Sixteenth Century Scholars

Sixteenth Century Scholars blog has moved

2013-09-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

It’s time for a change. I’ve been using Blogger for a few years now for Sixteenth Century Scholars but for everything else that I blog about I use Wordpress. It therefore seemed sensible to move everything over to the one platform and in the process take the opportunity to revamp the site a little bit. You can find the result through this link:

Link: http://sixteenthcenturyscholars.wordpress.com/

Or click directly on the new Sixteenth Century Scholars blog here.

This version of the blog will remain active for now but please update your bookmarks/RSS feeds to the new version as this is where I’ll be blogging from now on.

Thanks,

Matt

Belief in and reassessment of origin stories in the sixteenth-century

2013-08-21T16:31:00.000+01:00

“Once, in the days of time immemorial, there was a king of Greece who had thirty-three daughters. Each of these daughters rose up in revolt and murdered her husband. Perplexed as to how he had bred such rebels, but not wanting to kill his own flesh and blood, their princely father exiled them and set them adrift in a rudderless ship. Their ship was provisioned for six months. By the end of this period, the winds and tides had carried them to the edge of the known earth. They landed on an island shrouded in mist. As it had no name, the eldest of the killers gave it hers: Albina. When they hit shore, they were hungry and avid for male flesh. But there were no men to be found. The island was home only to demons. The thirty-three princesses mated with the demons and gave birth to a race of giants, who in turn mated with their mothers and produced more of their own kind. These giants spread over the whole landmass of Britain. There were no priests, no churches and no laws. There was also no way of telling the time. After eight centuries of rule, they were overthrown by Trojan Brutus.”

- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), p. 65.

The fictional representation of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power as narrated by Hilary Mantel in her Wolf Hall shows us, at the very least, that she has done her homework. The myth quoted above – which opens the second chapter of the book - is told not too dissimilar to how it would have been told in the sixteenth-century. If Mantel is to be believed (and she is, it is to be remembered, telling a fictional story albeit about real history) then Thomas Wosley did not put much stock in such stories. Whether or not that is true, there is certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that not all took the origin stories about Britain seriously. It is true that the Tudor monarchy chose the stories of King Arthur and Merlin as the basis for their power. Henry VII even named his eldest son Arthur as a means to link his power with the rebirth of Britain’s most famous king of legend. It is also true that the stories were repeated often not only in poetry but also in Chronicles claiming to be fonts of fact and truth. Yet, as T. D. Kendrick has noted many of these chroniclers added the caveat that they were repeating the tales sent down to them and not necessarily claiming their authorial expertise in this portion of their text. The origin stories, for many, were traditions that might have some element of truth and which were to be repeated unless totally disproven.

Cardinal Wolsey (wikipedia)

In his Anglica Historia, Polydore Vergil exclaimed that the chief source for these origin stories – Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae had created ‘many silly fictions’ by trying to place British origins above those of the Macedonians and the Romans. Others followed suit. In 1530 John Rastell argued that the story of Diocletian (the Greek king repeated in Mantel’s Wolf Hall) and his murderous daughters was a story that ‘semeth more mervaylous than trewe’ and that:

‘though it has continued here in England and taken for truth among us Englishmen yet other people do therefore laugh us to scorn’ (Rastell, prologue)

John Twyne claimed the story as nothing more than a laughable yarn and the poet, John Hardyng claimed it ‘not trew ne autenticke’. In his Chronicle of John Hardyng in metre published by Richard Grafton in 1543, Hardyng extrapolated that Diocletian’s daughters who were described originally in the Brut chronicle (which itself derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth) was a very similar tale to one he had heard regarding the fifty daughters of Danaus, King of the Greeks who had married his daughters to the sons of Aegyptus, King of Egypt. It was the same myth, just different setting. Hardyng explained:

But I dare say, this chronicle is not true,

For in that like time, in Syria was no king

Nay afterward, to time that Saul grew

Nay no king was in Syria ever living

That had that name, for Saul was the first king

Of Syria realm, at the end of the third age

In Samuels time, the prophet wise and sage.

During the sixteenth-century origin stories were reassessed and examined. They were not necessarily exercised out of all histories, nor removed from the popular beliefs concerning England’s past, but they were certainly not believed by all, or used simply as morality tales, no different than those of the fabled Robin Hood. This was a time when truth and fiction were increasingly becoming important terms used to split ‘real’ history from fables and legends. If the changes in understanding over origins are anything to go by, then the sixteenth-century was the point when historians really were beginning to reassess their role and purpose. They were not necessarily becoming ‘modern’, in our sense, but they were certainly not the same at the end of the century as they were at the beginning.

Further Reading

Thomas D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (Methuen: London, 1950).

John Rastell, The Pastime of People: The Chronicles of divers realms and most specially of the realm of England (London, 1530).

John Hardyng, The Chronicle of John Hardyng in Metre, from the first beginning of England, unto the reign of Edward IV where he made an end of his chronicle (London, 1543), p. vii.

John Foxe and the overload of books

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John Foxe must have been asked why his Book of Martyrs was necessary or needed when he was writing it in the early 1560s. He seems to have feared that another book of History lacked readers as his audience was already overwhelmed by books. In his final preface to the first edition he reflects on those concerns. Foxe makes a declaration intended to prove the utility and profit of yet another history book, especially one so large. He notes that there are an infinite multitude of books ‘daily put forth everywhere’, many of which were to be regarded as superfluous and only made to pester the circumspect reader.

Part of the problem lay in Foxe’s own doubts about his ability (although these were often rhetorical words and should, perhaps, not be taken literally). Foxe described how difficult it was to write something ‘singular’ that could join ‘thinges’ together (i.e. various histories and events) and provide something of use to the reader (‘increase the industry of the learners, the utility of the studious, and the delight of the learned’). Foxe’s defense was the one that he purported throughout his prefaces and the book itself:

“I thought it not to be neglected, that the precious monuments of so many matters, and men most meet to be recorded and registered in books, should lie buried by my fault in the pit of oblivion” (A&M, 1563,A declaration concerning the ultility and profit of this history)

The concern was a simple one. Although they would not have admitted it, the reformers were partly to blame for the scattering of England’s manuscript heritage upon the purging of monasteries in the 1530s. Little had been done since to recover those texts – many of which were unique and irreplaceable.

