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.

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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsvii
Abbreviations and Acronymsix

Introduction1

1.Religion and Propaganda: Thomas Cromwells use of Antoine

de Marcourts Livre des Marchans9

2.Public Forum and Forum of the Conscience: John Calvins

Theological Groundwork of the Modern Public Sphere 36

3.Lay Supremacy: Tudor Reform of the Canon Law of England 51

4.Public Preaching: Pauls Cross and the Culture of Persuasion 72

5.Public Conversion: Richard Smyths Retractation Sermon

at Pauls Cross, 1547 99

6.Political Hermeneutics: John Jewels Challenge Sermon

at Pauls Cross, 1559114

7.Politics of Religious Identity: John Foxe, Richard Hooker

and the Nascent Public Sphere144

8.Politics of Persuasion: Public and Private in Hookers

Apologetics161

9.Public Religion and Public Worship: The Hermeneutics

of Common Prayer186

Bibliography205
Index219
 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
rforme franaise avant Calvin, and for the generous support of this
undertaking by le Fonds qubcois de la recherche sur la socit 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 Pauls Cross project, also generously funded by SSHRC, and espe-
cially 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 qubcois de la recherche sur la socit et la culture over the past
several years.
Portions of this study have been published previously in various jour-
nals whose permission to reprint them here is gratefully acknowledged:

Le Livre des Marchans dAntoine de Marcourt et la thologie politique

au temps des Tudor. Imprims rforms de Pierre de Vingle (Neuchtel,
153335). Littratures 24.2 (2007) 5594.
viii acknowledgements

Negotiating the forum politicum and the forum conscientiae: John

Calvin and the religious origins of the modern public sphere, 209222.
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 (15291571). Reformation and Renaissance Review: 8.3 (2006)
349370.
The Public Sermon: Pauls Cross and the culture of persuasion in
England, 15341570. Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et
Rforme 31.1 (2008) 329.
Signs and Things Signified: sacramental hermeneutics in John Jewels
Challenge Sermon and the culture of persuasion at Pauls Cross.
Reformation and Renaissance Review 11.1 (2009) 5789.
Of musique with psalms: the hermeneutics of Richard Hookers defence
of the sensible excellencie of public worship, 127151. 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)
CSP Calendar of State Papers
FLE  The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker,
gen. ed. W. Speed Hill, 7 vols. (19771998)
FSL Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
HMSO Her Majestys Stationery Office
Inst. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis (1559)
JW The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (18451850)
Lawes Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie
(1593, 1597)
LP  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of
Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie
(18621932); repr. (1965)
LS  Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop
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)
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2009)
OL  Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, ed.
Hastings Robinson (1847)
PG  Patrologia cursus completus, series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne
(18571866)
PL  Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne
(18441864)
PRO Public Record Office
PS Parker Society
RLE Reformation legum ecclesiasticarum, ed. John Foxe (1571)
RSTC  Revised Short Title Catalogue, ed. W.A. Jackson,
F.S. Ferguson, and K.F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (19761991)
SR Statutes of the Realm, London (18101828)
STC A.W. Pollard, G.R. Redgrave, and others, eds., A short-title
catalogue of English books 14751640 (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)
WW  The Works of John Whitgift, DD, ed. John Ayre, 3 vols.
(18511853)
 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 persua-
sion 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 tradi-
tional sacramental model based upon the ontological assumption of a
gradual mediation or hierarchical dispositio of reality, the sixteenth-cen-
tury 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 persuasionthat 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 Marcourts Livre des marchans (1533) was translated into
English and published on two separate occasions. The first English edi-
tion, titled The Boke of Marchauntes, was published by Thomas Godfray in
August 1534the year of Parliaments 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 Marcourts satire; the discussion stresses the import
of Thomas Cromwells patronage in the tracts publication, and explores a

1On 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).
2 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 Marcourts
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 theo-
logical first principles undergirding the development of a public sphere in
the emergence of modernity. In his well-known definition of Christian lib-
erty, Calvin distinguishes with great care between the forum conscientiae
and the forum externum: in man government is twofold: the one spiri-
tual, 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 reformers key
soteriological claim concerning Justification in the preceding chapters
(Inst. III.1118). Moreover, this distinction of a twofold government pro-
vides the critical groundwork for Calvins political theology in Book IV. In
the Institutio Calvin elucidates a vitally important theological presupposi-
tion of an emergent public sphere of discoursea sphere of persua-
sionas 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
Reformationpersuasion through preaching and teachingthus estab-
lishes 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, Calvins account of a twofold govern-
ment in his definition of Christian liberty contributes to a radical rethink-
ing 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, Englands 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 ecclesiasti-
cal law as a consequence of Henry VIIIs 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 Commissions 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 Parkers approval, the Reformatio legum was
fated to receive neither royal, nor parliamentary, nor synodical authoriza-
tion. At the time certain members of Parliament contested the royal pre-
rogative 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 historiogra-
phy? The anti-clericalism of both Edward VIs and Elizabeths parliaments
provides added momentum to lay autonomy.
The open-air pulpit in the precincts of St Pauls Cathedral known as
Pauls Cross counts among the most influential of all public venues in
early-modern England. In a world where the sermon served as the princi-
pal means of adult education, as well as a key instrument of ethical guid-
ance and political control, Pauls 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 autho-
rised spokesmen expounded government policy and denounced heresy
and rebellion. Yet, unlike the royal Abbey of Westminster, St Pauls
belonged more to subjects than to princes. Despite official regulation,
Pauls Cross provided a popular forum for the articulation of diverse view-
points 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 Pauls
Cross. The fourth essay inquires into the role of the outdoor public ser-
mon in the formation of religious publics and identities in early-modern
London. Who were the principal agents and players? Who constituted the
4 introduction

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 Smyths
Retractation Sermon, preached both at Pauls Cross and later at Oxford in
1547 shortly after the accession of King Edward VI, and published by
Reginal Wolfe in the same year. Smiths 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 Smyths renunciation of this traditional
teaching in order to conform to the newly reformed religious settlement
established following Edward VIs accession, but also his later retraction
of the retractation (sic)a double conversion, so to speakwhich
resulted in his ejection from the Regius professorship (then Oxfords 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 Smyths retractation and public recan-
tation at Pauls Cross is the underlying substantive hermeneutical ques-
tion 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. Smyths 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 Cranmers liturgy of 1549
resulting in that of 1552 (the Second Edwardine BCP). By tracing the after-
math of Smyths 1547 sermon it becomes evident how events at Pauls
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 preach-
ing 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 Jewels famous Challenge
Sermon delivered at Pauls Cross in 1559. Significantly, this sermon sets
out the terms of disputation between reformers and traditionalists about
Englands 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 Jewels theory of signs,
its antecedents and its consequences for the definition of Englands subse-
quent 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. Jewels 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 revi-
sionist historiography. Finally, we suggest that Jewels approach provides
a means of interpreting the key role of Pauls 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 Englands religious
self-understanding than Foxes Acts (1563) and Hookers Laws (1593).2 The
seventh essays seeks to demonstrate how both works endeavour to rein-
force the Elizabethan religious and political settlement from related yet
mutually distinctive perspectives. Foxes 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. Hookers apologetic discourse, on the
other hand, seeks above all to justify the hierarchical order of the estab-
lished church with a view to securing conscientious obedience to the
authority of government. By means of these two very distinct approaches
apocalyptics and apologeticsFoxe 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 con-
science and the public realm of communal authority calls forth an
open arena of persuasiona public sphereas the necessary means of

2Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1992), 253.
6 introduction

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 Hookers 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 jurisdic-
tion in the Crown, lay at the very heart of these disputes. The eighth essay
traces two features of Richard Hookers theory of princely sovereignty
which stand at the centre of a long-standing debate over the basic coher-
ence 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 attri-
bute to the law what the law attributes to them, namely power and domin-
ion. 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 follow-
ing 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

3See John Bootys 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), 183231. See also Torrance Kirby, Angels descend-
ing and ascending: Richard Hookers discourse on the double motion of Common Prayer,
in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2003), 111130.
 introduction7

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.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 Hookers first
propositionor perhaps we might call it a fundamental hermeneutical
premiseconcerning 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.5 Hookers 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
Calvins treatment of the distinction between the forum conscientiae and
forum politicum vel externum and Jewels 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 acknowl-
edg 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

4Of 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; 2:33.2634.6 (emphasis added).
5Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24.
6Lawes V.23.1; FLE 2:110.716.
8 introduction

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 Hookers conception of Christian wor-
ship 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.

7Lawes I.11.2; FLE 1:112.1720.

 CHAPTER ONE

RELIGION AND PROPAGANDA: THOMAS CROMWELLS USE

OF ANTOINE DE MARCOURTS LIVRE DES MARCHANS

Antoine de Marcourts Livre des marchans (1533) was translated into

English and published on two separate occasions. The first English edi-
tion, titled The Boke of Marchauntes, was published by Thomas Godfray
in August 1534the year of Parliaments 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 Marcourts satire in England and France; first, it stresses the import of
Thomas Cromwells patronage in the tracts publication; secondly it chal-
lenges received opinion on the supposed opposition between religious
radicalism and political conservatism; and finally it examines Marcourts
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 move-
ment 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 devel-
opments 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 anon-
ymous English translation of Marcourts 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

1James Kelsey McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII
and Edward VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 6.
2The 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).
10 chapter one

Vingle in Neuchtel.3 Without any doubt 1534 was an altogether momen-

tous year in the course of the Reformation for both France and England.
Just two months after the appearance of Godfrays translated edition
in the so-called Affair of the PlacardsMarcourts 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 vangliques and the reforming human-
ists of the groupe de Meaux; both he and his sister Marguerite of Navarre
had shown marked support for Erasmus, Lefvre dtaples, and Grard
Roussel and their followers, while Francis had even exiled the conserva-
tive Nol Bda to Mont-St-Michel in May of 1533. After the Placards, a veri-
table 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 spe-
cies 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 Marcourts
tactic, in Higmans 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, Marcourts

3The original text was published by Vingle on 22 August 1533 under the title Le Livre des
marchans, fort utile a toutes gens nouvellement compos par le sire Pantapole, bien expert en
tel affaire, prochain voysin du seigneur Pantagruel. According to Gabrielle Berthoud, le
Livre des Marchans est luvre la plus poplaire et, apparemment, la mieux connue de
lauteur des Placards. See Antoine Marcourt : Rformateur et Pamphltaire du Livre des
Marchans aux Placards de 1534 (Genve : Droz, 1973), 111.
4The 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: Neuchtel, 10 October 1534. Marcourts sharp polemic
against the Catholic doctrine of the Mass was posted throughout Paris as well as at the
chteau of Amboise where Francis I was residing. See Francis Higman, De laffaire des
Placards aux nicodmites: le movement vanglique franais sous Franois Ier, Lire et
dcouvrir: la circulation des ides au temps de la Rforme (Genve: Droz, 1998), 619625.
5Francis Higman, Lire et dcouvrir: la circulation des ides au temps de la Rforme
(Genve: Droz, 1998) 622, 623. According to David Nicholls, Looking for the origins of the
French Reformation, Power, Culture, and Religion in France, c. 13501550, 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 order-
ing of religion could not now be separated from doctrinal matters
 religion and propaganda11

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 lutheriens6 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 Lefvre dtaples, Guillaume Brionnet, 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
tian 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 dis-
mantling 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

6In the eyes of the Sorbonne doctors, all of those involved in activities such as the
Meaux experiments constituted what the Sorbonniste Nol Bda called Luthers confra-
ternity. Philip Benedict and Virginia Reinburg, Religion and the Sacred, in Mark Holt, ed.,
Renaissance and Reformation France, 15001648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
136137. It was ironic that the radicals were called lutheriens since Marcourts 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 Zwinglis denial of the real presence
of Christ in the eucharistic elements. See Frederic J. Baumgartner, France in the sixteenth
century (New York: St Martins Press, 1995) 137140.
7See 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) 2755. Donald R. Kelley, The beginning of ideology: consciousness and society in the
French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)1319, 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.
8See Philip Benedict and Virginia Reinburg, Religion and the Sacred, 138, 139.
9Letters and Papers, Foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII, 15091547, ed.
J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie, 22 volumes (London 18621932), iv (3), 6011: 17
October 1529. Cited by McConica, English Humanists, 108.
12 chapter one

believes, will aid him in defending his rights.10 It was in fact the labour of
the parliamentary sessions of 153334 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 VIIIs headship of the Church. The preamble of the for-
mer 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 offi-
cially designated.12 In November 1534, just weeks after the Day of the
Placards in Paris, the Reformation Parliament broke Englands 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 Marcourts Boke of Marchauntes
should be enlisted in support of a royally sanctioned propaganda cam-
paign 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 Marcourts text?
In her landmark study Antoine Marcourt: reformateur et pamphltaire,
Gabrielle Berthoud observes that Le Livre des Marchans is Marcourts most

10Chastillons 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.
1124 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).
12For discussion of the progression of the revolutionary legislative agenda of the
Reformation Parliament see Richard Rex, The Crisis of Obedience: Gods Word and
Henrys Reformation, The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff.
1326 Henry VIII, cap. 1: Albeit, the Kings 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 Christs 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.
 religion and propaganda13

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
Neuchtel 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. Marcourts 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 153335 also appeared in English
translation. Among them were Marcourts Petit traict 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 emi-
nent botanist William Turner.21 Finally, in an instance which reverses

14Antoine Marcourt: reformateur et pamphltaire du Livre des Marchans aux Placards

de 1534 (Genve: Droz, 1973) 111 and 149 ff.
15Le liure des marchans. Reueu & augmente par sont [sic] premier autheur (Genve:
[Jean Michel], 1541). See Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 127.
16Le Livre des marchans Nouvellement revue et augment, 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.
17Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 140.
18The second edition of Marcourts Petit traict 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 (Neuchtel:
Pierre de Vingle, 1534). See G. Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 244251.
19A 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).
20La Doctrine nouvelle et ancienne (Neuchtel: Pierre de Vingle, 1534?). On the transla-
tion see the as yet unpublished essay by Isabelle Crevier-Denomm and William Kemp,
La traduction et ladaptation de la doctrine nouvelle et ancienne de Rhegius (Genve,
154244, Neuchtel vers 1534), Cinq sicles dhistoire religieuse Neuchteloise; approches
dun tradition Protestante, delivered at the lInstitut dHistoire de Neuchtel in 2005.
21A 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 Marcourts
tractsThe Boke of Marchauntes and A declaration of the masseTurners 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).
14 chapter one

the cross-Channel evangelical influence, just weeks after the Day of the
Placards Vingle published the short Traict du Purgatoire usually attrib-
uted to Guillaume Farel, and which owes something to the English
reformer and martyr John Friths 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 transla-
tion of the original text of 1533, Berthoud remarks that although Godfrays
edition of the Boke of Marchauntes is mentioned in the bibliographies, it
remains quasi ignor. Berthoud then puts some questions which are well
worth taking up:
One is curious, however, to know the reasons for his business [viz. Godfrays].
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 Kings final break with Rome, when the cam-
paign 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 Berthouds question concerning the initiative
behind the translation and publication of Marcourts 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

Turners 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 daucuns 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 ([Neuchtel: 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).
23The Booke of Marchauntes, very profitable to all folks (London, 1547) was one of
Jugges first publications. Jugge was appointed to the office of Queens 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,
142146.
24Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 142. On serait curieux, cependant, de connatre les
motifs de son entreprise [viz. Godfrays]. Initiative personnelle? Commande dun
imprimeur, dun groupe rform, dun pouvoir plus official? Rien ne le rvle, mais on
admettra que The boke of marchauntes venait son heure. 1534, cest lanne de la rupture
definitive du roi avec Rome, le moment o reprend la campagne contre les excs et la
richesse du clerg, campagne qui aboutira, en 1540, la suppression totale des monastres.
 religion and propaganda15

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 Henrys revolution. Throughout Englands radical consti-
tutional transformation of the 1530s, Henrys 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 Godfrays list of published titles suggests that he
was evidently an important player in Thomas Cromwells circle. Godfray
published numerous books which contributed directly to the advance-
ment of Cromwells 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 Marcourts 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

25Andrew 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).
26G. R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 15091558 (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.
27According 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) 3584. See p. 39: Henry VIII exer-
cised 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.
28Also 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).
29William 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
16 chapter one

Tyndales 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 Tyndales 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
Tyndales, 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 justifi-
cation 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 identityviz. the lorde Pantapole, right
expert in suche busynesse, nere neyghbour vnto the lorde Pantagrule
Marcourt sets himself up as the one who sells allcelui qui vend de
tout33the wholesaler, as it were, who seeks to undercut the ecclesiasti-
cal middleman. In this allusion Marcourts 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).
30Richard Rex, Crisis of Obedience, 863867.
31Richard Rex, Crisis of Obedience, 866.
32Boke of Marchauntes, Cv r. See also Av v: These avaricyouse marchauntes cov-
etouse 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.
33See Berthoud, Antoine de Marcourt, 111. Berthoud, however, does not provide the pre-
cise Greek etymology of this Rabelaisian name. The Greek (panta) is all and
(poles) is dealer, seller, or purveyor. According to Anne Lake Prescott, Marcourts
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.
 religion and propaganda17

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 grad-
ual 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 sacra-
mental apparatus of an ecclesiastical retailer.34
In another passage adjacent to this treatment of the mode of the distri-
bution 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/ resist-
ing 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

34See, for example, Luthers Wittenberg lectures of 1531 on Galatians, In epistolam

Sancti Pauli ad Galatas commentarius (Wittenberg: G. Rrer, 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).
35Boke 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 navez 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 autorit, et a vous appar-
tient de chastier, de corriger et reprimer les grans exces de telz larrons; faictes le donc,
18 chapter one

In the midst of Marcourts 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 Tyndales 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 Marcourts 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 Marcourts 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 Pauls epistles as none other than
the heavenly and the earthly cities. By Marcourts account
Laborious/ diligent/ and industrious persons be requisite/ for the entertain-
ing of the publyke welth/ the which with out finesse/ fraude/ or subtlety to

affin quil nadviengne que de vous soit verifi 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 donn 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 volunt, 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 lhonnerer, il vous honnorera; si vous
lexaltez, il vous exaltera. Par sa sagesse, les roys regnent et les seigneurs dominent et
ordonnent sainctes ordonnances.
36The 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.
37See the OED.
38Boke 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 goodswhether 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 Marcourtand in this he
is in essential agreement with such evangelical reformers on the conti-
nent as Guillaume Farel, Pierre Viret, Huldrych Zwingli, and Jean Calvin,
or William Tyndale, John Frith, William Turner, and Clement Armstrong
in Englandboth 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

39Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii rAiii v. Compare Livre des marchans (1533), Aii rAii
v: Et par ainsi personnages laborieux, diligens, industrieux sont requis pour
lentretenement 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 dung lieu en autre selon lexigence du temps et necessit du peuple.
Ausquelz loyaulx marchans est bien licite, comme a bons et fideles serviteurs de la chose
commune.
40Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii vAiv r. See Livre des marchans, Aii vAiii 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 leglise survenuz, je ne dis pas seulement gros marchans, mais furieux
larrons et insatibles loups ravissants.
20 chapter one

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 per-
forms. 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 doc-
trine 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 posi-
tion 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

41Calvin, Institute of the Christian Religion (1559) III.19.15.

42For 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, 205221.
 religion and propaganda21

In the bull Unam Sanctam Boniface defends the doctrine of the papal
plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis) by asserting the necessary hier-
archical 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 Marcourts
spiritual estate of marchaundyse44 and thus serves as the principal target
of his evangelical satire throughout the Boke of Marchauntes.
From Marcourts 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
DAquino: proposte nuove di letture. Festscrift Antonio Tognolo, Medioevo. Rivista di Storia
della Filosofia Medievale, 18 (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1992), 119150.
43Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879; reprinted Graz:
Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955; 1959), vol. 2, col. 124546: 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: 12], 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 accord-
ing 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, 1720 and Monahans introduction, p. xxvii. For Thomas Aquinass classical for-
mulation of the lex divinitatis see Summa Theologica IIa, IIae Q. 172, art. 2.
44Boke of Marchauntes, Aii v.
45Boke of Marchauntes, Aiii r.
22 chapter one

Such trade is not the work of good herdmen/ and trewe ministers of
[Gods] 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 merchan-
dising alchemy by Marcourt and Chaucers Canons Yeomans Tale in
the Canterbury Tales, interestingly also one of the twenty or so books
published by Thomas Godfray in the early 1530s.47 Chaucers Pardoner
I preche of no thing but for coveityse./ Therefore my theme is yet, and
evere was,/ Radix malorum est cupiditasis the very personification of
Marcourts 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 Chaucers 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 cam-
paign 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 Vallas debunk-
ing 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

46Boke of Marchauntes, Biv v.

47The 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),
494518. The canons yeomans reference to his masters slidynge science (l.732) and
crafty science (l. 1253) has an echo in the sleyghtnesse [habilit] of Marcourts merchants;
both the Canons Yeomans Tale and Marcourts satire convey a travesty of transubstan-
tiation. Compare Boke of Marchauntes, Avi.
48Canterbury Tales, ed. Cawley, ll. 424426; see 343360.
49Lorenzo 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).
 religion and propaganda23

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 Vallas 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 Paduas Defender of the Peace.50 Marshall, a not implausible
candidate for translator of the Boke of Marchaunts, was among the most
assiduous of Cromwells 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 Marshalls
translation of Defensor Pacis.52 The relevance of this fourteenth-century
work of Augustinian political theology to the Tudor revolution is evident
in Marsiliuss chief aim, namely to expose the Roman Papacys quest
for dominationthe libido dominandi definitive of Augustines civitas
terrenathat is, not only of the spiritual sphere but of the temporal
or civil realm as well.53 According to Marsilius this over-reaching of spiri-
tual authority was the central cause of conflict and disorder within
Christendom.54 The critique of the jurisdictional claims of the papacy in

50Marsilius 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).
51Shelley C. Lockwood, Marsilius of Padua and the case for the royal ecclesiastical
supremacy, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6.1 (1990), 89119. See Richard Rex,
Crisis of Obedience, 882.
52In a letter to Cromwell, Marshall indicates that he is relying on Cromwells 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.
53According to Augustine, the two citiesthe civitas Dei and the civitas terrenaare
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 Marcourts satire.
54Marsilius, 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
24 chapter one

Defensor Pacis can be fairly characterised as resting upon a rejection of

what was perceived as the mercantile logic of the lex divinitatis articu-
lated by Boniface and Giles of Rome in favour of Augustines two cities
model. Once again we can discern the very appropriate fit of Marcourts
satire within the larger scheme of the literary campaign mounted by
Thomas Cromwell in support of Henry VIIIs constitutional revolution.
Thomas Godfray also published Marshalls translation of Martin Bucers
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 salvationsola scripturaleads to the rejec-
tion 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,
Lefvre dtaples 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 con-
cerned, 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 [habilit] 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.
55Martin 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 auswrtigen Wirksamkeit 15281533, (Gteresloh: Gteresloher Verlagshaus,
1960) 167. William Marshalls 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?). Marshalls translation is not made directly from the
German of Das Einigerlei Bild, but rather from a Latin translation of Bucers text by Jacobus
Bedrotus, Non esse ferendas in Templis Christianorum Imagines et Statuas (Strasbourg,
1530). I am indebted to John McDermid for this observation.
56Jacques Lefvre dtaples, Preface to the Commentary of the Four Gospels, in
Eugene F. Rice, ed., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefvre dtaples (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1972) 436.
57Boke of Marchauntes, Aviii vBi 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
 religion and propaganda25

Common lawyer and political theorist Christopher St German was

another key player in Cromwells 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 Germans
contributions to the propaganda campaign were published by the Kings
own printer, Thomas Berthelet,58 one of the common lawyers more stri-
dent 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 Kings 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 exposycion60
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 Becket in Canterbury Cathedrala spiritual benefit to be purchased

by the worshipper.
58A treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spiritualtie and temporaltie (London:
Thomas Berthelet, 1532?); Salem and Bizance (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1533).
59An 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?).
60St German, Answer to a Letter, Giv r, Gv r. Compare Powre of the clergye, Diiii.
26 chapter one

feryng more the princes of Juda and Hierusalem than the only god/ nat
believing the counsel of good HieremieFor 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 oppo-
nent of the Masscertainly 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 kings 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 Marcourts 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 VIIIs
anti-papal manoeuvres of the early 1530s were received and embraced
by Londons radical Protestant community. Far from eroding the author-
ity 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 pub-
lished by Thomas Godfray in the period 153336, the appearance among

