes/ attributing unto them selves/ that/ which apptayneth unto the onely god: as iustice/ virtue/ wysedom/ pardon/ mercy/ remission of synne.’ 33 See Berthoud, Antoine de Marcourt, 111. Berthoud, however, does not provide the precise Greek etymology of this Rabelaisian name. The Greek πάντα (panta) is ‘all’ and πώλης (poles) is ‘dealer,’ ‘seller,’ or ‘purveyor.’ According to Anne Lake Prescott, Marcourt’s assumed identity is the first printed allusion to Rabelais in English. See Imagining Rabelais in Renaissance England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 17.



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evangelical intent are fused together. According to the central thrust of the satire, the entrepreneurial role of the priestly ‘merchant’ was that of a retailer, whose task is to distribute the spiritual ‘goods’ of divine grace incrementally. By means of an elaborate series of steps and degrees a gradual sanctification of the faithful ‘consumer’ was to be achieved through the mediation of a sacramental hierarchy. Over against this retail model the Lord Pantapole proposes that these goods are available ‘wholesale’, that is to say in the universal form Luther famously identified as a ‘total’ or justifying righteousness, communicated by wholly sufficient authority of scripture (sola scriptura) to the individual believer by grace alone (sola gratia) by means of faith alone (sola fide) without the necessary mediation of tradition, the merit of good works, and the elaborate sacramental apparatus of an ecclesiastical ‘retailer.’34 In another passage adjacent to this treatment of the mode of the distribution of grace Marcourt urges that the care of religion be taken under the direct control of the civil power: What you noble and virtuous princes/ lordes/ and ladyes: why do ye nat loke on these marchauntes? And yet/ nat withstanding /that by pride/ they will nat be visited: yet have you/ whether thei wyll or not/ auctorite over them/ and unto you/ it apperttaineth to chastise/ to correcte/ and to put downe/ the great excesse of such [Cii r°] theves. Than do it/ that the sayenge of Esaie be nat verified and fal upon you (Esa. [Isaiah] i) Thy princes be unfaithfull/ felowes unto theves. But rather that in the presence of the lyvinge god/ whose name ye bere; Who hathe given you the power of the swerde/ for to use unto his honour/ defending the innocents/ punnisshinge all evyll doers/ ye may be found faithfull and trewe/ consenting unto all goodnesse/ resisting unto the evyll with all your might for his good wyl/ for unto this ar you committed by him/ that he onely may exalte you or put you downe/ in the lyfe present and t come: and of this be acertened/ that if you go about for to honour him/ he wyll honour you/ if you exalte him/ he shall exalte you. [Cii v°] By his wisedom/ the kynges rayne and the lordes governe/ and ordayne holy thinges.35 34 See, for example, Luther’s Wittenberg lectures of 1531 on Galatians, In epistolam Sancti Pauli ad Galatas commentarius (Wittenberg: G. Rörer, 1535); Martin Luther, Werke Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) 40 I. The first English translation appeared in 1575, A commentarie of M. Doctor Martin Lvther vpon the Epistle of S. Paul to the Galathians, first collected … out of his preaching, and novv out of Latine faithfully translated into English … (London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1575). 35 Boke of Marchauntes (London: Thomas Godfray, 1534) Ci v°. See the Vingle edition of Livre des Marchans (1533), Bviii r°: ‘Que faictes vous, nobles et vertueux princes, seigneurs et dames, que n’avez vous sur ces marchans icy regard? Et non obstant que par orgueil ilz ne veullent pas estre visitez si avez vous, veulent ou non, sur eulx autorité, et a vous appartient de chastier, de corriger et reprimer les grans exces de telz larrons; faictes le donc,

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In the midst of Marcourt’s blistering satire of the sacramental apparatus of the Church hierarchical we are suddenly confronted with the proposition that by no means are authority and hierarchy per se the source of spiritual abuses. Rather, Marcourt explicitly invites ‘virtuous princes’ to be the ‘visitors’ of the clergy, that is ‘to chastice/ to correcte/ and to put downe/ the great excesse’ of the ecclesiastical ‘marchauntes.’ God has given princes the ‘power of the sword’ and therefore, according to an argument made famous by Marsilius of Padua, princes hold jurisdiction over the church. The passage concludes with a quotation from the Book of Proverbs which became a classic scriptural locus cited by Tudor defenders of the Royal Supremacy, and in Tyndale’s translation reads ‘By me [i.e. by the divine Wisdom] kings reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.’36 Marcourt’s claim, made equally by Tyndale, Luther, and Zwingli, is that the authority of princes is not mediated by the Church and her hierarchs, but is rather an un-mediated divine gift. Here, I believe, we are approaching the matter of Marcourt’s sustained satire of merchants and merchandise. The merchant is by definition ‘one who deals in goods not manufactured or produced by himself’ and in early usage the name of merchant is restricted to those who have dealings with foreign lands.37 ‘For truly it is nedefull/ that the abundaunce of one contrey/ supplye and satisfye unto that/ whiche nedeth in another.’38 The two countries between which this trade occurs would be plain to any contemporary reader conversant with Paul’s epistles as none other than the heavenly and the earthly cities. By Marcourt’s account Laborious/ diligent/ and industrious persons be requisite/ for the entertaining of the publyke welth/ the which with out finesse/ fraude/ or subtlety to affin qu’il n’adviengne que de vous soit verifié ce que dict Esaie. Telz princes sont infideles, compaignons des larrons. Mais plus tost que en la pre- [Bviii v°] sence de dieu vivant, duquel portez le nom qui vous a donné la puissance du glaive pour en user a son honneur, deffendans les innocens, punissans tous malfaicteurs, soyez trouvez fideles et veritables, consentans a tout bien, resistans au mal de vostre puissance, pour sa bonne volunté, car par luy estes vous a ce commis, et luy seul vous peult exalter ou deprimer en la vie presente et future, et de ce soyez acertenez : si vous tachez l’honnerer, il vous honnorera; si vous l’exaltez, il vous exaltera. Par sa sagesse, les roys regnent et les seigneurs dominent et ordonnent sainctes ordonnances.’ 36 The same passage from Proverbs is quoted, e.g., by Christopher St German, Dyaloge in Englysshe bytwyxt a doctoure of dyvynyte and a student in the lawes of Englande (London: Robert Wyer, 1530?), p. 12 in Montgomery ed.: ‘By me kings reign, and Makers of Law discern the truth.’ 37 See the OED. 38 Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii v°.



religion and propaganda19 have the distributynge/ and haunting/ to change/ conserve and transporte many sortes of marchandyses/ from one place to another according unto the convenience of tymes/ and the necessyte of the people. Unto the whiche the trewe marchauntes is right lefull/ as unto good and faithfull servauntes of the commune welth …39

However, as Marcourt continues in this same introductory passage, This estate/ wheof I speke/ as honourable/ as it is in the temporal and civyll welth/ so accursed and detestable it is in the divine and spirytuall lyfe: And for all that god hath permitted in his furour/ that in steed of good herdmen/ and trewe ministers of his holye worde/ that ther shulde come/ I do nat say alonly gret marchauntes/ but furiouse theves/ and insaciable ravening wolves.40

The primary questions addressed in this satire concern both the cure of souls and the ultimate derivation of jurisdiction and power in human political community. Indeed viewed through the satirical lens of ‘the estate of merchauntes’ these two questions can perhaps be viewed as one and the same question, namely a fundamental question concerning the manner of the mediation of certain primary ‘goods’—whether these goods be the divine gifts of grace and salvation to the individual believer or the divine gift of rule to the leaders of the human community. According to the radically evangelical position staked out by Marcourt—and in this he is in essential agreement with such evangelical reformers on the continent as Guillaume Farel, Pierre Viret, Huldrych Zwingli, and Jean Calvin, or William Tyndale, John Frith, William Turner, and Clement Armstrong in England—both individual salvation and supreme political power are ‘merchandise’ properly transmitted from one country to another, as it were from heaven to earth, from the spiritual realm to the temporal realm, without the necessity of mediation by an entrepreneurial (in the literal sense of this term) ecclesiastical hierarchy. Why, then, is the ‘estate of 39 Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii r°—Aiii v°. Compare Livre des marchans (1533), Aii r°—Aii v°: ‘Et par ainsi personnages laborieux, diligens, industrieux sont requis pour l’entretenement de la chose publicque, lesquelz sans finesse, sans fraude ou cautelle, ayent a distribuer, [Aii v°] commuer, changer, conserver et transporter plusieurs sortes de marchandises d’ung lieu en autre selon l’exigence du temps et necessité du peuple. Ausquelz loyaulx marchans est bien licite, comme a bons et fideles serviteurs de la chose commune.’ 40 Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii v°—Aiv r°. See Livre des marchans, Aii v°—Aiii r°: ‘Cest estat dont je parle, autant [Aiii r°] que en la chose temporelle et civile est honnorable, autant est il en la chose spirituelle et divine, mauldict et detestable. Et toutesfoys dieu a permis en sa fureur que, au lieu de bons pasteurs et veritables ministres de sa saincte parolle, soyent en l’eglise survenuz, je ne dis pas seulement gros marchans, mais furieux larrons et insatibles loups ravissants.’

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merchauntes’ honourable in the ‘temporal and civyll welth’ and yet ‘accursed and destable in the divine and spirytuall lyfe’? What we have in the Boke of Marchauntes is a thorough affirmation of the Augustinian dialectic of the two cities where the key consideration is to avoid the mixing or confusion of things spiritual with things temporal. Perhaps the most famous formulation of this Augustinian position in the sixteenth century is by another French reformer, Jean Calvin, who states the position in this way: In man government is twofold: the one spiritual, by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship; the other civil, by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bold to performs. To these two forms are commonly given the not inappropriate names of spiritual and temporal jurisdiction, intimating that the former species has reference to the life of the soul, while the latter relates to matters of the present life, not only to food and clothing, but to the enacting of laws which require a man to live among his fellows purely honourably, and modestly. The former has its seat within the soul, the latter only regulates the external conduct. We may call the one the spiritual, the other the civil kingdom. Now, these two, as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other. When the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other. For there exists in man a kind of two worlds, over which different kings and different laws can preside. By attending to this distinction, we will not erroneously transfer the doctrine of the gospel concerning spiritual liberty to civil order, as if in regard to external government Christians were less subject to human laws, because their consciences are unbound before God, as if they were exempted from all carnal service, because in regard to the Spirit they are free.41

Under attack in the satire of the Boke of Marchaunts is the competing ‘retail’ logic of the lex divinitatis, famously formulated by Boniface VIII in the bull Unam Sanctam, where the case in favour of the merchants is most eloquently stated. With the able assistance of the learned canon lawyer Giles of Rome, Boniface summarises the merchandising logic of medieval spirituality which is so thoroughly at odds with the high Augustinian position maintained by Marcourt and Calvin. In formulating the theological principle of priestly, sacramental function, Boniface invokes the so-called lex divinitatis, the fundamental ‘law of divinity’ as declared by the great sixth-century Syrian Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.42 41 Calvin, Institute of the Christian Religion (1559) III.19.15. 42 For a discussion of the appeal to the lex divinitatis by Boniface see David Luscombe, ‘The ‘Lex Divinitatis’ in the Bull ‘Unam Sanctam’ of Pope Boniface VIII,’ in C.N.L. Brooke, et al., eds., Church and Government in the Middle Ages, New York 1976, 205–221.



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In the bull Unam Sanctam Boniface defends the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis) by asserting the necessary hierarchical subordination of temporal to spiritual jurisdiction: For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity (lex divinita­ tis) that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior … Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power.43

This relation of subordination between the spiritual and the temporal realms establishes the ecclesiastical hierarch as an ordained agent or sacramental mediator between the worlds. It is precisely this notion of a priestly mediation between the two realms which constitutes Marcourt’s spiritual ‘estate of marchaundyse’44 and thus serves as the principal target of his evangelical satire throughout the Boke of Marchauntes. From Marcourt’s Augustinian standpoint the mercantile principle of the merely ‘external’ mediation of goods between one temporal realm and another of the same order ‘for the tyme of this present lyf’ is ‘worthy prayse and righte utyle.’45 Yet any attempt ‘to change/ conserve and transporte many sortes of marchandyses’ from the realm of the divine and spiritual life into the realm of temporal and civil life is ‘accursed and detestable.’ See also Wayne J. Hankey, ‘‘Dionysius dixit, Lex divinitatis est ultima per media reducere’: Aquinas, hierocracy and the ‘augustinisme politique’,’ in Ilario Tolomio, ed., Tommaso D’Aquino: proposte nuove di letture. Festscrift Antonio Tognolo, Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale, 18 (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1992), 119–150. 43 Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955; 1959), vol. 2, col. 1245–46: ‘One sword ought to be subordinated to the other, and temporal authority subjected to spiritual power. For, since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and those that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13: 1–2], they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other. For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior …Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man … This authority is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him and his successors … Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13: 2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings …’ See Giles of Rome, De ecclesiastica potestate ed. Arthur P. Monahan (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) I.4, 17–20 and Monahan’s introduction, p. xxvii. For Thomas Aquinas’s classical formulation of the lex divinitatis see Summa Theologica IIa, IIae Q. 172, art. 2. 44 Boke of Marchauntes, Aii v°. 45 Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii r°.

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Such trade is not the work of ‘good herdmen/ and trewe ministers of [God’s] holye worde’ but of ‘furiouse theves/ and insaciable ravening wolves.’ The very attempt to act as an intermediary between the realms is in the nature of a deception, namely ‘to sell the thinge that is nat his’ to sell; it is to confuse the substance of one order of reality with another after the example of the Alchemist: The gret Lycyfere/ I wolde say the gret lorde of these marchauntes/ which is the sleyghtest of all / holdeth his banke open unto all folks/ convertynge the leade unto golde. There was never such multiplying by Alkemyst seen in this worlde/ as he and his doth fynde/ to fynde suche a vayne of golde under lead.46

There is a curious resonance between this satirical depiction of merchandising alchemy by Marcourt and Chaucer’s ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’ in the Canterbury Tales, interestingly also one of the twenty or so books published by Thomas Godfray in the early 1530s.47 Chaucer’s Pardoner— ‘I preche of no thing but for coveityse./ Therefore my theme is yet, and evere was,/ Radix malorum est cupiditas’—is the very personification of Marcourt’s entrepreneurial cleric.48 As was the Boke of Marchauntes the Canterbury Tales were also published cum privilegio regali, with royal sanction. Given the sharpness of Chaucer’s critique of the vagaries and abuses of the late-medieval Church, it is arguable that the republication of Canterbury Tales might itself be considered a contribution to the campaign of propaganda orchestrated by Thomas Cromwell to coincide with the revolutionary doings of Parliament at this time. Also published by Godfray was a translation of Lorenzo Valla’s debunking of the so-called ‘Donation of Constantine,’ the eighth-century forgery which lent support to papal claims to the plenitudo potestatis or sovereign power to the detriment of the temporal power.49 Here too we see the same 46 Boke of Marchauntes, Biv v°. 47 The workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before: as in the table more playnly dothe appere, ed. William Thynne (London: Thomas Godfray, cum priuilegio, 1532). See Canterbury Tales, ed. A.C. Cawley (London: Dent, 1975), 494–518. The canon’s yeoman’s reference to his master’s ‘slidynge science’ (l.732) and ‘crafty science’ (l. 1253) has an echo in the ‘sleyghtnesse’ [habilité] of Marcourt’s merchants; both the ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’ and Marcourt’s satire convey a travesty of transubstantiation. Compare Boke of Marchauntes, Avi. 48 Canterbury Tales, ed. Cawley, ll. 424–426; see 343–360. 49 Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione libellus (Strasbourg, 1506); translated by William Marshall and published by Thomas Godfray under the title A treatyse of the donation or gyfte and endowme[n]t of possessyons, gyuen and graunted vnto Syluester pope of Rhome, by Constantyne emperour of Rome (London: Thomas Godfray, 1534).



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theme emerge: the promotion of a redefinition of spiritual power away from the hierarchical claims of the papacy implicit in the lex divinitatis and towards the totalising claim of the temporal power over all matters of external jurisdiction. The translator of Valla’s treatise was none other than William Marshall, who also translated, ‘with the kynges moste gracyous priuilege,’ that great late-medieval work of Augustinian political theology, Marsilius of Padua’s Defender of the Peace.50 Marshall, a not implausible candidate for translator of the Boke of Marchaunts, was among the most assiduous of Cromwell’s circle in his defence of the Royal Supremacy.51 Although official sponsorship of all the books published by Thomas Godfray and others in the propaganda campaign of 1533 through 1536 cannot be proven, there is evidence of a direct subsidy for Marshall’s translation of Defensor Pacis.52 The relevance of this fourteenth-century work of Augustinian political theology to the Tudor revolution is evident in Marsilius’s chief aim, namely to expose the Roman Papacy’s quest for domination—the libido dominandi definitive of Augustine’s civitas terrena—that is, not only of the spiritual sphere but of the temporal or civil realm as well.53 According to Marsilius this over-reaching of spiritual authority was the central cause of conflict and disorder within Christendom.54 The critique of the jurisdictional claims of the papacy in 50 Marsilius of Padua, The defence of peace: lately translated out of laten in to englysshe, with the kynges moste gracyous priuilege (London: Robert Wyer, 1535). Although completed in 1324 and circulated in manuscript, the original Latin text was not printed until 1522 in the Basle edition by Beatus Bildius. Opus insigne cui titulum fecit autor [Marsilius] Defensorem pacis, (Basle, 1522). 51 Shelley C. Lockwood, ‘Marsilius of Padua and the case for the royal ecclesiastical supremacy,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6.1 (1990), 89–119. See Richard Rex, ‘Crisis of Obedience,’ 882. 52 In a letter to Cromwell, Marshall indicates that he is relying on Cromwell’s promise of a subsidy of twenty pounds (£20) for the printing of his translation of Marsilius’ work. See Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, 7:423. 53 According to Augustine, the two cities—the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena—are constituted by two modes of love, viz. amor Dei and libido dominandi. See de civitate Dei, XIV.1. For Augustine it is characteristic of the latter to confuse the finite and temporal good with the infinite and eternal good, and this is the nub of Marcourt’s satire. 54 Marsilius, Defender of the Peace: ‘Christ Himself did not come into the world to rule men, or to judge them by civil judgment, nor to govern in a temporal sense, but rather to subject Himself to the state and condition of this world; that indeed from such judgment and rule He wished to exclude and did exclude Himself and His apostles and disciples, and that He excluded their successors, the bishops and presbyters, by His example, and word and counsel and command from all governing and worldly, that is, coercive rule. I will also show that the apostles were true imitators of Christ in this, and that they taught their successors to be so. I will further demonstrate that Christ and His apostles desired to be subject and were subject continually to the coercive jurisdiction of the princes of the world in reality and in person, and that they taught and commanded all others to whom they

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Defensor Pacis can be fairly characterised as resting upon a rejection of what was perceived as the ‘mercantile’ logic of the lex divinitatis articulated by Boniface and Giles of Rome in favour of Augustine’s ‘two cities’ model. Once again we can discern the very appropriate fit of Marcourt’s satire within the larger scheme of the literary campaign mounted by Thomas Cromwell in support of Henry VIII’s constitutional revolution. Thomas Godfray also published Marshall’s translation of Martin Bucer’s iconoclastic treatise Das Einigerlei Bild: ‘pyctures [and] other ymages which were wont to be worshypped, ar i[n] no wise to be suffred in the temples or churches of Christen men.’55 As in the satire of the Boke of Marchauntes, the question addressed by Bucer is ultimately concerned with the pivotal question of ‘mediation’. The evangelical profession of the sufficiency of scripture to salvation—sola scriptura—leads to the rejection of images, relics, and the like in favour of a direct access to the divine message through the Word. In a summary of this reforming position, Lefèvre d’Étaples states that ‘The Word of God alone suffices. This alone is enough to effect life everlasting. This rule is the guide to eternal life. All else, on which the Word of God does not shine, is as unnecessary as it is undoubtedly superfluous. Nor should such be reckoned with the Gospel as far as the purity of the pious worship and the integrity of faith are concerned, for it is not the creation of God.’56 Marcourt frames the question consistently with the satirical conceit of the merchants’ estate: ‘is it nat a gret sleyghtnesse [habilité] for to sell well and in sellynge/ to be well payde/ and that the byer finally shal have nothing but the sight?’57 gave the law of truth by word or letter, to do the same thing, under penalty of eternal condemnation.’ See Paul Halsall, Medieval Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ source/marsiglio4.html, accessed 26 March 2005. 55 Martin Bucer, Das Einigerlei Bild bei den Gotglaubigen an Orten da Sie Verehrt, Nit Mogen Geduldet Werden (Strasbourg, 1530), quoting from Opera Omnia, Deutsche Schriften, Vol. IV ‘Zur auswärtigen Wirksamkeit 1528–1533,’ (Güteresloh: Güteresloher Verlagshaus, 1960) 167. William Marshall’s translation, published by Godfray, is titled A treatise declaryng [and] shewing dyuers causes take[n]out of the holy scriptur[es], of the sente[n]ces of holy faders, [and] of the decrees of deuout emperours, that pyctures [and] other ymages which were wont to be worshypped, ar i[n] no wise to be suffred in the temples or churches of Christen men (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535?). Marshall’s translation is not made directly from the German of Das Einigerlei Bild, but rather from a Latin translation of Bucer’s text by Jacobus Bedrotus, Non esse ferendas in Templis Christianorum Imagines et Statuas (Strasbourg, 1530). I am indebted to John McDermid for this observation. 56 Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, ‘Preface to the Commentary of the Four Gospels,’ in Eugene F. Rice, ed., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972) 436. 57 Boke of Marchauntes, Aviii v°—Bi r°. Marcourt perhaps refers to the late-medieval spiritual practice of gazing upon the host or on sacred relics, as was the practice at the



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Common lawyer and political theorist Christopher St German was another key player in Cromwell’s circle of religious and constitutional reformers. His sustained literary attack on the papacy resulted in a series of pamphlets with an increasingly sharp edge. While several of St German’s contributions to the propaganda campaign were published by the King’s own printer, Thomas Berthelet,58 one of the common lawyer’s more strident pieces, An Answer to a Letter, was published by none other than Thomas Godfray.59 In An Answer St German sets out to redefine the nature of the Church in a manner consistent with the King’s claim to the pleni­ tudo potestatis. Not only do kings exercise the ‘cure of souls’ but they are also the final arbiters of both doctrine and the interpretation of the scriptures: let every man therefore iuge whether any curate may truly say: the kyng hat only cure of the bodyes of my parysshens, but I of their soules: for it is no dout but that kynges and princes have cure and charge over both, and that nat only over the soules of laye men: but also of the soules of bysshops and prestes … …for as moche as the unyversall catholique people can nat be gathered togyther to make suche exposycion [of the scripture], therefore it semeth that kynges and princes whom the people have chosen and greed to be their rulers and governours, and which have the whole voices of the people, may with theire counsel spirytuall and temporall make exposycyon of such scripture as is doutfull so as they shall thynke to be the true understanding of it, and none but they, and that theire subiectes be bounden even by the law of god to folowe their exposycion…60

Without any doubt Antoine de Marcourt is in step with St German and other leading Tudor propagandists of the Royal Supremacy in his appeal to the model of the virtuous Old Testament kings whose care was for both the honour of God and the good governance of the people: Dispisyng of the divine wyll and wysedom is cause of all evils/ on kinges/ princes/ lordes/ contreis and nations/ which hath ben sene by David Salomon/ Ezechie/ Achab/ Manasses/ and other lyke. And one ought nat to have fere for to avaunce the honoure of god/ as poore simple Sedechie had/ shrine ot Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral—a spiritual benefit to be ‘purchased’ by the worshipper. 58 A treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spiritualtie and temporaltie (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1532?); Salem and Bizance (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1533). 59 An answere to a letter (London: Thomas Godfray cum priuilegio, 1535); see also A trea­ tyse concernige the powre of the clergye and the lawes of the realme (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535?). 60 St German, Answer to a Letter, Giv r°, Gv r°. Compare Powre of the clergye, Diiii.

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chapter one feryng more the princes of Juda and Hierusalem than the only god/ nat believing the counsel of good Hieremie…For it is nat in the power of men/ to depreve kynges of their crownes: but only appertayneth unto god/ which tranposeth the kingdoms as it plesith him …61

In the parallel case of Clement Armstrong, another radical evangelical in the circle of Thomas Cromwell, Ethan Shagan has shown with wonderful clarity that religious radicalism is by no means necessarily opposed to authoritarian political theology.62 Armstrong, sacramentarian opponent of the Mass—certainly a radical position to hold in the 1530s— nonetheless defined the Church as ‘the congregation of all men in a realm congregated as in the body of one man, which one man is the king’s body wherein all people his subjects are as his bodily members … like as the king is the Church, so the Church is the king.’63 That Marcourt’s satire could be in basic accord with Tyndale, St German, Martin Bucer, and Marsilius of Padua on key questions of religious and political reform challenges certain historiographical assumptions about the Reformation. In the case of Clement Armstrong Shagan has shown how Henry VIII’s anti-papal manoeuvres of the early 1530s were received and embraced by London’s radical Protestant community. Far from eroding the authority of Princes, the assertion of a radical evangelical agenda could go hand in hand with a revolutionary extension of royal powers. For Marcourt as for Armstrong and others in the circle of Thomas Cromwell, the Royal Supremacy goes hand in hand with radical doctrinal reform. In considering the variety yet underlying common cause of books published by Thomas Godfray in the period 1533–36, the appearance among 61 Boke of Marchauntes, Cii v°—Ciii r°. On the importance of the invocation of the Old Testament model of kingship in the campaign of the 1530s in support of Henry’s claim to headship of the Church of England, see Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (Hound Mills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: MacMillan, 1993). 62 Ethan Shagan, ‘Clement Armstrong and the godly commonwealth: radical religion in early Tudor England,’ The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 61. Shagan argues that ‘it is a commonplace of scholarly analyses of the ‘radical Reformation’ that radical theology required churches to be organised ‘on the principle of voluntary association’ [quoting George Williams, The Radical Reformation, xxviii] and that radicals ‘disdained a settled relationship with secular society.’ … yet in Armstrong’s case we have what seems to be an authoritarian and hyper-institutionalist concoction mixed from many of the same elements found in the Anabaptist theological brew. In the English Reformation ‘radical’ and ‘magisterial’ cannot function as simple antonyms…In England of the early 1530s … the hopes of a small evangelical minority lay in the policies of a mercurial king who had begun making dark threats against the pope and the clergy.’ See p. 78. 63 Public Record Office, State Papers, Theological Tracts 6/11, 199 v°. Cited in Ethan Shagan, ‘Clement Armstrong,’ 74.



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them of the anti-clerical satire of a radical evangelical of Marcourt’s stripe appears wholly in keeping with the constitutional aims of the royally sanctioned literary campaign if not entirely consistent with other doctrinal policies of the realm. While Marcourt is unmistakably associated with theological radicalism—and his Articles veritables published as the Placard of October 1534 confirm his radical Sacramentarian leaning which, like Armstrong’s, could not have been reconciled with the position on the Mass and the real presence countenanced by King Henry—it is nonetheless plain that the Boke of Marchauntes lends solid support to the new ideology of kingship unfolding in the agenda of the Reformation Parliament and its accompanying propaganda. That Cromwell formally sanctioned publication of the satire is externally confirmed by Godfray’s colophon ‘cum privilegio.’ More to the point, however, is the demonstrable consistency of the Boke of Marchauntes with other leading contributions by Godfray’s press to the government’s literary campaign. This openly official approval of Marcourt’s book contrasts sharply with the attempt at concealment of the publisher’s identity and the place of publication in Pierre de Vingle’s French editions of 1533 and 1534.64 One important piece of evidence of this marked disprepancy in the official reception of Marcourt’s satire on the two sides of the Channel is discernible in a slight but revealing rhetorical modification in the use of the personal pronoun. In the peroration of the appeal to the Princes in the original Vingle edition of 1533, Marcourt writes ‘O, si ainsi promptz et vigilans vous estiez à procurer l’honneur de Dieu comme sont promptz et diligentz ces convoiteux marchans de estre apres leur cas pour bien garder que rien ne leur eschappe, las que la chose iroit bien.’65 The rhetorical effect is admonitory, perhaps even reproving. In the English translation of Godfray’s 1534 edition, the pronoun shifts from second person to first: ‘O lorde/ if we were so prompt and wakinge for to procure the honour of god/ as these covetouse marchantes be prompte and diligent/ for to be about theyr maters/ and to be well ware that nothinge escape theym: Helas all wolde goo well.’66 The shift of discourse from second-person to first-person—from ‘you’ to ‘we’—suggests some degree of complicity or common purpose 64 See Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 141: ‘Godfray, on l’a vu, n’a dissimulé ni son nom, ni son adresse, mais n’a pas renounce totalement pour autant aux indications fictives de Pierre de Vingle … D’autre part, ‘l’Imprimé à Corinthe’ est devenu ‘Written at Corinthe, by your frende and lover (out of frenche) Thorny, wyld, wedy, harletry.’ Le traducteur ne s’est malheureusement pas trahi advantage par ces mots énigmatiques.’ 65 Livre des Marchans (1533), Ci v° [my italics]. I am grateful to Isabelle CrevierDenommé for drawing this critical discrepancy in the translation to my attention. 66 Boke of Marchauntes, Ciii r°.

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between author and the intended hearer of the apology, namely the godly Prince. This subtle discrepancy in translation points to a world of difference between the official reception of Marcourt’s pamphlet in England as compared with France. The identity of the translator of Marcourt’s satire remains an enigma. One possibility is William Marshall for whom Godfray printed several translations, although all of those positively identified as Marshall's are either from Latin or German.67 Another possible candidate for translator is William Turner, translator of Rhegius’s The old learninge and the newe (1537), previously published in Neuchâtel by Vingle in 1534 as La Doctrine nouvelle et ancienne. Had he not died in 1531 Simon Fish might have been another possibility, for he has been credited with the translation of other continental evangelical tracts from French into English.68 Even Christopher St German cannot be ruled out since he is numbered among Thomas Godfray’s translators of humanist and reformist literature.69 Much less likely is Thomas Starkey, another humanist in the circle of Thomas Cromwell, although there is the circumstantial evidence that he had been studying law in Avignon from 1532 before his return to England around the time of the publication of the Boke of Marchauntes. Another possible but unlikely candidate is Giles du Wes (alias du Guez), librarian to Henry VIII and French tutor to the Lady Mary (afterwards Queen Mary), even though he was the author of a two-volume French grammar published by Godfray in 1534.70 67 In addition to the volumes published by Godfray already mentioned, Marshall’s translations included the following: Girolamo Savonarola, An exposition vpon the li Psalme, called Miserere mei deus (London: Thomas Godfray, cum privilegio regali, 1535?); also The forme and maner of subue[n]tion or helping for pore people, deuysed and practysed i[n] the cytie of Hypres in Flaunders, whiche forme is auctorised by the Emperour, [and] approued by the facultie of diuinitie in Paris (London: Thomas Godfray, cum privilegio regali, 1535). James McConica notes that ‘interest in Savonarola, a marked concern of the Erasmian community everywhere, was early a property of the English group—Savonarola’s meditation on the ‘Miserere mei, Deus’ was one of the most poignant and widely circulated documents of the pre-reform period.’ McConica, English Humanists, 195. 68 See Robert Peters’s introductory note to the Scolar press facsimile edition of The sum of the Holy Scripture and A supplication for the beggars 1529 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1973). 69 An epistle of sai[n]t Bernarde, called the golden epistle, whiche he se[n]t to a yo[n]g religyous man whom he moche loued. And after the sayd epistle, foloweth four reuelations of Saint Birget (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535). Translation of the ‘golden epistle’ or ‘de perfectione vitae’ is attributed to Christopher St German by John Bale, Index Britanniae scriptorium, compiled (1548–1554) and to Richard Whitford of Syon House by McConica, English Humanists, 116. See Edmund Colledge, ‘Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century versions of ‘The Golden Epistle of Saint Bernard’,’ Medieval Studies 37 (1975), 122–129. The ‘golden epistle’ is now usually attributed to Bernard’s friend William of St Thierry. 70 Giles du Wes, An introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce, and to speke Frenche trewly, 2 vols. (London: Thomas Godfray, 1534); repr. 1 vol. (Genève: Slatkine reprints, 1972).



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A generation later in Actes and Monuments John Foxe mentions the Boke of Marchauntes as having been included in a list of books prohibited by Henry VIII in a Proclamation issued in 1546,71 two years after the theology faculty of Paris had issued France’s first index of prohibited books.72 Accompanied by a host of other evangelical writings by such reformers as Miles Coverdale, George Joye, William Tyndale, John Frith, William Turner, and Robert Barnes among others, The Boke of Marchauntes was consigned to a bonfire at Paul’s Cross.73 The list divides up the books into order according to author and includes The Boke of Marchauntes within a subsection of titles attributed to William Turner including The huntyng & fyndyng out of the Romishe fox and A comparison betwene the olde learnynge and the newe. This may well be the strongest clue as to the identity of the translator, although perhaps not altogether convincing. It is interesting to note that the item immediately preceding The Boke of Marchauntes in the list of prohibited books attached to the Royal Injunction is The Summe of the holye Scripture,74 an English translation of Summa der godeliker Christian Schmitt, ‘La grammaire de Giles du Wes, étude lexicale,’ Revue de linguistique romane 43(1979), 1–45. Originally from Flanders, Du Wes was ‘keeper of the Library at Richmonte.’ 71 John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions [and] horrible troubles, that haue bene wrought and practised by the Romishe prelates, speciallye in this realme of England and Scotlande … (London: John Day, cum privilegio Regiæ Maiestatis, 1563). 72 The catalogue of prohibited books is recorded only in the first edition of Actes and Monuments (1563), 573, 574. The Royal Proclamation, issued on 8 July 1546, is included in the Bonner Register, followed by Edmund Bonner’s own certificate to the Privy Council confirming execution of the order together with a list of prohibited books, Guildhall MS 9531/12, pt1, folio 91 r°: ‘The king’s most excellent majesty—understanding how, under pretence of expounding and declaring the truth of God’s Scripture, divers lewd and evildisposed persons have taken upon them to utter and sow abroad, by books imprinted in the English tongue, sundry pernicious and detestable errors and heresies, not only contrary to the laws of this realm, but also repugnant to the true sense of God’s law and his word … His majesty straitly chargeth and commandeth, that no person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever he or they be, from the day of this proclamation, presume to bring any manner of English book, concerning any manner of Christian religion, printed in the parts beyond the seas, into this realm…’ See Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964) 1: 373–76. On the Paris index see Benedict and Reinburg, ‘Religion and the Sacred,’ 139. 73 See Edmund Bonner’s Certificatorium factum dominis de privato consilio regio super concrematione quorundam librorum prohibitorum, Guildhall MS 9531/12, folio 91 v°; repr. Actes and Monuments (London: Adam and Company, 1873), appendix to vol. V, no. xviii. 74 The summe of the holye scripture: and ordinarye of the Christen teachyng, the true Christen faithe, by the whiche we be all iustified (Antwerp?: s.n., 1529). As was The Boke of Marchauntes, Turner’s translation of The summe was printed once again shortly after the accession of Edward VI. Isabelle Crevier-Denommé has shown that this text had a

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Scrifturen, originally a work in Dutch which appeared in Leyden in 1523 and attributed to Henricus Bomelius (or Hendrik von Bommel), an evangelical preacher in the region of the Lower Rhine and Pastor of the Brethren of the Common Life.75 The English translation is attributed to another evangelical firebrand, Simon Fish, author of the popular evangelical satire Supplicacyon for the beggars, first circulated in the spring of 1529 and a copy of which Anne Boleyn is said to have presented to Henry VIII.76 Both Simon Fish and John Frith were engaged in polemics with Sir Thomas More concerning the doctrine of purgatory, and thus serve to highlight the developing rift between Erasmian humanist and radical evangelical approaches to religious reform. Moreover, as Isabelle Crevier-Denommé has shown, the French translation of this text—Summe de l’escripture saincte—provides yet another instance of links between England and the press of Marcourt’s publisher in Neuchâtel, Pierre de Vingle.77 Yet again we witness the impossibility of separating developments in the course of the Reformation in England from events on the continent. James McConica’s claim in English Humanists and Reformation Politics that the humanist evangelicals of Henry’s reign ‘declined the general heterodoxy of the Protestant reformers’ and embraced the middle way of Erasmian moderation as ‘the very formula of the Henrician Church’ does seem now a rather unlikely reading of the polemical environment which witnessed the officially sanctioned publication of Marcourt’s satire.78 Thomas Godfray’s press played a key role in Cromwell’s anti-papal campaign from 1533 through 1536, and the Boke of Marchaunts was one among numerous tracts by evangelical radicals published in support of the Royal Supremacy. Francis Higman’s suggestion that there is a duality in both the Protestantism and the Catholicism of the 1530s is helpful. England’s relatively complex publication history having been translated into English and Italian as well as French. See her as yet unpublished paper ‘Les changements doctrinaux dans les versions de la Summe de l’escripture saincte (1529–1539),’ presented at the colloquium ‘Les impressions réformées de Pierre de Vingle’ at the UK Society for Renaissance Studies, Cambridge University, April 2005. 75 De Summa der Godliker Scrifturen (Leyden, 1523), ed. Johannes Trapman (Leiden : Elve/Labor Vincit, 1978). Published anonymously in 1523 the Summa was a free translation by Bomelius of his Latin work Oeconomica Christiana which was not published until 1527. 76 Simon Fish, A supplication of the poore commons. Wherunto is added the Supplicacyon for the beggers (London: John Day and William Seres?, 1546). Sir Thomas More engaged Fish in defense of the doctrine of Purgatory as he did John Frith. See The supplycacyon of soulys made by syr Thomas More knight … Agaynst the supplycacyon of beggars (London: William Rastell, 1529). 77 See ‘Les changements doctrinaux dans les versions de la Summe de l’escripture saincte (1529–1539),’ colloquium ‘Les impressions réformées de Pierre de Vingle,’ April 2005. 78 McConica, English Humanists, 10, 11.



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reformist humanism had its ‘evangelical moment’ in the 1530s and then reverted to a more consciously conservative mode in the decade following. From the fall of Thomas Cromwell in 1540 until the death of Henry VIII in January 1547, the Church of England came to be dominated by the spirit of a conservative Erasmian humanism such as it had known prior to 1533;79 during the same period of the middle 1540s France witnessed a severe repression of heresy and rigorous enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy.80 With the accession of Edward VI, ‘the young Josiah,’ the climate shifted once again. Phoenix-like The Boke of Marchauntes was resurrected in its second English edition just months after perishing in the flames at Paul’s Cross. Within a year continental evangelical theologians Martin Bucer from Strasbourg and the Florentine Peter Martyr Vermigli would be installed in Cambridge and Oxford respectively as the King’s Professors of Divinity. Those in France who longed for a ruler who would emulate the idol-smashing boy-king of Ancient Judah would have to wait until the accession of Francis II in 1559 and then Charles IX in 1560 only to have their hopes of a thorough reform of church and doctrine dashed in the wake of the Colloquy of Poissy (1561).81 The tide of religious reform was far from attaining equilibrium on either side of the Channel. Twelve Conclusions Concerning Thomas Cromwell’s Nascent ‘Public’ What then are the leading characteristics of the nascent ‘public’ of avantgarde evangelicals at the periphery of King Henry VIII’s court in the 1530s, the public which has its centre in the group of propagandists associated with the circle of Thomas Cromwell? Their common interest is in the promotion of a radical constitutional and religious agenda of reform through the agency of semi-official printers, including Thomas Godfray. As we have seen, one of Godfray’s notable publications was the English 79 For an illuminating analysis of religious reform in the years immediately preceding the accession of Edward VI, see Alec Ryrie, ‘The Strange Death of Lutheran England,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53.1 (2002), 83–92. As Ryrie sums it up, there is a significant division of opinion in the interpretation of this period. Richard Rex sees it as an almost fully-fledged Counter-Reformation while Eamon Duffy regards the Reforming party as biding their time in anticipation of the succession. [Nothing succeeds like succession?] See Rex, Henry VIII, 144 and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992) 424–47. On this historiographical divergence, see Ryrie, ‘Lutheran England,’ 83. 80 Benedict and Reinburg, ‘Religion and the Sacred,’ 139. 81 Philip Benedict, ‘The Wars of Religion, 1562–1598,’ in Mark Holt, ed., Renaissance and Reformation France, 1500—1648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 150.

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translation of Antoine de Marcourt’s Rabelaisian spoof on ecclesiastical hierarchy, first secretively published in French by Pierre de Vingle at Neuchâtel in October 1533. First, a ‘public’ is a voluntary association: printers, authors, and members of the Privy Council associated within a tightly knit circle of friendship, patronage and personal connection which nonetheless set them in a gray area at the edges of the Court. Thomas Godfray contributed to the advancement of Thomas Cromwell’s simultaneous campaign of constitutional and religious reform in the mid- to late-1530s, but at arm’s length from the Crown. While Thomas Berthelet was officially the King’s Printer, Godfray’s press published numerous books which contributed directly to the advancement of Cromwell’s propaganda campaign and was associated with some of the more radical prophets and propagandists of the Tudor revolution, including William Tyndale, John Frith, Christopher St German, William Marshall, and Clement Armstrong, most of whom held theological opinions anathema to the King himself. This circle of authors, translators, and their publisher composed a voluntary association—a ‘public’—of what might be called the Tudor evangelical avantgarde whose main object was to prod the government to move in an increasingly radical break with the Roman hierarchy and with the old religion. The problem they faced was Henry’s strong affirmation of the former but his reluctance to give up on the latter. Secondly, Cromwell’s patronage of religious radicals is not a traditional guild association. These radical reformers whose works and translations were published by Thomas Godfray could hardly be said to be involved in the enterprise principally for money or even preferment. Indeed the evidence suggests that King Henry looked askance at the more radical literary productions of the evangelical radicals, and some of the group were actually hounded to their deaths by official government policy. The tension between Cromwell’s own more advanced Protestant position and the king’s religious conservatism helps to explain the Vicegerent’s employment of a semi-official press attached to Cromwell’s interest but not having the direct imprimatur of the Royal Printer. Nonetheless, in a letter to Cromwell, William Marshall indicates that he is relying on Cromwell’s promise of a subsidy of twenty pounds (£20) for the printing of his translation of Defender of the Peace, Marsilius of Padua’s treatise on constitutional theory. While Marshall was well known for his advanced Protestant opinions, there was certainly a cash nexus here for a ‘grubstreet’ translator. Thirdly, the community of interest here is of a relatively disinterested sort. In England of the 1530s, the promotion of radical religious reform is



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definitely on the cultural fringe. Many of the radicals could hardly be described as ‘disinterested’ when they were prepared to go to the stake for their religious persuasion (Simon Fish, William Tyndale, et al.) Yet from the standpoint of the established institutions of the Tudor commonwealth, their association in such an enterprise as the making public of religious tracts has a certain inherent ambivalence. The King simultaneously approved and disapproved of these religious radicals. Approval stemmed from their willingness to promote the cause of Caesaro-Papism, and disapproval from their undermining of essential Catholic teachings. Henry liked evangelical politics, but had his doubts about their sacramental radicalism. In short, the ambivalence of the King’s religious orientation had the unintended effect of defining Cromwell’s stable of propagandists as standing simultaneously both inside and outside the establishment. This is clearly a case of a ‘public’ emerging in the context of a ‘dynamic system of discourse’ on the fringes of the circles of power. Fourthly, Cromwell’s circle of radicals seeks a ‘public’ voice through the medium of print. There is a virtual flood of evangelical propaganda in England in the 1530s. Unlike France where, after the Day of the Placards in October 1534, every attempt is made by government to squelch the voice of reform, the Tudor regime is willing to allow this voice a hearing, though at a fairly respectable distance from the Crown. The evangelical circle around Thomas Cromwell acquires a voice through various presses, those of a more moderate tone through the royal printer and those of a more radical bent through presses with only quasi-official sanction, as with the press of Thomas Godfray, publisher of Marcourt’s satire. Fifthly, the avant-garde circle around Thomas Cromwell seeks a reform of both the Church and the civil constitution, but does so from outside the established institutions themselves by means of persuasion in the popular press. The English press of the 1530s arguably denotes an emergent civil society with competing ideologies, a situation owing in large part to the fluctuating state of official religious policy at the time in Parliament and at court. The fall of Cromwell in 1540 is accompanied by a spectacular drop in the volume of polemical books published. It is not until after the accession of the Protestant Edward VI in 1547 that the volume of publication regains the level attained in the mid-1530s. In this we have a rough indicator of the Crown’s power to permit or to suppress an incipient ‘public’ of discourse founded on religious dissent. Sixthly, the political dimension of the propaganda machine in Cromwell’s circle of religious radicals is fairly self-evident. It might be argued that the overtly political purpose of religious persuasion is so

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explicit as to disqualify the web of friendship, patronage and personal connection to which a printer like Thomas Godfray is attached from identification as a ‘disinterested public,’ although it would certainly be difficult to label this phenomenon without appealing to some analogous category. It would certainly be a mistake to exclude an explicit political dimension to all species of early-modern publics when some clearly appear either in the process of the dissolution of one establishment or in the inauguration of another—such as is the case of England in the mid-1530s and later throughout the reign of Edward VI. Seventhly, there is an attempt to redefine the place of religion in everyday life. The evangelical radicals in both England and France are unquestionably engaged in a very elaborate exercise of ‘social imagination.’ Marcourt, moreover, imagines the benefits of religion taken under the care of the civil power. The Boke of Marchaunts proposes such radical constitutional revision based on evangelical religious reform. In doing so, the author has set himself outside established institutional structures. The preferred mode of revolution is through the printed word—the tracts, the Placards, the subversive religious songs. The aim is to achieve constitutional revolution through persuasion—a frequent epigraph on books published by Vingle, Marcourt’s original publisher in Neuchâtel, is ‘lisez et puis jugez’. Eighthly, this ‘public’ manifests a clear desire for growth and success. The use of the printing press obviously targets growth of a public favourable to reform through maximum possible exposure of an argument. Such a religious ‘public’ may have as its goal the creation of a new reforming establishment—which is in fact attained in England under Edward VI (1547–1553), but not so in France under Henri II (1547–1559). In the case of England the emergent ‘public’ through its success comes to be situated at least temporarily within the field of royal power, and thus as an established interest arguably ceases to meet the criteria of our definition. On the other hand, lack of success may arguably have the effect of the institutionalizing of a dissenting public of like-minded people—e.g. the Huguenots—whose self-organizing field of discourse may aspire to grow but always under the threat of the dominant political power. Comparison of the respective reception of Marcourt in France and England is instructive on the question of the effects of popular success on an emerging public. Ninthly, there is an international dimension of the reform movement. Spatial dimension would appear to have limited applicability in the case of a circle of courtiers, propagandists, and their printers. In the case of Pierre de Vingle, exclusion from the realm of France is a sort of negative



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definition of a sphere of actual production, though the pamphlets are distributed to the French-reading public wherever they may be found. It is especially interesting to observe the broadly international dimension of mid-sixteenth-century religious propaganda. Tracts appearing in Germany, Holland, and France are translated and appear in England in very short order. The ‘public’ transcends the political and linguistic boundaries, and thus presses beyond the spatial limits imposed by individual states. The space here is truly international. Tenthly, the characteristic medium of the evangelical avant-garde is print. However, this allows widely diverse modes of expression including the theological tract (e.g. Marcourt’s Declaration of the Masse, satire (Boke of Marchaunts, Tyndale’s Parable of the Wicked Mammon), the sermon, carols and hymns (Noelz nouveaux), and wood-cut images (Les Faictz du Jesus Christ et du Pape). Eleventhly, this ‘public’ is ‘semi-official’: the press of Thomas Godfray functions in fairly close proximity to the court through its association with the circle of Thomas Cromwell, but does not possess the official status of ‘King’s Printer.’ And finally, with the coordinated employment of the apparatus of public Persuasion there is a clear goal of widening the public audience and hence in fostering a ‘public sphere’ of influence. The point of publishing radical evangelical and political tracts by those close to the seat of power was to influence the constitutional course of events through a ‘selforganized field of discourse.’ The field is open in principle to strangers on the condition that they subscribe to the tenets promoted by the public in question. It may well be ephemeral in view of its ultimate prospects for success—those who find themselves at the fringes of political power (such as the evangelical radicals of Cromwell’s circle in the 1530s) may find themselves forming a new establishment over time (such as in fact was accomplished by them at the accession of Edward VI). To become the establishment in no way detracts from their erstwhile status as a ‘public’ at an earlier stage. This is an instance of the Angela Vanhaelen’s diachronic argument: ‘a public is not a static entity but is something that comes into being and can evolve into something that is not a public.’82 No doubt the inverse is true also when one considers the vagaries of religious policy under Edward’s successors Mary and Elizabeth I. 82 Angela Vanhaelen, “Religion Inside Out: Dutch House Churches and the Making of Publics in the Dutch Republic,” co-authored with Joseph Ward, in Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge, ed. Paul Yachnin and Bronwen Wilson (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 25–36.

CHAPTER TWO

PUBLIC FORUM AND FORUM OF THE CONSCIENCE: JOHN CALVIN’S GROUNDWORK OF THE MODERN PUBLIC SPHERE The conspicuous growth of a popular ‘culture of persuasion’ fostered by the Protestant Reformation contributed in no small part to the genesis of the early-modern public sphere.1 Whereas in his well-known account of the ‘structural transformation’ of the public sphere Jürgen Habermas placed a primary emphasis upon the commercial activity of global mercantile companies, our purpose is to draw closer attention to changes in religious assumptions as a source of explanation of this phenomenon, specifically through an exploration of the theological anthropology of John Calvin. By the end of the sixteenth century, and largely owing to this cultural shift, the ‘moral ontology’ which defined religious identity had come to be radically transformed for both the evangelical avant-garde and the Catholic reformers newly energized by the Council of Trent.2 While at a certain level the distinction between the primary ontological ‘orders’ of the divine and the human—between eternal and temporal planes of reality, between soul and body, grace and nature, immortality and mortality—was jointly affirmed by both Protestant reformers and Catholic defenders of traditional religious identity, the impulse towards comprehensive Reformation of the doctrine and practice of the church as well as the reinterpretation of the principles underlying secular political life was based upon a deep-seated theological difference on how to interpret the precise disposition of this ontological distinction. For those who embraced evangelical reform, religious identity was no longer held to be a matter cosmologically ‘given’ or assumed as embedded 1 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 14–26. 2 The language of ‘moral ontology’ as it is employed here is borrowed from Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. According to Taylor, the concept of moral ontology refers to the essential objectivity of the deepest assumptions concerning human spiritual identity and our place within the cosmic order. In this respect the argument of Sources of the Self has been interpreted as an effort of metaphysical ‘retrieval’. See, e.g., Fergus Kerr, ‘The Self and the Good: Taylor’s Moral Ontology,’ in Ruth Abbey, ed., Charles Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 84–104.



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within the hierarchically ordered institutions and elaborate theurgical apparatus of late-medieval sacramental culture which, for more than a millennium, had served to mediate between individual Christians and the divine. In sharp contrast with the traditional hierarchical and sacramental model based upon the ontological assumption of a gradual mediation or dispositio of reality whereby the orders of nature and grace, mortal and immortal being, body and spirit were linked together in a continuous and contiguous cosmic whole, the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers insisted rather on a sharply defined hypostatic demarcation between the inner, subjective space of the individual believer and the external, public space of Christian institutional life, whether ecclesiastical, sacramental, or political.3 One of the momentous consequences of this revolution in ‘moral ontology’ was the abrupt displacement of the hierarchical mediation offered by the intricate structures of late-medieval sacramental culture, achieved largely through the instruments of persuasion—that is, by means of argument, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice—disseminated through both pulpit and press.4 This alternative culture of persuasion together with the secularizing process of ‘disenchantment’ that it came to embody, presupposes a radically different conception of ontological mediation between the primary orders of reality.5 This Weberian theme thus underpins the gradual transformation from a ritually grounded ‘representative’ publicity in the direction of what eventually takes shape as a recognizably modern, secular public sphere. In his Institutio, John Calvin formulates with unmatched clarity the theological first principles which underlie the inception and development 3 A classical formulation of the ontology of hierarchical ‘dispositio’ is found in Augustine’s de civitate Dei. See The City of God against the pagans, transl. and ed. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), XIX.13: ‘The peace of the whole universe is the tranquillity of order—and order is the arrangement of things equal and unequal in a pattern which assigns to each is proper position.’ For further discussion of the ontology of hierarchy see Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 29–44. 4 See Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5 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, translated by Oscar Burge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), ix ff. See also Taylor’s A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: 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’, edited by Peter Lassman, Irving Velody, with Herminio Martins (London; Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 3–31, 159 ff.

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of the early-modern culture of persuasion.6 In his rightly famous definition of Christian liberty in Book III, chapter 19, Calvin articulates the principle of this new moral ontology—what one might even risk identifying as the ontology of classical modernity—with his careful (one is tempted to say ‘Cartesian’) distinction between the ‘spiritual’ government of the forum of the conscience (forum conscientiæ) and the ‘civil’ government of the external, political forum (forum externum).7 This distinction is the foundation of Calvin’s account of the so-called duplex regimen: ‘in man government is twofold.’ That government ‘by which the conscience is trained to piety and divine worship’ he calls a ‘spiritual kingdom’ (regnum spirituale), while in sharp contradistinction, he defines the ‘political kingdom’ (regnum politicum) as that ‘by which the individual is instructed in those duties which, as men and citizens, we are bold to perform’.8 A forensic distinction between the realm of the conscience and an external, political realm is traceable back several centuries before Calvin. In Dante’s Paradiso, Thomas Aquinas introduces the Florentine to one of the shining lights in the heaven of the Sun, the great 12th-century canon lawyer of Bologna: ‘Next flames the light of Gratian’s smile, who taught / In either forum, and in both gives pleasure / To Paradise, by the good work he wrought.’9 While this allusion to the two fora might have puzzled the author of the Decretum, by the late 13th and 14th centuries it had become a commonplace of the Canon Law to distinguish between the outward forum of an external jurisdiction exercised in the ecclesiastical courts and the internal forum of spiritual jurisdiction in the practice of penance. The terms forum poenitentiae and forum conscientiae were virtually synonymous.10 Thomas Aquinas himself distinguishes between the external 6 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion; translated by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989), III.19. This edition is cited throughout unless otherwise indicated. 7 See also Inst. IV.10.3. Descartes distinction between ‘res cogitans’ and ‘res extensa’ in the Meditations displays an interesting parallel with Calvin’s account of the twofold government. René Descartes, Meditations on first philosophy: with selections from the Objections and replies; translated with an introduction and notes by Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 55, 128, 188. 8 Inst. III.19.15. See David Van Drunen, ‘The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin,’ Calvin Theological Journal 40 (2005), 248–266. David Clyde Jones, ‘Ethics: the Christian life and good works according to Calvin (3.6–10, 17–19),’ in David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback, eds., A theological guide to Calvin’s Institutes: essays and analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub., 2008). 9 Dante, Paradiso, X.103–105 (‘che l’uno e l’altro foro / aiutò sì che piace paradiso’). 10 Joseph Goering, ‘The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,’ in Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington, eds., The history of medieval canon law in



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forum and the forum of the conscience in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.11 According to the systematic structure of the argument of Calvin’s Institutio, the precise character and full significance of the vast gap which distinguishes the two ontological realms associated with the duplex regimen only becomes fully apparent through a reflection upon the reformer’s pivotal soteriological claim concerning ‘justification by faith alone’ in the series of chapters immediately preceding the discussion of liberty, namely in III, chapters 1 through 18.12 On the intimate connection of the first principles of reformed soteriology with this new moral ontology Calvin is categorical; he describes his exposition of the logic of the liberty of conscience in terms of the duplex regimen as nothing less than ‘an appendage of justification.’13 Moreover, Calvin’s distinction of this ‘twofold government’ provides the critical groundwork for his later discussion in Book IV of what he terms the chief ‘external’ means of grace comprising three principal components: first the visible church, its jurisdiction, laws, and powers; secondly, the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist; and thirdly, civil government, a political theology of which addresses the duties and authority of magistrates, the external necessity and moral utility of civil laws, and the obligation of citizens to observe both. On two decisive points Calvin is emphatically insistent: first, the clear exposition of the nature of Christian liberty is ‘a thing of prime necessity, and apart from knowledge of it consciences dare undertake almost nothing without doubting;’14 and secondly, the soteriological principle upon which this liberty depends, namely justification by faith only, is itself by Calvin’s own account nothing less than ‘the main hinge on which religion turns.’15 For these two reasons, Calvin’s new moral ontology of the duplex regimen and consequently the classical period, 1140–1234: from Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 379–425. See also A. Mostaza, ‘Forum internum—forum externum (En torno a la naturaleza juridica del fuero interno)’, Revista Española de derecho canonico 23 (1967), 253–331, at 258, n. 15; 24 (1968), 339–364. 11 ‘Ad secundum dicendum, quod sacerdotes parochiales habent quidem jurisdictionem in subditos suos quantum ad forum conscientiae, sed non quantum ad forum judiciale; quia non possunt coram eis conveniri in causis contentiosis; et ideo excommunicare non possunt, sed absolvere possunt in foro poenitentiali; et quamvis forum poenitentiale sit dignius, tamen in foro judiciali major solemnitas requiritur; quia in eo oportet quod non solum Deo, sed etiam homini satisfiat.’ Scriptum super Sententiis 4.18.2.2.1 ad 2. Cited by Goering, ‘The Internal Forum’, 380. 12 Inst. III.11.1–18.10. 13 Inst. III.19.1. 14 Inst. III.19.1. 15 Inst. III.11.1, 7.