Furthermore, the story of History told from generation to generation did not any longer fit the needs and requirements of a Protestant Church of England. That story claimed conversion to Christianity by the Pope’s hand. It argued for allegiance to Rome and the denouncement of any and all attempts to criticise that relationship.

Protestants, like Foxe, needed to retell the past in their own image. But, crucially, that retelling had thus far been piecemeal. Foxe mentions that ‘the number of trifling pamphlets may grow out of remembrance’. It was certainly a concern. Campaigns to bring over opinions can be won through bombardment of pamphlets and other writings, but these are a weak bridge, with little concrete foundation, stability or persistence. What was needed was a central resource from which those other works could be divulged. Foxe wanted to provide that foundation; a large work, containing all that was necessary: in essence the Acts and Monuments or Book of Martyrs that he was producing.

Foxe called it his duty and considering the interest and patronage given to him by the likes of Sir William Cecil, Archbishop Matthew Parker, and Edmund Grindal, then Archbishop of York; it most probably wasn’t an exaggeration, even if that was not quite what he meant. Previous to Foxe’s publication there were indeed a multitude of shorter texts published regarding the martyrs so recently burnt at the stake.

In 1559 Thomas Brice had published a poem which listed the Marian martyrs in order of the dates of their executions. The same year John Day printed The complaynt of veritie, made by Iohn Bradford, a short treatise that transcribed the martyrs writings. It was the first of many. In 1560 William Powell printed A frutefull treatise and full of heauenly consolation against the feare of death. Whereunto are annexed certaine sweete meditations of the kingdom of Christ ... Gathered by that holy marter of God, John Bradford. Bradford’s writings and examinations were also printed by William Griffith and William Copeland in 1561 as well as by Rowland Hall in 1562.

For other martyrs, Thomas Marsh published Arthur Golding’s A briefe treatise concerning the burnynge of Bucer and Phagius, at Cambrydge, in the tyme of Quene Mary. Also in 1559, Henry Sutton had printed The examination of the constante martir of Christ, Iohn Philpot. In 1562 Henry Bull had published An apologye made by the reuerende father and constante Martyr of Christe John Hooper (1562). In this text Bull noted that ‘manye frutefull workes did they [the Marian martyrs] write in prison…but fewe are come to lighte’. A year after the Acts and Monuments had seen print, Bull published the writings of Miles Coverdale as yet another example. Foxe also added to this growing collection with his Friendly Farewell, a collection of the writings of Nicholas Ridley.

It is probably these tracts that Foxe was referring to when he stated that he didn’t want to overload people with yet another book on the subject. His argument was that his book would be the last word on the subject; a synthesis of the other tracts in one big volume. In this, at least Foxe succeeded. Other than subsequent editions of his own book, there were relatively few other publications focused on martyrs after 1563. The Acts and Monuments had smothered all competition, and it had done so extremely well.

The Marian Martyrs (2): Holinshed’s Chronicles

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Whilst referring to Foxe for a more detailed account of the proceedings the 1577 and 1587 editions of Holinsheds chronicles record the same information that on April 10^th Ridley and Latimer were taken to Windsor then the University of Oxford for dispute with the divines and learned men still remaining. Two days later they were taken to Convocation at St Paul’s Church (Holinshed, 1557: v. 4, p. 1719; 1587: v. 6, p.1102).

The Burning of Latimer and Ridley (taken from John Foxe Acts and Monuments)

In the 1587 edition of Holinshed, Ridley and Latimer are referenced briefly soon after the account of Lady Jane and Northumberland’s failed plot (and their subsequent execution) and amid the account of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s trial and execution. The protestant prisoners are not again mentioned until after a discourse on the marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain and of the belief that the queen was with child:

‘about this season diverse learned men being apprehended, and in prison for matters of religion, were brought before the bishops of Winchester and London, and other the bishops and commissioners appointed therefore: who upon the constant standing of the said learned men in their opinions, which they had taken upon them to maintain, as grounded upon the true word of God, as they protested, proceeded in judgement against them, and so diverse of them were burned at London in Smithfield, and in diverse other places’ (Holinshed, 1577: v. 4, p. 1719; 1587, v. 6, p. 1125).

Interestingly in the 1587 edition was added:

‘Nay not only by fire but by other torments were the good Christians persecuted, whose zeal was hot in religion and defiance of the pope: insomuch that then he was counted Gods enemy, which took not the pope for the friend of Christ (whom he hated with hostility) as C.O. noted very truly in his Elizabetha, saying:
- nam creditor hostisEsse Dei, papa […] si quis pius asserit hostemEsse Dei, verso Christi qui tollit honores.’

(Holinshed, 1583: v. 4, p. 1719).

The reign of Mary in Holinshed is greatly enlarged between the two editions, however those elements taken from Foxe on the Marian martyrs remains largely unchanged (apart from what I have already mentioned). Latimer and Ridley eventually get their trial and execution on page 1129 of the 1587 edition: ‘they were condemned, and after burned in the town ditch at Oxford the sixteenth day of October. In the time of whose examinations, because the bishops aforesaid declared themselves to be the popes commissioners, neither Ridley nor Latimer would do them any reverence, but kept their caps on their heads.’ (Holinshed: 1577, v. 4, p. 1719; 1587, v. 6 p. 1129)

Thomas Cranmer is also afforded space in Holinshed being ‘burned in the same place where Ridley and Latimer before had suffered’ (Holinshed: 1587, v. 6, p. 1131). Cranmer, of course, was a propaganda disaster for both Mary’s government and the protestant memorialists in the Rhineland. Mary’s bishops had managed to gain a recantation from Cranmer only for him to later subside back to his old beliefs again. In the end Cranmer’s death could be used better by protestant propogandists as he did manage to die well:

‘His shirt was made long down to his feet; his feet were bare. Likewise his head, when both his caps were off, was so bare, that one hair could not be seen upon it. His beard was long and thick, covering his face with marvellous gravity. Such a contenance of gravity moved the hearts both of his friends and of his enemies. And as for the recantation aforesaid, with many tears he protested, that he had subscribed to the same against his conscience, only for fear of death, and hope of life. Which seemed true: for when he came to the stake, and the fire kindled, he put his right hand into the fire, and held it there a good space, saying: that the same hand should first burn, because it held the pen to subscribe against his Lord God.’ (Holinshed: 1587, v. 6, p. 1131).