61Boke of Marchauntes, Cii vCiii r. On the importance of the invocation of the Old
Testament model of kingship in the campaign of the 1530s in support of Henrys claim to
headship of the Church of England, see Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation
(Hound Mills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: MacMillan, 1993).
62Ethan 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
Armstrongs 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 ant-
onymsIn 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.
63Public Record Office, State Papers, Theological Tracts 6/11, 199 v. Cited in Ethan
Shagan, Clement Armstrong, 74.
 religion and propaganda27

them of the anti-clerical satire of a radical evangelical of Marcourts stripe

appears wholly in keeping with the constitutional aims of the royally
sanctioned literary campaign if not entirely consistent with other doctri-
nal policies of the realm. While Marcourt is unmistakably associated
with theological radicalismand his Articles veritables published as the
Placard of October 1534 confirm his radical Sacramentarian leaning which,
like Armstrongs, could not have been reconciled with the position on the
Mass and the real presence countenanced by King Henryit is nonethe-
less plain that the Boke of Marchauntes lends solid support to the new ide-
ology 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 Godfrays colophon
cum privilegio. More to the point, however, is the demonstrable consis-
tency of the Boke of Marchauntes with other leading contributions by
Godfrays press to the governments literary campaign. This openly official
approval of Marcourts book contrasts sharply with the attempt at con-
cealment of the publishers identity and the place of publication in Pierre
de Vingles French editions of 1533 and 1534.64 One important piece of evi-
dence of this marked disprepancy in the official reception of Marcourts
satire on the two sides of the Channel is discernible in a slight but reveal-
ing rhetorical modification in the use of the personal pronoun. In the per-
oration of the appeal to the Princes in the original Vingle edition of 1533,
Marcourt writes O, si ainsi promptz et vigilans vous estiez procurer
lhonneur 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 admoni-
tory, perhaps even reproving. In the English translation of Godfrays 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 cov-
etouse 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-personfrom
you to wesuggests some degree of complicity or common purpose

64See Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt, 141: Godfray, on la vu, na dissimul ni son nom, ni
son adresse, mais na pas renounce totalement pour autant aux indications fictives de
Pierre de Vingle Dautre part, lImprim Corinthe est devenu Written at Corinthe, by
your frende and lover (out of frenche) Thorny, wyld, wedy, harletry. Le traducteur ne sest
malheureusement pas trahi advantage par ces mots nigmatiques.
65Livre des Marchans (1533), Ci v [my italics]. I am grateful to Isabelle Crevier-
Denomm for drawing this critical discrepancy in the translation to my attention.
66Boke of Marchauntes, Ciii r.
28 chapter one

between author and the intended hearer of the apology, namely the godly
Prince. This subtle discrepancy in translation points to a world of differ-
ence between the official reception of Marcourts pamphlet in England as
compared with France.
The identity of the translator of Marcourts 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 Rhegiuss The old learninge and the newe
(1537), previously published in Neuchtel 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 Godfrays 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 pub-
lished by Godfray in 1534.70

67In addition to the volumes published by Godfray already mentioned, Marshalls

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 commu-
nity everywhere, was early a property of the English groupSavonarolas 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.
68See Robert Peterss 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).
69An 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 (15481554) 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), 122129. The golden
epistle is now usually attributed to Bernards friend William of St Thierry.
70Giles 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. (Genve: Slatkine reprints, 1972).
 religion and propaganda29

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 theol-
ogy faculty of Paris had issued Frances 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 Pauls 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, tude lexicale, Revue de linguistique

romane 43(1979), 145. Originally from Flanders, Du Wes was keeper of the Library at
Richmonte.
71John 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 Regi
Maiestatis, 1563).
72The 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 Bonners 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 kings most excellent majestyunderstanding how, under
pretence of expounding and declaring the truth of Gods Scripture, divers lewd and evil-
disposed 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 con-
trary to the laws of this realm, but also repugnant to the true sense of Gods 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 reli-
gion, 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: 37376.
On the Paris index see Benedict and Reinburg, Religion and the Sacred, 139.
73See Edmund Bonners 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.
74The 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, Turners translation of The summe was printed once again shortly after
the accession of Edward VI. Isabelle Crevier-Denomm has shown that this text had a
30 chapter one

Scrifturen, originally a work in Dutch which appeared in Leyden in 1523

and attributed to Henricus Bomelius (or Hendrik von Bommel), an evan-
gelical 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 evangeli-
cal 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-Denomm
has shown, the French translation of this textSumme de lescripture
saincteprovides yet another instance of links between England and the
press of Marcourts publisher in Neuchtel, 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 McConicas claim in English Humanists and Reformation Politics
that the humanist evangelicals of Henrys reign declined the general het-
erodoxy 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 Marcourts satire.78
Thomas Godfrays press played a key role in Cromwells anti-papal cam-
paign 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 Higmans suggestion that there is a duality in both the
Protestantism and the Catholicism of the 1530s is helpful. Englands

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 lescripture saincte (15291539), presented at the colloquium Les
impressions rformes de Pierre de Vingle at the UK Society for Renaissance Studies,
Cambridge University, April 2005.
75De 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.
76Simon 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).
77See Les changements doctrinaux dans les versions de la Summe de lescripture saincte
(15291539), colloquium Les impressions rformes de Pierre de Vingle, April 2005.
78McConica, English Humanists, 10, 11.
 religion and propaganda31

reformist humanism had its evangelical moment in the 1530s and then
reverted to a more consciously conservative mode in the decade follow-
ing. 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 wit-
nessed 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 Pauls 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 Kings
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 Cromwells Nascent Public

What then are the leading characteristics of the nascent public of avant-
garde evangelicals at the periphery of King Henry VIIIs 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 Godfrays notable publications was the English

79For 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), 8392. 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 bid-
ing 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) 42447. On this historiographical divergence, see Ryrie,
Lutheran England, 83.
80Benedict and Reinburg, Religion and the Sacred, 139.
81Philip Benedict, The Wars of Religion, 15621598, in Mark Holt, ed., Renaissance and
Reformation France, 15001648 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 150.
32 chapter one

translation of Antoine de Marcourts Rabelaisian spoof on ecclesiastical

hierarchy, first secretively published in French by Pierre de Vingle at
Neuchtel in October 1533.
First, a public is a voluntary association: printers, authors, and mem-
bers of the Privy Council associated within a tightly knit circle of friend-
ship, 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 Cromwells simultaneous campaign of constitu-
tional and religious reform in the mid- to late-1530s, but at arms length
from the Crown. While Thomas Berthelet was officially the Kings Printer,
Godfrays press published numerous books which contributed directly to
the advancement of Cromwells propaganda campaign and was associ-
ated 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 associa-
tiona publicof what might be called the Tudor evangelical avant-
garde whose main object was to prod the government to move in an
increasingly radical break with the Roman hierarchy and with the old reli-
gion. The problem they faced was Henrys strong affirmation of the former
but his reluctance to give up on the latter.
Secondly, Cromwells 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 evi-
dence suggests that King Henry looked askance at the more radical liter-
ary productions of the evangelical radicals, and some of the group were
actually hounded to their deaths by official government policy. The ten-
sion between Cromwells own more advanced Protestant position and the
kings religious conservatism helps to explain the Vicegerents employ-
ment of a semi-official press attached to Cromwells interest but not hav-
ing the direct imprimatur of the Royal Printer. Nonetheless, in a letter to
Cromwell, William Marshall indicates that he is relying on Cromwells
promise of a subsidy of twenty pounds (20) for the printing of his transla-
tion of Defender of the Peace, Marsilius of Paduas treatise on constitutional
theory. While Marshall was well known for his advanced Protestant opin-
ions, 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
 religion and propaganda33

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 common-
wealth, their association in such an enterprise as the making public of reli-
gious 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 dis-
approval from their undermining of essential Catholic teachings. Henry
liked evangelical politics, but had his doubts about their sacramental radi-
calism. In short, the ambivalence of the Kings religious orientation had
the unintended effect of defining Cromwells 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, Cromwells 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 Marcourts 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 acces-
sion 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 indica-
tor of the Crowns power to permit or to suppress an incipient public of
discourse founded on religious dissent.
Sixthly, the political dimension of the propaganda machine in
Cromwells circle of religious radicals is fairly self-evident. It might be
argued that the overtly political purpose of religious persuasion is so
34 chapter one

explicit as to disqualify the web of friendship, patronage and personal

connection to which a printer like Thomas Godfray is attached from iden-
tification 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 anothersuch 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 every-
day life. The evangelical radicals in both England and France are unques-
tionably 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 wordthe tracts,
the Placards, the subversive religious songs. The aim is to achieve consti-
tutional revolution through persuasiona frequent epigraph on books
published by Vingle, Marcourts original publisher in Neuchtel, 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 favour-
able to reform through maximum possible exposure of an argument. Such
a religious public may have as its goal the creation of a new reforming
establishmentwhich is in fact attained in England under Edward VI
(15471553), but not so in France under Henri II (15471559). 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 peoplee.g. the Huguenotswhose
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 ques-
tion 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
 religion and propaganda35

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 bound-
aries, 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. Marcourts Declaration of the Masse, satire (Boke
of Marchaunts, Tyndales 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 sta-
tus of Kings 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 publish-
ing radical evangelical and political tracts by those close to the seat of
power was to influence the constitutional course of events through a self-
organized 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
successthose who find themselves at the fringes of political power (such
as the evangelical radicals of Cromwells 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 Vanhaelens 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 Edwards successors Mary and Elizabeth I.

82Angela 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), 2536.
 CHAPTER TWO

PUBLIC FORUM AND FORUM OF THE CONSCIENCE:

JOHN CALVINS 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 Jrgen Habermas
placed a primary emphasis upon the commercial activity of global mer-
cantile 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 humanbetween eternal and temporal planes
of reality, between soul and body, grace and nature, immortality and
mortalitywas jointly affirmed by both Protestant reformers and Catholic
defenders of traditional religious identity, the impulse towards compre-
hensive 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

1Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991),
1426.
2The 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), 58, 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: Taylors Moral Ontology, in Ruth Abbey, ed.,
Charles Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 84104.
 public forum and forum of the conscience37

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 media-
tion offered by the intricate structures of late-medieval sacramental
culture, achieved largely through the instruments of persuasionthat is,
by means of argument, textual interpretation, exhortation, reasoned opin-
ion, and moral advicedisseminated 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 radi-
cally 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, secu-
lar public sphere.
In his Institutio, John Calvin formulates with unmatched clarity the
theological first principles which underlie the inception and development

3A classical formulation of the ontology of hierarchical dispositio is found in

Augustines 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 orderand 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), 2944.
4See Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
5On Max Webers concept of the secularizing process of disenchantment, see Charles
Taylors introduction to Marcel Gauchet, The disenchantment of the world: a political his-
tory of religion, translated by Oscar Burge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997),
ix ff. See also Taylors A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2007). See also Peter Lassman and Irving Velody, Max Weber on science, disen-
chantment, and the search for meaning, Max Webers Science as a Vocation, edited by
Peter Lassman, Irving Velody, with Herminio Martins (London; Boston: Unwin Hyman,
1989), 331, 159 ff.
38 chapter two

of the early-modern culture of persuasion.6 In his rightly famous defini-

tion of Christian liberty in Book III, chapter 19, Calvin articulates the prin-
ciple of this new moral ontologywhat one might even risk identifying as
the ontology of classical modernitywith his careful (one is tempted to
say Cartesian) distinction between the spiritual government of the
forum of the conscience (forum conscienti) and the civil government of
the external, political forum (forum externum).7 This distinction is the
foundation of Calvins 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 king-
dom (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 foren-
sic distinction between the realm of the conscience and an external, polit-
ical realm is traceable back several centuries before Calvin. In Dantes
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 Gratians 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 syn-
onymous.10 Thomas Aquinas himself distinguishes between the external

6John 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.
7See also Inst. IV.10.3. Descartes distinction between res cogitans and res extensa in
the Meditations displays an interesting parallel with Calvins account of the twofold gov-
ernment. Ren 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.
8Inst. III.19.15. See David Van Drunen, The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the
Transformationist Calvin, Calvin Theological Journal 40 (2005), 248266. David Clyde
Jones, Ethics: the Christian life and good works according to Calvin (3.610, 1719), in
David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback, eds., A theological guide to Calvins Institutes: essays
and analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub., 2008).
9Dante, Paradiso, X.103105 (che luno e laltro foro / aiut s che piace paradiso).
10Joseph 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
 public forum and forum of the conscience39

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 Calvins
Institutio, the precise character and full significance of the vast gap which
distinguishes the two ontological realms associated with the duplex regi-
men only becomes fully apparent through a reflection upon the reformers
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 prin-
ciples of reformed soteriology with this new moral ontology Calvin is cat-
egorical; 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 justi-
fication.13 Moreover, Calvins 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 princi-
pal 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 author-
ity 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 con-
sciences dare undertake almost nothing without doubting;14 and sec-
ondly, the soteriological principle upon which this liberty depends,
namely justification by faith only, is itself by Calvins own account nothing
less than the main hinge on which religion turns.15 For these two reasons,
Calvins new moral ontology of the duplex regimen and consequently

the classical period, 11401234: from Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 379425. See also A. Mostaza, Forum
internumforum externum (En torno a la naturaleza juridica del fuero interno), Revista
Espaola de derecho canonico 23 (1967), 253331, at 258, n. 15; 24 (1968), 339364.
11Ad secundum dicendum, quod sacerdotes parochiales habent quidem jurisdictio-
nem in subditos suos quantum ad forum conscientiae, sed non quantum ad forum judici-
ale; 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.
12Inst. III.11.118.10.
13Inst. III.19.1.
14Inst. III.19.1.
15Inst. III.11.1, 7.
40 chapter two

his entire political theology, are anchored at the very core of his theologi-
cal position.
While Calvins contribution to the foundations of modern politics has
been the subject of extensive critical discussion for many years as evi-
denced 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, Calvins 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 spherea 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 theo-
logical articulation in Calvins definition of Christian liberty. This defini-
tion 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 selfCalvins forum
conscientiand the public, outward realm of the common institutional
orderCalvins forum externum et politicum. On this view, the public
religious discourse of the Protestant Reformersspecifically religious
persuasion through translation of the scriptures into the vernacular, bibli-
cal exegesis, preaching, and moral exhortation, in short the promotion
of fides ex auditupresents an early exemplar, indeed arguably
the archetype, of a uniquely early-modern approach to negotiating the

16For a helpful critical overview of this extensive literature see Ralph C. Hancock,
Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Ithaka: Cornell University Press, 1989), 122.
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).
17See A. Pettegrees Introduction to Reformation and the culture of persuasion.
 public forum and forum of the conscience41

interaction between the inward spiritual life of the discreet and autono-
mous individual self, and the outward collective requirements of the
wider political community.18 In this respect, Calvins 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 mod-
ern civil society.19
The second major point to be addressed in connection with Calvins
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 pro-
posing a consideration of Calvins theology as counting among the signifi-
cant 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 dis-
course. 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 Taylors thesis in the opening
chapters of A Secular Age.20
It must be said, of course, that the assertion of a connection of moder-
nity 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 gen-
eration, were apt to point to Calvinisms formative contribution to moder-
nity, and especially to modern conceptions of political liberty.21 From
the somewhat different perspective of German Idealism, G.W.F. Hegel

18Lester De Koster, Light for the city: Calvins preaching, source of life and liberty (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub., 2004), 6388. On the individual irreducible self, see
William R. Stevenson, Jr., Sovereign grace: the place and significance of Christian freedom in
John Calvins political thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1158.
19See the first chapter titled The bulwarks of belief in Charles Taylors A Secular Age
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 2542.
20See A Secular Age, chapter 1, sections 6 and 7, 5475.
21See, 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, 16031640 (London: Allen, 1936).
42 chapter two

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 moder-
nity.22 Max Webers 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 under-
stands 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 emerg-
ing modern identity are far richer than the impoverished language of
modernitys 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 Taylors view, constitute the groundwork for these sources of
modern secular identity. Such has certainly been the case with Calvins
contribution to the formulation of these questions surrounding the emer-
gent 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 Calvins discourse on Christian liberty.

22Lectures on the Philosophy of History, translated by Henry Sibree (London: Henry

Bohn, 1857), 463.
23See the new translation by Stephen Kalberg of Webers 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 Calvin-
Bilder, plenary paper presented at the conference Calvin et son Influence, 15092009,
held in Geneva on 2427 May 2009.
24Sheldon 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).
25Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought: the Reformation
(Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 2.
26Taylor, Sources of the Self, 3, 7. Taylor argues that modernity isnt just a story of loss,
of subtraction. See A Secular Age, 2629.
 public forum and forum of the conscience43

Calvins 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 Calvins 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 lifenot 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 for-
mer 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 dif-
ferent kings and different laws have authority.27
It should be observed that Calvins 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 sub-
ject 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

27Inst. III.19.15; transl. Battles, 847.

28Five Latin editions of the Institutio Christian Religionis were published in Calvins
lifetime (1536, 1539, 1543, 1550, and 1559). The first French edition appeared in 1541, corre-
sponding to his 1539 Latin edition: Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrtienne (1541),
edition critique par Olivier Millet (Genve: Droz, 2008). Comparable to the influence of the
Authorized Version of the Bible on standard English, Calvins 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.
29Christian religionis institutio: totam fer pietatis summa[m], & quicquid est in doc-
trina salutis cognitu necessarium, complectens: omnibus pietatis studiosis lectu dignissimum
44 chapter two

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 govern-
ments as belonging respectively to the forum of the conscience (forum
conscienti) 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 deprav-
ity. 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 Augustines penalty and remedy
for sin (pna et remedium peccati)33 ultimately derives theological justifi-
cation from the deliberate systematic transposition of this pivotal exposi-
tion 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 gover-
nance 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 medi-
eval canon law referred to the external ritualised procedure associated

opus, ac recens editum. Prfatio ad Christianissimum Regem Franci, 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).
30See, e.g., Inst. III.19.15, IV.10.36, and IV.20.1.
31Inst. IV.10.3.
32Inst. IV.20.4.
33Augustine, de civitate Dei, xix.
 public forum and forum of the conscience45

with the sacrament of penance, for Calvin penitence is radically inter-

nalised 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 disen-
chantment 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 Calvins theology as none other than the condition of media-
tion between the two fora.
Calvins key claim in III.19 that his consideration of freedom and the
conscience is an appendage of justification alters dramatically the theo-
logical register of his account of the duplex regimen. According to his for-
mulation 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 good-
ness 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 righ-
teous in the presence of God, coram Deo. At the same time, Christ dwells
in the believer, who is dynamically and progressively sanctified by degrees

34See Inst., book IV.14.

35Inst. III.11.1.
36In all essentials Calvins position on Justification is in agreement with Luthers
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 Luthers 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), 6468.
46 chapter two

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 referencea 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 justifica-
tion, 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 reli-
gion, yet the ultimate unity of their source must nonetheless be upheld.
A critical consequence of this dialectical soteriology of the duplex gra-
tia is the seeming paradox of the definition of Christian liberty as simulta-
neously 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 unionthe 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 distin-
guishes 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 anti-
thetical. Thus for Calvin the moral ontological problem was how simulta-
neously to unite and yet maintain the distinction between the two forms

37See 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
Calvins appropriation of this soteriological dialectic, see Franois Wendel, Calvin: the
origins and development of his religious thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 237242.
38On the soteriological implications for Calvins 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), 224243, esp. 225228.
39Inst. III.11.11.
40Inst. III.19.15; transl. Battles, 847.
41Hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, xii.
 public forum and forum of the conscience47

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.
Calvins 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 dis-
tinction of the passive and active modes of grace, i.e. of faith and works,
and his consequent formulation of the relation between the forum consci-
enti and the forum externum both adhere to a normative dialectical par-
adigm of orthodox patristic Christology, one of the chief distinctive marks
of Calvins 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 con-
science the individual is bound to the heterogeneous obligations of two
distinct jurisdictions, namely the temporal and the spiritual. The for-
mer, as he states, has its seat within the soul, while the latter only regu-
lates 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 Calvins 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; cosmo-
logically considered, such a confusion is to neglect to distinguish between
this present fleeting mortal existence and the immortal condition of eter-
nity, 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

42Christo-centrism is judged by Franois Wendel to be the very hallmark of Calvins

theology. See Calvin, 215225. See also Paul Helm, John Calvins Ideas (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 5892 and E. David Willis, Calvins Catholic Christology (Leiden:
Brill, 1969).
43Inst. III.19.15.
48 chapter two

moral ontology of the duplex regimen can be clearly discerned in Calvins

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 Virgins 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 some-
times qualities applicable peculiarly to his divinity, and sometimes qualities
which embrace both natures, and do not apply specially to either. This com-
bination 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 realitythe forum conscienti and
the forum externumwith 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 dif-
ferent laws can preside.45

44Inst. 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 con-
ciliorum, nova et amplissima collectio (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1960
61), tom. IV, col. 562.
45Inst. III.19.15.
 public forum and forum of the conscience49

Yetthis qualifying conjunction is somehow characteristically Calvins

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 pub-
lic 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 ser-
vant of God, but with a most holy office, since they are serving as Gods
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 exter-
nal communal order. By this means Calvin effectively dismantles the tra-
ditional hierarchical model of a gradual mediation between the temporal
and spiritual orders and their respective modes of governance as presup-
posed 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

46Inst. IV.20.2.
47Inst. IV.20.2.
48Inst. IV.20.6.
50 chapter two

to bind them ever more tightly together according to the soteriological

and Christological models we have considered. Calvins 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 ontol-
ogy of hierarchical mediation, by a culture of persuasion with its alterna-
tive 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. Calvins account of the duplex regimen helps to elu-
cidate 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 structur-
ally 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 sharp-
ened by Henry VIIIs assumption of headship of the Church of England.
Several abortive attempts were made during his reign to establish a com-
mittee 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 dis-
cipline. Introduced into Parliament in April 1553, the revised canons were
summarily rejected, largely at the instigation of the John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland. The Commissions draft was edited by John Foxe, pub-
lished under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, and presented to
Parliament a second time in 1571. Although published with Archbishop
Matthew Parkers approval, the Reformatio legum was fated to receive nei-
ther royal, nor parliamentary, nor synodical authorization. At the time
certain members of Parliament contested the royal prerogative to deter-
mine 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
VIthe young Josiah1 and in earth supreme head of the Church of

1Graeme Murdock, The importance of being Josiah: an Image of Calvinist Identity,

Sixteenth Century Journal 29.4 (1998), 10431059.
52 chapter three

England and Irelandappointed a Royal Commission under the leader-

ship 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 ecclesi-
astical 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 Englands fundamen-
tal 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 Cranmers
proposal came before Parliament again, albeit under fairly altered circum-
stances. 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 knownReformatio legum ecclesiasticarum.5 Harleian MS 426
(dated 1552) in the British Library is the only extant evidence of the
Commissions actual work in drafting this revised code of canon law.
According to Gerald Bray, editor of the recent critical edition of the
Reformatio, Foxes text must have been based upon another (now lost) MS
source since it has eight more titles than the Harleian MS, although virtu-
ally all of the text shared by the 1552 MS and first printed edition of 1571 is

2For the Royal Proclamation appointing the Commission to reform the ecclesiastical
laws of England, see Gerald Brays 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),
16769 [cited hereafter as TCR].
33 & 4 Edward VI, cap. 11; Statutes of the Realm (London, 18101828), IV.11112
[hereafterSR].
4A 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 Gods lively word. See Diarmaid MacCulloch, The boy king: Edward VI and the protes
tantreformation (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].
5John Foxe, ed., Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum: ex authoritate primum Regis
Henrici. 8. inchoata: deinde per Regem Edouardum 6. prouecta, adauctq[ue] in hunc
modum, atq[ue] nunc ad pleniorem ipsarum reformationem in lucem dita (London: John
Day, 1571) [hereafter RLE].
 lay supremacy53

identical.6 Edward Cardwell, the mid-nineteenth-century editor of the

Reformatio, maintained that Foxes 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 Foxes use of it.7 There is, however, no
evidence of Parkers amending the MS of the Reformatio along lines analo-
gous to his revisions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine
Articles of Religion as Cardwell asserted.8 In addition to Cardwells critical
edition of 1850, John Foxes text of the Reformatio went through three fur-
ther editions in the seventeenth century,9 and three in the twentieth
including a facsimile reprint of Cardwell, James Spaldings English transla-
tion, and Gerald Brays 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 VIIIs 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

6According 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 addi-
tional ones are split into two blocks which are interpolated into the text At least ninety-
nine 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.
7See 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 Elizabeths 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).
8The 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.
9Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum ex authoritate primum Regis Henrici 8, inchoata;
deinde per Regem Edouardum 6, provecta, adauctque 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).
10The standard critical edition gives equal authority to Harleian MS 426 and to Foxes
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).
54 chapter three

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 Henrys quest for a divorce from
Queen Katherinethe Kings 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 for-
mally 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 juris-
diction provided an irresistible impetus to constitutional and legal reform.
On 28 April 1532, in the Answer of the Ordinaries, the English hierar-
chy defended their constitutional status to conduct their affairs indepen-
dently 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 refer-
ence 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:

1121 Henry VIII, cap. 13; SR III.292296. Praemunire was an offence under statute law
which received its name from the writ of summons to the defendant charged with appeal-
ing to a power outside of the realm for resolution of a situation within England that was
under jurisdiction of the Crown.
12See PRO State Papers 1/57, fols. 112123, for Henrys comments on Convocations pro-
posed 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 15291536 (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
Cranmers 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), 3764.
 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 Gods 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 Gods laws, and
the laws of your realm, to stand in full strength and power, your graces 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);
Henrys 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 sacramen-
tally interconnected framework of Christendom for almost a millennium
had been cut. Confirming the new constitutional reality of royal ecclesias-
tical supremacy, the Act in Restraint of Appeals passed by Parliament in
1533 declared England to be an empire, Henrys crown imperial, and dis-
solved 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.
Gratians Decretum, the very foundation of the canon law, declared unam-
biguously 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 facedboth constitutional
and theologicalcould hardly be more acute. The two powers of Gelasius
were in open conflict, and the future shape of the canon law was held in

13David Wilkins, ed., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols. (London: Gosling,
Gyles, Woodward, and Davis, 1737) III.75455; H. Gee and W.J. Hardy, eds., Document
Illustrative of English Church History (London: MacMillan and Co., 1896; repr. 1921), 17678
[cited hereafter as DI].
14The papal breve declared Henrys 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).
1524 Henry VIII cap. 12, SR III.42729; DI 18795, passed 7 April 1533.
16Decretum, 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.
56 chapter three

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 abro-
gated, 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 culmi-
nate in the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, although not without sev-
eral 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 syn-
odal, in our convocation or synod in time coming, which convocation is,
always has been, and must be assembled only by Your Highnesss command-
ment 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 eccle-
siastical ordinances: Be it therefore enacted by authority aforesaid that
the Kings 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 eccle-
siastical 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 sub-
sequent history of English canon law since it guarantees the continuity
of existing ecclesiastical constitutions and ordinances which be not

17See the celebrated Letter of Pope to Gelasius to the Emperor Anastasius on the supe-
riority 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.
1825 Henry VIII cap. 19; SR III.46061. See TCR, xv.
19Sections 3 and 4 of the above Act.
 lay supremacy57

contrary nor repugnant to the laws, statutes, and customs of this realm
nor to the damage or hurt of the Kings prerogative royal. These ecclesias-
tical 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 statu-
tory basis for the continued authority of medieval canon law as a signifi-
cant 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 col-
lections of canon law, notably from the six divisions of the Corpus iuris
canonici, as well as selections from the Corpus iuris civilis and William
Lyndwoods 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 repre-
sent any significant theological reform. Given the rapid pace of institu-
tional 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

2025 Henry VIII cap. 19; SR III.46061.

21E.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 excel-
lent Maiestie, 1604). For a critical text of the Constitutions and Canons, see The Anglican
canons, 15291947, 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), 258453.
22BL Add. MS 48040, fols. 13102v, 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), 99103. For the recently published critical edition of the Henrician
Canons, see TCR, 3143.
23Constitutiones provinciales ecclesiae Anglicanae (London: Winkyn de Worde, 1529).
58 chapter three

mandate for a Royal Commission in An Act whereby the kings 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, consti-
tutional, and doctrinal see-saw moved both swiftly and treacherously
throughout the late 1530s and early 1540s. Parliament reaffirmed tradi-
tional Catholic doctrine and strengthened existing heresy laws with pas-
sage 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 ensur-
ing 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 nega-
tive 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 origi-
nal 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 addi-
tional 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

2427 Henry VIII cap. 15; SR III.34849.

25Formally titled An Act for abolishing diversity in opinions, 31 Henry VIII cap. 14 SR
III.73941.
2635 Henry VIII cap. 16; SR III.95859.
27See Stanford E. Lehmberg, The later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 15361547 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977), 229231.
283 & 4 Edward VI cap. 11; SR IV.11112.
 lay supremacy59

bearing the same date as the Kings 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 wretch-
edly 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 estab-
lishment: 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
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 Kings 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

29See R.H. Brodie et al, eds., Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public Record
Office: Edward VI (London: HMs Stationery Office, 19241926), 4:114 (list of 11 Nov. 1551) and
4:354 (list of 12 Feb. 1552). For the Royal Proclamation appointing the Commission, see
TCR, 167168.
30For the full list of names and the three different versions of the list, see TCR, xli-liv.
31Warden of New College, Oxford, 15511553. See Christopher Dent, Protestant
Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 9.
32OL I.31314.
33Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Rowland Taylor and John Hooper.
34The 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
15591569 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchenen Verlag, 2008 [in press]).
35Carrie Euler, Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 15311558 (Zurich: TVZ,
2006), 95.
36See Edward VIs Proclamation appointing the commission. TCR, 16768.
60 chapter three

of Doctors Commons), William May (Dean of St Pauls and Master of

Requests), John Lucas (common lawyer and MP), and Thomas Goodrichs
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 contrib-
uted 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 enthusi-
asm for the task before him as a member of the committee:
For the kings 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, Lasco, and myself, are enroled among them. May God there-
fore 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 col-
leagues 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

37Gerald Bray, TCR, li-ii.

38OL II.50304.
 lay supremacy61

the highly polished, elegant Latin of the Reformatio. Yet it is clear that
Vermigli was Cranmers 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 Pauls 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 por-
tion 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 tradi-
tion of political theology represented by Vermigli,44 and also by Martin
Bucer, the Strasbourg reformer who, at Cranmers 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

39For 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), 121180.
40See John Patrick Donnelly, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermiglis doctrine of man
and grace (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 174.
41Titles 17, 1924, and 33.
42See Torrance Kirby, The Articles of Religion.
43R1118, 2532, 3455. 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.
44See Torrance Kirby, The Civil Magistrate: Peter Martyr Vermiglis 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), 221237, and The Charge
of Religion belongeth unto Princes: Peter Martyr Vermigli on the Unity of Civil and
Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, Archiv fr Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003), 131145.
62 chapter three

contributor to the work of drafting the newly reformed code. Bucers trea-
tise De Regno Christi (1551) dedicated to Edward VI and published posthu-
mously, 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, Bucers struggle with the magis-
tracy 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 archbish-
ops, bishops, clerics and other ministers, as over lay people, since all juris-
diction, 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 churchthe notae ecclesiae as they were called.49 It is precisely
herenamely at the intersection of Erastian constitutional principles

45Bucer 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).
46See, e.g., Sachs, Cranmers Reformatio, 7880, 105116. See also TCR, lxxi-lxxii.
47See the modern edition by Wilhelm Pauck, Melanchthon and Bucer (London: SCM
Press, 1969), 186, 272.
48Harleian MS 426 fol. 232r. RLE, fol. 95b. TCR, 51819. The formulation of the title
recalls the Act of Supremacy of 1534, 26 Henry VIII cap. 1, SR III.49293.
49See 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), 198214.
 lay supremacy63

with a developed plan for the supervision of morals and disciplinethat

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 disci-
pline 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 sub-
sequent 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 Bucers 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 none-
theless 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 ministersbishops, presbyters, and dea-
cons. 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 church-
warden was itself traditional and governed by medieval canons, the defi-
nition 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.

50Harleian 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, 34849, 37071.
64 chapter three

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 Cranmers 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 constitu-
tional 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 governmentrelics of the
Amorites as some of the controversialists referred to themperhaps 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 bor-
dering 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

51L. Sachs, Cranmers Reformatio, chapter 4, 136177.

52Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 15471603, 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), 313326.
53TCR, cxv.
54Sachs, Cranmers Reformatio, 121123.
55TCR, 34849. 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
 lay supremacy65

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 respectse.g. the aggressive provisions concerning
heresy58the Reformatio tends to promote a measure of clericalism remi-
niscent 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 sixteenth-
century 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 Edwards 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 Bucers view of the diaconate, see W.P. Stephens, The
Holy Spirit in the theology of Martin Bucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),
19091.
56RLE 80a-84b. Title 32, De Excommunicatione. See TCR, 462475.
57Harleian MS 426 83r89r. RLE 84b-90a. Title 33 Formula reconciliationis excommu-
nicatorum. TCR, 476491.
58Harleian MS 426 6r21r. RLE 4b-14a. Title 2 De haeresibus and Title 3 De iudiciis
contra haereses.
59J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 384423.
66 chapter three

with which there had always been a certain amount of tension. There
were, after all, two headshipsone spiritual and one temporalalthough
the latter was understood, according to Gelasian principles, to be subordi-
nate to the former. The Reformatio thus represented to its opponents in
the establishmentto Northumberland in 1553 and to the Queen herself
in 1571a model of the relation between church and commonwealth
which became characteristic of Concordat countries (i.e. those with offi-
cial treaties with the Roman Church). On this model, the canon law func-
tions 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 law-
yers 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 cer-
tainly 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 evi-
denced 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 wor-
ship 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

60See Foxe, Ad doctem et candidem lectorem Prfatio, RLE, sig. Bj; repr. TCR, 165.
61See TCR, lxxvixcix.
62There is at least one matter which I cannot overlook or leave to the learned judge-
ments 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).
 lay supremacy67

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 promul-
gated. 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 ecclesiasti-
cal 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
Parkers Advertisements.65 Notwithstanding the abolition of papal juris-
diction in the series of statutes enacted by the Reformation Parliament
between 1533 and 1536,66 and despite Henry VIIIs 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 real-
ize 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.

64Constitutions 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).
65Authorized 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 Edwards Injunctions of 1547, 25 from Elizabeths Injunctions of 1559, 12 from Matthew
Parkers 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.46061). See Anglican canons, 15291947, ed. Bray, 258453. 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), 2335.
66The parliamentary sessions of 153334 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 VIIIs 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 per-
sons. 24 Henry VIII, c. 12; 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; 28 Henry VIII, c. 10.
68 chapter three

The failure of these two attempts to legislate the Reformatio legum

ecclesiasticarumunder 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 prin-
ciples? 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 Cranmers third great project of reform, namely that of ecclesiasti-
cal 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 disci-
pline 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? Elizabeths bench of bishops,
many of whom had been exiles in Zurich during the reign of Queen Mary,

67Walter 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).
68Thomas 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).
 lay supremacy69

closed ranks in the 1570s in defence of the ecclesiological precept that the
reformed credentials of the Elizabethan church were in no way compro-
mised by the failure of the Reformatio or the lack of a formally constituted
disciplina. In the final analysis, their defence of the ecclesiastical constitu-
tion 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 Musculusall representatives of the so-called
other Reformed tradition.69 Whitgifts robust Erastian defence of the
conception of society as a unified corpus christianum where civil and reli-
gious authority were understood to be coextensive, takes its name from
another Zurich-trained theologian Thomas Lber, 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, Calvins
successor, and thus between the ecclesiological paradigms represented by
Zurich and Geneva.71 At the end of the sixteenth century Richard Hookers
defence of the ecclesiology of the Elizabethan Settlement continued
Whitgifts 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 ecclesiasti-
cal ordinances in the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum? Interpreters
have tended in various directions. Some have taken up the view first put

69Works of John Whitgift, DD, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. John Ayre for the Parker
Society, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851), 3:295325. J. Wayne Baker,
Heinrich Bullinger and the covenant: the other reformed tradition (Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Press, 1980).
70J. Wayne Baker, Erastianism, in Hans Hillerbrand, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), vol. 2, 5961. 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), 1145.
71Ruth Wesel-Roth, Thomas Erastus: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der reformierten Kirche
und zur Lehre von der Staatssouvernitt (Lahr/Baden: M. Schauenburg, 1954).
72See Joan Lockwood ODonovan, Theology of Law and Authority, Emory University
Studies in Law and Religion, vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press for Emory University, 1991),
151153. See also Torrance Kirby, Richard Hookers doctrine of the Royal Supremacy (Leiden
and New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), chapter 4.
70 chapter three

forward by the Admonition to the Parliament and its disciplinarian propo-

nents, viz. that Englands 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 Englandin
the late sixteenth century as the crucible for an emerging Anglicanism.74
In this account Haugaard refers to a recognition among some contempo-
raries 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 historiog-
raphy, has been understood ipso facto as a rejection of the doctrinal norms
of classical Reformed orthodoxy. Other scholars have taken to question-
ing this received orthodoxy of historiographical opinion, and have put for-
ward 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 leader-
ship 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

73See, e.g., Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterian and English Conformist
Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London and Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988).
74See 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), 943960.
75FLE 6(1): 67.
 lay supremacy71

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

76Robert C. Walton, Zwinglis theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967),

226.
77See Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection, 124.
 CHAPTER FOUR

PUBLIC PREACHING:
PAULS CROSS AND THE CULTURE OF PERSUASION

On the 11th of July 1533, Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII in

response to Archbishop Thomas Cranmers annulment of the Kings mar-
riage to Katherine of Aragon, and his ensuing coronation of Anne Boleyn.1
Clements 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 Henryand
through him, his entire realmto the sacramentally inter-connected
framework that was Christendom. Correspondingly, by virtue of his ada-
mant 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 dissolu-
tion of the received sense of the cosmos as a coherent, unified, and con-
tinuous order of spiritual/eternal and external/temporal realms and
powersa 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

1The papal breve declared Henrys 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.
2Max 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).
 public preaching73

of hierarchical orderthe ontological horizon of Christendom, if you

willwithin 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 her-
meneutical framework of religious self-understanding. In their dispute
over the locus of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Reformation
and with it modernitywas 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 signifi-
cance, an adjustment of religious organization at the level of constitu-
tional orderkings and queens messing about as Christopher Haigh
once put itor, alternatively, was intrinsically theological and broadly
metaphysical in scope, and therefore represented a fundamental revision
of religious identity.3 Was Henrys claim to the title of ecclesiastical head-
ship 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 phenom-
enon commonly described as Henrician Catholicism refers to a sacra-
mental religiosity where much remained the same in spite of the transfer
of supreme ecclesiastical power from the Bishop of Rome to the King.6

3Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds., The Beginnings of English Protestantism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); P. Marshall, The Impact of the English
Reformation 15001640 (London: Arnold, 1997); Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Myth of the
English Reformation, Journal of British Studies 30 (1991), 119; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping
of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 15001580 (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1992), 11, 377593.
4See 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.
5Ethan 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.
6Lucy 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.
74 chapter four

Although roundly rejected by such as Sir Thomas More and John Fisher,
this deeply conservative brand of reform was the contemporary view pro-
moted 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 prin-
ciples of religious identity, that is to say, with certain fundamental herme-
neutical 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 persuasion10
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.

7Fisher 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 Pauls Cross (e.g. a sermon on 29 June 1548), and republished the treatise De vera obedi-
encia: 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).
831 Henry VIII, c. 14 (1539), Statutes of the Realm, III, 73942.
9In 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).
10Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
11See 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-Christs Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 229 ff.
 public preaching75

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 modernitys 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 Taylors
view, constitute the groundwork or foundation for these sources. There
fore, following Taylors 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 con-
cerning 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 gener-
ating 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 con-
spicuous expansion of a culture of persuasion, and the resulting emer-
gence 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 Pauls
Cathedral known as Pauls 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 Cromwells first acts following Henrys excommunica-
tion was to give the order that none should be permitted to preach at
Pauls 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

12Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 3.
13In 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 regimes 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.
14Debora K. Shuger, Habits of thought in the English Renaissance: religion, politics, and
the dominant culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 9.
15See Richard Rex, The Crisis of Obedience: Gods Word and Henrys 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.
76 chapter four

Pauls Cross: The Public Pulpit

The open-air pulpit in the precincts of St. Pauls Cathedral known as Pauls
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, Pauls
Cross stands out as Londons 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 thou-
sands, gathered here to listen to the weekly two-hour sermons. On one
occasion after delivering a sermon at Pauls Cross not long after the acces-
sion 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. Pauls church-
yard had been a bustling public space, a privileged venue for the announce-
ment of royal proclamations and papal bulls to citizens of the capital. At
Pauls Cross spokesmen authorized by both Crown and Church expounded
government policy and denounced heresy and rebellion. Yet, unlike the
royal Abbey of Westminster, St Pauls 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

16Millar MacLure, The Pauls Cross Sermons, 15341642 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1958), 4, 18. For an account of the architecture of the precincts of St. Pauls Cathedral
see P.W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Pauls Cross Churchyard (London: Bibliographical
Society, 1990).
17Dated 5 March 1560. The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bish-
ops and others, with some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
15581579, First Series, ed. H. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the
Parker Society, 1842), 71. You may now sometimes see at Pauls 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 weak-
ened and shaken at almost every note. Henry Machyn confirms the great popularity of
sermons of Pauls 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 Machyns 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.
 public preaching77

the cathedral churchyard was one of the favoured settings for popular pro-
test, a place where public grievances could be aired. For centuries this was
the meeting place of Londons folk-moot; royal guarantee of the liberties
of the City was proclaimed here in the reign of Henry III; Pauls Cross was
also a rallying point for adherents of Simon de Montforts 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 Pauls Cross sermons, Millar MacLure
observed that The Pauls 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 micro-
cosm of the whole realm, all England in a little room, and indeed an early-
seventeenth-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 Pauls 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 VIIs issuing his bull of excommunica-
tion. Preaching campaigns at Pauls Cross bolstered Matthew Parkers
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

18J.R. Maddicot, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

19MacLure, Pauls Cross Sermons, 167.
20MacLure, Pauls Cross Sermons, 4.
21E. Beresford Chancellor, St. Pauls 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 Pauls Cross.. See C. Haigh, English Reformations.
22Jrgen 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).
78 chapter four

Englands religious identities, and through this transformation contrib-

uted substantially to the emergence of a public arena of discourse ani-
mated 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 persuasionarguments, textual interpretation, exhortation, rea-
soned opinion, and moral advice. At the end of the reign of Elizabeth, reli-
gious 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 MacLures Register of Sermons preached at Pauls Cross, 15341642 to
obtain some impression of this transformation.23 At one time or another,
all of the significant players among the ecclesiastical and university estab-
lishments put in an appearance on stageJohn 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 institutionsChurch,
Parliament, or University. Their contribution to a nascent public sphere is
to be interpreted rather through the arena of their discoursetheir rela-
tion to the audiences, and their reliance upon the devices of rhetoric and
argument to shape religious identity. The dynamic of stage and audience
at Pauls 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.
Pauls Cross is arguably the single most important vehicle of public per-
suasion 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 Englands religious
identities in this period comes to depend to a high degree on the words
uttered here. The emergence at Pauls Cross of an increasingly sophisticated

23Revised and augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS
Occasional Publications, no. 6. (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989).
 public preaching79

culture of persuasion moving concurrently with public policy was intrin-

sic 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 esti-
mate they are likely to be in the majority. Virtually all booksellers not in
Pauls 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 six-
teenth-century London was conducted within hailing distance of Pauls
Cross.24 The culture of persuasion which issued from the pulpit contin-
ued 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 cau-
tioned that any account of how Protestantism could become a mass move-
ment 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 espe-
cially 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 accu-
rately applied than in the case of Pauls 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 Pauls Cross in the forma-
tion 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 Pauls Cross sermon following a memorandum
issued by Thomas Cromwell to John Stokesley, Bishop of London, on the
previous day.27 As part of Cromwells concerted campaign of propaganda
in the months following in support of legislation moving through
Parliament to confirm Henrys headship of the Church, every Sunday
preached at Pauls Cross a bishop who declared the Pope not to be head of

24See Peter W.M. Blayney, The Bookshops in Pauls Cross Churchyard, London (The
Bibliographical Society, Occasional paper no. 5, 1990) which includes modern diagrams of
Pauls Cross Churchyard in 1545, 1600, 1640, 1665 & 1675 (7579), and a detailed modern
plan of the whole precinct in 1600 (facing p. 3).
25Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 39.
26Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
27Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, 15091514, eds.
J.S. Brewer, James Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts &
Green, 18621932), 7.48 (2).
80 chapter four

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 Cromwells radar to preach a ser-
mon questioning the Kings supremacy. In the opinion of William
Marshall, acting as the Lord Chancellors observer, the Bishop of London
had permitted a rabblement of seditious preachers at Pauls Cross.30
Edward Lee, Archbishop of York, on the other hand, did right well touch-
ing 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 Haighs
observations concerning Englands multiple Reformations.34 1540 marks
the transition from the evangelical phase of the 1530s to the more conser-
vative final years Henrys reign. The key point is not so much about a pro-
cess 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 cul-
ture of persuasion.
8 July 1543 saw the recantations at Pauls Cross of avant-garde evangeli-
cals 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

28John 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.
29Sir 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, 187577), vol. 1, 3435,
with reference to a sermon at Pauls Cross by Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham.
30Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 11, 325.
31Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 12(2), 258.
32Wriothesley, vol. 1, 7879.
33Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. Nicholas
Pocock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865), vol. 1, 475.
34See note 9 above.
35R.C. Johnson, John Heywood (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), 1135.
 public preaching81

odds for the remainder of Henrys reign. It is interesting to note in passing

that the well-established medieval practice of public penance and recan-
tations at Pauls Cross continued throughout the Reformation period and
well into the seventeenth century until the destruction of the pulpit in
1643. MacLures Register notes frequent and regular occurrence of peni-
tents 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 Pauls Cross there is an interesting juxta-
position of the concerns of the individual soul with those of higher, politi-
cal significance, an intersection of what Calvin referred to as the inward
forum of the conscience (forum conscienti) 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 Tyndales English
New Testament and Coverdales 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
Feckenhams 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 Pauls 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

36Millar MacLure, Register of Sermons preached at Pauls Cross, 15341643, revised and
augmented by Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications,
no. 6 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989).
37Calvin, Institutio christianae religionis (1559), III.10.1 and ff.
38Wriothesley, vol. 1, 175. See Edmund Bonners 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.
39Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. 21 (2), 710
40William Barlow, A dyaloge describing the originall grou[n]d of these Lutheran faccy-
ons, and many of theyr abusys (London: Wyllyam Rastell, wyth the pryuylege of our
souereyn lord kyng Henry [the] viii, 1531).
82 chapter four

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 coun-
try, England, as Paul did in his first epistle to the Corinthians.42 In a ser-
mon preached in June following, Stephen Gardiner boldly reasserted the
conservative Henrician stance; he upheld the kings supremacy, and at the
same time affirmed the traditional Catholic teaching concerning the Mass,
transubstantiation, and the doctrine of Real Presence.43 Shortly thereaf-
ter, 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 Pauls
Cross Sermons shows a heavily disproportionate emphasis throughout
the period 1534 to 1600 on Gardiners two themes above all others: namely,
the royal claim to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the status of the sacra-
ment. With respect to the Supremacy, there are discernible phases of rhet-
oric employed. Sermons of the first Reformation (15331539) place strong
emphasis on justifying the principle of the Kings supremacy, while those
of the second (15471553) stress obedience of subjects to an institution
now clearly recognized. When a Protestant settlement became increas-
ingly 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

41A 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).
42A notable sermo[n] of Latemer, sig. B xi.
43Gardiner 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).
44Wriothesley, vol. 2, 4; see also Chronicle of the Grey friars of London, ed. John Gough
Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1852), 56.
45MacLures 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
 public preaching83

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 memorywith each receiving the appropriate
emphasis as circumstances required.
To continue, for the moment, with our rehearsal of highlights of
the action at Pauls Cross, 1549 witnessed several Anabaptists bearing
a faggot in token of their recantation of heretical errors.46 In July
Thomas Cranmers chaplain, John Joseph, rehearsedthat is to say,
summarizeda 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 Pauls
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 Johns,
Cambridge, preached in the Shroudsa chapel beneath the Cathedral
choir where Pauls Cross sermons were delivered during inclement
weatheragainst 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 Christs 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.
46Wriothesley, vol. 2, 10, 12
47Wriothesley, vol. 2, 1618. Regular rehearsal sermons recapitulated sermons previ-
ously preached at Pauls 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), 14979. For a description of the 1549 rebellions, see Anthony Fletcher and
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (Harlow: Longmans, 2004) and esp. 5264 on the
Western Rebellion.
48A fruitfull sermon made in Poules churche at London in the Shroudes the seconde daye
of Februari (London: John Day, 1550).
49For his formal definition of the public sphere see Jurgen Habermas, 27.
84 chapter four

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 Marys accession, Thomas Watson, Bishop of
Lincoln, guarded by 200 men-at-arms with bills and halberds, counselled
the congregation at Pauls 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
Edwards reign and to praise Marys 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 Pauls Cross later that
same year to hear Gardiner proclaim Englands readmission into Catholic
Christendom.53 Exploitation of all the tools of public persuasion had by
now become definitive of both evangelical reformers and Catholic conser-
vatives alike.
Just two days after the accession of Elizabeth on 17 November 1558, her
chaplain William Bill preached at Pauls Cross by royal order and, accord-
ing 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