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his entire political theology, are anchored at the very core of his theological position. While Calvin’s contribution to the foundations of modern politics has been the subject of extensive critical discussion for many years as evidenced by an enormous and continually growing body of commentary,16 there are two particular aspects of his radical re-formulation of moral ontology that stand in need of closer attention. First, Calvin’s treatment of the ‘twofold government’ may help to elucidate the neglected but vitally important question of the religious and theological underpinnings of the emerging secular public sphere—a sphere marked above all else by its manifestation of what Andrew Pettegree has very helpfully designated the early-modern ‘culture of persuasion’.17 Diversely manifest in print (e.g. sermons, pamphlets and tracts, printed proclamations, parliamentary statutes) as well as in various other publicly ‘staged’ productions (e.g. the preaching of sermons, performance of plays, public trials and executions, and formal disputations) all of which effectively combined in the middle years of the sixteenth century to fill an increasingly conspicuous void left by a progressive dismantling of the traditional, late-medieval ‘sacramental culture,’ the growth of this culture of persuasion finds its focussed theological articulation in Calvin’s definition of Christian liberty. This definition provides an apt model for the interpretation of the moral ontology of the emerging public sphere. Briefly stated, for Calvin the public sphere is nothing less than the newfound and necessary means of mediating across the immense gulf that reformed soteriology was responsible for opening up between the ‘two kingdoms’ in the first place, namely between the private, inward realm of the individual self—Calvin’s forum conscientiæ—and the public, outward realm of the common institutional order—Calvin’s forum externum et politicum. On this view, the public religious discourse of the Protestant Reformers—specifically religious persuasion through translation of the scriptures into the vernacular, biblical exegesis, preaching, and moral exhortation, in short the promotion of ‘fides ex auditu’—presents an early exemplar, indeed arguably the archetype, of a uniquely early-modern approach to negotiating the

16 For a helpful critical overview of this extensive literature see Ralph C. Hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Ithaka: Cornell University Press, 1989), 1–22. See also Douglas F. Kelly, The emergence of liberty in the modern world: the influence of Calvin on five governments from the 16th through 18th centuries (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub., 1992). 17 See A. Pettegree’s Introduction to Reformation and the culture of persuasion.



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interaction between the inward spiritual life of the discreet and autonomous individual self, and the outward collective requirements of the wider political community.18 In this respect, Calvin’s treatment of Christian liberty contributes to a radical rethinking of the relationship between private and public space and thus to a substantive reformulation of moral ontology which would in turn give rise to the institutions of modern civil society.19 The second major point to be addressed in connection with Calvin’s theme of the duplex regimen concerns the useful light it sheds upon the sources of modern secularity. The secular as we have come to know it presents itself most frequently in opposition to religious concerns. By proposing a consideration of Calvin’s theology as counting among the significant sources of the political culture of modernity, it is clear that any simple dichotomy between the secular and the religious is bound to be highly suspect from the outset. On the contrary, it would appear evident on an attentive reading of Calvin that some of the significant sources of modern secularity derive their primary meaning from a profoundly religious discourse. The secondary claim, then, is that this modern secularity is at root a profoundly theological orientation, whether or not it knows itself to be so. This latter claim is in part a reiteration of Taylor’s thesis in the opening chapters of A Secular Age.20 It must be said, of course, that the assertion of a connection of modernity with Protestantism in general and its association with Calvin in particular is a commonplace, indeed ‘old hat’, so much so as to have become thoroughly unfashionable. The Whig historians, for example, who have been the target of relentless revisionist critique for more than a generation, were apt to point to Calvinism’s formative contribution to modernity, and especially to modern conceptions of political liberty.21 From the somewhat different perspective of German Idealism, G.W.F. Hegel 18 Lester De Koster, Light for the city: Calvin’s preaching, source of life and liberty (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub., 2004), 63–88. On the individual ‘irreducible self’, see William R. Stevenson, Jr., Sovereign grace: the place and significance of Christian freedom in John Calvin’s political thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11–58. 19 See the first chapter titled ‘The bulwarks of belief’ in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 25–42. 20 See A Secular Age, chapter 1, sections 6 and 7, 54–75. 21 See, e.g., Thomas Babington Macaulay, The history of England from the accession of James the Second (New York: AMS Press, 1968); S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (London: Longmans, Green, 1894); W.K. Jordan, The development of religious toleration in England : from the accession of James 1 to the convention of the Long parliament, 1603–1640 (London: Allen, 1936).

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famously observed in his Philosophy of History that the Protestant world had advanced to such a degree in its thinking as ‘to realize the absolute culmination of self-consciousness’ and that this was the birth of modernity.22 Max Weber’s thesis of ‘disenchantment’, and the links between the Protestant ethic and modern capitalism to which he drew attention, tends in a similar direction.23 None of these accounts, however, probes the depths of the deep theological groundwork implicit in their claim. John Witte, Sheldon Wolin, and Quentin Skinner, to name some more recent critics, have addressed this question from diverse angles.24 Skinner understands modernity as the emergence of a purely secular politics liberated from what he plainly regards as the impediment of religion.25 Charles Taylor, however, puts his finger on the critical problem when he pointedly remarks at the outset of Sources of the Self that the ‘moral sources of emerging modern identity are far richer than the impoverished language of modernity’s most zealous defenders,’ and he goes on to add that the moral ontology behind any given set of views is more likely than not to remain largely implicit.26 A critical element of this impoverishment of language is a neglect of the ontological, theological, and metaphysical categories which, in Taylor’s view, constitute the groundwork for these sources of modern secular identity. Such has certainly been the case with Calvin’s contribution to the formulation of these questions surrounding the emergent culture of persuasion and the sources of an early-modern conception of the secular. We propose that a prime focus for both of these questions ought to include a probing of the depth of their common theological foundations in Calvin’s discourse on Christian liberty.

22 Lectures on the Philosophy of History, translated by Henry Sibree (London: Henry Bohn, 1857), 463. 23 See the new translation by Stephen Kalberg of Weber’s The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism with other writings on the rise of the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). See also Friedrich W. Graf, ‘Calvin im Plural: zur Vielfalt moderner CalvinBilder,’ plenary paper presented at the conference ‘Calvin et son Influence, 1509–2009’, held in Geneva on 24–27 May 2009. 24 Sheldon S. Wolin, ‘Calvin and the political education of Protestantism,’ in Politics and vision: continuity and innovation in Western political thought (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), chapter 6; John Witte, Jr., The reformation of rights: law, religion, and human rights in early modern Calvinism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 25 Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought: the Reformation (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 2. 26 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 3, 7. Taylor argues that modernity ‘isn’t just a story of loss, of subtraction.’ See A Secular Age, 26–29.



public forum and forum of the conscience43 Calvin’s ‘Two Governments’

To this end let us examine more closely the hinge which not only links the two orders of being but also ties together the theological and political dimensions of Calvin’s thought. Calvin is well aware of the potential for scandal in this delicate negotiation. The pivotal passage in the Institutio reads thus: …in order that none of us may stumble on that stone [i.e. the relation of Christian freedom to the law] let us first consider that there is a twofold government (duplex esse in homine regimen) in man: one aspect is spiritual, whereby the conscience is instructed in piety and in reverencing God; the second is political, whereby man is educated for the duties of humanity and citizenship that must be maintained among men. These are usually called the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘temporal’ jurisdiction (not improper terms) by which is meant that the former sort of government pertains to the life of the soul, while the latter has to do with the concerns of the present life—not only with food and clothing but with laying down laws whereby a man may live his life among other men holily, honourably, and temperately. For the former resides in the inner mind, while the latter regulates only outward behaviour. The one we may call the spiritual kingdom (regnum spirituale), the other, the political kingdom (regnum politicum). Now these two, as we have divided them, must always be examined separately; and while one is being considered, we must call away and turn aside the mind from thinking about the other. There are in man, so to speak, two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority.27

It should be observed that Calvin’s thinking on the question of the twofold government has a significant development in terms of its systematic placement over the course of his multiple revisions of the Institutio.28 In the original edition of 1536, this description of the distinction between two orders of governance is presented as an introduction to his discussion of civil and ecclesiastical government in the final chapter, the chief subject matter of what became Book IV on the ‘external means of grace’ in the much expanded definitive version of the work published in 1559.29 In this 27 Inst. III.19.15; transl. Battles, 847. 28 Five Latin editions of the Institutio Christianæ Religionis were published in Calvin’s lifetime (1536, 1539, 1543, 1550, and 1559). The first French edition appeared in 1541, corresponding to his 1539 Latin edition: Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne (1541), edition critique par Olivier Millet (Genève: Droz, 2008). Comparable to the influence of the Authorized Version of the Bible on standard English, Calvin’s French translations of these Latin editions helped to shape the French language for generations. The final edition of the Institutio is about five times the length of the first edition. 29 Christianæ religionis institutio: totam ferè pietatis summa[m], & quicquid est in doctrina salutis cognitu necessarium, complectens: omnibus pietatis studiosis lectu dignissimum

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final edition there are a number of important invocations of the duplex regimen in Book IV, e.g. in the discussion of the legislative power and on the necessity of coercive civil government as one of the principal external means of grace.30 In IV.10 of the 1559 edition he identifies the two governments as belonging respectively to the forum of the conscience (forum conscientiæ) and the external, political forum (forum externum).31 Nonetheless, Calvin places his crucial definition of Christian freedom and the twofold government in the third book of the final edition where the primary context of the argument is psychological and soteriological, i.e. focussed on the inner, subjective mode of obtaining the gifts of grace, rather than on the political and institutional forms per se. It is clear from the 1559 edition that for Calvin it is insufficient simply to describe secular government as a negative consequence of human depravity. It is not only ‘owing to human perverseness that supreme power on earth is lodged in kings and other governors, but by Divine Providence, and the holy decree of Him to whom it has seemed good so to govern the affairs of men, since he is present, and also presides in enacting laws and exercising judicial equity.’32 That Calvin regards secular government in a substantially more positive light than Augustine’s ‘penalty and remedy for sin’ (pœna et remedium peccati)33 ultimately derives theological justification from the deliberate systematic transposition of this pivotal exposition of Christian liberty and the duplex regimen into the midst of the discourse on soteriology in the earlier third part of the Institutio. In terms of this new placement, the distinction between the two modes of governance is given considerably deeper theological significance than the mere distinction between ecclesiastical and civil rule. In this fashion, Calvin transposes the customary institutional sense of the distinction between ‘spiritual’ and ‘temporal’ jurisdiction to the moral ontological plain. Whereas the forum of spiritual jurisdiction under the auspices of medieval canon law referred to the external ritualised procedure associated

opus, ac recens editum. Præfatio ad Christianissimum Regem Franciæ, qua hic ei liber pro confessione fidei offertur (Basle: Thomas Platteru[m] & Balthasar Lasium, 1536), chapter 6. For an English translation, see Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1536 Edition, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 178. For the second edition, see Institutes of the Christian religion of John Calvin, 1539: text and concordance, ed. Richard F. Wevers (Grand Rapids, MI: Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, 1988). 30 See, e.g., Inst. III.19.15, IV.10.3–6, and IV.20.1. 31 Inst. IV.10.3. 32 Inst. IV.20.4. 33 Augustine, de civitate Dei, xix.



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with the sacrament of penance, for Calvin penitence is radically internalised within the forum or realm of the individual Christian conscience. Conversely, both the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions are construed as ‘the external means or aids by which god invites us into the society of Christ and holds us therein’, that is to say through the government of the visible church and the commonwealth which together constitute the ‘forum politicum’.34 The radical internalizing of the ‘forum’ of penitence in the conscience carries with it the corollary of the profanizing disenchantment of ecclesiastical functions. Moreover, the primary means of mediation between the inward ‘space’ of individual conscience and the outward ‘space’ of the communal, institutional life of the church are ‘moral instruments’ of persuasion. In effect the secular public sphere appears in Calvin’s theology as none other than the condition of mediation between the two fora. Calvin’s key claim in III.19 that his consideration of freedom and the conscience is ‘an appendage of justification’ alters dramatically the theological register of his account of the duplex regimen. According to his formulation of justification, the communication of grace to fallen humanity is interpreted as a twofold process: We receive and possess by faith, Jesus Christ, as he is given to us by the goodness of God, and by participation in him we have a double grace (duplex gratia). The first is, that being reconciled to God by his innocence, instead of having a judge in heaven to condemn us, we very clearly have a Father there. The second is, that we are sanctified by his Spirit, to think upon holiness and innocence of life.35

On this summary account of Reformation soteriology, the individual believer participates in two sharply distinguished kinds of righteousness, the primary mode ‘passive’ and the derivative, secondary mode ‘active’— namely, faith and works.36 According to this account of grace, the believer dwells mystically ‘in Christ’ by faith and is thus made completely righteous in the presence of God, ‘coram Deo’. At the same time, Christ dwells in the believer, who is dynamically and progressively sanctified by degrees

34 See Inst., book IV.1–4. 35 Inst. III.11.1. 36 In all essentials Calvin’s position on Justification is in agreement with Luther’s formulation of the doctrine in his famous sermon Two Kinds of Righteousness (1520). See M. Luther, Two Kinds of Righteousness, translated by Lowell J. Satre in Luther’s Works, vol. 31, edited by H.J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Concordia Press, 1957), 293ff. See Martin Kolb, Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 64–68.

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in the world, in the presence of others, that is to say ‘coram hominibus’.37 In his discussion of liberty and the conscience Calvin makes it clear that the twofold government derives from these two distinct ‘places’ in the reformed account of the operation of grace through these two distinct modes and in keeping with their respective, radically distinct ontological frames of reference—a duplex regimen proceeding from a duplex gratia.38 In the series of chapters immediately preceding his account of the duplex regimen, Calvin formally distinguishes these two soteriological modes as the perfect, passive, alien, and consequently ‘imputed’ grace of justification, on the one hand, and the gradual, dynamic, proper, and therefore ‘acquired’ grace of sanctification, on the other. These two modes of grace while very intimately yoked together, both in their source and in their reception, must nonetheless be kept wholly and clearly distinct.39 Failure to maintain the distinction between justification and sanctification is, for Calvin, tantamount to the complete overthrow of the foundation of religion, yet the ultimate unity of their source must nonetheless be upheld. A critical consequence of this dialectical soteriology of the duplex gratia is the seeming paradox of the definition of Christian liberty as simultaneously ‘freedom from’ and ‘subjection to’ the requirements of the law. In turn, this dialectical emphasis leads Calvin to assert simultaneously the most radical distinction between the temporal and spiritual orders, and their intimate union—the paradox, in fact, which is the ‘potential stone of stumbling’ to which he refers at the beginning of the critical passage.40 As Ralph Hancock expresses this remarkable tension, ‘Calvin explodes any simple dichotomy between secular and religious concerns; he distinguishes radically between them, but precisely in order to join them fast together.’41 There is a twofold danger in this tension, namely the possi­ bility of confusing the two orders by joining them too closely with one another, or alternatively, of supposing that the two orders are antithetical. Thus for Calvin the moral ontological problem was how simultaneously to unite and yet maintain the distinction between the two forms 37 See Alistair McGrath, Iustitia Dei: a history of the Christian doctrine of justification (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 199. For a lucid explanation of Calvin’s appropriation of this soteriological ‘dialectic’, see François Wendel, Calvin: the origins and development of his religious thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 237–242. 38 On the soteriological implications for Calvin’s treatment of conscience, see Randall C. Zachman, The assurance of faith: conscience in the theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 224–243, esp. 225–228. 39 Inst. III.11.11. 40 Inst. III.19.15; transl. Battles, 847. 41 Hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, xii.



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of governance. It is in this distinctly dialectical sense, therefore, that the discourse of the twofold government is, as Calvin states, an ‘appendage of the discourse on justification’. And it is precisely on this link between the duplex gratia and the duplex regimen that the new moral ontology of a modern secularity depends. Calvin’s dialectical treatment of the twofold government is thus very carefully constructed on the foundation of the principal modes of the ‘double grace’. Moreover, his approach to the simultaneous union and distinction of the passive and active modes of grace, i.e. of faith and works, and his consequent formulation of the relation between the forum conscientiæ and the forum externum both adhere to a normative dialectical paradigm of orthodox patristic Christology, one of the chief distinctive marks of Calvin’s theological method according to some scholars.42 According to this model, the conscience of the believer corresponds to the principle of hypostatic identity while, at the same time, in this hypostatic unity of conscience the individual is bound to the heterogeneous obligations of two distinct ‘jurisdictions’, namely the ‘temporal’ and the ‘spiritual’. ‘The former’, as he states, ‘has its seat within the soul,’ while ‘the latter only regulates the external conduct’. As the passage continues, ‘when the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other’ lest they be confused. Calvin defines conscience as ‘a certain mean between God and man because it does not allow man to suppress within himself what he knows, but pursues him to the point of convicting him.’43 Conscience both knows the demands of the law and recognizes the promise of liberty hidden behind those demands. According to Calvin’s moral ontology, to confuse the spiritual forum of the conscience with the external political forum has its soteriological analogue in the confusion of faith and works; cosmologically considered, such a confusion is to neglect to distinguish between this present fleeting mortal existence and the immortal condition of eternity, between body and soul; doctrinally it is to imply by consequent a confusion of the divine and the human natures, and thus to overturn the cornerstone of patristic orthodoxy, especially as construed by Augustine. The question of conscience, of liberty, and of the duplex regimen is thus elevated to the level of the most fundamental doctrine. The logic of the 42 Christo-centrism is judged by François Wendel to be the very hallmark of Calvin’s theology. See Calvin, 215–225. See also Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58–92 and E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology (Leiden: Brill, 1969). 43 Inst. III.19.15.

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moral ontology of the duplex regimen can be clearly discerned in Calvin’s paraphrase of the Christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon in 451: When it is said that the Word was made flesh, we must not understand it as if he were either changed into flesh, or confusedly intermingled with flesh, but that he made choice of the Virgin’s womb as a temple in which he might dwell. He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For we maintain, that the divinity was so conjoined and united with the humanity, that the entire properties of each nature remain entire, and yet the two natures constitute only one Christ …. Thus the Scriptures speak of Christ. They sometimes attribute to him qualities which should be referred specially to his humanity and sometimes qualities applicable peculiarly to his divinity, and sometimes qualities which embrace both natures, and do not apply specially to either. This combination of a twofold nature in Christ they express so carefully, that they sometimes communicate them with each other, a figure of speech which the ancients termed ‘idiomaton koinonia’ (a communication of properties).44

So, eleven hundred years after this ecumenical council of the ancient Church, Calvin invoked this Christological model to lend support to the precarious dialectical task of simultaneously uniting and distinguishing the spiritual and the external orders of reality—the forum conscientiæ and the forum externum—with their respective modes of governance: … these two [the spiritual and the civil kingdom] as we have divided them, are always to be viewed apart from each other. When the one is considered, we should call off our minds, and not allow them to think of the other. For there exists in man a kind of two worlds over which different kings and different laws can preside.45

44 Inst. II.14.1. The Christological definition of Chalcedon reads as follows: ‘Following then the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the self-same Perfect in Godhead, the self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the self-same of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, the self-same consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the self-same, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the Virgin, Theotokos as to the Manhood; acknowledged in Two Natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and both concurring into One Prosopon and One Hypostasis … one and the self-same Son and only begotten Word, Lord, Jesus Christ.’ Phillipe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, Sacrorum conciliorum, nova et amplissima collectio (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1960– 61), tom. IV, col. 562. 45 Inst. III.19.15.



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Yet—this qualifying conjunction is somehow characteristically Calvin’s— while there are two distinct orders of reality (or ‘natures’) they are nonetheless hypostatically united within each individual conscience; while the two modes of governance must be kept distinct, Calvin insists that they are by no means antithetical. Indeed Calvin insists that ‘we must know that they are not at variance.’46 Calvin reveals the ‘public sphere’ as ultimately an instrument for a public ‘communication of idioms’ between the two realms without which the life of liberty would relapse into complete paralysis. Consequently, the distinction between the spiritual and the civil kingdoms ‘does not go so far as to justify us in supposing that the whole scheme of civil government is matter of pollution, with which Christian men have nothing to do.’47 On the contrary, civil government is much more than a remedium peccati: ‘magistrates are occupied not with profane affairs or those alien to a servant of God, but with a most holy office, since they are serving as God’s deputies.’48 To deprive man of government is to deprive him of his very humanity. Civil government not only promotes peace and tranquillity, it protects ‘the outward worship of God,’ the defence of sound doctrine, and the promotion of civil righteousness. Moreover, as the structure of the argument of Book IV of the Institutio shows, the external governance of the civil realm is understood by Calvin as yoked together with jurisdiction over the visible Church and the administration of the sacraments as one of three primary external instruments of the divine governance. In summary, to return to our original question, does Calvin contribute substantively to the definition of a modern secular identity manifested in an emergent public sphere? It would seem that his sustained theological treatment of liberty and the conscience according to the model of the duplex regimen plays a highly significant, perhaps even decisive role in redefining the relation between the individual conscience and the external communal order. By this means Calvin effectively dismantles the traditional hierarchical model of a gradual mediation between the temporal and spiritual orders and their respective modes of governance as presupposed by the moral ontology of sacramental culture. By his dismissal of the primacy of a sacramental mediation by means of a cosmic dispositio in favour of distinguishing hypostatically between the orders of reality, Calvin pushes these orders into a radical distinction, yet he does so only 46 Inst. IV.20.2. 47 Inst. IV.20.2. 48 Inst. IV.20.6.

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to bind them ever more tightly together according to the soteriological and Christological models we have considered. Calvin’s contribution to the definition of the moral ontology of an emerging secular modernity thus turns on the profundity of his theological analysis of the duplex regimen. In sum, the displacement of sacramental culture with its moral ontology of hierarchical mediation, by a culture of persuasion with its alternative ontology sharply demarcating the inner subjective ‘forum of the conscience’ and the ‘external political forum’ of common, institutional life (both religious and civil), calls forth the public sphere as the new and necessary instrument of mediation, the means of bridging the distance between the two fora. Calvin’s account of the duplex regimen helps to elucidate the vital role played by a public religious discourse in defining the new ‘moral ontology’ of an emerging early-modern civil society, and thus also serves to establish the terms of a uniquely early-modern approach to negotiating the interaction between the conscience of the individual and the wider political community through the instrumentality of a structurally transformed ‘public sphere’.

CHAPTER THREE

LAY SUPREMACY: TUDOR REFORM OF THE CANON LAW OF ENGLAND In 1529, Parliament passed the first in a series of statutes denouncing papal authority as a usurpation of the traditional jurisdiction of the English ecclesiastical courts, combined with reaffirmation of the doctrine of the late-14th century Statutes of Praemunire. In response, the clergy in Convocation initiated a pre-emptive attempt at a systematic overhaul of the canon law. The urgency to reform ecclesiastical law was further sharpened by Henry VIII’s assumption of headship of the Church of England. Several abortive attempts were made during his reign to establish a committee to set about the task of legal reform. It was not until 1551, however, that Edward VI finally appointed a Royal Commission of 32 under the leadership of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer charged with drawing up a formal proposal for systematic reform of canon law and ecclesiastical discipline. Intro­duced into Parliament in April 1553, the revised canons were summarily rejected, largely at the instigation of the John Dudley, Duke of North­umberland. The Commission’s draft was edited by John Foxe, published under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, and presented to Parliament a second time in 1571. Although published with Archbishop Matthew Parker’s approval, the Reformatio legum was fated to receive neither royal, nor parliamentary, nor synodical authorization. At the time certain members of Parliament contested the royal prerogative to determine matters of faith and discipline. Of what significance was this repeated failure to achieve systematic reform of the canon law and ecclesiastical discipline in defining religious identity in England in the course of England's multiple Reformations under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I, as well as in later ecclesiastical historiography? Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum On 11 November 1551 and on the advice of his Privy Council, King Edward VI—the ‘young Josiah’1 and ‘in earth supreme head of the Church of 1 Graeme Murdock, ‘The importance of being Josiah: an Image of Calvinist Identity,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 29.4 (1998), 1043–1059.

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England and Ireland’—appointed a Royal Commission under the leadership of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer charged with drawing up a scheme for a thorough reform of the canon law and ecclesiastical discipline.2 Constituted under the authority of a statute passed by Parliament the previous year,3 the work of this Committee of 32 was to prove the most far-reaching and comprehensive attempt ever made to reform the ecclesiastical ordinances of England in accordance with the principles of Reformed theology. Introduced into Parliament by Cranmer less than two years later on 10 April 1553, the proposed revision of England’s fundamental ecclesiastical law was summarily rejected, largely at the instigation of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.4 Less than three months later Edward died, and with his death and the subsequent accession of Queen Mary, hopes of canon law reform based on evangelical principles were dashed. With the accession of Elizabeth in November 1558, however, hopes of reform were kindled anew. Yet it was not until 1571 that Cranmer’s proposal came before Parliament again, albeit under fairly altered circumstances. Having been edited in the interim and introduced by John Foxe, the MS was published for the first time under the title by which it is now commonly known—Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum.5 Harleian MS 426 (dated 1552) in the British Library is the only extant evidence of the Commission’s actual work in drafting this revised code of canon law. According to Gerald Bray, editor of the recent critical edition of the Reformatio, Foxe’s text must have been based upon another (now lost) MS source since it has eight more titles than the Harleian MS, although virtually all of the text shared by the 1552 MS and first printed edition of 1571 is 2 For the Royal Proclamation appointing the Commission to reform the ecclesiastical laws of England, see Gerald Bray’s recent critical edition of the Reformatio in Tudor Church Reform: the Henrician canons of 1535 and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press [for the] Church of England Record Society, 2000), 167–69 [cited hereafter as TCR]. 3 3 & 4 Edward VI, cap. 11; Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810–1828), IV.111–12 [hereafter SR]. 4 A committed supporter of Protestantism, Dudley favoured reducing the powers of bishops and the confiscation of their estates. John Bale declared that he had always known Dudley as ‘a most mighty, zealous, and ardent supporter, maintainer, and defender of God’s lively word.’ See Diarmaid MacCulloch, The boy king: Edward VI and the protes­ tant reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 53. John Hooper, an advanced reformer, praised him as ‘a diligent promoter of the glory of God,’ Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, ed. Hastings Robinson (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1847), I.99 [hereafter OL]. 5 John Foxe, ed., Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum: ex authoritate primum Regis Henrici. 8. inchoata: deinde per Regem Edouardum 6. prouecta, adauctáq[ue] in hunc modum, atq[ue] nunc ad pleniorem ipsarum reformationem in lucem ædita (London: John Day, 1571) [hereafter RLE].



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identical.6 Edward Cardwell, the mid-nineteenth-century editor of the Reformatio, maintained that Foxe’s text was based upon a later, revised MS which had been in the possession of Archbishop Matthew Parker and which has not been traced beyond Foxe’s use of it.7 There is, however, no evidence of Parker’s amending the MS of the Reformatio along lines analogous to his revisions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as Cardwell asserted.8 In addition to Cardwell’s critical edition of 1850, John Foxe’s text of the Reformatio went through three further editions in the seventeenth century,9 and three in the twentieth including a facsimile reprint of Cardwell, James Spalding’s English translation, and Gerald Bray’s new standard critical edition of the Latin original with a parallel English text.10 Lay Supremacy From the very outset the reform of the canon law was driven first and foremost by the constitutional necessity inherent in Henry VIII’s claim to the title of headship in relation to the Church of England. In his preface to his edition of the Reformatio, John Foxe briefly recounts the tortuous 6 According to Bray, RLE ‘has eight more titles than [Harleian MS 426] and the ones they have in common are in a substantially different order. Furthermore, the eight additional ones are split into two blocks which are interpolated into the text … At least ninetynine percent of the shared text is identical, but compared with [Harleian MS 426] F[oxe edition, i.e. RLE] has some additions, alterations, and especially deletions in addition to those accounted for by the editorial corrections made by Archbishop Cranmer, Dr Walter Haddon, and Peter Martyr Vermigli.’ TCR, lix-lx. 7 See TCR, lix. The Reformatio as edited by Foxe has eight more titles than Harleian MS 426, and at least 99% of the text shared by the 1552 MS and the 1571 first printed edition. E. Cardwell suggested that Parker had taken Harleian MS 426 (or a fair copy) and revised it early in Elizabeth’s reign. Edward Cardwell, ed., The reformation of the ecclesiastical laws as attempted in the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: University Press, 1850; facsimile reprint, Farnborough, Hants: Gregg, 1968). 8 The reformation of the ecclesiastical laws as attempted in the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850). See TCR, lix. 9 Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum ex authoritate primum Regis Henrici 8, inchoata; deinde per Regem Edouardum 6, provecta, adauctáque in hunc modum, atque nunc ad ple­ niorem ipsarum reformationem in lucem edita (London: T. Harper and R. Hodgkinson, 1640; repr. Stationers’ Company, 1641; repr. Thomas Garthwaite, 1661). 10 The standard critical edition gives equal authority to Harleian MS 426 and to Foxe’s first printed edition. See Gerald Bray, ed., Tudor church reform. Bray provides an excellent and thorough critical introduction to the text. Another edition consisting of an English translation of Harleian MS 426 was made by James C. Spalding, The Reformation of the ecclesiastical laws of England, 1552 (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishing, 1992).

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history of efforts to constitute the Royal Commission which eventually drafted the text of the revised code presented to Parliament by Thomas Cranmer in 1553. The earliest suggestion for such a committee originated with the clergy in Convocation more than twenty years earlier in the midst of political manoeuvres surrounding Henry’s quest for a divorce from Queen Katherine—‘the King’s great matter’. In 1529 the first in a series of statutes was passed by Parliament denouncing papal authority as a usurpation of the traditional jurisdiction of the English ecclesiastical courts, and reasserting the doctrine of the late-14th century Statutes of Praemunire.11 Clearly recognizing the anti-papal writing on the wall, the clergy in Convocation initiated a pre-emptive attempt at a systematic overhaul of the canon law four years before the break with Rome was formally sealed.12 The canon law together with its complex apparatus of courts, procedures, and precedents was so closely bound up with papal authority that the flexing of royal claims to supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction provided an irresistible impetus to constitutional and legal reform. On 28 April 1532, in the ‘Answer of the Ordinaries’, the English hierarchy defended their constitutional status to conduct their affairs independently of the civil power for the last time. A fortnight later on 16 May, the bishops voted a formal ‘Act of Submission’ which they presented to Henry. In their submission they promised not to make or promulgate any new ecclesiastical laws without the license and assent of the Sovereign, thus effectively abjuring the papal supremacy. The bishops also offered the entire corpus of the canon law for royal evaluation by a committee of Parliament. The ‘Act of Submission of the Clergy’ contains the first reference to a Commission of thirty-two members charged with the reform of the canon law of England, although twenty years were to elapse before concrete action was taken to this end: 11 21 Henry VIII, cap. 13; SR III.292–296. ‘Praemunire’ was an offence under statute law which received its name from the writ of summons to the defendant charged with appealing to a power outside of the realm for resolution of a situation within England that was under jurisdiction of the Crown. 12 See PRO State Papers 1/57, fols. 112–123, for Henry’s comments on Convocation’s proposed revision of the canon law. Cited by John F. Jackson, ‘Law and Order: Vermigli and the reform of ecclesiastical laws in England,’ in Peter Martyr Vermigli and the European Reformations, ed. Frank James III (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004), 269. See also Stanford Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). In this summary of the early Henrician stages of the establishment of the Commission for reform of the Canon Law, I am indebted to the researches of Leslie R. Sachs, ‘Thomas Cranmer’s Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum of 1553 in the context of English church law from the later Middle Ages to the canons of 1603,’ (JCD Thesis, Catholic University of America, 1982), 37–64.



lay supremacy55 So that finally whichsoever of the said constitutions, ordinances or canons provincial or synodal shall be thought and determined by your grace, and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons, not to stand with God’s laws, and the laws of the realm, the same to be abrogated and taken away by your grace, and the clergy. And such of them as shall be seen by your grace, and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons to stand with God’s laws, and the laws of your realm, to stand in full strength and power, your grace’s most royal assent and authority once obtained fully given to the same.13

In rapid succession Archbishop Warham died (22 August 1532); Henry married Anne Boleyn (25 January 1533); Cranmer was consecrated his successor to the See of Canterbury (on Passion Sunday, 30 March 1533); Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was pronounced invalid (23 May 1533); Anne was crowned Queen (1 June 1533); and Henry was shortly thereafter excommunicated by Clement VII (11 July 1533).14 The thread of hierarchy which had linked England through the papacy to the sacramentally interconnected framework of Christendom for almost a millennium had been cut. Confirm­ing the new constitutional reality of royal ecclesiastical supremacy, the ‘Act in Restraint of Appeals’ passed by Parliament in 1533 declared England to be an ‘empire’, Henry’s crown ‘imperial’, and dissolved all juridical ties to the See of Rome on the ground that the English Church ‘is sufficient and meet of itself, without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons’.15 With the constitutional abolition of papal supremacy the entire edifice of the medieval canon law was now clearly and radically problematic. Gratian’s Decretum, the very foundation of the canon law, declared unambiguously that the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome was supreme, and that ‘those who preside over human affairs cannot judge those who are in charge of the divine.’16 The challenge to be faced—both constitutional and theological—could hardly be more acute. The two powers of Gelasius were in open conflict, and the future shape of the canon law was held in 13 David Wilkins, ed., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols. (London: Gosling, Gyles, Woodward, and Davis, 1737) III.754–55; H. Gee and W.J. Hardy, eds., Document Illustrative of English Church History (London: MacMillan and Co., 1896; repr. 1921), 176–78 [cited hereafter as DI]. 14 The papal breve declared Henry’s divorce of Katherine and his marriage with Anne Boleyn invalid, and pronounced his excommunication from the Church. On the same day Clement also excommunicated Thomas Cranmer, Edward Lee (Abp of York), Stephen Gardiner (Bp of Winchester), and John Longland (Bp of Lincoln). 15 24 Henry VIII cap. 12, SR III.427–29; DI 187–95, passed 7 April 1533. 16 Decretum, D. 96, preceding c. 5, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955; 1959), I.20. Cited hereafter as CICan.

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the balance.17 By 1535 the study of canon law in the universities had been prohibited, all canon law prejudicial to the law of England had been abrogated, and the clergy had completely surrendered any right to legislate independently of the Crown. The Submission of the Clergy of 1532 was reaffirmed by Statute in 1534. This is a critical turning point in the history of English canon law because of its pivotal function in establishing a continuing constitutional and juridical framework for the Church of England. The Act also formally authorized comprehensive reform of the canon law which was to culminate in the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, although not without several more twists and turns. The statute restates the terms of the original Act of Submission whereby the clergy promised with the word of a priest (in verbo sacerdotii), here unto Your Highness, submitting ourselves most humbly to the same, that we will never from henceforth presume to attempt, allege, claim or put in effect or enact, promulgate or execute any new canons or constitutions, provincial or synodal, in our convocation or synod in time coming, which convocation is, always has been, and must be assembled only by Your Highness’s commandment or writ, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to assemble our convocation and to make, promulge, and execute such constitutions and ordinances … and thereto give your royal assent and authority.18

Section 2 of the Act constitutes the actual mandate for the reform of ecclesiastical ordinances: ‘Be it therefore enacted by authority aforesaid that the King’s Highness shall have power and authority to nominate and assign at his pleasure the said thirty-two persons of his subjects, whereof sixteen to be of the clergy and sixteen to be of the temporality of the upper and nether houses of Parliament.’ The third section requires that no ecclesiastical ordinances shall be enforced contrary to the royal prerogative. Subsequent sections recapitulate the prohibition of appeals to Rome and make provision for final appeals from the archiepiscopal court to the King in Chancery.19 Section 7 of the Act is of immense significance for the subsequent history of English canon law since it guarantees the continuity of existing ecclesiastical constitutions and ordinances ‘which be not 17 See the celebrated ‘Letter of Pope to Gelasius to the Emperor Anastasius’ on the superiority of spiritual to temporal power: ‘Indeed, noble emperor, there are two powers by which this world is principally ruled: the sacred auth of pontiffs, and the royal power. Of these the responsibility of the priests is the more weighty insofar as they will answer for the kings of men themselves before the divine tribunal.’ Decretum, D. 96, c. 10; CICan I.340. 18 25 Henry VIII cap. 19; SR III.460–61. See TCR, xv. 19 Sections 3 and 4 of the above Act.



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contrary nor repugnant to the laws, statutes, and customs of this realm nor to the damage or hurt of the King’s prerogative royal.’ These ecclesiastical laws are guaranteed ‘until such time as they be viewed, searched, or otherwise ordered and determined by the said [commission of] thirty-two persons, or the more part of them, according to the tenor, form, and effect of this present Act.’20 Owing to the fact that the Reformatio was never enacted as law (having failed to pass through Parliament both in 1553 and in 1571), and because subsequent ecclesiastical legislation21 fell far short of the complete revision and codification of existing law envisaged, section 7 of the ‘Act of Submission of the Clergy’ was to serve as the effective statutory basis for the continued authority of medieval canon law as a significant element of actual law for the Church of England, and has done so from the Reformation to the present day. Although the Commission of 32 envisioned in the ‘Act of Submission’ was never formally constituted at the time (that would have to wait almost two decades until 1551), nonetheless one tangible result of parliamentary resolve to reform the canon law was the drafting of the so-called Henrician Canons of 1535.22 Composed in late 1535 and early 1536, these consist of 36 titles subdivided into 360 canons, and are mainly copied from existing collections of canon law, notably from the six divisions of the Corpus iuris canonici, as well as selections from the Corpus iuris civilis and William Lyndwood’s Provinciale, a digest of the canons of the Province of Can­ terbury first published in 1433.23 Never officially approved, the Henrician Canons had no long-term constitutional significance nor do they represent any significant theological reform. Given the rapid pace of institutional and doctrinal transformation in the mid-1530s, it is fair to say that this first attempt at revision was obsolete before the ink was dry. For, not long after the drafting of the Henrician Canons, Parliament reiterated the 20 25 Henry VIII cap. 19; SR III.460–61. 21 E.g., the Constitutions and Canons ecclesiastical: treated vpon by the Bishop of London, president of the conuocation for the prouince of Canterbury, and the rest of the bishops and clergie of the sayd prouince: and agreed vpon with the Kings Maiesties licence in their synode begun at London anno Dom. 1603 (London: Robert Barker, printer to the Kings most excellent Maiestie, 1604). For a critical text of the Constitutions and Canons, see The Anglican canons, 1529–1947, edited by Gerald Bray (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press [for the] Church of England Record Society in association with the Ecclesiastical Law Society, 1998), 258–453. 22 BL Add. MS 48040, fols. 13–102v, formerly Yelverton MS 45. F. Donald Logan reports his discovery of these canons in ‘Henrician Canons,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 47 (1975), 99–103. For the recently published critical edition of the Henrician Canons, see TCR, 3–143. 23 Constitutiones provinciales ecclesiae Anglicanae (London: Winkyn de Worde, 1529).

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mandate for a Royal Commission in ‘An Act whereby the king’s majesty shall have power to nominate 32 persons of his clergy and laity for making of ecclesiastical laws.’24 While little of substance came to pass with the project of ecclesiastical law reform in the short term, the political, constitutional, and doctrinal see-saw moved both swiftly and treacherously throughout the late 1530s and early 1540s. Parliament reaffirmed traditional Catholic doctrine and strengthened existing heresy laws with passage of the ‘Act of Six Articles’ in 1539.25 The Reformation suffered a severe setback and the reform of canon law was placed on hold. In 1544, however, a third Act26 calling for canon law reform was passed with some tone of urgency.27 Yet again, the force of the legislation is directed towards ensuring the conformity of ‘all manner of canons, constitutions, and ordinances provincial and synodal’ with the Royal Supremacy. It would require a fourth Act of Parliament, passed after the death of Henry VIII, to set the wheels of the Commission of 32 finally in motion. The mere substitution of royal for papal supremacy by abolition of such ecclesiastical ordinances as infringed upon the royal prerogative was deemed by itself to be a negative and insufficient ground for a truly Reformed Church of England. Early in the reign of Edward VI in the midst of the great civil disorders in the summer and autumn of 1549, the bishops complained bitterly about the lack of due canonical order in the Church. A bill was introduced in the House of Lords to constitute a committee of sixteen, and this was passed by the Commons with an amendment restoring the number to the original 32 proposed by Convocation back in 1529. Fearing a curtailment of episcopal control by a committee constituted with equal representation of clergy and laity, Thomas Cranmer and ten other bishops opposed the amendment in the upper house but the legislation passed with the additional provision for a three-year time limit to complete the task.28 The time to reform the ecclesiastical laws of England had clearly arrived. Membership of the Royal Commission The appointment of the members of the Royal Commission by Edward VI involved a certain amount of jockeying. Thirty-two names appear on a list 24 27 Henry VIII cap. 15; SR III.348–49. 25 Formally titled ‘An Act for abolishing diversity in opinions,’ 31 Henry VIII cap. 14 SR III.739–41. 26 35 Henry VIII cap. 16; SR III.958–59. 27 See Stanford E. Lehmberg, The later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 229–231. 28 3 & 4 Edward VI cap. 11; SR IV.111–12.



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bearing the same date as the King’s Commission, 11 November 1551.29 Equal representation of clergy and laity was stipulated, and of the clerical members four were to be bishops, and of the lay members four common lawyers.30 In a letter to Heinrich Bullinger in January 1552, Ralph Skinner31 refers to the appointment of the Commission: ‘they have lately assembled a Convocation, and appointed certain persons to purify our church from the filth of antichrist, and to abolish those impious laws of the Roman pontiff, by which the spouse of Christ has for so long a time been wretchedly and shamefully defiled; and to substitute new ones, better and more holy, in their place.’32 It is a noteworthy list of some of the most prominent figures in the Edwardian and Elizabethan intellectual and political establishment: eight Privy councillors, five future Marian martyrs,33 seven bishops including those elevated after the accession of Elizabeth, and two eminent continental divines, namely Peter Martyr Vermigli and John à Lasco. Interestingly, the list includes many of the same names of those involved in the doctrinal reform which culminated in the Forty-Two Articles of Religion (which were later reduced to Thirty-Nine at the Con­ vocation of 1563)34 and in the liturgical revision of the Second Edwardine Book of Common Prayer (1552). Eight members of the Commission were correspondents of Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich.35 The Privy Council provided also for a smaller drafting committee of eight.36 This sub-committee included Cranmer, Thomas Goodrich (Bp of Ely), Richard Cox (the King’s Almoner, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Dean of Lincoln), Peter Martyr Vermigli (Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford), Rowland Taylor (a civilian and member 29 See R.H. Brodie et al, eds., Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward VI (London: HM’s Stationery Office, 1924–1926), 4:114 (list of 11 Nov. 1551) and 4:354 (list of 12 Feb. 1552). For the Royal Proclamation appointing the Commission, see TCR, 167–168. 30 For the full list of names and the three different versions of the list, see TCR, xli-liv. 31 Warden of New College, Oxford, 1551–1553. See Christopher Dent, Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 9. 32 OL I.313–14. 33 Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Rowland Taylor and John Hooper. 34 The Articles of Religion were calendared on 20 October 1552, close to the date Bray ascribes to Harleian MS 426. TCR, lviii. Calendar of State Papers of the reign of Edward VI, Domestic Series, ed. C.S.Knighton (London, 1992), 268, no. 739 (SP 10/15, no. 28). See also Torrance Kirby, ‘The Articles of Religion of the Church of England (1563/71), commonly called the Thirty-Nine Articles,’ in Karl H. Faulenbach, ed., Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirchen. Band II: Die Epoche der klassischen nationalen Bekenntnisbildung 1559–1569 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchenen Verlag, 2008 [in press]). 35 Carrie Euler, Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531–1558 (Zurich: TVZ, 2006), 95. 36 See Edward VI’s Proclamation appointing the commission. TCR, 167–68.

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of Doctors’ Commons), William May (Dean of St Paul’s and Master of Requests), John Lucas (common lawyer and MP), and Thomas Goodrich’s nephew Richard Goodrich, MP. The latter two were the only lay members of the sub-committee. The lack of lay peers on the drafting committee is conspicuous and it has been suggested that this may well have contributed to the ultimate failure of the text of the Reformatio to secure the approval of the temporal Lords when the legislation finally came before Parliament in March 1553.37 Vermigli wrote to Bullinger in March with a certain degree of enthusiasm for the task before him as a member of the committee: For the king’s majesty has ordained, that, as the gospel is received in his kingdom, and the bishop of Rome is driven out, the Church of England shall be no longer ruled by pontifical decrees, and decretals, Sixtine, Clementine, and other popish ordinances of the same kind: for the administration of these laws has for the most part prevailed up to this time in the ecclesiastical court, under the tacit authority of the pope; though many other laws were enacted by which the external polity of the church might be regulated. To the intent, therefore, that so powerful a kingdom should not be deprived of this, as it appears, necessary advantage, the king has appointed two and thirty persons to frame ecclesiastical laws for this realm, namely, 8 bps, 8 divines, 8 civil lawyers, and 8 common lawyers; the majority of whom are equally distinguished by profound erudition and solid piety; and we also, I mean Hooper, à Lasco, and myself, are enroled among them. May God therefore grant that such laws may be enacted by us, as by their godliness and holy justice may banish the Tridentine canons from the churches of Christ! But as I am conscious we have need of the prayers of yourself and your colleagues in furtherance of so great an undertaking, I implore them with all the sincerity and earnestness in my power. For it is not only necessary to entreat God that pious and holy laws may be framed, but that they may obtain the sanction of Parliament, or else they will not possess any force or authority whatsoever.38

The work of drafting the Reformatio appears to have been expeditious. On the evidence of the marginal revisions to Harleian MS 426, it appears, moreover, that the bulk of the labour in drafting the Reformatio legum fell to Cranmer and Vermigli. The hand of Walter Haddon, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge and executor with Matthew Parker of his friend Martin Bucer, is also identifiable in the margins. Haddon and John Cheke, Lady Margaret Professor at Cambridge, are generally credited with editing

37 Gerald Bray, TCR, li-ii. 38 OL II.503–04.



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the highly polished, elegant Latin of the Reformatio. Yet it is clear that Vermigli was Cranmer’s closest collaborator on this as on various other projects of doctrinal, constitutional, and liturgical reform throughout this period. Vermigli had even composed a politically charged sermon preached by Cranmer at St Paul’s at the height of the civil disturbances in the summer of 1549.39 Of all the distinguished continental scholars invited to England during this period, Cranmer came to know and esteem Vermigli best of all.40 Theology of the Reformatio The principles of reformed theology are especially evident in the opening title on basic doctrine and in subsequent titles concerned with matters of liturgy, church order, and discipline.41 In their formulation the doctrinal titles are closely linked to the Forty-Two Articles and affirm the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer (1552).42 At the same time, a substantial portion of the Reformatio is derived from the Corpus iuris canonici, especially as concerns matters of legal procedure, although the latter material is extensively rearranged and redrafted.43 A critical theological influence on the Reformatio, especially as it touches upon the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Prince or civil magistrate, derives from the classical Reformed tradition of political theology represented by Vermigli,44 and also by Martin Bucer, the Strasbourg reformer who, at Cranmer’s invitation, had served as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge until his death in February 1551, just a few months before the appointment of the royal commission. It is more than likely had he lived that Bucer would have been a key

39 For the text of this ‘Sermon concernynge the tyme of rebellion’ with a textual and historical introduction, see Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 121–180. 40 See John Patrick Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s doctrine of man and grace (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 174. 41 Titles 1–7, 19–24, and 33. 42 See Torrance Kirby, ‘The Articles of Religion’. 43 R11–18, 25–32, 34–55. Bray points out that the ‘medieval inheritance accounts for at least 95% of material, and virtually all of the remainder can be ascribed to the work of 15th and 16th-century canonists working in that tradition.’ TCR, lxiv-vi. 44 See Torrance Kirby, ‘The Civil Magistrate: Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Commentary on Romans 13,’ in The Peter Martyr Reader, ed. J.P. Donnelly, Frank James III and Joseph C. McLelland (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1999), 221–237, and ‘‘The Charge of Religion belongeth unto Princes:’ Peter Martyr Vermigli on the Unity of Civil and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction,’ Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003), 131–145.

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contributor to the work of drafting the newly reformed code. Bucer’s treatise De Regno Christi (1551) dedicated to Edward VI and published posthumously, exercised significant influence on the proposals for ecclesiastical discipline and the reform of social mores.45 Some have argued that De Regno Christi provides the underlying theological rationale for the entire project of the Reformatio.46 Moreover, Bucer’s struggle with the magistracy in Strasbourg over questions of ecclesiastical discipline prior to his arrival in England has important implications for the interpretation of the reception of the revised code. The general tenor of the Reformatio is unmistakably Erastian in its emphasis on the right of princes to the cura religionis, the power to supervise and reform doctrine, discipline, and worship. As Bucer claims in De Regno Christi, ‘Just as the kingdoms of the world are subordinated to the kingdom of Christ, so also is the Kingdom of Christ in its own way subordinated to the kingdoms of this world … Pious princes must plant and propagate the Kingdom of Christ also by the power of the sword.’47 This tenet of classically Reformed political theology is expressed in title XXVII of the Reformatio, ‘De officio et iurisdicione omnium iudicum’, article 2 ‘Iurisdictio regis’: The king has and can exercise the most complete jurisdiction, both civil and ecclesiastical, within his kingdoms and dominions as much over archbishops, bishops, clerics and other ministers, as over lay people, since all jurisdiction, both ecclesiastical and secular, is derived from him as from one and the same source.48

Both Vermigli and Bucer saw the lay power as the principal agent of church reform. Both also held the view that ecclesiastical discipline, together with the preaching of the word and the right administration of the sacraments, constitutes one of three essential marks of the true visible church—the notae ecclesiae as they were called.49 It is precisely here—namely at the intersection of Erastian constitutional principles 45 Bucer died on 28 February 1551, just months before the Commission was appointed. De regno Christi Iesu Seruatoris Nostri, libri II: Ad Eduardum VI. Angliae, annis abhinc sex scripti (Basle: J. Oporinum, 1557). 46 See, e.g., Sachs, ‘Cranmer’s Reformatio’, 78–80, 105–116. See also TCR, lxxi-lxxii. 47 See the modern edition by Wilhelm Pauck, Melanchthon and Bucer (London: SCM Press, 1969), 186, 272. 48 Harleian MS 426 fol. 232r. RLE, fol. 95b. TCR, 518–19. The formulation of the title recalls the ‘Act of Supremacy’ of 1534, 26 Henry VIII cap. 1, SR III.492–93. 49 See Robert M. Kingdon, ‘Peter Martyr Vermigli and the Marks of the True Church,’ in E. Forrester Church and Timothy George, eds., Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History: Essays presented to George Huntston Williams on the occasion of his 65th birthday (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 198–214.



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with a developed plan for the supervision of morals and discipline—that difficulties first began to emerge which were ultimately to derail the plan for a comprehensive reform of ecclesiastical law on the principles of Reformed theology. Briefly put, the attempt to reform of the canon law in England comes to revolve around the issue of lay supremacy and whether this supremacy can be reconciled with the scheme of ecclesiastical discipline proposed by the Reformatio. The tension between the ecclesiology of the ‘three marks’ and the ecclesiology of the royal supremacy was about to become the leit motif of later-sixteenth-century controversies within the Church of England and, moreover, a critically significant factor in the subsequent historiographical interpretation of the Edwardian and later the Elizabethan attempts to reform the canon law. In some respects the debate over the Reformatio was a replay in England of Bucer’s earlier struggle to reform ecclesiastical discipline in Strasbourg. In England, as in Strasbourg, the programme of comprehensive reform of ecclesiastical ordinances was perceived as tinged with a subtle but nonetheless deep-seated clericalism. There is a certain element of irony in this given the fact that anti-clericalism was among the chief motivations in the Reformers’ drive to dismantle the late-medieval institutions embodied in the Decretales and the papal supremacy. This was most certainly the case, as we have already seen, in the series of statutes enacted by the Reforma­ tion Parliament in the 1530s. In certain other respects the Reformatio is a relatively conservative document. It retains, for example, the ancient three-fold order of ecclesiastical ministers—bishops, presbyters, and deacons. In this respect it does not imitate the pattern of scripturally-based disciplina which replaces the medieval hierarchy of orders with a four-fold order of pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons. At the same time, the Reformatio seeks to establish a rigorous Bucerian regime of ecclesiastical control of morals at the level of the parishes through the supervision of congregational stewards or churchwardens. While the office of churchwarden was itself traditional and governed by medieval canons, the definition of the wardens’ functions in the Reformatio renders them a virtual eldership, with the proviso that power of coercive jurisdiction was reserved to the bishop.50 In this latter respect, the Reformatio proposes a radical departure from medieval jurisdictional practice.

50 Harleian Ms 426 90r-92r; 100r-102v. See RLE, Title 20 ‘De ecclesia et ministris eius, illorumque officiis’, art. 2, ‘De oeconomis sive gardianis ecclesiarum et sacellorum’ and Title 21 ‘De ecclesiarum gardianis’. TCR, 348–49, 370–71.