The Marian Martyrs (1): John Foxe

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When Mary I came to the throne in England it was not long until she began to act against the more radical reformers. Many of high and low birth were burnt as heretics whilst others fled the country for the Rhineland. The evangelical historian and martyrologist John Foxe, famed for writing his Book of Martyrs during the subsequent reign of Elizabeth I provides us with our most vivid descriptions of these events.

John Bradford and John Leafe, for instance, ‘ended theyr mortall liues, moste likest two Lambes, without any alteration of their countenaunce, being voyde of all feare’. John Philpot on ‘the xviii. Day of December, in the middest of the fiery flames, yelded his soule into the hands of the almighty God, and full like a lambe gaue vp his breath his body being consumed into ashes’. Rowland Taylor, who had a lit fagot thrown at his head at the beginning of his burning held up:

‘both hys handes, called vpon God, and sayd: Mercifull father of heaven, for Iesus Christ my Saviours sake, receiue my soule into thy hands. So stood he still without either crying or moving, with his handes folded together, till Soice with an Halberd stroke him on the head that the braynes fell out, and the dead corpes fell downe into the fire.’

Then there was the burning of John Hooper, former Bishop of Worcester and Gloucester which did not go as planned. The first fire did not catch and when ‘a few dry fagottes were brought, and a new fire kindeled’ only his ‘neather partes’ were singed. Eventually, after a third fire was lit:

‘he prayed with somewhat a loude voice: Lorde Iesu haue mercy vppon me: Lorde Iesu haue mercy vppon mee: Lorde Iesus receiue my spirite […] when he was blacke in the mouth, and his tongue swolne, that he coulde no speake, yet hys lippes went till they were shronke to the gummes: and he knocked his breast with his hands, vntill one of his armes fell off, and then knocked still with the other, what time the fat, water, and bloud dropped out at his fingers ends, vntill by renuing of the fire, his strength was gone’

These were all clergymen but many ordinary people also suffered such as Elizabeth Cooper, a Pewters wife in Norwich, who was:

‘…at the stake with Simon Miller to be burnt, when the fire came vnto her, she a little shronke thereat, with a voice crying once, ha. When the sayd Simon Miller hearde the same, he put his hand behind him towarde her, and willed her to bee strong, and of good cheare: For good sister (said he) we shall haue a ioyfull and a sweete supper. Whereat she being, as it seemed thereby strengthened, stoode as still and as quiet as one moste glad to finish that good worke whiche before most happily shee had begonne. So in fine she ended her life with her companion ioyfully, committing her soule into the hands of almighty God’.

In many cases multiple burnings took place at the same time. At Stratford-le-Bow thirteen were burnt at the stake in one fire. At Smithfield in London Thomas Loseby, Henry Ramsey, Thomas Thyrtell, Margaret Hyde, and Agnes Stanley ended their lives in one fire, whilst at Canterbury ten martyrs were put to the flame by Thornton, Bishop of Dover and Nicholas Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury.

One particularly abhorrent burning occurred (as Foxe tells it) at Guernsey involving a woman and her two daughters:

‘At the middle post was the mother, the eldest daughter on the right hande, the youngest on the other. They were first strangled, but the Rope brake before they were dead, and so the poore women fell in the fire. Perrotine, who was then great with childe, did fall on her side, where happened a ruefull sight, not onely to the eyes of all that there stood, but also to the eares of all true harted Christians, that shall read this historye: For as the belly of the woman brast a sonder by vehemency of the flame, the infant being a fayre man childe, fel into the fire’.

Foxe focused on those who had stayed in England to face the wrath of Mary’s government. It was important for him and for those who supported his work that the martyrs were memorialised whilst Roman Catholics (for they blamed the burnings not just on Mary’s government but upon the whole Roman church) were vilified and revealed as a foreign enemy to Elizabeth’s England. That picture of English reformation survives to this day and its effects continue to ebb below the surface of British society. But it is not the whole picture and indeed historians and the public at large still grapple with the legacy of propaganda left by Elizabethan scholars, playwrights, politicians and clergymen.

There are numerous more examples many of which were graphic in both their portrayal of the burning itself and in the process leading to the burning. Historians have, in ever greater detail, examined many of these accounts and formed arguments around them. In particular, there is a current interest in comparing Foxe’s narrative to other sources – such as official documents – to check his authenticity. However, few have looked at alternative contemporary accounts in works of history such as Holinshed and Stow. It is therefore interesting to compare Foxe’s account of such events to that given in other near contemporary chronicles.

Tradition in the Sixteenth Century

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Tradition is an important aspect of our lives. This was equally true in the sixteenth-century as it is now, although it’s meaning and prominence in society has radically changed in that time. I have just finished reading the sociologist Edward Shils book entitled and on the subject of Tradition (published in 1981). To my knowledge there are few other books on the market that look in their entirety at tradition as a concept, and it is therefore still important for that reason alone. Shils himself has been credited as a social theorist on similar levels to Max Weber, Jűrgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, although as Stephen Turner has suggested, he is often misunderstood.

In this book Shils talks about two types of past. One that is real – that which has happened and left behind its residues. Then the other – a more mutable perception of that past based, admittedly on the residues left behind. The perceived past is capable of being retrospectively reformed by humans living in any given present. It is a past that is recorded in memory and writing, formed from facts, but pliable, open to interpretation, error, or even purposeful revision.

This description fits perfectly with what happened in the sixteenth-century. Reformers and evangelicals had a very specific perception of Christian history, one that became mutable to their purposes in degrading the Roman Catholic Church and raising theirs up in its stead. The argument ran that novelty was an error – a corruption made and designed by fallible humans. The only statement that could be confirmed as certain truth was biblical. God’s word was certain, unalterable.

That was then, what about now? It seems tradition has had a change of fortune in the western mindset between the sixteenth-and twenty-first centuries. The claim of tradition as opposed to novelty has reversed. Shils begins his book by stating:

“Very few persons argue for the revival of the beliefs and institutions of the remoter past which have been obliterated in the more recent past. Even if they desire their revival, they do not think that there is any reasonable chance that what they desire will be realized.” (Shils, p. 1)

In the sixteenth-century evangelical reformers tried to do just that; return to a distant past, now nearly lost, to retrieve the institutions of old in place of one which they believed had become corrupted. Shils notes that:

“the time through which we have just lived has been one in which what was inherited from the past was thought of as an irksome burden to be escaped from as soon as possible.” (Shils, p.2)

This is nowhere made clearer than in present day politics. The coalition government in Britain is rapidly unpicking the state fabric – paving the way for privatisation in health, education, and communication systems. These systems are seen as holding the country back. Those who see otherwise are often accused of being backward looking themselves, recalling a mythical golden age that either never existed or certainly doesn’t exist any longer.