50Certe[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 emprysonmen-
tes. Whereunto is added. A treatise agaynst the errour of transubstantiation, made by the sayd
reuerende father D. Nicolas Rydley (Strasbourg: Rihel, 1556).
51See Machyn, 41; Wriothesley, vol. 2, 99100; Grey Friars Chronicle, 83.
52Machyn, 69, referring to 30 September 1554.
53Machyn, 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.
54On 20 November 1558. Machyn, 69
55The Zurich Letters; or, the correspondence of several English bishops and others, with
some of the Helvetian reformers, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 15581579, First Series,
trans. and ed. Hastings Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker
Society, 1842), 4.
 public preaching85

sought to consolidate power. No more sermons were heard at Pauls 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 Pauls 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 influ-
ential of all sermons delivered at Pauls Cross throughout the Tudor era.56
Jewels sermon marks a significant watershed in the history of Pauls Cross
in light of the subsequent cultivation of religious identities in England
(use of the plural is salient in this connection), and, perhaps most impor-
tant 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 Jewels Challenge Sermon is not markedly different from
what had been common fare at Pauls Cross since the days of Thomas
Cromwells propaganda campaign of the 1530s. There are, however, cer-
tain subtle differences of rhetoric and, even more importantly, of the ser-
mons 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. Jewels 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 sacramen-
tal 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 Pauls Cross sermons.) He repeated the challenge in a Court

56Machyn, 219. The xxvj day of November dyd pryche at Pow [ls 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 Jewels 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).
86 chapter four

sermon on 17 March and once again at Pauls Cross on 31 March 1560.57

Gary Jenkins has pointed out that most of the finer distinctions of eucha-
ristic 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 Pauls Cross sermon caused an unprecedented
commotion that continued on the boil for several years.
Over the course of the next decade, Pauls Cross reverberated repeat-
edly with repercussions of Jewels Challenge and the printing houses in
Pauls church-yard were kept busy as never before. Henry Cole, Marian
Dean of St. Pauls, was the first to step up to the plate in an exchange of
letters later published together with the now famous sermon in a pam-
phlet.59 In the meantime, Jewel had honed his argument further and pub-
lished it anonymously in Latin under the title Apologia ecclesi
anglican.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 Coles replacement as Dean of St Pauls, preached at Pauls
Cross in response to Thomas Hardings 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 Dormans 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 Dormans last salvo returning to direct attack
on Jewels original sermon.64 Harding answered Jewel again with his

57Machyn, 228
58Jenkins, 71.
59The 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 Regi Maiestatis per
septennium [London: John Day, 1560?].
60John Jewel, Apologia ecclesi anglican (Londini: [Apud Reginaldum vvolfium],
1562).
61An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande (London: Reginald
Wolfe, 1564). See Lynne Magnussons entry on Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon in ODNB (2004).
62An ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge, by Dr Harding (Louvaine: Iohn Bogard, 1564).
63A 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).
64A 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 Pauls
Cross (1567; repr. [Menston]: Scolar Press, 1973).
 public preaching87

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 eventu-
ally joined William Allen in founding the English College at Douai. From
there Stapleton launched yet another salvo attacking Jewels reply to
Harding, while in the meantime Jewel had begun to pull together his mas-
sive 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 Englands 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 estab-
lished theological assumptions and religious custom, all feare is put to
flight, and licentiouse living dothe raigne withoute comptrollment. By
virtue of Jewels assertion of Justification by faith alone and by his repu-
diation of the authority of the Papacy, there shall ryse manyfolde yea infi-
nite 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 con-
tributor to the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1571).70 Such were the

65Thomas Harding, A confutation of a booke intituled An apologie of the Church of

England (Antwerpe: Ihon Laet, 1565).
66Thomas 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).
67Booty, ch. 1; Jenkins, 70 ff.
68A retur[ne of vn]truthes vpon [M. Jewel]les replie: Partly of such, as he hath slaunder-
ously 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).
69H. 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).
70Walter Haddon, Contra Hieron: Osorium, eiusq[ue] odiosas insectationes pro
Euangelicae veritatis necessaria Defensione, Responsio Apologetica (London: T. Day, 1577).
88 chapter four

escalating stakes in what had become one of the epic confrontations of

the English Reformation. And of course the high profile of Pauls Cross
was not only decisive in precipitating the exchange, but continued to
function prominently in the unfolding struggle to define religious iden-
tity. 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 Pauls Cross.71
Throughout this protracted torrent of words preached and published, tac-
itly acknowledged by all participants in the Great Controversy were cer-
tain common rules of engagement. While the polemical tone from all
quarters was almost invariably harsh and abrasive, there was, nonethe-
less, 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 ecclesi-
astical 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 strug-
gle 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 (15631583), Church History 22.2
(1953), 14254.
71While the exchange between Jewel and Harding was the principal action, other sig-
nificant 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 begyn-
nyng 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).
72See W. Haugaard, Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-
century England, Sixteenth Century Journal 10.3 (1979), 3760; see 43.
 public preaching89

Religious Identity and the Public Sphere

In less than 30 years between the launching of Thomas Cromwells propa-

ganda campaign in 1534 and the publication of Jewels 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 iden-
tity had been called into question. At the same time, on an instrumental
level, the rhetorical means employed in the unfolding of this radical ques-
tioning of religious identity in both evangelical challenge and traditional-
ist responsewhether through pulpit or presswere 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 bor-
row MacLuhans hackneyed expression.73 The conflict between Jewel and
his interlocutors appears to have had the effect of galvanizing the recur-
rent issues aired in the pulpit at Pauls Cross over the previous 25 years.
The main thrust of the Challenge Sermon was to highlight opposition
between what we have identified (following Charles Taylors 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 Jewels chal-
lenge at Pauls Cross. It is precisely the clarity of Jewels 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
Pauls Cross over the preceding decades, we have already observed a
recurring emphasis on two questions in particular: first, the nature of sac-
ramental presence and the sacramental itself in terms of the doctrine of
the Mass, and secondly, the relation between religious and political power

73The reference is to Marshall McLuhans thesis that the printing press changed civili-
zation 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 for-
tiori to the public pulpit.
74Taylor, Sources of the Self, 58, 9, 10, 41, passim.
75Taylor, Sources of the Self, 7.
90 chapter four

in light of the royal assumption of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The

success of Jewels 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 frameworkTaylors moral ontology. The acerbity and sus-
tained 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 reli-
gious identity are ultimately determined. Charles Taylor states concern-
ing 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 valu-
able, 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 supportstransubstan-
tiation, veneration, private masses, communion under one kind, prayers
in a strange tonguebecome, on Jewels account, the selected criteria for
addressing, weighing, and finally judging a complete ontological frame-
work. 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 Cityall of them repre-
sented in one way or another in the pageant of a sermon at Pauls 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 conscien-
tious 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.

76Taylor, Sources of the Self, 28.

 public preaching91

Over against the Mass, Jewel sets justification by faith and the compet-
ing 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 con-
sequence 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 presup-
posed within the universal hierarchical order of reality. Argument, dem-
onstration, 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 instru-
ments of the culture of persuasion in order to justify and defend the sac-
ramental 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

77Taylor, Sources of the Self, 26.

78Taylor, Sources of the Self, 26.
79Nicholas Sanders, A treatise of the images of Christ: and his saints: and that it is vnlau-
full 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.
92 chapter four

the epiphenomenon of a different ontological assumption, one which

challenges the moral assumptions of the great-chain ontology as inter-
preted 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 trialand increasingly also of the
press and print culture, although derivatively, following the pulpits
leadto 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 disenchant-
ment which gives rise to modernity.
The Privy Councils first response to Clement VIIs bull of excommuni-
cation portended a crucial role for Pauls 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 Pauls 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
imaginarythe thread which linked the ordered life of temporal reli-
gious community through the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the hierarchi-
cal 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 Trinityhad been cut. By defy-
ing the bull of excommunication, the core assumption underlying the
moral ontology of hierarchy had been challenged, and with it the hith-
erto 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

80See Richard Rex, The Crisis of Obedience: Gods Word and Henrys 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 docu-
ments had continued to talk of the pope The legislation of 1534 systematically avoids the
title pope.
81Taylor, Sources of the Self, 58, 9, 10, 41, passim.
82Famously 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
 public preaching93

immanent, created order of being in the cosmos, and beyond the visible
realm to the invisible community of the angels and the saints, was effec-
tively abandoned as a social imaginary.83 The severing of the great chain
(vividly symbolized by Clement VIIs excommunication of Henry) might
be described as creating a kind of moral-ontological vacuum which
given natures acknowledged abhorrence of such a conditionwas 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 anthropol-
ogy of the evangelical reformers. Nowhere is this emergent culture of
persuasion more vitally evident in the 1530s than at Pauls Cross. If the
authority of the papacy was to be extinguishedand with it the old
assumption concerning Englands religious identity as derived from and
defined by a gradual, sacramentally mediated hierarchy culminating in
the jurisdiction of the papacythen 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 frameworkthis new moral
ontologywas 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.
83Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, London: Duke University Press,
2004).
84Taylor, Sources of the Self, 13.
94 chapter four

From 1534, preachers at Pauls Cross were required to promote a radi-

cally 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 lon-
ger term, of even greater significance than the content of instruction.
Throughout the revolution of the 1530s the public pulpit at Pauls Cross
not only becomes one of the principal means of reconstructing the pri-
mary assumptions of Englands 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 sym-
bolized by Henrys 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 summa-
rized 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 low-
est 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, understand-
ing, and will. In this respect, early-modern religious identity, and indeed

85Unam Sanctam, Extravagantes Communes, Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg
(Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1879; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955;
1959), vol. 2, col. 124546.
 public preaching95

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 nec-
essary to employ the pulpit to persuade subjects of their primary religious
obligation and of the legitimacy of the reconstituted institutions of reli-
gious authorityan assumption implicit in Thomas Cromwells explicit
provisions for preaching at Pauls Cross at this timeis itself as important
as any specific doctrine being promulgated from the public pulpit. In the
context of the public sermons preached at Pauls 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 Englands radical religious and constitutional transforma-
tion of the 1530s, Henrys 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 Pauls Cross. What, then, is the significance of Cromwells
resorting to pulpit and press in this concerted fashion to justify a new defi-
nition 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 rela-
tion between the conscience of the individual subject and constituted

86G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 15091558 (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.
87According 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), 3584. See 39: Henry VIII exer-
cised 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.
96 chapter four

political authority. The crucial element in this new relation is especially

evident in the perceived need for the encouragement of a public cam-
paign of persuasion. Such a campaign assumes that the moral force of reli-
gious 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
frameworkPersuasionand the new definition of the communal iden-
tity have become intrinsic to the subsistence of that framework. This is the
sense of the importance attached to a culture of persuasion.
Cromwells 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 Reformationor in subsequent
English Reformations, if that is the preferred formulanotably 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 pul-
pit at Pauls Cross is consistently at the heart of the action. As we have
attempted to show, the relentless effort to promote religious and constitu-
tional reform through a sustained campaign of public persuasion repre-
sents the steady undercurrent of the Pauls Cross sermons throughout this
period.
The perceived need to persuadethat is, to speak to the conscience, to
appeal to the perceptions, judgment, discernment, prudence, discrimina-
tion, etc. of a discerning religious publicis 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 mes-
sage.88 To affirm the necessity of addressing the judgment of the discern-
ing, rational individual as the Tudor reformers do is to make a definite
claim regarding the means whereby that individual has access to the pri-
mary 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 evi-
dence of the collapse of the alternative framework of religious identity
defined by a semiotic hermeneutic, a moral ontology defined by the con-
cept of hierarchy, and an external, sacramental apparatus as the primary

88On this link of medium and message, see Haugaard, 3743.

 public preaching97

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 ever-
widening 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 defini-
tion 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 Pauls 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 hierarchi-
cal); 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 scrip-
ture 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 churchs 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
imaginaryecclesia, the community of individuals who share this rela-
tion. Owing to the concept of mediation implied by the solasgrace
alone, faith alone, etc.the framework of religious identity and with it
the ordering of the relation between the inner and outer, between pri-
vate 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 institu-
tional life, both religious and civil, thus necessitates the appearance
of a public sphere of discussion as the means of mediation between

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

the demands of the two forai.e. between conscience and institutional

power. This transformation is decisive in the shift from the moral ontol-
ogy 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 SMYTHS RETRACTATION

SERMON AT PAULS CROSS, 1547

Richard Smyths Retractation Sermon preached both at Pauls 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 Smiths 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 Oxfords 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 inau-
gural lectures at Oxford Vermigli took up this very question and precipi-
tated the famous Oxford Disputation of 1549 which exercised a decisive
influence on the revision of Cranmers 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 late-
medieval Church in his Enchiridion militis Christiani of 1503, Erasmus
draws a telling parallel between Platos theory of knowledge and his own
philosophia Christi.1 The philosophers turning away from the fleeting

1On 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), 138154.
100 chapter five

images of sensuous phantasy on coming out of the Cave, and towards the
brilliant luminosity of the intellectual SunPlatos 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
Mirandolas Oration fuses the epistemological imagery of Republic with
the erotic metaphor of the souls ascent to the intellectual heaven in
Phaedrus and Jacobs 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 pow-
ers / but also simylytudes or ymagynacions of all the intellygyble powers
dothe cease and kepe scylence.3

2Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the dignity of man; translated by A. Robert
Caponigri (South Bend, Indiana: Regnery Gateway, 1956), 1719.
3Desiderius Erasmus, Ratio seu methodus compendio perueniendi ad ueram theologiam:
Paraclesis, id est adhortatio ad sanctissimum, ac saluberrimum Christian philosoph
studium (Basle: [Johannes Froben], 1521), republished (Strasbourg: Felicem, 1522). An
English translation of Erasmuss 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), 1621. While John Foxe maintained that Tyndale made this
translation while a tutor in Gloucestershire in the mid 1520s, David Daniell attributes the
 public conversion101

In 1504 Erasmus sent a copy of his Handbook to his humanist colleague

John Colet, the Dean of St Pauls, 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 learn-
ing.4 Erasmuss call to ethical and religious reform is founded upon a radi-
cal 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
sourcesa 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 Testamentthe Novum instrument omnewhich, 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 1525translated by Tyndale7while a revised edition

translation to Nicholas Udall: see William Tyndale: A Biography (London and New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1994), 72. See Anne M. ODonnell, 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.
4Erasmus, Epistle 181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138.
5From Erasmuss prefatory epistle address to Paul Volz, Abbot of Hugshofen, Epistle
181:53, quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus Reader, 138, 139.
6Sed 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.
7The 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).
102 chapter five

including Erasmuss Latin text in parallel was published again in

1534the same year as Parliaments passage of the Act of Supremacy.8
Tyndales translation of the Enchiridion had been published a year
earlier, in 1533, by John Biddel, the Kings printer, to coincide with the
first major thrust of Thomas Cromwells propaganda offensive in support
of the legislative programme before the Reformation Parliament.9 The
significance of Erasmuss 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, alto-
gether a decisive period in the religious transformation of both England
and Europe.10
Erasmuss Enchiridion epitomizes a far-reaching conversion of the the-
ory of knowledge which underpins two grand projects of the sixteenth
centurynamely, 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 controver-
sies, 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

8Novum Instrumentum omne: diligenter ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum & emenda-

tum (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 Erasmuss Novum Instrumentum became the
base source text for Luthers German bible, for Tyndales English New Testament and
subsequently for the King James Version, as well as almost all other Reformation transla-
tions of the Bible on the continent.
9G.R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 15091558 (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: Gods Word and Henrys Reformation,
The Historical Journal 39.4 (1996), 879 ff.
10Erasmuss 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.
11Charles G. Nauert, Humanism as Method: Roots of conflict with the Scholastics,
The Sixteenth Century Journal 29. 2 (1998), 427438.
 public conversion103

Providence.12 Metanoia comes after ordinary knowing in a manner analo-

gous to Metaphysics succeeding or indeed completing Physics. In a
secondary but nonetheless common use metanoia signifies a alteration
of ones 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 dia-
logue 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 Erasmuss 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 bodythe 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, dont we?
Yes. [Glaucon replies.]
There would, therefore, be an art of this turning around (periagoge), con-
cerned 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 phainomenatowards the permanent reality, namely the
forms or ideas. The preliminary mode of knowing proper to fleeting
appearance is designated by Plato as phantasia or doxamere opin-
ionwhile the mode of cognition propoer to the converted and illumi-
nated soul is a tethered understandingepisteme. The sense of turning
around in the Latin conversio brings with it an additional sense of subver-
sion, alteration, or radical change.14 Pliny the Younger speaks of conversio

12See, e.g., Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, De divinis nominibus, 4.33; in Opera (Paris:
Guillaume Morel, 156162), 338339; Patrologia Grca (Paris: Migne, 18571861), 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.
13Plato, Republic, Steph. 518d. See Allan Bloom, transl. and ed. (New York: Harper
Collins, 1991), 197.
14See, 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
104 chapter five

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 round-
ing out of a period.16
Turning our attention now in Erasmian fashion from the ancient
sources to the sacred fountain of the scriptures, Christs first speech on
coming out of the wilderness as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew echoes
the admonitory cry of John the Baptist: ,
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 altera-
tion 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 Smiths 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 con-
version as represented by Erasmus in his Enchiridion, may assist us con-
structively in interpreting a representative event of formal public
conversion early in the reign of Edward VI, namely in Dr Richard Smyths
Retractation Sermon preached at Pauls 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).
15Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 9.13.18: tanta conversio consecuta est.
16Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, 10.5.4; Cicero, de Oratore 3.54.207.
17Matt. 4:17
18Augustine, De civitate Dei, 14.28. See also 7.33 and 8.24 conversio ad verum Deum
sanctumque.
19Richard 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
 public conversion105

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 aca-
demic appointments in the realm. Such was his intellectual distinction
that later, during the succeeding reign of Edwards 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 deter-
mined 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 con-
version in its wakeand 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. Smyths Retractation
Sermon provides an instructive case for weighing the religious and politi-
cal 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.
Smyths 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 gradu-
ated 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).
20Richard 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).
21For a full discussion of the career of Richard Smyth and his recantations see J. Andreas
Lwe, Richard Smyth and the language of orthodoxy: re-imagining Tudor Catholic polemi-
cism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), esp. 3440.
106 chapter five

Oxford at King Henry VIIIs 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 Smyths retractation
sermon, the college was renamed Christ Church (Aedes Christi) in
acknowledgement of its elevation to the status of Cathedral in a jurisdic-
tional transformation of the English Churchthis fluctuating transmuta-
tion 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 conver-
sion of the wealth of monastic communities to the service of the univer-
sity 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 Henrys reign and in fact
published after the kings 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 Pauls Cross on 15 May 1547.26 In addition to his

22On 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 VIIIs own attempt to address this matter in
his Christmas Eve address to Parliament in 1545, in Marshalls view perhaps Henrys finest
hour. Mumpsimus et Sumpsimus: the intellectual origins of a Henrician Bon Mot, Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001), 512520.
23The Priory of Wallingford near Smyths 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.
24Richard 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).
25Richard 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, dwell-
ynge 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 Lwe,
Richard Smyth, 186200.
26Charles 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
 public conversion107

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 dis-
solved at the time of his Retractation at Pauls 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 Councilin effect a public, though as
events transpired, insincere conversion. Smyths 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 mendax29every man is a liara pas-
sage 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,
Smyths 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 constitu-
tion 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. 14851559 ed. W.D. Hamilton (Westminster: Camden society, 187577), 184.
27On Whittington College, see Colleges: Whittingtons College, A History of the County
of London: Volume 1: London within the Bars, Westminster and Southwark (1909), 578580.
URL:http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=35393.Dateaccessed:
19 November 2011.
28Andreas Lwe, Richard Smyth, 35.
29Richard Smyth. A godly and faythfull retractation made and published at Paules crosse
in London, Aii.
30See, e.g., Luthers scholion on Romans 8, Weimarer Ausgabe 56, 385.
31For a discussion of omnis homo mendax theme, see Kenneth Hagen, Luthers
Approach to Scripture as seen in his Commentaries on Galatians, 15191538 (Tbingen: Mohr,
1993), 1928.
108 chapter five

Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who might reasonably be con-

sidered to have had some degree of sympathy for Smyths conservative
doctrinal position, wrote to Edward Seymour complaining about Smyths
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 scepticallyand this is borne out by John Foxe in
his reports of correspondence between Edward Seymour and Stephen
Gardiner concerning the Pauls 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, Somersetever willing
to see the best in his adversariesapplauds the sincerity of Smyths recan-
tation.34 Winchesters more judicious assumption of Smyths equivoca-
tion, 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,

32And 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 vnwritt 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 comm 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 e word, we should be then dawes, and was by & by sory that
euer he had written of the sacramt 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.
33John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), IV, 795.
34Seymour wrote to Stephen Gardiner just days later, on 21 May 1547, expressing his
incredulity at Gardiners dissatisfaction with Smiths 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, 735736.
35The sermon of the bishop of Winchester before the kings maiestie 29 June 1548, on
Matthew XVI.13. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 127.5.
 public conversion109

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 Edwards 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 occa-
sion 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 Cranmers 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
Smyths 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 appre-
hended and compelled, once again, to recant and subscribe the Oath of
Royal Supremacyon 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 retracta-
tion 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

36On 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), 7194 and Torrance Kirby, The Zurich
Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), chapter 3.
37Foxe, Actes and Monuments, IV.
110 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 churchs traditional pre-
reformed 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 sensu-
ous 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 becom-
ing, 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 philosophers vision. As such, Smyths Retractation appears to agree
with Erasmuss 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
Augustines 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 Smyths 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 Smyths books
described by Charles Wriothesley as having been ritually burnt at Pauls
Cross at the time of Smyths recantation: which booke I do Reproue and
Reuoke in dyuers faultes in it.40 The first part of the Retractation sermon
consists of Smyths repudiation of the six principal points in the argument

38Aurelius Augustine, Opera omnia, Retractationum libri duo, in Patrologia Latina 32,
583656. Augustine, The Retractations, translated by Sister Mary Inez Bogan (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968).
39Smyth, Retractation, Aiiir.
40Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiir.
 public conversion111

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 herme-
neutics of sacramental presence as evidenced by the many sermons
preached at Pauls Cross on these matters. Moreover the questions of
authority and sacramental presence are very closely connected in the con-
text 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 peo-
ple: 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

41Smyth, Retractation, Aiiiiv.

42The parliamentary sessions of 15331534 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 VIIIs
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.
43Smyth here affirms the formal Submission of the Clergy, 25 Henry VIII cap. 19;
Statutes of the Realm III, 460461.
44In this Smyth affirms the Act of Supremacy itself, 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; Statutes of the
Realm III, 492493.
112 chapter five

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
techynga 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 dampnation48 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

45Smyth, Retractation, BiivBiiiv and Ciiv. The Clementine Epistles are included among
58 out of 60 apocryphal letters or decrees attributed to the popes from St. Clement (8897)
to Melchiades (311314) 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.
46Smyth, Retractation, Biiv.
47Smyth, Retractation, Biiir.
48Smyth, Retractation, Biiiv.
49Smyth, Retractation, BiiivBivr.
 public conversion113

authority of the kings 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 scriptureyet,
as Gardiner shrewdly observed, the entire discourse of the retractation is
construed under the crafty aegis of Omnis homo mendax.

50Smyth, Retractation, Ciiiv.

 CHAPTER SIX

POLITICAL HERMENEUTICS:
JOHN JEWELS CHALLENGE SERMON AT PAULS CROSS, 1559

John Jewels famous Challenge Sermon delivered not long after the acces-
sion of Elizabeth I is especially significant for setting the terms of disputa-
tion between reformers and traditionalists concerning Englands religious
identity during the first decade of her reign, in the so-called Great
Controversy of the 1560s.1 While Jewels framing of his formal challenge
emphasized a claim to the reformers adherence to the authority of scrip-
ture and the primitive church, the main substance of the sermon concerns
the hermeneutics of sacramental presence, namely how rightly to inter-
pret 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 semiot-
ics. Our aim is to examine Jewels 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 Englands religious
identity in the second half of the sixteenth century. We will consider in
particular the sermons 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
Jewels 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 historiogra-
phy.3 Finally, we offer the proposal that Jewels approach to the question
concerning the hermeneutics of the sacrament provides a means of inter-
preting the marked prominence and influence of the institution of Pauls
Cross itself in the context of the public life of the realm. In the course of

126 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.
2Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
3Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reas-
sessed, The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497528.
 political hermeneutics115

the latter half of the 16th century this outdoor pulpit contributes greatly to
the inauguration of an early-modern public spherein a deep cultural
sense, to quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium is indeed the message.4
Our goal in addressing Jewels 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 historio-
graphical 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 1560sall in the context of the outdoor pulpit
at Pauls Cross.