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It has been argued by some that the Reformatio represents overall a radical break with the actual practice of the English church in the sixteenth century. Leslie Sachs, for example, advances this interpretation when he depicts the ecclesiastical ordinances of Cranmer’s proposed code as ‘the church that never was.’51 Over against this view Gerald Bray has argued that in fact the Reformatio portrays quite accurately the constitutional reality of the Elizabethan church. It is arguable that both points of view have validity. On the one hand, the document does indeed affirm the continuation of the ancient hierarchical status, jurisdiction, and privileges of archbishops, bishops, deans, canons, and archdeacons, although all are subordinated to the supreme jurisdiction of the Crown. This acceptance of certain trappings of medieval church government—‘relics of the Amorites’ as some of the controversialists referred to them—perhaps lies behind the claim frequently put forward by apologists of the so-called ‘via media’ of Anglicanism that the English Reformation may be compared to a ‘theological cuckoo in the nest.’52 The simile suggests that the ‘egg’ of Protestant doctrinal reform is laid in a ‘Romish’ nest of inherited medieval institutional structures perpetuated by the failure of comprehensive reform of the canon law. Doctrine may have been reformed through the 42 (later 39) Articles of Religion while the ecclesiastical laws and discipline remained stubbornly unregenerate. Gerald Bray is certainly correct in maintaining that even the Reformatio itself does not represent a radical departure from inherited medieval structures of government, and that the structure of church government described in the document corresponds quite closely to actual Edwardian and Elizabethan practice.53 On the other side, however, Sachs is surely accurate in viewing the disciplinary provisions of the Reformatio as bordering on the revolutionary, especially with regard to the supervision of morals, heresy, and the exercise of the power of the keys.54 Following the cue of Martin Bucer, the Reformatio redefines the role of the diaconate along scriptural lines with a view to promoting a radical reform of social welfare and the care of the poor.55 Moreover, the Reformatio proposes a 51 L. Sachs, ‘Cranmer’s Reformatio,’ chapter 4, 136–177. 52 Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Press, 2000), 29. See Torrance Kirby, ‘‘Relics of the Amorites’ or adi­ aphora? The authority of Peter Martyr Vermigli in the Elizabethan Vestiarian Controversy of the 1560s,’ Reformation & Renaissance Review 6.3 (2004), 313–326. 53 TCR, cxv. 54 Sachs, ‘Cranmer’s Reformatio’, 121–123. 55 TCR, 348–49. See also the Ordinal of 1550, ‘The Fourme and Maner of Orderinge of Deacons’, where the Bishop inquires of the candidate to be ordained: ‘It perteyneth to the



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considerable expansion of the moral supervision of the laity by the clergy and reasserts medieval practices in the exercise of the power of excommunication based upon various papal decretals.56 In particular the Reformatio enjoins strict observance of social exclusion as a part of the penalty of excommunication, and envisages absolution from this penalty as a liturgical event involving the participation of the entire parish.57 In this and in other respects—e.g. the aggressive provisions concerning heresy58—the Reformatio tends to promote a measure of clericalism reminiscent more of medieval ordinances than of the actual tolerant practices which emerged in the reign of Edward VI and were further entrenched under Elizabeth. Under Protector Somerset the heresy laws of Henry VIII were repealed, and during the reign of Elizabeth the handful of heretics prosecuted were arraigned according to provisions of the common law. External conformity of behaviour was of much greater concern to the state than religious opinions per se. Thus the proposed ordinances of the Reformatio were simultaneously at variance and in agreement with the actual practice of the sixteenthcentury Church of England. In its variance with existing church order, the Reformatio embodies both a transformative Bucerian ideal of discipline and, at the same time, asserts a degree of clericalism at odds with the lay supremacy, and therefore ironically harking back to the medieval Gelasian division of spiritual and temporal powers. This implicit challenge to lay authority is especially ironic in the case of the chief author of the code, Thomas Cranmer, whose embrace of the Royal Supremacy has been not unfairly described as verging on idolatry.59 The perceived threat to the Erastian presuppositions of the constitution probably contributed as much as anything else to the failure of the proposal in the last months of Edward’s reign. Prior to the Reformation Parliament of the 1530s and the series of statutes which promulgated the Royal Supremacy, it was customary to think of canon law as distinguished from civil or secular law, office of a Deacon … to searche for the sicke, poore, and impotente people of the parishe, and to intimate theyr estates, names, and places where thei dwel to the Curate, that by his exhortacion they maye bee relieved by the parishe or other convenient almose [alms]: wil you do this gladly and wyllingly?’ On Bucer’s view of the diaconate, see W.P. Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the theology of Martin Bucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 190–91. 56 RLE 80a-84b. Title 32, ‘De Excommunicatione’. See TCR, 462–475. 57 Harleian MS 426 83r–89r. RLE 84b-90a. Title 33 ‘Formula reconciliationis excommunicatorum’. TCR, 476–491. 58 Harleian MS 426 6r–21r. RLE 4b-14a. Title 2 ‘De haeresibus’ and Title 3 ‘De iudiciis contra haereses’. 59 J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 384–423.

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with which there had always been a certain amount of tension. There were, after all, two headships—one spiritual and one temporal—although the latter was understood, according to Gelasian principles, to be subordinate to the former. The Reformatio thus represented to its opponents in the establishment—to Northumberland in 1553 and to the Queen herself in 1571—a model of the relation between church and commonwealth which became characteristic of Concordat countries (i.e. those with official treaties with the Roman Church). On this model, the canon law functions as a distinct legal entity whose purposes are assumed to be different from those of the ‘secular’ sovereign, thus tending to ‘hypostasize’ the church in relation to the commonwealth. In deciding whether or not to embrace a codified body of ecclesiastical ordinances, the common lawyers and the civilians both bridled at the implied independence of the church from the oversight of both Parliament and the royal courts. John Foxe maintained in his preface to the 1571 edition of the Reformatio that the reformed ecclesiastical ordinances would certainly have been ratified ‘if only the king had lived a little longer’, and while this was certainly a matter for regret, all could ‘now be put right in the happier times of our most serene Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by the public authority of this present Parliament.’60 Yet once again, as in 1553, the attempt to gain parliamentary sanction for the revised canons failed, although it is not altogether clear whether this event was owing to active opposition on the part of the Privy Council.61 That Foxe had Puritan sympathies is evidenced by his criticism of the orthodoxy of the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer in his Preface.62 In taking exception to uniformity of worship it appears that he overplayed his hand. By invoking the authority of scripture against the liturgical keystone of the Elizabethan Settlement, he lifts the curtain as it were, and reveals the fissure which was to manifest itself shortly in the publication of An Admonition to the Parliament.63 The 60 See Foxe, ‘Ad doctem et candidem lectorem Præfatio,’ RLE, sig. Bj; repr. TCR, 165. 61 See TCR, lxxvi–xcix. 62 ‘There is at least one matter which I cannot overlook or leave to the learned judgements of others, which is that this law forbids anything at all to be done [in worship] apart from those things which are prescribed in the rubrics of that book, written in our common language, which has been declared to be the proper and perfect guide to all divine worship, etc. But we recognize only the word of God to be the perfect guide to all divine worship, whereas it appears that there are some things in that book which appear not to square exactly with the need of ecclesiastical reformation, and which probably ought rather to be changed.’ RLE, sig. Bj; repr. TCR, 165. 63 [Thomas Wilcox and John Field], An Admonition to the Parliament ([Hemel Hempstead?: J. Stroud?], 1572).



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consequence of this second parliamentary failure was that the only attempt at a comprehensive reformation of the ecclesiastical laws of England explicitly grounded on Reformed doctrine was never promulgated. Royal assent was eventually given by King James I to a collection of Canons which were to remain the basic law of the Church of England until 1969, but even these failed to achieve the full canonical status accorded by parliamentary statute.64 Far from being a systematic reform of ecclesiastical ordinances and comparatively limited in content, the Canons of 1603 essentially comprised a hodge-podge consisting of various Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan statutes, assorted Royal Injunctions and Proclamations, canons of the Convocation, and Archbishop Matthew Parker’s Advertisements.65 Notwithstanding the abolition of papal jurisdiction in the series of statutes enacted by the Reformation Parliament between 1533 and 1536,66 and despite Henry VIII’s prohibition of the study of canon law in the universities, it is owing principally to the failure of the Reformatio legum and the falling short of all subsequent legislation to realize its central goal of a comprehensive reform of ecclesiastical ordinances, that the medieval procedural apparatus of the Church of England would remain in place throughout the sixteenth century (and indeed up to late in the twentieth), subject of course to the replacement of supreme papal jurisdiction by the Crown.

64 Constitutions and canons ecclesiasticall: treated vpon by the Bishop of London, presi­ dent of the conuocation for the prouince of Canterbury, and the rest of the bishops and clergie of the sayd prouince: and agreed vpon with the Kings Maiesties licence in their synode begun at London anno Dom. 1603 (London: Robert Barker, 1604). 65 Authorized by the Convocation of Canterbury in 1603, by James I in 1604, and by the Convocation of York in 1606, of these 141 canons 97 were adapted from Elizabethan laws, 12 from Edward’s Injunctions of 1547, 25 from Elizabeth’s Injunctions of 1559, 12 from Matthew Parker’s Advertisements of 1564, 25 from canons of 1571, and 12 canons of 1597. The legal force of the Canons of 1603 derives from Submission of Clergy Act of 1534 (25 Henry VIII cap. 19; SR III.460–61). See Anglican canons, 1529–1947, ed. Bray, 258–453. See Richard Helmholz, ‘The Canons of 1603: The Contemporary Understanding,’ English canon law: essays in honour of Bishop Eric Kemp, edited by Norman Doe, Mark Hill, and Robert Ombres (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 23–35. 66 The parliamentary sessions of 1533–34 made decisive moves against the papacy with the formal enactment of the Royal Supremacy. In strictly constitutional terms, a series of statutes beginning with the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1533), followed by the Act of Supremacy (1534), and culminating with an Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome (1536) accomplish the revolution which established Henry VIII’s headship of the Church. The preamble of the Act of Supremacy famously declares that England is an ‘empire,’ governed by one Supreme Head, namely the king, and that under his rule the Church was wholly self-sufficient ‘without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons.’ 24 Henry VIII, c. 12; 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; 28 Henry VIII, c. 10.

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The failure of these two attempts to legislate the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum—under Edward in 1553 and under Elizabeth in 1571— poses important critical questions which, to some extent, have governed the historiographical treatment of the English Reformation ever since. Given the failure of the Reformatio, was the Church of England truly reformed? Or was the course of the Reformation in England frustrated by the lack of a comprehensive, codified revision of ecclesiastical ordinances consciously and explicitly framed according to Reformed theological principles? The doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer were framed by Cranmer with significant contributions by both Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli, whose classically Reformed credentials were unimpeachable. Was the failure to achieve Cranmer’s third great project of reform, namely that of ecclesiastical discipline, such that the Church of England could not lay reasonable claim to be truly reformed? From 1571 onward, the lines were drawn for an extended struggle over this question. In the 1570s, following the failure of the Reformatio, Walter Travers and Thomas Cartwright took up the cause of ‘further Reformation’ announced by An Admonition to the Parliament.67 In 1574 Travers expounded the case for an ecclesiastical discipline on the explicit ground that this would bring the ‘reformation’ of the Church of England to completion. Without a truly reformed discipline the Church of England was no ‘true visible church’, indeed she could not claim to be reformed at all. This, of course, was an ecclesiological position grounded in the Bucerian claim concerning the notae ecclesiae. If discipline were one of the three essential ‘marks’ of the true visible church, then the failure of the Reformatio was tantamount to failure of Reformation itself. In his exchanges with Archbishop Whitgift between 1572 and 1577 in the course of the Admonition Controversy, Thomas Cartwright elaborated this ecclesiology further.68 The main issue of the Admonition Controversy boils down to the basic question: What in fact is it to be reformed? Elizabeth’s bench of bishops, many of whom had been exiles in Zurich during the reign of Queen Mary, 67 Walter Travers, A briefe and plaine declaration, concerning the desires of all those faithfull ministers, that haue and do seeke for the discipline and reformation of the Church of Englande: which may serue for a iust apologie, against the false accusations and slaunders of their aduersaries (London: Robert Waldegraue, 1584). 68 Thomas Cartwright, A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor VVhitgifte: Agaynste the admonition to the Parliament ([Hemel Hempstead?]: [John Stroud?], 1573). The second replie of Thomas Cartwright: agaynst Maister Doctor Whitgiftes second answer, touching the Churche discipline ([Heidelberg]: [Michael Schirat], 1575).



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closed ranks in the 1570s in defence of the ecclesiological precept that the reformed credentials of the Elizabethan church were in no way compromised by the failure of the Reformatio or the lack of a formally constituted disciplina. In the final analysis, their defence of the ecclesiastical constitution came down to an Erastian preference for a lay supremacy and the incorporation of the governance of the Church under the purview of the royal prerogative rather than for a highly clericalised code of discipline. In his defence of the royal headship of the church in the 1570s against the attacks of the disciplinarian puritans Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, John Whitgift, then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, relied heavily on the political writings of Vermigli, Bullinger, Zwingli, Rudolph Gwalther and Wolfgang Musculus—all representatives of the so-called ‘other Reformed tradition’.69 Whitgift’s robust ‘Erastian’ defence of the conception of society as a unified ‘corpus christianum’ where civil and religious authority were understood to be coextensive, takes its name from another Zurich-trained theologian Thomas Lüber, alias ‘Erastus’ of Heidelberg.70 The controversy between Whitgift and promoters of the Genevan model of reform in England was in many respects a replay of the dispute on the continent between Erastus and Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor, and thus between the ecclesiological paradigms represented by Zurich and Geneva.71 At the end of the sixteenth century Richard Hooker’s defence of the ecclesiology of the Elizabethan Settlement continued Whitgift’s elaboration of this same Zurich political theology.72 What then is the significance for historiography of the English Reformation of this long narrative of the attempt to codify the ecclesiastical ordinances in the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum? Interpreters have tended in various directions. Some have taken up the view first put 69 Works of John Whitgift, DD, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. John Ayre for the Parker Society, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851), 3:295–325. J. Wayne Baker, Heinrich Bullinger and the covenant: the other reformed tradition (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980). 70 J. Wayne Baker, ‘Erastianism,’ in Hans Hillerbrand, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), vol. 2, 59–61. Baker argues that Zurich provides Erastus with his model for the relation of civil and ecclesiastical authority. Erastus Evans, Erastianism: the Hulsean prize essay, 1931, in the University of Cambridge (London: The Epworth Press, 1933), 11–45. 71 Ruth Wesel-Roth, Thomas Erastus: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der reformierten Kirche und zur Lehre von der Staatssouveränität (Lahr/Baden: M. Schauenburg, 1954). 72 See Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Theology of Law and Authority, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press for Emory University, 1991), 151–153. See also Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), chapter 4.

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forward by the Admonition to the Parliament and its disciplinarian proponents, viz. that England’s failure to achieve a comprehensive revision of ecclesiastical ordinances was to fall short of true Reformation.73 Some, notably supporters of the via media or ‘cuckoo’ hermeneutic of the English Reformation, have celebrated this failure. By this means, it has been argued, England managed to avoid the extremes of both Rome and Geneva. William Haugaard, for example, portrays the Church of England in the late sixteenth century as the ‘crucible for an emerging Anglicanism.’74 In this account Haugaard refers to ‘a recognition among some contemporaries that the English church represented a kind of Protestant tertium quid among established European churches, whose character suggested the possibility of rapprochement with Roman Catholic as well as fellow Protestant churches.’75 Thus pursuit of an Anglican middle way, perhaps one of the most influential of all motifs in English Reformation historiography, has been understood ipso facto as a rejection of the doctrinal norms of classical Reformed orthodoxy. Other scholars have taken to questioning this received orthodoxy of historiographical opinion, and have put forward the counter argument that lack of a formal disciplina need not be taken as a failure to achieve the orthodox requirements of a true visible church. It has been important in making the revisionist case to recognize that Geneva need not be taken as the sole standard of measurement on this question of ‘what it is to be Reformed’, either in the sixteenth century or in our own contemporary historiographical approaches to the English Reformation(s). Rather, the other Reformed tradition exemplified by Zurich provides a most useful paradigm or touchstone for interpreting the reluctance of both the Edwardian and Elizabethan establishments to embrace a systematic reform of ecclesiastical discipline. The civic leadership of Zurich were viewed by Zwingli, Bullinger and their adherents as the rightful agents of ecclesiastical reform. The Zurich model reposed vast amounts of trust in the judgement of Christian magistrates to gov­ ern  the church, and this led Bullinger ‘[both] to spiritualize the church and [also] to identify the visible church with the outward structure of the 73 See, e.g., Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterian and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London and Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988). 74 See William P. Haugaard, ‘Introduction and Commentary,’ in W. Speed Hill, gen. ed., The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993) [FLE] 6(1): 2. See also Lee Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer,’ Anglican Theological Review 84.4 (2002), 943–960. 75 FLE 6(1): 6–7.



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community.’76 Such an unification of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction is as much applicable to the Edwardian and Elizabethan version of reform as it is to Zurich. This ‘third way’ of interpreting the narrative of the failure of the Reformatio by way of both affirmation of lay supremacy and suspicion of a revived disciplinarian clericalism has, I think, much to recommend it.77

76 Robert C. Walton, Zwingli’s theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 226. 77 See Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection, 1–24.

CHAPTER FOUR

PUBLIC PREACHING: PAUL’S CROSS AND THE CULTURE OF PERSUASION On the 11th of July 1533, Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII in response to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s annulment of the King’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon, and his ensuing coronation of Anne Boleyn.1 Clement’s action and the official response by the King and Privy Council constitute a striking moment of high-stakes political drama laden with significance for the future definition and formation of religious identities in early-modern England. Papal exercise of spiritual jurisdiction in such circumstances presupposed the concept of the so-called ‘plenitude of power’ (plenitudo potestatis), whereby spiritual and temporal authority were bound together in hierarchical relation. By means of a ritualized, sacramental act Clement (representing the old ‘horizon’ of meaning) succeeded in cutting the thread of hierarchy which linked Henry—and through him, his entire realm—to the sacramentally inter-connected framework that was Christendom. Correspondingly, by virtue of his adamant defiance of papal jurisdiction, Henry (representing an emerging new ‘horizon’) confirmed this momentous break of the bond of union between the temporal and spiritual orders. The excommunication of Henry may be viewed symbolically as a decisive step in the transition to modernity; indeed it is arguably an archetypical instance of the dissolution of the received sense of the cosmos as a coherent, unified, and continuous order of spiritual/eternal and external/temporal realms and powers—a process Max Weber defined as the ‘disenchantment of the world.’2 Through their joint action, perhaps inadvertently in both cases, the two rulers successfully shattered the long-assumed moral framework 1 The papal breve declared Henry’s divorce of Katherine and his marriage with Anne Boleyn invalid, and pronounced his excommunication from the Church. On the same day Clement also excommunicated Thomas Cranmer, Edward Lee (Archbishop of York), Stephen Gardiner (Bishop of Winchester), and John Longland (Bishop of Lincoln). Although issued on 11 July, it did not come into force until October. 2 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation,’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 139, 155. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).



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of hierarchical order—the ontological horizon of Christendom, if you will—within which Henry and his subjects had, until then, lived out their religious lives. In effect, through a single, simple sacramental act and through a determined assertion of political will to ignore that act, Clement and Henry together set in motion a sequence of events which would result in the eventual annulment of ‘the sacramental’ itself as the governing hermeneutical framework of religious self-understanding. In their dispute over the locus of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Reformation— and with it modernity—was both figuratively and effectively launched in England. There is ongoing debate among Reformation historians whether the enactment of the royal supremacy was of merely external political significance, an adjustment of religious organization at the level of constitutional order—‘kings and queens messing about’ as Christopher Haigh once put it—or, alternatively, was intrinsically theological and broadly metaphysical in scope, and therefore represented a fundamental revision of religious identity.3 Was Henry’s claim to the title of ecclesiastical headship merely a ‘naked act of power with no visible moral basis’?4 In the case of Clement Armstrong, an avant-garde Protestant in the circle of Thomas Cromwell, Ethan Shagan has shown that evangelicals could be strongly supportive of the new political theology.5 At the same time, the phenomenon commonly described as ‘Henrician Catholicism’ refers to a sacramental religiosity where much remained the same in spite of the transfer of supreme ecclesiastical power from the Bishop of Rome to the King.6 3 Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds., The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); P. Marshall, The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640 (London: Arnold, 1997); Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘The Myth of the English Reformation,’ Journal of British Studies 30 (1991), 1–19; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1500–1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 11, 377–593. 4 See Henry Chadwick, ‘Royal ecclesiastical supremacy,’ in Brendan Bradshaw and Eamon Duffy, eds., Humanism, Reform and the Reformation: The Career of Bishop John Fisher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 187. C. Haigh, ‘A Protestant Nation, not a Nation of Protestants,’ Catholic Herald 25 (1998), 7. On the question of the cause of decline in popular late-medieval Catholicism, Haigh observes that ‘Protestant preaching cannot be the answer … there was not enough of it about.’ 5 Ethan Shagan, ‘Clement Armstrong and the godly commonwealth: radical religion in early Tudor England,’ The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 61. Shagan points out that ‘in England of the early 1530s … the hopes of a small evangelical minority lay in the policies of a mercurial king who had begun making dark threats against the pope and the clergy.’ See 78. 6 Lucy E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), ch. 2 ‘The Henrician Vision’ and ch. 3 ‘The Henrician Legacy’; Bernard M.G. Reardon, Religious thought in the Reformation (London: Longman, 1995), ch. 10.

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Although roundly rejected by such as Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, this deeply conservative brand of reform was the contemporary view promoted by survivors like Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner.7 Although the monasteries were dissolved, the Mass remained, as did the splendour of ritual; clerical celibacy was reaffirmed and private masses, auricular confession, and much else besides conveyed a sense of continuity with late-medieval religious identity, especially after the enactment in 1539 of the Statute of the Six Articles8 and the fall of Thomas Cromwell in 1540.9 Yet at root the question would appear to have much to do with ‘first principles’ of religious identity, that is to say, with certain fundamental hermeneutical assumptions and what Charles Taylor has identified as ‘moral ontology.’ By their respective actions, Henry and Clement initiated the conditions for a radical transformation of English religious identity which in fact proved irreversible. Most significant from the standpoint of the present inquiry, this dispute over jurisdiction was the occasion for the explosive growth of a virtually unprecedented ‘culture of persuasion’10 diversely manifest in both print (as, e.g., in sermons, pamphlets and tracts, printed proclamations, parliamentary statutes) as well as in various other publicly ‘staged’ productions (the preaching of sermons, performance of plays, public trials and executions, and formal disputations) all of which effectively combined in the middle years of the sixteenth century to fill an increasingly conspicuous void left by the progressive dismantling of the traditional, late-medieval ‘sacramental culture.’11 The flourishing of a new culture of persuasion contributed in turn to the early emergence in England of what later came to be called the ‘public sphere.’

7 Fisher and More both suffered execution rather than tolerate the Royal Supremacy, while Gardiner and Bonner both gave the institution their full support. Gardiner published a famous defence of the Supremacy in 1535, defended the institution repeatedly in sermons at Paul’s Cross (e.g. a sermon on 29 June 1548), and republished the treatise De vera obediencia: an oration made in Latine by the ryghte reuerend father in God Stephan B. of VVinchestre, nowe lord Chau[n]cellour of england, with the pteface [sic] of Edmunde Boner … touchinge true obedience (London: John Day, 1553). 8 31 Henry VIII, c. 14 (1539), Statutes of the Realm, III, 739–42. 9 In this connection, Christopher Haigh accurately identifies three distinct stages of Reformation, or rather three Reformations: the mid to late 1530s, the reign of Edward VI, and the opening years of the reign of Elizabeth. C. Haigh, English reformations: religion, politics, and society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 10 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 11 See Mary Polito, Governmental arts in early Tudor England (Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 42. On scaffold performances, see Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 229 ff.



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Charles Taylor remarks at the outset of Sources of the Self that ‘moral sources of emerging modern identity are far richer than the impoverished language of modernity’s most zealous defenders.’12 His point is very plain: a critical element of this impoverishment of language is a neglect of the ontological, theological, and metaphysical categories which, in Taylor’s view, constitute the groundwork or foundation for these sources. There­ fore, following Taylor’s lead in our attempt to recover some of these rich sources of early-modernity in the context of Tudor struggles over religious identities, we propose first to trace some steps whereby disputation concerning certain key hermeneutical and theological assumptions gave rise to a significant alteration in the sense of these identities, and secondly to explore how transformed religious identities contributed in turn to generating a rudimentary, but nonetheless recognizable early-modern instance of a public sphere of discourse.13 It must be recalled that in this Tudor period, religious discourse was the primary, most universal discourse ‘through which [the public] interpreted its own existence.’14 Our aim, then, is to attempt to hold together within a single view questions related to the reconstruction of early-modern ‘religious identity,’ the related conspicuous expansion of a ‘culture of persuasion,’ and the resulting emergence from this of a recognizably ‘public’ arena of discourse. In order to further this intent, the concrete historical focus of our exploration of these intersecting themes will be the open-air pulpit in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral known as ‘Paul’s Cross’ for reasons which I hope will become clear as our inquiry proceeds. For the present, may it suffice to observe that one of Thomas Cromwell’s first acts following Henry’s excommunication was to give the order that none should be permitted to preach at Paul’s Cross without declaring the authority of the Bishop of Rome (as he was henceforth to be named) was no greater in England than that of any other foreign bishop.15 12 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 3. 13 In another context Peter Lake and Michael Questier note that ‘…in Elizabethan England the creation of something like a rudimentary public sphere was not a product of a Puritan opposition to the establishment or state but rather a product of the regime’s own efforts to perpetuate and protect itself from a popish threat variously conceived.’ See their joint article ‘Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,’ The Journal of Modern History 72 (2000), 625. 14 Debora K. Shuger, Habits of thought in the English Renaissance: religion, politics, and the dominant culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 9. 15 See Richard Rex, ‘The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation,’ The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff. ‘The change in nomenclature from ‘pope’ to ‘bishop of Rome’ was a decision taken at the highest level. Throughout 1533 official documents had continued to talk of the ‘pope’… The legislation of 1534 systematically avoids the title ‘pope’.’

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The open-air pulpit in the precincts of St. Paul’s Cathedral known as ‘Paul’s Cross’ can be reckoned among the most influential of all public venues in early-modern England. In a world where sermons generally counted among 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 more of a stage than a preaching station. It was an arena of vital consequence where ‘the conscience of church and nation found public utterance,’ particularly in moments of crisis.16 Very large crowds, sometimes numbering in thousands, gathered here to listen to the weekly two-hour sermons. On one occasion after delivering a sermon at Paul’s Cross not long after the accession of Elizabeth, John Jewel wrote in a letter to his mentor Peter Martyr Vermigli in Zurich that as many as 6,000 people stayed afterwards to sing metrical psalms.17 Going back to the thirteenth century St. Paul’s churchyard had been a bustling public space, a privileged venue for the announcement of royal proclamations and papal bulls to citizens of the capital. At Paul’s Cross spokesmen authorized by both Crown and Church expounded government policy and denounced heresy and rebellion. Yet, unlike the royal Abbey of Westminster, St Paul’s was always perceived as belonging more to subjects than to princes, and this peculiar status was to acquire increased significance over time. From the earliest records it is clear that 16 Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 4, 18. For an account of the architecture of the precincts of St. Paul’s Cathedral see P.W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical Society, 1990). 17 Dated 5 March 1560. 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, ed. H. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1842), 71. ‘You may now sometimes see at Paul’s cross, after the service, six thousand persons, old and young, of both sexes, all singing together and praising God. This sadly annoys the Mass priests, and the devil. For they perceive that by these means the sacred discourses sink more deeply into the minds of men, and that their kingdom is weakened and shaken at almost every note.’ Henry Machyn confirms the great popularity of sermons of Paul’s Cross in several entries to his Diary. See Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Printed for the Camden Society by J.B. Nichols and Son, 1848), the entry for 3 March 1560: ‘The sam day dyd pryche at Powlles crosse the nuwe byshope of London master Gryndall, in ys rochet and chyminer; and after sermon done the pepull dyd syng; and ther was my lord mayre and the althermen, and ther was grett audyence.’ See also Machyn’s entries for 3 and 16 April and 23 June 1557, 10 and 17 September 1559, 26 November 1559, and 28 February and 15 June 1561.



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the cathedral churchyard was one of the favoured settings for popular protest, a place where public grievances could be aired. For centuries this was the meeting place of London’s folk-moot; royal guarantee of the liberties of the City was proclaimed here in the reign of Henry III; Paul’s Cross was also a rallying point for adherents of Simon de Montfort’s rebellion.18 In the sixteenth century this place was the acknowledged epicentre of a series of revolutionary events where matters of religious identity were concerned. In his magisterial study of the Paul’s Cross sermons, Millar MacLure observed that ‘The Paul’s Cross pulpit was nothing less than the popular voice of the Church of England during the most turbulent and creative period of her history,’19 although what is meant by a ‘popular voice’ here is ambivalent given the degree of government control. At times, especially during sessions of Parliament, the auditory must have seemed a microcosm of the whole realm, ‘all England in a little room,’ and indeed an earlyseventeenth-century painting shows us each member of the audience in his place, properly accoutred, ‘groundlings and notables, pit and galleries, and in the midst, the pulpit as stage.’20 Paul’s Cross frequently served as the public face of government when Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer orchestrated propaganda for the Henrician reformation in the 1530s in the aftermath of Clement VII’s issuing his bull of excommunication. Preaching campaigns at Paul’s Cross bolstered Matthew Parker’s Advertisements of religious uniformity in the mid-1560s as well as the attempts by John Whitgift and Richard Bancroft to stem the rising tide of Disciplinarian Puritanism during the Admonition controversy and later. It was popularly claimed that ‘all the English Reformation was accomplished from the Cross,’ very much under the watchful eye of senior bishops and the tight control of the Privy Council.21 These conditions, of course, by no means meet the requirements of a ‘public sphere’ by a strictly Habermasian measure.22 Yet, between 1534 and the end of the sixteenth century, this pulpit remained continuously at the centre of events which transformed 18 J.R. Maddicot, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 19 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 167. 20 MacLure, Paul’s Cross Sermons, 4. 21 E. Beresford Chancellor, St. Paul’s Cathedral (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1925). Perhaps a more accurate formulation would employ the plural: ‘all the English Reformations were accomplished from Paul’s Cross..’ See C. Haigh, English Reformations. 22 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). See also N. Crossley and J.M. Roberts, eds., After Habermas: new perspectives on the public sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

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England’s religious identities, and through this transformation contributed substantially to the emergence of a public arena of discourse animated above all by a ‘culture of persuasion.’ Of prime significance is the fact that the transition from a late-medieval to an early-modern religious identity was achieved to a very large extent through persuasion—arguments, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opinion, and moral advice. At the end of the reign of Elizabeth, religious identity could no longer be assumed as simply ‘given’ within the accepted order of the world. Structures which had previously connected a hierarchically ordered cosmos to a parallel, interconnected religious understanding in late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’ had given way, even among adherents of Rome, to a ‘culture of persuasion.’ One has only to peruse MacLure’s Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642 to obtain some impression of this transformation.23 At one time or another, all of the significant players among the ecclesiastical and university establishments put in an appearance on stage—John Fisher, Cuthbert Tunstall, and Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley, John Jewel, John Whitgift, Richard Hooker, and Richard Bancroft are just a few of the prominent preachers who ‘made their exits and their entrances’ in the tortuous course of the English Reformations. Yet, the full significance of their appearances is not to be interpreted solely with regard to their official standing in these traditional institutions—Church, Parliament, or University. Their contribution to a nascent public sphere is to be interpreted rather through the arena of their discourse—their relation to the audiences, and their reliance upon the devices of rhetoric and argument to shape religious identity. The dynamic of stage and audience at Paul’s Cross promoted an emerging sense of religious identity shaped by the instruments of exegesis, argumentation, and exhortation. It is through such a dynamic that the sense of an emerging ‘public’ open to persuasion begins to take hold and to redefine religious identity. Paul’s Cross is arguably the single most important vehicle of public persuasion to be employed by government from the initiation of the Henrician Reformation down to the final years of the reign of Elizabeth. On this claim rests a further assertion that the formation of England’s religious identities in this period comes to depend to a high degree on the words uttered here. The emergence at Paul’s Cross of an increasingly sophisticated

23 Revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6. (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989).



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‘culture of persuasion’ moving concurrently with public policy was intrinsic not only to the formation of a new Protestant religious identity, but also to the articulation of a Counter-Reformation Catholic identity. In part this was owing to the intimate proximity of pulpit and press. The names of dozens of printers and booksellers are identified on colophons in the period 1530 to 1600 as ‘dwelling in Paules churchyarde,’ and by rough estimate they are likely to be in the majority. Virtually all booksellers not in Paul’s churchyard are located nearby within the sound of Bow bells. It is certainly no mere happenstance that a large part of the book trade in sixteenth-century London was conducted within hailing distance of Paul’s Cross.24 The ‘culture of persuasion’ which issued from the pulpit continued on its course in print. Yet it would be advisable not to exaggerate the role of print culture with respect to the pulpit. Andrew Pettegree has cautioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass movement in an age before mass literacy must be careful to ‘relocate the role of the book, as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion,’ and especially with respect to public preaching. ‘Scripturally-based preaching is restored to its central place as the ‘bedrock’ around which the churches harnessed other communication media.’25 Nowhere is this more accurately applied than in the case of Paul’s Cross. Yet curiously the sermon remains a much neglected genre in the study of this period.26 To begin our brief survey of the role played by Paul’s Cross in the formation of Tudor religious identities, taking the formal break with Rome as our point of departure, on 15 January 1534 the traditional prayer for the pope was omitted at the Paul’s Cross sermon following a memorandum issued by Thomas Cromwell to John Stokesley, Bishop of London, on the previous day.27 As part of Cromwell’s concerted campaign of propaganda in the months following in support of legislation moving through Parliament to confirm Henry’s headship of the Church, ‘every Sunday preached at Paul’s Cross a bishop who declared the Pope not to be head of 24 See Peter W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, London (The Bibliographical Society, Occasional paper no. 5, 1990) which includes modern diagrams of Paul’s Cross Churchyard in 1545, 1600, 1640, 1665 & 1675 (75–79), and a detailed modern plan of the whole precinct in 1600 (facing p. 3). 25 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39. 26 Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 27 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1514, eds. J.S. Brewer, James Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1862–1932), 7.48 (2).

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the church.’28 Many sermons of the mid-1530s dwell on the theme of ‘how every king hath the highe power under God, and oughte to be the supreme head over all spirituall prelates.’29 Yet somehow in August 1536, a royal chaplain managed to slip underneath Cromwell’s radar to preach a sermon questioning the King’s supremacy. In the opinion of William Marshall, acting as the Lord Chancellor’s observer, the Bishop of London had permitted ‘a rabblement of seditious preachers’ at Paul’s Cross.30 Edward Lee, Archbishop of York, on the other hand, ‘did right well touching the supremacy, as touching the condemnation of the rebels [of the Pilgrimage of Grace].’ 31 On 12 May 1538 Friar John Forest refused to do public penance for denying the Royal Supremacy before the assembled company surrounding the pulpit, perhaps signalling some alteration in public mood.32 1540 witnessed sermons both for and against Lutheran doctrine delivered respectively by Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner.33 This is significant from the standpoint of Christopher Haigh’s observations concerning England’s multiple Reformations.34 1540 marks the transition from the evangelical phase of the 1530s to the more conservative final years Henry’s reign. The key point is not so much about a process of ‘confessionalizing’ and its undeniably murky development so far as England is concerned, as it is about the broad commitment by proponents of widely diverse confessional positions to the practices of a common ‘culture of persuasion.’ 8 July 1543 saw the recantations at Paul’s Cross of avant-garde evangelicals Thomas Becon, Robert Wisdom, and Robert Singleton. On 6 July 1544 the playwright John Heywood was required to recant his adherence to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.35 The acknowledgment of the royal supremacy and the affirmation of Lutheran doctrine continued to be at 28 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: Adam and Company, 1873), V. 68. Regard­ ing sermons in general as the single most important vehicle for the advancement of royal policy, see G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: the Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 231. 29 Sir Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. W.D. Hamilton, from a transcript made early in the seventeenth century for the third Earl of Southampton (Westminster: Camden Society, 1875–77), vol. 1, 34–35, with reference to a sermon at Paul’s Cross by Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham. 30 Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 11, 325. 31 Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 12(2), 258. 32 Wriothesley, vol. 1, 78–79. 33 Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. Nicholas Pocock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865), vol. 1, 475. 34 See note 9 above. 35 R.C. Johnson, John Heywood (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), 11–35.



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odds for the remainder of Henry’s reign. It is interesting to note in passing that the well-established medieval practice of public penance and recantations at Paul’s Cross continued throughout the Reformation period and well into the seventeenth century until the destruction of the pulpit in 1643. MacLure’s Register notes frequent and regular occurrence of penitents ‘bearing faggots’ and recanting ‘damnable errors and heresies’ throughout the reigns of Henry VIII and all three of his progeny.36 In this penitential drama conducted at Paul’s Cross there is an interesting juxtaposition of the concerns of the individual soul with those of higher, political significance, an intersection of what Calvin referred to as the inward forum of the conscience (forum conscientiæ) and the outward forum of the public arena (forum externum et politicum).37 It would seem that the more sharply the ‘self’ is delineated, the more clearly a recognizably ‘public’ forum comes into play. Both self and public sphere emerge with sharper definition as the sacramental hierarchy with its intricate, graduated disposition of reality recedes from its place as the dominant hermeneutic. On 26 September 1546 numerous heretical books and pamphlets were burned at the Cross during the sermon, including Tyndale’s English New Testament and Coverdale’s Bible.38 On 16 January 1547, less than two weeks before the death of Henry VIII, John Feckenham, almoner to Edmund Bonner, deplored the advance of Lutheran heresy among the younger generation.39 Feckenham’s apprehension was to prove prescient. Shortly after the accession of Edward VI, William Barlow denounced the veneration of images and smashed two icons while standing in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross, himself an instance of the new power of persuasion since he had earlier written a tract attacking the abuses of the Lutheran heretics.40 On 18 January 1548 Hugh Latimer preached his celebrated ‘Sermon of the Ploughers,’ certainly one of the most famous sermons preached in the 36 Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1643, revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989). 37 Calvin, Institutio christianae religionis (1559), III.10.1 and ff. 38 Wriothesley, vol. 1, 175. See Edmund Bonner’s Certificatorium factum dominis de privato consilio regio super concrematione quorundam librorum prohibitorum, Guildhall MS 9531/12, folio 91 v°; repr. Actes and Monuments (London: Adam and Company, 1873), appendix to vol. V, no. xviii. 39 Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 21 (2), 710 40 William Barlow, A dyaloge describing the originall grou[n]d of these Lutheran faccyons, and many of theyr abusys (London: Wyllyam Rastell, wyth the pryuylege of our souereyn lord kyng Henry [the] viii, 1531).

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course of the English Reformation.41 Latimer calls upon all London to a common act of penitence, although ‘London cannot abide to be rebuked, such is the nature of man’ and ‘in this behalf I must speak here to my country, England, as Paul did in his first epistle to the Corinthians.’42 In a sermon preached in June following, Stephen Gardiner boldly reasserted the conservative Henrician stance; he upheld the king’s supremacy, and at the same time affirmed the traditional Catholic teaching concerning the Mass, transubstantiation, and the doctrine of ‘Real Presence.’43 Shortly thereafter, Richard Cox, Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, entered the pulpit to offer his riposte. Wriothesley notes that ‘All thoys preachers that prechyd at Powlles crosse at that time spake moche agyne the bysshope of Wynchester.’44 Perusal of extant Paul’s Cross Sermons shows a heavily disproportionate emphasis throughout the period 1534 to 1600 on Gardiner’s two themes above all others: namely, the royal claim to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the status of the sacrament. With respect to the Supremacy, there are discernible phases of rhetoric employed. Sermons of the ‘first Reformation’ (1533–1539) place strong emphasis on justifying the principle of the King’s supremacy, while those of the ‘second’ (1547–1553) stress obedience of subjects to an institution now clearly recognized. When a Protestant settlement became increasingly secure in the third phase of Reformation under Elizabeth, sermons on the supremacy strike a more celebratory note, especially in the Accession Day sermons on 17 November. These were occasions of solemn annual rehearsal of communal memory with the affirmation of royal governance of the Church as their focus.45 Moving thus through distinct 41 A notable sermo[n] of ye reuerende father Maister Hughe Latemer whiche he preached in ye Shrouds at paules churche in Londo[n], on the xviii daye of Ianuary 1548 (London: John Day and Wylliam Seres, 1548). 42 A notable sermo[n] of … Latemer, sig. B xi. 43 Gardiner published learned treatises on both subjects. See An explicatio[n] and assertion of the true Catholique fayth, touchyng the moost blessed sacrament of the aulter with confutacion of a booke written agaynst the same / made by Steuen Byshop of Wynchester; and exhibited by his owne hande for his defence to the Kynges Maiesties commissioners at Lambeth, ([Rouen: R. Caly], 1551) and De vera obedientia … with the preface of Edmunde Boner … nowe translated in English and printed by Michael Wood (Roane [Rouen? London: John Day?], 1553). 44 Wriothesley, vol. 2, 4; see also Chronicle of the Grey friars of London, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1852), 56. 45 MacLure’s Register includes references to Accession Sermons in 1582, by John Whitgift in 1583, Thomas Cooper, Bishop of Winchester in 1588, Richard Bancroft in 1589, and Fletcher in 1595, and Thomas Holland in 1599. ‘… the seventeenth of Nov [1595], a day of great triumph, for the long and prosperous raigne of her Majestie at London, the pulpit crosse in Paules Churchyard new repaired, painted, and partly inclosed with a wal of



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rhetorical phases from exposition, through exhortation, and finally to commemoration, there is a gradual evolution of religious identity. The influence of persuasion is brought to bear in turn upon the faculties of understanding, will, and memory—with each receiving the appropriate emphasis as circumstances required. To continue, for the moment, with our rehearsal of highlights of the action at Paul’s Cross, 1549 witnessed several Anabaptists ‘bearing a faggot’ in token of their recantation of heretical errors.46 In July Thomas Cranmer’s chaplain, John Joseph, ‘rehearsed’—that is to say, summarized—a ‘sermon conernynge the tyme of rebellion’ composed by the Florentine reformer and then Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Peter Martyr Vermigli, although actually preached by Cranmer at St Paul’s the previous week, just a few days after the imposition of martial law.47 In the aftermath of the rebellion of 1549, Thomas Lever, Master of St John’s, Cambridge, preached in the Shrouds—a chapel beneath the Cathedral choir where Paul’s Cross sermons were delivered during inclement weather—against disobedience and social injustice.48 The rebellion must be interpreted. Ordered to preach in support of religious reform on 1 September 1549, Edmund Bonner chose to assert Christ’s real presence in the sacrament in defiance of Cranmer and the Edwardian establishment, and soon found himself imprisoned for his pains. Such episodes underline the degree to which the fully fledged public sphere described by Habermas has yet to appear, and yet the very fact that a religious conservative like Bonner is given the opportunity of the pulpit is itself a remarkable occurrence.49 On 9 July 1553 the shoe was clearly on the other foot. Nicholas Ridley preached in the same pulpit in support of the succession of Lady Jane bricke: Dr Fletcher Bp of London preached there in prayse of the Queene, and prayer for her Majestie, before the Lord Mayor, Alderman, and Citizens in their best liveries. Which Sermon being ended upon the Church leades the Trumpets sounded, the cornets winded, the Quiristers sung an antheme. On the steeple many lights were burned: the Tower sholt off her ordinance, the Bels were rung, bonefiers made, &c.’ See John Stow, Annales, or, A generall chronicle of England (London: Richard Meighen, 1631), 770. 46 Wriothesley, vol. 2, 10, 12 47 Wriothesley, vol. 2, 16–18. Regular ‘rehearsal’ sermons recapitulated sermons previously preached at Paul’s Cross. See ‘A sermon concernynge the tyme of Rebellion,’ in Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2007), 149–79. For a description of the 1549 rebellions, see Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (Harlow: Longmans, 2004) and esp. 52–64 on the Western Rebellion. 48 A fruitfull sermon made in Poules churche at London in the Shroudes the seconde daye of Februari (London: John Day, 1550). 49 For his formal definition of the ‘public sphere’ see Jurgen Habermas, 27.

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Grey, on the same day that Privy Counsellors and the guard swore their obedience to her, and was subsequently burned at the stake in Oxford for his indiscretion.50 At Mary’s accession, Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, guarded by 200 men-at-arms ‘with bills and halberds,’ counselled the congregation at Paul’s Cross to ‘keep the ould faithe, and edifye the ould Temple againe.’51 Stephen Gardiner, now Lord Chancellor, stepped up to the pulpit on 30 September 1553 to condemn the preachers of Edward’s reign and to praise Mary’s consort, King Phillip II of Spain. Henry Machyn reports that on this occasion there was ‘as grett a audyensse as ever I saw in my lyff.’52 Phillip himself attended at Paul’s Cross later that same year to hear Gardiner proclaim England’s readmission into Catholic Christendom.53 Exploitation of all the tools of public persuasion had by now become definitive of both evangelical reformers and Catholic conservatives alike. Just two days after the accession of Elizabeth on 17 November 1558, her chaplain William Bill preached at Paul’s Cross by royal order and, according to Machyn, ‘mad[e] a godly sermon.’54 That the new regime was off to a very shaky start was made plain the Sunday following when John Christopherson, Marian Bishop of Chichester, vehemently denounced Bill and encouraged his audience to ‘believe not this new doctrine; it is not the gospel, but a new invention of new men and of heretics.’55 After this initial pulpit skirmish there followed several months’ silence while the Council 50 Certe[n] godly, learned, and comfortable conferences, betwene the two reuerende fathers, and holye martyrs of Christe, D. Nicolas Rydley late Bysshoppe of London, and M. Hughe Latymer sometyme Bysshoppe of Worcester, during the tyme of their emprysonmentes. Whereunto is added. A treatise agaynst the errour of transubstantiation, made by the sayd reuerende father D. Nicolas Rydley (Strasbourg: Rihel, 1556). 51 See Machyn, 41; Wriothesley, vol. 2, 99–100; Grey Friars Chronicle, 83. 52 Machyn, 69, referring to 30 September 1554. 53 Machyn, 78: ‘The ij day of Desember dyd com to Powlles all prestes and clarkes with ther copes and crosses, and all the craftes in ther leverey, and my lorde mayre and the althermen, agaynst my lord cardenall(‘s) commyng; and at the bysshopes of London plase my lord chansseler and alle the bysshopes tarehyng for my lord cardenall commyng, that was at ix of the cloke, for he landyd at Beynard Castell; and ther my lord mayre reseyvyd hym, and browgth ym to the Powllse, and so my lord chanseler and my lord cardenall and all the byshopes whent up in-to the quer with ther meyturs; and at x of the cloke the Kyng(‘s) grace cam to Powlles to her mase with iiij C. of gaard, on C. Englys, on C. HeAlmen, on C. Spaneards, on C. of Swechenars, and mony lords and knyghtes, and hard masse. Boyth the quen(‘s) chapell and the kynges and Powlles qwer song.’ 54 On 20 November 1558. Machyn, 69 55 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, trans. and ed. Hastings Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1842), 4.



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sought to consolidate power. No more sermons were heard at Paul’s Cross until the scholarly Matthew Parker was appointed to preach the following February, the very time he was desperately seeking to avoid elevation to the See of Canterbury. Edmund Grindal proclaimed restoration of the Book of Common Prayer from Paul’s Cross in May 1559. On the 26 November following, before as ‘grett audyense as (has ever) bene at Powlles Crosse,’ John Jewel, bishop-elect of Salisbury, preached his famed ‘Challenge Sermon,’ a sharply focused and sustained attack on the doctrine, rites, and ceremonies of Roman church, and quite possibly the most broadly influential of all sermons delivered at Paul’s Cross throughout the Tudor era.56 Jewel’s sermon marks a significant watershed in the history of Paul’s Cross in light of the subsequent cultivation of religious identities in England (use of the plural is salient in this connection), and, perhaps most important of all, in the maturation of the Tudor ‘culture of persuasion’ and hence in the emergence of a recognizable early-modern instance of public sphere. In content Jewel’s Challenge Sermon is not markedly different from what had been common fare at Paul’s Cross since the days of Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda campaign of the 1530s. There are, however, certain subtle differences of rhetoric and, even more importantly, of the sermon’s public reception which set apart this particular pulpit event as one of remarkable significance for the formation not only of English religious identity at the outset of the reign of Elizabeth, but also of early-modern identity in a larger, more general sense. Jewel’s rhetorical gambit was to seek reversal of the burden of proof; he challenged the adherents of Rome to demonstrate the truth of their position on various aspects of sacramental doctrine and practice: private masses, communion under one kind, prayers in a strange tongue, transubstantiation, and the veneration of images as well as the question of the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. Jewel urged the autonomy of regional churches and the supremacy of Christian Princes. (Here we find once again the two constantly recurring themes of Paul’s Cross sermons.) He repeated the challenge in a Court

56 Machyn, 219. ‘The xxvj day of November dyd pryche at Pow [l’s Cross] master Juell, byshope of Salysbere, and ther was my lord mare and the althermen and mony of the courte, and ther was grett audyense as (has ever) bene at Powlles Crosse.’ For two excellent scholarly accounts of Jewel’s Challenge Sermon, see Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: the dilemmas of an Erastian reformer (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006) and John Booty, John Jewel as apologist of the Church of England (London: Published for the Church Historical Society [by] SPCK 1963).

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sermon on 17 March and once again at Paul’s Cross on 31 March 1560.57 Gary Jenkins has pointed out that most of the finer distinctions of eucharistic doctrine were undoubtedly ‘too arcane for the vast majority of the faithful in England to have contemplated, let alone considered at length.’58 Nonetheless, this particular Paul’s Cross sermon caused an unprecedented commotion that continued on the boil for several years. Over the course of the next decade, Paul’s Cross reverberated repeatedly with repercussions of Jewel’s Challenge and the printing houses in Paul’s church-yard were kept busy as never before. Henry Cole, Marian Dean of St. Paul’s, was the first to step up to the plate in an exchange of letters later published together with the now famous sermon in a pamphlet.59 In the meantime, Jewel had honed his argument further and published it anonymously in Latin under the title Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ.60 It was soon translated by the formidable Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon, second wife of Sir Nicholas; ‘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.’61 On 30 April 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.62 Attacks on Jewel in print were swiftly multiplying and Dean Nowell was in the pulpit once again in November to reply to yet another: Thomas Dorman’s Defence of Catholyke Beleef dedicated to his patron Harding.63 As a consequence Nowell and Dorman became involved in an exchange of five books, with Dorman’s last salvo returning to direct attack on Jewel’s original sermon.64 Harding answered Jewel again with his 57 Machyn, 228 58 Jenkins, 71. 59 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. 1560. Set forthe and allowed, according to the order appointed in the Quenes Maiesties iniunctions. Cum gratia & priuilegio Regiæ Maiestatis per septennium [London: John Day, 1560?]. 60 John Jewel, Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ (Londini: [Apud Reginaldum vvolfium], 1562). 61 An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande (London: Reginald Wolfe, 1564). See Lynne Magnusson’s entry on Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon in ODNB (2004). 62 An ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge, by Dr Harding (Louvaine: Iohn Bogard, 1564). 63 A proufe of certeyne articles in religion, denied by M. Iuell: sett furth in defence of the Catholyke beleef therein, by Thomas Dorman (Antwerp: Iohn Latius, with priuilege, 1564). 64 A disproufe of M. Novvelles reproufe (Antwerp: Iohn Latius, 1565) and A request to Mr. Jewel that he keep his promise made by solemn protestation in his late sermon at Paul’s Cross (1567; repr. [Menston]: Scolar Press, 1973).



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Confutation of the Apology, and Jewel preached again in reply to Harding on 27 May 1565.65 At this point Thomas Stapleton leapt into the fray with the publication of his Fortress of the Faith.66 Pulpit and press had become thoroughly intertwined in the furious pace of what became known as the ‘Great Controversy.’67 After being deprived of his prebend at the Cathedral of Chichester for refusing to repudiate papal primacy, Stapleton eventually joined William Allen in founding the English College at 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.68 As the fur continued to fly and as a measure, moreover, of how public the confrontation had become, even foreigners were drawn into the struggle to define England’s religious identity. In an epistle to Queen Elizabeth translated by Richard Shacklock, another Louvainist, Portuguese bishop Hieronymous 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 assertion of Justification by faith alone and by his repudiation of the authority of the Papacy, ‘there shall ryse manyfolde yea infinite religions one contrary to the other … for every man wyll invent a churche, according to his own fantasye.’69 As though it were a tennis match, Osorius was answered in turn by the distinguished Latinist Walter Haddon, translator of the Liber Precum Publicarum (1560) and key contributor to the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1571).70 Such were the

65 Thomas Harding, A confutation of a booke intituled An apologie of the Church of England (Antwerpe: Ihon Laet, 1565). 66 Thomas Stapleton, A fortresse of the faith: first planted amonge vs englishmen, and continued hitherto in the vniuersall Church of Christ. The faith of which time protestants call, papistry (Antwerpe: Ihon Laet, 1565). 67 Booty, ch. 1; Jenkins, 70 ff. 68 A retur[ne of vn]truthes vpon [M. Jewel]les replie: Partly of such, as he hath slaunderously charg[…] Harding withal (Antwerpe: Iohn Latius, at the signe of the Sower, 1566). Jewel, A defence 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 (London: Henry Wykes, 1567). 69 H. 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, Fraunce, and Ireland. &c. Translated oute of Latten in to Englishe by Richard Shacklock M. of Arte and student of the ciuill lavves in Louaine (Antwerp: By Iohn Latius, 1565). 70 Walter Haddon, Contra Hieron: Osorium, eiusq[ue] odiosas insectationes pro Euangelicae veritatis necessaria Defensione, Responsio Apologetica (London: T. Day, 1577).

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escalating stakes in what had become one of the epic confrontations of the English Reformation. And of course the high profile of Paul’s Cross was not only decisive in precipitating the exchange, but continued to function prominently in the unfolding struggle to define religious identity. All told, the contributions of Jewel and his allies combined with the counter-offensive led by the English recusant exiles centred at the University of Louvain produced more than 40 treatises and pamphlets within seven years of the original ‘Challenge Sermon’ at Paul’s Cross.71 Throughout this protracted torrent of words preached and published, tacitly acknowledged by all participants in the ‘Great Controversy’ were certain common rules of engagement. While the polemical tone from all quarters was almost invariably harsh and abrasive, there was, nonetheless, 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. A particularly fierce battle was waged over conflicting claims to patristic authority which had the long-term effect of launching modern Patristic scholarship. In pulpit and press ‘who owns the Fathers?’ became a watchword among the disputants, and in the midst of the struggle the birth-pangs of modern critical scholarship can be discerned. Seventy-four editions of the writings of the Early Church Fathers were published between 1536 and 1600, half of which comprise tellingly the works of Augustine.72 As the debate unfolded, Augustine proved a pivotal authority in working out the underlying ‘moral-ontological’ differences between the old horizon and the new. See Lawrence V. Ryan, ‘The Haddon-Osorio Controversy (1563–1583),’ Church History 22.2 (1953), 142–54. 71 While the exchange between Jewel and Harding was the principal action, other significant contributions were made by Nicholas Sanders, The Supper of our Lord set forth according to the truth of the Gospell and Catholike faith (Louvain, 1566); John Martiall, A replie to M. Calfhills blasphemous answer made against the Treatise of the crosse (Louvain: John Bogard, 1566); Richard Shacklock, translator of A most excellent treatise of the begynnyng of heresyes in oure tyme, compyled by the Reuerend Father in God Stanislaus Hosius Byshop of Wormes in Prussia (Antwerp: Diest, 1565); Thos Heskyns, The parliament of Chryste : auouching and declaring the enacted and receaued trueth of the presence of his bodie and bloode in the blessed Sacrament, and of other articles concerning the same, impugned in a wicked sermon by M. Iuell (Antwerp: Wm. Silvius, 1565); Robt Poyntz, Testimonies for the real presence of Christes body and blood in the blessed Sacrame[n]t of the aultar (Louvain: John Fowler, 1566); and Wm Allen, A defense and declaration of the Catholike Churchies doctrine, touching purgatory, and prayers for the soules departed (Antwerp: I. Latius, 1565). 72 See W. Haugaard, ‘Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenthcentury England,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 10.3 (1979), 37–60; see 43.



public preaching89 Religious Identity and the Public Sphere

In less than 30 years between the launching of Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda campaign in 1534 and the publication of Jewel’s Apologia in 1562, 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. Put another way, how the principles of religious identity were communicated is inseparable from what was actually being communicated. It is important to recognize that at a fundamental level in these events ‘the medium is the message,’ to borrow MacLuhan’s hackneyed expression.73 The conflict between Jewel and his interlocutors appears to have had the effect of galvanizing the recurrent issues aired in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross over the previous 25 years. The main thrust of the Challenge Sermon was to highlight opposition between what we have identified (following Charles Taylor’s formulation) as two competing ‘moral ontologies.’74 In his history of the emergence of modern identity Taylor points out that the moral ontology behind any given set of views is more likely than not to remain largely implicit.75 The interpretation proposed here is that the competing moral ontologies underpinning their respective religious identities are brought fully into sharper relief in the course of the controversy precipitated by Jewel’s challenge at Paul’s Cross. It is precisely the clarity of Jewel’s formulation of the kernel of this question of identity that sparks the great public debate of the 1560s. Issues previously largely implicit had been made explicit. While a considerable variety of questions occupied the preachers at Paul’s Cross over the preceding decades, 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 secondly, the relation between religious and political power 73 The reference is to Marshall McLuhan’s thesis that the printing press changed civilization by creating a ‘new human environment.’ Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (New York, 1950), vi, quoted by Haugaard, 38. What applies to the press applies a fortiori to the public pulpit. 74 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. 75 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 7.