The idea of a golden age, a time when everything was better or perfect, has a very long history. We all look back wistfully to a happy time, when everything seemed good. In History such golden ages can come as a result of desired change. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi’s fight for Indian independence focused on an Indian past – located in the idea of a countrywide village community – a past that never existed other than in the minds of the people. Last year’s London Olympic Games opening ceremony revealed an imagined British past and present; one triumphant, quirky, and rich, but pretended, imagined in the minds of a nation. In both cases the idea of an imagined past constructed an image of a golden age in the conviction that it can provide the context for an improved future, changed somewhat from the perceived failures of the present.

We often talk about progress these days – in fact we have been talking about it for about four hundred years. Intrinsic to our beliefs is the concept that we must change and improve and never turn backward.

There is a great belief that practices, institutions and society need to be constantly changed, replaced or discarded in favour of new ones. The emphasis is always on improvement. If our skin is blemished or our nose is too big (or small) we change it, make improvements. Our houses grow, expand and change – new furniture is introduced, old is removed – it is a cycle, constant in its transference from one fashion to the next.

That wasn’t the case once. Progress was the beast, the thing that led to novelty and a distancing from the true path laid out for us by God. That was the predominant belief. Novelty was bad, a corruption from purity. Innovation was viewed as a human intervention, which was bad because God had already laid out our futures before it had even begun. Therefore our views and opinions about tradition and novelty are different than those that we study in the pre-modern times. They are reversed – to a degree – novelty is the sin, but so too might tradition, depending on whether it was the tradition that God had laid out, or the tradition built up by humans since then. For Roman Catholics these traditions were provided by God, through the priesthood, but for Protestants this was a corruption.

It’s almost ironic that in Britain Protestant is often referred to as a progressive faith in comparison to Catholic. Protestantism is often claimed as a lead-factor to Britain being capable of innovating and kick-starting the industrial revolution. But in truth it is the Catholic faith where traditions are built one upon the other that was the most progressive in the sixteenth-century. Protestantism represented rupture, but a rupture intended to revert to an even older tradition. It was not forward looking at all, not intentionally anyway, it was backward looking, more so than the Catholic Church of its time. So who really were the modernisers and why should progress and novelty always be seen as a good thing, while traditions and old ways are ignored, replaced, and looked upon with disdain?

Further Reading

Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago, 1981)

Stephen Turner, ‘The Significance of Shils’, Sociological Theory, 17:2 (July 1999), pp. 125-145.

The premise of the Acts and Monuments in John Foxe's words

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John Foxe makes various claims in his Acts and Monuments about what he is doing and why. His various prefaces, dedicated to all types of potential reader (the learned Protestant; the learned Roman Catholic; the unlearned; the Queen etc) make this explicitly clear.

I’m currently writing a chapter where I hope to introduce what it was Foxe thought he was doing when researching the pre-reformation portions of his book. Historians say many things about it over and over again (and I’m sure I will be as well, although hopefully I’ll have a few new things to say as well), but essentially Foxe is purporting to be writing the true history of Christianity and Britain’s role within it.

I highlight the word ‘true’ for a purpose, not just because this is what all historians claim to be doing, especially those in the sixteenth-century who wanted to convince their readers of the validity of their theological argument equally as much as their credentials as an historian, but because Foxe was making the argument for a revised past; one very different than the traditionally held story. He was equally making the case for the uplifting of the most popular sources for that history – Foxe used Ranulf Higden’s fourteenth century Polychronicon sparingly because it was the culmination of the monastic tradition. He attacked Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia at every opportunity because he was Italian and because he had offended England’s antiquarians by discrediting their origin stories. In reverse, Foxe lifted up Robert Fabyan’s London Chronicle and Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majoria as alternative and relatively purified sources.

All of this Foxe makes clearer in one paragraph that sums up the entire argument and sets up the need, Foxe claims, for the Acts and Monuments as a ‘complet history’ which was to be ‘faithfully collected out of all our Monasticall writers and written Monumentes’ and which ‘should open the plaine truth of times lying long hid in obscure darknes of antiquitie’:

‘For as they paint him out on the one part glistering in wealth & glory, in showing what succession they Popes had from the chaire of S. Peter, when they first began, and how long they sate, what Churches and what famous buildings they erected, how farre their possessions reached, what lawes they made, what counsels they called, what honor they receaved of kinges & Emperours, what Princes and countreys they brought under their authoritie, with other like stratagemes, of great pompe and royaltie: so on the other side what vices these Popes brought with them to their seat, what abominations they practized what superstition they maintayned, what Idolatrie they procured, what wicked doctrine they defended contrary to the expresse word of God, to what heresies they fell, into what division of sectes they cut the unitie of Christan religion, how some practized by Symonie, some by Necromancy, and sorcery, some by poysoning, some endenting with the devill to come by their Papacy, what hypocrisie was in their lives, what corruption in their doctrine, what warres they raysed, what bloudshed they caused, what trachery they traversed against their Lordes and Emperours, imprisoning some, betraying some of the templaries and Saracens, in bringing other under their feete, also in behedding some, as they did with Fredericus and Conradinus, the heyres and offspring of the house of Fredericus Barbarossa .an. 1269: furthermore how mightely almighty god hath stand against them, how their warres never prospered against the Turke, how the judgements of the godly learned from time to time have ever repugned agaynst their errours &c. of these and a thousand other moe, not one word hath bene touched’

- Acts and Monuments (1570 edition),preface entitled A Protestation to thewhole Church of England, p. 2

This is a long quote, but it nicely summarises what Foxe sees as the true History. I am yet to decide if I’ll be using it whole in my final text or whether it would be best to break it down into parts, but I think what Foxe is saying here is important to understanding what it is he is trying to say in the Acts and Monuments as a whole.