The Public Pulpit

England was exceptional in early-modern Europe for its high concentra-

tion 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

4The reference is to McLuhans 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), 721.
5Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, 133134.
6Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 4048.
7Peter 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 pub-
lic sphere in early modern England. Journal of British Studies 45.2 (2006), 270292. Peter
Lake and Michael Questier, Puritans, Papists, and the Public Sphere: the Edmund
Campion Affair in Context. Journal of Modern History 72.3 (2000), 587627. Halasz,
Alexandra. The marketplace of print: pamphlets and the public sphere in early modern
116 chapter six

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 compari-
son with the spoken word.8 At one extreme 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 operat-
ing 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 par-
ticular 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 deter-
minate, situated public gathering for the purposes of actual communica-
tion 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 char-
acterised 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 dis-
cussed locallyin the vicinity of pulpits, in coffee houses, workshops,
markets, and parish churchesthereby 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 Martins Press, 1988) and his inaugural lec-
ture 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), 129.
8Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into
a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991),
1426.
9Alexandra Halasz, The marketplace of print, 11516, 2334. 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.
10Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion, 39.
11Mears, Queenship and political discourse, 268.
 political hermeneutics117

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 under-
estimated the critical importance of preaching and, therefore, of orality to
their religious task; the evangelical avant-garde placed enormous empha-
sis 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 preachingand the outdoor pulpit in
Pauls 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 Pauls Cross in the mid- to late-16th century, namely the right definition
of the nature of the sacrament. MacLures 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

12See Natalie Mearss chapter on The Elizabethan public sphere in Queenship and
political discourse, 182216.
13On the complex question of sermon auditory, see Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing:
English Preachers and Their Audiences, 15901640 (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), 183184.
14Torrance Kirby, The Public Sermon: Pauls Cross and the culture of persuasion in
England, 15341570, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Rforme 31.1 (2008), 329.
15MacLure, Register of Sermons, 2850.
16See 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, dwell-
ynge 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
118 chapter six

against transubstantiation.17 On 29 June 1548 before an immense audi-

ence at Pauls Cross, and in good Henrician style, Stephen Gardiner vigor-
ously upheld both the royal supremacy and the dissolution of the chantries
while, in the same sermon, in spite of Somersets 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
Pauls Cross on 1 September 1549, but did spend most of his sermon about
the gross, carnel, and papistical presence of Christs body in the sacra-
ment.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 Cranmers 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. Chaudire, 1550?]. See
J. Andreas Lwe, Richard Smyth and the language of orthodoxy: re-imagining Tudor Catholic
polemicism (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003), 3439. Ellen A. Macek, Richard Smith: Tudor
cleric in defense of traditional belief and practice, The Catholic Historical Review 72.3
(1986), 383402.
17Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.437; 7:520, 523. See Millar MacLure,
Register of Sermons preached at Pauls Cross, 15341643, revised and augmented by Jackson
Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls, CRRS Occasional Publications, no. 6 (Ottawa:
Dovehouse Editions, 1989), 28.
18CCCC 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.
19The 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, 187577), vol. 2.4; Chronicle of the Grey friars
of London, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1852), 56. MacLure, Register
of sermons, 29.
20Wrioth. Chron., 2.4; see also Grey friars Chron., 56.
21Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 5.745, 746. See also Wrioth. Chron., 2.24.
22Grey Friars Chron., 63. See MacLure, Register of Sermons, 31.
23Grey Friars Chron., 67.
 political hermeneutics119

series of preachers staunchly defended the traditional doctrine of the

Mass and transubstantiation at Pauls Cross. On 20 August 1553, shortly
after Marys accession, Thomas Watson, then chaplain to the Bishop of
Winchester, surrounded by 200 of the Queens guard, exhorted his audi-
tory at Pauls 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 Lords 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 Queens chaplain, Hugh Glasier, offered a refuta-
tion at Pauls Cross of those who would explain the bad weather of the
previous two years as Gods 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 Jewels Challenge

24Machyn, Diary, 41; Wrioth. Chron., 2.99100; Grey Friars Chron., 83; Foxe, Actes &
Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.768. MacLure, Register of Sermons, 35.
25Machyn, Diary, 46; Foxe, Actes & Monuments, ed. Townsend, 6.541; 7.778. See
MacLure, Register of Sermons, 35.
26Machyn, Diary, 79.
27Hugh 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 commaunde-
ment. 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 hospi-
tall, 1555), Bviiv-Bviiiv. [Transcription below from a copy in St Pauls 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?
120 chapter six

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 assump-
tions 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 herme-
neutics of the sacrament provide an invaluable key to interpreting the
political significance of the culture of persuasion exemplified by the insti-
tution of public preaching at Pauls 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 pro-
ceeding 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 disen-
chantment 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 rele-
vance of this theme to recent historiography of the English Reformation

28See Bodleian Tanner MS 50, fols. 72r-72v for notes taken by an anonymous observer
at Pauls 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 Bartholomews 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 Gods
precious Jewell and contrasts wonders donne by the Apostles wear donne playnly with-
outh 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 won-
der 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
29Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reas-
sessed, The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497528.
 political hermeneutics121

with particular reference to its evolving assumptions concerning the place

of the sacred and the supernatural in the context of the religious and politi-
cal 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, phys-
ical immanence of the holy became the engine of desacralization, and con-
sequently of modernization.31 With its emphasis on the polarity of
traditional religion and the new evangelical identity, much of earlier 20th-
century 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
Scribners 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
Duffys extensive, detailed, and influential research on the vitality of late-
medieval piety,35 or more generally in sustained post-modern critique of
any and all claims based upon the assertion of a doctrine of progress

30Max 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), 261296. Keith Thomas, Religion and
the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
31Walsham, Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reassessed, 498505.
See also Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 13501750
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1214.
32Walsham, Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reassessed, 500.
33See Robert Scribner, Religion and culture in Germany (14001800), 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), 47594 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), 1134, 7592.
34Nicholas Tyacke, ed., Englands Long Reformation, 15001800 (London; Bristol, PA:
UCL Press, 1998).
35Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, c.1400-c.1580
(New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2005).
122 chapter six

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
rulesor so at least it would seem. In the context of our present inquiry,
however, what is particularly intriguing about Walshams 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 under-
stood as a decline of belief in divine immanence, from secularization as a
rejection or marginalization of religion as such. In this respect Walshams
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 modernitys most zealous defenders.37
Taylors 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 self-
understanding 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 moral-
ontological 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 unsuccess-
ful 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 theo-
logical discourse as providing a useful or even intelligible explanation

36Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 58, 9, 10, 41, passim.
37Taylor, Sources of the Self, 3.
38Jonathan 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.
 political hermeneutics123

of these events.39 Yet, on the other hand, how are we to accountin

Diarmaid MacCullochs wordsfor the undeniably howling success of
the Reformation by the end of Elizabeths 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 historians task to pursue both. Walsham tellingly con-
cludes with the insight that the debate about the rationality or moder-
nity of the Reformation is in this sense both a question mal pose 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-understand-
ing; 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.

39Christopher Haigh, Success and failure in the English Reformation, Past and Present
173 (2001), 2849. Gerald Strauss, Success and failure in the German Reformation, Past and
Present 67 (1975), 3063, both cited by Walsham, 500.
40Diarmaid MacCulloch, The impact of the English Reformation, Historical Journal 38
(1995), 152.
41Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, translated by Thomas Hobbes and edited by
David Grene (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959).
42Walsham, Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reassessed, 527
43Walsham, Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World reassessed, 527.
44Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe, 28.
45Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, Illuminations, translated by
Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1992), 255.
124 chapter six

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 catego-
riesthat is to say, through the theological, the moral-ontological, the
metaphysical, and the sacralour point of departure is to acknowledge
this alien, pre-scientific mentalit and to make every possible effort in
seeking to understand both ideas and events by suspending the tempta-
tion 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 particu-
lar question so heatedly engaged in the most sustained propaganda
campaign hitherto? How are the theological ideas and the public and
political events ignited by Jewels sermon both elements of agency, as
Walsham suggests, and also dynamically interactive? Do the theologi-
cal ideas underpinning the hermeneutics of sacramental presence shed
light on the phenomenon of the Jewels Challenge sermon and the sub-
sequent conduct of the Great Controversy itself as public events? And
do these ideas illuminate in particular the markedly increased signifi-
cance of the institution of the public outdoor sermon, especially at the
venue of Pauls Cross?
If we are to make sense of the rapid proliferation of open and popular
public debate in the later sixteenth centurya phenomenon Andrew
Pettegree has aptly described as the rise of a culture of persuasionwe
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
Pauls Cross. To this end, then, we propose to address three matters: first,
there will be a discussion of the main theological concern of Jewels
Challenge Sermon. This will be followed by a consideration of the signifi-
cance of this theology to the interpretation of his public preaching at

46Andrew 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.
 political hermeneutics125

Pauls Cross, and to the conduct of the subsequent controversy more gen-
erally, 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 hermeneu-
tics and of the noteworthy public events surrounding their diffusion con-
tributes 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 concern-
ing 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?

Jewels Challenge Sermon

On 26 November 1559, John Jewel preached his notorious Challenge at

Pauls Cross, certainly the most famous sermon delivered in the early
years after the accession of Elizabeth, and arguably one of the most influ-
ential of all sermons preached at Pauls 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 Pauls 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 defend-
ersof the old religion, and offered to engage any and all combatants in a

47Machyn, Diary, 218. See Gary Jenkins, John Jewel and the English National Church: the
dilemmas of an Erastian reformer (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 7085.
48John 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 Jewels 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. 120177. 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.
126 chapter six

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 primi-
tive church for the space of six hundred years after Christ.49 Jewels chal-
lenge 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 Pauls Cross two weeks later.50 Henry Cole, Dean of St Pauls
and leading traditionalist, immediately took up Jewels 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 Jewels sermonan event customarily
referred to as the Great Controversy of the 1560swould 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 governments
officially sanctioned response to Pope Pius IVs 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
Jewels first appearance at Pauls Cross. For England such a sustained
spate of printed works devoted to a single scholarly disputation was

49Jewel, The copie of a sermon, fols. 139140. All references to the Challenge Sermon
are taken from this edition.
50Mary Morrissey notes that by cross-referencing the Register of Pauls Cross sermons
with Peter McCulloughs calendar of court sermons reveals no other coincidences like
this except for John Jewels 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 Pauls Cross. See her forthcoming
monograph, Politics and the Pauls Cross Sermons, 15581642 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), chapter 1, n. 135.
51See True copies of the letters (1560).
52John 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 Bootys 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).
 political hermeneutics127

wholly without precedent.53 While the controversy swiftly expanded to

include a broad selection of theological concernsJewel himself enumer-
ated 27 specific topics in his Apologythere 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 Jewels initial sermon at Pauls Cross. For early Elizabethan traditional-
ists 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 eccle-
siastical 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 pub-
lic 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, Jewels
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 ques-
tion of current Reformation historiography and therefore of shedding
light on the questions of both religious identity and the intellectual ori-
gins of modernity. When considering the historical significance of deep
assumptions about enchantment, claims regarding the possible imma-
nence in the world of the sacred and the supernatural, the locus par excel-
lence for such a discussion from a sixteenth-century perspective is
undoubtedly sacramental theology, and more specifically the conception
of sacramental presence. Jewels 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

53For 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), 5882. 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), 124.
54Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2007), 2589. Idem, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 58, 9, 10, 41, passim.
128 chapter six

1560s will seek to address certain key questions: why did the hermeneutics
of sacramental presence become the primary focus of debate for defend-
ers 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 Pauls Cross hold as the ignition point of this public
theological disputation? Finally, upon closer examination does the rar-
efied 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 ref-
erence to a nascent public sphere? Our methodological hypothesis is that
we should engage very seriously the alien mentalit 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-understand-
ing 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 sacramen-
tal sign (signum) and divine-human reality signified by it (res signifi-
cata) 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 Bloodthe species [i.e. the external appearance]
only of the bread and wine remainingwhich conversion indeed the
Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation.56 In the formula-
tion of Thomas Harding, Jewels 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 Jewels 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 Jewels 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 Jewels charge of the novelty of transubstan-
tiation 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

55Stephen 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.
56Decrees of the ecumenical councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward;
Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 2, Session 13, Canon 2.
57Thomas 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
1:465466.
58I.e. the Fourth Lateran Council. Jewel, The true copies of the letters, 139140. 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 cen-
tury, and by the end of the twelfth century the term was in widespread use.
130 chapter six

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 expand-
ing list of contested teachings, Jewel promised to geue ouer and subscribe
vnto hym.59
Whereas the doctrine of transubstantiation tended to elide the distinc-
tion between signifier (signum) and signified (res significata) in the asser-
tion of an objectified real presence through ontological conversion, the
sacramental doctrine implicit in Thomas Cranmers revised liturgy of the
second Book of Common Prayer (1552), adhered to the Augustinian herme-
neutic advocated by Vermigli, Cranmer, and Ridley, by upholding a sharp
distinction between the two. According to Jewels 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 prcis of the evangelical position, Jewels insistence upon a differ-
ence between the sign and the thing itself signified signals his adoption of
the Augustinian approach with its emphasis upon a figurative interpreta-
tion of sacramental presence, a reformed theological orientation pro-
moted vigorously by Thomas Cranmer61 and Nicholas Ridley in the
previous decade.62 Indeed Jewels precise formulation of the sacramental
hermeneutic is almost word for word that of his mentor Peter Martyr

59Jewel, 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 Jewels 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.
60John 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.
61Cranmer, 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).
62Nicholas 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
 political hermeneutics131

Vermigli in the latters Tractatio on the Eucharist of 1549, a systematic

presentation of the Florentine reformers 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 rec-
eyved 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 Gardiners 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 Cranmers 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
Ridleys conversion to reading of Bertrams book on the Sacrament.67
Augustines insistence upon the necessity of drawing a sharp distinc-
tion between signum and res significatabetween 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. E2rE4v.
63A 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.
64Stephen 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.
65Thomas Harding, An ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge, by Doctor Harding. aug-
mented vvith certaine quotations and additions (Antwerpe: At the golden Angel by William
Sylvius the Kinges Maiesties printer, 1565), 128. See Jewels transcription of Hardings refer-
ence to Berengarius in Defense of the Apology, vol. 1, 457.
66Ratramnus, 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).
67Foxes account of the Oxford Disputation of 1555 is reprinted in Nicholas Ridley,
Works, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), ix, 206.
132 chapter six

sacramental sign and the mystical, invisible reality signifiedhad a long

pedigree of influence, and Jewels 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 Jewels interpretation of sacramental presence. The identical
argument had been mounted to considerable effect a decade earlier by
Jewels 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 consid-
ers that among the first polemical responses to the Challenge Sermon
was Richard Smyths 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 Vermiglis appointment.
In the context of Vermiglis inaugural lectures on Corinthians, Smyth
challenged the Florentine scholar to a public disputation on the Eucharist

68Peter Martyr Vermigli, Tractatio de sacramento Eucharisti habita in celeberrima

vniuersitate Oxoniensi in Anglia, per D. Petrum Martyrem Vermilium Florentinum, Regium
ibidem Theologi professorem, cum iam absoluisset interpretationem. II capitis prioris
epistol 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 neum 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).
69See John Calvin, Dilucida Explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis, CO 9,
457524, esp. 490 : Porro quum toti mundo plus quam notum esse putarem, consensu vet-
eris 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 commen-
tum 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
Europische Perspektiven, Institut fr Europische Geschichte, Mainz (June, 2009).
70Richard Smyth, Confutatio eorum, qu Philippus Melanchthon obijcit contra miss
sacrificium propitiatorium. Cui accessit & repulsio calumniarum Ioannis Caluini & Musculi,
& Ioannis Iuelli contra missam (Louvain, 1562).
 political hermeneutics133

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 Cranmers sacramental theology.71 Smyths
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 Kings Book
(1543), and Morgan Phillips, Principal of St Mary Hall.72 Consequently,
Jewels Challenge at Pauls 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.
Jewels 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 presencethe dominant theme
in Jewels exchanges with his principal adversary, Thomas Harding, and
indeed throughout the controversy of the 1560sJewel invokes Augus
tines 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 Lords Supper, as indeed they had
in the canon of the Mass.75 Adhering to an Augustinian hermeneutic of

71Richard 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. Chaudire, 1550?]).
72Peter 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 epis-
tolae 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 neum 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 Vermiglis account Tresham recorded his own
version of the event: Disputatio de eucharistiae sacramento contra Petrum Martyrem,
BL Harleian MS 422.
73See Augustine, On Christian teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 844.
74Augustine, de bono Perseverantiae, 2.13.
75Gordon P. Jeanes, Signs of Gods promise: Thomas Cranmers sacramental theology and
the Book of Common Prayer (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2008).
134 chapter six

signs, Jewel attaches the highest theological significance to the formula as

representing liturgically the preparation of the mind for the act of receiv-
ing 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 faith-
ful receiver the connection between sign and signified may be effected.
Jewel ties the sacramental hermeneutic to the logic of Augustines 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 pres-
ence 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 sit-
ting 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 conver-
sion 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 sacra-
ment, 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 Christs real absence in the relation
to the sacrament.80 With its sharp separation of signum and res signifi-
cataZwinglis sacramental hermeneutic is in many respects the mirror
antithesis of transubstantiation. While the liturgy of 1552 very decisively

76Jewel, Works, vol. 3, 533536.

77Jewel, Works, vol. 3, 64; see also vol. 1.453, 759; and vol. 2, 1122.
78Jewel, Works, 1.477.
79Jewel, Works, 2.1117.
80Harding, Confutation, fol. 40r.
 political hermeneutics135

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 remem-
braunce that Christ dyed for thee, and feede on him in thy hearte by
faythe, with thankesgeuing,81 Cranmer studiously avoids Zwinglis stark
iconoclastic hermeneutic of the separation of sign and thing.
Demonstrating signs rather of Vermiglis theological influence, the sec-
ond 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 dra-
matic shift in the liturgical order of the administration of the communion.
In the revised order, the worshippers reception of the sacramental ele-
ments 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
institutiondo 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; Jewels subtle dynamic account of presence is thus

81The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward VI (London: Dent; New York:
Dutton, 1910), 225, 389.
82See, e.g., the account of Bullinghams Bartholomew Day sermon at Pauls 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.
136 chapter six

neither Zwinglian memorialism nor ontological realism. His is a stance

now commonly identified as instrumental realism.83
Jewels argument for the distinction between a literal and a figurative
interpretation of sacramental presence shifts the locus of presence deci-
sively 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 recep-
tion of the consecrated host.85 The Challenge Sermon is crucially signifi-
cant for re-instating the sacramental theology of the Edwardine
divinesof Cranmer, Vermigli, and Ridleyand thus in consolidating
the development of a distinctively reformed sacramental hermeneutics in
the Elizabethan Church. Jewels Challenge is pivotal in the defining a hori-
zon of meaning for Elizabethan Protestant religious identity, and ulti-
mately in reforming the deepest assumptions of moral ontology. In Jewels
Augustinian hermeneutics as in Cranmers 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 medi-
ated 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

83See Brian Gerrish, Grace and gratitude: the Eucharistic theology of John Calvin
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
84The realist words of 1549this is my bodyare replaced in 1552 with eat this in
remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, by faith, with thanks-
giving. The primary locus of presence is relocated away from the external elements and
made inseparable from the worshipping subject.
85It 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
occurredi.e. the moment of transubstantiationthus serving to underline vividly the
difference between the two divergent liturgical accounts of presence.
 political hermeneutics137

sacrament is necessarily an interpretative act; though it takes place in a

communal [i.e. liturgical] context, it ultimately requires a highly indi-
vidual mode of understanding the elements as metaphors whose effec-
tuality 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 sacra-
ment. By defusing the clarity of 1552, the Elizabethan compromise on
the words of administration serves to extend even further the latitude of
the worshippers 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 discre-
tion over that order. Its theology simultaneously legitimates and under-
mines its political discourse of autonomous hierarchical authority
The BCP officially instituted the individual as a primary component of reli-
gion, without abrogating the normative claims of the hierarchical socio-
politico-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 sepa-
ration 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

86Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 96.

87Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 111.
88Euan 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.
138 chapter six

medieval sacramental ontology serves not so much to promote disen-

chantment of the world as to propose a radical reformulation of the terms
of enchantmentand here we may detect a glimmer of a post-revisionist
path. With the exception of a handful of religious extremistse.g.
Anabaptists, the Family of Love, and various Puritan separatistsonce
the break with Rome had been accomplished, leading magisterial reform-
ers like Jewel, John Whitgift, and Richard Hooker were intent upon recon-
struction of a visible, institutional, hierarchical, and liturgical church
orderi.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 Pauls 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 vis-
ible and invisible church, between the historical and the imagined com-
munity 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 Pauls 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 encourag-
ing the faithful to labour towards a fulfilment of the heavenly promises
through a gradual process of habitual sanctification.91 While the church

89For 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 Hookers 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), 127151.
90Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 249294. See Torrance Kirby, Apocalyptics and
Apologetics: Richard Helgerson on Elizabethan Englands religious identity and the forma-
tion of the public sphere, in Paul Yachnin, ed. Forms of Association in Early Modern Europe
(Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010).
91See Mary Morrissey, Ideal Communities and Early Modern London in the Pauls
Cross Sermons, paper presented at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in
Venice, April 2010.
 political hermeneutics139

as earthly sign of the heavenly city must be clearly distinguished from

the mystical reality of that signified community in the Jeremiad, none-
theless 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 medi-
ation 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 Jewels proteg 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 sig-
nified 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
Jewels evangelical premise of the necessary distinction of sign and signi-
fied, 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
tionof sign and signified, and the re-enchantment implied by the herme-
neutics of figural presence.94 Although the signs are by no means to be

92Apologie (1564), Sig. Cviir.

93Apologie (1564), Sig. Cviiv. See Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and
Disputation, 255. Augustine, On Christian Teaching (1997), 31.
94Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.1733. 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
140 chapter six

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 presup-
poses 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 instru-
mentality 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.
95Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.1733.
96See Lawes V.58.2; 2:249.161250.3.
97Lawes V.67.11; 2:338.13340.1.
 political hermeneutics141

the receiver. In this respect the sacraments exemplify Alexandra

Walshams 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 desig-
nated by Jewel (following Vermigli and Augustine) a visible word (ver-
bum visibile), the public sermon comes to be regarded as an audible
sacrament (sacramentum audibile).98
For Hooker, this sharp semiotic demarcation between the inner, pri-
vate realm of individual conscience and the outer, public demands of
institutional order calls forth an arena of persuasiona forum of trial
by argument, discussion, and interpretationas 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 ref-
ormation: 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 preju-
dice, 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 Jewels, was to maintain a distinction between signs
and things signified, while at the same time affirming the dynamic pos-
sibility 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 signi-
fied, by his assertion of continued possibility of mediation so that pos-
teritie may knowe wee haue not loosely through silence permitted
thinges to passe away as in a dreame.100

98Jewel, 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 refor-
mations (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 179.
99Lawes, Pref.7.1;1:34.2023.
100Lawes, Pref.1.1. On the tension between apocalyptic and apologetic narratives, see
Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood, 249294.
142 chapter six

The primary function of Jewels 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, Jewels 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 institu-
tional community and hierarchical order are linked to internal and invis-
ible 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 con-
science and the external, public realm of religious and political commu-
nity 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 media-
tion between individual and community. Perhaps more than any other
Tudor institution Pauls Cross itself comes to exemplify this nascent pub-
lic sphere in early-modern England.