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in light of the royal assumption of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The success of Jewel’s Challenge sermon 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 the question of the more fundamental axioms of an essential, underlying framework—Taylor’s moral ontology. The acerbity and sustained intensity of the ensuing exchange between Jewel and his numerous interlocutors of the Louvain school as well as others are evidence of a significant escalation in the stakes of public persuasion. The Great Contro­ versy of the 1560s brings the question of religious identities to focus on fundamental axioms, and both parties to the dispute plainly recognize that these axioms are definitive of the larger, universal moral-ontological framework within which the more specific and particular concerns of religious identity are ultimately determined. Charles Taylor states concerning identity in general that it is defined by … the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand … To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary.76

The doctrine of the Mass, its main corollaries and supports—transubstantiation, veneration, private masses, communion under one kind, prayers in a strange tongue—become, on Jewel’s account, the selected criteria for addressing, weighing, and finally judging a complete ontological framework. The invocation of a forensic image here is crucial. This is a trial. A charge is levelled, the prosecution makes its case, the defence is heard, and after a summing up, judgment is delivered. While the conduct of the trial no doubt presupposes the presence of the powerful agents of Crown, Parliament, the Church, the University, and the City—all of them represented in one way or another in the pageant of a sermon at Paul’s Cross— the judges in a very vital sense are the assembled audience. The most important trial is to be conducted in an open court of public judgment. All of the devices of persuasion are aimed ultimately at securing conscientious embrace of the argument. The judgment of the learned is without doubt of the highest consequence, but the ultimate success will depend also on popular embrace of that judgment. 76 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 28.



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Over against the Mass, Jewel sets justification by faith and the competing ontological framework it represents. Modern pluralist assumptions are apt to produce genuine discomfort at the confidence assumed in such formulations. As Taylor points out, we now tend to view any and all such ‘frameworks’ as intrinsically optional and that this is just a necessary consequence of the advancing ‘disenchantment’ that is modernity.77 Yet Taylor is surely correct in his observation that ‘in earlier ages … when the major definition of our existential predicament was one in which we feared above all condemnation, where an unchallengeable framework made imperious demands on us, it is understandable that people saw their frameworks as enjoying the same ontological solidity as the very structure of the universe.’78 Thus, for example, Nicholas Sanders argues in defence of a Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy culminating in the papacy, by invoking the Christian Neoplatonic moral ontology of the cosmic ‘lex divinitatis,’ the law of the so-called ‘great chain.’ Sanders appeals to just such an assumption of ontological solidarity when he claims that Where many Countries, tongs, Rulers and teachers are in one body, and as it were many Capitaines in one great armie of men, (as there are in the church of Christ) there, if order be not exactly kept, great and horrible confusion must needes follow. The conservation of order, is to have a known Iudge, whose finall sentence in all controversies all men may both heare and obey.79

Without finality of judgment all order dissipates. The papacy as the ‘known judge’ who brings down a ‘finall sentence’ is thus the most crucial link to the ontological order as sacramentally interpreted. Yet, even for Sanders the authority of this final sentence is no longer simply given or presupposed within the universal hierarchical order of reality. Argument, demonstration, persuasion must be invoked in order to convince the public that such a judge is necessary, that the Pope himself is in actuality that author of the ‘finall sentence.’ In effect Sanders appeals to the instruments of the ‘culture of persuasion’ in order to justify and defend the ‘sacramental culture.’ From a competing framework or moral-ontological assumption, Jewel will argue that unity and order subsist within the horizon set by the sovereignty of the godly Prince. The Royal Supremacy is 77 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 26. 78 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 26. 79 Nicholas Sanders, A treatise of the images of Christ: and his saints: and that it is vnlaufull to breake them, and lauful to honour them. With a confutation of such false doctrines as M. Iewel hath vttered in his Replie, concerning that matter (Louvain: apud Ioannem Foulerum, 1567), Sig. ij v°. Quoted by Booty, 41.

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the epiphenomenon of a different ontological assumption, one which challenges the moral assumptions of the ‘great-chain’ ontology as interpreted by Sanders, Harding, and the rest of the Louvainists. Thus a distinct religious identity with its manifold phenomenal consequences derives from a different moral axiom and from the revised ‘horizon’ defined by that alternative axiom. It is the role of the pulpit in this ‘trial’—and increasingly also of the press and print culture, although derivatively, following the pulpit’s lead—to employ every possible means of persuasion to bring an ever more discerning public to conscientious affirmation of the framework, the moral ontology, and the fundamental axioms of interpretation which serve to shape religious identity. This substitution of ‘the persuasive’ for ‘the sacramental’ is a crucial step in the Weberian process of ‘disenchantment’ which gives rise to modernity. The Privy Council’s first response to Clement VII’s bull of excommunication portended a crucial role for Paul’s Cross in public disputation over religious identities in the decades immediately following. Committed to a policy of establishing royal headship of the Church, Thomas Cromwell ordered that none should be permitted to preach at Paul’s Cross without declaring the authority of the Bishop of Rome (as he was henceforth to be named) as no greater than that of any other foreign bishop.80 This was revolution indeed. The long, continuous thread of the late-medieval ‘social imaginary’—the thread which linked the ordered life of temporal religious community through the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the hierarchical order of the entire cosmos, and beyond the realm of the visible, physical reality with the hierarchy of the angels, the communion of the saints, and ultimately to the divine life of the blessed Trinity—had been cut. By defying the bull of excommunication, the core assumption underlying the ‘moral ontology’ of hierarchy had been challenged, and with it the hitherto accepted ‘horizon’ of religious identity.81 The anciently presupposed hierarchical ‘framework’ of the ‘lex divinitatis,’82 which was understood to link the church and human society through symbol and sacrament to an 80 See Richard Rex, ‘The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation,’ The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff. ‘The change in nomenclature from ‘pope’ to ‘bishop of Rome’ was a decision taken at the highest level. Throughout 1533 official documents had continued to talk of the ‘pope’… The legislation of 1534 systematically avoids the title ‘pope’.’ 81 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. 82 Famously formulated two centuries earlier in the Bull ‘Unam Sanctam,’ Pope Boniface VIII defends the doctrine of the papal supremacy (plenitudo potestatis), and therefore the necessary subordination of temporal to spiritual jurisdiction, by invoking the



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immanent, created order of being in the cosmos, and beyond the visible realm to the invisible community of the angels and the saints, was effectively abandoned as a ‘social imaginary.’83 The severing of the ‘great chain’ (vividly symbolized by Clement VII’s excommunication of Henry) might be described as creating a kind of moral-ontological vacuum which— given nature’s acknowledged abhorrence of such a condition—was very swiftly occupied by a distinctly different primary axiom, presupposition, framework, moral ontology. In the process of replacement of the hierarchical assumptions of the old framework, there emerges a remarkable assurance of the possibilities inherent in Persuasion. Whereas the primary point of contact with reality in the ‘sacramental culture’ was through sign and symbol, the contact in the ‘culture of persuasion’ was principally through an appeal to the human faculties of memory, understanding, and will, that is to the identity of the human self (imago dei) as interpreted by the Augustinian anthropology of the evangelical reformers. Nowhere is this emergent ‘culture of persuasion’ more vitally evident in the 1530s than at Paul’s Cross. If the authority of the papacy was to be extinguished—and with it the old assumption concerning England’s religious identity as derived from and defined by a gradual, sacramentally mediated hierarchy culminating in the jurisdiction of the papacy—then this required a radically revised account of the horizon/framework/axiom of religious identity to stand in its place. With this new moral ontology there emerges a new religious identity, and through it a new political identity as well which would bring with it a distinctively modern affirmation of ‘ordinary life.’84 The swiftness with which the dissolution of the monasteries was achieved is a measure of the dynamism of this new moral framework and a testimony to the radical decisiveness of the shift achieved within the ‘first’ Reformation of Henry VIII. Central to the definition of the new framework—this new ‘moral ontology’—was a deep-seated commitment to a ‘culture of persuasion.’

concept of lex divinitatis (law of divinity), the law of the so-called ‘great chain’ set forth by the sixth-century Syrian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity (lex divinitatis) that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior … Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power. 83 Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2004). 84 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 13.

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From 1534, preachers at Paul’s Cross were required to promote a radically new religious assumption, one which cut sharply across the grain of the old. The nature of this new religious identity, moreover, was made evident in both the content and the form or manner of its presentation. As we have seen, the content of the new identity was closely identified with the assertion of the absolute supremacy of the Crown in religious matters, and with it the corollary denial of the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome— the two were ontologically irreconcilable. The formal presentation of this new identity, however, is of equal importance, and arguably, over the longer term, of even greater significance than the content of instruction. Throughout the revolution of the 1530s the public pulpit at Paul’s Cross not only becomes one of the principal means of reconstructing the primary assumptions of England’s religious identities through promulgation of a revised doctrine; the heavy emphasis upon the formal activity of preaching itself comes to exemplify the substance of that new framework. A hermeneutics of judgment comes to supplant the hermeneutics of sign and symbol, a ‘culture of persuasion’ displacing a ‘sacramental culture.’ According to the logic of the displaced framework of mediated cosmic hierarchy (whose rejection we claimed at the outset is dramatically symbolized by Henry’s rejection of papal jurisdiction), religious identity had been understood hitherto as something given, as intimately identified within the ontological structures and symbolic order of the universe itself. Such an identification of religious and cosmic reality is the essential (and essentialist) claim of what we have been calling ‘sacramental culture.’ At the outset of the fourteenth century Boniface VIII very succinctly summarized the logic of this culture of sacramental mediation in the bull Unam Sanctam: ‘it is the law of divinity (lex divinitatis) that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries … [and] according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior and … therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power.’85 The new framework of the ‘culture of persuasion,’ on the other hand, is built upon the premise that the primary substance of religious identity is not simply given in the hierarchical structure of the cosmos, but is rather to be found in the constitution of the human self as memory, understanding, and will. In this respect, early-modern religious identity, and indeed 85 Unam Sanctam, ‘Extravagantes Communes,’ Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955; 1959), vol. 2, col. 1245–46.



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the modern sense of the ‘self,’ is arguably a reformulation of an Augustinian anthropology. On this view, religious identity derives properly from inner recognition, conscientious affirmation, and the internal witness of faith and persuasion. The simple fact that in 1534 public authority deems it necessary to employ the pulpit to persuade subjects of their primary religious obligation and of the legitimacy of the reconstituted institutions of religious authority—an assumption implicit in Thomas Cromwell’s explicit provisions for preaching at Paul’s Cross at this time—is itself as important as any specific doctrine being promulgated from the public pulpit. In the context of the public sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, therefore, there is a remarkably close correspondence between the rhetorical ‘form’ and the theological ‘content’ in the revolutionary re-definition of religious identity by the Protestant reformers. The ‘culture of persuasion’ is manifested through both form and content. Throughout England’s radical religious and constitutional transformation of the 1530s, Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell simultaneously managed both the intricacies of the legislative programme and a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign through pulpit and press in support of the constitutional agenda before Parliament.86 The substance of the pamphlets of the early 1530s in many respects epitomizes the legislation passed by the Reformation Parliament.87 The same is true for the sermons preached at Paul’s Cross. What, then, is the significance of Cromwell’s resorting to pulpit and press in this concerted fashion to justify a new definition of the church and religious identity? The order is no longer assumed simply as ontologically given but must give an account of itself; there is a revolutionary break with deep, long-held assumptions concerning the nature of the church and its relation to political power, of the relation between religion and the primary social structures, and also of the relation between the conscience of the individual subject and constituted 86 G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 157: ‘Cromwell obtained a grip on the press in latter part of 1533. Under his patronage a very different body of writers and writings took over the task of discussing the issues of the day; production turned from controversy to constructive thought.’ 87 According to Franklin Le Van Baumer, Henry VIII and Cromwell devoted almost as much attention to the printing press as to the parliamentary session. See The Early Tudor Theory of Kingship (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966), 35–84. See 39: ‘Henry VIII exercised a dictatorship of the press which, judged by its results, was just about as effective as any western Europe has ever seen. The opposition, denied the use of the English printing press, was either driven abroad to publish, or else forced to circulate its views in manuscript.’

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political authority. The crucial element in this new relation is especially evident in the perceived need for the encouragement of a public campaign of persuasion. Such a campaign assumes that the moral force of religious identity rests not upon its intrinsic given-ness in the order of religious life, but rather upon active recognition, assent, and embrace by its adherents. The importance of subjective appropriation of the new framework—Persuasion—and the new definition of the communal identity have become intrinsic to the subsistence of that framework. This is the sense of the importance attached to a ‘culture of persuasion.’ Cromwell’s propaganda campaign in pulpit and press sets a radical precedent; it establishes a pattern for the promotion of religious identity in subsequent phases of the English Reformation—or in subsequent English Reformations, if that is the preferred formula—notably in the rapid and comprehensive religious reforms promoted by the Council in the brief reign of Edward VI, in the attempts under Mary to scale back these reforms, and in their re-introduction and eventual consolidation after the accession of Elizabeth. Throughout all of these changes, the pulpit at Paul’s Cross is consistently at the heart of the action. As we have attempted to show, the relentless effort to promote religious and constitutional reform through a sustained campaign of public persuasion represents the steady undercurrent of the Paul’s Cross sermons throughout this period. The perceived need to persuade—that is, to speak to the conscience, to appeal to the perceptions, judgment, discernment, prudence, discrimination, etc. of a discerning religious public—is wholly consistent with the core theological claims of the reformers; such a rhetorical approach is positively required of them. In a very real sense ‘the medium is the message.’88 To affirm the necessity of addressing the judgment of the discerning, rational individual as the Tudor reformers do is to make a definite claim regarding the means whereby that individual has access to the primary reality. On this view, the moral horizon of the reformers is defined by the medium of persuasion as much as by the message of evangelical or political doctrine. The emergence of the Tudor culture of persuasion in the 1530s and its flourishing in the ‘Great Controversy’ of the 1560s are evidence of the collapse of the alternative framework of religious identity defined by a semiotic hermeneutic, a moral ontology defined by the concept of hierarchy, and an external, sacramental apparatus as the primary 88 On this link of medium and message, see Haugaard, 37–43.



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means of mediation between temporal and spiritual existence. Indeed the continuing ‘stand-off’ between the reformed Church of England and Catholicism propelled an escalating ideological struggle with an everwidening gap between religious conscience and institutional authority. As Peter Lake and Michael Questier have concluded with respect to the lessons of the Edmund Campion affair, the emergence of a ‘rudimentary public sphere’ in Elizabethan England was essentially an ‘ideological’ event. ‘At stake was the line between politics and religion and the definition of what could or should be freely debated in public, of what loyalty and obedience to the magistrate meant.’89 These issues constitute the crux of what is debated back and forth, week after week, year after year in the pulpit at Paul’s Cross. The soteriological formulae of the evangelical avant-garde offer an alternative framework of mediation: salvation by Christ alone (and not by the necessary mediation of the church hierarchical); by grace alone (and not by any natural human powers, faculties, or capabilities); by faith alone (and not by external works or any virtuous activity); as revealed in scripture alone (that is, a hermeneutics of scripture as containing a teaching sufficient to salvation without the necessity of additional teaching and traditions of the historical church). The effect of such a hermeneutics is to challenge the chain of hierarchical mediation and to question at its foundation the necessity of the church’s elaborate sacramental apparatus in the economy of salvation. For the reformers, the unification of souls to the divine is something to be accomplished through the comparative immediacy of the Word spoken and heard, that is through an inner persuasion. This radically re-formed soteriological conception of the relation between the individual soul of the Christian believer and the divine carries with it a corollary of what constitutes the primary social imaginary—ecclesia, the community of individuals who share this relation. Owing to the concept of mediation implied by the ‘solas’—grace alone, faith alone, etc.—the framework of religious identity and with it the ordering of the relation between the ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ between private and public existence, is transformed almost beyond recognition in a relatively brief span of time. In effect, the increasingly sharp delineation between the ‘forum of the conscience’ and the ‘external forum’ of institutional life, both religious and civil, thus necessitates the appearance of a ‘public sphere’ of discussion as the means of mediation between

89 Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’,’ Journal of Modern History 72 (2000), 625.

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the demands of the two fora—i.e. between conscience and institutional power. This transformation is decisive in the shift from the moral ontology of ‘sacramental culture’ to that of the ‘culture of persuasion’ and, as we have argued, this transformation of moral ontology gives birth in turn to a budding early-modern public sphere.

CHAPTER FIVE

PUBLIC CONVERSION: RICHARD SMYTH’S ‘RETRACTATION SERMON’ AT PAUL’S CROSS, 1547 Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ preached both at Paul’s Cross and at Oxford in 1547 and published in the same year was accompanied by the ritual burning of his two books in defence of the traditional account of sacramental presence, viz. Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament of the Alter and Defence of the Sacrifice of the Masse, both published in 1546. There is not only the question of both Smith’s public renunciation of this traditional teaching in order to conform to the newly reformed religious settlement established following the accession of Edward VI, and also his later ‘retraction of the retractation’ which resulted in his ejection from the Regius professorship, then Oxford’s most prestigious appointment, and his subsequent replacement by Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Florentine divine invited to England by Cranmer. At the core of this conversion (and re-conversion) episode is the substantive theological question of how to interpret the ‘conversion’ of the sacramental elements. In his inaugural lectures at Oxford Vermigli took up this very question and precipitated the famous Oxford Disputation of 1549 which exercised a decisive influence on the revision of Cranmer’s liturgy of 1549 resulting in that of 1552 (the Second Edwardine BCP). One of the key ‘forms of conversion’ that contributed substantially to the intellectual transformation of Europe and its world during the early modern period is the purposeful turn of humanist scholars and reforming theologians alike towards the Forms themselves. I refer to the conscious, indeed fervent embrace of the Platonic epistemology of illumination exemplified by Erasmian reform. Underpinning many early-modern forms of conversion is a conversion in the the deep assumptions of the theory of cognition. In a blistering attack on the egregious moral abuses of the latemedieval Church in his Enchiridion militis Christiani of 1503, Erasmus draws a telling parallel between Plato’s theory of knowledge and his own ‘philosophia Christi’.1 The philosopher’s turning away from the fleeting 1 On Erasmus and the Philosophia Christi as ‘a life centered on Christ and characterized by inner faith rather than external rites,’ see Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 138–154.

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images of sensuous ‘phantasy’ on coming out of the Cave, and towards the brilliant luminosity of the intellectual Sun—Plato’s Form of the Good— represents for Erasmus a model of conversion to what he terms ‘quick and vigorous adulthood in Christ,’ that is a religious life characterized by inward clarity of cognition as contrasted with perfunctory observance of external ceremony and ritual. In the peroration of the fifth rule of the Enchiridion, an especially vivid passage reminiscent of Pico della Mirandola’s Oration fuses the epistemological imagery of Republic with the erotic metaphor of the soul’s ascent to the intellectual heaven in Phaedrus and Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth;2 Erasmus sums up his case for religious reform as consisting first and foremost in metanoia, a radical conversion of the mind, rendered here in the translation published in 1533 attributed to William Tyndale: Thou therfore my brother / leest with sorowfull laboures thou shuldest not moche preuayle / but that with meane exercyse myghtest shortely waxe bygge in Christe and lusty / dyligently embrace this rule / & crepe not alwaye on the grounde with the vncleane beestes / but always sustayned with those wyngis which Plato beleueth to springe euer a fresshe / through the heate of loue in the mynde of men. Lyfte vp thy selfe as it were with certayne steppes of the ladder of Iacob / from the body to the spyrit / from ye visyble worlde vnto the inuysible / from the letter to the mystery / from thynges sencyble to thynges intellygible / from thyngis grosse and compounde vnto thynges syngle and pure. Who so euer after this maner shall approche and drawe nere to the lorde / the lorde of his parte shall agayne approche and drawe nyghe to hym. And if thou for thy parte shalte endeuoyre to aryse out of the darknesse and troubles of the sensuall powers / he wyll come agaynste the plesauntly & for thy profyte / out of his lyght inaccessyble / and out of that noble scylence incogytable: In whiche not only all rage of sensuall powers / but also simylytudes or ymagynacions of all the intellygyble powers dothe cease and kepe scylence.3 2 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the dignity of man; translated by A. Robert Caponigri (South Bend, Indiana: Regnery Gateway, 1956), 17–19. 3 Desiderius Erasmus, Ratio seu methodus compendio perueniendi ad ueram theologiam: Paraclesis, id est adhortatio ad sanctissimum, ac saluberrimum Christianæ philosophæ studium (Basle: [Johannes Froben], 1521), republished (Strasbourg: Felicem, 1522). An English translation of Erasmus’s original Latin text, attributed to William Tyndale, appeared in 1533: A booke called in latyn Enchiridion militis christiani, and in englysshe the manuell of the christen knyght replenysshed with moste holsome preceptes, made by the famous clerke Erasmus of Roterdame (London: Wynkyn de Worde, for Iohan Byddell, 1533). See Douglas H. Parker, ‘The English ‘Enchiridion militis christiani’ and Reformation Politics,’ Erasmus in English 5 (1972), 16–21. While John Foxe maintained that Tyndale made this translation while a tutor in Gloucestershire in the mid 1520s, David Daniell attributes the



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In 1504 Erasmus sent a copy of his Handbook to his humanist colleague John Colet, the Dean of St Paul’s, together with an account of his general purpose: ‘I composed it not in order to show off my cleverness or my style, but solely in order to counteract the error of those who make religion in general consist in rituals and observances … but who are astonishingly indifferent to matters that have to do with true goodness. What I have tried to do, in fact, is to teach a method of morals, as it were, in the manner of those who have originated fixed procedures in the branches of learning.’4 Erasmus’s call to ethical and religious reform is founded upon a radical epistemological conversion. ‘I could see,’ he states, that the common body of Christians was corrupt not only in its affections, but in its ideas … Abraham long ago dug wells in every country seeking veins of living water; and when the Philistines filled them with earth they were dug anew by Isaac and his sons, who, not content with restoring the old wells, dug new ones besides … Nor are we quite free of Philistines nowadays, who get more pleasure from earth than from fountains of living water.5

The prescribed cure was to be nothing less than a return back to the sources—a radical conversio ad fontes! In the first instance this was to be a return to the ancients, and most especially to the Greeks. The classical turn was not, however, an end in itself, but was plainly understood as instrumental in preparation for the return to the living waters of the Sacred Oracles, that is to say to the Scriptures.6 Twelve years later, in 1516, Erasmus published his Greek edition of the New Testament—the Novum instrument omne—which, in its role as textus receptus for the large majority of vernacular translations of the sixteenth century, was arguably the most consequential of all publishing events of the sixteenth century. The Novum instrumentum appeared in English in 1525—translated by Tyndale7—while a revised edition translation to Nicholas Udall: see William Tyndale: A Biography (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 72. See Anne M. O’Donnell, ‘Editing the independent Works of William Tyndale’, in Erika Rummel, ed., Editing Texts from the Age of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 55. 4 Erasmus, Epistle 181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138. 5 From Erasmus’s prefatory epistle address to Paul Volz, Abbot of Hugshofen, Epistle 181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138, 139. 6 ‘Sed in primis ad fontes ipsos properandum, id est graecos et antiquos.’ Erasmus, De ratione studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores (Paris: G.Biermant, 1511) in Opera omnia, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1969), 120.11. 7 The New Testament ([Cologne: H. Fuchs?, 1525]). See also The New Testament: a facsimile of the 1526 edition, translated by William Tyndale; with an introduction by David Daniell (London: The British Library; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2008).

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including Erasmus’s Latin text in parallel was published again in 1534—the same year as Parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy.8 Tyndale’s translation of the Enchiridion had been published a year earlier, in 1533, by John Biddel, the King’s printer, to coincide with the first major thrust of Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda offensive in support of the legislative programme before the Reformation Parliament.9 The significance of Erasmus’s epistemological revolution for the English Reformation and a new politics is signalled by ten further editions of the Enchiridion in English over the next three tumultuous decades, altogether a decisive period in the religious transformation of both England and Europe.10 Erasmus’s Enchiridion epitomizes a far-reaching conversion of the theory of knowledge which underpins two grand projects of the sixteenth century—namely, the humanist challenge to scholastic method and the Protestant reformers challenge to the traditional assumptions governing the doctrine and practice of the late-medieval Church.11 In order to begin to understand the full significance of this epistemological ‘conversion’ in the context of sixteenth century religious and philosophical controversies, we might do well to consider the terminology of ‘conversion’ by employing an Erasmian approach in the best philological tradition of literae humaniores. In Greek, the verb ‘meta-noiein’ signifies in the first, most literal instance to perceive or to understand ‘afterwards’ or even ‘too late’, in the sense contrary to ‘pro-noiein’, that is to ‘foresee’. Indeed Pronoia is a word that has been used by theologians to designate the divine 8 Novum Instrumentum omne: diligenter ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum & emendatum (Basle: Froben, 1516). The new Testament in Englyshe and in Latyn accordyng to the translacyon of doctour Erasmus of Roterodam ([London]: Robert Redman, [1538]). As the ‘textus receptus’ of the New Testament Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum became the base source text for Luther’s German bible, for Tyndale’s English New Testament and subsequently for the King James Version, as well as almost all other Reformation translations of the Bible on the continent. 9 G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1977) 157: ‘Cromwell obtained a grip on the press in latter part of 1533. Under his patronage a very different body of writers and writings took over the task of discussing the issues of the day; production turned from controversy to constructive thought.’ For discussion of the progression of the revolutionary legislative agenda of the Reformation Parliament see Richard Rex, ‘The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation,’ The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff. 10 Erasmus’s call to reform remained popular in England throughout the Reformations of the sixteenth century and was republished in editions of 1534, 1541, two in 1544, 1545, 1548, two in 1552, 1561 and 1576. 11 Charles G. Nauert, ‘Humanism as Method: Roots of conflict with the Scholastics,’ The Sixteenth Century Journal 29. 2 (1998), 427–438.



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Providence.12 Metanoia comes after ordinary knowing in a manner analogous to Metaphysics succeeding or indeed completing Physics. In a secondary but nonetheless common use metanoia signifies a ‘alteration of one’s mind or purpose’, a ‘change of heart’ in the sense of regret or remorse. Plato, for example, uses the term in this latter sense in his dialogue Euthyphro (279c) as does Menander in his comedy The Litigants (Epitrepontes, 72). Perhaps the most famous of all classical references, the concept of ‘metanoia’ refers to a radical transformation of the mind or consciousness such as Plato depicts in his famous metaphor of the Cave in Republic (518d)—the epistemological figure that effectively informs the moral and religious conversio of Erasmus’s Manuell of the christen knyght. There is a certain power within every rational soul, according to Socrates, which is capable of such a turning: …‘just as an eye is not able to turn toward the light from the dark without the whole body—the soul of each must be turned around from that which is coming into being (ek tou gignomenou) together with the whole soul until it is able to endure looking at that which is (eis to on) and the brightest part of that which is. And we affirm that this is the good, don’t we?’ ‘Yes.’ [Glaucon replies.] ‘There would, therefore, be an art of this turning around (periagoge), concerned with the way in which this power can most easily and efficiently be turned around, not an art of producing sight in it. Rather, this art takes as given that sight is there, but not rightly turned nor looking at what it ought to look at, and accomplishes this object.’ ‘So it seems,’ he said.13

Metanoia is to turn from the impermanent sensuous appearances— literally the phainomena—towards the permanent reality, namely the ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’. The preliminary mode of knowing proper to fleeting appearance is designated by Plato as ‘phantasia’ or ‘doxa’—mere opinion—while the mode of cognition propoer to the converted and illuminated soul is a ‘tethered’ understanding—‘episteme’. The sense of turning around in the Latin ‘conversio’ brings with it an additional sense of subversion, alteration, or radical change.14 Pliny the Younger speaks of ‘conversio’ 12 See, e.g., Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, De divinis nominibus, 4.33; in Opera (Paris: Guillaume Morel, 1561–62), 338–339; Patrologia Græca (Paris: Migne, 1857–1861), 3:733. Quoted by Richard Hooker in ‘Grace and Free Will’ in the Dublin Fragments 13, Folger Library Edition of the Works, vol. 4 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), 113. 13 Plato, Republic, Steph. 518d. See Allan Bloom, transl. and ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 197. 14 See, e.g., Cicero, De divinatione, 2.2.6: ‘moderatio et conversio tempestatum’; idem, Oratio pro L. Flacco, 37, 94: ‘conversio et perturbatio rerum’. The following classical

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as a complete alteration of point of view or opinion,15 while both Cicero and Quintilian employ the term in the formal language of rhetoric, namely as the transition from one species of composition to another, or the rounding out of a period.16 Turning our attention now in Erasmian fashion from the ancient sources to the sacred fountain of the scriptures, Christ’s first speech on coming out of the wilderness as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew echoes the admonitory cry of John the Baptist: ‘Μετανοεῖτε, ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν’—‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ as Tyndale, and subsequently the King James Version translate.17 And finally, looking briefly to the early Church Fathers, Augustine employs the term ‘conversio’ theologically when he describes in profoundly Platonic fashion the alteration in the orientation of love (amor) away from the fleeting goods of the earthly city where the will is constrained by its lust of domination (libido dominandi) and love of self (amor sui), towards the permanence of the heavenly city where the converted rational soul finds in the love of God (amor Dei) an object adequate to the fulfillment (fruitio) of its nature in whose image and likeness it is made.18 Richard Smith’s Retractation Sermon of 1547 In the heady, combative atmosphere of late-scholastic and humanist scholarship in mid-Tudor Oxford, all of these classical, scriptural, and patristic senses of ‘metanoia’ and ‘conversio’ would undoubtedly have been commonplace. Moreover, the epistemological significance of conversion as represented by Erasmus in his Enchiridion, may assist us constructively in interpreting a representative event of formal public conversion early in the reign of Edward VI, namely in Dr Richard Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ preached at Paul’s Cross in London on 15 May 1547,19 citations are derived for the most part from the definitions of ‘metanoia’ in A Greek-English Lexicion compiled by H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, New Edition ed. Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) and of ‘conversio’ in A Latin Dictionary, ed. C.T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 15 Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 9.13.18: ‘tanta conversio consecuta est’. 16 Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, 10.5.4; Cicero, de Oratore 3.54.207. 17 Matt. 4 17 18 Augustine, De civitate Dei, 14.28. See also 7.33 and 8.24 ‘conversio ad verum Deum sanctumque’. 19 Richard Smyth, A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, the yeare of oure lorde God 1547, the 15 daye of May, by Mayster Richard Smyth Doctor of diuinitye, and reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in Oxford. Reuokyng therein



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and two months later on 24 July at the University of Oxford.20 At the time, in his capacity as Regius Professor of Divinity and Prebendary of Christ Church, Oxford, Smyth held one of the most senior and prestigious academic appointments in the realm. Such was his intellectual distinction that later, during the succeeding reign of Edward’s sister Queen Mary, Smyth was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Most likely owing to his prominence in the university, Smyth was singled out by the Privy Council to preach a sermon retracting certain traditional teachings on the nature of religious authority and the sacraments that had been published in two books in the previous year in order to signal the determined shift of religious policy under the new regime. In effect, Smyth was called upon to disavow publicly doctrines and opinions that until only a few months previously, that is the final years of the reign of King Henry VIII, had represented something close to the conservative standard of orthodoxy then accepted.21 Regime change brought the necessity of conversion in its wake—and with it the necessity for Smyth to change his primary doctrinal assumptions if he was to continue in possession of his eminent academic situation, not to mention the enviable emoluments pertaining thereto as a Canon of Christ Church. Smyth’s ‘Retractation Sermon’ provides an instructive case for weighing the religious and political implications of conversion in early-modern England, as well as an opportunity to test their dependence upon the shifting epistemological assumptions of conversion proposed by Erasmus in his Enchiridion. Smyth’s career maps an exhilarating sequence of public conversions followed by later retractions which serves as something of an exemplar of the rapid adaptation necessary to the survival of recurring changes of regime. Numbering among the leading intellects of his day, Smyth graduated BA from Merton College in 1527 and was shortly thereafter elected to a fellowship of his college. He read for the BD degree which he received in 1533, was inducted to the nearby living of Cuxham. Three years later in 1536 Smyth was appointed ‘reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in certeyn Errors and faultes by hum committyd in some of hys bookes (London: [Reynolde Wolfe], Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum, 1547). 20 Richard Smyth, A playne declaration made at Oxforde the 24. daye of July, by mayster Richarde Smyth, Doctor of diuinite, vpon hys Retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, in the yeare of our lorde God, MDxlvii the xv. daye of May (London: [Reynolde Wolfe], 1547). 21 For a full discussion of the career of Richard Smyth and his recantations see J. Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth and the language of orthodoxy: re-imagining Tudor Catholic polemicism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), esp. 34–40.

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Oxford’ at King Henry VIII’s newly constituted college, formerly Cardinal College which had been suppressed in 1531 after the fall of Wolsey, and refounded by Henry in 1532. In 1546, a year before Smyth’s retractation sermon, the college was renamed Christ Church (Aedes Christi) in acknowledgement of its elevation to the status of Cathedral in a jurisdictional transformation of the English Church—this fluctuating transmutation of the college during its first twenty years itself provides an interesting example of institutional conversion in the context of the tumultuous course of Englands Reformations.22 While Smyth was an undergraduate during the 1520s Wolsey had already begun the process of dissolving numerous monasteries in order to convert their endowments to support his magnificent collegial foundations.23 The significance of this conversion of the wealth of monastic communities to the service of the university with its emphasis upon ‘the new learning’ cannot have been lost on Smyth who set out an elaborate conservative defence of ecclesiastical traditions and privileges in the final year of Henry’s reign and in fact published after the king’s demise early in 1547.24 Smyth was called upon to burn his book along with two others in defence of the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass25 in the context of a formal recantation at Paul’s Cross on 15 May 1547.26 In addition to his 22 On the question of the plurality of Tudor Reformations, see Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Peter Marshall discusses Henry VIII’s own attempt to address this matter in his Christmas Eve address to Parliament in 1545, in Marshall’s view perhaps Henry’s ‘finest hour’. ‘Mumpsimus et Sumpsimus: the intellectual origins of a Henrician Bon Mot’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001), 512–520. 23 The Priory of Wallingford near Smyth’s parish at Cuxham was among thirty monastic houses dissolved by Wolsey in order to found his college in Oxford and a Grammar School in his birthplace at Ipswich. 24 Richard Smith, A brief treatyse settynge forth diuers truthes necessary both to be beleued of Chrysten people, & kepte also, whiche are not expressed in the Scripture but left to ye church by the apostles traditio[n] … (Lo[n]don: in Paules Churche yearde, at the synge of the Mayde[n]s hed by Thomas Petit, 1547). 25 Richard Smyth, The assertion and defence of the sacramente of the aulter. Compyled and made by mayster Richard Smythe doctour of diuinitie, and reader of the Kynges maiesties lesson in his graces vniuersitie of Oxforde, dedicate vnto his hyghnes, beynge the excellent and moost worthy defendour of Christes faythe (London: Iohn Herforde for Roberte Toye, dwellynge in Paules church yarde at the sygne of the Bell, 1546). Richard Smyth, A defence of the blessed masse, and the sacrifice therof prouynge that it is auayleable both for the quycke and the dead and that by Christes owne and his apostles ordynaunce, made [and] set forth by Rycharde Smyth doctour in diuinitie, and reader of ye kynges highnes lesson of diuinitie, in his maiesties vniuersitie of Oxforde. Wherin are dyuers doubtes opened, as it were by the waye, ouer and aboue the principall, and cheyfe matter (London: John Herforde, 1546). See Löwe, Richard Smyth, 186–200. 26 Charles Wriothesley notes in his Chronicle of the Grey friars of London that on ‘the fiftenth daie of maie, 1547, Doctor Smyth of Wydyngton [i.e. Whittington] College …



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appointment at Oxford, in 1537 Smyth had also been elected Master of Whittington College, a foundation established early in the 15th century to support a small collegiate order of learned secular priests in the London Parish of St Michael Paternoster Royal.27 Whittington College was dissolved at the time of his Retractation at Paul’s Cross. In both retractation sermons Smyth formally recanted traditional Henrician orthodoxy and stated his willing adherence to the new Reformed standards favoured by Protector Somerset, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and the majority of the Council—in effect a public, though as events transpired, insincere conversion. Smyth’s two Retractation Sermons have been described as ‘masterpieces of equivocation.’28 On both occasions Smyth chose to preach on a decidedly ambiguous text from Psalm 116, 2 ‘Omnis homo mendax’29—‘every man is a liar’—a passage quoted by Paul in Romans 3:4, and made much use of by Martin Luther in his explication of the forensic doctrine of Justification by faith.30 With his typically dialectical emphasis Luther had claimed that ‘God alone is true; all men are liars’ (solus Deus verax, omnis homo mendax): ‘Just as in former times David left behind all the means by which Solomon built the temple, so also in this grace Christ left behind the Gospel and other writings so that by these and not by human decrees the church is built.’31 Given this recent controversial association of his chosen sermon text, Smyth’s discourse goes directly, albeit playfully, to the substance of the very Reformation controversy which had precipitated his recantation, namely to the question of divine versus human authority in the constitution and government of the Church. Given the context of his making a public recantation, the scripture passage ‘omnis homo mendax’ carried a heavily ironical, indeed cynical flavour. So much so, that even a traditionalist Henrician Catholic like recanted and burned two bookes … and there professed another sincere doctrine contrarie to his old papisticall order.’ See A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from a. d. 1485–1559 ed. W.D. Hamilton (Westminster: Camden society, 1875–77), 184. 27 On Whittington College, see ‘Colleges: Whittington’s College,’ A History of the County of London: Volume 1: London within the Bars, Westminster and Southwark (1909), 578–580. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid= 35393. Date accessed: 19 November 2011. 28 Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth, 35. 29 Richard Smyth. A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, Aii. 30 See, e.g., Luther’s scholion on Romans 8, Weimarer Ausgabe 56, 385. 31 For a discussion of ‘omnis homo mendax’ theme, see Kenneth Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture as seen in his Commentaries on Galatians, 1519–1538 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993), 19–28.

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Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who might reasonably be considered to have had some degree of sympathy for Smyth’s conservative doctrinal position, wrote to Edward Seymour complaining about Smyth’s evident lack of sincerity.32 In his preface to the Oxford sermon, titled A Playne declaration, Smyth admits that his first attempt at retractation had been received sceptically—and this is borne out by John Foxe in his reports of correspondence between Edward Seymour and Stephen Gardiner concerning the Paul’s Cross event. In his letter to Seymour, Gardiner takes considerable care to distance himself from Smyth: ‘I nether liked his tractation of vnwritten verities, more yet his retractacion, & was glad of my formar Iudgement, that I neyuer had familiaryty with him.’33 In a curious inversion of expected roles, Somerset—ever willing to see the best in his adversaries—applauds the sincerity of Smyth’s recantation.34 Winchester’s more judicious assumption of Smyth’s equivocation, on the other hand, might very well have been motivated more than a little disingenously by his own interest in seeking to distance himself from Smyth. In his own sermon before the young King Edward in June 1548, Gardiner attempted to sustain his high-wire balancing act by his simultaneous defense of the Royal Supremacy and the doctrine of Transubstantiation.35 For this attempt to reassert the conservative, 32 ‘And when I sawe Doctor Smithes recantacion begin with Omnis homo mendax so engleshed and such a new humility as he woulde make all the doctors of the church liers with him selfe, knowing what oppinions were abrode, it enforced me to write vnto your grace for the ease of my conscience: geuing this Iudgement of Smith that I nether liked his tractation of vnwrittē verities, more yet his retractacion, & was glad of my formar Iudgement, that I neyuer had familiaryty with him, I sawe him not (that I wot these iii yeres ne talked with him these vii yeres, as curious as I am noted in the commō welth). And wher as in his vnwritten verites he was so mad to say, Byshops in this realme may make laws, I haue witnes that I said at þe word, we should be then dawes, and was by & by sory that euer he had written of the sacramēt of the alter, which was not as it was noysed, vntouched, with that Woord, all men be liers which is a maruaillous word, as it soundeth in our tong when we saie a man were better haue a thief in his house then a lier.’ John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), IV, 795. 33 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), IV, 795. 34 Seymour wrote to Stephen Gardiner just days later, on 21 May 1547, expressing his incredulity at Gardiner’s dissatisfaction with Smith’s retractation: ‘As it apered, you be so angrye wyth hys retractions … that you cannnot abide his beginning … it appered vnto vs then of him taken but godly … we would haue wished your lorship to have written against his booke before, or now with it, if you thinke that to be defended whiche the author himself refuseth to averre. Your Lordship writeth so ernestly for lent, which we go not about to put awsaye, no more then when Dr Smith wrote so ernestly that euery man should be obedient to the bishops, the magistrates by and by went not about to bring kings and princes, and others, under their subjection.’ Foxe, Actes and Monuments, IV, 735–736. 35 ‘The sermon of the bishop of Winchester before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on Matthew XVI.13.’ Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 127.5.



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late-Henrician consensus, Gardiner shortly found himself confined to the Fleet, and later to the Tower of London where he remained a prisoner till the end of Edward’s reign. After being deprived of his chair at Oxford in 1548, Smyth fled across the Channel to the University of Louvain where, in another public occasion he retracted his retractation, and then proceeded to compose a series of tracts attacking the doctrinal views of leaders of the Edwardian Refor­ mation, including Thomas Cranmer and the Florentine scholar Peter Martyr Vermigli who, recently arrived from Strasbourg, had displaced Smyth as Regius Professor at Cranmer’s invitation.36 Later, in the wake of the accession of Queen Mary the First, Smyth returned to England, and was restored to his previous position at Oxford where, as Chancellor of the University, he presided at the heresy trial of Cranmer in 1555 during which Smyth’s own writings on the Eucharist were employed as the judicial ‘yardstick of orthodoxy’. Smyth preached publicly on the occasion of the burning for heresy of two protestant bishops, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, and employed this opportunity in the pulpit with an attempt to secure their recantations and conversions.37 Following the accession of Elizabeth Smyth attempted to flee to Scotland but was apprehended and compelled, once again, to recant and subscribe the Oath of Royal Supremacy—on this occasion his conversion was short-lived as he was able to make his escape to Louvain and was soon instituted as Reader of Scripture at the recently founded Catholic University in Douai where spent the remainder of his career until his death in 1563. The Source of Religious Authority The central question Smyth addresses in his ‘godly and faythfull retractation’ concerns the ultimate source of religious authority, and the relative weight to be attributed to the revealed scriptures and human traditions. Speaking directly to his audience towards the end of his retractation, Smyth invokes the hermeneutics of the New Learning when he attributes his error to

36 On Vermigli and Smyth in Oxford see Charlotte Methuen, ‘Reading Scripture in the University’, in Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi, and Frank James, eds., A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2009), 71–94 and Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), chapter 3. 37 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, IV.

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chapter five … the frailty of mans nature, and to my negligent marking, hauing at that tyme [i.e. in writing his books in defense of the church’s traditional prereformed doctrines] rather a respecte to a fantasy that then I had in my mynde, than too the trew and infallyble doctrine of scripture.

In the Platonic epistemology summarized by Erasmus in the Enchirdion, ‘phantasia’ is the mode of knowing proper to enchained dwellers of the Cave who, trapped in the flux of becoming, have knowledge only of sensuous shadows, mere fleeting reflections of the true reality of the forms. Smyth suggests that it is only by an ascent to the higher knowledge of the ‘infallible doctrine of scripture’ that one is able to recognize, as Erasmus put it in the Enchiridion, the true ‘being’ which stands behind the ‘becoming’, by looking as it were upon the divine light of the Sun. In this allusion to the Platonic epistemology, Smyth identifies human traditions with a lower knowledge, while the light of the Scripture assumes the clarity of the philosopher’s vision. As such, Smyth’s Retractation appears to agree with Erasmus’s humanist account of epistemological conversion away from thralldom to the objects of ‘phantasie’ in the form of the sensuous externals of human traditions and back to the sources of the Sacred Oracles of Scripture. In the opening passage of his sermon Smyth invokes the exemplar of Augustine’s Liber Retractationum, a book composed near the end of his life.38 If Augustine did it, ‘shall I now be ashamed to acknoledge my self to haue ben deceyued in my Booke of Tradition?’ Smyth asks rhetorically. If retractation of theological opinions was common practice among the early Church Fathers, then such a course cannot really be all that serious a matter now.39 Smyth’s ‘Booke of Tradition’ titled A brief Treatyse, setting furth diuerse truthes, necessary both too be beleued and Christen people, had been published earlier in 1547, the same year as his recantation, and set forth an argument defending the observance of certain human traditions, precepts, ordinances, rites and ceremonies not contained in Scripture, but nonetheless necessary to salvation. This was one of Smyth’s books described by Charles Wriothesley as having been ritually burnt at Paul’s Cross at the time of Smyth’s recantation: ‘which booke I do Reproue and Reuoke in dyuers faultes in it.’40 The first part of the Retractation sermon consists of Smyth’s repudiation of the six principal points in the argument 38 Aurelius Augustine, Opera omnia, Retractationum libri duo, in Patrologia Latina 32, 583–656. Augustine, The Retractations, translated by Sister Mary Inez Bogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). 39 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiir. 40 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiir.



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of A brief Treatyse combined with a second part revoking his traditionalist teaching concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass. Taken together these two parts of the Retractation comprise the principal theological questions in dispute at the time, namely the disposition of authority and the hermeneutics of sacramental presence as evidenced by the many sermons preached at Paul’s Cross on these matters. Moreover the questions of authority and sacramental presence are very closely connected in the context of presuppositions concerning the nature of conversion itself. In his Booke of Traditions Smyth defended the ‘autorite of Bysshoppes in makiyng lawes and ordenances’ in such manner as to impugne the jurisdiction of both Prince and Parliament.41 In so doing he implied that ecclesiastical tradition was authoritative independently of ‘the consent and auctoritie of the Prince and people,’ and thus constituted a direct challenge to the Act of Supremacy.42 In the retractation Smyth sets out to toe the line: ¶ Secondly, I say and affirme that no Bysshop nor none of the clergy assembled togither haue auctoritie to make any Lawes or Decrees besydes Gods Law ouer the people without the consent of the Princes and the people: and if they do make anye suche, no man is bounde to obey theym. ¶ Thirdly, I say that in those countryes, where by the auctorite of the Prince they haue made any suche Lawes, thauctorite of those Lawes, doth not appende and hang of the Bisshops and the Clergy, but of the princes and cheif heds in euery country.43 ¶ Fourthly, I say and affirme that within this Realme of England and other the kinges Dominions, there is [B.ii.r] is no Law, Decree, Ordinaunce or constitution ecclesiasticall in force and auaileable by any mans auctority, but only by the kynges maiestyes auctority or of his Parliament.44

Having treated the jurisdiction of Crown, Parliament, and Clergy, he then proceeds to repudiate the authority of tradition in the form of the 41 Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiiv. 42 The parliamentary sessions of 1533–1534 made decisive moves against the papacy with the formal enactment of the Royal Supremacy. In strictly constitutional terms, a series of statutes beginning with the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome (1533), followed by the Act of Supremacy (1534), and culminating with an Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome (1536) accomplish the revolution which established Henry VIII’s headship of the Church. The preamble of the Act of Supremacy famously declares that England is an ‘empire,’ governed by one Supreme Head, namely the King, and that under his rule the Church was wholly self-sufficient ‘without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons.’ 24 Henry VIII, c. 12; 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; 28 Henry VIII, c. 10. 43 Smyth here affirms the formal Submission of the Clergy, 25 Henry VIII cap. 19; Statutes of the Realm III, 460–461. 44 In this Smyth affirms the Act of Supremacy itself, 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; Statutes of the Realm III, 492–493.

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spurious Clementine Epistles, forgeries exposed as such in the fifteenth century by Nicholas of Cusa and Lorenzo Valla.45 For centuries these decretals had provided the foundation for papal claims to supremacy of authority over the Emperor and other princes and, according to Smyth in his Booke of Traditions, ‘must be taken for the Appostles doctrine and techyng’—a confusion of human and divine sources according to the hermeneutics of the New Learning:46 Now hauynge red many thynges, whiche at that tyme I had not diligently marked and wayed: I doo thinke, affirme, and confesse that doctrine to be not trew, but a wayne, unlawfull, uniust, and unportable berdeinn to Christen consciences: and that those Canons pretended to be of thappostles making and gatherd of saint Clement, not to be made of thappostles.47

Finally Smyth recants his assertion that numerous ritual customs and practices prescribed by ecclesiastical tradition but not found in Holy Scripture must be observed ‘under payne of dampnation’48 and goes on to affirm the classic Reformed position concerning the sufficiency of Scripture alone to salvation. Many of the ecclesiastical customs listed by Smyth as being in dispute belong to the category of the very religious practices that Erasmus had censured in the Enchiridion as belonging to the sphere of the sensuous imagination: viz. ‘the hallowyng of the water in the font, the thrise dippyng of the Chylde in the water at the Christenyng, the puttyng on of the Chrisome, the Consecration of the Oyle, and Anoyntyng of the christened chylde, the hallowyng of the Aulters, the prayeng towardes the East, the Sensyng of the aultare, the Wasshyng of the handes, and sayeng Confitoer, and lifting up of the Sacrament of the Masse, the makyng of Holy water …’49 In his Retractation, all of these ceremonies and traditional practices are to be rendered subject to the 45 Smyth, Retractation, Biiv—Biiiv and Ciiv. The Clementine Epistles are included among 58 out of 60 apocryphal letters or decrees attributed to the popes from St. Clement (88–97) to Melchiades (311–314) and are now known to be forgeries. See the excellent and highly accessible account is the essay by E.H. Davenport, The False Decretals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916), xxii. Cf. also William Shafer, Codices pseudo-Isidoriani: a palaeographico-historical study, Monumenta iuris canonici, Series C: Subsidia vol. 3 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971). With the possible exception of Hincmar in the 9th century and the guarded expression of the Synod of Gerstungen, no one raised a voice against the forgeries until Valla and Cusanus in the fifteenth century. See Philip Schaff, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. IX (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1953), 347. 46 Smyth, Retractation, Biiv. 47 Smyth, Retractation, Biiir. 48 Smyth, Retractation, Biiiv. 49 Smyth, Retractation, Biiiv—Bivr.



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authority of the king’s majesty, either to receive or to abrogate, and his subjects ‘may use his said lybertie without any daunger of synne or scruple of conscience, either to the kynges maiestie which gaue lybertie, or to him whiche hath obteyned the lybertie or Dispensacion.’50 All of this Smyth ascribes to a conversion away from ‘a respecte to a fantasy that then I had in my mynde, than to the trew and infallyble doctrine of scripture’—yet, as Gardiner shrewdly observed, the entire discourse of the retractation is construed under the crafty aegis of ‘Omnis homo mendax.’

50 Smyth, Retractation, Ciiiv.

CHAPTER SIX

POLITICAL HERMENEUTICS: JOHN JEWEL’S ‘CHALLENGE SERMON’ AT PAUL’S CROSS, 1559 John Jewel’s famous ‘Challenge Sermon’ delivered not long after the accession of Elizabeth I is especially significant for setting the terms of disputation between reformers and traditionalists concerning England’s religious identity during the first decade of her reign, in the so-called ‘Great Controversy’ of the 1560s.1 While Jewel’s framing of his formal challenge emphasized a claim to the reformers’ adherence to the authority of scripture and the primitive church, the main substance of the sermon concerns the hermeneutics of sacramental presence, namely how rightly to interpret the relation between a sacramental sign (signum) and the mystical reality signified by that sign (res significata). To a large extent the Challenge Sermon constitutes a theological exploration of the principles of semiotics. Our aim is to examine Jewel’s theory of signs, its antecedents (both in the previous decade, as well as much earlier in patristic and medieval thought), and its consequences for the definition of England’s religious identity in the second half of the sixteenth century. We will consider in particular the sermon’s implications with respect to moral ontology in its shift away from the deep assumptions of ‘sacramental culture’ towards what has been termed a ‘culture of persuasion’.2 Jewel’s argument offers a helpful vantage-point for examining the much-disputed question of the ‘Reformation and the disenchantment of the world’ and for re-visiting the assumptions of revisionist historiography.3 Finally, we offer the proposal that Jewel’s approach to the question concerning the hermeneutics of the sacrament provides a means of interpreting the marked prominence and influence of the institution of Paul’s Cross itself in the context of the public life of the realm. In the course of 1 26 November 1559. See The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from a.d. 1550 to a.d. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: J.B. Nichols and Son for the Camden Society, 1848), 218. 2 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 3 Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed,’ The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497–528.



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the latter half of the 16th century this outdoor pulpit contributes greatly to the inauguration of an early-modern public sphere—in a deep cultural sense, to quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium is indeed the message.4 Our goal in addressing Jewel’s Challenge Sermon, therefore, is to analyse the sacramental hermeneutics underlying the radical reconstruction of ‘religious identity’ in late-Tudor England in the light of recent historiographical concerns about the disenchantment thesis; to consider the conspicuous expansion of a popular ‘culture of persuasion’ throughout this period as the chief means of this reconstruction; and finally to explore the emergence of an early-modern ‘public sphere’ of discourse as a consequence of the unprecedented events associated with the Great Controversy of the 1560s—all in the context of the outdoor pulpit at Paul’s Cross. The Public Pulpit England was exceptional in early-modern Europe for its high concentration of the principal instruments of government and in having a large, well-informed population, both within a single urban location. Moreover, unlike other European capitals, London enjoyed a virtual monopoly of printing.5 Consequently, it was relatively more feasible here to engage and cultivate a highly sophisticated and active public opinion. Of arguably even greater significance than the press, however, was the institution of public preaching.6 Recent studies by Peter Lake, Michael Questier and Alexandra Halasz, among others, have shown that religious discourse played a critical role in shaping the contours of an emerging civil society in Elizabethan England, and that shifting religious assumptions can be credited in particular with fostering a nascent early-modern ‘public sphere’.7 Concerning the process 4 The reference is to McLuhan’s thesis that the printing press changed civilization by creating a ‘new human environment.’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, ed. Lewis Lapham (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 7–21. 5 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, 133–134. 6 Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 40–48. 7 Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, The politics of the public sphere in early modern England (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2007). P. Lake, ‘Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England.’ Journal of British Studies 45.2 (2006), 270–292. Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’: the Edmund Campion Affair in Context.’ Journal of Modern History 72.3 (2000), 587–627. Halasz, Alexandra. The marketplace of print: pamphlets and the public sphere in early modern

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of transformation from a ritually focussed, late-medieval ‘representative’ publicity to an early-modern bourgeois public sphere, as well as in certain recent attempts to define the nature of ‘publics’ scholars have tended largely to ascribe primary importance to the medium of print in comparison with the spoken word.8 At one extreme Halasz has treated the earlymodern public sphere in England as an ‘unsituated’ or ‘virtual’ discourse, conducted principally by means of a public ‘marketplace of print’ operating almost entirely through pamphlets, newsbooks, and so on with authors, printers, booksellers, and readers as the meaningfully engaged participants.9 On the other side, Andrew Pettegree has cautioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass movement in an age before mass literacy must be careful to ‘relocate the role of the book, as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion’ and that preaching in particular should be ‘restored to its central place as the ‘bedrock’ around which the churches harnessed other communication media’.10 Natalie Mears proposes a plausible model somewhere between the extremes of an ‘un-situated’, imaginary public construct of print, and a physically determinate, ‘situated’ public gathering for the purposes of actual communication and debate as at the Inns of Court, for example. For Mears ‘the Elizabethan public sphere and the concept of the public sphere itself, therefore, have to be seen as a combination of both’ modes.11 Elizabethan popular debate, especially on questions of religious reform, was thus characterised by such ‘unsituated discourse’ as printed sermons, admonitions, scholarly polemics, the scurrilous screed of Martin Marprelate while at the same time, the subject matter of this printed conversation was discussed locally—in the vicinity of pulpits, in coffee houses, workshops, markets, and parish churches—thereby meeting a basic test conceived by Habermas, namely that the ‘public sphere’ is an activity typically

England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. See also Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of protestant England (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988) and his inaugural lecture on appointment to the Regius chair of modern history at the University of Cambridge, ‘De republica Anglorum: or, history with the politics put back,’ in Collinson, ed., Elizabethan essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 1–29. 8 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 14–26. 9 Alexandra Halasz, The marketplace of print, 115–16, 23–34. For a critical view of this approach, see Natalie Mears, Queenship and political discourse in the Elizabethan realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26, 184. 10 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, 39. 11 Mears, Queenship and political discourse, 268.