Blogging for Historians

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Although my main area of research focuses on sixteenth (and seventeenth) century book history, I do also have an interest in writing and reading habits in our present day. When I started work at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) back in 2010 I was quickly introduced to the world of blogs. At the time I’m not even sure if I had looked at a blog on a History-related topic, not alone posted anything. However, I was told that I needed one for the History SPOT project, and so my first blog was born (The History SPOT blog). It’s proven quite successful in its own modest way, with between 20 to 150 views per day and with a total (as of 11 December 2012) of 213 posts written and uploaded. I have since created a blog for the IHR relating to its temporary relocation while work is undertaken to modernise the north block of Senate House (IHR Relocation Blog), another that acted as a ‘virtual conference’ for the IHR’s winter conference Novel Approaches: from academic history to historical fiction, and of course this Sixteenth Century Scholars blog that you are now reading.

The History SPOT blog

I also read blogs on a regular basis. Among my favorites are Medieval Fragments which looks specifically at twelfth century manuscripts for a project based at the University of Leiden; The History of Emotions from Queen Mary, looking at the history of feelings (often in the early modern period); and Cardiff Book History which focuses mainly (but not solely) on research and MSS at the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research at Cardiff University.

For early modernists by far the greatest resource relating to blogs is the Early Modern Commons website. This site contains an index (kept largely up-to-date) for academic quality blogs on any subject of the early modern period. It’s well worth a look!

You are probably wondering why I’m talking about blogs rather than something related directly to the subject of early modern scholarship. It’s a fair question and I’m afraid on this occasion the link is tenuous (at least it is right now). Thanks to a grant from the SMKE Scholarship (Social Media Knowledge Exchange) I have now begun my own small project investigating blogging practices by and for historians. The idea of the project is to investigate why individual historians or institutions (including academic, librarian, and archival) begin a blog, how it is managed, and what is hoped to be gained from it. The project is also looking at why people read blogs and what they expect from an academically produced History blog in particular.

How will this be done? First, I will be conducting interviews with several owners of blogs which will be podcasted and uploaded online. Second, I will create a small tool-kit designed especially for postgraduate and early career researchers from what I learn from the interviews and from a series of online surveys.

The Blogging for Historians blog

Now we come to the part where I ask for your help. The project has a blog of its own – Blogging for Historians - and the first survey is now live. If you could spare a moment to fill in this survey I would be very appreciative. It is designed for anyone who looks at History-related blogs as well as those that own one or post on a blog. I’m hoping that at some stage I can relate this study more closely to my research in the early modern period, and as soon as I do, I will post something more about it here. Here are the main links:

Blogging for Historians Blog: http://bloggingforhistorians.wordpress.com/

History Best Practice Blogging Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MHVXQ2W

Thank you in advance for your help and time.

Thomas Stapleton's Bede - fighting back against Foxe and Bale

2012-11-12T10:00:00.000+00:00

Thomas Stapleton's edition of Bede's
Ecclesiastical History (1565)

Recently I’ve been looking into the Roman Catholic apologist Thomas Stapleton’s translation and publication of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. I’m mainly looking at it for what he, himself, has to say about the protestant reformers whose writings he was directly attacking. The work of Matthew Parker and his circle in promoting the Elizabethan church settlement was made all the more difficult therefore, in 1565 when Stapleton’s publication came to light. Here are a few of my ramblings.

In the sixteenth century Bede’s notoriety as a man of learning was already well established, but for Protestants his work represented something of a difficulty. Bede was very much in support of the Christianisation of England by Augustine, and thus made for a difficult translation to protestant revisions to their past. Although attempts were made by the likes of John Foxe and John Bale, they never really managed to place Bede at the centre of any Protestant history of the Anglo-Saxons. Foxe, for example, banished Bede to the side lines in favour of other later and alternative accounts. Bale, meanwhile, caused scandal and consternation even among other Protestant scholars by reading into Bede a sexual scandal befitting of a tabloid newspaper headline.

Bale’s approach, in particular, was to prove fertile ground for Thomas Stapleton’s preface to Bede’s ecclesiastical history. But, before I go into all of that, it is worthwhile, I think, recalling a little about the man himself. Stapleton was named by his father after the famous Lord Chancellor and humanist scholar Sir Thomas More who had at that time recently been sent to the executors axe. This gives you some idea of the Stapleton family position on the emerging reformation, and Thomas himself was not to waver from this stance. He was trained as a theologian at Oxford in the 1550s and then ordained as priest in early 1558. His resistance to protestant reforms led to his exile to Louvain in 1559 and he was never again to set foot in England. Up until the mid-1560s he wrote various works in English setting out his disagreement with the Elizabethan regimes religious policy. All of these publications were considered controversial in England, and whilst his translation of Bede was perhaps the least of these, it was inconvenient as far as Parker’s plans went for establishing a reformed chronicle tradition in England.

At the front of the new edition Stapleton explains clearly his reasons for undertaking such work; so that the Queen might clearly see “the misse information of a fewe for displacing the auncient and right Christian faith”. Indeed, the claim of misinformation by Bale, Foxe and others is exactly what Stapleton bases a good part of his arguments upon. Stapleton accuses Bale of being like a “venomous spider” in his reading of Bede.

Depiction of Pope Gregory meeting
the English for the first time
http://www.art.co.uk/products/p12373907-sa-i1742893/posters.htm

Bale made his accusations in his The Actes of Englysh Votaryes (published 1546), basing it upon a short paragraph in Bede’s ecclesiastical history. Here is the passage from Bede:

"Nor must we pass by in silence the story of the blessed Gregory, handed down to us by the tradition of our ancestors, which explains his earnest care for the salvation of our nation. It is said that one day, when some merchants had lately arrived at Rome, many things were exposed for sale in the market place, and much people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and saw among other wares some boys put up for sale, of fair complexion, with pleasing countenances, and very beautiful hair. When he beheld them, he asked, it is said, from what region or country they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, and that the inhabitants were like that in appearance. He again inquired whether those islanders were Christians, or still involved in the errors of paganism, and was informed that they were pagans. Then fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, “Alas! what pity,” said he, “that the author of darkness should own men of such fair countenances; and that with such grace of outward form, their minds should be void of inward grace.” He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. “Right,” said he, “for they have an angelic face, and it is meet that such should be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven. What is the name of the province from which they are brought?” It was replied, that the natives of that province were called Deiri. “Truly are they De ira,” said he, “saved from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?” They told him his name was Aelli; and he, playing upon the name, said, “Allelujah, the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts.” (Bede, EH, 82-3)