Public and Private Space

The primary achievement of Jewels proposed reconstruction of the semi-

otics of sacramental presence was to advocate a decisive reform of
Englands religious identity based upon a radical critique of the central
premise of traditional sacramental culture, namely the assertion on onto-
logical union of signum and res significata as epitomized by the tradi-
tionalteaching on transubstantiation. It would be misleading to portray
Jewels 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. Jewels deliberate apologetic pur-
pose aims to define religious identity within a reconstituted liturgical and
 political hermeneutics143

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 assump-
tions 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 con-
science and the external public realm of religious and political commu-
nity with all of its hierarchical institutions, structures, and coercive
demands. In the course of the Great Controversy of the 1560s, Jewels
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 individu-
als and community, between subjects and rulers. By igniting the Great
Controversy of the 1560s in his Challenge Sermon, Jewel also draws fitting
attention to Pauls Cross as one of the most important institutions in the
formation of Englands 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 lan-
guage 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 incomprehen-
sible.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 Pauls Cross, the open-air pulpit situated in the cathe-
dral 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

1Richard Helgerson, Forms of nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1992), 252.
2Brian Cummings, The literary culture of the Reformation: grammar and grace (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 6.
3See, for example, Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of protestant England (New York:
St Martins 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), 129. The central claim of Timothy Rosendales 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 cen-
turies centres on the Book of Common Prayer. See 25.
4Torrance Kirby, The Public Sermon: Pauls Cross and the culture of persuasion in
England, 15341570, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Rforme 31.1 (2008),
329. See also Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
 politics of religious identity145

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 prin-
cipally 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 lit-
eracy 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 physi-
cally determinate, situated gathering for the purposes of actual commu-
nication and debate as at the Inns of Court, for example, or at Pauls 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 discourseprinted ser-
mons, admonitions, scholarly polemics, the scurrilous screed of Martin
Marprelatewhile 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 localitye.g. in the vicinity of pulpits, in ale
houses, workshops, markets, and parish churchesand most importantly
in the company of other flesh-and-blood participants.9 Certainly none of
the sixteenth-century Reformers themselves underestimated the critical

5Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991),
1426.
6Alexandra Halasz, The marketplace of print: pamphlets and the public sphere in early
modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11516, 2334. For a criti-
cal view of this approach, see Natalie Mears, Queenship and political discourse in the
Elizabethan realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26, 184.
7Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the culture of persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 39.
8Mears, Queenship and political discourse, 268.
9See Mearss chapter on The Elizabethan public sphere in Queenship and political dis-
course, 182216.
146 chapter seven

importance of orality to their religious task; the evangelical avant-garde

placed enormous emphasis on the claim that faith comes through hear-
ing, to the point that the formula fides ex auditu came to be universally
regarded as a primary axiom of Reformation.10 The most palpable pres-
ence of this axiom was manifest in public utterance from the pulpitand
as I have argued above, one particular pulpit in Pauls churchyard argu-
ably 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, hav-
ing written already on the radical situatedness of the pulpit at Pauls
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 obser-
vation that no books, with the obvious exception of the English Bible and
the Book of Common Prayer, have had a greater part in shaping Englands
religious self-understanding than Foxes Acts and Hookers 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 Tyndales and Cranmers great contributions, of course.
Combined with Helgersons claim that in Elizabethan England the lan-
guage of politics was most often the language of religion, and assuming
that this choice of representative texts has been well made, we may per-
haps entertain some hope of penetrating the mysterious genesis of the
early-modern publics by attending to these two outstanding achieve-
ments of the religious reflection. In order to ensure that there is no misap-
prehension here, the connection I am aiming to draw between Elizabethan

10Hughes Oliphant Old, The reading and preaching of the scriptures in the worship of the
Christian church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 183184.
11Torrance Kirby, The Public Sermon: Pauls Cross and the culture of persuasion in
England, 15341570, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Rforme 31.1 (2008),
329.
12Helgerson, Forms of nationhood, 253.
 politics of religious identity147

theology and church history, on the one hand, and the formation of early-
modern publics on the other, was not explicitly Helgersons concern.
Helgersons main claim is more general in scope, namely that these two
enormous booksFoxes Actes and Monuments (1563) and Hookers Of
the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593), published exactly thirty years
apart, one at the beginning and the other towards the end of Elizabeths
long reignprovide a key to understanding the reshaping of Englands
religious and political identity, and by extension an early-modern sense of
English nationhood. My purpose is to carry Helgersons argument back a
step, with a view to exploring further the religious pre-conditions underly-
ing 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 modernitythe 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, Englands early-modern sense of nationhood is inextricably bound
up with deep religious assumptions which shaped the emergence of early-
modern publics. This link, however, remains to a large extent implicit in
Helgersons 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 diametri-
cally 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

13Taylor, Sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989; repr. 2006), 58, 9, 10, 41, passim.
14Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 249294.
15Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 253. In the Act of Supremacy of 1559 (1 Eliz. c. 1,
Statutes of the Realm, vol. 4, 350355), the Queen is styled the only Supreme Governor of
this realm as well in all ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal.
148 chapter seven

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 presup-
position as well as in their respective longer term historical effects: Foxes
book is historically narrative and anecdotal in structure, while Hookers is
a carefully constructed philosophical and theological argument. Helgerson
summarizes this difference of genre by noting that Hooker contributes
principally to the nations thought while Foxe attends to its story.16
Published respectively near the beginning and near the end of Elizabeths
long reign, the two books were composed under dramatically different cir-
cumstances and historical conditions, and differ markedly as well in the
manner of their reception. Foxes 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 Englands religious identity.17
Despite his claim that Hooker and Foxe are closely allied in their under-
lying 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 arguments chief
shortcoming. In the best traditions of Whig historiography Helgerson por-
trays Foxe, in the company of his host of Puritan admirers, as the hopeful,
progressive, forward-looking liberal, while Hookers 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 approachesviz. the apocalyptic and the apologeticthat
the formation of early-modern publics in England is rendered intelligible.
Whereas Helgersons 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

16Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 253.

17Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 254.
18Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 269, 270.
 politics of religious identity149

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 differ-
ences and common presuppositions of these two approaches to the for-
mulation of Englands Protestant religious identity.
Apocalyptic narrative is characterized by vigorous affirmation of an
unremitting struggle between potent oppositesbetween Christ and
Anti-Christ, Jerusalem and Babylon, God and the Satan, and ecclesiasti-
cally 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 Augustines two
cities, viz. the earthly city (civitas terrena) and the heavenly city (civitas
Dei).20 Foxes apocalyptic narrative places a heavy, scripturally inspired
emphasis on the negative impact on the scattered and invisible commu-
nity of the godly by coercive power wielded by religious and political insti-
tutions; 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 Foxes narrative is overwhelmingly on the suffer-
ings of the godly at the hands of institutional religious authority. In Foxes
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 level-
ling 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 sculum.21
Consistent with this view, the religious heroes of Foxes story are
commoners, simple, ordinary folk, labourers and craftsmen, whom the
religious lites fear as profane spreaders of heresy and insubordination.

19See 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, 15301645 (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).
20See Augustine, de civitate Dei, Bk. XIV, chapter 28.
21J.G.A. Pocock, England, in National Consciousness, history and political culture in
Early Modern Europe, ed. Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1975), 109.
150 chapter seven

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 estab-
lished 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 conscien-
tious 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 churchs institutional structures is the burden of Hookers apolo-
getic discourse, and in a very palpable sense he stands at odds with the
extreme polarisation of the visible and invisible communities presup-
posed by Foxes apocalpytic ecclesiology. Over against the apocalyptic
insistence upon a clear-cut opposition of the revealed authority of scrip-
ture to corrupt human authority, Hooker grounds his defense of the struc-
tures of ecclesiastical order constituted by the Act of Uniformity of 1559
in a complex account of a cosmic hierarchy of lawseternal, natural,
angelic, human, positive, and revealed, to name just a few of the principal
divisions.25 Every aspect of Hookers defense of the complex structures of
the Elizabethan settlement, all the way from the royal supremacy, through

22Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 265.

23See 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).
24Lawes, Pref.7.1;1:34.2023.
25Lawes, Book I.
 politics of religious identity151

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 Cartwrights 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 Anti-
Christ.27 The substance of Hookers apologetic is to appeal to the neces-
sary 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 spiritu-
all 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 accord-
ing unto their place and degree adored.28
An apt summary of the sapiential premiss of Hookers apologetic orienta-
tion is contained in his concluding observation: let all [Wisdoms] wayes
be according unto their place and degree adored.

26Lawes, Book II.

27Thomas Cartwright, A Replye to an Answere made of M. doctor Whitgifte Agaynste
the Admonition ([Hemel Hempstead?: J. Stroud?], 1575), 2627, 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.
28Lawes II.1.4; 1:147.23148.6. 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.
152 chapter seven

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 Hookers
apologetic as a direct challenge to the foundational claim of the Refor
mation concerning the sufficiency of the holy scripture (sola scriptura).29
Hookers appeal to a diversity of sources of the divine wisdoma com-
plex 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 experi-
ence. His Puritan opponents, arguing from an apocalyptic premise, inter-
pret this defence of a natural knowledge of God, of natural law as a
supplement to the revealed law of scripture, and of the hierarchical dispo-
sitio 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 reasonby 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 Hookers apologetic hermeneutic
was interpreted by his Puritan opponents as the very antithesis of the

29See [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 doc-
trine (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 Hookers life-
time. The complete text, together with Hookers marginal annotations, is reprinted in The
Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 4, ed. John Booty (1982), 179.
30See ACL 3. The Holye Scripture contayneth all thinges necessarie to salvation. FLE
4:11.114.9. See especially 4:11.22.
31Hooker, Lawes, V.28.1.
32Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 274, 275.
 politics of religious identity153

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 Hookers apologetic purpose is
framed in explicitly apocalyptic terms. The passage continues with the fol-
lowing 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 assump-
tions of Hookers Puritan critics cannot tolerate any muting of the clarity
of the eschatological contraries.
Helgerson identifies a thread which holds out the possibility of disclos-
ing a path leading out of this hermeneutical labyrinth. Unlikely as it might
seem, the thread is Helgersons allusion to Foxes narrative of the martyr-
dom 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

33ACL 20. Schoolemen, Philosophie, and Poperie. FLE 4:65.1668.19: yet in all your dis-
course, 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.
34Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 8.494.
35Driver 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
154 chapter seven

woman of little education engaged in debate with learned theologians

underlines the subversive social reality of a Reformed church as an imag-
ined community of the saints who are members by virtue of being com-
mitted 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 Drivers insistent distinction between the sacra-
mental 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 sacra-
mental presence in almost identical terms in his celebrated Challenge
Sermon preached at Pauls Cross.36 In the context of a learned critique of
the received scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation Jewel adopts Alice
Drivers 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 Gods 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 Lords 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 there-
fore seeing it is a sign, it cannot be the thing signified also. Thus far we agree, for
I have granted you your own saying.
36To 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 Jewels Works, 1:448.
37Jewels Works, 1:448.
 politics of religious identity155

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 Englands reli-
gious identity. Jewels and Drivers 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 Drivers interroga-
tion, Foxes 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 enchant-
ment. Alice Drivers and John Jewels insistence upon the sharp distinc-
tion 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 none-
theless share an acute sense of the demarcation between the inner subjec-
tive forum of the conscience and the external political forum of common,
156 chapter seven

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 inter-
action 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 exter-
nal political forum that the hermeneutics of the sacrament sheds light on
the conditions for the emergence of new forms of civil association, pre-
eminently in the form of publics.
According to Timothy Rosendale, the contrasting assumptions of tradi-
tional 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 col-
lapse the distinction between signifier and signified in their assertion of
an objectified real presence, the doctrine implicit in the liturgy of Thomas
Cranmers Book of Common Prayer upholds the distinction between the
two. According to Jewels 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 devel-
opment of a distinctively Protestant Elizabethan hermeneutics. The
revised liturgy of the second prayerbook of 1552 shifts the locus of pres-
ence 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 Cranmers 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

38Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 274.

39Timothy Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 96.
40John 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.
41The realist words of 1549this is my bodyare replaced in 1552 with eat this in
remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, by faith, with thanks-
giving. The primary locus of presence is relocated away from the external elements and
made inseparable from the worshipping subject.
 politics of religious identity157

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 remembrancethat is through
an acknowledgement of presence in the conscience. As Rosendale points
out, the internalization of this figural sacrament is necessarily an inter-
pretative act; though it takes place in a communal context, it ultimately
requires a highly individual mode of understanding the elements as meta-
phors 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 deconstruc-
tion of the primacy of a sacramental culturea process of disenchant-
ment.44 This deconstruction or disenchantment constitutes a central
motif in the narrative of Foxes martyrology as it is also of the Protestant
Reformation more generally. However, with the exception of a handful of
religious extremistse.g. Anabaptists, the Family of Love, and various
English Separatistsonce 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 assump-
tions 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 apoca-
lyptic 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

42It 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
occurredi.e. the moment of transubstantiationthus serving to underline vividly the
difference between the two divergent liturgical accounts of presence.
43Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature, 96.
44For this connection see Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation and the
Disenchantment of the World reassessed, The Historical Journal 51.2 (2008), 497528.
45For 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
Hookers 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), 127151.
158 chapter seven

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 sac-
ramental itself. In the liturgy Hooker claims that there is indeed a sacra-
mental 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 Hookers 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 con-
fused 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 instru-
mental 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

46Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.1733. 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 inter-
pretation 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 persuasionin effect a public
sphereas the necessary means of mediation between the seemingly
opposed and incommensurable demands of two opposed realms of exis-
tence 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 persua-
sive 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 nar-
rative 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

47Lawes V.67.5; 2:334.1733.

48See Lawes V.58.2; 2:249.161250.3.
49Lawes V.67.11; 2:338.13340.1.
50John 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 conscienti: 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).
160 chapter seven

sign and thing signified, while the latter seeks to restore the link between
the two. Thus, according to Richard Helgersons 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 early-
modern 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 teachingbetween print and practice as it werecan be dis-
cerned in the distinction evident in the two prominent genres of later
Elizabethan sermons at Pauls 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 sanctifica-
tion.51 While the earthly sign must be clearly distinguished from the mys-
tical 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 ontol-
ogy 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.

51See Mary Morrissey, The Pauls Cross Jeremiad and other sermons of exhortation,
chap. 23 in Pauls Cross and the culture of persuasion in England, 15201640, ed. Torrance
Kirby (Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV, forthcoming in 2014).
 CHAPTER EIGHT

POLITICS OF PERSUASION:
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IN HOOKERS APOLOGETICS

Much of Richard Hookers career was spent in theological and constitu-

tional 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 Hookers 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. Hookers formal Answere3 to
Traverss objections lays the groundwork of the philosophical and theo-
logical 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

1For a recent and thorough account of Richard Hookers career, see Lee W. Gibbs, Life
of Hooker,in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2008), 126.
2A 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, 197793) (hereafter FLE), vol. 5, ed. Laetitia Yeandle and Egil Grislis
(1990), 64148.
3The 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).
4Books 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 vindicat-
ing the Church of England, as truly christian, and duly reformed: in eight books of ecclesiasti-
cal 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
162 chapter eight

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 jurisdic-
tion, (7) the authority of bishops and (8) the supreme authority or sover-
eignty of the Prince in both church and commonwealth, and hence their
unity in the Christian state. Throughout the treatise Hookers 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 particu-
lar, whether such as we obserue, or such as your selues would haue estab-
lished, 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 Whitgifts 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 Calvins Geneva. The preface sets
the tone of the work and announces Hookers main apologetic intent.
There is a significant difference between Hookers 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.
5Lawes Pref.7.1, 2; FLE 1:34.2035.2.
6Lawes Pref. Title; FLE 1:1.1.
 politics of persuasion163

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 Hookers starting-point is to accept unconditionally the
disciplinarian premise that the doctrinal tenets and the pastoral aspira-
tions 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 cos-
mic 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 ques-
tion which wee haue in hand.8
The rhetorical aim is to persuade opponents of the Settlement to consci-
entious conformity by demonstrating the coherence of the particular
decisions of the Settlementthe 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 (15541600) concerns the coherence of his
thought. For several decades scholars have disagreed sharply on how to
interpret the relation between Hookers 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

7Lawes I.1.3; FLE 1:58.56.

8Lawes I.1.3; FLE 1:58.1119.
164 chapter eight

more specific practical, political, and constitutional prescriptions (or par-

ticular decisions) described in the later books (V-VIII).9 In particular,
Hookers 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, Hookers 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 medi-
eval influences on Hookers political theory sparked the first concerted
attack on the logical coherence of these two bookends (so to speak) of his
discourse. Allesandro Passerin dEntrvess monograph Riccardo Hooker:
contributo alla teoria e all storia del diritto naturalearguably the first
extended, critical study of Hookers political thoughtchallenged the
long-received Whig reading by demonstrating the Elizabethans consider-
able debt to scholastic models, and to Aquinas in particular, in the formu-
lation of his account of natural law.11 Not long afterwards, in a British
Academy lecture on Marsilius of Padua, C.W. Previt-Orton remarked on
Hookers evident reliance upon the political theology of the Defensor
Pacis in his account of the royal supremacy in Book VIII of the Lawes.12

9Lawes I.1.2; FLE 1:57.2533. 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 themsel-
ues 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).
10For an insightful summary of the early stages of this dispute see A.S. McGrade, The
Coherence of Hookers Polity: the Books on Power, Journal of the History of Ideas 24.2 (1963),
16382. 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), 376; republished in W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation:
Luther to Hooker, ed. C.W. Dugmore (London: Athlone Press, 1980), 13191.
11Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e all storia del diritto naturale, Memorie dell
Istituto Giuridico 2.22 (Turin: Istituto Giuridico della R. Universit, 1932), 72 ff. See also
dEntrvess 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 filosoficogiuridici, dedicati a
Giorgio Del Vecchio nel XXV anno di insegnamento (19041929), 2 (193031), 22850.
12C.W. Previt-Orton, Marsilius of Padua, Proceedings of the British Academy 21 (1935),
147, at 3132.
 politics of persuasion165

The consequence was the ignition of a protracted debate over the logical
coherence of Hookers 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 Hookers political
theory was later reinforced by Peter Munz and Hugh Kearney. Both schol-
ars 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 apolo-
gia 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.
Aquinass] 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 suc-
cessful conclusion he had been obligated, by various factors, to avail himself
of a political theory [viz. Marsiliuss] 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 Hookers 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

13See Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd., 1952; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1970), 4957, and H.F. Kearney,
Richard Hooker: A Reconstruction, Cambridge Journal 5 (1952), 300311.
14Munz, The Place of Hooker, 101.
15Gunnar Hillerdal, Reason and Revelation in Richard Hooker (Lund: CWK Gleerup,
1962), 30. A.S. McGrade, The Coherence of Hookers Polity, Journal of the History of Ideas
24.2 (1963), 16382. Robert Eccleshall, Richard Hookers Synthesis and the Problem of
Allegiance, Journal of the History of Ideas 37.1 (1976), 111124. W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, The
Source of Hookers Knowledge of Marsilius of Padua, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25.1
(1974), 7581 and The Philosopher of the Politic Society, Studies in the Reformation:
Luther to Hooker, ed. C.W. Dugmore (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 13191.
16Rory Fox, Richard Hooker and the Incoherence of Ecclesiastical Polity, Heythrop
Journal 44.1 (2003), 4359; Patrick Patterson, Hookers Apprentice: God, Entelechy, Beauty,
and Desire in Book One of Hookers Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, Anglican Theological
Review (2002), 96188. 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 the-
ology. 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), 8689.
166 chapter eight

logical coherence of Hookers political thought is challenged from one

perspective or another. Most have confined the scope of their investiga-
tions to the overtly political portions of Hookers 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 sover-
eigns willthus achieving a logically incoherent transition from scholas-
tic 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, there-
fore, he was disposed to sacrifice philosophical consistency to the polemi-
cal 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 imme-
diate 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 Kearneys and Munzs thesis
Gunnar Hillerdal, for example, interprets the design of Hookers 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 booksthe royal supremacy, in particularas
falling into a Nominalistic dichotomy of these two orders of reality.
Hillerdal nonetheless succeeded in showing that the question of the
coherence of Hookers thought extends beyond the confines of his specific
accounts of natural law and the constitution of 1559 and requires atten-
tion to his more general theological and metaphysical assumptions.
Nonetheless, like others before him, Hillerdal assumes too readily Hookers
commitment to Thomism.
Our purpose is to take up once again this question of the coherence of
Hookers 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

17Cargill Thompson, The Philosopher of the Politic Society, 140.

 politics of persuasion167

boundaries established by Hookers own preferred mode of theological

discourse. Indeed, a cautious reflection upon the alien mentalit of this
Renaissance thinker provides the key to making headway in this task. To
begin to make sense of the coherence of Hookers theories of law and sov-
ereignty requires paying the closest possible attention to his deepest theo-
logical 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 inclina-
tion 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 consis-
tent 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 Hookers 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 spe-
cies 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 par-
ticipate 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 itselfi.e. verie Onenesse.20 Hookers 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 causal-
ity set out by Proclus in his Elements of Theology whereby every effect

18See, e.g., Frederic Beiser, The Sovereignty of Reason: the Defense of Rationality in the
Early English Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
19Lawes V.56.5; 2:237.2325.
20Lawes I.2.2; 1:59.1415
168 chapter eight

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 eter-
nallie 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 mer-
cie, written in the booke of eternall wisdom, and held in the handes of omnip-
otent 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 the-
ology 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 com-
plete 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 scho-
lastic theology of such as Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Duns Scotus,
and of Protestant reformers like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli.25 Again,
Hookers eclectic references denote familiarity with all of the above. For
all of these theologians, an uncreated divine principle, the Word (logos, or

21Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R Dodds, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963), 3839; proposition 35. Abbrev. below as ET.
22Hooker, Lawes, V.56.5; 2: 236.2631, 237.1522.
23Ioannis Stobaei Eclogarum libri duo: Quorum prior physicas, posterior ethicas complec-
titur; nunc primm Graec 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.
24See A.S. McGrade, Classical, Patristic, and Medieval Sources, in Companion to
Richard Hooker, 5188, and William Haugaard, Renaissance Patristic Scholarship and
Theology in Sixteenth-Century England, Sixteenth Century Journal 10.3 (1979), 3760.
25Aquinas, Summa Theologi Ia qq. 14, 15, 22, 3335; IIa IIae, qq. 9096. Calvin, Institutes
of the Christian Religion, I.5; II.14
 politics of persuasion169

ratio, or paradeigmareason, 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 thor-
oughly invested in the practical, political, and constitutional conse-
quences 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 consti-
tutional arrangement of the Elizabethan Settlementthe stately house
of the established Church and the goodly tree of the flourishing common-
wealth united under the rule of one sovereignhas 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 apolo-
getic purpose constitutes, moreover, Hookers own explicit claim to coher-
ence of argumenthe 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.
Hookers 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

26Lawes I.1.2; FLE 1:57.616

27See Rudolph Almasy, Polemics and Apologetics, in A Companion to Richard Hooker,
12150.
170 chapter eight

the underlying theological and metaphysical connections connecting the

theories of law and sovereigntyhis intimate knitting together of high
theology and politicsis arguably the defining characteristic of Hookers
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 Hookers 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 con-
nection, Hookers universe is drenched with Deity.30 Nomos-theology,
then, is the substantive proposition of Book I of the Lawes. Hooker sum-
marizes 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 con-
trouersie 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 tele-
ological tradition derived ultimately from the metaphysics of Aristotle
and mediated by Thomas Aquinas. The definition is almost verbatim a

28I make this argument in the introduction to my book Richard Hookers Doctrine of the
Royal Supremacy (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), 14.
29On Hookers 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), 16584; John E. Booty, The
Spirituality of Participation in Richard Hooker, Sewanee Theological Review 38.1 (1994),
920; 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), 126.
30C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1954), 462.
31Lawes I.16.1; FLE 1:135.1113
32Lawes I.2.1; FLE 1:58.2629
 politics of persuasion171

quotation of Aquinass definition of the essence of law.33 Moreover,

scholars such as dEntrves, Munz, Marshall, and others have been quite
correct in their observation of the structural similarities between Hookers
account of law and Thomas Aquinass 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 perfec-
tion which God is, geveth perfection to that he doth.35 Just as the tradi-
tional 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
Aquinass position.36 Hookers emphasis upon the divine unity is marked:
our God is one, or rather verie Onenesse, and meere unitie, having noth-
ing 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
Hookers departure from the Thomistic paradigm. On a certain level, it is
as if Hooker had conflated Aquinass 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 hier-
archical procession from higher to lower species. In this respect, Hookers

33ST Ia II, 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 prin-
ciple 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).
34ST Ia II, qq. 9096. These similarities have often been noted by Hookers interpret-
ers. See, e.g., John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the AnglicanTtradition; an Historical and
Theological Study of Hookers Ecclesiastical Polity (London: A.C. Black, 1963), and Munz, The
Place of Hooker.
35Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.6
36ST Ia II, 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 Reasons 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.
37Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.1419
38ST Ia, q. 3. De simplicitate Dei. See esp. Art. 7, respondeo.
39Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.15
172 chapter eight

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 Aquinass definition of eternal law in secunda pars of the
Summa, however, Hooker distinguishes between a first and a second eter-
nal law on the ground that God is a law both to himself (in se) in his inac-
cessible 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 open-
ing questions of the first part of Aquinass Summa), Hooker invention of
the category second ternal lawe introduces something quite distinctive,
unusual, and unexpected from the standpoint of the tradition of Christian
legal theory.42
All things, Hooker maintains, including Gods 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 agentcausa sui, and consequently
gubernator suiand 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

40On 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 Brulle, in Augustinus in der Neuzeit: Colloque de las Herzog August
Bibliothek de Wolfenbttel 1417 Octobre 1996, ed. Dominique Courcelles (Turnhout: Brepols,
1998), 125160. See also my article Grace and Hierarchy: Richard Hookers Two Platonisms,
RHER, 2540.
41See Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.664.3. ST Ia, q. 3, art. 8 Whether God enters into composi-
tion with other things.
42See Lee Gibbss discussion of the two eternal laws in his Introduction to Book I, FLE
6(1): 92 ff.
43Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:58.3359.1
44Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.12-5
45Lawes I.2.3; FLE 1:60.1618
 politics of persuasion173

eternal law. In this fashion Hooker simultaneously guards the transcen-

dent simplicity and unity of the divine source of lawGod in his verie
Onenesse, the first eternal lawand, by positing the second eternal
law he asserts the radical immanence of God in all the manifold partici-
pating 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, Hookers 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 belowthat is from the creaturely aspect of the manifold
derivative forms of law within it which participate the eternal lawthe
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 re-
emergence 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 meta-
physics, 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

46Lawes I.2.2; FLE 1:59.1219: 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.
47Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.910
48Plotinus, The Enneads, edited and translated by Stephen McKenna (Burdett, New
York: Larson Publications, 1992), III.8.7., 279.
174 chapter eight

Hookerfollowing Aquinass nomenclatureas 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 Hookers system of the laws
expresses Aquinass Christian Neoplatonic twofold motion of creative
procession from (exitus) and redemptive return back to (reditus) the origi-
nal unity of the eternal law. Each of these two primary speciesthe natu-
ral law and the divine lawis further participated by multiple derivative
and dependent forms of law. By means of a continuing procession or dis-
positive emanation, the natural law comprises an unfolding series of sub-
ordinate 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 unwit-
tingly is distinguished from the governance of the rational.50 The law gov-
erning the rational creatures is distinguished further into a law clestial
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 dis-
positio of the second eternal law.
The other principal aspect of the second eternal law, i.e. the law of
Gods special revelation of himself in the Scriptures, presupposes a disrup-
tion 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 condi-
tion 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 Gods ordering purpose. Hookers dis-
tinction between these two summa genera of the second eternal lawviz.
natural law and divine lawcorresponds, 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 supernatu-
ral revelation and by the natural light of reason so critically important to
Protestant theology.52

49ST IaII q. 90, art. 4

50Lawes I.3.25; FLE 1;64.369.20
51Lawes I.4.13; FLE 1:69.2172.24
52See Calvin, Inst. I.2.1. See my article Richard Hookers Theory of Natural Law in the
Context of Reformation Theology, Sixteenth Century Journal 30.3 (1999), 681703.
 politics of persuasion175

On the side of natural law there are further derivative and composite
species of lawchief among them human positive law and the law of
nations, for examplewhich depend upon a conscious, pragmatic reflec-
tion upon the general principles contained in the natural law and their
application to particular, concrete circumstances. These additional deriv-
ative 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 Fallas 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 Hookers 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 simul-
taneously to widen and to decrease the distance between the creator-
lawgiver and the created cosmos. The gathering together of all the deriva-
tive species of law within the second eternal lawa distinction missing
from Aquinass 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 empha-
sizes 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

53For coercive law as a remedium peccati, see Augustine, De civitate Dei, Bk XIX.
54ST, Ia IIae, qq. 90108
55Lee Gibbs, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer,
Anglican Theological Review 84.4 (2002), 943960; Patterson, Hookers 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, 4957; Passerin dEntrves,
Medieval Contribution, esp. 88142; Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition.
176 chapter eight

the creator-source. Hookers distinction between the first and second eter-
nal 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 dis-
tinction between first and second eternal laws serves to hypostasizein
Augustinian fashionthe relation between the divine source and the
derivative manifestations of law rather than to present themas Aquinas
does in his questions on law in the Ia II of the Summa Theologicaas
gradually mediated by means of a hierarchical dispositio. Hookers distinc-
tive treatment of the eternal law exhibits the marked Augustinian ten-
dency 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 divinitatisattributed by Aquinas and
Boniface VIII to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagiteto his Reformed
Protestant, and consequently thoroughly Augustinian, theological assump-
tions concerning the relation between creator and creature and between
the orders of Nature and Grace. What has largely been missed in the discus-
sion of Hookers debt to Aquinas is that the logic of hierarchical dispositio
in Aquinass theological method is present in the argument of the Lawes,
but nonetheless contained by Hooker within a broad Augustinian theologi-
cal frame:
Now that law which as it is laid up in the bosome of God, they call ternall,
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 clestiall 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 bin-
deth 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 ther-
fore, which are as they ought to be, are conformed unto this second law eter-
nall, 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 distinc-
tive characteristics of the Thomist account of law as a hierarchical

56See Kirby, Richard Hookers Theory of Natural Law, 681 ff.