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experienced in a determinate physical locality and in the company of other flesh-and-blood participants.12 Certainly none of the sixteenth-century Reformers themselves underestimated the critical importance of preaching and, therefore, of orality to their religious task; the evangelical avant-garde placed enormous emphasis on the claim that faith comes through hearing, to the point where the formula ‘fides ex auditu’ came to be universally regarded as a primary axiom of Reformation.13 The most conspicuously ‘situated’ instance of this axiom was undoubtedly public preaching—and the outdoor pulpit in Paul’s churchyard counts among the most influential of all venues for a situated discourse linking rulers and ruled from the outset of the Henrician Reformation in the early 1530s down to the final years of the reign of Elizabeth and beyond.14 Our present inquiry proposes an examination of the link between Tudor religious culture and the nascent public sphere in light one of the most popular of all themes to be addressed from the pulpit at Paul’s Cross in the mid- to late-16th century, namely the right definition of the nature of the sacrament. MacLure’s Register of Sermons reveals that this sermon topic was preached with marked frequency from the reign of Edward VI through the first decade after the accession of Elizabeth than the right definition of the nature of the sacrament.15 The disputation verged on the feverish in the late 1540s and early 1550s. Richard Smyth, shortly to be replaced by Peter Martyr Vermigli in the Regius Chair at Oxford, recanted his books written in defense of the traditional teaching on the Mass in a formal retractation sermon on 15 May 1547.16 In November of the same year Nicholas Ridley preached 12 See Natalie Mears’s chapter on ‘The Elizabethan public sphere’ in Queenship and political discourse, 182–216. 13 On the complex question of sermon auditory, see Arnold Hunt, ‘The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Hughes Oliphant Old, The reading and preaching of the scriptures in the worship of the Christian church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 183–184. 14 Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1534–1570,’ Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 31.1 (2008), 3–29. 15 MacLure, Register of Sermons, 28–50. 16 See chapter five above. A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse in London, the yeare of oure lorde God 1547, the 15 daye of May, by mayster Richard Smyth Doctor of diuinitye, and reader of the Kynges maiestyes lecture in Oxford (London: [R. Wolfe], 1547). Idem, The assertion and defence of the sacramente of the aulter. Compyled and made by mayster Richard Smythe doctour of diuinitie, and reader of the Kynges maiesties lesson in his graces vniuersitie of Oxforde, dedicate vnto his hyghnes, beynge the excellent and moost worthy defendour of Christes faythe (London: Iohn Herforde, for Roberte Toye, dwellynge in Paules church yarde at the sygne of the Bell, 1546). Three years later, now residing across the Channel in Louvain where he had been appointed professor of divinity, Smith

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against transubstantiation.17 On 29 June 1548 before an immense audience at Paul’s Cross, and in good Henrician style, Stephen Gardiner vigorously upheld both the royal supremacy and the dissolution of the chantries while, in the same sermon, in spite of Somerset’s explicit prohibition, he mounted a robust defence of the traditional doctrine of the mass and soon found himself committed to the Fleet prison for his pains.18 On 8 July 1548 Richard Cox, Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, answered Gardiner with a vindication of the evangelical sacramental teaching soon to be authorized by statute.19 Wriothesley notes that ‘All thoys preachers that prechyd at Powlles crosse at that time spake moche agyne the bysshope of Wynchester’.20 Edmund Bonner was ordered to preach in favour of the vernacular liturgy and the Act of Uniformity at Paul’s Cross on 1 September 1549, but ‘did spend most of his sermon about the gross, carnel, and papistical presence of Christ’s body in the sacrament’.21 Bonner was shortly thereafter deprived of his bishopric following a trial presided over by Thomas Cranmer. John Hooper, later Bishop of Gloucester, responded to Bonner on the 22 September following.22 On 1 June 1550 Thomas Kyrkham asserted that there was ‘no substance but bread and wine’ in the sacrament.’23 Following the death of Edward VI a penned an attack on Cranmer’s eucharistic theology. See A confutation of a certen booke, called a defence of the true, and Catholike doctrine of the sacrame[n]t, &c. sette fourth of late in the name of Thomas Archebysshoppe of Canterburye. By Rycharde Smyth, Docter of diuinite, and some tyme reader of the same in Oxforde [Paris: R. Chaudière, 1550?]. See J. Andreas Löwe, Richard Smyth and the language of orthodoxy: re-imagining Tudor Catholic polemicism (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003), 34–39. Ellen A. Macek, ‘Richard Smith: Tudor cleric in defense of traditional belief and practice,’ The Catholic Historical Review 72.3 (1986), 383–402. 17 Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.437; 7:520, 523. See Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1643, revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989), 28. 18 CCCC MS 127.5, ‘The sermon of the bishop of Winchester [Stephen Gardiner] before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on Matthew XVI.13.’ See also CCCC MS 106.175, fol. 487, ‘Letter from the duke of Somerset to Gardiner bishop of Winchester charging him not to meddle with any matter of controversy in his sermon, Syon, June 28, 1548.’ 19 The Act of Uniformity (1549), 2 and 3 Edward VI, c. 1. See Sir Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from a.d. 1485 to 1559, ed. W.D. Hamilton, from a transcript made early in the seventeenth century for the third Earl of Southampton (Westminster: Camden Society, 1875–77), vol. 2.4; Chronicle of the Grey friars of London, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1852), 56. MacLure, Register of sermons, 29. 20 Wrioth. Chron., 2.4; see also Grey friars Chron., 56. 21 Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 5.745, 746. See also Wrioth. Chron., 2.24. 22 Grey Friars Chron., 63. See MacLure, Register of Sermons, 31. 23 Grey Friars Chron., 67.



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series of preachers staunchly defended the traditional doctrine of the Mass and transubstantiation at Paul’s Cross. On 20 August 1553, shortly after Mary’s accession, Thomas Watson, then chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester, surrounded by 200 of the Queen’s guard, exhorted his auditory at Paul’s Cross not to trust the evangelical preachers, but that they should ‘keep the ould faithe, and edifye the ould Temple againe.’24 Hugh Weston notoriously named the Lord’s Table ‘an oyster board’ two months later on 22 October in a sermon that publicized the eucharistic debate over which he was then presiding as Prolocutor of the lower house of the Convocation of Canterbury.25 Henry Machyn reports George Coates, bishop of Chester, defending the traditional sacramental teaching on 16 December 1554.26 The Queen’s chaplain, Hugh Glasier, offered a refutation at Paul’s Cross ‘of those who would explain the bad weather of the previous two years as God’s judgement for the return of the ‘idolatrous’ mass.27 It would be difficult to identify another locus of theology more hotly disputed in the decade immediately preceding Jewel’s Challenge 24 Machyn, Diary, 41; Wrioth. Chron., 2.99–100; Grey Friars Chron., 83; Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.768. MacLure, Register of Sermons, 35. 25 Machyn, Diary, 46; Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.541; 7.778. See MacLure, Register of Sermons, 35. 26 Machyn, Diary, 79. 27 Hugh Glasier, A notable and very fruictefull Sermon made at Paules Crosse the XXV. day of August, by maister Hughe Glasier, Chapleyn to the Quenes most excellent maiestie, Perused by the reuerende father in god Edmond bishop of London, and by him approued, commended, and greatly liked: and therefore nowe set furth in print, by his auctoritie and commaundement. Read, and iudge. Loke, and lyke (London: Robert Caly, within the precinct of the late dissolued house of the graye Freers, nowe conuerted to an hospital, called Christes hospitall, 1555), Bviiv-Bviiiv. [Transcription below from a copy in St Paul’s Cathedral Library.] ‘But here parcase some wyll say (as some lewedly haue sayd) howe can the people be at unitie, seyng the abhominable ydole of the sacrament of the Aulter is in such price and estimation, in this realme? and howe can any man with a quiet heart and conscience be content with the idolatrie that is used in the Masse? Wee se (say they) what a plague and punishment [B.viii.r°] almightie God hath sent to this realme, these ii. Yeres last past, syns this idole, and idolatrie hath been restored and set up againe. What a plage (say thei) haue we had the last yeare, by exceading drought and heate? And what a plage (say they) haue wee hadde this present yeare, by exceading rayne and moysture? This do the noughtie heretikes and schimatikes rayle, and blaspheme in corners. No no (good people) wee haue not been, nor be plaged, for hauing of the Masse, or for worshipping and honouring of the blessed sacrament of the aulter, used in the Masse, but rather for the not hauing, not worshippyng and honouring of it. For if the sacrment be an Idole, and such idolatrie in the Masse, as is falsly and untruely surmised, and [B.viii.v°], blasphemously spoken and rayled by these unthriftes. Howe hath God wynked at suche thinges within this realme, these many hundreth yeres? Hath not the Masse been had, and deuoutly heard and songe: yea, and the sayd sacrament very reuerently used and honoured of all antiquitie within this realme, and the realme in all honour, ryches and welth hath in all conditions florished, and prospered?’

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Sermon than the doctrine of the mass with the attention of all concerned focussed on the semiotics of ‘presence’. No other single doctrine had quite the same capacity to bring into clear focus the most profound assumptions of ‘moral ontology’ whether traditionalist or evangelical.28 Our purpose, then, is threefold: first to demonstrate that for the major participants in the Great Controversy, both reformers and traditionalists, sacramental hermeneutics constitute a primary vehicle in attempts to determine and define religious identity; secondly to argue that the hermeneutics of the sacrament provide an invaluable key to interpreting the political significance of the culture of persuasion exemplified by the institution of public preaching at Paul’s Cross; and finally to suggest that this hermeneutical shift and the new consequence accorded to preaching serve to elucidate the deep sources of an emerging public sphere by virtue of their being among the most important contemporary indicators of early-modern attempts to formulate a horizon of meaning. Before proceeding further with this proposal, however, it would be of some help to review more closely the broad historiographical context of our inquiry with respect to the thesis of ‘disenchantment’. Disenchantment and the Public Sphere In a recent critical survey of the ongoing debate about the role of the Protestant Reformation in a process commonly referred to as the ‘disenchantment of the world’, Alexandra Walsham offers a penetrating and helpful account of the development of this thesis from its popularisation by the research of Max Weber.29 Walsham explores in some detail the relevance of this theme to recent historiography of the English Reformation 28 See Bodleian Tanner MS 50, fols. 72r-72v for notes taken by an anonymous observer at Paul’s Cross of sermons preached in the period between June 1565 and September 1566 at the height of the ‘Great Controversy’. In a sermon preached on St Bartholomew’s Day, 23 August 1566, John Bullingham, then prebendary of Wenlocksburn in the diocese of London and later Bishop of Gloucester, refers repeatedly to the divine Word as ‘God’s precious Jewell’ and contrasts ‘wonders donne by the Apostles wear donne playnly withouth ledgerdamayne … we callinge to remembrance the signes and wonders that Antichriste bragged and boasts of, we may be shamed at the hearinge of them … the wonder of transubstantiation is the greatest wonder for th[ey] haue a substance without his accidents, to haue the forme of a man in the forme of bread it is a wonder, to haue a mans boddy at one tyme in many places it is a wonder, to haue his boddy in heaven and in the prests hand allatone tyme it is a wonder …’ 29 Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed,’ The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497–528.



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with particular reference to its evolving assumptions concerning the place of the sacred and the supernatural in the context of the religious and political upheavals of the early modern period. On one side there is the familiar narrative of progress offered by Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, and Sir Keith Thomas with its teleological emphasis on the ‘rational religiosity’ of the reformers as a necessary transitional phase through which English society travelled on its way to the modern world.30 On this view, Protestant iconoclasm motivated by skepticism of the possibility of the external, physical immanence of the holy became the engine of desacralization, and consequently of modernization.31 With its emphasis on the polarity of traditional religion and the new evangelical identity, much of earlier 20thcentury historiography of the English Reformation reflects this view. Tending in the contrary direction is the ‘bold revisionist backlash’ against the disenchantment thesis, various in guise but nonetheless approaching what Walsham identifies as the ‘current historical consensus’.32 Resistance to the disenchantment thesis can be identified, for example, in Robert Scribner’s emphasis on the underlying continuities between Protestant and Catholic identities,33 or in the recent tendency to think in terms of a ‘Long Reformation’ extended over a period of centuries,34 or in Eamon Duffy’s extensive, detailed, and influential research on the vitality of latemedieval piety,35 or more generally in sustained post-modern critique of any and all claims based upon the assertion of a doctrine of progress 30 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, transl. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963); idem, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. Talcott Parsons (New York and London: Scribners, Allen, and Unwin, 1930), 105, 117, 149. Ernst Troeltsch, ‘Renaissance and Reformation’, transl. L.W. Spitz (ed.), The Reformation: Basic Interpretations (Lexington, Mass.: D C Heath, 1972), 261–296. Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 31 Walsham, ‘Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed’, 498–505. See also Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1350–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12–14. 32 Walsham, ‘Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed’, 500. 33 See Robert Scribner, Religion and culture in Germany (1400–1800), ed. Lyndal Roper (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 98. See also ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993), 475–94 and his essays ‘Reformation and Desacralisation: from Sacramental World to Moralised Universe’ and ‘Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe’, both in Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe, ed. Ronald Po-Chia Hsia and Robert Scribner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 11–34, 75–92. 34 Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London; Bristol, PA: UCL Press, 1998). 35 Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2005).

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founded upon universal rationality. This, of course, is to name but a few channels of current revisionist leaning. In almost every quarter Weber and the neo-Whig historians have been well and truly eclipsed. Revisionism rules—or so at least it would seem. In the context of our present inquiry, however, what is particularly intriguing about Walsham’s discussion is the intimation of an alternative path, that is to say a post-revisionist third option. It is important from the outset to distinguish ‘desacralization’ understood as a decline of belief in divine immanence, from ‘secularization’ as a rejection or marginalization of religion as such. In this respect Walsham’s analysis appears to be broadly in agreement with Charles Taylor for whom the formulation of the ‘moral ontology of modernity’ is thoroughly rooted in religious self-understanding.36 For Taylor there is definitely irony in the fact that ‘the moral sources of emerging modern identity are far richer than the impoverished language of modernity’s most zealous defenders.’37 Taylor’s main point is that critical, scientific reason is inclined to neglect the religious, theological, and metaphysical categories which constitute the groundwork or the ‘sources’ of the modern self. The selfunderstanding of modernity as Enlightenment is particularly blind when it comes to acknowledging the deep religious foundations upon which its own great project is erected. The ‘disenchantment’ thesis itself is thus deeply implicated in the critical-scientific proclivity to ignore the moralontological ‘sources’ of modernity. As Jonathan Clark maintains, the defenders of modernity are especially prone to discounting religion as either an explanation or an engine of historical change.38 At the same time, it is almost equally problematic from a ‘high’ revisionist standpoint to give a satisfactory account of the origins of modernity. If the forces of de-sacralization and disenchantment are indeed so manifestly unsuccessful and ineffectual, where then does modernity come from? With marked emphasis on the popular failure of Reformation in England, Christopher Haigh, among others, has emphatically dismissed the plausibility of theological discourse as providing a useful or even intelligible explanation 36 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. 37 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 3. 38 Jonathan Clark, ‘The re-enchantment of the world? Religion and monarchy in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, Monarchy and religion: the transformation of royal culture in eighteenth-century Europe, ed. Michael Schaich (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), chapter. 2; cited by Walsham, 527.



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of these events.39 Yet, on the other hand, how are we to account—in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s words—for the undeniably ‘howling success’ of the Reformation by the end of Elizabeth’s reign?40 Perhaps the problem here is methodological. Is there some way in which an emerging modernity can be grasped with a mode of discourse which is not identifiably modern, which does not know itself as scientific, critical, and enlightened? Walsham implies such a post-revisionist path when she concludes that the ‘Reformation must be conceived of as both an intellectual and a social process: we have to recognize the capacity of thought to shape and influence, precipitate and anticipate action and practice and vice versa.’ In an echo of Thucydides, for whom speeches (logoi) and deeds (erga) are intimately bound together in the narrative of history,41 ‘both ideas and events must be accorded an element of agency.’42 Surely it is the historian’s task to pursue both. Walsham tellingly concludes with the insight that ‘the debate about the ‘rationality’ or ‘modernity’ of the Reformation is in this sense both a question mal posée and a crippling barrier to clear thinking.’43 On this view, the Reformation must first be construed according to the principles of its own self-understanding; and this surely requires a patient attempt to uncover the underlying presuppositions and distinctive modes of argument of the principal actors, to honour as far as possible their own primary categories and distinctive terms of reference, and to maintain throughout the highest degree of respect for their alien character. As Euan Cameron argues in his recent monograph Enchanted Europe, ‘[m]edieval and early modern Europeans read their world theologically, and we must take their theological readings of it seriously.’44 In a discussion of honest historiography, Walter Benjamin once observed that it is the task of the ethical historian ‘to rescue the past’.45 Such redemption requires that these sources be enabled to speak more authentically for themselves. 39 Christopher Haigh, ‘Success and failure in the English Reformation,’ Past and Present 173 (2001), 28–49. Gerald Strauss, ‘Success and failure in the German Reformation,’ Past and Present 67 (1975), 30–63, both cited by Walsham, 500. 40 Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘The impact of the English Reformation’, Historical Journal 38 (1995), 152. 41 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, translated by Thomas Hobbes and edited by David Grene (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959). 42 Walsham, ‘Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed’, 527 43 Walsham, ‘Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed’, 527. 44 Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe, 28. 45 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1992), 255.

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Just such an approach will assist immensely in our present task. By recognizing in the Reformation a dynamic ‘intellectual process’ in need of interpretation on its own primary terms, assumptions, and categories—that is to say, through the theological, the moral-ontological, the metaphysical, and the sacral—our point of departure is to acknowledge this alien, pre-scientific mentalité and to make every possible effort in seeking to understand both ideas and events by suspending the temptation to make a ‘critical’ judgement. We must respect the sources and ask what exactly is in dispute theologically in the 1560s in this question of sacramental presence? Why is this arcane question concerning physical divine immanence in the eucharistic elements (or lack thereof, as the case may be) of such universally acknowledged high significance for the principal actors in these events, and why is this seemingly very particular question so heatedly engaged in the most sustained propaganda campaign hitherto? How are the theological ideas and the public and political events ignited by Jewel’s sermon both ‘elements of agency’, as Walsham suggests, and also ‘dynamically interactive’? Do the theological ideas underpinning the hermeneutics of sacramental presence shed light on the phenomenon of the Jewel’s Challenge sermon and the subsequent conduct of the Great Controversy itself as ‘public’ events? And do these ideas illuminate in particular the markedly increased significance of the institution of the public outdoor sermon, especially at the venue of Paul’s Cross? If we are to make sense of the rapid proliferation of open and popular public debate in the later sixteenth century—a phenomenon Andrew Pettegree has aptly described as the rise of a ‘culture of persuasion’—we must attend closely to the theological substance of the ‘speeches’ (logoi) and their relevance to the remarkable ‘events’ (erga) surrounding them.46 Nowhere arguably is this dynamic public interplay of speech and event more relevant in the decade following the accession of Elizabeth than at Paul’s Cross. To this end, then, we propose to address three matters: first, there will be a discussion of the main theological concern of Jewel’s Challenge Sermon. This will be followed by a consideration of the significance of this theology to the interpretation of his public preaching at 46 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39. Pettegree has cautioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass movement in an age before mass literacy must be careful to ‘relocate the role of the book, as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion,’ and especially with respect to public preaching. ‘Scripturally-based preaching is restored to its central place as the ‘bedrock’ around which the churches harnessed other communication media.’



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Paul’s Cross, and to the conduct of the subsequent controversy more generally, particularly in the light of the central provocative ‘sacramental idea’ which sparked the event. And finally, we will inquire whether such an approach to the interpretation of Elizabethan sacramental hermeneutics and of the noteworthy public events surrounding their diffusion contributes to advancing the discussion of broader methodological and historiographical concerns. What does our probing of the pre-modern assumptions of this Elizabethan sacramental controversy reveal concerning the stand-off between the Weberian disenchantment thesis and the revisionist reaction against it? Is there a possibility in this of advancing the ‘post-revisionist’ historiographical turn? Jewel’s ‘Challenge Sermon’ On 26 November 1559, John Jewel preached his notorious ‘Challenge’ at Paul’s Cross, certainly the most famous sermon delivered in the early years after the accession of Elizabeth, and arguably one of the most influential of all sermons preached at Paul’s Cross throughout the 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.47 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 theological topic from among those most hotly disputed throughout the sixteenth century, namely the web of doctrine concerning the hermeneutics of the Eucharist, with the focus of his argument chiefly upon the question of sacramental presence.48 In the course of his sermon Jewel openly addressed defenders of the old religion, and offered to engage any and all combatants in a 47 Machyn, Diary, 218. See Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: the dilemmas of an Erastian reformer (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 70–85. 48 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, wher-upon d. [Henry] Cole first sought occasion to encounter (London: John Day, 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 before the Quenes Maiestie, and hyr most honorable Cou[n]sayle (London: John Day, 1560), fols. 120–177. 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, chapter 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.’

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public trial of the question whether traditional teaching concerning the Mass 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.’49 Jewel’s challenge triggered a public sensation; the response elicited in both pulpit and press was virtually unprecedented. Breaking the accustomed pattern, Jewel was invited to deliver the sermon a second time before the Queen in the Chapel Royal on 17 March 1560, and he preached an expanded version once again at Paul’s Cross two weeks later.50 Henry Cole, Dean of St Paul’s and leading traditionalist, immediately took up Jewel’s challenge, and the letters exchanged between the two churchmen were published together with the sermon itself soon afterwards.51 This was only the beginning. The disputation sparked by Jewel’s sermon—an event customarily referred to as the ‘Great Controversy’ of the 1560s—would consume the theological energies of a legion of scholars and preachers in the course of the ensuing decade. An expanded, polished, and widely circulated adaptation of the sermon, published in both Latin and English under the title An Apologie of the Church of England, constituted the government’s officially sanctioned response to Pope Pius IV’s invitation to England to send an ambassador to attend the Council of Trent.52 The published contributions of Jewel himself and his supporters, combined with the counter-offensive led by Thomas Harding and the English recusant exiles at the University of Louvain and Douai, produced more than fifty published sermons, treatises, and pamphlets within just eight years of Jewel’s first appearance at Paul’s Cross. For England such a sustained spate of printed works devoted to a single scholarly disputation was 49 Jewel, The copie of a sermon, fols. 139–140. All references to the ‘Challenge Sermon’ are taken from this edition. 50 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.’ See her forthcoming monograph, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), chapter 1, n. 135. 51 See True copies of the letters (1560). 52 John Jewel, An apologie, or aunswer in defence of the Church of England concerninge the state of religion vsed in the same. Newly set forth in Latin, and nowe translated into Englishe (London: [Reginald Wolf], 1562). For an account of the gestation of the Apology, see John Booty’s Introduction to his edition of John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England (Ithaka, NY: Cornell University Press for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1963; repr. 2002).



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wholly without precedent.53 While the controversy swiftly expanded to include a broad selection of theological concerns—Jewel himself enumerated 27 specific topics in his Apology—there was, nonetheless, broad agreement on all sides that the essential core of the controversy was the original question concerning the nature of sacramental presence broached in Jewel’s initial sermon at Paul’s Cross. For early Elizabethan traditionalists and evangelicals alike, the hermeneutics of the sacrament became the touchstone in attempts to formulate religious self-understanding, with broad implications not only for the definition of the institutions of ecclesiastical and political society, but especially for the deepest assumptions of what Charles Taylor refers to as the ‘moral ontology’ of a distinctively early-modern civil identity, an identity associated with an emerging public sphere.54 In the context of recently intensified debate about the role of the Reformation in the process of ‘the disenchantment of the world’ with the consequent emergence of a secularized, de-sacralized modernity, Jewel’s sermon, together with the remarkable reaction it provoked, invites renewed attention. The sacramental discussion of the Challenge Sermon contains the intriguing possibility of sharply focussing this pivotal question of current Reformation historiography and therefore of shedding light on the questions of both religious identity and the intellectual origins of modernity. When considering the historical significance of deep assumptions about ‘enchantment’, claims regarding the possible 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 the conception of sacramental ‘presence’. Jewel’s sermon and the controversy it provoked present a valuable test case to address some of the critical questions which face the historian who seeks to come to grips with current issues concerning disenchantment vs. re-enchantment, of modernizing vs. sacralizing. In the context of these broader historiographical concerns, our inquiry into the Challenge Sermon and the ensuing theological polemics of the 53 For a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the Great Controversy, see John E. Booty, John Jewel as apologist of the Church of England (London: Published for the Church Historical Society [by] SPCK, 1963), 58–82. For a full bibliography of the literature of the controversy, see Peter Milward, Religious controversies of the Elizabethan age: a survey of printed sources (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 1–24. 54 Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 25–89. Idem, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim.

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1560s will seek to address certain key questions: why did the hermeneutics of sacramental presence become the primary focus of debate for defenders and critics of the Elizabethan religious settlement alike? How are we to interpret the remarkably open, public, indeed popular conduct of this disputation over such an ostensibly arcane subject? What significance does the venue of Paul’s Cross hold as the ignition point of this public theological disputation? Finally, upon closer examination does the rarefied theological content of this controversy of the 1560s enable a better understanding of how the Elizabethan Reformation contributed towards definition of the emerging institutions of modernity, specifically with reference to a nascent public sphere? Our methodological hypothesis 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 religious and political institutions and practices. To adopt the more detached perspective of an enlightened critical skepticism might incline us to discount the political import of theological argument, and thus run the risk of erecting a barrier to a satisfactory interpretation of both the event of the Great Controversy and the religious self-understanding of Jewel and his contemporary interlocutors. Signs and Things Signified The conflicting claims of both traditional and evangelical sacramental theology are most evident in their respective assertions concerning the manner of the divine ‘presence’ and the mode of its participation on the part of the worshipper. On the traditionalist side, in accordance with the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Mass placed profound emphasis on the ontological immanence of the holy in the consecrated elements of the sacrament. So intimate was the bond between the sacramental  sign (signum) and divine-human reality signified by it (res significata)  that traditional orthodox teaching upheld an objectified ‘real presence’ in the physical elements of the sacrament. In 1546 Stephen Gardiner 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



political hermeneutics129 infallible truth, and styl saith, in consecrations of this most holy Sacrament, by the common ministre of the churche. This is my body.55

In the decrees of the thirteenth session of 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 [i.e. the external appearance] only of the bread and wine remaining—which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation’.56 In the formulation of Thomas Harding, Jewel’s principal interlocutor as the Elizabethan 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.’57 An 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 the notion of ‘enchantment’: the signum becomes the res significata. According to Jewel’s main argument in the Challenge Sermon, such a fusion of signum and res significata could not be found in scripture, nor in the teaching of the fathers of the ancient church; by Jewel’s account the word ‘transubstantiation’ itself was but ‘newly deuised & neuer once herd, or spoken of, before the councel of Laterane, holden at Rome, in the yere of our Lorde. M. ccxv (1215).’58 Jewel’s charge of the novelty of transubstantiation situates the hermeneutics of the sacrament at the forefront of his polemical challenge, namely that ‘if any learned man of our adversaries be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old doctor or father, or out of any general council, or out of the holy Scripture, or any one example 55 Stephen Gardiner, A detection of the Deuils sophistrie wherwith he robbeth the vnlearned people, of the true byleef, in the most blessed sacrament of the aulter ([London]: Prynted at London in Aldersgate strete, by Jhon[n?] Herforde, at the costes & charges of Roberte Toye, dwellynge in Paules Churche yarde, at the sygne of the Bell, 1546), ivv. 56 Decrees of the ecumenical councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 2, Session 13, Canon 2. 57 Thomas Harding, A confutation of a booke intituled An apologie of the Church of England, by Thomas Harding Doctor of Diuinitie (Antwerp: Ihon Laet, 1565); edn. Ayre, JW 1:465–466. 58 I.e. the Fourth Lateran Council. Jewel, The true copies of the letters, 139–140. According to the article on ‘Eucharist’ in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edn., 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.

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out of the primitive church for the space of six hundred years after Christ’ in proof of this article of transubstantiation or of any others on his expanding list of contested teachings, Jewel promised ‘to geue ouer and subscribe vnto hym.’59 Whereas the doctrine of transubstantiation tended to elide the distinction between signifier (signum) and signified (res significata) in the assertion of an objectified ‘real presence’ through ontological conversion, the sacramental doctrine implicit in Thomas Cranmer’s revised liturgy of the second Book of Common Prayer (1552), adhered to the Augustinian hermeneutic advocated by Vermigli, Cranmer, and Ridley, by upholding a sharp distinction between the two. According to Jewel’s account of sacramental presence 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 other wise.60

In this précis of the evangelical position, Jewel’s insistence upon ‘a difference between the sign and the thing itself signified’ signals his adoption of the Augustinian approach with its emphasis upon a figurative interpretation of sacramental ‘presence’, a reformed theological orientation promoted vigorously by Thomas Cranmer61 and Nicholas Ridley in the previous decade.62 Indeed Jewel’s precise formulation of the sacramental hermeneutic is almost word for word that of his mentor Peter Martyr 59 Jewel, The true copies of the letters, 164. See A defence 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. by Iohn Iewel Bishop of Sarisburie (London: In Fleetestreate, at the signe of the Elephante, by Henry VVykes, 1567). The Defense went through two further editions in Jewel’s lifetime, 1570 and 1571, both published by Henry Wykes. See also Jewel, Defense of the Apology, in Works, ed. for the Parker Society by John Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), vol. 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. 60 John Jewel, ‘Of Real Presence’, A defense of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London: Henry Wykes, 1570). See The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre for the Parker Society, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), vol. 1:448. 61 Cranmer, Tractatio de sacramento Eucharistiae (London: R. Wolfe, 1549). Also in English, A defence of the true and catholike doctrine of the sacrament of the body and bloud of our sauiour Christ with a confutation of sundry errors concernyng thesame, grounded and stablished vpon Goddes holy woorde, & approued by ye consent of the moste auncient doctors of the Churche (London: In Poules churcheyarde, at the signe of the Brasen serpent, by Reynold Wolfe, 1550). 62 Nicholas Ridley, A brief declaracion of the Lordes Supper, written by the syngular learned man, and most constaunt martir of Iesus Christ, Nicholas Ridley Bishop of London



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Vermigli in the latter’s Tractatio on the Eucharist of 1549, a systematic presentation of the Florentine reformer’s position argued in the Oxford Disputation of 1549.63 In a tract attacking Cranmer in 1551, Stephen Gardiner had linked the sacramental theology of the English evangelicals to the early medieval teachings of Berengarius of Tours and Ratramnus of Corbie, thus volleying back the charge of theological novelty: Sens Christes tyme, there is no memorye, more then of sixe, that hathe affirmed that doctrine, which this auctour would have called nowe the Catholique doctrine, and yet not writen by them of one sorte, neyther receyved in belyefe in publique profession. But secretely, when it happened, begun by conspiration, and in the ende ever hitherto extincte and quenched. First was Bertrame, Then Berengarius, Then Wycliefe, and in our tyme Oecolampadius, Swinglius and Joachimus Vadianus.64

A decade later, following Gardiner’s lead, Thomas Harding accused Jewel, along with Vermigli, Cranmer, Ridley, and others, of resurrecting the Berengarian ‘sacramentary heresy’.65 Harding was not far off the mark in making this link. In the midst of parliamentary debate on Cranmer’s new vernacular liturgy, two editions of an English translation of a sacramental treatise by the 9th-century Augustinian Ratramnus were published in 1548 and 1549.66 In his disputation on the sacrament with Richard Smyth, Nicholas Ridley had commended Ratramnus, and John Foxe attributes Ridley’s conversion to ‘reading of Bertram’s book on the Sacrament.’67 Augustine’s insistence upon the necessity of drawing a sharp distinction  between signum and res significata—between the outward, visible prisoner in Oxforde, a litel before he suffred deathe for the true testimonie of Christ ([Emden: E. van der Erve], 1555), sig. E2r—E4v. 63 A discourse or traictise of Petur Martyr Vermilla Flore[n]tine, the publyque reader of diuinitee in the Vniuersitee of Oxford wherein he openly declared his whole and determinate iudgemente concernynge the sacrament of the Lordes supper in the sayde Vniuersitee (London: Robert Stoughton [i.e. E. Whitchurch], 1550), fol. 69v. 64 Stephen Gardiner, An explicatio[n] and assertion of the true Catholique fayth, touchyng the moost blessed Sacrament of the aulter ([Rouen: printed by Robert Caly], 1551), 74r. 65 Thomas Harding, An ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge, by Doctor Harding. augmented vvith certaine quotations and additions (Antwerpe: At the golden Angel by William Sylvius the Kinges Maiesties printer, 1565), 128. See Jewel’s transcription of Harding’s reference to Berengarius in Defense of the Apology, vol. 1, 457. 66 Ratramnus, The boke of Barthram priest intreatinge of the bodye and bloude of Christ wryten to greate Charles the Emperoure, and set forth vii.C. yeares agoo (London: Thomas Raynalde and Anthony Kyngstone, 1548; 1549). 67 Foxe’s account of the Oxford Disputation of 1555 is reprinted in Nicholas Ridley, Works, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), ix, 206.

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sacramental sign and the mystical, invisible reality signified—had a long pedigree of influence, and Jewel’s invocation of this teaching constitutes the hallmark of his approach to the matter of sacramental presence. Among English evangelicals of the 1560s there was nothing particularly original in Jewel’s interpretation of sacramental presence. The identical argument had been mounted to considerable effect a decade earlier by Jewel’s mentor and colleague Peter Martyr Vermigli in his Treatise concer­ nynge the Lordes Supper of 1549,68 a work described by Calvin as the epitome of the Reformed teaching on the sacraments.69 When one considers that among the first polemical responses to the Challenge Sermon was Richard Smyth’s Confutatio,70 this was clearly a case of a re-match. A decade earlier in 1549, Vermigli had inaugurated his tenure as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford with a set of lectures on the very text Jewel chose for the Challenge Sermon. Smyth, a staunch traditionalist, had very recently been displaced from the Regius chair by Vermigli’s appointment. In the context of Vermigli’s inaugural lectures on Corinthians, Smyth challenged the Florentine scholar to a public disputation on the Eucharist 68 Peter Martyr Vermigli, Tractatio de sacramento Eucharistiæ habita in celeberrima vniuersitate Oxoniensi in Anglia, per D. Petrum Martyrem Vermilium Florentinum, Regium ibidem Theologiæ professorem, cum iam absoluisset interpretationem. II capitis prioris epistolæ D. Pauli Apostoli ad Corinthios. Ad hec. Disputatio de eode[m] Eucharistiae Sacramento, in eadem Vniuersitate habita per eundem D.P. Mar. Anno Domini M.D.XLIX (London: [R. Wolfe] ad æneum serpentem, [1549]). The English translation appeared a year later in 1550: A discourse or traictise of Petur Martyr Vermilla Flore[n]tine, the publyque reader of diuinitee in the Vniuersitee of Oxford wherein he openly declared his whole and determinate iudgemente concernynge the sacrament of the Lordes supper in the sayde Vniuersitee (London: Robert Stoughton [i.e. E. Whitchurch] dwellinge within Ludgate at the signe of the Bysshoppes Miter for Nycolas Udall, [1550]). See also the recent critical edition in the Peter Martyr Library: The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist,1549 [series ‘Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies’, vol. 56], translated & edited with Introduction and Notes by Joseph C. McLelland (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000). 69 See John Calvin, Dilucida Explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis, CO 9, 457–524, esp. 490 : ‘Porro quum toti mundo plus quam notum esse putarem, consensu veteris ecclesiae doctrinam nostram clare probari, causam hanc retexit Heshusius, et quosdam vetustos scriptores, ut confligant nobiscum, quasi erroris sui suffragatores advocat. Equidem hactenus hoc argumentum ex professo tractandum non suscepi: quia nolebam actum agere. Primus hoc Oecolampadius accurate ac dextre praestitit: ut evidenter monstraret commentum localis praesentiae veteri ecclesiae fuisse incognitum. Successit Bullingerus, qui eadem felicitate peregit has partes. Cumulum addidit Petrus Martyr, ut nihil prorsus desiderari queat.’ Cited in ‘John Calvin and Peter Martyr Vermigli: a reassessment of their relationship’, a paper presented by Emidio Campi at a conference on ‘Calvin und Calvinismus— Europäische Perspektiven’, Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz (June, 2009). 70 Richard Smyth, Confutatio eorum, quæ Philippus Melanchthon obijcit contra missæ sacrificium propitiatorium. Cui accessit & repulsio calumniarum Ioannis Caluini & Musculi, & Ioannis Iuelli contra missam (Louvain, 1562).



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only to flee from Oxford and reappear across the Channel at Louvain where he incorporated Master of Arts in April 1549. Shortly thereafter Smyth published an attack on Cranmer’s sacramental theology.71 Smyth’s challenge was taken up by three other traditionalist Oxford divines— William Chedsey, President of Corpus Christi College, William Tresham, Canon of Christ Church and one of the drafters of A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Chrysten Man, popularly known as the King’s Book (1543), and Morgan Phillips, Principal of St Mary Hall.72 Consequently, Jewel’s Challenge at Paul’s Cross, delivered just a few months after his return from Zurich where he had accompanied Vermigli in exile, very likely struck at least the learned members of his auditory as a deliberate rekindling of the notorious Oxford disputations on the Eucharist of the previous decade. Jewel’s assertion of the hermeneutical distinction between ‘signum’ and ‘res significata’ was thus characteristic of a distinctive and already well-established evangelical hermeneutic grounded in the authority of Augustine.73 In interpreting sacramental presence—the dominant theme in Jewel’s exchanges with his principal adversary, Thomas Harding, and indeed throughout the controversy of the 1560s—Jewel invokes Augus­ tine’s appeal to the formula ‘sursum corda’ as the liturgical archetype for  the distinction between signs and things signified.74 Retained by Cranmer in the vernacular liturgies of both 1549 and 1552, the ancient response ‘Lift up your hearts/We lift them up unto the Lord’ preceded the words of institution in the Order for the Lord’s Supper, as indeed they had in the canon of the Mass.75 Adhering to an Augustinian hermeneutic of 71 Richard Smith, A confutation of a certen booke, called a defence of the true, and Catholike doctrine of the sacrame[n]t, &c. sette fourth of late in the name of Thomas Archebysshoppe of Canterburye. By Rycharde Smyth, Docter of diuinite, and some tyme reader of the same in Oxforde ([Paris: R. Chaudière, 1550?]). 72 Peter Martyr Vermigli, Tractatio de sacramento Eucharistiae, habita in celeberrima vniuersitate Oxoniensi in Anglia, per D. Petrum Martyrem Vermilium Florentinum, Regium ibidem Theologiae professorem, cum iam absoluisset interpretationem. II capitis prioris epistolae D. Pauli Apostoli ad Corinthios. Ad hec. Disputatio de eode[m] Eucharistiae Sacramento, in eadem Vniuersitate habita per eundem D.P. Mar. Anno Domini M.D.XLIX (London: [R. Wolfe ad æneum serpentem, 1549]). See also The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, 1549 [series ‘Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies’, vol. 56], translated & edited with Introduction and Notes by Joseph C. McLelland (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000). After reading Vermigli’s account Tresham recorded his own version of the event: ‘Disputatio de eucharistiae sacramento contra Petrum Martyrem’, BL Harleian MS 422. 73 See Augustine, On Christian teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8–44. 74 Augustine, de bono Perseverantiae, 2.13. 75 Gordon P. Jeanes, Signs of God’s promise: Thomas Cranmer’s sacramental theology and the Book of Common Prayer (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2008).

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signs, Jewel attaches the highest theological significance to the formula as representing liturgically the preparation of the mind for the act of receiving communion; while the ‘figure’ of the thing (the signum) is not to be confused with that which it represents, the ‘thing itself’ (res significata), nonetheless through a dynamic motion within the conscience of the faithful receiver the connection between sign and signified may be effected. Jewel ties the sacramental hermeneutic to the logic of Augustine’s account of justification: ‘‘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.’’76 Jewel also cites Augustine in his further 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 (viz. the body of Christ) ‘is received of every man unto life whosoever be partaker of it.’77 Jewel summarises the Augustinian soteriological foundation of his 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 by a spiritual mean of being.’78 Jewel frames his theology of sacramental participation as an apology of the liturgy of the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1559. Based upon his interpretation of the sursum corda, Jewel rejects ontological conversion of the physical elements of bread and wine, but affirms nonetheless a figural mystical presence: ‘with the eyes of our understanding we look beyond these creatures; we reach our spiritual senses into heaven, and behold the ransom and price of our salvation. We do behold in the sacrament, not what it is, but what it doth signify.’79 Thomas Harding accused Jewel of advocating Zwinglian memorialism with its strong emphasis on the Ascension and therefore upon Christ’s ‘real absence’ in the relation to the sacrament.80 With its sharp separation of signum and res significata Zwingli’s sacramental hermeneutic is in many respects the mirror antithesis of transubstantiation. While the liturgy of 1552 very decisively 76 Jewel, Works, vol. 3, 533–536. 77 Jewel, Works, vol. 3, 64; see also vol. 1.453, 759; and vol. 2, 1122. 78 Jewel, Works, 1.477. 79 Jewel, Works, 2.1117. 80 Harding, Confutation, fol. 40r.



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shifts the focus away from the elements of the sacrament by replacing the words of distribution ‘The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe whiche was geuen for thee …’ with the formula ‘Take and eate this in remembraunce that Christ dyed for thee, and feede on him in thy hearte by faythe, with thankesgeuing,’81 Cranmer studiously avoids Zwingli’s stark iconoclastic hermeneutic of the separation of sign and thing. Demonstrating signs rather of Vermigli’s theological influence, the second Edwardine Prayerbook represents presence according to a moral subtle version of the Augustinian figural hermeneutic, that is to say as a conceptual synthesis of word and elements performed dynamically in the inner, subjective forum of the consciences of worshippers, and thus presence came to be viewed as inseparable from actual reception of the elements.82 It is instructive in this connection to note that in the Book of Common Prayer of 1552, as well as in the subsequent revision of 1559, there is a dramatic shift in the liturgical order of the administration of the communion. In the revised order, the worshippers’ reception of the sacramental elements occurs at precisely that moment in the liturgy where, according to the traditional Sarum rite, the host was elevated by the priest, signifying thereby the moment of transubstantiation and where, in the earlier 1549 liturgy, the priest was still directed by implicitly ‘theurgical’ rubrics to take the bread and cup ‘into his handes’. In both the Sarum and 1549 rites the blessing of the elements is followed by a lengthy sequence of prayers which intervene between consecration and reception. According to the rubrics in the rites of 1552 and 1559, however, the administration of the communion follows immediately upon the dominical words of institution—‘do this in remembraunce of me’. This revised order for rece­ ption of the sacrament serves to underline vividly through the dynamic action of the liturgy the difference between the alternative accounts of sacramental ‘presence’, namely between the traditional interpretation of an ontological ‘real presence’ and an Augustinian interpretation of a figural significance; Jewel’s subtle dynamic account of presence is thus 81 The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward VI (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1910), 225, 389. 82 See, e.g., the account of Bullingham’s Bartholomew Day sermon at Paul’s Cross, Bodl. Tanner MS 50, 73r: ‘An excellent noot surel for vs to learne by, that befor we take in hande to receaue the sacrament, we must go dowen into our consciences, and into the bottom of our hartes, to see whether we be dissemblers or no, and whether we be dispatched from dissimulation if we fynde any sparke therof, we are not worthy to come vnto that banket of Jesus Christ.’

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neither Zwinglian memorialism nor ontological realism. His is a stance now commonly identified as ‘instrumental realism’.83 Jewel’s argument for the distinction between a literal and a figurative interpretation of sacramental ‘presence’ shifts the locus of ‘presence’ decisively away from the physical elements of the sacrament and transfers it to the inner, subjective experience of the worshipper.84 Consequently, sacramental ‘presence’ is re-interpreted here as a ‘figural’ or dynamic conceptual synthesis of word and elements situated in the subjective forum of the consciences of the worshippers; and thus ‘real presence’ comes to be viewed as inseparable from an internalised, spiritual ‘reception’ of the consecrated host.85 The Challenge Sermon is crucially significant for re-instating the sacramental theology of the Edwardine divines—of Cranmer, Vermigli, and Ridley—and thus in consolidating the development of a distinctively reformed sacramental hermeneutics in the Elizabethan Church. Jewel’s Challenge is pivotal in the defining a horizon of meaning for Elizabethan Protestant religious identity, and ultimately in reforming the deepest assumptions of moral ontology. In Jewel’s Augustinian hermeneutics as in Cranmer’s reformed liturgy, there is a crucial redefinition of the ‘terms of enchantment’; the gap between sacramental sign and the reality signified is no longer understood as mediated primarily by means of an external, theurgical action in the ritual of the mass with a real, physical­presence as formulated according to the doctrine of transubstantiation; rather, presence depends foremost upon an inward, subjective and (most importantly) interpretative act of remembrance —that is through an acknowledgement of ‘presence’ in and through the conscience that serves to connect words with elements in the dynamic action that is the liturgy. This reformulation of the conception of presence entails, moreover, a reconfiguration of the relation between the individual and community. As Timothy Rosendale argues in his recent monograph Liturgy and Literature, ‘the internalization of this figural 83 See Brian Gerrish, Grace and gratitude: the Eucharistic theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). 84 The ‘realist’ words of 1549—‘this is my body’—are replaced in 1552 with ‘eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, by faith, with thanksgiving.’ The primary locus of presence is relocated away from the external elements and made inseparable from the worshipping subject. 85 It is perhaps interesting in this connection to note that in the BCP of 1552, as well as in the subsequent revisions of 1559 and 1662, the administration of the communion occurs at precisely the stage in the liturgy at which the elevation of the host had previously occurred—i.e. the moment of transubstantiation—thus serving to underline vividly the difference between the two divergent liturgical accounts of presence.



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sacrament is necessarily an interpretative act; though it takes place in a communal [i.e. liturgical] context, it ultimately requires a highly individual mode of understanding the elements as metaphors whose effectuality is dependent on faithful personal reading.’86 Rosendale goes on to argue that the combining the words of administration of 1549 (‘The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe whiche was geven for thee, preserve thy bodye and soule unto everlasting lyfe’) and 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 new stress placed on the essential role of the individual subject in interpreting the meaning of the sacrament. By defusing the clarity of 1552, the Elizabethan compromise on the words of administration serves to extend even further the latitude of the worshipper’s hermeneutical responsibility. Interpretation is all! For Rosendale The Book of Common Prayer 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 sociopolitico-ecclesiastical order that had traditionally been the sole determinant of religious affairs.87

By means of his Augustinian approach to interpreting the sacrament through a sharpening of the distinction between the external visible sign and the inward mystical thing signified, while at the same avoiding a separation of their intrinsic connection in accordance with the concept of figural­meaning, Jewel facilitated a thorough deconstruction of the deep assumptions of ‘sacramental culture’ during the late-Tudor period;88 yet through his affirmation of a figural ‘real presence’ as distinct from both transubstantiation and Zwinglian ‘real absence’, this deconstruction of 86 Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 96. 87 Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 111. 88 Euan Cameron identifies the primary assumption of ‘sacramental culture’ with his observation that ‘[i]n 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 ‘Catholic’ Christianity, became esplicit 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.’ See Enchanted Europe, 156.

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medieval sacramental ontology serves not so much to promote ‘disenchantment of the world’ as to propose a radical reformulation of the ‘terms of enchantment’—and here we may detect a glimmer of a post-revisionist path. With the exception of a handful of religious extremists—e.g. Anabaptists, the Family of Love, and various Puritan separatists—once the break with Rome had been accomplished, leading magisterial reformers like Jewel, John Whitgift, and Richard Hooker were intent upon reconstruction of a visible, institutional, hierarchical, and liturgical church order—i.e., an elaborate and formalised institutional system of religious signs. The reconstitution of the external forms of worship and polity that we know as the Elizabethan Settlement, however, was founded upon a distinctly altered moral ontology, a re-defined horizon of meaning grounded, as Jewel argues in his Challenge Sermon at Paul’s Cross, in a radical reconfiguration of the hermeneutics of ‘signum’ and ‘res significata’.89 This early Elizabethan reconstruction of theological semiotics entailed an analogous a clarification of the distinction between the visible and invisible church, between the historical and the imagined community of the saints, and between individual and community, as corollaries of the distinction between sign and thing signified, as well as a new ‘apologetic’ method to bring about this transformation.90 This distinction is evident in the two especially prominent genres of later Elizabethan sermons at Paul’s Cross identified by Mary Morrissey, namely the ‘Jeremiads’ and the ‘exhortations to charity’, the former with their emphasis on the gulf separating the fallen and derelict church in history from the splendour of the heavenly city, and the latter encouraging the faithful to labour towards a fulfilment of the heavenly promises through a gradual process of habitual sanctification.91 While the church

89 For a fuller account of the apologetic reestablishment of a semiotic linkage between signum and significata, see Torrance Kirby, ‘Of musique with psalms: the hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s defence of the ‘sensible excellencie’ of public worship,’ in John Stafford (ed.), Lutheran and Anglican: Essays in honour of Egil Grislis (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2009), 127–151. 90 Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 249–294. See Torrance Kirby, ‘Apocalyptics and Apologetics: Richard Helgerson on Elizabethan England’s religious identity and the formation of the public sphere,’ in Paul Yachnin, ed. Forms of Association in Early Modern Europe (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). 91 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.



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as earthly ‘sign’ of the heavenly city must be clearly distinguished from the mystical reality of that ‘signified’ community in the Jeremiad, nonetheless the union of sign with thing signified is interpreted as an object of striving in the exhortation to charity; both clarity of distinction between signum and res significata and the real possibility of their mediation are proposed by means of the Augustinian hermeneutic of ‘figural presence’, with attainment of the reality of presence posited via inner ‘persuasion’ of the conscience. In taking up this sacramental trope Jewel’s protegé Richard Hooker also takes considerable pains throughout his own elaborate apologia to affirm the existence of a dynamic bond between sign and thing signified, but such a bond as cannot subsist simply in an external, theurgically created reality, ex opere operato. There is, he says, a sacramental change of substance, but the transubstantiation is not to be found outwardly in the physical elements of the sacrament, but rather within the conscience of the faithful participant in the sacramental action. Signs and the things signified are ‘distinct’; nonetheless, the mystical substance of the sign is not to be ‘separated’ from the sign. This same dialectical tension of semiotic distinction and unity is expressed by Jewel in his Apology: Moreover we alow the sacramentes of the Churche, that is to saye certaine holy signes and ceremonies whiche Christ Woulde wee should use, that by them he might set before our eyes the mysteries of our salvation, and might more strongly confirme our faith which we have in his bloude, and might seale his grace in our heartes.92

It is in this sense that Jewel, following Vermigli and Augustine, asserts that the sacraments are ‘visible words’ of God.93 In another late-Elizabethan formulation of the hermeneutics of ‘instrumental realism’ Hooker affirms Jewel’s evangelical premise of the necessary distinction of sign and signified, and like Jewel he asserts the necessity of their real connection. Hooker appeals to this same dynamic tension with his use of the language of sacramental ‘instrumentality’, a language which serves to bridge the distance between the ‘disenchantment’ implied by the sharp distinc­ tion of sign and signified, and the ‘re-enchantment’ implied by the hermeneutics of figural presence.94 Although the signs are by no means to be 92 Apologie (1564), Sig. Cviir. 93 Apologie (1564), Sig. Cviiv. See Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation, 255. Augustine, On Christian Teaching (1997), 31. 94 Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.17–33. ‘The Bread and Cup are his Body and Blood, because they are causes instrumental, upon the receit whereof, the Participation of his Body and Blood

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confused with the things signified, nonetheless the former continue to be connected to the latter in such a manner that enables the sacramental offering and receiving of the promise signified through the means of the sign. Thus according to the language of ‘instrumental realism’, there is in the sacrament a dynamic inter-play of word, action, and recognition. As Hooker inimitably formulates this in the fifth book of the Lawes, The Real Presence of Christs most Blessed Body and Blood, is not therefore to be sought for in the [external] Sacrament, but in the worthy Receiver of the Sacrament … As for the Sacraments, they really exhibite; but, for ought we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really, nor do really contain in themselves, that Grace, which with them, or by them, it pleaseth God to bestow.95

According to Hooker, therefore, a reformed hermeneutic redefines the meaning of sacramental presence as an action. Real presence presupposes the faithful worshipper who is able to interpret the unity of the three things that ‘make the substance of the sacrament’, namely the divine gift offered, that is the thing signified; the elements which depict the gift, namely the external visible signs; and finally the scriptural words of institution which articulate the link between the two.96 Presence is an act of interpretation, and therefore inseparable from the conscience. ‘Whereupon’, Hooker concludes, ‘there ensueth a kinde of Transub­ stantiation in us, a true change, both of Soul and Body, an alteration from death to life.’97 This redefinition of presence cautiously avoids the two extremes of either separating or confusing sign and thing signified. Thus viewed, sacraments become necessarily dynamic events where the instrumentality of signs works through the act of interpretation on the part of ensueth. For that which produceth any certain effect, is not vainly nor improperly said to be, that very effect whereunto it tendeth. Every cause is in the effect which groweth from it. Our Souls and Bodies quickned to Eternal Life, are effects; the cause whereof, is the Person of Christ: His Body and Blood are the true Well-spring, out of which, this Life floweth. So that his Body and Blood are in that very subject whereunto they minister life: Not onely by effect or operation, even as the influence of the Heavens is in Plants, Beasts, Men, and in every thing which they quicken; but also by a far more Divine and Mystical kinde of Union, which maketh us one with him, even as He and the Father are one. The Real Presence of Christs most Blessed Body and Blood, is not therefore to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy Receiver of the Sacrament … As for the Sacraments, they really exhibite; but, for ought we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really, nor do really contain in themselves, that Grace, which with them, or by them, it pleaseth God to bestow.’ 95 Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.17–33. 96 See Lawes V.58.2; 2:249.161–250.3. 97 Lawes V.67.11; 2:338.13–340.1.



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the receiver. In this respect the sacraments exemplify Alexandra Walsham’s concept of the dynamic of idea and action; and they represent moreover an ontological path between the two extremes of enchantment and disenchantment. Conversely, where the sacrament had been designated by Jewel (following Vermigli and Augustine) a ‘visible word’ (verbum visibile), the public sermon comes to be regarded as an ‘audible sacrament’ (sacramentum audibile).98 For Hooker, this sharp semiotic demarcation between the inner, private realm of individual conscience and the outer, public demands of institutional order calls forth an arena of persuasion—a ‘forum’ of trial by argument, discussion, and interpretation—as the necessary means of mediation between the ostensibly incommensurable demands of these two realms of existence and religious identity. In an invocation of the nascent public sphere in the Preface to the Lawes, Hooker states that his purpose in composing the treatise is to address the consciences of those disgruntled with the Elizabethan Settlement and who seek ‘further reformation’: ‘… my whole endeavour is to resolve the conscience, and to shewe as neere as I can what in this controversie the hart is to thinke, if it follow the light of sound and sincere judgement, without clowd of prejudice, or mist of passionate affection.’99 As an apologist for the 1559 Settlement, Hooker like Jewel is intent on defending a vast system of visible ecclesiastical signs which referred to an invisible mystical order of heavenly gifts and promises. The moral-ontological endeavour of this apology, again like Jewel’s, was to maintain a distinction between signs and things signified, while at the same time affirming the dynamic possibility of their conjunction through an appeal to the conscience. To this end Hooker employs all of the persuasive devices of his apologetic as instruments to bridge the gap of disenchantment opened up by the apocalyptic narrative, namely that between the sign and the thing signified, by his assertion of continued possibility of mediation so ‘that posteritie may knowe wee haue not loosely through silence permitted thinges to passe away as in a dreame’.100 98 Jewel, Apologie (1564), Sig. Cviiv. See also Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation, ed. J.C. McLelland (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000), 255. Augustine, On Christian Teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 31. J.C. McLelland, The visible words of God: an expositon of the sacramental theology of Peter Martyr Vermigli (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957). Carter Lindberg, The European reformations (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 179. 99 Lawes, Pref.7.1;1:34.20–23. 100 Lawes, Pref.1.1. On the tension between apocalyptic and apologetic narratives, see Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood, 249–294.