Bale repeated this story making a play on Bede’s choice of words to suggest that Pope Gregory had sexual desires on the English boys. Bale notes that Catholic Bishops have no wives and are thus seeking ‘other spirytuall remedyes’. Whilst the accusation is not direct it is very obvious from the context and notes that Bale makes just before retelling the story from Bede. The play on words enacted by Pope Gregory - Angles, Deiri and Aelli - are transformed in the Votaryes as signs that he and the other Bishops were lusting after these slave boys with angelic faces and beautiful hair:

“So how curyose these fathers were, in the wele eyenge of their wares. Here was no cyrcumstaunce unloked to, perteynynge to the sale” (Votaryes, 20)

It is therefore no surprise that Stapleton sought to attack Bale as ‘filthy and uncleane’ and that he had ‘sucketh out a poisoned sence and meaning’ when reading Bede ‘charging that holy man [Gregory I] with a most outrageous vice and not to be named’.

If this was all that Stapleton argues then we could more or less dismiss it as a simple, but obvious, rebuttal to Bale. In itself, it is not all that interesting or unexpected. However, Stapleton is making a larger point here about the nature of Christian faith, belief, and charity. He asks his readers to:

“gather honny lyke bees oute of this comfortable history of oure countre, not venim like spiders. Reade it with charitable simplicitie, not suspicious curiosite, with virtuous charite, not with wicked malice.” (Stapleton, Bede, preface)

What is Stapleton trying to say here? Placing this sentence into its wider context it becomes obvious that Stapleton is making a distinction between Protestant and Roman Catholic opinion about Christian charity. Stapleton appeals to his readers to read Bede’s history with a Christian heart and furthermore to note how John Bale has read it with malicious intent. Surely, Stapleton argues, “none can think evill of other, which is not evill him selfe”. By appealing to people’s better natures, Stapleton has found a weakness in the Protestant arguments that attempt to portray Catholic activity in the past as seedy, traitorous and un-Christian. Whilst far from watertight (Protestants could and did argue that they were only untangling the lies and deceits of the enemy) it was perhaps enough to make some pause and think.

A second line of attack that Stapleton makes follows a line that every undergraduate historian should be familiar with: the primary source vs. the secondary source debate. He points out that Bede was not only an Englishman but was also alive at the time or near enough to that of which he wrote about. He is therefore an eyewitness, but also one who has no knowledge of later arguments, such as those between Protestants and Catholics, and as such has no agenda. Whilst Stapleton is wrong to suggest that Bede had no agenda, it nonetheless works as a powerful statement against those like Foxe, Bale, and Parker writing some 900 years later. Through Bede, Stapleton is presenting a genuine voice from the past, unspoilt by later judgements and arguments. Thus, in Stapleton’s words:

“There is no suspicion of partes taking, no prejudice of favouring either side, no feare of affection of missejudgement to be gathered upon him. We have good cause to suspect the reports of Bale, of Fox, of Beacon and suche other, whiche are knowen to maintaine a faction and singular opinion lately spronge up, who reporte thinges passed many hundred yeares before their dayes. No such suspicion can be made of S. Bede, who lyved above eight hundred yeares paste, and reporteth the planting of Christen religion among us Englishmen, partly by that whiche he sawe him selfe, partly by the reporte of such who either lived at the first coming in of Christendom to our countre them selves, or were scholers to such.” (Stapleton, Bede, preface)

In all then, Stapleton’s preface to his translation of Bede talked about the differences between Protestant and Catholic faith and charity, and attempted to present Protestant scholars as horrid men and slanderers. There is much here for the historian to pick up upon, more than what I have talked about here even. There are also plenty of quotation opportunities – Stapleton is not shy about his attacks. What this work does help to show us, however, is the difficulty protestant scholars had in making the Anglo-Saxons something respectable in their new world order. Bede’s writings favoured the Roman Catholics in terms of argument much better than they ever would for the early reformers.

Jonathan Swift and the Battle of the Books

2012-06-19T10:30:00.000+01:00

Portrait of Jonathan Swift

Although this blog is primarily about scholars in the sixteenth century, Jonathan Swift’s Battle of the Books (mentioned in my previous post The Battle of the Books: A seventeenth century war of words and ideas) caught my interest. The debate over the merits of ‘ancient’ traditions against the on-coming tide of science and modernity took form in many different ways during the early modern period. The famous example of Galileo being sent to prison by an outraged Pope over his claims that the Earth was not, in actual fact, the centre of the universe nor that it was flat, is a case in point. Admittedly this example is in essence much more complicated than is made out in popular accounts but it nonetheless demonstrates the thought processes going on in the ‘early modern’ mind.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is best known now for his Gulliver’s Travels, however, in the seventeenth century Swift was known as both Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin and for his career as a satirist, essayist and political pamphleteer (switching sides between the Whigs and the Tories). His ODNB biographer Clive Probyn describes Swift as a satirist with:

“no equal in English literature for range, subtlety, and power. His life and works continue to vex as well as instruct and amuse his readers”

- ODNB Jonathan Swift

Swift’s The Battle of the Books certainly fell into the category of a vexing and thought provoking text. Published in 1704 as a short satire within a larger work entitled A Tale of a Tub, Swift depicted a literal battle for supremacy between books in the King’s library as representative of their authors (and their ideas). Think Toy Story as told 300 years ago!

Each author – ancient on the one side and modern on the other - are described in military terms, as if they were each an army preparing for war:

“The Moderns were in very warm debates upon the choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear impending from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, where every private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Wither. The light-horse were commanded by Cowley and Despreaux. There came the bowmen under their valiant leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to fall down again, but turn, like that of Evander, into meteors; or, like the cannon-ball, into stars [...] the army of the Ancients was much fewer in number; Homer led the horse, and Pindar the light-horse; Euclid was chief engineer; Plato and Aristotle commanded the bowmen; Herodotus and Livy the foot; Hippocrates, the dragoons; the allies, led by Vossius and Temple, brought up the rear”

As the satire moves on we witness individual battles between ancients and moderns who were generally seen as in argument with each other. It’s a battle royale! Aristotle vs. Bacon; Homer vs. Gondibert; and Lucan vs. Blackmore. In most cases one or the other is victorious. Although the conclusion is left somewhat open ended as to who won overall, the text suggests Swift’s allegiance with the ancients which is also borne out from his other works and debates with William Wotton.