57Lawes I.3.1; FLE 1:63.1429
 politics of persuasion177

emanationof the Eternal Law. Yet, by gathering natural law and divine
law together within the second eternal law, Hooker introduces a deci-
sively 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 Hookers 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 jus-
tice, but solely by means of gracea way mysticall and supernaturallis
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 fash-
ion. Grace alone is capable of overcoming the distance.59 In this way,
Hookers 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 soterio-
logical 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 impli-
cations 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 Hookers nomos-theology
for the interpretation of his theory of sovereignty.

Augustinian Constitutionalism: Law makes the King

There are two critical features of Hookers theory of sovereignty which

stand at the centre of the debate over the coherence of his thought.

58Lawes I.11.5, 6; FLE 1:118.1118

59See Ranall Ingalls, Sin and Grace, in Companion to Richard Hooker, 151183.
178 chapter eight

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 irreconcil-
able 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 Hookers
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 sub-
ordinate to divine law. Munzs argument takes as its unspoken premise
that Hooker actually affirms the Thomist metaphysics of hierarchical dis-
positio. Given such a premise, Hookers generall meditations of Book I are
plainly contradictedin the view of Munz and and in that of many other
scholars besidesby the particular decisions concerning constitutional
order argued in Book VIII.64 This conclusion drawn concerning the logical
incoherence of Hookers 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

60Lawes VIII.1.8; FLE 3:330.1416.

61Lawes VIII.2.1; FLE 3:332.2324: Attribuat Rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei potestatem et
Dominium.
62Lawes VIII.3.1 [Keble 2.6]; FLE 3:335.22336.4
63Munz, Place of Hooker, 4957.
64Munz, Place of Hooker, 96111.
 politics of persuasion179

have attempted to show above how Hooker does indeed appropriate ele-
ments of Aquinass theory of law, how on occasion he appears almost to
be quoting directly from the Summa, but how also, nonetheless, he modi-
fies 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, Hookers
Erastian defence of the Civil Magistrates role as the highest uncom-
manded Commander65 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.
Hookers 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 Marsiliuss
chief aim, namely to expose the Roman papacys quest for domination
the libido dominandi definitive of Augustines civitas terrenathat 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

65Lawes VIII.1.8 [Keble 2.1]; FLE 330.15.

66The label is employed by Munz, Place of Hooker, 101. Hugh Kearney portrays Hooker
in this respect as proto-Hobbesian; see Hooker: A Reconstruction, 300311. 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), 89119.
67Marsilius 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).
68According to Augustine, the two citiesthe civitas Dei and the civitas terrenaare
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 Marcourts satire.
69Marsilius, 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
180 chapter eight

set out a series of dogmatic propositions which culminated in the asser-

tion of Papal supremacy.70 His assertion of the popes 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 divinitatisthe same logic which informs Thomas
Aquinass theory of the hierarchically ordered, dispositive emanation of
the species of law in the prima secund pars of his Summa Theologica.71
Over against the hierarchical logic of dispositio implied by the lex divinita-
tis favoured by both Aquinas and Boniface VIII, Marsilius proposes a radi-
cal 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 meta-
physics of hierarchical dispositio, Marsiliuss Augustinian critique asserts a
hypostatic relation between the spiritual and temporal realms, between
the orders of grace and nature. This Augustinian rejection of the meta-
physical 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 the-
ology also shapes Hookers 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 dis-
tinguished 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 suc-
cessors to be so. I will further demonstrate that Christ and His apostles desired to be sub-
ject 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 condem-
nation. See Paul Halsall, Medieval Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/
marsiglio4.html.
70The Bull was formally issued on 18 November 1302. The original is no longer in exis-
tence; 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. 124546. For an English trans-
lation of the bull see Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 10501300 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1988), 188189.
71For Aquinass formulation of the lex divinitatis see S T IIa II, 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 common-
wealth 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 Hookers political Augustini
anism which connects the arguments of Books I and VIII and renders
them coherent with each other.
Hookers 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 Marsiliuss thoroughly Augus
tinian insistence upon the need to distinguish sharply and clearlyand
therefore hypostatically rather than dispositivelybetween 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 reason-
ing Hooker maintains that Christ alone (solus Christus)75 exercises head-
ship over the Church as an inner, invisible, and mystical civitasi.e. the
church as a societie supernaturallwhile the ecclesiastical jurisdiction
of the Prince belongs properly to the outward, visible, and external
civitasi.e. the church as a human, politique societie:

72Lawes VIII.l.2, 5; FLE 3:3l8, 324.

731 Elizabeth I, cap. 1; Statutes of the Realm, 4:350355. See also 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; SR
3:492493.
74On 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).
75See Lawes VIII.4.9 [Keble 4.9]; FLE 377.1620. 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
182 chapter eight

The Church being a supernaturall societie, doth differ from naturall societ-
ies 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 cer-
taine 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 him-
selfe 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 disposi-
tively) to the first eternal law, so also the church as a societie supernatu-
rall with its lawe supernaturall is related to the church as a human
politique societie77 governed by positive human law which in turn is
derived from a reflection upon the natural lawin 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 distin-
guished 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 Hookers 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 spiri-
tual jurisdiction:

76Lawes I.15.2; FLE 1:131620.

77See Lawes I.15.3; FLE 1:131.25
78Lawes VIII.2.1; FLE 3:331.17332.1.
79MS 364, fols. 6984; 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), 494.1014.
 politics of persuasion183

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.80
This relation of subordination between the spiritual and the temporal
realms establishes the ecclesiastical hierarch as an ordained agent or sac-
ramental mediator between the worlds. Hookers naming of the Sovereign
as uncommanded Commandera charming allusion to Aristotles
unmoved moverwould 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 subjec-
tion 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 Aristotles
unmoved mover gives life and motion to the entire physical cosmos, so
also the Prince is the lex animata of the entire political realmpolitique
societie ( )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

80Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:col. 124546: 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: 12],
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 interme-
diaries. 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 eccle-
siastica potestate, ed. Arthur P. Monahan (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) I.4, 1720,
and Monahans introduction, xxvii.
81Lawes VIII.3.5; FLE 3:355.33.
184 chapter eight

In making this claim is Hooker trapped in some deep internal contradic-

tion 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
Hookers thought, however, we can discern in this account of the nature of
the sovereign power a theological pattern reminiscent of the subtle struc-
ture 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 hypostati-
cally from the church as an external, visible, and human politique soci-
etie. 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/invis-
ible, inward/outward, temporal/eternal, yet Christ is nonetheless person-
ally 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 subordina-
tion of human jurisdiction to spiritual jurisdiction, but solely a hypostatic
distinctionas 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 prop-
erly belong to the sphere of the politique societie. There is also a con-
comitant 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 common-
wealths things spirituall ought above temporall to be provided for. And of
things spirituall the chiefest is Religion.83

82Lawes VIII.4.9; FLE 3:377.710.

83Lawes VIII.1.4; FLE 3:321.1016.
 politics of persuasion185

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 statea term he uses in a remark-
ably modern sensewith 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 prop-
erly 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, Gods 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

84Lawes VIII.3.1; FLE 3:336.14.

85Lawes VIII.1.2; FLE 3:320.912. 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).
86Lawes 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 Hookers
first propositionor perhaps we might call it a fundamental herme
neutical premiseconcerning the judgment of what is convenient and

1See John Bootys 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), 183231. See also Torrance Kirby, Angels descend
ing and ascending: Richard Hookers discourse on the double motion of Common Prayer,
in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2003), 111130.
2Of 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; 2:33.2634.6 (emphasis added).
 public religion and public worship187

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 claimin short, his hermeneuticsis 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
Hookers 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 12261243. The passage in Chronicles (2 Chron. 2:4
6) refers to Solomons 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 Solomons Temple, is
heaven upon earth.4 Hooker cites Ambroses 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

3Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24.

4 E .
(Rome: Demetrius Doukas,
1526), sig. M2r; PG 98:384. See Lawes V.6.2; 2:34f; see also FLE 6(2): 659.
188 chapter nine

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 Fields 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 Hookers summary of these objections,

5Delectatio Domini in Ecclesia est, Ecclesia vero est imago clestium. De interpellatione
David; in Opera Omnia (Basle: Eusebius Episcopius, 1567), vol. 4, 410; PL 14:813.
6Facit in terris opera clorum. Epistle 6:16, in Lucubrationes (Basle: Heinrich Petri,
1542), 205; PL 58:560.
7Lawes V.6.2; 2:34.36
8Cartwright, A replye to an ansvvere, 131. See WW 2:438.
9See Walter Travers, Ecclesiastic disciplin, et Anglican ecclesi ab aberrationis,
plena verbo Dei, & dilucida explicatio (Rupell: Adam de Monte, 1574) fol. 12 r-v. For a
contemporary English translation of Traverss 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], 1516.
 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 religion11 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 pop-
ishe 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 Hookers 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 phanciean expression referring to the imaginative
faculty, plausibly to Platos is the mean or the instrument
whereby the mind is addressed.

10Lawes IV.3.1; 1:280.616

11See Hookers peroration to Lawes IV.14.7; 1:343.8344.32, esp. 344.6.
12Lawes IV.1.3; 1:274.1527
190 chapter nine

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 Hookers liturgical hermeneutics: the sen-
sible 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 Pseudo-
Dionysius 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

13See Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,
2005), 2944.
14Lawes IV.1.3; 1:275.2124.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.
15See Daniel T. Lochman, Divus Dionysius: authority, self, and society in John Colets
reading of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Journal of the History of Ideas 68.1 (2007), 134. On
Hookers extensive use of the concept of the lex divinitatis, see Torrance Kirby, Grace and
Hierarchy, Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, 2540.
16For Aquinass 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), 428440.
17Lawes, VIII.Supplement II; 3:493.33494.13; see also FLE 6(2): 108081.
 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 things19 serve to mediate knowledge of things
spiritually understood of which they are resemblances is as clear a formu
lation as one might wish of Hookers 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 Hookers 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 clestial 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

18Autograph Notes (Supplement II), 3:494

19Sensible things and hierarchies are both translated sacramenta in the Latin edi
tion of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. See Comm. on 1:275.2124e in FLE 6(1): 602
20Lawes V.6.2; 2:33.2634.6 (emphasis added).
21Lawes I.16.4; 1:137.1330
22Lawes I.16.4; 1:137.2830.
192 chapter nine

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 clestial
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 oneverse
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 Hookers 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

23Lawes V.29.5; 2:127.1214.

24The Collect appointed in the Book of Common Prayer to be read on 29 September.
25Lawes V.25.2; 2:114.1321. See Feisal G. Mohamed, Renaissance Thought on the
Celestial Hierarchy: the decline of a tradition?, Journal of the History of Ideas 65.4 (2004),
570572.
26Lawes V.39.1; 2:154.57.
27Lawes V.39.4; 2:158.1620.
 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 Cartwrights 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 Hookers 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. Hookers 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 Hookers 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

28Cartwright, Replye, 203.

29ACL 4:23.1024.8; 4:65.1.
194 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 churchs 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
natureas 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

30Lawes V.23.1; FLE 2:110.716. 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, 19771997).
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).
31Lawes I.11.2; FLE 1:112.1720
 public religion and public worship195

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
Hookers 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 Hookers 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 Hookers conception
of human participation of the divine life33theosis, so to speak, although
Hooker does not employ this exact languagethrough 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.
Hookers 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.

32Lawes V.50.3; FLE 2: 208.20209.2

33See 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), 165184. 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), 126.
196 chapter nine

In keeping with his capacious metaphor of instruction as an angelic com

munication of heavenly inspiration, Hookers 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
motionsof the angellic entercorse, that is to say both instruction in the
truth and the orientation of the souls 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

34Lawes V.18.1, 3;2:65.1819, 67.610

35Lawes V.1821; 2:65.487.17
36Lawes V.19.1; 2:21.4
37Lawes V.23.1; 2:2631
 public religion and public worship197

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 clestiall 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 [Christs] Church39 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
natureand 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 Gods Incarnation. In an echo of the rehearsal of the Decalogue
Hooker begins with Gods 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

38Lawes V.23.1;2:111.1618
39Lawes V.24.1; 2:111.2627
40Lawes V.50.1; 2:208.25209.2
41Lawes 1.2.2; 1:59.2023
42Lawes V.51.1; 2:209.815
198 chapter nine

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 himwhich
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,

432 Cor. 5:19, quoted in Lawes V.51.3; 2:210.26211.1

44Lawes V.56.1; 2:234.27
45Lawes V.56.1; 2:208. 25209.2 See also Lawes I.5.1,2 and A Learned Sermon of the Nature
of Pride, FLE 5:341.39: 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.
46See Lawes V.56.5; 2: 236.2631, 237.1525. 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.
 public religion and public worship199

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 Gods 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 militantnulla
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 fore-
knowledge saveth us not without our actuall and reall adoption into the fellow-
ship 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 Hookers 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

47Lawes V.56.2; 2:235.39

48Lawes V.56.7; 2:238.1824
49Lawes V.56.7;2:238.23239.8 (my italics)
200 chapter nine

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 Hookers first

50Lawes V.50.1; 2:207.1015

51See John Bootys 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), 183231. See also Torrance Kirby, Angels descend
ing and ascending: Richard Hookers discourse on the double motion of Common Prayer,
in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, ed. Torrance Kirby (London and Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2003), 111130.
52Lawes V.6.2; 2:33.2634.6 (emphasis added).
 public religion and public worship201

propositionor perhaps we might call it a fundamental hermeneutical

premiseconcerning 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 Hookers 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 mens profession, but
rather they be certain witnesses and effectual signs of grace, and Gods
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

53Lawes V.6.1; 2:32.24

54Lawes V.55.1; 2:227.32 and V.56.7; 2:240.11
55Lawes V.57.5; 2:247.1621
202 chapter nine

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 Christs
body extends to the totality of our humanity, just as in his Incarnation
Christ is teleos anthropos, completely and perfectly man. From Christs
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 Hookers 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

56Lawes V.57.5; 2:247.58

57Lawes V.56.7;2:239.45
58Lawes V.56.9;2:241.511
 public religion and public worship203

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 formsthe True, the Good, and the Beautifulin 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

59Wisdom 8:1also 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; 1:60.2761.6.
60Lawes I.11.2; 1:112.1720
 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 Pauls 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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Accession Day sermons82
Actes and Monuments (Foxe)29,
146147, 155
Act Extinguishing the Authority of
the Bishop of Rome (1536)12,
67n66, 111n42
Act in Restraint of Appeals to
Rome of 153312, 55, 67n66, 111n42
Act of Six Articles (1539)58
Act of Submission of the Clergy (1532)54,
56, 57, 67n65, 111n43
Act of Supremacy1, 9, 12, 67n66, 102, 111,
147n15, 181
Act of Uniformity118, 147148, 150
adiaphora152
An Admonition to the Parliament (Wilcox
and Field)6667, 68, 70, 188, 189
Admonition Controversy77, 162
Advertisements (Parker)67, 77
Affair of the Placards1012, 14, 33, 34
agency, elements of123124
Alchemist22
Allen, William87, 88n71
Ambrose of Milan168, 187
amor Dei23n53, 104, 179n68
amor sui104
Anabaptists26n62, 83, 138, 157
Anastasius, emperor56n17
Anaxagoras168
angels
body of Christ201
celestial law174, 176
hierarchy of7, 92, 191
lex divinitatis190n16
prayer191192, 193197, 199200
Anglican middle way7071
Anne Boleyn30, 55, 72
Anselm of Canterbury168
Answer of the Ordinaries54
Ansvvere to Maister Iuelles chalenge
(Harding)86
Answere (Hooker)161
Answer to a Letter (St German)25
Anti-christ59, 120n28, 149, 151
anti-clericalism3, 11n6, 14, 16, 2627, 63
antiphonal singing192193
apocalyptic vs. apologetic narrative56,
141, 146, 147160
Apocrypha202203
INDEX
Apologia ecclesi anglican (An Apologie
of the Church of England; Jewel)8687,
89, 126, 139
Aquinas See Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle153, 170, 183
Armstrong, Clement19, 2627, 32, 73
Articles of Religion53, 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 of35
Augustine2324, 37n3, 44, 47, 88, 104
difference between sign and thing
signified, 130, 133, 139
hypostatic mediation, 176177, 179, 181
on justification, 134
Liber Retractationum, 110
Augustinian dialectic of two cities1820,
149, 179n68
Autograph Notes (Hooker)182183, 190
Averroism165, 178179
Bale, John28n69, 52n4
Bancroft, Richard77, 78, 82n45
baptism39, 201
Barlow, William81
Basil of Caesarea192
Baumer, Franklin Le Van15n27, 95n87
beauty of holiness193
Becon, Thomas80
Bda, Nol10, 11n6
Bedrotus, Jacobus24n55
Bellay, Jean du11
Benjamin, Walter123
Berengarius of Tours131
Berthelet, Thomas25, 32
Berthoud, Gabrielle10n3, 1213, 14,
16n33, 27n64
Beza, Theodore69
Biddel, John102
Bill, William84
Bishop of Rome
Act Extinguishing the Authority of the
Bishop of Rome12, 67n66, 111n42
no greater than others60, 73, 75, 85,
92, 94
supreme jurisdiction55
220 index
bishops
Act of Submission of the Clergy54, 56,
57, 67n65, 111n43
authority of108n34, 162
burned for heresy109
ecclesiastical reform58, 59, 6869
excluded from ruling23n54, 179n69
hierarchy62, 63, 64, 150151, 193
Pauls Cross sermons77, 126n50
reducing powers of53n4
Boke of Marchauntes (de Marcourt)
banned29
clerical abuses16
English propaganda campaign12, 27, 30
Old Testament model of
kingship2526
possible translators23, 28, 29
published by Godfray1, 9, 14, 27
published by Jugge1
second edition31
secular power1617, 34
two cities/countries1820, 21
Bomelius, Henricus (Hendrik von
Bommel)30
Bonaventure,168
Boniface VIII2021, 24, 92n82, 94, 176,
179180, 182183
Bonner, Edmund29n72, 74, 81, 83, 118
Bonners Register29n72
book burning81
Booke of Traditions (Smyth)110112
The book of Bertram the priest concerning
the body and blood of Christ in the
sacrament131
Book of Common Prayer53, 59, 61, 68, 146
national liturgy148
orthodoxy of66
pomp188189
Prayer of Humble Access198
public duties200
restoration of85
revision of99
revised (1552)130, 135, 156157
revised (1559)134, 135, 194
signs vs. things signified156, 186187
Book of Martyrs (Foxe) See Actes and
Monuments
books, prohibited29
book trade, and patronage1415
Bray, Gerald52, 53, 61n43, 63
Brionnet, Guillaume11
A brief Treatyse (Smyth)110111
Bucer, Martin24, 31, 60, 6162, 68
Bullinger, Heinrich59, 69, 70
Bullingham, John120n28
Caesaro-Papism33
Calvin, John
Augustinian dialectic20
commendation of Vermigli132
Greek metaphysics168
Institutio christian religionis11, 3738,
3941, 4345
quotes151n28
Beza successor of69
theological anthropology36
twofold government4350
Cameron, Euan123, 137n88
Campion, Edmund97
canon law
Gratians Decretum55
distinguished from civil law6566
outward forum vs. inward forum38,
4445
prohibition in universities67
canon law reform5171
Canons of 160367
Canons Yeomans Tale (Chaucer)22
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)22
capitalism42
Cardinal College, Oxford106. See also
Christ Church, Oxford
Cardwell, Edward53
Cargill Thompson, James165166
Cartwright, Thomas6869, 151, 162, 188,
189, 192193
Cathedral of Chichester87
Catholic University in Douai109
Cave (Platos Republic)99100, 103, 110
Challenge Sermon (Jewel)8586,
8890, 133
background to120125
defining the terms of the Great
Controversy114115
delivery of125126
religious identity142143
responses to132
sacramental presence154155
chantries, dissolution of118
Charles IX31
Chastillon, Louis de11, 12
Chaucer, Geoffrey22
Chedsey, William133
Cheke, John6061
Christ
Gospel and107
headship of181, 184185
speech of104
twofold nature of4749
A Christian Letter of certayne Englishe
Protestantes152, 193194
 index221
Christian liberty3941, 42, 44
Christ Church, Oxford82, 105106, 118, 133
Christology4749, 50, 187, 195, 201
Christopherson, John84
church, as external grace39
church militant and church trium-
phant186188, 191, 196197, 199
Church of England
Council of Trent126
question of true reformation6871
churchwarden64
Cicero104
City of God (Augustine)37n3
civil government, as external grace39
Clark, Jonathan122
Clement of Alexandria168
clergy, abuses by16
clericalism
code of discipline6971
in Reformatio65
Clement VII55, 7274, 77, 92, 93
Clementine Epistles112
Coates, George119
Cole, Henry86, 126
Colet, John101, 190
Colloquy of Poissy31
communion39, 135136, 201202
communion under one kind90
A comparison betwene the olde learnynge
and the newe (Turner, trans.)29
Concordat countries66
Confutatio (Smyth)132
Confutation of the Apology (Harding)87
conscience, forum of38, 45
conscience
defined47
gap with authority97
hypostatic identity47
sacramental presence135, 157, 158
constitutional revision3334
conversio103104
conversion, Greek roots of102104
Convocation of Canterbury67n65
Convocation of York67n65
Cooke, Anne, Lady Bacon86
Cooper, Thomas82n45
corpus christianum69
Corpus iuris canonici57, 60, 61, 183n80
Corpus iuris civilis57
Council of Chalcedon48
Council of Trent36, 126, 129
Counter-Reformation79, 8384
Coverdale, Miles29, 81
Cox, Richard59, 82, 118
Cranmer, Thomas51, 52, 54, 58, 83, 146
Augustinian approach to signs131
and Bucer61
Edmund Bonners trial118
excommunication of55, 72
figurative sacramental presence130
Henry VIIIs annulment72
Marian martyr59n53
membership on Royal
Commission5961
Pauls Cross77, 78, 80
Richard Smyth and107, 109, 117n16
Royal Supremacy65
vernacular liturgies133
writings68
Crevier-Denomm, Isabelle29n74, 30
Cromwell, Thomas11, 15
anti-papal campaign30, 85, 92
fall of31, 33, 74
inner circle28, 73
Pauls Cross75, 77, 7980, 9596
propaganda22, 24, 27, 33, 9596, 102
public3135
culture of persuasion40, 42, 7475, 78, 80
Challenge Sermon85, 143
commitment to93
defense of sacramental culture
and9192
perceived need9596
sacramental culture vs.9495,
9798, 144
Cummings, Brian144
cura religionis62
cure of souls25
Cyril of Alexandria168
Daniell, David100n3
Das Einigerlei Bild (Bucer)24
David107
Day, John13
Placards, day of1012, 14, 33, 34
deacons63, 64n55
de civitate Dei (Augustine)37n3
Declaration de la Messe (Marcourt)13, 35
decretals60, 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)2324,
32, 164, 179180
De nova et veteri doctrina (Rhegius)13
dEntrves, Allesandro Passerin164, 171
De Regno Christi (Bucer)62
222 index
desacralization121, 127
Descartes, Ren38n7
A detection of the devils Sophistrie128129
diaconate, role of64
Dionysius See Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite
Disciplinarian Puritanism69, 77, 151, 161,
162, 166
disenchantment91, 92, 120125, 127,
137138, 139, 141, 157
dispositio1, 37, 49, 180
antiphonal singing192193
Thomist metaphysics173174, 176177
within the state184185
divine law (lex divinitatis)2024, 91,
9293, 94, 171172, 173174, 176, 178,
180, 190
divine unity171, 173, 197198
doctors63
doctrine201202
Donation of Constantine22
Dorman, Thomas86
Douai, Catholic University in109
Douai, English College at87, 126
Driver, Alice153155
Dudley, John51, 52
Duffy, Eamon31n79, 121
Duns Scotus, John168
duplex cognitio Dei174
duplex gratia4547
duplex regimen3941, 4350
Early Church Fathers88, 104, 110, 168
Eccleshall, Robert165
ecclesiastical discipline
as essential mark62, 68
reformation attempts in Strasbourg63
suspicion of6971
Ecclesiastical Hierarchies (Pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite)190
ecclesiastical ordinances infringing on
royal prerogative5458
ecclesiastical vs. spiritual power183185
Edward VI
accession9, 13n21, 14, 29n74, 33, 99
civil disorder58
clericalism65
death of118
De Regno Christi dedicated to62
reforming establishment34, 35, 96
Royal Commission of 325152, 5861
sermon topics during reign117
Stephen Gardiner108109
elders63
Elements of Theology (Proclus)167168
Elizabeth I14n23, 35, 52
accession of59, 109, 154
Challenge Sermon126
clericalism and lay supremacy65
epistles to87
religious identity under78, 96,
146147
sermon topics during reign117
Elizabethan Settlement66, 69, 137138,
141, 147, 150
Hookers defense161163, 164,
166, 169
Enchanted Europe (Cameron)123
Enchiridion militis Christiani99100, 102,
110, 112
England as empire12, 55, 67n66,
111n42
English Humanists and Reformation Politics
under Henry VIII and Edward VI
(McConica)9, 28n67, 30
English New Testament (Tyndale)81, 146
Enlightenment122
Erasmian reform99
Erasmus, Desiderius
Enchiridion militis Christiani99100,
102, 110, 112
Handbook101
Manuell of the christen knyght103
supported by Francis I and Marguerite
of Navarre10
Erastian theory62, 65, 69
Elizabethan Settlement164, 166
Hooker and178
Erasmian humanism3031
Erastus69
esse of the church152
taples, Lefvre d10, 24
eternal law167, 172174, 175177, 182
Eucharist39, 135136, 201202
Eusebius of Caesarea168
Euthyphro (Plato)103
excommunication55, 65, 72, 77, 92, 93
exhortations to charity138, 160
Farel, Guillaume14
Family of Love138, 157
Feckenham, John81
fides ex auditu117, 146
Field, John188
First Corinthians125
Fish, Simon28, 30
Fisher, John74, 78
Fletcher, Richard82n45
 index223