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The primary function of Jewel’s evangelical narrative of the Elizabethan establishment, therefore, is to fashion a new religious identity based upon a deconstruction of the key premise of ‘sacramental culture’, namely the externalized ontological union of signum and res significata as epitomized by the traditional teaching concerning the conversion of substance or transubstantiation. At the same time, Jewel’s recasting of sacramental hermeneutics in the Challenge Sermon cannot be portrayed as a simple shift from ‘enchantment’ to ‘disenchantment’, from the fusion of sign and thing to their radical separation. The apologetic discourse of both Jewel and Hooker aims to redefine religious identity within a reconstructed order wherein the external and visible signs of sacramental and institutional community and hierarchical order are linked to internal and invisible mysteries through the consciences of individuals. In this fashion, the English reformers from Cranmer, Vermigli, and Ridley through Jewel and Hooker, contribute to a distinctively early-modern re-thinking of 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 hierarchical institutions, structures, and coercive demands. In the course of this reformation of religious identity based upon a thorough reform of sacramental hermeneutics with its attending ‘culture of persuasion’ and revised assumptions of moral ontology, a sense of a ‘public sphere’ begins to emerge as an indispensable means of mediation between individual and community. Perhaps more than any other Tudor institution Paul’s Cross itself comes to exemplify this nascent public sphere in early-modern England. Public and Private Space The primary achievement of Jewel’s proposed reconstruction of the semiotics of sacramental ‘presence’ was to advocate a decisive reform of England’s religious identity based upon a radical critique of the central premise of traditional ‘sacramental culture’, namely the assertion on ontological union of signum and res significata as epitomized by the traditional teaching on transubstantiation. It would be misleading to portray Jewel’s refashioning of sacramental hermeneutics by a sharpened semiotic distinction between sign and thing as a shift from ‘enchantment’ to ‘disenchantment’ as has been asserted by both the Whiggish narratives of progress and the revisionist critique. Jewel’s deliberate apologetic purpose aims to define religious identity within a reconstituted liturgical and



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institutional order wherein the external and visible signs of sacrament and polity are linked to supernatural and invisible mysteries through the medium of the conscience, modelled upon his treatment of the question of sacramental presence. In his Challenge Sermon, Jewel contributes to a distinctively early-modern attempt to re-interpret the fundamental assumptions of moral ontology. By questioning the most basic assumptions of medieval sacramental culture concerning the relation of signs to thing 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 hierarchical institutions, structures, and coercive demands. In the course of the Great Controversy of the 1560s, Jewel’s attempt to recast the hermeneutics of sacramental presence contributed to the promotion of a vigorous ‘culture of persuasion’ which in turn fostered the emergence of an early instance 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. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

POLITICS OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: JOHN FOXE, RICHARD HOOKER AND THE NASCENT PUBLIC SPHERE ‘In early modern England the language of politics was most often the language of religion.’ So Richard Helgerson claimed in Forms of Nationhood.1 Brian Cummings makes the point even more forcefully: ‘without reference to religion,’ he states, ‘the study of early modern writing is incomprehensible.’2 As a number of recent studies have shown, religious discourse played a critical role in shaping the contours of an emerging civil society in Elizabethan England, to such an extent that religious assumptions can be credited with the momentous role of fostering a nascent early-modern ‘public sphere’.3 At Paul’s Cross, the open-air pulpit situated in the cathedral churchyard, a radical reshaping of religious identity in the Tudor period was achieved through a determined displacement of the primacy of a traditional, late-medieval ‘sacramental culture’ by a new ‘culture of persuasion’ centred on the medium of the public sermon, a cultural shift, moreover, which manifested itself in the consequent growth and flourishing of conditions condusive the formation of the modern forms of association usually identified as ‘publics’.4 In addressing this process of transformation from a ritually focussed, late-medieval ‘representative publicity’ to early-modern publics in the sense of ‘voluntary forms of 1 Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 252. 2 Brian Cummings, The literary culture of the Reformation: grammar and grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 6. 3 See, for example, Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of protestant England (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988) and his inaugural lecture on appointment to the Regius chair of modern history at the University of Cambridge, ‘De republica Anglorum: or, history with the politics put back,’ in Collinson, ed., Elizabethan essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 1–29. The central claim of Timothy Rosendale’s Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) is breath-taking in its minimalism: ‘English history from the mid-sixteenth through the late-seventeenth centuries centres on the Book of Common Prayer.’ See 25. 4 Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1534–1570,’ Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 31.1 (2008), 3–29. See also Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).



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association’, some scholars have tended to ascribe primary importance to the medium of print in comparison with the spoken word.5 At one extreme Alexandra Halasz has treated the early-modern public sphere in England as an ‘unsituated’ or ‘virtual’ discourse, conducted principally by means of a public ‘marketplace of print’ operating almost entirely through pamphlets, newsbooks, and so on with authors, printers, booksellers, and readers as the meaningfully engaged participants.6 On the other side, Andrew Pettegree has cautioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass movement in an age before mass literacy must be careful to ‘relocate the role of the book, as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion’ and that preaching in particular should be ‘restored to its central place as the ‘bedrock’ around which the churches harnessed other communication media’.7 Natalie Mears quite sensibly proposes that the most plausible model lies somewhere between these extremes of the ‘un-situated’, imaginary construct of print, and the physically determinate, ‘situated’ gathering for the purposes of actual communication and debate as at the Inns of Court, for example, or at Paul’s Cross. For Mears ‘the Elizabethan public sphere and the concept of the public sphere itself, therefore, have to be seen as a combination of both’ modes.8 Elizabethan popular debate, especially on questions of religious reform, was characterised on one level by an ‘unsituated discourse’—printed sermons, admonitions, scholarly polemics, the scurrilous screed of Martin Marprelate—while at the same time, the subject matter of this printed conversation was discussed locally, thus meeting a basic test conceived by Habermas, namely that ‘publics’ embody an activity typically experienced in a determinate physical locality—e.g. in the vicinity of pulpits, in ale houses, workshops, markets, and parish churches—and most importantly in the company of other flesh-and-blood participants.9 Certainly none of the sixteenth-century Reformers themselves underestimated the critical 5 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 14–26. 6 Alexandra Halasz, The marketplace of print: pamphlets and the public sphere in early modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 115–16, 23–34. For a critical view of this approach, see Natalie Mears, Queenship and political discourse in the Elizabethan realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26, 184. 7 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39. 8 Mears, Queenship and political discourse, 268. 9 See Mears’s chapter on ‘The Elizabethan public sphere’ in Queenship and political discourse, 182–216.

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importance of orality to their religious task; the evangelical avant-garde placed enormous emphasis on the claim that faith comes through hearing, to the point that the formula ‘fides ex auditu’ came to be universally regarded as a primary axiom of Reformation.10 The most palpable presence of this axiom was manifest in public utterance from the pulpit—and as I have argued above, one particular pulpit in Paul’s churchyard arguably counts among the most influential of all venues for public discourse between rulers and ruled from the outset of the Henrician Reformation in the early 1530s down to the final years of the reign of Elizabeth.11 So, having written already on the radical ‘situatedness’ of the pulpit at Paul’s Cross, and in the interest of striking the sensible balance proposed by Natalie Mears between real and virtual publics, I would like to explore the conditions underlying the formation of early-modern publics in Elizabethan England from the side of the less situated religious discourse of two churchmen, John Foxe and Richard Hooker, the one an historian, the other a philosopher and theologian, and propose to do so with due acknowledgement of my debt to the discernment and very considerable erudition of Richard Helgerson. In a substantial concluding chapter in Forms of Nationhood, titled ‘Apocalyptic and Apologetic’, Helgerson begins with the arresting observation that ‘no books, with the obvious exception of the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, have had a greater part in shaping England’s religious self-understanding than Foxe’s Acts and Hooker’s Laws.’12 Among all the enormous production of the so-called ‘unsituated discourse’ of print issuing from the Elizabethan publishing houses, these are for Helgerson the two decisive works in the formation of modern English nationhood, after Tyndale’s and Cranmer’s great contributions, of course. Combined with Helgerson’s claim that in Elizabethan England ‘the language of politics was most often the language of religion’, and assuming that this choice of representative texts has been well made, we may perhaps entertain some hope of penetrating the mysterious genesis of the early-modern publics by attending to these two outstanding achievements of the religious reflection. In order to ensure that there is no misapprehension here, the connection I am aiming to draw between Elizabethan 10 Hughes Oliphant Old, The reading and preaching of the scriptures in the worship of the Christian church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 183–184. 11 Torrance Kirby, ‘The Public Sermon: Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1534–1570,’ Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 31.1 (2008), 3–29. 12 Helgerson, Forms of nationhood, 253.



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theology and church history, on the one hand, and the formation of earlymodern publics on the other, was not explicitly Helgerson’s concern. Helgerson’s main claim is more general in scope, namely that these two enormous books—Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1563) and Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593), published exactly thirty years apart, one at the beginning and the other towards the end of Elizabeth’s long reign—provide a key to understanding the reshaping of England’s religious and political identity, and by extension an early-modern sense of English nationhood. My purpose is to carry Helgerson’s argument back a step, with a view to exploring further the religious pre-conditions underlying the formation of the modern nation in the context of the formation of publics. Such an exploration depends upon recognition of the crucial role of religious self-understanding in the formulation of what Charles Taylor terms the new ‘moral ontology’ of modernity—the metaphysical bridge, as it were, which connects the discourse of religion with the political assumptions necessary to the formation of civil society.13 In short, England’s early-modern sense of nationhood is inextricably bound up with deep religious assumptions which shaped the emergence of earlymodern publics. This link, however, remains to a large extent implicit in Helgerson’s argument; and the task of our present inquiry is to seek to make this connection more explicit. The Hermeneutics of Apocalyptics and Apologetics According to Helgerson, Foxe and Hooker are united in their common endeavour to defend and reinforce the Elizabethan religious and political settlement. While their religious assumptions are closely related and in broad agreement, they nonetheless pursue their respective arguments from radically different polemical perspectives and with almost diametrically opposed methods.14 Both Foxe and Hooker unequivocally support the proto-Erastian principles of the religious settlement of 1559, namely ecclesiastical separation from Rome, provincial autonomy in the form of the royal headship of the Church, and retention of the hierarchical constitution of episcopacy.15 Both defend the Act of Uniformity with its 13 Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 5–8, 9, 10, 41, passim. 14 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 249–294. 15 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 253. In the Act of Supremacy of 1559 (1 Eliz. c. 1, Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, 350–355), the Queen is styled ‘the only Supreme Governor of this realm … as well in all ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal’.

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prescriptive national liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, although Foxe does so somewhat less enthusiastically than Hooker. Yet their respective works differ markedly in terms of both genre and hermeneutical presupposition as well as in their respective longer term historical effects: Foxe’s book is historically narrative and anecdotal in structure, while Hooker’s is a carefully constructed philosophical and theological argument. Helgerson summarizes this difference of genre by noting that Hooker contributes principally to the nation’s ‘thought’ while Foxe attends to its ‘story’.16 Published respectively near the beginning and near the end of Elizabeth’s long reign, the two books were composed under dramatically different circumstances and historical conditions, and differ markedly as well in the manner of their reception. Foxe’s polemic is addressed almost entirely against the perceived menace emanating from Rome in the context of a reign still young and fragile. Hooker, on the other hand, writes after the watershed year of 1588 when the struggle faced by the reformed Church of England proceeded more from the internal dissent of the so-called ‘hotter’ sort of Protestants seeking ‘further Reformation’ than from the agents of the Church of Rome. According to Helgerson, these major differences of polemical context, genre, and reception contribute to ‘radically differing constructions of England’s religious identity’.17 Despite his claim that Hooker and Foxe are closely allied in their underlying religious assumptions, as his argument unfolds Helgerson appears largely content to allow the perception of their basic opposition to stand. This tendency of Helgerson to rest content with the contrariety of the the ‘apocalyptic’ and the ‘apologetic’ visions is arguably his argument’s chief shortcoming. In the best traditions of Whig historiography Helgerson portrays Foxe, in the company of his host of Puritan admirers, as the hopeful, progressive, forward-looking liberal, while Hooker’s traditionalist apology comes across as all anxiety and wistful longing for a fast fading dream of cosmic order, the proverbial conservative stick-in-the-mud.18 Yet, as I hope to show, it is precisely through the dynamic interaction of these two distinct approaches—viz. the apocalyptic and the apologetic—that the formation of early-modern publics in England is rendered intelligible. Whereas Helgerson’s analysis emphasizes the differences and conflict between the apocalyptic and apologetic genres, our proposal is that the generation of the public sphere transpires in the context of a dynamic 16 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 253. 17 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 254. 18 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 269, 270.



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interplay between these two distinct modes of religious self-understanding. In order to apprehend the full significance of this dynamic interaction, however, it would be helpful first to explore more closely the salient differences and common presuppositions of these two approaches to the formulation of England’s Protestant religious identity. Apocalyptic narrative is characterized by vigorous affirmation of an unremitting struggle between potent opposites—between Christ and Anti-Christ, Jerusalem and Babylon, God and the Satan, and ecclesiastically between the true church, as an invisible community of the godly, and the false church, for Foxe an oppressive institutional hierarchy emanating from the papacy at Rome, portrayed by him as the historical embodiment of the Anti-Christ.19 The ecclesiological manifestation of this narrative is heavily dependent upon the eschatological dialectic of Augustine’s ‘two cities’, viz. the ‘earthly city’ (civitas terrena) and the ‘heavenly city’ (civitas Dei).20 Foxe’s apocalyptic narrative places a heavy, scripturally inspired emphasis on the negative impact on the scattered and invisible community of the godly by coercive power wielded by religious and political institutions; the Book of Martyrs represents the religious conscience as standing in continuous conflict with respect to these oppressive ‘higher powers’. It is through the oppressive regime of these powers that martyrs are made, and hence the focus of Foxe’s narrative is overwhelmingly on the sufferings of the godly at the hands of institutional religious authority. In Foxe’s apocalyptic narrative the authority of scripture is set in opposition to human power, the vernacular and universal accessibility of the Bible in opposition to the exclusivity of Latin learning and clericalism, and a levelling equality of universal priesthood against sacerdotal hierarchy. John Pocock once observed that ‘apocalyptic, which sacralizes secular time, must always in an opposite sense secularize the sacred, by drawing the process of salvation into that time which is known as the sæculum.’21 Consistent with this view, the religious heroes of Foxe’s story are commoners, simple, ordinary folk, labourers and craftsmen, whom the religious élites fear as profane spreaders of heresy and insubordination. 19 See Andrew Escobedo, Nationalism and historical loss in Renaissance England: Foxe, Dee, Spenser, Milton (Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 2004), esp. chapter 3 and Katharine R. Firth, The apocalyptic tradition in reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). See also Richard Bauckham, Tudor apocalypse: sixteenth century apocalypticism, millennarianism and the English Reformation: from John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978). 20 See Augustine, de civitate Dei, Bk. XIV, chapter 28. 21 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘England,’ in National Consciousness, history and political culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1975), 109.

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Through a process of evangelical ‘levelling’, common folk are ‘seen to die with the same fortitude as their betters; bible-reading labourers defeat university educated men; poverty and simplicity join martyrdom as signs of the true church.’22 The phenomenon of the ‘sacralizing’ of the secular and ‘secularizing’ of the sacred is important to keep in mind with respect to the question of the dynamic interaction between the two rhetorics of apocalyptic and apologetic. On the other side of the coin, Hooker the philosophical theologian seeks to explain and to justify the hierarchical structures of the established church with a view to securing conscientious obedience to the authority of government. He states that the chief purpose of his apologetic is to address those who are disgruntled and seek ‘further reformation’ of the Elizabethan Church23 in order to persuade them towards a conscientious embrace of the institutions and practices of the religious settlement of 1559: ‘my whole endeavour is to resolve the conscience, and to shewe as neere as I can what in this controversie the hart is to thinke, if it follow the light of sound and sincere judgement, without clowd of prejudice, or mist of passionate affection.’24 In sharp contrast to Foxe, order, hierarchy, and obedience, the entire external, visible, and coercive apparatus of the church are to be celebrated and embraced as the institutionalizing and necessary normalizing of the Reformation in England. Systematic defense of the church’s institutional structures is the burden of Hooker’s apologetic discourse, and in a very palpable sense he stands at odds with the extreme polarisation of the visible and invisible communities presupposed by Foxe’s apocalpytic ecclesiology. Over against the apocalyptic insistence upon a clear-cut opposition of the revealed authority of scripture to corrupt human authority, Hooker grounds his defense of the structures of ecclesiastical order constituted by the Act of Uniformity of 1559 in a complex account of a cosmic hierarchy of laws—eternal, natural, angelic, human, positive, and revealed, to name just a few of the principal divisions.25 Every aspect of Hooker’s defense of the complex structures of the Elizabethan settlement, all the way from the royal supremacy, through 22 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 265. 23 See John Field and Thomas Wilcox, An Admonition to the Parliament [or ‘A view of Popish Abuses Yet Remaining in the English Church’] (Hemel Hempstead?: J. Stroud?, 1572), printed in Puritan Manifestoes: A Study of the Origin of the Puritan Revolt, ed. W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglas (London: The Church History Society, vol. 72, 1907), 19; (repr. London: SPCK, 1954; New York: Burt Franklin, 1972). 24 Lawes, Pref.7.1;1:34.20–23. 25 Lawes, Book I.



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the hierarchy of bishops and other ministers, down to the most minute details of the liturgical forms of common prayer, can be viewed as posing a direct challenge to the apocalyptic emphasis upon the sharply defined eschatological duality of the visible and the invisible church, true and the false religion, corrupt human reason and the light of divine revelation, Christ and Anti-Christ. The apology of the ecclesiastical order of the Church of England rests upon overturning apocalyptically inspired Puritan claims on behalf of the prescriptive authority of the Bible in matters of polity, discipline, and order.26 For Hooker there is an important epistemological principle at stake in these religious polemics. In the Lawes Hooker responds at length to the Disciplinarian Puritan Thomas Cartwright’s ‘apocalyptic’ insistence that scripture alone (sola scriptura) constitutes a universal rule of human action and that whatever is not done in strict accord with the divinely revealed word is sinful, corrupt, and therefore the work of the AntiChrist.27 The substance of Hooker’s ‘apologetic’ is to appeal to the necessary authority of a diversity of sources of religious knowledge, with particular emphasis upon the weight of secular reason. That he does so by grounding his ‘apologetic’ appeal upon the express authority of scripture adds an element of irony to the controversy: Whatsoever either men on earth, or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountaine of Wisdom, which wisdom hath diversly imparted her treasures unto the world. As her waies are of sundry kinds, so her maner of teaching is not meerely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred bookes of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some thinges she leadeth and trayneth them onely by worldly experience and practise. We may not so in any one speciall kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other, but let all her wayes be according unto their place and degree adored.28

An apt summary of the sapiential premiss of Hooker’s apologetic orientation is contained in his concluding observation: ‘let all [Wisdom’s] wayes be according unto their place and degree adored.’ 26 Lawes, Book II. 27 Thomas Cartwright, A Replye to an Answere made of M. doctor Whitgifte … Agaynste the Admonition ([Hemel Hempstead?: J. Stroud?], 1575), 26–27, cited in Lawes II.1.3; 1 146.1, II.2.1; 1:148.7, II.3.1; 1:150.19 and II.4.1; 1:151.18. 28 Lawes II.1.4; 1 147.23–148.6. The Wisdom of Solomon 11:4. Compare Calvin, Inst. 1.1.1: ‘Those blessings which unceasingly distill to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain.’

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Taking their cue from a Foxeian apocalyptic frame of reference, the anonymous Puritan authors of A Christian Letter of certayne Englishe Protestantes (1599) interpret the philosophical assumptions of Hooker’s apologetic as a direct challenge to the foundational claim of the Refor­ mation concerning the sufficiency of the holy scripture (sola scriptura).29 Hooker’s appeal to a diversity of sources of the divine wisdom—a complex variety of modes of access ordered according to ‘place and degree’— reveals that the hermeneutics of his ‘apologetic’ depend upon strong affirmation of the ‘light of nature’ manifest in human reason and experience. His Puritan opponents, arguing from an apocalyptic premise, interpret this defence of a ‘natural’ knowledge of God, of natural law as a supplement to the revealed law of scripture, and of the hierarchical dispositio of the laws and modes of knowing, as fundamentally at odds with the first principles of Reformation.30 For Hooker the apologist, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, discipline, and worship are matters to be determined largely by a worldly reason—by prudence, legal tradition, and human judgement contextualized from the study of the practices of the early Church, and indeed so far as the papacy and the Church of Rome herself ‘follow reason and truth, we fear not to tread the self same steps wherein they have gone and to be their follower.’31 Here we can discern a deep divergence between the apologetic and apocalyptic perspectives. In his apologetic mode Hooker has moved sharply away from the apocalyptic insistence upon the polarity of Jerusalem and Babylon, the heavenly and the earthly cities, the true and the false church. As Helgerson astutely points out, for Hooker the historical contingency of ‘things indifferent’ (adiaphora) touches all but a few noncontroversial articles of faith and order that are deemed to be ‘necessary for salvation,’ namely those things belonging to the ‘esse’ or substance of religious identity.32 Hooker’s apologetic hermeneutic was interpreted by his Puritan opponents as the very antithesis of the 29 See [Andrew Willett?], A Christian Letter of certaine English Protestantes, unfayned favourers of the present state of religion, authorized and professed in England: unto that Reverend and Learned man Mr. R. Hoo[ker] requiring resolution in certayne matters of doctrine (which seeme to overthrowe the foundation of Christian Religion, and of the Church among us) expreslie contayned in his five bookes of Ecclesiasticall Policie (Middelburg: R. Schilders,1599) [STC 13721] was the only attack on the Lawes published in Hooker’s lifetime. The complete text, together with Hooker’s marginal annotations, is reprinted in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 4, ed. John Booty (1982), 1–79. 30 See ACL §3. The Holye Scripture contayneth all thinges necessarie to salvation. FLE 4:11.1–14.9. See especially 4 11.22. 31 Hooker, Lawes, V.28.1. 32 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 274, 275.



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evangelical narrative epitomized by Foxe, and consequently earned him accusations of undermining the Reformed formularies of the Elizabethan religious settlement to the extent that almost all the principall pointes of our English creed [are] greatlie shaken and contradicted. Shall wee doe you wronge to suspect you as a privie and subtill enemie to the whole state of the Englishe Church, and that you would have men to deeme her Majestie to have done ill in abolishing the Romish religion, and banishing the Popes authoritie; and that you would bee glad to see the backesliding of all reformed churches to bee made conformable to that wicked synagogue of Rome … and that you esteeme … the bookes of holy scripture to bee at the least of no greater moment then Aristotle and the Schoolemen? …33

The level of Puritan discomfort with Hooker’s apologetic purpose is framed in explicitly apocalyptic terms. The passage continues with the following pointed remark: ‘doe you meane to bring in a confusion of all thinges, to reconcile heaven and earth, and to make all religions equall: Will you bring us to Atheisme, or to Poperie?’ The apocalyptic assumptions of Hooker’s Puritan critics cannot tolerate any muting of the clarity of the eschatological contraries. Helgerson identifies a thread which holds out the possibility of disclosing a path leading out of this hermeneutical labyrinth. Unlikely as it might seem, the thread is Helgerson’s allusion to Foxe’s narrative of the martyrdom of Alice Driver, burnt at the stake in Ipswich on 4 November 1558, just two weeks before the death of Queen Mary.34 On being questioned about the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the sacrament, Driver responds in true ‘apocalyptic’ form by making an appeal to the authority of scripture against tradition and the magisterium of the church.35 That she is a 33 ACL §20. Schoolemen, Philosophie, and Poperie. FLE 4:65.16—68.19: ‘yet in all your discourse, for the most parte, Aristotle the patriarch of Philosophers (with divers other human writers) and the ingenuous [sic!] schoolemen, almost in all pointes have some finger; Reason is highlie sett up against holie scripture, and reading against preaching; the church of Rome favourablie admitted to bee of the house of God; Calvin with the reformed churches full of faults; and most of all they which indevoured to be most removed from conformitie with the church of Rome. 34 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 8.494. 35 Driver was interrogated by one Dr Spenser, Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich. Spenser: ‘What sayest thou to the Blessed Sacrament of the altar? Dost thou believe that it is very flesh and blood after the words be spoken of consecration?’ Alice Driver stood with her lips deliberately sealed. A priest who stood by told her, ‘Answer the Chancellor, woman!’ Driver: ‘Why, priest, I came not to talk with thee, but I came to talk with thy master, but if thou wilt I shall talk with thee, command thy master to hold his peace.’ With that the priest

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woman of little education engaged in debate with learned theologians underlines the subversive social reality of a Reformed church as an ‘imagined community of the saints’ who are members by virtue of being committed readers and hearers of the Scriptures. When asked by John Spencer, Chancellor of Norwich, whether the host was ‘a sign of a holy thing’ Driver responds ‘You have said the truth, sir, it is a sign indeed, and I must needs grant it; and therefore seeing it is a sign, it cannot be the thing signified also. Thus far we agree…’ Driver’s insistent distinction between the sacramental ‘sign’ and the ‘thing signified’ is of the utmost significance in the unfolding debate over the formulation of religious identity. Spencer, of course, could not have agreed with her direct challenge to the official dogma concerning transubstantiation. Nonetheless, just a few months later, shortly after the accession of Elizabeth in November 1558, John Jewel, soon to be appointed bishop of Salisbury, put the question of sacramental presence in almost identical terms in his celebrated ‘Challenge Sermon’ preached at Paul’s Cross.36 In the context of a learned critique of the received scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation Jewel adopts Alice Driver’s assertion as the principal axiom of his own apologia: ‘first we put a difference between the sign and the thing itself that is signified.’37 In the course of the 1560s and ‘70s, formulation of such a sharp distinction between a literal and a figurative interpretation of sacramental ‘presence’ put his nose in his cap and spake never a word again. The Chancellor again pressed her for a reply. Driver: ‘Sir, pardon me though I make no answer, for I cannot tell what you mean thereby, for in all my life I never heard nor read of any such Sacrament in all the Scripture. Spenser: ‘Why, what scriptures have you read?’ Driver: ‘I have, I thank God, read God’s Book… the Old and New testament. That same book have I read throughout, yet never could find any such Sacrament there; and for that cause I cannot make answer to that thing I know not. Notwithstanding for all, I will grant you a Sacrament, called the Lord’s Supper, and therefore seeing I have granted you a Sacrament, I pray you show me what a Sacrament is.’ Spenser: ‘It is a sign.’ Dr Gascoigne, who was standing by, confirmed the same, that it was a sign of a holy thing. Driver: ‘You have said the truth, sir, it is a sign indeed, and I must needs grant it; and therefore seeing it is a sign, it cannot be the thing signified also. Thus far we agree, for I have granted you your own saying.’ 36 ‘To conclude, three things herein [i.e. concerning the sacrament] 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 other wise.’ 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 (London: John Day, 1560). Quoted in Jewel’s Works, 1:448. 37 Jewel’s Works, 1:448.



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came to be of profound significance for the development of a distinctively Protestant Elizabethan hermeneutics. Indeed for Jewel the central issue of the Reformation and thus of the substantive disagreement between the churches of England and Rome, was ultimately reducible to one of hermeneutical method, namely how to interpret sacramental ‘signs’ and their relation to ‘things signified’. The unprecedented attention received by his ‘Challenge Sermon’ throughout the 1560s testifies to the importance of his formulation of what can be not unfairly described as the central semiotic problem of the sixteenth-century reshaping of England’s religious identity. Jewel’s and Driver’s common formulation of the question of sacramental presence offers a valuable clue to assist in our grappling with the tension and interaction between the apocalyptic and apologetic formulations of religious identity. Viewed through the lens of his narrative of Alice Driver’s interrogation, Foxe’s apocalytic approach to the definition of religious identity in Actes and Monuments can be read as a deconstruction of the primary hermeneutical assumptions of a traditional ‘sacramental culture’, chiefly the ‘essential’ identification of the sign with the thing signified. With his marked Augustinian emphasis upon a sharp eschatological distinction between the visible and the invisible churches, between the earthly and the heavenly cities, closeley analogous to that between sign and thing signified, apocalyptic hermeneutics can be read on a certain level as a deconstruction of the semiotics of transubstantiation and of ‘enchantment’. Alice Driver’s and John Jewel’s insistence upon the sharp distinction between the visible sacramental sign and the invisible divine reality signified encapsulates what we might term ‘the apocalyptic premise’ whereby the visible and invisible worlds, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and eternal orders of reality are to be kept thoroughly distinct. Where, then, in this analysis of the hermeneutics of apocalyptic and apologetic are we to look for the principle of the conditions for emerging modern publics? The political assumptions of the later sixteenth century would seem to be quite remote from such arcane questions as the precise locus of sacramental presence. In what manner does interplay between the rhetorics of apocalyptic and apologetic shed light on our prelimi­ nary  question concerning the genesis of the early-modern publics? As Helgerson makes plain, despite their radically divergent approaches, Foxe ‘the apocalyptic historian’ and Hooker ‘the apologetic historicist’ nonetheless share an acute sense of the demarcation between the inner subjective ‘forum of the conscience’ and the external ‘political forum’ of common,

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institutional life (both religious and civil).38 It is in the definition of this liminal space between the internal and the external fora and of their interaction that the conditions for a radical transformation of forms of civil association are revealed. It is precisely through its re-formation of the terms of the relation between the forum of the conscience and the external political forum that the hermeneutics of the sacrament sheds light on the conditions for the emergence of new forms of civil association, preeminently in the form of ‘publics’. According to Timothy Rosendale, the contrasting assumptions of traditional and evangelical hermeneutics in the sixteenth century are most clearly manifest in their divergent accounts of sacramental theology.39 Whereas the doctrine of the Mass and transubstantiation tended to collapse the distinction between signifier and signified in their assertion of an objectified ‘real presence’, the doctrine implicit in the liturgy of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer upholds the distinction between the two. According to Jewel’s defence of this doctrine in the section on ‘Real Presence’ in his Defense of the Apologie, ‘To conclude, 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 other wise.’40 Such a distinction between literal and figurative interpretation of sacramental ‘presence’ is, according to Rosendale, of crucial significance in the development of a distinctively Protestant Elizabethan hermeneutics. The revised liturgy of the second prayerbook of 1552 shifts the locus of ‘presence’ decisively away from the physical elements of the sacrament and transfers it to the inner, subjective experience of the worshipper.41 Consequently, ‘presence’ is interpreted in Cranmer’s Prayerbook liturgy of 1552 as a ‘figural’, a conceptual synthesis of word and elements perfor­ med  in the subjective forum of the minds of the worshippers, and thus 38 Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 274. 39 Timothy Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 96. 40 John Jewel, ‘Of Real Presence’, A defense of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (London: Henry Wykes, 1570). See The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre for the Parker Society, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), vol. 1:448. 41 The ‘realist’ words of 1549—‘this is my body’—are replaced in 1552 with ‘eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, by faith, with thanksgiving.’ The primary locus of presence is relocated away from the external elements and made inseparable from the worshipping subject.



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inseparable from an internal, spiritual ‘reception’ of the consecrated host.42 In the reformed liturgy, the gap between sign and signified is thus no longer bridged in an external theurgical act as implied by the ritual of the mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation, but rather presence depends upon an inward subjective act of remembrance—that is through an acknowledgement of ‘presence’ in the conscience. As Rosendale points out, ‘the internalization of this figural sacrament is necessarily an interpretative act; though it takes place in a communal context, it ultimately requires a highly individual mode of understanding the elements as metaphors whose effectuality is dependent on faithful personal reading.’43 The opening up of the breach between sign and thing signified in the apocalyptic discourse is the hermeneutical condition for the deconstruction of the primacy of a ‘sacramental culture’—a process of ‘disenchantment’.44 This deconstruction or ‘disenchantment’ constitutes a central motif in the narrative of Foxe’s martyrology as it is also of the Protestant Reformation more generally. However, with the exception of a handful of religious extremists—e.g. Anabaptists, the Family of Love, and various English Separatists—once the break with Rome had been accomplished the magisterial reformers were intent upon the reconstruction of a visible, institutional, hierarchical, and liturgical church order. And in doing so they were compelled to adopt, in one way or another, the main assumptions of an apologetic frame of reference. The reconstruction of Reformed religious institutions was to be on a distinctly different foundation from that assumed by late-medieval Christianity.45 Nonetheless, the reformers’ reconstruction of a visible, institutional church presupposed the apocalyptic premise of the necessary distinction between the historical and the imagined community of the saints, between visible and invisible church, and of course between sign and signified. The sign was still connected to 42 It is perhaps interesting in this connection to note that in the BCP of 1552, as well as in the subsequent revisions of 1559 and 1662, the administration of the communion occurs at precisely the stage in the liturgy at which the elevation of the host had previously occurred—i.e. the moment of transubstantiation—thus serving to underline vividly the difference between the two divergent liturgical accounts of presence. 43 Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 96. 44 For this connection see Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Reformation and the ‘Disenchantment of the World’ reassessed,’ The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497–528. 45 For a fuller account of the apologetic reestablishment of a semiotic linkage between signum and significata, see my article ‘Of musique with psalms: the hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s defence of the ‘sensible excellencie’ of public worship,’ in John Stafford, ed., Lutheran and Anglican: Essays in honour of Egil Grislis (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2009), 127–151.

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the thing signified, but was now linked by means of a redefined principle of presence and mediation, namely by ‘persuasion’. As an ‘apologist’ of the newly reformed ecclesiastical and civil order, Hooker takes great pains to persuade his audience of the existence of a necessary bond between sign and signified, but such a bond as can no longer subsist ex opere operato, that is purely in an external, theurgically created reality. In effect, the apologetics of Elizabethan religious reform redefine the nature of the ‘sacramental’ itself. In the liturgy Hooker claims that there is indeed a sacramental change or conversion of substance, but this transubstantiation is not to be found outwardly in the physical elements of the sacrament, but rather within the conscience of the participant in the liturgical action. In this sense Hooker affirms the apocalyptic premise of the real distinction of sign and thing signified, yet nonetheless asserts with apologetic intention the necessity of their real connection. On the one hand, sacramental signs and the things signified are distinct; yet, the truth or ‘substance’ of the sign is not finally separable from the sign. This is the force of Hooker’s use of the language of sacramental ‘instrumentality’, a language whose main force is to serve to bridge the distance between apocalyptic and apologetic hermeneutics.46 While from an apocalyptic frame of reference the signs are not in any way to be confused with the signified, nonetheless the apologist insists that the former continue to be connected to the latter in such a manner that enables a sacramental offering and receiving of the gift signified through the instrumental means of the sign. Thus for Hooker, The Real Presence of Christs most Blessed Body and Blood, is not therefore to be sought for in the [external] Sacrament, but in the worthy Receiver of the Sacrament … As for the Sacraments, they really exhibite; but, for ought 46 Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.17–33. ‘The Bread and Cup are his Body and Blood, because they are causes instrumental, upon the receit whereof, the Participation of his Body and Blood ensueth. For that which produceth any certain effect, is not vainly nor improperly said to be, that very effect whereunto it tendeth. Every cause is in the effect which groweth from it. Our Souls and Bodies quickned to Eternal Life, are effects; the cause whereof, is the Person of Christ: His Body and Blood are the true Well-spring, out of which, this Life floweth. So that his Body and Blood are in that very subject whereunto they minister life: Not onely by effect or operation, even as the influence of the Heavens is in Plants, Beasts, Men, and in every thing which they quicken; but also by a far more Divine and Mystical kinde of Union, which maketh us one with him, even as He and the Father are one. The Real Presence of Christs most Blessed Body and Blood, is not therefore to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy Receiver of the Sacrament … As for the Sacraments, they really exhibite; but, for ought we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really, nor do really contain in themselves, that Grace, which with them, or by them, it pleaseth God to bestow.’



politics of religious identity159 we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really, nor do really contain in themselves, that Grace, which with them, or by them, it pleaseth God to bestow.47

Real presence, therefore, in the sacraments presupposes the faithful worshipper who is able to interpret the unity of the three things that ‘make the substance of the sacrament’, namely the gift offered, that is the thing signified; the elements which depict the gift, namely the signs; and the word of scripture which articulates the link between the sign and the signified.48 Sacraments thus come to be viewed as necessarily dynamic events where the instrumentality of signs works through the act of interpretation on the part of the receiver. ‘Whereupon’, Hooker concludes, ‘there ensueth a kinde of Transubstantiation in us, a true change, both of Soul and Body, an alteration from death to life.’49 This subtle but telling redefinition of the hermeneutics of sacramental presence cautiously avoids the extremes of either separating or confusing the sign and the thing signified. Consequently for Hooker, the sharp demarcation between the inner, private realm of individual conscience and the outer, public demands of institutional order calls forth an arena of persuasion—in effect a ‘public sphere’—as the necessary means of mediation between the seemingly opposed and incommensurable demands of two opposed realms of existence and religious identity. Calvin had earlier explicitly referred to this opposition employing the distinction between the ‘forum conscientiae’ and the ‘forum politicum et externum’.50 In this fashion all of the persuasive devices of apologetic are employed as instruments to bridge the very gulf opened up by the apocalyptic narrative, namely that between the sign and the thing signified. Thus the primary function of the apocalyptic narrative is to fashion a new religious identity based upon a deconstruction of the premises of a ‘sacramental culture’, while the apologetic discourse, on the other side, aims to reconstitute a place for religious identity within a reconstructed institutional order; the former emphasizes the disparity of 47 Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.17–33. 48 See Lawes V.58.2; 2:249.161–250.3. 49 Lawes V.67.11; 2:338.13–340.1. 50 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated and annotated by Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), Bk. III.19.15; 847. See my essay ‘Negotiating the ‘forum politicum’ and the ‘forum conscientiæ’: John Calvin and the religious origins of the early-modern public sphere,’ in Angela Vanhaelen and Joseph Ward, eds. Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: Publics and Spaces (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming in 2010).

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sign and thing signified, while the latter seeks to restore the link between the two. Thus, according to Richard Helgerson’s account of the narrative of ‘Apocalyptic and Apologetic’ in Forms of Nationhood, John Foxe and Richard Hooker contribute in complementary ways to a distinctively early-modern re-thinking of how to negotiate the space between the inner private realm of individual conscience and the external public realm of institutional order and political community with all of its hierarchical institutions, structures, and coercive demands. In this distinctively earlymodern problematic of religious identity, one of the principal instruments of mediation between individual and community would prove to be the emerging publics of religious persuasion. By way of conclusion, a dialogue of sorts between the unsituated world of theological semiotics and the more concrete, situated space of public religious teaching—between print and practice as it were—can be discerned in the distinction evident in the two prominent genres of later Elizabethan sermons at Paul’s Cross, namely the so-called ‘Jeremiads’ and the ‘exhortations to charity’, the former with their emphasis on the gulf separating the fallen and derelict church in history from the splendour of the heavenly city, and the latter encouraging the faithful to labour towards a fulfilment of the heavenly promises in a process of habitual sanctification.51 While the earthly sign must be clearly distinguished from the mystical reality signified in the Jeremiad, nonetheless the union of sign with thing signified is an object of striving; both the clarity of distinction and the possibility of mediation are proposed by means of the revised ontology of presence such as that outlined by Hooker, namely through an inner ‘persuasion’ of the conscience. It is through a common persuasion that a ‘public’ is formed.

51 See Mary Morrissey, ‘The Paul’s Cross Jeremiad and other sermons of exhortation,’ chap. 23 in Paul’s Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 1520‒1640, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV, forthcoming in 2014).

CHAPTER EIGHT

POLITICS OF PERSUASION: ‘PUBLIC’ AND ‘PRIVATE’ IN HOOKER’S APOLOGETICS Much of Richard Hooker’s career was spent in theological and constitutional controversy concerning the provisions of the Elizabethan Settle­ ment of 1559.1 From the very outset the question of the coherence of the Erastian presuppositions of the Settlement, specifically the unification of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Crown, with certain theological premises lay at the very heart of these disputes. In his capacity as Master of the Temple in the Inns of Court Hooker preached a series of sermons in the mid-1580s on themes of Reformation soteriology and eccelesiology. Their doctrinal orthodoxy was formally challenged by the disciplinarian Puritan, Walter Travers, in A Supplication made to the Privie Counsell.2 Travers sharply challenged Hooker’s strong appeal to the authority of reason and natural law in religious and ecclesiastical matters as inconsistent with the chief tenets of reformed doctrinal orthodoxy. Hooker’s formal Answere3 to Travers’s objections lays the groundwork of the philosophical and theological system which he expounded in considerably greater detail in his treatise of the 1590s, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. The Lawes consists of a lengthy preface and eight books.4 The first four books address (1) the nature of law in general, (2) the proper uses of the 1 For a recent and thorough account of Richard Hooker’s career, see Lee W. Gibbs, ‘Life of Hooker,’in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 1–26. 2 A supplication made to the Priuy Counsel by Mr Walter Trauers (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612). See Egil Grislis, ‘Introduction to Commentary on Tractates and Sermons § iv, The Controversy with Travers,’ in the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, 6 vols., gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977–93) (hereafter FLE), vol. 5, ed. Laetitia Yeandle and Egil Grislis (1990), 641–48. 3 The answere of Mr. Richard Hooker to a supplication preferred by Mr Walter Travers to the HH. Lords of the Privie Counsell (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612). 4 Books I-IV were published in 1593, book V in 1597, books VI and VIII posthumously in 1648, and the first complete edition of all VIII books, including book VII for the first time, by John Gauden after the Restoration in 1662. The works of Mr. Richard Hooker … vindicating the Church of England, as truly christian, and duly reformed: in eight books of ecclesiastical polity : now compleated, as with the sixth and eighth, so with the seventh, touching episcopacy, as the primitive, catholick and apostolick government of the church, out of his own

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authorities of reason and revelation, (3) the application of the latter to the government of the church and (4) objections to practices inconsistent with the continental ‘reformed’ example. The final four address the more particular issues of (5) public religious duties, (6) the power of jurisdiction, (7) the authority of bishops and (8) the supreme authority or sovereignty of the Prince in both church and commonwealth, and hence their unity in the Christian state. Throughout the treatise Hooker’s express aim is to explicate systematically the principles underlying the religious Settlement of 1559 in such a manner as to secure conscientious obedience and conformity through the all the instruments of persuasion: my whole endeuour is to resolue the conscience, and to shew as neare as I can what in this controuersie the hart is to thinke, if it will follow the light of sound and sincere iudgement, without either clowd of preiudice or mist of passionate affection. Wherefore seeing that lawes and ordinances in particular, whether such as we obserue, or such as your selues would haue established, when the minde doth sift and examine them, it must needes haue often recourse to a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kindes, and qualities of lawes in generall, whereof vnlesse it be throughly enformed, there will appeare no certaintie to stay our perswasion vpon: I haue for that cause set downe in the first place an introduction on both sides needfull to bee considered: Declaring therein what law is, how different kindes of lawes there are, and what force they are of according vnto each kind.5

The treatise is framed as a response to Thomas Cartwright who had been John Whitgift’s formidable adversary in the Admonition Controversy of the 1570s. The preface is in fact addressed formally ‘to them that seeke (as they tearme it) the reformation of lawes, and orders ecclesiasticall, in the Church of England,’6 that is to disciplinarian-puritans who, like Cartwright and Travers, sought closer conformity to the pattern of the ‘best reformed churches’ on the continent, especially Calvin’s Geneva. The preface sets the tone of the work and announces Hooker’s main apologetic intent. There is a significant difference between Hooker’s rhetorical approach and that of previous contributions to Elizabethan polemics. He abandons the usual recourse to ridicule and personal abuse which was so characteristic­of the vast majority of tracts contributed by both sides of the controversy­and speaks irenically to the fundamental theological manuscripts, never before published: with an account of his holy life, and happy death written by Dr. John Gauden … ; the entire edition dedicated to the Kings Most Excellent Majestie, Charls [sic] the II … (London: J. Best, for Andrew Crook, 1662). Hereafter Lawes. 5 Lawes Pref.7.1, 2; FLE 1:34.20–35.2. 6 Lawes Pref. Title; FLE 1:1.1.



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assumptions with the professed aim of securing conscientious acceptance of the Settlement. To this end he sets out to persuade by an appeal to mutually acceptable theological assumptions and authorities: ‘wee offer the lawes whereby wee liue vnto the generall triall and iudgement of the whole world’.7 Hooker’s starting-point is to accept unconditionally the disciplinarian premise that the doctrinal tenets and the pastoral aspirations of the Reformation had to be fulfilled in the polity of the Church of England. The rhetorical slant is intended to serve the main apologetic aim of the treatise, namely to justify the Elizabethan Settlement as consistent with the principles of reformed doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus the grand cosmic scheme of laws set out in Book I is intended to place the particulars of the controversy within a foundational context: because the point about which wee strive is the qualitie of our Lawes, our first entrance hereinto cannot better be made, then with consideration of the nature of lawe in generall and of that lawe which giueth life vnto all the rest which are commendable iust and good, namely the lawe whereby the Eternall himselfe doth worke. Proceeding from hence to the lawe, first of nature, then of scripture, we shall haue the easier accesse vnto those things which come after to be debated, concerning the particular cause and question which wee haue in hand.’8

The rhetorical aim is to persuade opponents of the Settlement to conscientious conformity by demonstrating the coherence of the ‘particular decisions’ of the Settlement—the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, hierarchy, episcopacy, royal supremacy, and thus ultimately ‘Ecclesiastical Dominion’ or sovereignty itself, with certain ‘general meditations’ on the metaphysics or first principles concerning the nature of law. The Question of Coherence One of the most important and enduring questions to engage critical study of the writings of the Elizabethan theologian, philosopher, and polemicist Richard Hooker (1554–1600) concerns the coherence of his thought. For several decades scholars have disagreed sharply on how to interpret the relation between Hooker’s broad metaphysical groundwork (or ‘generall meditations’ as he himself calls them) set out in the opening books (I-IV) of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, with the 7 Lawes I.1.3; FLE 1:58.5–6. 8 Lawes I.1.3; FLE 1:58.11–19.

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more specific practical, political, and constitutional prescriptions (or ‘particular decisions’) described in the later books (V-VIII).9 In particular, Hooker’s metaphysical exposition in Book I of the nature of law and the principle of its generic division has been closely evaluated with reference to his determinedly Erastian defence in Book VIII of the constitution established under the terms of the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, and the logical coherence between these two decisive components of his treatise was found to be severely wanting. In short, Hooker’s theory of law and his theory of sovereignty came to be viewed as fundamentally at odds with each other.10 As early as the 1930s, a sequence of studies devoted to exploring medieval influences on Hooker’s political theory sparked the first concerted attack on the logical coherence of these two bookends (so to speak) of his discourse. Allesandro Passerin d’Entrèves’s monograph Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e all storia del diritto naturale—arguably the first extended, critical study of Hooker’s political thought—challenged the long-received Whig reading by demonstrating the Elizabethan’s considerable debt to scholastic models, and to Aquinas in particular, in the formulation of his account of natural law.11 Not long afterwards, in a British Academy lecture on Marsilius of Padua, C.W. Previté-Orton remarked on Hooker’s evident reliance upon the political theology of the Defensor Pacis in his account of the royal supremacy in Book VIII of the Lawes.12 9 Lawes I.1.2; FLE 1:57.25–33. ‘I haue endeuoured throughout the body of this whole discourse, that euery former part might giue strength vnto all that followe, and euery later bring some light vnto all before. So that if the iudgements of men doe but holde themselues in suspence as touching these first more generall meditations, till in order they haue perused the rest that ensue: what may seeme darke at the first will afterwardes be founde more plaine, euen as the later particular decisions will appeare I doubt not more strong, when the other haue beene read before’ (emphasis added). 10 For an insightful summary of the early stages of this dispute see A.S. McGrade, ‘The Coherence of Hooker’s Polity: the Books on Power,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 24.2 (1963), 163–82. See also W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘The Philosopher of the ‘Politic Society’: Richard Hooker as a Political Thinker,’ in Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of his Works, ed. W. Speed Hill (Cleveland and London: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972), 3–76; republished in W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker, ed. C.W. Dugmore (London: Athlone Press, 1980), 131–91. 11 Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e all storia del diritto naturale, Memorie dell’ Istituto Giuridico 2.22 (Turin: Istituto Giuridico della R. Università, 1932), 72 ff. See also d’Entrèves’s The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (New York: Humanities Press, 1959), 88, 143, and ‘Hooker e Locke: Un contributo alla storia del contratto sociale,’ in Studi filosofico–giuridici, dedicati a Giorgio Del Vecchio nel XXV anno di insegnamento (1904–1929), 2 (1930–31), 228–50. 12 C.W. Previté-Orton, ‘Marsilius of Padua,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 21 (1935), 1–47, at 31–32.



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The consequence was the ignition of a protracted debate over the logical coherence of Hooker’s thought based upon observation of the apparent irreconcilability of the Thomist ‘rationalism’ of his theory of law with the supposed ‘voluntarism’ implicit in his theory of sovereignty. The case for the logical incoherence of these two key components of Hooker’s political theory was later reinforced by Peter Munz and Hugh Kearney. Both scholars arrived at the conclusion that Hooker adhered to a Thomist position on the definition of law in the ‘theoretical’ first book of the Lawes. When Hooker came down to the sober practical business of providing an apologia for the Tudor constitution in the later books of his treatise, however, he abandoned the orthodox principles of Aquinas and sought refuge in the heretical Averroism of Marsilius.13 For Munz, Hooker had set out to interpret the Tudor State in terms of a Christian philosophy [viz. Aquinas’s] and had thus endeavoured to show that a true Christian could not find fault with it. In order to carry that interpretation, however, to a successful conclusion he had been obligated, by various factors, to avail himself of a political theory [viz. Marsilius’s] which was diametrically opposed to the principles of the Christian philosophy which he had expounded in the earlier part of the work.14

The question of the coherence of Hooker’s thought has since been taken up successively by Gunnar Hillerdal, A.S. McGrade, James Cargill Thompson, Robert Eccleshall,15 and most recently by Lee Gibbs, Rory Fox, and Patrick Patterson.16 In each of these readings of Hooker the intrinsic 13 See Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1952; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1970), 49–57, and H.F. Kearney, ‘Richard Hooker: A Reconstruction,’ Cambridge Journal 5 (1952), 300–311. 14 Munz, The Place of Hooker, 101. 15 Gunnar Hillerdal, Reason and Revelation in Richard Hooker (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1962), 30. A.S. McGrade, ‘The Coherence of Hooker’s Polity,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 24.2 (1963), 163–82. Robert Eccleshall, ‘Richard Hooker’s Synthesis and the Problem of Allegiance,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 37.1 (1976), 111–124. W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, ‘The Source of Hooker’s Knowledge of Marsilius of Padua,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25.1 (1974), 75–81 and ‘The Philosopher of the ‘Politic Society,’’ Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker, ed. C.W. Dugmore (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 131–91. 16 Rory Fox, ‘Richard Hooker and the Incoherence of Ecclesiastical Polity,’ Heythrop Journal 44.1 (2003), 43–59; Patrick Patterson, ‘Hooker’s Apprentice: God, Entelechy, Beauty, and Desire in Book One of Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie,’ Anglican Theological Review (2002), 961–88. Patterson sees the Lawes as a ‘monument to a vanished world’ and fundamentally ‘at odds with the emerging ‘modernity’ of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, and in tune with the spirit of classical and medieval philosophy and theology.’ See also Lee Gibbs, ‘Introduction to Book I,’ in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993), 6 (1), 86–89.

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logical coherence of Hooker’s political thought is challenged from one perspective or another. Most have confined the scope of their investigations to the overtly political portions of Hooker’s treatise (usually Books I and VIII), while most, but not all, have set aside all but the most basic theological considerations. For Kearney, Hooker sets out in Book I with the Thomist assumption that law is intrinsically rational and winds up in Book VIII asserting that law is merely the positive assertion of the sovereign’s will—thus achieving a logically incoherent transition from scholastic rationalism to a proto-Hobbesian variety of hyper-voluntarism. Cargill Thompson, on the other hand, views Hooker more contextually, and sees him as driven from the outset by the pragmatic requirements of defeating the Disciplinarian puritan challenge. For purely polemical reasons, therefore, he was disposed to sacrifice philosophical consistency to the polemical requirements of defending the Elizabethan Settlement: ‘Throughout the Lawes, Hooker was continually arguing to a brief, and he cannot easily be acquitted of the charge of subordinating his political ideas to the immediate needs of the controversy.’17 Other interpreters branched out into exploration of more broadly theoretical angles on the question of the coherence of the Lawes. In a variation of Kearney’s and Munz’s thesis Gunnar Hillerdal, for example, interprets the design of Hooker’s generic division of the various kinds of law in Book I as reflective of a Thomistic understanding of a balanced correlation between the ‘orders of nature and grace’, but views the justification of the institutions of the Elizabethan Settlement in the later books—the royal supremacy, in particular—as falling into a Nominalistic dichotomy of these two orders of reality. Hillerdal nonetheless succeeded in showing that the question of the coherence of Hooker’s thought extends beyond the confines of his specific accounts of natural law and the constitution of 1559 and requires attention to his more general theological and metaphysical assumptions. Nonetheless, like others before him, Hillerdal assumes too readily Hooker’s commitment to Thomism. Our purpose is to take up once again this question of the coherence of Hooker’s thought with a view to proposing a resolution to the apparent conflict of his ‘general meditations’ on the nature of law and his defence of the ‘particular decisions’ embodied in the Erastian constitution of the Elizabethan Settlement. Central to our proposal is the requirement that our investigation proceed as much as possible within the methodological 17 Cargill Thompson, ‘The Philosopher of the ‘Politic Society,’’ 140.



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boundaries established by Hooker’s own preferred mode of theological discourse. Indeed, a cautious reflection upon the alien mentalité of this Renaissance thinker provides the key to making headway in this task. To begin to make sense of the coherence of Hooker’s theories of law and sovereignty requires paying the closest possible attention to his deepest theological presuppositions. While there are certainly tantalizing glimpses of an enlightened rationalism and even of a nascent historical critical method in his writings,18 Hooker shows no modern enlightened inclination to draw a clear line of demarcation between the spheres of political and theological discourse. It is arguably the very attempt to impose such modern methodological assumptions upon the interpretation of Hooker that give rise to the indictment of incoherence in the first place. Rather than call him to the bar of modern critical judgment and insist that he explain his position employing only a methodology and categories consistent with those we have inherited from the Enlightenment, we propose to explore his theories of law and sovereignty as far as possible within his own declared metaphysical-theological categories. Call this approach a ‘hermeneutics of sympathy’ if you will. Nomos-Theology: ‘God is Law’ Central to the argument of Richard Hooker’s treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593) is his claim that God is law. As ‘first originall cause’, this divine ‘aeternal Law’ contains within itself all derivative species of law; ‘as ofspringe of god, they are in him as effects in their highest cause, he likewise actuallie is in them, thassistance and influence of his deitie is theire life.’19 Hooker distinguishes between a ‘first’ and a ‘second’ eternal law. The latter comprises all derivative species of law which participate the eternal law as discrete emanations ordered dispositively in hierarchical ‘procession’, while the former is the original, self-constituting divine source as it remains concomitantly and ineffably simple, at unity within itself—i.e. ‘verie Onenesse’.20 Hooker’s account of eternal law as simultaneously unity in simplicity and participation of that unity by a multiplicity of derivative forms of law recapitulates the account of causality set out by Proclus in his Elements of Theology whereby ‘every effect 18 See, e.g., Frederic Beiser, The Sovereignty of Reason: the Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 19 Lawes V.56.5; 2:237.23–25. 20 Lawes I.2.2; 1:59.14–15

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remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it.’21 Hooker anchors his elaborate exposition and defense of the Elizabethan religious settlement in a metaphysical theory of law which itself assumes a Neoplatonic ontology of ‘participation’ in the Proclean tradition. All thinges are therefore pertakers of God, they are his ofspringe, his influence is in them, and the personall wisdome of God is for that verie cause said to excell in nimbleness or agilitie, to pearce into all intellectual pure and subtile spirites, to goe through all, and to reach unto everie thinge which is… All thinges which God in theire times and seasons hath brought forth were eternallie and before all times in God as a worke unbegunne is in the artificer which afterward bringeth it unto effect. Therefore whatsoever wee doe behold now in this present world, it was inwrapped within the bowells of divine mercie, written in the booke of eternall wisdom, and held in the handes of omnipotent power, the first foundations of the world being as yeat unlaide.22

From a metaphysical or theological point of view, this claim is neither original nor remarkable. It represents a restatement of classical ‘logos theology’ such as one finds in Neoplatonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, in the thought of Philo of Alexandria derived from pre-Socratic sources (Heracleitus and Anaxagoras), and developed into the premise of a complete practical philosophy in the writings of the Stoics. Drawing upon the florilegium of Stobaeus Hooker cites all of these authorities.23 Christian appropriation of this Greek metaphysical theme is prominent among early-church fathers, for example Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria or Augustine,24 as it was characteristic also of the later scholastic theology of such as Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and of Protestant reformers like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli.25 Again, Hooker’s eclectic references denote familiarity with all of the above. For all of these theologians, an uncreated divine principle, the Word (logos, or 21 Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R Dodds, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 38–39; proposition 35. Abbrev. below as ET. 22 Hooker, Lawes, V.56.5; 2: 236.26–31, 237.15–22. 23 Ioannis Stobaei Eclogarum libri duo: Quorum prior physicas, posterior ethicas complectitur; nunc primùm Graecè editi (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1575) is likely the edition Hooker employed: Henry Chadwick, ‘Philo and the Beginnings of Christian Thought,’ in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A.H. Armstrong (Cambridge: University Press, 1967), 137. 24 See A.S. McGrade, ‘Classical, Patristic, and Medieval Sources,’ in Companion to Richard Hooker, 51–88, and William Haugaard, ‘Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 10.3 (1979), 37–60. 25 Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ Ia qq. 14, 15, 22, 33–35; IIa IIae, qq. 90–96. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.5; II.14



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ratio, or paradeigma—reason, order, plan) constitutes the ‘idea of ideas’, the Platonic ‘archetypal idea’ and ‘first principle’ of all created order while the creation itself, both visible-material and invisible-spiritual, proceeds from and is wholly dependent upon this original, un-derived, hidden and transcendent first principle as its first and primary cause. For Hooker, an appeal to logos theology entails considerably more than a purely metaphysical claim concerning the nature of the first principle. As his argument in Book I unfolds, it becomes clear that Hooker is thoroughly invested in the practical, political, and constitutional consequences of this nomos-theology, of the claim that ‘God is law’. Indeed the edifice of his apologetic rests upon this point of departure: The statelinesse of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one, that root which ministreth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosome of the earth concealed: and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, such labour is then more necessary then pleasant both to them which undertake it, and for the lookers on. In like maner the use and benefite of good lawes, all that live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the groundes and first originall causes from whence they have sprong be unknowne, as to the greatest part of men they are.26

The burden of his argument is thus to demonstrate that the entire constitutional arrangement of the Elizabethan Settlement—the ‘stately house’ of the established Church and the ‘goodly tree’ of the flourishing commonwealth united under the rule of one sovereign—has its ultimate ground and justification in a ‘hidden’, transcendent first principle, a ‘first originall’ of all external manifestations of order. For Hooker the institutions of the Elizabethan religious settlement rest upon this foundational proposition of metaphysical ontology, viz. that God is Law. This account of his apologetic purpose constitutes, moreover, Hooker’s own explicit claim to coherence of argument—he intends this theory of law to provide the necessary justification for his later defense of the institutions of the Settlement, and more specifically for his account of the theory of sovereignty. Hooker’s adaptation of this classical logos theology to the concrete political and constitutional issues of his particular time and place is unique when judged beside other contemporary contributions to Elizabethan religious polemics.27 Indeed his prodigiously sustained effort to explore 26 Lawes I.1.2; FLE 1:57.6–16 27 See Rudolph Almasy, ‘Polemics and Apologetics,’ in A Companion to Richard Hooker, 121–50.