I particularly enjoyed the confrontation between Virgil and John Dryden where their individual personalities shine through very clearly:

“On the left wing of the horse Virgil appeared, in shining armour, completely fitted to his body [...] He cast his eye on the adverse wing, with a desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold upon a sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe, issuing from among the thickest of the enemy’s squadrons [...] The two cavaliers had now approached within the throw of a lance, when the stranger desired a parley, and, lifting up the visor of his helmet, a face hardly appeared from within which, after a pause, was known for that of the renowned Dryden. The brave Ancient suddenly started, as one possessed with surprise and disappointment together; for the helmet was nine times too large for the head, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the lady in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state [...] and the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote. Dryden, in a long harangue, soothed up the good Ancient; called him father, and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it plainly appear that they were nearly related. Then he humbly proposed an exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality between them. Virgil consented (for the goddess Diffidence came unseen, and cast a mist before his eyes), through his was of gold and cost a hundred beeves, the other’s but of rusty iron. However, this glittering armour became the Modern yet worsen than his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses; but, when it came to the trial, Dryden was afraid and utterly unable to mount.”

The rendition of Dryden reflects his personality perfectly. In 1717 Congreve wrote of Dryden that he ‘was of a Nature exceedingly Humane and Compassionate; easily forgiving Injuries, and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them who offended him’ (see ODNB for John Dryden. Although, it would appear that Virgil won this particular encounter no concrete conclusion is noted by Swift. Although damage is done between books, for the most part, the conclusion remains uncertain.

My interest in this subject derives from researching a paper for the Anglo-American conference which will be held by the IHR on 5-6 July 2012. Although my paper has very little to do with Jonathan Swift’s satire or the debate between ancients and moderns in the seventeenth century, it is interesting to look ahead of my own research time-period to see where some of the debates in the late sixteenth century ended up.

If you are interested in looking more at the confrontations and continual intersection between ancient and modern cultures, then there is still room to book a place at this year’s Anglo-American. It takes place at Senate House, University of London between 5-6 July. For more information, a schedule, abstracts, and details for registration see the following link: Anglo-American conference 2012: Ancients and Moderns.

Courtly love and Elizabethan politics

2012-06-12T10:30:00.000+01:00

Although slightly off-topic, I thought I would share with you a post I uploaded last week to my History SPOT blog for the Institute of Historical Research. The topic is courtly love as a political tool in Elizabethan England, and, in particular, the poems by Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1554-1618) well known as an Elizabethan explorer and soldier, is also known to have written a sonnet entitled Fortune Hath Taken Thee Away, My Love. It is believed that Raleigh wrote this sonnet as a response to the rise of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and thus making a complaint over his own fall from influence. In her publication of the sonnet Gordon Braden has reiterated the belief amongst scholars that ‘Fortune’ was a code name for the Earl of Essex and that Raleigh was informing Elizabeth that this brought him ‘to woe’ and that the Earl was now ‘my mortal foe’.

Fortune Hath Taken Thee Away, My Love

BY SIR WALTER RALEGH

Fortune hath taken thee away, my love,

My life’s soul and my soul’s heaven above;

Fortune hath taken thee away, my princess;

My only light and my true fancy’s mistress.

Fortune hath taken all away from me,

Fortune hath taken all by taking thee.

Dead to all joy, I only live to woe,

So fortune now becomes my mortal foe.

In vain you eyes, you eyes do waste your tears,

In vain you sighs do smoke forth my despairs,

In vain you search the earth and heaven above,

In vain you search, for fortune rules in love.

Thus now I leave my love in fortune’s hands,

Thus now I leave my love in fortune’s bands,

And only love the sorrows due to me;

Sorrow henceforth it shall my princess be.

I joy in this, that fortune conquers kings;

Fortune that rules on earth and earthly things

Hath taken my love in spite of Cupid’s might;

So blind a dame did never Cupid right.

With wisdom’s eyes had but blind Cupid seen,

Then had my love my love for ever been;

But love farewell; though fortune conquer thee,

No fortune base shall ever alter me.

- Gordon Braden, Sixteenth-century poetry: an annotated anthology [2005], p. 337.

A second sonnet, often argued as having been written by Elizabeth herself, mocks Raleigh in reply. For more on this have a look at a blog post on Hobbinol’s Blog – Writing the English Renaissance: Elizabethan Courtly Love.

This is just one example of the role that music played at the Tudor court. Its enactment was political and personal reflecting ideals of courtly love and influencing the process of internal and foreign relations.

Dr Katherine Butler (University of Oxford) has discussed this topic in more detail on one of the History SPOT podcasts entitled: Recreational Music-Making and the Fashioning of Political or Diplomatic Relationships at the Court of Elizabeth I. In this paper Butler argues that musical performances in the form of lute or virginal productions carried out in private chambers or in the form of more public displays shaped courtly identity and influence and acted as a carefully staged enactment to express grievances, intent, and personality at court. Butler gives various examples ranging from Lord Darley, Walter Raleigh, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.

The Battle of the Books: A seventeenth century war of words and ideas

2012-05-14T11:51:00.002+01:00

In preparing for my paper for the Anglo-American conference in July, I thought it would be worthwhile looking at the seventeenth century debate of the same name as the conference: the Battle between the Ancients and the Moderns. Although such a title sounds more like a plot from a Hollywood film, the reality is somewhat dryer, though, perhaps, more intellectually satisfying. I think what grabbed me most about that debate was something that Joseph M. Levine wrote in his 1981 article ‘Ancients and Moderns Reconsidered’:

“the ancients were not simply defenders of tradition against the new, they had in fact come onto the European scene in England as elsewhere as innovators, humanists, in revolt against the culture of their own (late medieval) times. Thus, paradoxically, an ancient could in certain circumstances appear to be a modern, as we shall see the moderns, more closely examined, could sometimes turn out to be ancients. In the battle of the books the ancients were the self-conscious continuators of the Renaissance and were determined like their predecessors to exalt and to imitate the past – but not any past and certainly not that medieval past which was to them all Gothic and barbarous – rather that special corner of the past which they demarked as classical antiquity and to which they attached a peculiarly practical value.”