Forest, John80 grace

Forms, Platonic99100 duplex gratia4547
Forms of Nationhood (Helgerson)144, external means of39, 43
146147, 160 signs of201
Fortress of the Faith (Stapleton)87 Gratian55
Forty-Two Articles of Religion59, 61, 64 Gratian (fictional usage)38
See also Articles of Religion great chain9193, 190
forum conscienti38, 40, 44, 4748, 81, Great Controversy8688, 8990, 96, 114,
9798, 155156, 159 120n28, 126128, 143
forum externum et politicum38, 40, 44, 45, Gregory of Nyssa168
4748, 81, 9798, 155156, 159 Grey, Jane8384
Fourth Lateran Council129, 137n88 Grindal, Edmund85
Fox, Rory165 groupe de Meaux11
Foxe, John29, 51, 5253, 100n3, 108, 131 Guez, du28
apocalyptic narrative148150, 153155 Gwather, Rudolph69
internal and external fora155156
prominence of Actes146147 Habermas, Jrgen36, 77, 83, 116, 145
Puritanism66, 148 Haddon, Walter6061, 87
religious identity160 Haigh, Christopher74n9, 80, 106n22,
frameworks of interpretation, 122123
competing9091 Halasz, Alexandra115116, 145
Francis I (France)10 Harding, Thomas8687, 92, 126, 129, 131,
Francis II (France)31 133, 134
Frith, John14, 15, 30, 32 Haugaard, William70
Hegel, G.W.F.4142
Gardiner, Stephen55n14, 72n1 Helgerson, Richard144, 146147, 152,
attack on Cranmer131 155, 160
Edward VI108109 Henri II (France)34
Pauls Cross74, 78, 80, 82, 84, 118 Henrician Canons of 15355758
on Real Presence128129 Henrician Catholicism7374
Richard Smyth and107108 Henry III (England)77
Gascoine, Dr154 Henry VIII1112, 26
Gelasius5556 canon law prohibition in
Geneva6970, 162 universities67
Geranius, Cephas13n18. See also Cromwells public and32
Marcourt, Antoine de death of31, 58
German Idealism4142 divorces54, 55, 72
Germanus Nauplius II187 excommunication by Clement VII55,
Gibbs, Lee165 7274, 75, 92, 93
Giles of Rome20, 24 headship of Church of England51,
Glasier, Hugh119 67n66, 7980
Godfray, Thomas9, 14 heresy laws65
An Answer to a Letter (St German)25 librarian of28
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)22 marriage to Anne Boleyn55, 72
official sponsorship23 plurality of Reformations106n22
propaganda15, 30, 3132, 3334 prohibited books29
semi-official status35 and publishing trade15, 95n87
translators for28 Heracleitus168
God, as One167, 171, 173, 197 heresy
God as law167177 Berengarian sacramentary heresy131
Goodrich, Thomas59 Hugh Latimer109
Goodrich, Richard60 Lutheran dogma8182
good works17 Nicholas Ridley109
grace alone16 recantations8081
224 index
Reformatio on65
Thomas Cranmer109
Heskyns, Thomas88n71
Heywood, John80
hierarchy3738
cosmic hierarchy of laws150
sacramentally mediated93
threefold hierarchy189
universal priesthood vs.149
Higman, Francis10, 30
Hillerdal, Gunnar165166
Holland, Thomas82n45
Holy Trinity197199, 203
Hooker, Richard78, 138, 139141
antiphonal singing192193
apologetic narrative147148, 150151
bond between sign and
signified158160
coherence of arguments163167,
177185
definition of law170
Elizabethan Settlement161163,
164, 169
on the Incarnation195
internal and external fora155156,
159160
on prayer194197
prominence of Lawes146147
Puritans vs.152153, 166, 193
religious identity160
signs, importance of186193,
200201
Hooper, John53n4, 59n33, 118
Huguenots34
humanism and Protestantism10n5
The huntyng & fyndyng out of the Romishe
fox (Turner, trans.)29
identity90. See also religious identity
images, veneration of85, 90
imago dei93, 175
Incarnation195, 197199, 202
Institutio christian religionis (Calvin)11,
3738, 3941, 4345
instrumental realism135136
James I, Canons of 160367
Jeremiads138139, 160
Jerome168
Jewel, John76, 78
Apologia ecclesi anglican8687, 89,
126, 139
Augustinian approach to signs,131135,
139140, 156
Challenge Sermon8586, 8890, 114115,
120127, 132, 133, 142143, 154155
Defence of the Apologie87, 130, 156
instrumental realism135136
novelty of transubstantiation129130
John the Baptist104
Joseph, John83
Jugge, Richard9, 14
jurisdiction, coercive63
jurisdiction, spiritual vs. temporal4445,
62, 65, 7071, 92n82. See also Royal
Supremacy
justification, Augustine on134
justification by faith16, 39, 45, 87, 91, 107
Justin Martyr168
Katherine of Aragon12n11, 54, 55, 72
Kearney, Hugh165166
Kings Printer25, 3132, 33, 35, 102
koinonia198
Kyrkham, Thomas118
Lake, Peter75n13, 97, 115
language, impoverishment of42
Lasco, John 59, 60
Lateran Council129, 137n88
Latimer, Hugh59n33, 78, 8182, 109
Lavardin, Hildebert de129n58
law, God as167177
lay supremacy and church reform6263,
69
A Learned Sermon of the Nature of
Pride198n45
Lee, Edward55n14, 72n1, 80
Les Faictz du Jesus Christ et du Pape35
Lever, Thomas83
Lewis, C.S.170
lex animata183
lex divinitatis2024, 91, 9293, 94, 171172,
173174, 176, 178, 180, 190
Liber Precum Publicarum (Haddon,
trans.)87
Liber Retractationum (Augustine)110
liberties of the City77
libido dominadi23, 104, 179
literacy116, 124n46, 145
The Litigants (Menander)103
liturgical order of communion135136,
157n42
liturgy, vernacular40, 118, 149
Liturgy and Literature (Rosendale)136137
Livre des marchans (de Marcourt)935
banned29
clerical abuses16
 index225

English propaganda campaign12, 27, 30 McConica, James9, 28n67, 30

Old Testament model of McCullough, Peter126n50
kingship2526 McGrade, A.S.165
possible translators23, 28, 29 McLuhan, Marshall89n73, 115
published by Godfray1, 9, 14, 27 Mears, Natalie116, 145, 146
published by Jugge1 mediation24, 37
second edition31 medieval hierarchy63, 64, 67
secular power1617, 34 Meditations on first philosophy
two cities/countries1820, 21 (Descartes)38n7
logoi123, 124 medium is the message89, 96, 115
logos theology168172, 173 Menander103
Longland, John55n14, 72n1 metanoia100, 102104
Long Reformation121 moderation3031
Louvain, University of87, 88, 90, 109, modernity4142, 75, 91, 92, 122123,
117n16, 126, 133 165n16
Lber, Thomas, alias Erastus69. See also modernization121125
Erastian theory monasteries, suppression of14, 74, 93, 106
Lucas, John60 Montfort, Simon de77
Luther, Martin17, 18, 107, 168 moral exhortation40
Lutheran doctrine80 moral ontology
lutheriens11 defined36n2
Lyndwood, William57 assumptions of127
opposition between89
MacCulloch, Diarmaid123 morals
Machyn, Henry76, 84, 119, 125 Erasmus101102
MacLure, Millar77, 78, 81, 82n45, 117 supervision of63, 6465
Manicheus21n43 More, Thomas14, 30, 74
Manuell of the christen knyght Morrissey, Mary126n50, 138
(Erasmus)103 Munz, Peter165166, 171, 178, 179n66
Marcourt, Antoine de Musculus, Wolfgang69
Articles veritables11n6
Declaration de la Messe13 natural law173174
Livre des marchans935 New Learning109110
Petit traict tres utile, et salutaire de la New Testament (Tyndale, trans.)101102
Sainte Eucharistie de nostre Seigneur Nicholas of Cusa112
Jesuchrist13 Noelz nouveaux35
translations13, 2728 nomos-theology167177, 178
Marguerite of Navarre10 not ecclesi6263, 68
Marian martyrs59 nous173
Marprelate, Martin116, 145 Novum instrument omne
Marshall, John Sedberry171 (Erasmus)101102
Marshall, Peter106n22 Nowell, Alexander86
Marshall, William15, 23, 24, 28, 32, 80
Marsilius of Padua18, 23, 32, 164165, Obedience of a Christian Man
179180 (Tyndale)1516
Martiall, John88n71 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie
martyrs (Hooker)140, 146147, 151, 161163
Alice Driver153154 coherence of arguments163167
apocalyptic narrative149 God is law167177
Marian martyrs59 prayer194
Mary I, Queen28, 35, 52, 84, 96, 105, signs186193
109, 119, 153 The old learninge and the newe
Mass82, 89, 118119 (Rhegius)28
May, William60 omnis homo mendax107108, 113
226 index
One, God as167, 171, 173, 197
ontological distinctions36, 39, 44, 46
Oration on the dignity of man (Pico della
Mirandola)100
Ordinal, 189
Origen168
Osorius, Hieronymous87
Oxford Disputation of 154999, 131, 133
papacy
English jurisdiction1112
final judge91
repudiation of authority87 (See also
Royal Supremacy)
Parable of the Wicked Mammon
(Tyndale)35
paradeigma168169
Paradiso (Dante)38
Parker, Matthew51, 53, 60, 85
Advertisements67, 77
Anne Cooke, Lady Bacon86
participation168, 170
pastors63
Pathway into the Holy Scripture
(Tyndale)15
Patristic scholarship88
patronage1415
Patterson, Patrick165
Paul198
Pauls Cross29, 31
bishops77, 126n50
Elizabethan sermons138, 160
face of government77
preaching at75, 7679
pope7980, 85, 92
press79, 9596
public space7688
public sphere7778, 83
recantations8081
Register of Sermons78, 81, 82n45, 117
religious identity7779, 8283, 8788
Royal Supremacy7981, 82
Shrouds83
Stephen Gardiner74, 78, 80, 82, 84, 118
Thomas Cranmer77, 78, 80
Thomas Cromwell75, 77, 7980, 9596
penance4445, 8081, 83
penitence, act of82
penitence, internal45
Petit traict tres utile, et salutaire de la
Sainte Eucharistie de nostre Seigneur
Jesuchrist (Marcourt)13
Pettegree, Andrew14, 40, 116, 124, 145
phancie189
phantasia100, 103, 110, 113, 189
Phillip II (Spain)84
Phillips, Morgan133
Philo of Alexandria168
Philosophy of History (Hegel)4142
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni100
Pius IV126
Placard of October 1534. See Articles
veritables (Marcourt)
Plato99100, 103
A Playne declaration (Smyth)108
plenitude of power (plenitudo
p otestatis)2123, 25, 72, 92n82,
180, 182183
Pliny the Younger103104
Pocock, John149
political forum38
political liberty4042
pope
Act Extinguishing the Authority of the
Bishop of Rome12, 67n66, 111n42
Bishop of Rome as title60, 73, 75, 85,
92, 94
Pauls Cross7980, 85, 92
supreme jurisdiction55
post-revisionism122123
Poyntz, Robert88n71
prayer, defined194
Prayer of Humble Access198
Prayer194, 196197, 198, 199200, 201202
prayers in a strange tongue90
preaching40
as essential mark of visible church62
Pauls Cross75, 7679
reading of scripture196
presbyters63
press
connection to Pauls Cross79, 9596
Cromwell and102n9
public sphere and115116, 145
under Henry VIII15, 22, 24, 27, 29, 9596
Previt-Orton, C.W.164
Primal Hypostases173
Priory of Wallingford106n23
private vs. public space4041
Privy Council66, 72, 77, 84
response to Clement VII92
Richard Smyth and105, 107
Proclus167168, 190
pronoia,102103
pronoun usage in Boke of
Marchaunts2728
propaganda1516
Canterbury Tales as22
 index227
English press22, 24, 27, 33,
9596, 102
Protestantism vs. humanism10n5
Proverbs, Book of18
Provinciale (Lyndwood)57
Psalm 27:4187188
Psalm 116:2107
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite2021,
92n82, 176, 182n79, 183, 190191, 193
public duties200
public of evangelicals3135 Regius Professor of Divinity, position4,
public penance8081, 83
publics144
public sphere
culture of persuasion and7475, 9798
Elizabethan England75n13
mediation of apocalyptic
narrative159160
origin of36
Pauls Cross7778, 83
print vs. spoken word115117, 144146
Puritans75n13
religious underpinnings4041,
4950, 144
Purgatory14, 30
Puritans
Christian Letter of certayne Englishe
Protestantes152, 193194
Disciplinarian Puritanism69, 77, 151,
161, 162, 166
John Foxe66, 148
liturgy of Common Prayer188
public sphere and75n13
Richard Hooker vs.152153, 166, 193
separatists138
Thomas Cartwright69, 151, 162
Walter Travers69, 161, 162
Queens Printer14n23
Questier, Michael75n13, 97, 115
Quintilian104
Rabelais16
radicalism2, 9, 12, 2627
ratio168169
rationalism165, 167
rationality121123
Ratramnus of Corbie131
real absence134
Real Presence11, 27, 82, 83, 89, 128129,
156, 158159. See also transubstantiation
reform, international dimension3435
Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum5153,
5657, 87
drafting6061
failure to win approval60, 6567
Reformations, multiple74n9, 80, 82, 96,
106n22
Reformation Parliament1112, 15, 65, 102
ideology of kingship27
papacy, moves against67n66
Register of Sermons preached at Pauls
Cross, 15341642 (MacLure)78, 81,
82n45, 117
59, 61, 83, 99, 105, 109, 117, 132
regnum politicum43
regnum spirituale43
rehearsal sermons83
religion, place in daily life34
religious authority, source of109113
religious identity3637, 7275
apologetic discourse and159160
Actes and Monuments155
Catholic identity79, 121
continuity of121
during Elizabeths reign146147
given vs. found9495
horizon of92
moral force of9596
Pauls Cross7779, 8283, 8788
redefining142143
Republic (Plato)99100, 103, 110
res significata114, 129130, 133134,
138140, 142143, 153n35, 154, 156158
retail vs. wholesale model of
justification1617
retraction, seriousness of110
Retractation Sermon (Smyth)99113
revisionism121122
Rex, Richard16, 31n79
Rhegius, Urbanus13, 28
Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e all
storia del diritto naturale
(dEntrves)164
Ridley, Nicholas59n33, 78, 8384,
109, 117118
Augustinian approach to signs131
figurative sacramental presence130
righteousness, active vs. passive4546
Romans 3:4107
Romans 13180
Rosendale, Timothy136137, 144n3,
156157
Roussel, Grard10
Royal Commission for Canon Law
reform32, 5153, 5458
membership of5861
228 index
Royal Proclamations2930
Royal Supremacy1112, 16, 1718, 23,
30, 8990
Lawes162
and Old Testament kings2526
Parliament67n66
Pauls Cross7981, 82
phases of82
religious identity7374, 9192
Richard Hooker190191
Richard Smyth109, 110111, 112113
Stephen Gardiner108, 118
Thomas Cranmer65
Ryrie, Alec31n79
Sachs, Leslie64
sacralizing the secular149150
sacrament, nature of82, 89, 117120,
153n35
sacramental culture
culture of persuasion vs.9495,
9798, 144
deconstruction of137138, 142, 157,
159160
defense of9192
dismantling of74, 78
points of contact with reality93
sacramental instrumentality158159
sacramental presence118, 124, 125128.
See also Great Controversy
internal156157
Jewel134136, 154155
sacraments
right administration of62
signs of grace201
visible words of God139140
sacrifice of the Mass106, 111
Saint Michael and All Angels192
salvation, mediation of24, 199
sanctification46
Sanders, Nicholas88n71, 9192
Savonarola, Girolamo28n67
Scribner, Robert121
scripture
part of liturgy196
reliance on110
scripture alone151, 152
Second Chronicles187
Second Epistle of Peter199
A Secular Age (Taylor)41
secularity41, 44, 149150
self-consciousness42
Sermon of the Ploughers (Latimer)
8182
sermons
Accession Day sermons82
audible sacraments141
bishops77, 126n50
Challenge Sermon (Jewel)8586,
8890, 114115, 120127, 132, 133,
142143, 154155
Elizabethan sermons138, 160
Peter Martyr Vermigli83
Register of Sermons78, 81, 82n45, 117
rehearsal83
Retractation Sermon (Smyth)99113
royal policy advancement28
Sermon of the Ploughers(Latimer)
8182
Shrouds83
topics during Edward VIs reign117
Seymour, Edward (Protector
Somerset)65, 107, 108, 118
Shagan, Ethan26, 73
Shacklock, Richard87, 88n71
Shrouds83. See also Pauls Cross
Sidonius Apollinaris187, 188
sign and mystical reality114, 186193
signum114, 129130, 133134, 138140,
142143, 153n35, 154, 156158
singing, antiphonal192193
Singleton, Robert80
Skinner, Quentin42
Skinner, Ralph59
Smyth, Richard99, 117, 131, 132133
conversion and retractation104109
on source of religious authority109113
social imaginary9293
social injustice83
social welfare64
Socrates103
sola scriptura151, 152
solemnitie, visible189190
Solomon107, 187
Somerset, Protector (Edward
Seymour)65, 107, 108, 118
sources, respect for123125
Sources of the Self (Taylor)42, 75
Spalding, James53
Spencer, John153154
spiritual authority, vs. temporal1924,
38, 4350
spiritual vs. ecclesiastical183185
Stapleton, Thomas87
Starkey, Thomas28
Statute of the Six Articles74
Statutes of Praemunire51
St German, Christopher15, 25, 28, 32
 index229
Stobaeus, Joannes168
Stokesley, John79
Strasbourg, reformation in63
Summa Theologica (Aquinas)171, 179
Summe of the holye Scripture/
Summa der godeliker Scrifturen
(Bomelius)2930
Supplicacyon for the beggars (Fish)30
A Supplication made to the Privie Counsell
(Travers)161
sursum corda133134
symbols9294, 190n14
Taylor, Charles36n2, 41, 42, 74, 75,
89, 127
on identity90, 122
modernity122, 147
Taylor, Rowland59
Temple187
thing signified114, 129130, 133134,
138140, 142143, 153n35, 154, 156158
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion53, 59, 64,
68. See also Articles of Religion
Thomas, Keith121
Thomas Aquinas
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard3839
influence on Richard Hooker164166,
170171, 183
divine law174, 175, 178179, 180, 190n16
Thomas Aquinas (Dantes Paradiso)38
three essential marks6263, 68
Thucydides123
Tower of London109
Tractatio (Vermigli)130131
transubstantiation82, 85, 90, 106, 108,
117118, 119
earliest use of term129n58
in recipient139141, 156157, 158159
sign vs. thing signified153n35, 154
traditional theology128129
Travers, Walter6871, 161, 189
Treatise concernynge the Lordes Supper
(Vermigli)132
Tresham, William133
Trinity197199, 203
Troeltsch, Ernst121
true visible church62, 68
Tudor Averroism178179
Tunstall, Cuthbert78
Turner, William13, 28, 29
two cities, dialectic of1820, 149, 179n68
twofold government3941, 4350
twofold knowledge of God174
Tyndale, William1516, 18, 32, 35, 81
translations attributed to100, 101, 146
Udall, Nicholas101, 206
Unam Sanctum (bull, Boniface VIII)2021,
92n82, 94, 179180, 182183
universal priesthood149
University of Louvain87, 88, 90, 109, 126
uncommanded Commander183
unmoved mover183
Valla, Lorenzo2223, 112
Vanhaelen, Angela35
Vermigli, Peter Martyr31
Augustinian approach to signs
131133, 139
figurative sacramental presence130131
Jewels letter to76
membership on Royal
Commission5961
Regius professorship99, 109, 117
sermon composed by83
theology of61, 62, 68, 69
vernacular40, 118, 149
A view of popishe abuses (Wilcox
and Field)189
Vingle, Pierre de,910, 13, 27, 28, 30, 3435
Viret, Pierre13
voluntarism165, 166
Walsham, Alexandra120121, 141
wardens63
Warham, William55
Watson, Thomas119
Weber, Max37n5, 42, 72, 120121, 122
Wes, Giles du28
Weston, Hugh119
Whitgift, John6869, 77, 78, 82n45,
138, 162
Whittington College107
Wilcox, Thomas188, 189
Wisdom202203
Wisdom, Robert80
Witte, John42
Wolin, Sheldon42
Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas11, 106
Word of God24, 168169
Wriothesley, Charles110, 118
Zurich6971
Zwingli, Huldrych11n6, 18, 19, 69, 70,
134135, 136, 137, 168, 201