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the underlying theological and metaphysical connections connecting the theories of law and sovereignty—his intimate knitting together of high theology and politics—is arguably the defining characteristic of Hooker’s thought, such that the designation ‘political theology’ is probably the most accurate designation of his venture.28 Such an approach to political theory is thoroughly in keeping with Hooker’s repeated affirmation of the Neoplatonic logic of ‘participation’ whereby all things are understood to exist within their ‘first originall cause’ and, conversely, the cause to dwell within all derivative beings.29 As C.S. Lewis once commented in this connection, Hooker’s universe is ‘drenched with Deity.’30 ‘Nomos-theology’, then, is the substantive proposition of Book I of the Lawes. Hooker summarizes his general aim towards the end of Book I: the drift and purpose of all is this, even to show in what maner as every good and perfect gift, so this very gift of good and perfect Lawes is derived from the father of lightes; to teach men a reason why iust and reasonable lawes are of so great force, of so great vse in the world; and to enforme their minds with some methode of reducing the lawes whereof there is present controuersie vnto their first originall causes, that so it may be in euery particular ordinance thereby the better discerned, whether the same be reasonable iust and righteous or no.31

Hooker defines law in general as ‘that which doth assigne unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of working… so that no certaine end could ever be attained, unlesse the actions whereby it is attained were regular, that is to say, made suteable for and correspondent unto their end, by some canon, rule or lawe.’32 This definition places him in a scholastic teleological tradition derived ultimately from the metaphysics of Aristotle and mediated by Thomas Aquinas. The definition is almost verbatim a 28 I make this argument in the introduction to my book Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), 1–4. 29 On Hooker’s idea of participation, see Charles W. Irish, ‘‘Participation in God Himselfe’: Law, the Mediation of Christ, and Sacramental Participation in the Thought of Richard Hooker,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation [hereafter RHER], ed. W.J. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 165–84; John E. Booty, ‘The Spirituality of Participation in Richard Hooker,’ Sewanee Theological Review 38.1 (1994), 9–20; and Edmund Newey, ‘The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor,’ Modern Theology 18.1 (2002), 1–26. 30 C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 462. 31 Lawes I.16.1; FLE 1 135.11–13 32 Lawes I.2.1; FLE 1:58.26–29



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quotation of Aquinas’s definition of the ‘essence of law’.33 Moreover, scholars such as d’Entrèves, Munz, Marshall, and others have been quite correct in their observation of the structural similarities between Hooker’s account of law and Thomas Aquinas’s in his short treatise on law in the second part of the Summa Theologica.34 Hooker asserts that everything works according to law, including God himself: ‘the being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working: for that perfection which God is, geveth perfection to that he doth.’35 Just as the traditional logos theology accounts for the genesis of the world by means of an emanation or processio from an originative principle of divine unity, so also Hooker derives a diverse hierarchy of laws from the eternal law as their ‘highest wellspring and fountaine.’ In this respect he also adheres to Aquinas’s position.36 Hooker’s emphasis upon the divine unity is marked: ‘our God is one, or rather verie Onenesse, and meere unitie, having nothing but it selfe in it selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of many things besides.’37 It is precisely, however, in his insistence upon the divine unity and simplicity that we can begin to discern a glimmer of Hooker’s departure from the Thomistic paradigm. On a certain level, it is as if Hooker had conflated Aquinas’s treatise on law in the secunda pars with the argument of the articles on the divine simplicity in the third question of the prima pars.38 All derivative species of law participate in the divine, undifferentiated unity of what Hooker calls ‘that lawe which as it is laid vp in the bosome of God’,39 and emanate from it ‘dispositively’, that is by way of a gradual hierarchical ‘procession’ from higher to lower species. In this respect, Hooker’s 33 ST Ia IIæ, q. 90, art. 1: ‘Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting: for ‘lex’ is derived from ‘ligare’ [to bind], because it binds one to act. Now the rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts, as is evident from what has been stated above (1, 1, ad 3); since it belongs to the reason to direct to the end, which is the first principle in all matters of action, according to the Philosopher (Physics ii).’ 34 ST Ia IIæ, qq. 90–96. These similarities have often been noted by Hooker’s interpreters. See, e.g., John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the AnglicanTtradition; an Historical and Theological Study of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity (London: A.C. Black, 1963), and Munz, The Place of Hooker. 35 Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.6 36 ST Ia IIæ, q. 91, art. 1: ‘the very Idea of the government of things in God the Ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law. And since the Divine Reason’s conception of things is not subject to time but is eternal, according to Proverbs 8 23, therefore it is that this kind of law must be called eternal.’ 37 Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.14–19 38 ST Ia, q. 3. ‘De simplicitate Dei’. See esp. Art. 7, respondeo. 39 Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.15

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nomos-theology adheres to the Neoplatonic logic of the so-called lex divinitatis whereby the originative principle of law remains simple and self-identical while, at the same time, it proceeds (emanates) beyond and below itself ‘dispositively’ in its generation of manifold, derivative species of law.40 Unlike Aquinas’s definition of eternal law in secunda pars of the Summa, however, Hooker distinguishes between a first and a second eternal law on the ground that God is a law both to himself (in se) in his inaccessible divine simplicity, and to all creatures besides (ad extra), and thus invokes the ineffably transcendent divinity of Ia pars, q. 3, as the original Eternal Law.41 While his discussion of the first eternal law adheres closely to traditional formulations of ‘logos’ theology (such as found in the opening questions of the first part of Aquinas’s Summa), Hooker invention of the category ‘second æternal lawe’ introduces something quite distinctive, unusual, and unexpected from the standpoint of the tradition of Christian legal theory.42 ‘All things,’ Hooker maintains, including God’s own self, ‘do worke after a sort according to lawe.’43 Whereas all creatures work ‘according to a lawe, whereof some superiour, unto whome they are subject, is author,’ nonetheless ‘only the workes and operations of God have him both for their worker, and for the lawe whereby they are wrought. The being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working.’44 As the first principle of law, God alone is a completely self-regulated agent—causa sui, and consequently gubernator sui—and ‘being the first, it can have no other then it selfe to be the author of that law which it willingly worketh by. God therefore is a law both to himselfe, and to all other things besides.’45 All derivative species of law, therefore, have their origin in this first eternal law; however for Hooker their derivation from the first eternal law is not in the first instance through a gradual, hierarchically mediated ‘dispositio,’ but rather they are understood by him to be gathered together within the second 40 On the hierarchical concept of the ‘lex divinitatis’ see W.J. Hankey, ‘Augustinian Immediacy and Dionysian Mediation in John Colet, Edmund Spenser, Richard Hooker and the Cardinal de Bérulle,’ in Augustinus in der Neuzeit: Colloque de las Herzog August Bibliothek de Wolfenbüttel 14–17 Octobre 1996, ed. Dominique Courcelles (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 125–160. See also my article ‘Grace and Hierarchy: Richard Hooker’s Two Platonisms,’ RHER, 25–40. 41 See Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.6–64.3. ST Ia, q. 3, art. 8 ‘Whether God enters into composition with other things.’ 42 See Lee Gibbs’s discussion of the two eternal laws in his ‘Introduction to Book I,’ FLE 6(1): 92 ff. 43 Lawes I.2 2; FLE 1:58.33–59.1 44 Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.12-5 45 Lawes I.2.3; FLE 1:60.16–18



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eternal law. In this fashion Hooker simultaneously guards the transcendent simplicity and unity of the divine source of law—God in his ‘verie Onenesse,’ the first eternal law—and, by positing the second eternal law he asserts the radical immanence of God in all the manifold participating forms bound together within it. The crucial consequence of this gathering together of the various species of law within a second eternal law is to diminish the overall significance of the hierarchical dispositio as the primary mode of mediation between the divine source of law and the finite, created order of laws. In place of the Thomist logic of a gradual, hierarchical disposition of the species of law, Hooker’s positing of the second eternal law sets up an Augustinian ‘hypostatic’ relation between the Creator/Eternal Law and creature/manifold determinate species of law. Viewed from the aspect of the ‘bosome of God’, the second eternal law is actually one and the same as the first eternal law, and in this unity the importance of the principle of gradual disposition is obviated. Viewed, however, from below—that is from the creaturely aspect of the manifold derivative forms of law within it which participate the eternal law—the second eternal law is distinct from the simple and unutterable divine unity.46 The second eternal law comprises the various laws ‘kept by all his creatures, according to the severall conditions wherewith he hath indued them.’47 In its ‘descended’ aspect, the second eternal law permits a reemergence of the principle of hierarchical dispositio. In this respect, the relation between the first and second eternal laws is analogous to that between the first and second Primal Hypostases of Neoplatonic metaphysics, viz. ‘the One’ and its first derivative ‘Mind’, nous or logos.48 The second eternal law has a variety of ‘names’ depending on the different orders of creatures subject to a single divine government. For Hooker, the two principal derivative genera of the second eternal law are 1) the natural law and 2) the revealed law of the scriptures, usually identified by

46 Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.12–19: ‘Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man to wade farre into the doings of the most High; whome although to knowe bee life, and ioy to make mention of his name; yet our soundest knowledge is, to know that wee know him not as indeede hee is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence when we confesse without confession, that his glory is inexplicable, his greatnesse aboue our capacitie and reach. Hee is aboue, and wee vpon earth; therefore it behoueth our wordes to bee warie and fewe.’ 47 Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.9–10 48 Plotinus, The Enneads, edited and translated by Stephen McKenna (Burdett, New York: Larson Publications, 1992), III.8.7., 279.

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Hooker—following Aquinas’s nomenclature—as the ‘divine law’ and consisting of the ‘old law’ of Moses and ‘new law’ of the Gospel.49 Thus comprised within the second eternal law Hooker’s system of the laws expresses Aquinas’s Christian Neoplatonic twofold motion of creative procession from (exitus) and redemptive return back to (reditus) the original unity of the eternal law. Each of these two primary species—the natural law and the divine law—is further participated by multiple derivative and dependent forms of law. By means of a continuing procession or ‘dispositive’ emanation, the natural law comprises an unfolding series of subordinate and hierarchically arranged species of law. Unlike Aquinas, Hooker extends his account of the natural law to include the irrational natural and necessary agents ‘which keepe the lawe of their kind unwittingly’ is distinguished from the governance of the rational.50 The law governing the rational creatures is distinguished further into a ‘law cœlestial’ ordering the angels, ‘spirits immateriall and intellectuall’,51 and a ‘law of reason,’ most often identified as the ‘natural law’ simply, the law which orders self-conscious and rational humankind. For Hooker all of these sub-species of the natural law represent a further processio ad extra or dispositio of the second eternal law. The other principal aspect of the second eternal law, i.e. the law of God’s special revelation of himself in the Scriptures, presupposes a disruption of the order regulated by the natural law and introduced into that order by the Fall and by original sin. This divinely revealed law provides the means of the restoration or ‘return’ of the creation to its original condition of unity under the eternal law; the second eternal law thus works through the revelation of Scripture to ensure that nothing in the created order falls outside the regulation of God’s ordering purpose. Hooker’s distinction between these two summa genera of the second eternal law—viz. natural law and divine law—corresponds, as has already been shown, to the cosmic logic of procession and return of Neoplatonic metaphysics, but for Hooker it also reflects the epistemological distinction of the twofold knowledge of God (duplex cognitio Dei), namely by the light of supernatural revelation and by the natural light of reason so critically important to Protestant theology.52 49 ST IaIIæ q. 90, art. 4 50 Lawes I.3.2–5; FLE 1;64.3–69.20 51 Lawes I.4.1–3; FLE 1:69.21–72.24 52 See Calvin, Inst. I.2.1. See my article ‘Richard Hooker’s Theory of Natural Law in the Context of Reformation Theology,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 30.3 (1999), 681–703.



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On the side of natural law there are further derivative and composite species of law—chief among them human positive law and the law of nations, for example—which depend upon a conscious, pragmatic reflection upon the general principles contained in the natural law and their application to particular, concrete circumstances. These additional derivative species of law are viewed by Hooker as a consequence of human sin and, like the divine law, they constitute part of the divinely ordained means of correction to the disorder introduced by the Fall—as Augustine would say, coercive human law is a remedium peccati.53 Throughout all this the human creature as the imago dei is portrayed by Hooker as the focal point of the divine operation of procession from and return to the original fount of order established in divine simplicity of the first eternal law. The structure of this generic division of law in Book I of the Ecclesiasticall Politie shows that Hooker had undoubtedly read Aquinas on law54 very closely, as numerous scholars have noted.55 Hooker’s crucial distinction between the first and second eternal laws marks, nonetheless, a significant departure from the metaphysical framework of the Thomist model. The effect of drawing a distinction between two aspects of the eternal law may at first glance appear not all that momentous. The effect, however, is simultaneously to widen and to decrease the distance between the creatorlawgiver and the created cosmos. The gathering together of all the derivative species of law within the second eternal law—a distinction missing from Aquinas’s own generic division of law in the Summa Theologica— undermines the primacy of a gradual, dispositive, hierarchical mediation between creator and creature intrinsic to the Thomist model, and emphasizes rather the hypostatic distinction and identity of participation of these manifold species of law in their common source. With a marked Augustinian emphasis, the second eternal law in effect renders the participation of the manifold forms of law in their source, i.e. the Eternal Law, simultaneously both more transcendent and more immanent, ruling out a gradual and hierarchical dispositive­mediation between the creaturely-derivative with

53 For coercive law as a remedium peccati, see Augustine, De civitate Dei, Bk XIX. 54 ST, Ia IIae, qq. 90–108 55 Lee Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer,’ Anglican Theological Review 84.4 (2002), 943–960; Patterson, ‘Hooker’s Apprentice’; Robert K. Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker, 49–57; Passerin d’Entrèves, Medieval Contribution, esp. 88–142; Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition.

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the creator-source. Hooker’s distinction between the first and second eternal laws thus entails a heightened distinction between the hidden original source of law and the manifold derivative species of law in a manner more characteristic of the late-medieval Nominalists and Augustinians. The distinction between first and second eternal laws serves to ‘hypostasize’—in Augustinian fashion—the relation between the divine source and the derivative manifestations of law rather than to present them—as Aquinas does in his questions on law in the Ia IIæ of the Summa Theologica—as gradually mediated by means of a hierarchical dispositio. Hooker’s distinctive treatment of the eternal law exhibits the marked Augustinian tendency of his thought, a general theological bent which he shares with other magisterial Reformers, Calvin included.56 In short, this distinction between the first and second eternal laws underscores the critically significant (and largely ignored) adaptation by Hooker of the scholastic logic of hierarchical mediation, the so-called lex divinitatis—attributed by Aquinas and Boniface VIII to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite—to his Reformed Protestant, and consequently thoroughly Augustinian, theological assumptions concerning the relation between creator and creature and between the orders of Nature and Grace. What has largely been missed in the discussion of Hooker’s debt to Aquinas is that the logic of hierarchical dispositio in Aquinas’s theological method is present in the argument of the Lawes, but nonetheless contained by Hooker within a broad Augustinian theological frame: Now that law which as it is laid up in the bosome of God, they call æternall, receyveth according unto the different kinds of things which are subject unto it different and sundry kinds of names. That part of it which ordereth natural agents, we call usually natures law; that which Angels doe clearely behold, and without any swarving observe is a law cœlestiall and heavenly: the law of reason that which bindeth creatures reasonable in this world, and with which by reason they may most plainly perceive themselves bound; that which bindeth them, and is not knowen but by speciall revelation form God, Divine law; humane lawe that which out of the law either of reason or of God, men propobablie gathering to be expedient, they make it a law. All things therfore, which are as they ought to be, are conformed unto this second law eternall, and even those things which to this eternall law are not conformable, are notwithstanding in some sort ordered by the first eternall lawe.57

To sum up, the nomos-theology of Book One displays many of the distinctive characteristics of the Thomist account of law as a hierarchical 56 See Kirby, ‘Richard Hooker’s Theory of Natural Law,’ 681 ff. 57 Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.14–29



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emanation­of the Eternal Law. Yet, by gathering natural law and divine law together within the second eternal law, Hooker introduces a decisively significant Augustinian theological turn. The Eternal Law proper, i.e. the first eternal law, is distanced from its derivative forms of law in such a fashion that the natural law cannot serve to mediate between fallen humanity and the divine source of Justice. In this respect Hooker’s theory of law takes on the marked Augustinian flavour of his soteriology: the light of nature is never able to finde out any way of obtayning the reward of blisse, but by performing exactly the duties and workes of righteousnes. From salvation therefore and life all flesh being excluded this way, behold how the wisedome of God hath revealed a way mysticall and supernaturall, a way directing unto the same ende of life by a course which groundeth it selfe upon the guiltines of sinne, and through sinne desert of condemnation and death.58

There is no ‘natural’ mediation between fallen humanity and divine justice, but solely by means of grace—‘a way mysticall and supernaturall’—is the gulf between man and God bridged. In this respect, the hierarchical dispositio of laws cannot serve to link heaven and earth in any salvific fashion. Grace alone is capable of overcoming the distance.59 In this way, Hooker’s appropriation of the Thomist legal theory with its assumption of gradual hierarchical mediation is properly understood to be contained within the boundaries of an Augustinian logic of hypostatic mediation. Hooker allows the logic of hierarchy, but not at all in the Thomist soteriological sense of a gradual dispositio connecting heaven and earth, with nature assisting grace. This ‘containment’ of the hierarchical principle within an Augustinian hypostatic framework has very pronounced implications for ecclesiology and constitutional theory. These implications are worked out by Hooker throughout the remainder of his treatise. Leaving books II through VII aside in admittedly procrustean fashion, we propose to examine the consequences of our reading of Hooker’s nomos-theology for the interpretation of his theory of sovereignty. Augustinian Constitutionalism: ‘Law makes the King’ There are two critical features of Hooker’s theory of sovereignty which stand at the centre of the debate over the coherence of his thought. 58 Lawes I.11.5, 6; FLE 1:118.11–18 59 See Ranall Ingalls, ‘Sin and Grace’, in Companion to Richard Hooker, 151–183.

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First is his claim that the power of ‘Supreme Jurisdiction’ over the Church or ‘Ecclesiastical Dominion’ rightfully belongs to the ‘Civil Prince or Governor’ to ‘order and dispose of spirituall affayres, as the highest uncommanded Commander in them’;60 the second is the distinctively dialectical manner of his assertion of the divine right of sovereigns as ‘Godes Lievtenants’ who, nonetheless, should ‘attribute to the law what the law attributes to them, namely power and dominion.’61 unto kings by human right, honour by very divine right, is due. Manns ordinances are many times presupposed as groundes in the statutes of God. And therfore of what kinde soever the means be wherby Governours are lawfully advanced unto their seates as we by the law of God stand bound meekly to acknowledg them for Godes Lievtenantes and to confesse their power his …62

Scholars have frequently portrayed the boldly Erastian constitution described and defended by Hooker in Book VIII as essentially irreconcilable with the supposedly Thomistic nomos-theology outlined in Book I. Peter Munz sets the pattern when he argues that in his defence of the royal ecclesiastical supremacy Hooker abandons his previous adherence to a Thomist theology of law with its gradual disposition of the powers of nature and grace in favour of a species of ‘Tudor Averroism’.63 Hooker’s willingness to affirm subjection of the governance of the church to the civil power is deemed inconsistent with the Thomist first principles, that is to say, with the logic of the lex divinitatis whereby the temporal power must be subordinated hierarchically to the spiritual power as the order of nature itself is subordinated to the order of grace, or as natural law is subordinate to divine law. Munz’s argument takes as its unspoken premise that Hooker actually affirms the Thomist metaphysics of hierarchical dispositio. Given such a premise, Hooker’s ‘generall meditations’ of Book I are plainly contradicted—in the view of Munz and and in that of many other scholars besides—by the ‘particular decisions’ concerning constitutional order argued in Book VIII.64 This conclusion drawn concerning the logical incoherence of Hooker’s account of sovereignty with his legal principles rests, however, on a fallacy, namely that the nomos-theology of Book I is indeed a simple appropriation of Thomist metaphysical principles. We 60 Lawes VIII.1.8; FLE 3:330.14–16. 61 Lawes VIII.2.1; FLE 3:332.23–24: ‘Attribuat Rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei potestatem et Dominium.’ 62 Lawes VIII.3.1 [Keble 2.6]; FLE 3:335.22–336.4 63 Munz, Place of Hooker, 49–57. 64 Munz, Place of Hooker, 96–111.



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have attempted to show above how Hooker does indeed appropriate elements of Aquinas’s theory of law, how on occasion he appears almost to be quoting directly from the Summa, but how also, nonetheless, he modifies the Thomist legal theory substantively by setting it within a larger framework marked by its Augustinian soteriological assumptions. Our main purpose in comparing the arguments of Books I and VIII yet again, is to attempt to show that far from tending to logical incoherence, Hooker’s Erastian defence of the Civil Magistrate’s role as the ‘highest uncommanded Commander’65 of the ecclesiastical as well as the civil hierarchy is nothing less than the practical completion of his argument, the necessary fulfilment of his Reformed rendition of nomos-theology. Hooker’s defence of the constitutional arrangements of the Elizabethan Settlement is not altogether inaccurately described as an instance of ‘Tudor Averroism’.66 Marsilius of Padua was, after all, a vocal critic of the claims of the papacy to jurisdiction over princes on very similar Augus­ tinian theological grounds.67 The relevance of this fourteenth-century work of Augustinian political theology to Hooker is evident in Marsilius’s chief aim, namely to expose the Roman papacy’s quest for domination— the libido dominandi definitive of Augustine’s civitas terrena—that is, supreme jurisdiction over not only the spiritual and ecclesiastical realms, but over the temporal or civil realms as well.68 According to Marsilius this over-reaching of spiritual authority was the central cause of conflict and disorder within Christendom.69 In the bull Unam Sanctam Boniface VIII 65 Lawes VIII.1.8 [Keble 2.1]; FLE 330.15. 66 The label is employed by Munz, Place of Hooker, 101. Hugh Kearney portrays Hooker in this respect as ‘proto-Hobbesian’; see ‘Hooker: A Reconstruction,’ 300–311. For Tudor appeals to the political theology of Marsilius, see Shelley C. Lockwood, ‘Marsilius of Padua and the Case for the Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6.1 (1990), 89–119. 67 Marsilius of Padua, The defence of peace: lately translated out of laten in to englysshe, with the kynges moste gracyous priuilege (London: Robert Wyer, 1535). Although completed in 1324 and circulated in manuscript, the original Latin text was not printed until 1522 in the Basle edition by Beatus Bildius: Opus insigne cui titulum fecit autor [Marsilius] Defensorem pacis, (Basle, 1522). See modern English translation by Alan Gewirth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). 68 According to Augustine, the two cities—the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena—are constituted by two modes of love, viz. amor Dei and libido dominandi. See de civitate Dei, XIV.1. For Augustine it is characteristic of the latter to confuse the finite and temporal good with the infinite and eternal good, and this is the nub of Marcourt’s satire. 69 Marsilius, Defender of the Peace: ‘Christ Himself did not come into the world to rule men, or to judge them by civil judgment, nor to govern in a temporal sense, but rather to subject Himself to the state and condition of this world; that indeed from such judgment and rule He wished to exclude and did exclude Himself and His apostles and disciples, and that He excluded their successors, the bishops and presbyters, by His example, and word

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set out a series of dogmatic propositions which culminated in the assertion of Papal supremacy.70 His assertion of the pope’s supremacy with the corollary subordination of princes and civil rulers to the papal ‘plenitudo potestatis’ is grounded in an interpretation of Romans 13 according to the logic of the lex divinitatis—the same logic which informs Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the hierarchically ordered, dispositive emanation of the species of law in the prima secundæ pars of his Summa Theologica.71 Over against the hierarchical logic of dispositio implied by the lex divinitatis favoured by both Aquinas and Boniface VIII, Marsilius proposes a radical redefinition of spiritual power along Augustinian soteriological lines and consequently in direct opposition to the claims of the papacy to the plenitudo potestatis implicit in the lex divinitatis. Over against the metaphysics of hierarchical dispositio, Marsilius’s Augustinian critique asserts a hypostatic relation between the spiritual and temporal realms, between the orders of grace and nature. This Augustinian rejection of the metaphysical primacy of mediated hierarchy (lex divinitatis) undergirding the logic of Unam Sanctam led Marsilius to assert the converse and equally totalising claim of the temporal power over all matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. An Augustinian hypostatic view of the relation between spiritual and temporal power similar to that which informs the Marsilian political theology also shapes Hooker’s interpretation of the relation between church and commonwealth and the unity of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the person of the godly Prince: A Church and a Commonwealth we graunt are thinges in nature the one distinguished from the other, a Commonwealth is one way, and a Church and counsel and command from all governing and worldly, that is, coercive rule. I will also show that the apostles were true imitators of Christ in this, and that they taught their successors to be so. I will further demonstrate that Christ and His apostles desired to be subject and were subject continually to the coercive jurisdiction of the princes of the world in reality and in person, and that they taught and commanded all others to whom they gave the law of truth by word or letter, to do the same thing, under penalty of eternal condemnation.’ See Paul Halsall, Medieval Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/ marsiglio4.html. 70 The Bull was formally issued on 18 November 1302. The original is no longer in existence; the oldest text in the registers of Boniface VIII in the Vatican archives, Reg. Vatic., L, fol. 387. See Extravagantes Decretales Communes, I.8.1, ‘De Maioritate et Obedientia,’ in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. E. Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879; repr. Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955, 1959), 2:col. 1245–46. For an English translation of the bull see Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 188–189. 71 For Aquinas’s formulation of the lex divinitatis see S T IIa IIæ, q.172, art.2.



politics of persuasion181 another way defined… We may speake of them as two, we may sever the rights and causes of the one well enough from the other in regard of that difference which we graunt there is between them, albeit we make no personal [my italics] difference. For the truth is the Church and the Commonwealth are names which import thinges really different. But those thinges are accidentes and such accidentes as may and should alwayes lovingly dwell together in one subject.72

Proceeding from an Augustinian premise, that church and commonwealth can be united as ‘accidents’ within a single ‘subject’, and that civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction may coincide in the person of the Prince as the Act of Supremacy proclaims,73 is for Hooker a logical and necessary consequence of the nomos-theology set out by him in the first book of the Lawes. Indeed it is the common thread of Hooker’s political Augustini­ anism which connects the arguments of Books I and VIII and renders them coherent with each other. Hooker’s interpretation of the royal supremacy certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to the political theology of Marsilius. The common ground is a shared embrace of the precepts of political Augustinianism.74 It is precisely owing to Marsilius’s thoroughly Augus­ tinian insistence upon the need to distinguish sharply and clearly—and therefore ‘hypostatically’ rather than ‘dispositively’—between the spheres of the spiritual and the temporal powers that the ‘external’ and coercive jurisdiction over the church as a human, political organization is ascribed by him to the sovereign power of the Legislator. By a similar line or reasoning Hooker maintains that Christ alone (solus Christus)75 exercises headship over the Church as an inner, invisible, and mystical civitas—i.e. the church as a ‘societie supernaturall’—while the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Prince belongs properly to the outward, visible, and external civitas—i.e. the church as a ‘human, politique societie’:

72 Lawes VIII.l.2, 5; FLE 3:3l8, 324. 73 1 Elizabeth I, cap. 1; Statutes of the Realm, 4:350–355. See also 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; SR 3:492–493. 74 On the theme of political Augustinianism in the Middle Ages, see R.W. Dyson, St Augustine of Hippo: the Christian Transformation of Political Philosophy ( London; New York: Continuum, 2005) and idem, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers : St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, Giles of Rome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003). 75 See Lawes VIII.4.9 [Keble 4.9]; FLE 377.16–20. ‘Him only therefore we doe acknowledg to be that Lord which dwelleth liveth and raigneth in our hartes; him only to be that Head which giveth salvation and life unto his body; him only to be that fountaine, from whence the influence of heavenly grace distilleth…’

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chapter eight The Church being a supernaturall societie, doth differ from naturall societies in this; that the persons vnto whom wee associate our selues, in the one are men simply considered as men; but they to whom we bee ioyned in the other, are God, Angels, and holy men. the Church being both a society, and a society supernaturall; although as it is a society, it haue the selfe same originall grounds which other politique societes haue, namely the naturall inclination which all men haue vnto sociable life, and consent to some certaine bond of association, which bond is the law that appointeth what kind of order they shall be associated in: yet vnto the Church as it is a societie supernaturall this is peculiar, that part of the bond of their association which belong to the Church of God, must be a lawe supernaturall, which God himselfe hath reuealed concerning that kind of worship which his people shall do vnto him.76

Just as the second eternal law is related hypostatically (and not dispositively) to the first eternal law, so also the church as a ‘societie supernaturall’ with its ‘lawe supernaturall’ is related to the church as a human ‘politique societie’77 governed by positive human law which in turn is derived from a reflection upon the natural law—in short, by the authority of the Crown in Parliament. Yet, just when we think we have found our footing on solid Augustinian ground, Hooker gives us pause to consider further. Early in Book VIII he invokes the lex divinitatis in the most explicit terms: if thinges and persons be ordered, this doth implie that they are distinguished by degrees. For order is a graduall disposition. The whole world consisting of partes so manie so different is by this only thing upheld, he which framed them hath sett them in order. Yea the very deitie it self both keepeth and requireth for ever this to be kept as a law, that wheresoever, there is a coagmentation of many, the lowest be knitt to the highest by that which being interjacent may cause each to cleave unto other and so all to continue one.78

Moreover, in Hooker’s Autograph Notes from Trinity College, Dublin79 he quotes almost verbatim from the bull Unam Sanctam where Boniface VIII defends the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis) by asserting the necessary hierarchical subordination of temporal to spiritual jurisdiction: 76 Lawes I.15.2; FLE 1:1316–20. 77 See Lawes I.15.3; FLE 1:131.25 78 Lawes VIII.2.1; FLE 3:331.17–332.1. 79 MS 364, fols. 69–84; he ascribes this formulation of the lex divinitatis to St Dionysius [the Pseudo-Areopagite]. See Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 3, ed. P.G. Stanwood (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981), 494.10–14.



politics of persuasion183 For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity (lex divinitatis) that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior … Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power.80

This relation of subordination between the spiritual and the temporal realms establishes the ecclesiastical hierarch as an ordained agent or sacramental mediator between the worlds. Hooker’s naming of the Sovereign as ‘uncommanded Commander’—a charming allusion to Aristotle’s ‘unmoved mover’—would no doubt have pleased both Thomas Aquinas and Boniface, yet the metaphysical premise concerning the manner of that mediation has been radically transformed. Hooker parts company with the two scholastics when he avoids inferring any necessary subjection of the terrestrial to the spiritual power by virtue of his rejection of the confused identification of the ‘spiritual’ with the ‘ecclesiastical’. On the contrary, he attributes the plenitude of power unequivocally to the Civil Magistrate, thereby completely redefining the meaning of the relation between the powers. Ecclesiastical power is reinterpreted as belonging to terrestrial government; the church is a ‘politique societie’. Just as Aristotle’s unmoved mover gives life and motion to the entire physical cosmos, so also the Prince is the lex animata of the entire political realm—‘politique societie’ (κοινωνία πολιτική)—which, in the case of England, is ‘a free Christian state or kingdom where one and the selfsame people are the Church and the Commonwealth.’81

80 Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:col. 1245–46: ‘One sword ought to be subordinated to the other, and temporal authority subjected to spiritual power. For, since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and those that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13: 1–2], they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other. For according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is the law of divinity that the lowest things are led to the highest by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior… Therefore if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man… This authority is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him and his successors… Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13: 2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings…’ See Giles of Rome, De ecclesiastica potestate, ed. Arthur P. Monahan (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) I.4, 17–20, and Monahan’s introduction, xxvii. 81 Lawes VIII.3.5; FLE 3:355.33.

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In making this claim is Hooker trapped in some deep internal contradiction of argument? Is this the product of an incoherent political theology? Such has been the prevailing judgement of numerous scholars for many years. By attending closely to the underlying Augustinian contours of Hooker’s thought, however, we can discern in this account of the nature of the sovereign power a theological pattern reminiscent of the subtle structure of his nomos-theology in Book I. Just as the hierarchical dispositio of the generic division of laws is contained by a broader hypostatic logic on the basis of the distinction drawn between the first and second eternal laws, so here the hierarchical dispositio of jurisdiction and authority is interpreted within the larger Augustinian frame. The church as a mystical, invisible, and divine ‘societie supernaturall’ is distinguished hypostatically from the church as an external, visible, and human ‘politique societie.’ Christ alone rules as head of the ‘societie supernaturall’ where he rules ‘by the inward influence of heavenly grace’. we make the Spirituall regiment of Christ to be generally that wherby his Church is ruled and governed in thinges spirituall. Of this generall we make two distinct kindes, the one invisibly exercised by Christ himself in his own person, the other outwardly administred by them whom Christ doth allow to be the Rulers and guiders of his Church.82

The species of jurisdiction are hypostatically distinguished as visible/invisible, inward/outward, temporal/eternal, yet Christ is nonetheless ‘personally’ the source of both. Being ‘severed in nature,’ these two ‘kindes’ of power are incommensurable, and therefore cannot be ordered by means of gradual dispositio. Consequently, there can be no dispositive subordination of human jurisdiction to spiritual jurisdiction, but solely a hypostatic distinction—as Marsilius also argued. The result is a ‘humanizing’ of the church as an external, political organization, with the consequence that there is no longer a theological or metaphysical necessity for an ‘essential’ distinction to be drawn between ecclesiastical and civil power; both properly belong to the sphere of the ‘politique societie’. There is also a concomitant and symmetrical ‘sacralizing’ of the commonwealth: even as the soule is the worthier part of man, so humane societies are much more to care for that which tendeth properly unto the soules estate then for such temporall thinges as this life doth stand in need of … so in all commonwealths things spirituall ought above temporall to be provided for. And of things spirituall the chiefest is Religion.83 82 Lawes VIII.4.9; FLE 3:377.7–10. 83 Lawes VIII.1.4; FLE 3:321.10–16.



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Moreover, since civil jurisdiction derives authority directly from heaven, ‘God doth ratifie the workes of that Soveraigne authoritie which Kings have received by men.’84 For Hooker the logic of hierarchical dispositio is retained within the organisation of the state—a term he uses in a remarkably modern sense—with its ‘naturall’ but not ‘personall’ distinction between civil and ecclesiastical powers.85 Yet these powers are united in the person of the sovereign, in a manner analogous to the uniting of diverse species of law within the second eternal. Hierarchical order properly obtains within the self-complete unity of the politique societie, rather than through a subordination of a temporal jurisdiction to a separated spiritual jurisdiction. Hierarchy continues to obtain within the political realm, but a hierarchy answerable to the Prince as sole and supreme ruler: … in a free Christian state or kingdom where one and the selfsame people are the Church and the Commonwealth, God through Christ directing that people, to see it for good and weighty considerations expedient that their Sovereign Lord and Governor in causes civil have also in Ecclesiasticall affairs a supreme power, forasmuch as the light of reason doth lead them unto it, and against it, God’s own revealed law hath nothing; surely they do not in submitting themselves thereunto any other than that which a wise and religious people ought to do.86

84 Lawes VIII.3.1; FLE 3:336.14. 85 Lawes VIII.1.2; FLE 3:320.9–12. ‘They hold the necessitie of personall separation which cleane excludeth the power of one mans dealing in both, we of naturall which doth no hinder, but that one and the same person may in both beare a principall sway’ (emphasis added). 86 Lawes VIII.3.5; FLE 3:355.

CHAPTER NINE

PUBLIC RELIGION AND PUBLIC WORSHIP: THE HERMENEUTICS OF COMMON PRAYER The ‘Publique Duties’ of Religion In the prolegomenon to the fifth book of the Lawes Hooker lays out a set of general propositions as a sort of groundwork preliminary to his system­ atic  exposition of the public duties of religion embodied in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.1 He formulates his first axiom govern­ ing  the ordering of religious rites and ceremonies with the following observation: that which inwardlie each man should be, the Church outwardlie ought to testifie. And therefore the Duties of our Religion which are seene must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be. Signes must resemble the thinges they signifie. If religion bear the greatest sway in our hartes, our out­ warde religious duties must show it as farre as the Church hath outward habilitie. Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them accordinge to our power, a sensible excellencie, correspondent to the majestie of him whome we worship. Yea, then are the publique duties of religion best ordered, when the militant Church doth resemble by sensi­ ble means, as it maie in such cases, that hidden dignitie and glorie where­ with the church triumphant in heaven is bewtified.2

Signs are to resemble things signified; outward acts to testify to inward dispositions of the heart; human sensible means to show forth hid­ den  divine glory; things visible to correspond to things invisible; the church militant to emulate the church triumphant: such is Hooker’s ‘first proposition’—or perhaps we might call it a fundamental herme­ neutical premise—concerning the judgment of what is convenient and 1 See John Booty’s ‘Introduction to Book V’ in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 6(1), gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 183–231. See also Torrance Kirby, ‘Angels descend­ ing and ascending: Richard Hooker’s discourse on the ‘double motion’ of Common Prayer,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 111–130. 2 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, vol. 2 of the Folger edition, cited hereafter as Lawes. Book, chapter, and section numbers are followed by volume, page, and line num­ bers in the Folger edition (FLE). V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added).



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appropriate in what he calls ‘the outward public ordering of Churchaffairs’, chiefly with regard to the external forms of divine worship.3 This brief summary is heavily laden with ecclesiological, sacramental, and ulti­ mately Christological consequence, not to mention its enormous apolo­ getic significance. While Hooker hints briefly in his notes at the provenance of his presupposition regarding the principles governing the relation between signs and things signified, the disclosure of the full significance of his claim—in short, his hermeneutics—is the burden of much of the argu­ ment of the remainder of the fifth book, a more lengthy discussion than the previous four books of the Lawes combined. This hermeneutical axiom, as we hope to show, is of decisive significance not only in defining Hooker’s views on public worship and common prayer, but also in clarify­ ing both his broader theological orientation, and his claim to a place among the leading figures of magisterial reform. In support of his apologetic regarding the essential connection between signs and things signified Hooker cites a characteristically eclec­ tic combination of authorities: Second Chronicles, Ambrose of Milan, Sido­ nius Apollinaris, a 5th-century Roman patrician consecrated bishop of Clermont in the Auvergne, and Germanus Nauplius II, titular patriarch of Constantinople from 1226–1243. The passage in Chronicles (2 Chron. 2:4– 6) refers to Solomon’s building of the Temple in Jerusalem: ‘And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above all god. But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot con­ tain him?’ In a certain sense these two short verses set forth the question in a nutshell: on the one hand the construction of the Temple seeks to reflect the divine greatness, and yet, at the same time, Solomon acknowl­ edges the utter impossibility of the undertaking. The sign is wholly inad­ equate to the task of conveying the greatness of the signified, and yet the building is undertaken all the same, implying thereby an assertion of the possibility of establishing a connection between the incommensurable. According to Patriarch Germanus, ‘the Church’, like Solomon’s Temple, ‘is heaven upon earth’.4 Hooker cites Ambrose’s paraphrase of Psalm 27:4 which states: ‘One thing have I desired of the lord, which I will require; even that I may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the lord, and to enquire in his temple.’ In his gloss on this passage, Ambrose binds together the Temple as ‘sign’ with the 3 Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24. 4 ‘ Ẻ κκλησία ε̉ςτὶν ε̉πίγειος ου̉ρανός.’ Α ̉ ι Θει̃αι λειτουργει̃αι (Rome: Demetrius Doukas, 1526), sig. M2r; PG 98:384. See Lawes V.6.2; 2:34f; see also FLE 6(2): 659.

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divine presence as ‘thing signified’ with the words ‘the delight of God is in the Church; the church is the substantial image of things heavenly.’5 For Sidonius Apollinaris, the Church ‘does in earth the works of heaven’.6 In the biblical references and in all three ecclesiological interpretations, the emphasis is upon the essential unity and connectedness of the church militant and the church triumphant, the former an external and visible representation of a hidden and invisible reality. Thus Hooker marshals biblical as well as patristic and medieval authorities in support of his cen­ tral claim regarding the nature of signs and their relation to the things signified: ‘the publique duties of religion [are] best ordered, when the militant Church doth resemble by sensible means, as it maie in such cases, that hidden dignitie and glorie wherewith the church triumphant in heaven is bewtified.’7 When John Field’s colleague Thomas Wilcox observed in An Admonition to the Parliament (1572) that ‘we in England are so far off, from hauing a church rightly reformed, according to the prescripte of Gods woorde, that as yet we are scarse come to the outward face of the same,’ his complaint was directed squarely in apocalyptic opposition to the assumption that such a ‘sensible’ resemblance the church triumphant was either possible or even desirable. In his defence of the Admonition published in the fol­ lowing year, Thomas Cartwright noted ‘the faults that are committed almost thrughout the whole Leyturgy/ & publike service of the Church of England … neyther the worde of God/ nor reason/ nor the examples of the eldest churches both Jewishe and christian / doe permitte us to use the same formes and ceremonies.’8 At the heart of these urgent Puritan objec­ tions was a growing sense that owing to the liturgy of Common Prayer, with its attendant vestments and ornaments, in its embrace of pomp and an ‘outward stateliness’ of worship, the Church of England had ‘in many thinges departed from the auncient simplicitie of Christ and his Apostles’;9 and in Hooker’s summary of these objections, 5 ‘Delectatio Domini in Ecclesia est, Ecclesia vero est imago cœlestium.’ De interpellatione David; in Opera Omnia (Basle: Eusebius Episcopius, 1567), vol. 4, 410; PL 14:813. 6 ‘Facit in terris opera cælorum.’ Epistle 6:16, in Lucubrationes (Basle: Heinrich Petri, 1542), 205; PL 58:560. 7 Lawes V.6.2; 2:34.3–6 8 Cartwright, A replye to an ansvvere, 131. See WW 2:438. 9 See Walter Travers, Ecclesiasticæ disciplinæ, et Anglicanæ ecclesiæ ab aberrationis, plena è verbo Dei, & dilucida explicatio (Rupellæ: Adam de Monte, 1574) fol. 12 r-v. For a contemporary English translation of Travers’s treatise by Thomas Cartwright, see A full and plaine declaration of ecclesiasticall discipline owt off the word off God: and off the declininge off the churche off England from the same [Heidelberg: Michael Schirat, 1574], 15–16.



public religion and public worship189 wee have framed our selves to the customes of the Church of Rome: our orders and ceremonies are papisticall … our Church-founders were not so carefull as in this matter they shoulde have bene, but contented them selves with such discipline, as they took from the Church of Rome. Their error we ought to reforme by abolishing all Popish orders. There must bee no com­ munion nor fellowship with Papistes neither in doctrine, ceremonies, nor government. It is not enough that we are devided from the Church of Rome by the single wall of doctrine, retening as wee doe parte of their ceremonies, and almost their whole government …10

For Hooker, the question therefore was ‘whether we may follow the Church of Rome in those orders rites and ceremonies, wherein we doe not thinke them blameable, or els ought to devise others, and to have no con­ formitie with them.’ In setting out his argument in defence of Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal with its three-fold hierarchy of sacred ministers, Hooker appeals to an ancient authority who, at least superficially, looks to be a most unlikely ally in an apology intended both to justify ‘the state of reformed religion’11 in England and to urge the non-necessity of further Reformation along the lines proposed by Cartwright, Travers, and the authors of the Admonition and A view of popishe abuses, Wilcox and Field. In response Hooker observes that no nation under heauen either doth or euer did suffer publique actions which are of waight, whether they be ciuil and temporall, or else spirituall and sacred, to passe without some visible solemnitie; the very strangenes whereof and difference from that which is common, doth cause popular eyes to observe and to marke the same. Wordes both because they are com­ mon, and doe not so strongly move the phancie of man, are for the most parte but sleightly heard: and therfore with singular wisdome it hath bene prouided that the deeds of men which are made in the presence of wit­ nesses, should passe not onely with words, but also with certaine sensible actions, the memory wherof is farre more easie and durable then the memo­ rie of speech can be.12

Here also we detect the application of Hooker’s hermeneutic of signs in the employment of visible tokens to represent hidden realities, and here also the language is somewhat suggestive of a Platonic influence. The fac­ ulty of human ‘phancie’—an expression referring to the imaginative faculty, plausibly to Plato’s φαντασία—is the mean or the instrument whereby the mind is addressed. 10 Lawes IV.3.1; 1 280.6–16 11 See Hooker’s peroration to Lawes IV.14.7; 1:343.8–344.32, esp. 344.6. 12 Lawes IV.1.3; 1:274.15–27

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In support of the hermeneutics of ‘visible solemnitie’ in the liturgy Hooker invokes patristic authority in the person of none other than Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the obscure but remarkably influential early-sixth-century Syrian orthodox theologian who aimed at a synthesis of Christian doctrine with the late-Neoplatonic metaphysics of Proclus.13 In his Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, Dionysius offers the most succinct sum­ mary of governing principle of Hooker’s liturgical hermeneutics: ‘the sensible things which Religion hath hallowed, are resemblances framed according to things spiritually understood, whereunto they serve as a hand to lead and a way to direct.’14 This was a widely recognized formulation of the lex divinitatis, the so-called law of the ‘great chain’, influential earlier in the sixteenth century in the theology of John Colet.15 This law consti­ tutes a principle of cosmic mediation of divine power and governance through a series of hierarchically ordered steps and degrees.16 In the man­ uscript of his Autograph Notes drafted in preparation for the composition of the final book of the Lawes, i.e. Book VIII on the power of ecclesiastical dominion, or the Royal Supremacy, Hooker again quotes PseudoDionysius as the source of his thoughts on the question of order and hier­ archy, thus linking hermeneutically the questions of ceremonies and ecclesiastical government:17 If you take away order, of necessity confusion follows, whence arises divi­ sion and from division destruction … Therefore, the Apostle has said that all 13 See Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 29–44. 14 Lawes IV.1.3; 1 275.21–24.e. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia 2.3.2; Opera (Paris: Guillaume Morel, 1562), 121; PG 3:397. See the translation of this passage in Pseudo-Dionyius: the Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality), translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), 205: ‘Sacred symbols are actually the perceptible tokens of the conceptual things. They show the way to them and lead to them, and the conceptual things are the source and the under­ standing underlying the perceptible manifestations of hierarchy.’ 15 See Daniel T. Lochman, ‘Divus Dionysius: authority, self, and society in John Colet’s reading of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 68.1 (2007), 1–34. On Hooker’s extensive use of the concept of the ‘lex divinitatis’, see Torrance Kirby, ‘Grace and Hierarchy,’ Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, 25–40. 16 For Aquinas’s formulation of the lex divinitatis see Summa Theologiae IIa IIae q.172 art.2: ‘As the Apostle says (Rom. 13.1), Things that are of God are well-ordered. Now the Divine ordering (lex divinitatis) according to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. V), is such that the low­ est things are directed by middle things. Now angels hold a middle position between God and men, in that they have a greater share in the perfection of the Divine goodness than men have. Wherefore the divine enlightenments and revelations are conveyed from God to men by the angels.’ See also Denys Turner, ‘How to read pseudo-Denys today?’ International Journal of Systematic Theology 7.4 (2005), 428–440. 17 Lawes, VIII.Supplement II; 3:493.33–494.13; see also FLE 6(2): 1080–81.



public religion and public worship191 things should be done with order … This order consists in distinction of degree, so that one differs from his fellow in power and the lesser obeys the greater, otherwise society cannot hold together. Ans so it is a divine law [lex divinitatis], says Blessed Dionysius, for the lowest things to be led back to the highest by those that are intermediate.18

That the lower ‘sensible things’19 serve to mediate knowledge of things ‘spiritually understood’ of which they are resemblances is as clear a formu­ lation as one might wish of Hooker’s first axiom concerning the ‘publique duties of religion’. To return to his formulation of this axiom, ‘duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them … a sensible excellencie, correspondent to the majestie of him whome we wor­ ship … [they are] best ordered, when the militant Church doth resemble by sensible means… that hidden dignitie and glorie wherewith the church triumphant in heaven is bewtified.’20 That there can be an aesthetic correspondence between the visible beauty of the church militant in earth and the invisible glory of the church triumphant in heaven is the premise underlying Hooker’s apologetic appeal to the logic of hierar­ chical mediation. Throughout the Lawes Hooker continually employs arguments and images which support the view that the church, her orders of ministry, government, sacraments and ceremonies, and indeed her music are all modelled on an exemplar of a cosmic order epitomized by the hierarchy of the angels. The ‘law cœlestial which governs the angelic beings provides a paradigm for order and worship among mortals: Neither are the Angels themselves, so farre severed from us in their kind and manner of working, but that, betweene the law of their heavenly operations and the actions of men in this our state of mortalitie, such correspondence there is, as maketh it expedient to know in some sort the one, for the others more perfect direction21

The orderly obedience of the angels provides ‘a paterne and a spurre’ to weaker human nature, particularly with respect to the ‘sensible excellen­ cie’ of ceremonies of the liturgy: ‘even about the outward orders of the Church which serve but for comlinesse, some regard is to be had of Angels, who best like us, when wee are most like unto them in all partes of decent demeanor.’22 Thus the clergy clad in ‘holy garments’ mandated by the 18 Autograph Notes (Supplement II), 3:494 19 ‘Sensible things’ and ‘hierarchies’ are both translated ‘sacramenta’ in the Latin edi­ tion of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. See Comm. on 1:275.21–24e in FLE 6(1): 602 20 Lawes V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added). 21 Lawes I.16.4; 1:137.13–30 22 Lawes I.16.4; 1 137.28–30.

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Ornaments Rubric are said to resemble ‘the glorie of the Sainctes in heaven, together with the bewtie wherein Angels have appeared unto men’.23 This concept of the linking together of human worship with angelic models is beautifully summarised in the Collect appointed for the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels: ‘O Everlasting God, who hast ordered and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant that, as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth …’24 Thus for Hooker the howse of prayer is a court bewtified with the presence of the cœlestial powers, that there we stand, we pray, we sound forth hymnes unto God, havinge his Angels intermingled as our associates; and that with reference thereunto thapostle doth require so great care to be had of decencie for the angels sake; how can we come to the house of prayer and not be moved with the verie glorie of the place it selfe, so to frame our affections prayinge, as doth best beseeme them, whose sutes thalmightie doth there sitt to heare, and his angels attend to furder?25

Hooker devotes an entire chapter to a defence of the ancient practice of antiphonal singing, that is ‘of singinge or sayinge psalmes and other parts of common prayer wherein the people and the minister answere one another by course.’26 For Basil of Caesarea, the practice of singing one verse with the voice and attending in the heart to next ‘did both strengthen the meditation of those holie wordes which were uttered in that sorte, and serve also to make attentive and to raise up the hartes of men; a thinge whereunto Gods people of old did resort with hope and thirst that thereby especiallie theire soules might be edified …’27 The alternation between vocal and silent chant, between heart and voice, serves in Hooker’s view to reinforce the sense of the dispositio of worship between the angelic and human orders. Concerning antiphonal chant, Cartwright observes that from whence soever it came, it cannot he good, consideringe, that when it is graunted, that all the people may praise God (as it is in singing of psalmes) then this ought not to be restrayned unto a few; and where it is lawfull both with harte and voice to singe the whole psalme there is is not meete that 23 Lawes V.29.5; 2:127.12–14. 24 The Collect appointed in the Book of Common Prayer to be read on 29 September. 25 Lawes V.25.2; 2:114.13–21. See Feisal G. Mohamed, ‘Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: the decline of a tradition?’, Journal of the History of Ideas 65.4 (2004), 570–572. 26 Lawes V.39.1; 2:154.5–7. 27 Lawes V.39.4; 2:158.16–20.



public religion and public worship193 they should singe but the one halfe with their harte and voice, and the other with their harte only. For where they may both with harte and voice sing there the heart is not enough. Therefore besides the incommoditie which cometh this way, in that being tossed after this sorte men cannot under­ stand what is songe, those other two inconveniences com of this form of singing, and therefore it is banished in all reformed Churches.28

The force of Cartwright’s negative response to antiphonal singing is to reassert the impossibility and inappropriateness of the attempt to imitate or represent through external forms of worship as in such a manner as to suggest their being in any way proportionable to the ‘hidden dignitie’ of angelic praise. From an apocalyptic perspective the distance between sign and thing signified is too great to admit of such a dispositio. Apologetics of Public Worship How are we to construe theologically Hooker’s repeated invocations of the ‘beauty of holiness’? An invocation of worship fit for the presence of the angels as interpreted by the grand tradition of Christian Neoplatonism in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite raises the question whether Hooker may perhaps have been disingenuous in his repeated assertion that he is a defender of the reformed tradition in the Church of England. Hooker’s 16th-century Puritan critics and indeed many of his 19th-century and 20th-century admirers see his theology as essentially a theological compromise, by some even as a wholesale abandonment of reformed principles. Some of Hooker’s contemporaries excoriated holus bolus his sustained defence of the authority of reason and natural law, the freedom of the will, the authority of the Fathers and ecclesiastical tradi­ tion, and the ‘beauty of holiness’ as manifest in the splendour of Church architecture, ornaments, and liturgy, together with his defence of the hier­ archy of bishops, and finally the royal headship of the Church as self-evi­ dent abandonment of main-stream Protestant orthodoxy, as a retreat into ‘the darkenesse of Schoole learning’, and therefore as a fatal compromise with ‘Poperie’, as the anonymous attack titled A Christian Letter puts it.29 Betwene the throne of God in heaven and his Church upon earth here mili­ tant if it be so that Angels have theire continuall intercorse, where should we finde the same more verified then in these two ghostlie exercises, the one 28 Cartwright, Replye, 203. 29 ACL 4 23.10–24.8; 4:65.1.

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chapter nine ‘Doctrine’, the other ‘Prayer’? For what is thassemblie of the Church to learne, but the receivinge of Angels descended from above? What to pray, but the sendinge of Angels upward? His heavenly inspirations and our holie desires are as so many Angels of entercorse and comerce betwene God and us. As teachinge bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledg him our soveraigne good.30

Early on in the course of his elaborate explication and apology on behalf of the Book of Common Prayer (1559) in the fifth book of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1597), Richard Hooker defines prayer in intimate association with doctrine, that is to say with formal instruction in the principles of the Christian religion. The liturgy of the Church is for Hooker nothing less than an outward, visible representation of a two-fold motion of procession and return, that is to say of a dynamic process of messages of instruction communicated from above to worshippers below, with a congruent and corresponding offering heavenward of praise and supplication from those to whom these ‘ghostlie’ messages have been communicated. Moreover, he very strikingly identifies this participation in the church’s formal act of prayer with the activity of the angels. ‘What is thassemblie of the Church to learne, but the receivinge of Angels descended from above? What to pray, but the sendinge of Angels upward?’ By linking this vivid image of angelic intercourse between God and humanity with instruction in the ‘supreme truth’ and with testimony of the ‘soveraigne good’, Hooker embraces an ancient tradition which identi­ fies the forms of the Beautiful, the True, and the Good in unity of sub­ stance. For Hooker, the goal of full actualisation of human nature is to be achieved by no other means than through a full participation of the divine nature—as he himself puts it, ‘then are we happie therfore, when fully we enioy God, as an obiect wherein the powers of our soules are satisfied euen with euerlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being vnto God vnited, we liue as it were the life of God.’31 Such a perfect enjoy­ ment to be achieved in possession of the Good requires knowledge of the things that are most true. The mediation of divine inspiration and human longing, of thought and desire, is achieved, at least in similitude, by means of an angelic motion. Hooker is careful in this passage to identify the 30 Lawes V.23.1; FLE 2:110.7–16. All references to Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie cite the standard Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977–1997). Citations are abbreviated hereafter as Lawes with references to book, chapter, and section numbers followed by volume, page, and line numbers in the Folger edition (FLE). 31 Lawes I.11.2; FLE 1:112.17–20



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angelic linkage between heaven and earth, as between the forms of Truth and the Good, in the language of ‘figure’: these ‘heavenly inspirations and our holie desires are as so many Angels of entercorse and comerce betwene God and us.’ This account of the unification of doctrine and prayer in the liturgy as a dynamic ‘double’ motion linking together the divine and the human depends upon an explication of the theological sig­ nificance of the mutual indwelling of God and man; and consequently Hooker’s exposition of the true nature of liturgy is Christological in sub­ stance. In order, therefore, to understand the interconnectedness of doc­ trine, prayer, and worship, it is necessary in Hooker’s estimation to interpret the Incarnation. For as our naturall life consisteth in the union of the bodie with the soule; so our life supernaturall in the union of the soule with God. And for as much as there is no union of God with man without that meane betwene both which is both, it seemeth requisite that wee first consider how God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, and [only then] how the sacramentes doe serve to makes us pertakers of Christ.32

The purpose of our discussion is to explore Richard Hooker’s conception of human participation of the divine life33—theosis, so to speak, although Hooker does not employ this exact language—through fulfillment of a dynamic, dialectical interaction of prayer and instruction in the act of worship. To this end we propose to examine in turn his account of the twin ‘ghostlie excercises’ of prayer as a framing of the human desire for happiness in the possession of the good, of instruction as initiation into the mysteries of a true knowledge of first principles, and of liturgy as the beautiful means of their unification in knowledge and action. Hooker’s dialectical treatment of preaching and prayer as the ascent and descent of the angels in ‘commerce betwene God and us’ constitutes a bridge between a section in the fifth book of the Lawes touching on divine instruction and a further series of chapters on Common Prayer and the liturgy of the Offices. For Hooker, the weaving together of instruction with praise and supplication in the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer constitutes a prototype of our participation in the double angelic motion. 32 Lawes V.50.3; FLE 2: 208.20–209.2 33 See Charles Irish ‘‘Participation of God Himselfe:’ law, the mediation of Christ, and sacramental participation in the thought of Richard Hooker,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms, ed. W.J. Torrance Kirby, vol. 2 (Dordrecht and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 165–184. Edmund Newey, ‘The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor,’ Modern Theology 18.1 (2002), 1–26.

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In keeping with his capacious metaphor of instruction as an angelic com­ munication of heavenly inspiration, Hooker’s account of ‘publique teach­ ing or preaching’ is broad indeed in scope. Understood in the broadest sense public teaching is the ‘open publication of heavenlie mysteries … Cateschising maie be in schooles, it maie be in private families. But when we make it a kinde of preachinge we meane alwaies the publique perfor­ mance thereof in the open hearinge of men, because thinges are preacht not in that they are taught but in that they are publisht.’34 The public read­ ing of the Scriptures and catechism as well as the preaching of sermons constitute the ordinary means of transmission of heavenly messages ‘sent from above.’35 For with us the readinge of scripture in the Church is a parte of our Church litourgie, a speciall portion of the service which we doe to God, and not an exercise to spend the time, when one doth waite for an others comminge, till thassemblie of them that shall afterwardes worship him be complete … Sermons are not the onlie preaching which doth save soules … our usuall publique reading of the worde of God for the peoples instruction is preach­ ing. The worde of God outwardlie administred (his spirit inwardlie concur­ ringe therewith) converteth, edifieth, and saveth soules.36

It is important to note that prayer is referred to by Hooker equivocally. In a more restricted sense prayer is just one of the two angelic motions, as in his figurative declaration concerning the ‘sacrifice of praise’ that ‘prayers are those caulves of mens lippes; those most gracious and sweet odors; those rich presentes and guiftes which beinge carryed up into heaven doe best testifie our dutifull affection, and are for the purchasinge of all favour at the handes of God the most undoubted means we can use.’37 When he turns to consider more generally the form of Common Prayer, how­ ever,  Hooker takes prayer in a more general sense as representing the liturgy and therefore comprising both the upward and downward motions of the ‘angellic entercorse,’ that is to say both instruction in the truth and the orientation of the soul’s desire towards the good as understood. Moreover, prayer for Hooker is an activity shared by the Church mili­ tant and the Church triumphant. Not only do angels provide a fitting met­ aphor for thinking about the activity of prayer, they are also actual partners 34 Lawes V.18.1, 3;2:65.18–19, 67.6–10 35 Lawes V.18–21; 2:65.4–87.17 36 Lawes V.19.1; 2:21.4 37 Lawes V.23.1; 2:26–31



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in the exercise; since prayer is ‘a worke common unto men with angels, what should we thinke but that so much of our lives is cœlestiall and divine as we spend in the exercise of prayer?’38 In one sense, the common­ ness of ‘Common Prayer’ is the participation in an action which tran­ scends any ordinary distinction between an earthly-temporal and a celestial-eternal realm of existence. As members of ‘that visible mysticall bodie which is [Christ’s] Church’39 we have a foot in both the natural and the supernatural orders of being. How to think the community the soul has with God in Christ is taken forward by Hooker in three principal stages. To understand how the soul comes to ‘live the life of God’ through a full participation of the divine nature—and thus to understand the final goal of Common Prayer itself— it is necessary, says Hooker, to consider first ‘how God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, and [finally] how the sacramentes doe serve to makes us pertakers of Christ.’40 This is certainly a tall order, but here at least is a potted summary of the argument. First, the question of how God is in Christ leads us to consider the common life of the Holy Trinity and the mystery of God’s Incarnation. In an echo of the rehearsal of the Decalogue Hooker begins with God’s indivisible unity: ‘The Lord our God is but one God.’ As Hooker had previously stated at the outset of Book I, ‘Our God is one, or rather verie Onenesse, and meere unitie, having nothing but it selfe in it selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of many things.’41 Yet in this indivisible unity ‘notwithstanding we adore the father as beinge altogether of him selfe, wee glorifie that consubstantiall worde which is the Sonne, wee blesse and magnifie that coessentiall Spirit eter­ nallie proceedinge from both which is the holie Ghost. Seeing therefore the father is of none, the Sonne is of the Father, and the Spirite is of both, they are by these their severall properties reallie distinguishable ech from other.’42 It is precisely here in the distinction of the divine persons that the principle of common life has its fount and origin. Each person has his own subsistence and all share in the one divine substance. While the second person is properly said to become man, because the eternal Logos and the godhead are ‘one subject,’ it is the whole nature of God, the divine sub­ stance which takes human nature upon itself. To deny this would be to 38 Lawes V.23.1;2:111.16–18 39 Lawes V.24.1; 2:111.26–27 40 Lawes V.50.1; 2:208.25–209.2 41 Lawes 1.2.2; 1:59.20–23 42 Lawes V.51.1; 2:209.8–15

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‘make the Sonne of God incarnate not to be verie God.’ The ‘cause suffi­ cient’ for this assumption of the human nature by the divine is, as Paul puts it, ‘that so God might be in Christ reconcilinge to him selfe the world.’43 This union of God and man in Christ is the key to everything Hooker has to say about prayer and the common life. Hooker proceeds next to consider the second step in his argument, namely how Christ is present ‘in us.’ We have moved from the supreme koinonia of the persons of the Trinity and the koinonia of the divine and human natures in Christ to a consideration of koinonia which is between Christ and the Church ‘in this present worlde.’44 The participation of the divine nature which is the supreme goal of prayer is mediated by the ‘mutuall inward hold which Christ hath of us and wee of him’—which rehearses the doctrine expressed in the Prayer of Humble Access in the Book of Common Prayer where the worshippers pray before receiving the sacrament that ‘we may dwell in him and he in us.’ The prior ‘communi­ ties,’ so to speak, of Trinity and Incarnation provide the ground of our access. Hooker presents this access in terms of a doctrine of causality: ‘everie originall cause imparteth it selfe unto those thinges which come of it, and Whatsoever taketh beinge from anie other the same is after a sorte in that which giveth it beinge.’45 That which is the original source of being ‘dwells’ in that which is derivative of it and, conversely, that which is derivative ‘dwells’ in its original source.46 That community which is the mutual indwelling of Christ and his Church, therefore, has its archetype, 43 2 Cor. 5:19, quoted in Lawes V.51.3; 2:210.26–211.1 44 Lawes V.56.1; 2:234.27 45 Lawes V.56.1; 2:208. 25–209.2 See also Lawes I.5.1,2 and A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride, FLE 5:341.3–9: ‘Besides god him selfe being the supreme cause which giveth being unto all things that are and every effect so resembling the cause whereof it cometh that such as the one is the other cannot choose but be also, it followeth that either men are not made righteous by him, or if they be then surely god him selfe is much more that which he maketh us, just if a [He] be the authour fountain and cause of our justice.’ 46 See Lawes V.56.5; 2: 236.26–31, 237.15–25. ‘All thinges are therefore pertakers of God, they are his ofspringe, his influence is in them, and the personall wisdome of God is for that verie cause said to excell in nimbleness or agilitie, to pearce into all intellectual pure and subtile spirites, to goe through all, and to reach unto everie thinge which is… All thinges which God in theire times and seasons hath brought forth were eternallie and before all times in God as a worke unbegunne is in the artificer which afterward bringeth it unto effect. Therefore whatsoever wee doe behold now in this present world, it was inwrapped within the bowells of divine mercie, written in the booke of eternall wisdom, and held in the handes of omnipotent power, the first foundations of the world being as yeat unlaide. So that all thinges which God hath made are in that respect the ofspringe of god, they are in him as effects in their highest cause, he likewise actuallies is in them, thassistance and influence of his deitie is theire life.’



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its highest and most perfect reality, in the community of the three divine persons of the Blessed Trinity: It followeth hereupon that the Sonne of God beinge light of light, must needes be also light in light. The persons of the Godhead, by reason of the unitie of their substance, doe as necessarelie remaine one within an other as they are of necessitie to be distinguished one from an other, because two are the issue of one, and one the ofspringe of the other two, onlie of three one not growinge out of any other.47

Our ‘participation of the divine nature,’ as the Second Epistle of Peter has it, is interpreted by Hooker as a twofold dwelling in God. On the one hand, the Church participates the community of the godhead by virtue of our union with Christ in God’s predestining purpose: ‘Wee are therefore in God through Christ eternallie accordinge to that intent and purpose whereby wee were chosen to be made his in this present world before the world it selfe was made, wee are in God through the knowledge which is had of us and the love which is borne towards us from everlastinge.’48 On the other side, there is no salvation outside the Church militant—nulla salus extra ecclesiam! But in God wee actuallie are no longer then onlie from the time of our actu­ all adoption into the bodie of his true Church, into the fellowship of his chil­ dren. For his Church he knoweth and loveth, so that they which are in the Church are thereby known to be in him. Our beinge in Christ by eternall foreknowledge saveth us not without our actuall and reall adoption into the fellowship of his Sainctes in this present world. For in him we are by our actuall incorporation in that societie which hath him for their head and doth make together with him one bodie (he and they in that respect havinge one name) for which cause by vertue of this mysticall conjunction wee are of him and in him even as though our verie flesh and bones should be made continuate with his. Wee are in Christ because he knoweth and loveth us even as partes of himself. No man actuallie is in him but they in whome he actuallie is. For he which hath not the sonne of God hath not life.49

This passage helps to explain Hooker’s earlier somewhat paradoxical ref­ erence to the Church as a ‘visible mystical body’ in his discussion of ‘Publique Prayer’ back in chapter 24. The Church, consistent with the archetype of the Incarnation itself, is both in heaven and in earth, mystical yet visible. Once again we recognize the pattern of ‘properties com­ municated’ (communicatio idiomatum) as in the image of the ‘angelic 47 Lawes V.56.2; 2:235.3–9 48 Lawes V.56.7; 2:238.18–24 49 Lawes V.56.7;2 238.23–239.8 (my italics)

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commerce’ with which we began in relation to the dynamic double motion of ‘Doctrine’ and ‘Prayer’ in the liturgy of the offices. The Church assem­ bles in order to learn by receiving heavenly inspiration as by angels descending from above and also to pray by offering up holy desires as by angels ascending in return. Instruction and prayer whereof wee have hitherto spoken are duties which serve as elementes partes or principles to the rest that followe, in which number the Sacramentes of the Church are cheife. The Church is to us that verie mother of our new birth in whose bowels wee are all bredd, at whose brestes wee receyve nourishment.50

We now turn to a consideration of beauty as the form which binds together the two ‘ghostly exercises’ whereby the soul is led to embrace God as both ‘supreme truth’ and ‘sovereigne good’. In the prolegomenon to the fifth book of the Lawes where Hooker lays out certain general prop­ ositions as a groundwork preliminary to his exposition of the public duties of religion embodied in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.51 He formulates his first axiom governing the ordering of religious rites and cer­ emonies with the following observation: that which inwardlie each man should be, the Church outwardlie ought to testifie. And therefore the Duties of our Religion which are seene must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be. Signes must resemble the thinges they signifie. If religion bear the greatest sway in our hartes, our out­ warde religious duties must show it as farre as the Church hath outward habilitie. Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them accordinge to our power, a sensible excellencie, correspondent to the majestie of him whome we worship. Yea, then are the publique duties of religion best ordered, when the militant Church doth resemble by sensi­ ble means, as it maie in such cases, that hidden dignitie and glorie where­ with the church triumphant in heaven is bewtified.52

Signs are to resemble things signified; outward acts to testify to inward dispositions of the heart; human sensible means to show forth hidden divine glory; things visible to correspond to things invisible; the church militant to emulate the church triumphant: such is Hooker’s ‘first 50 Lawes V.50.1; 2:207.10–15 51 See John Booty’s ‘Introduction to Book V’ in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 6(1), gen. ed. W. Speed Hill (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 183–231. See also Torrance Kirby, ‘Angels descend­ ing and ascending: Richard Hooker’s discourse on the ‘double motion’ of Common Prayer,’ in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 111–130. 52 Lawes V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added).



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proposition’—or perhaps we might call it a fundamental hermeneutical premise—concerning the judgment of what is convenient and appropri­ ate in what he calls ‘the outward public ordering of Churchaffairs’, chiefly with regard to the external forms of divine worship.53 This brief summary of what might be described not inappropriately as Hooker’s ‘semiotic pos­ tulate’ is heavily laden with ecclesiological, sacramental, and ultimately Christological consequence, not to mention its enormous apologetic significance. For Hooker it is above all the Sacraments which ‘serve to make men partakers of Christ’ and therefore fit company of the angels.54 The sacra­ ments are the divinely appointed and necessary means of our participa­ tion of God in Christ. As Article XXV puts it, ‘Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain witnesses and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good word towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in him.’ Hooker, following the doctrine of the Articles of Religion, rejects the Zwinglian option as falling short of the Chalecdonian measure of Christological orthodoxy. Just as he rejects the claim of our being in Christ simply by sharing a common human nature with him as ‘too cold an inter­ pretation’ of the mystery of our coherence with him, so here he also insists that we must become real partakers of his body. For wee take not baptisme nor the Eucharist for bare resemblances or memorialls of thinges absent, neither for naked signes and testimonies assuringe us of grace received before, but (as they are in deed and in veritie) for meanes effectuall whereby God when wee take the sacramentes deliv­ ereth into our handes that grace available unto eternall life, which grace the sacraments represent or signifie.55

Through the instrumentality of the sacraments God accommodates him­ self to the human condition. In them the ascending motion of the angels of our ‘holie desires’ and the descending motion of the angels of ‘heavenly inspirations’ are united; through these sacramental means, as instruments whereby are received by grace, there is effected the real incorporation of believers into the body of Christ. It is crucial to this teaching that unlike ‘Doctrine’ and ‘Prayer’ in the public religious act, Sacraments are delivered into our hands as individuals: ‘That savinge grace which Christ originallie 53 Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24 54 Lawes V.55.1; 2 227.32 and V.56.7; 2:240.11 55 Lawes V.57.5; 2 247.16–21

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is or hath for the good of his whole Church, by sacramentes he severallie deriveth into everie member thereof.’56 This is perhaps one important sense in which Hooker views ‘Doctrine’ and ‘Prayer’ as elements or parts which come to completion and fulfilment in the Sacraments. In the sacra­ ments the heavenly gifts are made actual in the lives of concrete individu­ als and through these ‘morall instruments’ these individuals are conformed to the common life of the ‘visible mystical bodie.’ Through the sacraments there is achieved that ‘actual incorporation’ into the community which has Christ as its head and which is actually one body with him whereby ‘wee are of him and in him even as though our verie flesh and bones should be made continuate with his.’57 Furthermore, the actual range or extent of this participation is also of crucial significance. Communion in Christ’s body extends to the totality of our humanity, just as in his Incarnation Christ is teleos anthropos, completely and perfectly man. From Christ’s body ‘our verie bodies’ through the mystical communion receive the ‘vitall efficacie’ which belongs to him owing to his Resurrection: ‘Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that heere they are joyned with his bodie which is incorruptible, and that his is in oures as a cause of immortalitie, a cause by removinge through the death and merit of his owne flesh that which hindered the life of oures. Christ is therefore both as God and as man that true vine whereof wee both spirituallie and corporallie are branches.’58 Conclusion In conclusion, we have seen that Richard Hooker’s apology of the liturgy of Common Prayer represents a liturgical knitting together of doctrine and prayer, of heavenly inspiration sent down from above and human aspiration rising up from below, of instruction in the truth through the reading and preaching of the revealed scriptures and of the formation of desire in the supplications of the faithful. The double angelic motion of the receipt of messages here below from God the source who is the ‘supreme Truth’ above, and the sending up of prayers and praises to the same God who as end is our ‘soveraigne Good’ is an orderly and beautiful motion. In a passage from the Apocrypha that Hooker is fond of quoting, ‘Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily, and sweetly doth she 56 Lawes V.57.5; 2 247.5–8 57 Lawes V.56.7;2:239.4–5 58 Lawes V.56.9;2:241.5–11



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order all things.’59 In the ‘sensible excellencie’ of an orderly and beautiful activity of divine worship, the individual believer is instructed in the sav­ ing knowledge of ‘supreme truth’ as its source and directed towards ‘soveraigne goodness’ as its highest end. Through the knitting together of these three forms—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—in the ‘ghost­ lie activitie’ of the liturgy, Hooker maintains that the faithful worshipper of God the Holy Trinity may be drawn through imitation of the ‘angelic commerce’ towards participation of the life of the Deity: ‘Then are we hap­ pie therfore, when fully we injoy God, as an object wherein the powers of our soules are satisfied euen with everlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being vnto God united, we live as it were the life of God.’60

59 Wisdom 8:1—also the Advent antiphon ‘O Sapientia’, retained in the Almanack of the Book of Common Prayer (1559)—quoted by Hooker in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, I.2.3; 1:60.27–61.6. 60 Lawes I.11.2; 1:112.17–20

BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscript Sources BL Harleian MS 422. ‘Disputatio de eucharistiae sacramento contra Petrum Martyrem’. Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 50. ‘Short and summary nootes of some Sermons preached at Poulls crosse and ells whear not vnprofitable to be remembred.’ The volume contains notes on (39) sermons preached between June 1565 and September 1566, most of them preached at Paul’s Cross. CCCC MS 127.5, ‘The sermon of the bishop of Winchester [Stephen Gardiner] before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on Matthew XVI.13.’ CCCC MS 106.175, fol. 487, ‘Letter from the duke of Somerset to Gardiner bishop of Winchester charging him not to meddle with any matter of controversy in his sermon, Syon, June 28, 1548.

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INDEX Accession Day sermons 82 Actes and Monuments (Foxe) 29, 146–147, 155 Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome (1536) 12, 67n66, 111n42 Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome of 1533 12, 55, 67n66, 111n42 Act of Six Articles (1539) 58 Act of Submission of the Clergy (1532) 54, 56, 57, 67n65, 111n43 Act of Supremacy 1, 9, 12, 67n66, 102, 111, 147n15, 181 Act of Uniformity 118, 147–148, 150 adiaphora 152 An Admonition to the Parliament (Wilcox and Field) 66–67, 68, 70, 188, 189 Admonition Controversy 77, 162 Advertisements (Parker) 67, 77 Affair of the Placards 10–12, 14, 33, 34 agency, elements of 123–124 Alchemist 22 Allen, William 87, 88n71 Ambrose of Milan 168, 187 amor Dei 23n53, 104, 179n68 amor sui 104 Anabaptists 26n62, 83, 138, 157 Anastasius, emperor 56n17 Anaxagoras 168 angels body of Christ 201 celestial law 174, 176 hierarchy of 7, 92, 191 lex divinitatis 190n16 prayer 191–192, 193–197, 199–200 Anglican middle way 70–71 Anne Boleyn 30, 55, 72 Anselm of Canterbury 168 ‘Answer of the Ordinaries’ 54 Ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge (Harding) 86 Answere (Hooker) 161 Answer to a Letter (St German) 25 Anti-christ 59, 120n28, 149, 151 anti-clericalism 3, 11n6, 14, 16, 26–27, 63 antiphonal singing 192–193 apocalyptic vs. apologetic narrative 5–6, 141, 146, 147–160 Apocrypha 202–203

Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ (An Apologie of the Church of England; Jewel) 86–87, 89, 126, 139 Aquinas See Thomas Aquinas Aristotle 153, 170, 183 Armstrong, Clement 19, 26–27, 32, 73 Articles of Religion 53, 59, 61, 64, 68, 189, 201 Articles veritables (Marcourt) 10n4, 11n6, 27 Assertion and Defence of the Sacrament of the Alter (Smyth) 4, 99, 106n25, 117n16 audience, widening of 35 Augustine 23–24, 37n3, 44, 47, 88, 104 difference between sign and thing signified, 130, 133, 139 hypostatic mediation, 176–177, 179, 181 on justification, 134 Liber Retractationum, 110 Augustinian dialectic of two cities 18–20, 149, 179n68 Autograph Notes (Hooker) 182–183, 190 Averroism 165, 178–179 Bale, John 28n69, 52n4 Bancroft, Richard 77, 78, 82n45 baptism 39, 201 Barlow, William 81 Basil of Caesarea 192 Baumer, Franklin Le Van 15n27, 95n87 ‘beauty of holiness’ 193 Becon, Thomas 80 Béda, Noël 10, 11n6 Bedrotus, Jacobus 24n55 Bellay, Jean du 11 Benjamin, Walter 123 Berengarius of Tours 131 Berthelet, Thomas 25, 32 Berthoud, Gabrielle 10n3, 12–13, 14, 16n33, 27n64 Beza, Theodore 69 Biddel, John 102 Bill, William 84 Bishop of Rome Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome 12, 67n66, 111n42 no greater than others 60, 73, 75, 85, 92, 94 supreme jurisdiction 55

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index

bishops Act of Submission of the Clergy 54, 56, 57, 67n65, 111n43 authority of 108n34, 162 burned for heresy 109 ecclesiastical reform 58, 59, 68–69 excluded from ruling 23n54, 179n69 hierarchy 62, 63, 64, 150–151, 193 Paul’s Cross sermons 77, 126n50 reducing powers of 53n4 Boke of Marchauntes (de Marcourt) banned 29 clerical abuses 16 English propaganda campaign 12, 27, 30 Old Testament model of kingship 25–26 possible translators 23, 28, 29 published by Godfray 1, 9, 14, 27 published by Jugge 1 second edition 31 secular power 16–17, 34 two cities/countries 18–20, 21 Bomelius, Henricus (Hendrik von Bommel) 30 Bonaventure, 168 Boniface VIII 20–21, 24, 92n82, 94, 176, 179–180, 182–183 Bonner, Edmund 29n72, 74, 81, 83, 118 Bonner’s Register 29n72 book burning 81 Booke of Traditions (Smyth) 110–112 The book of Bertram the priest concerning the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament 131 Book of Common Prayer 53, 59, 61, 68, 146 national liturgy 148 orthodoxy of 66 pomp 188–189 Prayer of Humble Access 198 public duties 200 restoration of 85 revision of 99 revised (1552) 130, 135, 156–157 revised (1559) 134, 135, 194 signs vs. things signified 156, 186–187 Book of Martyrs (Foxe) See Actes and Monuments books, prohibited 29 book trade, and patronage 14–15 Bray, Gerald 52, 53, 61n43, 63 Briçonnet, Guillaume 11 A brief Treatyse (Smyth) 110–111 Bucer, Martin 24, 31, 60, 61–62, 68 Bullinger, Heinrich 59, 69, 70 Bullingham, John 120n28

Caesaro-Papism 33 Calvin, John Augustinian dialectic 20 commendation of Vermigli 132 Greek metaphysics 168 Institutio christianæ religionis 11, 37–38, 39–41, 43–45 quotes 151n28 Beza successor of 69 theological anthropology 36 twofold government 43–50 Cameron, Euan 123, 137n88 Campion, Edmund 97 canon law Gratian’s Decretum 55 distinguished from civil law 65–66 outward forum vs. inward forum 38, 44–45 prohibition in universities 67 canon law reform 51–71 Canons of 1603 67 Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale (Chaucer) 22 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 22 capitalism 42 Cardinal College, Oxford 106. See also Christ Church, Oxford Cardwell, Edward 53 Cargill Thompson, James 165–166 Cartwright, Thomas 68–69, 151, 162, 188, 189, 192–193 Cathedral of Chichester 87 Catholic University in Douai 109 Cave (Plato’s Republic) 99–100, 103, 110 Challenge Sermon (Jewel) 85–86, 88–90, 133 background to 120–125 defining the terms of the Great Controversy 114–115 delivery of 125–126 religious identity 142–143 responses to 132 sacramental presence 154–155 chantries, dissolution of 118 Charles IX 31 Chastillon, Louis de 11, 12 Chaucer, Geoffrey 22 Chedsey, William 133 Cheke, John 60–61 Christ Gospel and 107 headship of 181, 184–185 speech of 104 twofold nature of 47–49 A Christian Letter of certayne Englishe Protestantes 152, 193–194

index221 Christian liberty 39–41, 42, 44 Christ Church, Oxford 82, 105–106, 118, 133 Christology 47–49, 50, 187, 195, 201 Christopherson, John 84 church, as ‘external’ grace 39 church militant and church triumphant 186–188, 191, 196–197, 199 Church of England Council of Trent 126 question of true reformation 68–71 churchwarden 64 Cicero 104 City of God (Augustine) 37n3 civil government, as ‘external’ grace 39 Clark, Jonathan 122 Clement of Alexandria 168 clergy, abuses by 16 clericalism code of discipline 69–71 in Reformatio 65 Clement VII 55, 72–74, 77, 92, 93 Clementine Epistles 112 Coates, George 119 Cole, Henry 86, 126 Colet, John 101, 190 Colloquy of Poissy 31 communion 39, 135–136, 201–202 communion under one kind 90 A comparison betwene the olde learnynge and the newe (Turner, trans.) 29 Concordat countries 66 Confutatio (Smyth) 132 Confutation of the Apology (Harding) 87 conscience, forum of 38, 45 conscience defined 47 gap with authority 97 hypostatic identity 47 sacramental presence 135, 157, 158 constitutional revision 33–34 conversio 103–104 conversion, Greek roots of 102–104 Convocation of Canterbury 67n65 Convocation of York 67n65 Cooke, Anne, Lady Bacon 86 Cooper, Thomas 82n45 corpus christianum 69 Corpus iuris canonici 57, 60, 61, 183n80 Corpus iuris civilis 57 Council of Chalcedon 48 Council of Trent 36, 126, 129 Counter-Reformation 79, 83–84 Coverdale, Miles 29, 81 Cox, Richard 59, 82, 118 Cranmer, Thomas 51, 52, 54, 58, 83, 146

Augustinian approach to signs 131 and Bucer 61 Edmund Bonner’s trial 118 excommunication of 55, 72 figurative sacramental presence 130 Henry VIII’s annulment 72 Marian martyr 59n53 membership on Royal Commission 59–61 Paul’s Cross 77, 78, 80 Richard Smyth and 107, 109, 117n16 Royal Supremacy 65 vernacular liturgies 133 writings 68 Crevier-Denommé, Isabelle 29n74, 30 Cromwell, Thomas 11, 15 anti-papal campaign 30, 85, 92 fall of 31, 33, 74 inner circle 28, 73 Paul’s Cross 75, 77, 79–80, 95–96 propaganda 22, 24, 27, 33, 95–96, 102 ‘public’ 31–35 culture of persuasion 40, 42, 74–75, 78, 80 Challenge Sermon 85, 143 commitment to 93 defense of sacramental culture and 91–92 perceived need 95–96 sacramental culture vs. 94–95, 97–98, 144 Cummings, Brian 144 cura religionis 62 cure of souls 25 Cyril of Alexandria 168 Daniell, David 100n3 Das Einigerlei Bild (Bucer) 24 David 107 Day, John 13 Placards, day of 10–12, 14, 33, 34 deacons 63, 64n55 de civitate Dei (Augustine) 37n3 Declaration de la Messe (Marcourt) 13, 35 decretals 60, 63, 65, 112. See also Corpus iuris canonici Decretum (Gratian) 55 Defence of Catholyke Beleef (Dorman) 86 Defence of the Apologie (Jewel) 87, 130, 156 Defence of the Sacrifice of the Masse (Smyth) 99 Defensor Pacis (Marsilius of Padua) 23–24, 32, 164, 179–180 De nova et veteri doctrina (Rhegius) 13 d’Entrèves, Allesandro Passerin 164, 171 De Regno Christi (Bucer) 62

222

index

desacralization 121, 127 Descartes, René 38n7 A detection of the devils Sophistrie 128–129 diaconate, role of 64 Dionysius See Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite Disciplinarian Puritanism 69, 77, 151, 161, 162, 166 disenchantment 91, 92, 120–125, 127, 137–138, 139, 141, 157 dispositio 1, 37, 49, 180 antiphonal singing 192–193 Thomist metaphysics 173–174, 176–177 within the state 184–185 divine law (lex divinitatis) 20–24, 91, 92–93, 94, 171–172, 173–174, 176, 178, 180, 190 divine unity 171, 173, 197–198 doctors 63 doctrine 201–202 Donation of Constantine 22 Dorman, Thomas 86 Douai, Catholic University in 109 Douai, English College at 87, 126 Driver, Alice 153–155 Dudley, John 51, 52 Duffy, Eamon 31n79, 121 Duns Scotus, John 168 duplex cognitio Dei 174 duplex gratia 45–47 duplex regimen 39–41, 43–50 Early Church Fathers 88, 104, 110, 168 Eccleshall, Robert 165 ecclesiastical discipline as essential mark 62, 68 reformation attempts in Strasbourg 63 suspicion of 69–71 Ecclesiastical Hierarchies (PseudoDionysius the Areopagite) 190 ecclesiastical ordinances infringing on royal prerogative 54–58 ecclesiastical vs. spiritual power 183–185 Edward VI accession 9, 13n21, 14, 29n74, 33, 99 civil disorder 58 clericalism 65 death of 118 De Regno Christi dedicated to 62 reforming establishment 34, 35, 96 Royal Commission of 32 51–52, 58–61 sermon topics during reign 117 Stephen Gardiner 108–109 elders 63

Elements of Theology (Proclus) 167–168 Elizabeth I 14n23, 35, 52 accession of 59, 109, 154 Challenge Sermon 126 clericalism and lay supremacy 65 epistles to 87 religious identity under 78, 96, 146–147 sermon topics during reign 117 Elizabethan Settlement 66, 69, 137–138, 141, 147, 150 Hooker’s defense 161–163, 164, 166, 169 Enchanted Europe (Cameron) 123 Enchiridion militis Christiani 99–100, 102, 110, 112 England as empire 12, 55, 67n66, 111n42 English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (McConica) 9, 28n67, 30 English New Testament (Tyndale) 81, 146 Enlightenment 122 Erasmian reform 99 Erasmus, Desiderius Enchiridion militis Christiani 99–100, 102, 110, 112 Handbook 101 Manuell of the christen knyght 103 supported by Francis I and Marguerite of Navarre 10 Erastian theory 62, 65, 69 Elizabethan Settlement 164, 166 Hooker and 178 Erasmian humanism 30–31 Erastus 69 esse of the church 152 Étaples, Lefèvre d’ 10, 24 eternal law 167, 172–174, 175–177, 182 Eucharist 39, 135–136, 201–202 Eusebius of Caesarea 168 Euthyphro (Plato) 103 excommunication 55, 65, 72, 77, 92, 93 exhortations to charity 138, 160 Farel, Guillaume 14 Family of Love 138, 157 Feckenham, John 81 fides ex auditu 117, 146 Field, John 188 First Corinthians 125 Fish, Simon 28, 30 Fisher, John 74, 78 Fletcher, Richard 82n45

index223 Forest, John 80 Forms, Platonic 99–100 Forms of Nationhood (Helgerson) 144, 146–147, 160 Fortress of the Faith (Stapleton) 87 Forty-Two Articles of Religion 59, 61, 64 See also Articles of Religion forum conscientiæ 38, 40, 44, 47–48, 81, 97–98, 155–156, 159 forum externum et politicum 38, 40, 44, 45, 47–48, 81, 97–98, 155–156, 159 Fourth Lateran Council 129, 137n88 Fox, Rory 165 Foxe, John 29, 51, 52–53, 100n3, 108, 131 apocalyptic narrative 148–150, 153–155 internal and external fora 155–156 prominence of Actes 146–147 Puritanism 66, 148 religious identity 160 frameworks of interpretation, competing 90–91 Francis I (France) 10 Francis II (France) 31 Frith, John 14, 15, 30, 32 Gardiner, Stephen 55n14, 72n1 attack on Cranmer 131 Edward VI 108–109 Paul’s Cross 74, 78, 80, 82, 84, 118 on Real Presence 128–129 Richard Smyth and 107–108 Gascoine, Dr 154 Gelasius 55–56 Geneva 69–70, 162 Geranius, Cephas 13n18. See also Marcourt, Antoine de German Idealism 41–42 Germanus Nauplius II 187 Gibbs, Lee 165 Giles of Rome 20, 24 Glasier, Hugh 119 Godfray, Thomas 9, 14 An Answer to a Letter (St German) 25 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 22 official sponsorship 23 propaganda 15, 30, 31–32, 33–34 semi-official status 35 translators for 28 God, as One 167, 171, 173, 197 God as law 167–177 Goodrich, Thomas 59 Goodrich, Richard 60 good works 17 grace alone 16

grace duplex gratia 45–47 external means of 39, 43 signs of 201 Gratian 55 Gratian (fictional usage) 38 great chain 91–93, 190 Great Controversy 86–88, 89–90, 96, 114, 120n28, 126–128, 143 Gregory of Nyssa 168 Grey, Jane 83–84 Grindal, Edmund 85 groupe de Meaux 11 Guez, du 28 Gwather, Rudolph 69 Habermas, Jürgen 36, 77, 83, 116, 145 Haddon, Walter 60–61, 87 Haigh, Christopher 74n9, 80, 106n22, 122–123 Halasz, Alexandra 115–116, 145 Harding, Thomas 86–87, 92, 126, 129, 131, 133, 134 Haugaard, William 70 Hegel, G.W.F. 41–42 Helgerson, Richard 144, 146–147, 152, 155, 160 Henri II (France) 34 Henrician Canons of 1535 57–58 Henrician Catholicism 73–74 Henry III (England) 77 Henry VIII 11–12, 26 canon law prohibition in universities 67 Cromwell’s ‘public’ and 32 death of 31, 58 divorces 54, 55, 72 excommunication by Clement VII 55, 72–74, 75, 92, 93 headship of Church of England 51, 67n66, 79–80 heresy laws 65 librarian of 28 marriage to Anne Boleyn 55, 72 plurality of Reformations 106n22 prohibited books 29 and publishing trade 15, 95n87 Heracleitus 168 heresy Berengarian ‘sacramentary’ heresy 131 Hugh Latimer 109 Lutheran dogma 81–82 Nicholas Ridley 109 recantations 80–81

224

index

Reformatio on 65 Thomas Cranmer 109 Heskyns, Thomas 88n71 Heywood, John 80 hierarchy 37–38 cosmic hierarchy of laws 150 sacramentally mediated 93 threefold hierarchy 189 universal priesthood vs. 149 Higman, Francis 10, 30 Hillerdal, Gunnar 165–166 Holland, Thomas 82n45 Holy Trinity 197–199, 203 Hooker, Richard 78, 138, 139–141 antiphonal singing 192–193 apologetic narrative 147–148, 150–151 bond between sign and signified 158–160 coherence of arguments 163–167, 177–185 definition of law 170 Elizabethan Settlement 161–163, 164, 169 on the Incarnation 195 internal and external fora 155–156, 159–160 on prayer 194–197 prominence of Lawes 146–147 Puritans vs. 152–153, 166, 193 religious identity 160 signs, importance of 186–193, 200–201 Hooper, John 53n4, 59n33, 118 Huguenots 34 humanism and Protestantism 10n5 The huntyng & fyndyng out of the Romishe fox (Turner, trans.) 29 identity 90. See also religious identity images, veneration of 85, 90 imago dei 93, 175 Incarnation 195, 197–199, 202 Institutio christianæ religionis (Calvin) 11, 37–38, 39–41, 43–45 instrumental realism 135–136 James I, Canons of 1603 67 Jeremiads 138–139, 160 Jerome 168 Jewel, John 76, 78 Apologia ecclesiæ anglicanæ 86–87, 89, 126, 139 Augustinian approach to signs, 131–135, 139–140, 156

Challenge Sermon 85–86, 88–90, 114–115, 120–127, 132, 133, 142–143, 154–155 Defence of the Apologie 87, 130, 156 instrumental realism 135–136 novelty of transubstantiation 129–130 John the Baptist 104 Joseph, John 83 Jugge, Richard 9, 14 jurisdiction, coercive 63 jurisdiction, spiritual vs. temporal 44–45, 62, 65, 70–71, 92n82. See also Royal Supremacy justification, Augustine on 134 justification by faith 16, 39, 45, 87, 91, 107 Justin Martyr 168 Katherine of Aragon 12n11, 54, 55, 72 Kearney, Hugh 165–166 King’s Printer 25, 31–32, 33, 35, 102 koinonia 198 Kyrkham, Thomas 118 Lake, Peter 75n13, 97, 115 language, impoverishment of 42 Lasco, John à 59, 60 Lateran Council 129, 137n88 Latimer, Hugh 59n33, 78, 81–82, 109 Lavardin, Hildebert de 129n58 law, God as 167–177 lay supremacy and church reform 62–63, 69 A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride 198n45 Lee, Edward 55n14, 72n1, 80 Les Faictz du Jesus Christ et du Pape 35 Lever, Thomas 83 Lewis, C.S. 170 lex animata 183 lex divinitatis 20–24, 91, 92–93, 94, 171–172, 173–174, 176, 178, 180, 190 Liber Precum Publicarum (Haddon, trans.) 87 Liber Retractationum (Augustine) 110 liberties of the City 77 libido dominadi 23, 104, 179 literacy 116, 124n46, 145 The Litigants (Menander) 103 liturgical order of communion 135–136, 157n42 liturgy, vernacular 40, 118, 149 Liturgy and Literature (Rosendale) 136–137 Livre des marchans (de Marcourt) 9–35 banned 29 clerical abuses 16

index225 English propaganda campaign 12, 27, 30 Old Testament model of kingship 25–26 possible translators 23, 28, 29 published by Godfray 1, 9, 14, 27 published by Jugge 1 second edition 31 secular power 16–17, 34 two cities/countries 18–20, 21 logoi 123, 124 logos theology 168–172, 173 Longland, John 55n14, 72n1 Long Reformation 121 Louvain, University of 87, 88, 90, 109, 117n16, 126, 133 Lüber, Thomas, alias Erastus 69. See also Erastian theory Lucas, John 60 Luther, Martin 17, 18, 107, 168 Lutheran doctrine 80 lutheriens 11 Lyndwood, William 57 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 123 Machyn, Henry 76, 84, 119, 125 MacLure, Millar 77, 78, 81, 82n45, 117 Manicheus 21n43 Manuell of the christen knyght (Erasmus) 103 Marcourt, Antoine de Articles veritables 11n6 Declaration de la Messe 13 Livre des marchans 9–35 Petit traicté tres utile, et salutaire de la Sainte Eucharistie de nostre Seigneur Jesuchrist 13 translations 13, 27–28 Marguerite of Navarre 10 Marian martyrs 59 Marprelate, Martin 116, 145 Marshall, John Sedberry 171 Marshall, Peter 106n22 Marshall, William 15, 23, 24, 28, 32, 80 Marsilius of Padua 18, 23, 32, 164–165, 179–180 Martiall, John 88n71 martyrs Alice Driver 153–154 apocalyptic narrative 149 Marian martyrs 59 Mary I, Queen 28, 35, 52, 84, 96, 105, 109, 119, 153 Mass 82, 89, 118–119 May, William 60

McConica, James 9, 28n67, 30 McCullough, Peter 126n50 McGrade, A.S. 165 McLuhan, Marshall 89n73, 115 Mears, Natalie 116, 145, 146 mediation 24, 37 medieval hierarchy 63, 64, 67 Meditations on first philosophy (Descartes) 38n7 ‘medium is the message’ 89, 96, 115 Menander 103 metanoia 100, 102–104 moderation 30–31 modernity 41–42, 75, 91, 92, 122–123, 165n16 modernization 121–125 monasteries, suppression of 14, 74, 93, 106 Montfort, Simon de 77 moral exhortation 40 moral ontology defined 36n2 assumptions of 127 opposition between 89 morals Erasmus 101–102 supervision of 63, 64–65 More, Thomas 14, 30, 74 Morrissey, Mary 126n50, 138 Munz, Peter 165–166, 171, 178, 179n66 Musculus, Wolfgang 69 natural law 173–174 New Learning 109–110 New Testament (Tyndale, trans.) 101–102 Nicholas of Cusa 112 Noelz nouveaux 35 nomos-theology 167–177, 178 notæ ecclesiæ 62–63, 68 nous 173 Novum instrument omne (Erasmus) 101–102 Nowell, Alexander 86 Obedience of a Christian Man (Tyndale) 15–16 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (Hooker) 140, 146–147, 151, 161–163 coherence of arguments 163–167 God is law 167–177 prayer 194 signs 186–193 The old learninge and the newe (Rhegius) 28 omnis homo mendax 107–108, 113

226

index

One, God as 167, 171, 173, 197 ontological distinctions 36, 39, 44, 46 Oration on the dignity of man (Pico della Mirandola) 100 Ordinal, 189 Origen 168 Osorius, Hieronymous 87 Oxford Disputation of 1549 99, 131, 133 papacy English jurisdiction 11–12 final judge 91 repudiation of authority 87 (See also Royal Supremacy) Parable of the Wicked Mammon (Tyndale) 35 paradeigma 168–169 Paradiso (Dante) 38 Parker, Matthew 51, 53, 60, 85 Advertisements 67, 77 Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon 86 participation 168, 170 pastors 63 Pathway into the Holy Scripture (Tyndale) 15 Patristic scholarship 88 patronage 14–15 Patterson, Patrick 165 Paul 198 Paul’s Cross 29, 31 bishops 77, 126n50 Elizabethan sermons 138, 160 face of government 77 preaching at 75, 76–79 pope 79–80, 85, 92 press 79, 95–96 public space 76–88 public sphere 77–78, 83 recantations 80–81 Register of Sermons 78, 81, 82n45, 117 religious identity 77–79, 82–83, 87–88 Royal Supremacy 79–81, 82 Shrouds 83 Stephen Gardiner 74, 78, 80, 82, 84, 118 Thomas Cranmer 77, 78, 80 Thomas Cromwell 75, 77, 79–80, 95–96 penance 44–45, 80–81, 83 penitence, act of 82 penitence, internal 45 Petit traicté tres utile, et salutaire de la Sainte Eucharistie de nostre Seigneur Jesuchrist (Marcourt) 13 Pettegree, Andrew 14, 40, 116, 124, 145 phancie 189

phantasia 100, 103, 110, 113, 189 Phillip II (Spain) 84 Phillips, Morgan 133 Philo of Alexandria 168 Philosophy of History (Hegel) 41–42 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 100 Pius IV 126 Placard of October 1534. See Articles veritables (Marcourt) Plato 99–100, 103 A Playne declaration (Smyth) 108 plenitude of power (plenitudo p­ otestatis) 21–23, 25, 72, 92n82, 180, 182–183 Pliny the Younger 103–104 Pocock, John 149 political forum 38 political liberty 40–42 pope Act Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome 12, 67n66, 111n42 Bishop of Rome as title 60, 73, 75, 85, 92, 94 Paul’s Cross 79–80, 85, 92 supreme jurisdiction 55 post-revisionism 122–123 Poyntz, Robert 88n71 prayer, defined 194 Prayer of Humble Access 198 Prayer 194, 196–197, 198, 199–200, 201–202 prayers in a strange tongue 90 preaching 40 as essential mark of visible church 62 Paul’s Cross 75, 76–79 reading of scripture 196 presbyters 63 press connection to Paul’s Cross 79, 95–96 Cromwell and 102n9 public sphere and 115–116, 145 under Henry VIII 15, 22, 24, 27, 29, 95–96 Previté-Orton, C.W. 164 Primal Hypostases 173 Priory of Wallingford 106n23 private vs. public space 40–41 Privy Council 66, 72, 77, 84 response to Clement VII 92 Richard Smyth and 105, 107 Proclus 167–168, 190 pronoia, 102–103 pronoun usage in Boke of Marchaunts 27–28 propaganda 15–16 Canterbury Tales as 22

index227 English press 22, 24, 27, 33, 95–96, 102 Protestantism vs. humanism 10n5 Proverbs, Book of 18 Provinciale (Lyndwood) 57 Psalm 27:4 187–188 Psalm 116:2 107 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 20–21, 92n82, 176, 182n79, 183, 190–191, 193 public duties 200 ‘public’ of evangelicals 31–35 public penance 80–81, 83 publics 144 public sphere culture of persuasion and 74–75, 97–98 Elizabethan England 75n13 mediation of apocalyptic narrative 159–160 origin of 36 Paul’s Cross 77–78, 83 print vs. spoken word 115–117, 144–146 Puritans 75n13 religious underpinnings 40–41, 49–50, 144 Purgatory 14, 30 Puritans Christian Letter of certayne Englishe Protestantes 152, 193–194 Disciplinarian Puritanism 69, 77, 151, 161, 162, 166 John Foxe 66, 148 liturgy of Common Prayer 188 public sphere and 75n13 Richard Hooker vs. 152–153, 166, 193 separatists 138 Thomas Cartwright 69, 151, 162 Walter Travers 69, 161, 162 Queen’s Printer 14n23 Questier, Michael 75n13, 97, 115 Quintilian 104 Rabelais 16 radicalism 2, 9, 12, 26–27 ratio 168–169 rationalism 165, 167 rationality 121–123 Ratramnus of Corbie 131 real absence 134 Real Presence 11, 27, 82, 83, 89, 128–129, 156, 158–159. See also transubstantiation reform, international dimension 34–35 Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum 51–53, 56–57, 87

drafting 60–61 failure to win approval 60, 65–67 Reformations, multiple 74n9, 80, 82, 96, 106n22 Reformation Parliament 11–12, 15, 65, 102 ideology of kingship 27 papacy, moves against 67n66 Register of Sermons preached at Paul’s Cross, 1534–1642 (MacLure) 78, 81, 82n45, 117 Regius Professor of Divinity, position 4, 59, 61, 83, 99, 105, 109, 117, 132 regnum politicum 43 regnum spirituale 43 rehearsal sermons 83 religion, place in daily life 34 religious authority, source of 109–113 religious identity 36–37, 72–75 apologetic discourse and 159–160 Actes and Monuments 155 Catholic identity 79, 121 continuity of 121 during Elizabeth’s reign 146–147 given vs. found 94–95 horizon of 92 moral force of 95–96 Paul’s Cross 77–79, 82–83, 87–88 redefining 142–143 Republic (Plato) 99–100, 103, 110 res significata 114, 129–130, 133–134, 138–140, 142–143, 153n35, 154, 156–158 retail vs. wholesale model of justification 16–17 retraction, seriousness of 110 ‘Retractation Sermon’ (Smyth) 99–113 revisionism 121–122 Rex, Richard 16, 31n79 Rhegius, Urbanus 13, 28 Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e all storia del diritto naturale (d’Entrèves) 164 Ridley, Nicholas 59n33, 78, 83–84, 109, 117–118 Augustinian approach to signs 131 figurative sacramental presence 130 righteousness, active vs. passive 45–46 Romans 3:4 107 Romans 13 180 Rosendale, Timothy 136–137, 144n3, 156–157 Roussel, Gérard 10 Royal Commission for Canon Law reform 32, 51–53, 54–58 membership of 58–61

228 Royal Proclamations 29–30 Royal Supremacy 11–12, 16, 17–18, 23, 30, 89–90 Lawes 162 and Old Testament kings 25–26 Parliament 67n66 Paul’s Cross 79–81, 82 phases of 82 religious identity 73–74, 91–92 Richard Hooker 190–191 Richard Smyth 109, 110–111, 112–113 Stephen Gardiner 108, 118 Thomas Cranmer 65 Ryrie, Alec 31n79 Sachs, Leslie 64 sacralizing the secular 149–150 sacrament, nature of 82, 89, 117–120, 153n35 sacramental culture culture of persuasion vs. 94–95, 97–98, 144 deconstruction of 137–138, 142, 157, 159–160 defense of 91–92 dismantling of 74, 78 points of contact with reality 93 sacramental instrumentality 158–159 sacramental presence 118, 124, 125–128. See also Great Controversy internal 156–157 Jewel 134–136, 154–155 sacraments right administration of 62 signs of grace 201 visible words of God 139–140 sacrifice of the Mass 106, 111 Saint Michael and All Angels 192 salvation, mediation of 24, 199 sanctification 46 Sanders, Nicholas 88n71, 91–92 Savonarola, Girolamo 28n67 Scribner, Robert 121 scripture part of liturgy 196 reliance on 110 scripture alone 151, 152 Second Chronicles 187 Second Epistle of Peter 199 A Secular Age (Taylor) 41 secularity 41, 44, 149–150 self-consciousness 42 ‘Sermon of the Ploughers’ (Latimer)  81–82

index sermons Accession Day sermons 82 audible sacraments 141 bishops 77, 126n50 Challenge Sermon (Jewel) 85–86, 88–90, 114–115, 120–127, 132, 133, 142–143, 154–155 Elizabethan sermons 138, 160 Peter Martyr Vermigli 83 Register of Sermons 78, 81, 82n45, 117 rehearsal 83 Retractation Sermon (Smyth) 99–113 royal policy advancement 28 Sermon of the Ploughers (Latimer) 81–82 Shrouds 83 topics during Edward VI’s reign 117 Seymour, Edward (Protector Somerset) 65, 107, 108, 118 Shagan, Ethan 26, 73 Shacklock, Richard 87, 88n71 Shrouds 83. See also Paul’s Cross Sidonius Apollinaris 187, 188 sign and mystical reality 114, 186–193 signum 114, 129–130, 133–134, 138–140, 142–143, 153n35, 154, 156–158 singing, antiphonal 192–193 Singleton, Robert 80 Skinner, Quentin 42 Skinner, Ralph 59 Smyth, Richard 99, 117, 131, 132–133 conversion and retractation 104–109 on source of religious authority 109–113 social imaginary 92–93 social injustice 83 social welfare 64 Socrates 103 sola scriptura 151, 152 solemnitie, visible 189–190 Solomon 107, 187 Somerset, Protector (Edward Seymour) 65, 107, 108, 118 sources, respect for 123–125 Sources of the Self (Taylor) 42, 75 Spalding, James 53 Spencer, John 153–154 spiritual authority, vs. temporal 19–24, 38, 43–50 spiritual vs. ecclesiastical 183–185 Stapleton, Thomas 87 Starkey, Thomas 28 Statute of the Six Articles 74 Statutes of Praemunire 51 St German, Christopher 15, 25, 28, 32

index229 Stobaeus, Joannes 168 Stokesley, John 79 Strasbourg, reformation in 63 Summa Theologica (Aquinas) 171, 179 Summe of the holye Scripture/ Summa der godeliker Scrifturen (Bomelius) 29–30 Supplicacyon for the beggars (Fish) 30 A Supplication made to the Privie Counsell (Travers) 161 sursum corda 133–134 symbols 92–94, 190n14 Taylor, Charles 36n2, 41, 42, 74, 75, 89, 127 on identity 90, 122 modernity 122, 147 Taylor, Rowland 59 Temple 187 thing signified 114, 129–130, 133–134, 138–140, 142–143, 153n35, 154, 156–158 Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion 53, 59, 64, 68. See also Articles of Religion Thomas, Keith 121 Thomas Aquinas Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 38–39 influence on Richard Hooker 164–166, 170–171, 183 divine law 174, 175, 178–179, 180, 190n16 Thomas Aquinas (Dante’s Paradiso) 38 three essential marks 62–63, 68 Thucydides 123 Tower of London 109 Tractatio (Vermigli) 130–131 transubstantiation 82, 85, 90, 106, 108, 117–118, 119 earliest use of term 129n58 in recipient 139–141, 156–157, 158–159 sign vs. thing signified 153n35, 154 traditional theology 128–129 Travers, Walter 68–71, 161, 189 Treatise concernynge the Lordes Supper (Vermigli) 132 Tresham, William 133 Trinity 197–199, 203 Troeltsch, Ernst 121 true visible church 62, 68 Tudor Averroism 178–179 Tunstall, Cuthbert 78 Turner, William 13, 28, 29 two cities, dialectic of 18–20, 149, 179n68 twofold government 39–41, 43–50

twofold knowledge of God 174 Tyndale, William 15–16, 18, 32, 35, 81 translations attributed to 100, 101, 146 Udall, Nicholas 101, 206 Unam Sanctum (bull, Boniface VIII) 20–21, 92n82, 94, 179–180, 182–183 universal priesthood 149 University of Louvain 87, 88, 90, 109, 126 uncommanded Commander 183 unmoved mover 183 Valla, Lorenzo 22–23, 112 Vanhaelen, Angela 35 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 31 Augustinian approach to signs  131–133, 139 figurative sacramental presence 130–131 Jewel’s letter to 76 membership on Royal Commission 59–61 Regius professorship 99, 109, 117 sermon composed by 83 theology of 61, 62, 68, 69 vernacular 40, 118, 149 A view of popishe abuses (Wilcox and Field) 189 Vingle, Pierre de, 9–10, 13, 27, 28, 30, 34–35 Viret, Pierre 13 voluntarism 165, 166 Walsham, Alexandra 120–121, 141 wardens 63 Warham, William 55 Watson, Thomas 119 Weber, Max 37n5, 42, 72, 120–121, 122 Wes, Giles du 28 Weston, Hugh 119 Whitgift, John 68–69, 77, 78, 82n45, 138, 162 Whittington College 107 Wilcox, Thomas 188, 189 Wisdom 202–203 Wisdom, Robert 80 Witte, John 42 Wolin, Sheldon 42 Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas 11, 106 Word of God 24, 168–169 Wriothesley, Charles 110, 118 Zurich 69–71 Zwingli, Huldrych 11n6, 18, 19, 69, 70, 134–135, 136, 137, 168, 201