- Joseph M. Levine (p. 78)

Woodcut from Jonathan Swift's
Battle of the Books (1704) which
vividly discussed the contention
between 'Moderns' and 'Ancients'

It is certainly true that many learned men who wrote in the final decades of the sixteenth century saw themselves as humanist scholars. It is also true that all of them, pretty much without exception, looked back to classical authors to support their arguments. For those who wrote histories it was to the likes of Livy that they turned to in their prefaces to exclaim truth, honesty and approval. Religion, which of course was at the height of contention in this century, had already become a scholarly battleground where the veracity of which doctrine was correct largely rested upon dim recollections and fragmentary evidence of a mythical pristine early church. Did the true church lie with the Pope and the Roman Catholics, or, as the Elizabethan regime in England argued, did it lie elsewhere, in a church that has ever since its inception, been a persecuted church? The answer did not lie in what we would now call the medieval period, although some, like John Foxe, did make strenuous use of that period of time. The truth, they believed lay in the times of the ancients.

Nevertheless Foxe’s focus on the medieval centuries as well as the ancient Roman times may well have incidentally helped to pave the way for seventeenth century scholars to make their debate upon those seeking knowledge from the ancients and those seeing knowledge as yet to be discovered. Rosemond Tuve, for example noted in 1939 how the vernacular, and in particular the re-discovery of Old English, helped to shape the quarrel between ancients and moderns:

“The commonplaces of the position taken by the Moderns against the pretended decay of Nature are belief in the superiority of a Christian culture, in the progressive unveiling of Truth, defence of the indigenous and English as against the classical Ancient, confidence in the improvements of Modern knowledge and the methods of critical scholarship, and a constantly growing faith in the almost infinite possibilities opened up by these new approaches and concepts. ‘Saxonist’ endeavours established connection with these modern axioms at almost all points”

- Rosemond Tuve, (p. 178)

Saxon study therefore provided the Moderns with a non-Latin heritage and enabled them to distance themselves from the pagan learning’s of the ancients through the means of language and religious culture. A more recent study by Wyman H. Heredeen on the early seventeenth-century scholar William Camden makes use of a similar argument:

“With new theories about language and education, as well as with the intensification of nationalistic sentiment across Europe, a new Hellenism emerged that recognized that the ancients were once the moderns, that the true spirit of classical writers was to be found in the cultivation of the vernacular. The price of the success, or partial success, of the humanist’s educational agenda, then, was being superseded by a Hellenism less dependent on narrowly defined ideas of imitation.”

- Wyman H. Herendeen (p. 110)

Two divergent viewpoints had therefore emerged. The first was the very same that Foxe had believed in his own century; that all truth and knowledge could be found through study of the classical past. His use of the medieval was largely to show how the papacy and Christian culture in general had fallen from that initial purity over many centuries. The rise of humanist learning and a reformed religion was therefore necessary to put the human race back on track. Half a century later however, the seeds sown by Foxe and his colleagues in the study of the Anglo-Saxons as well as in later medieval history to show that decline, were re-identified as a method for breaking away from the classical inheritance.

Further Reading

Wyman H. Herendeen, William Camden: A life in context (2007).

Joseph M. Levine, ‘Ancients and Moderns Reconsidered’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15:1 (Autumn 1981), pp. 72-89.

Rosemond Tuve, ‘Ancients, Moderns and Saxons’, English Literary History 6:3 (Sept. 1939), pp. 165-190.

Ancient and Early Modern Martyrs: A Reformation reappraisal of Britain’s Roman heritage as told by John Foxe (Abstract)

2012-04-30T14:30:00.000+01:00

The Anglo-American conference on Ancients and Moderns is now just over 2 months away and the research for my paper is, annoyingly, still only slowly ebbing along. Nevertheless I hope to be able to start talking a little more about my thoughts and findings on this blog over the next few weeks. In the meantime I thought I would share with you the abstract for my paper:

Ancient and Early Modern Martyrs: A Reformation reappraisal of Britain’s Roman heritage as told by John Foxe

The Acts and Monuments, written by John Foxe in the late sixteenth century, is commonly recognised as primarily a martyrology that vividly details the persecution of English Protestants by the government of Queen Mary. However, the work is so much more than this; it is an ecclesiastical history that told a revised history of Christianity from Christ through to their own times. In this history the Pope was labelled as Antichrist and traditionally perceived heretics counted as members of the true faithful.

Foxe chose many ways to establish his argument and to validate his claims one of which was to show the authenticity of the protestant church to have stretched back to Christ himself. In his second edition (published in 1570) Foxe devoted an entire chapter to the classical world seeking to show Roman culture, politics and religion through revised eyes. Foxe wished to receive the classical world as a purer time not yet disfigured by human and supernatural corruptions but one also plagued by persecution. For Foxe the true Christian church was a persecuted one as history had shown time and time again.

Foxe achieved this aim largely through the eyes of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263-339 AD) who had initiated the very form that Foxe wrote - the ecclesiastical history - but he also did so through the parallel researches carried out by other evangelical reformers such as the bibliophile John Bale and the German team of historians who compiled the Magdeburg Centuries. Those texts were written in Latin so Foxe’s vernacular work provided for the ordinary English people the only accessible means to reformist re-evaluation of the classical world. I will look at exactly what that interpretation was; how it related to the views of Foxe’s sixteenth century contemporaries; and how the classical world formed an essential role in Foxe’s understanding of the past and his conception for the present and future.

Ancient or Modern religion? - Foxe's opening gambit

2012-03-02T14:30:00.000+00:00

How did Foxe receive the classical traditions and texts? How did he incorporate them into a revised conception of the past? Was he unique in his vision of ancient civilization or did he agree with other scholars of his generation? These are questions that need answering, and will have to become a focus for my study over the coming months. Last weekend I made a start to these proceedings by reading through the first part of the first book of the Acts and Monuments. In this section Foxe compared (in list format) the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century with that described by Eusebius and others for early Christianity. Foxe’s central purpose was to demonstrate that although the ancient church fathers had declared the Roman Church a true church, it was not right to claim that this was still true in the sixteenth century. As Foxe himself notes:

“What say they [that is the Roman Catholics], where was this Church of yours, before these fifty years? To whom briefly to answer, first we demand what they mean by this, which they call our Church? If they mean the ordinance and institution of doctrine and Sacraments, now received of us, and differing from the Church of Rome, we affirm and say, that our church was, when this church of theirs was not yet hatched out of the shell, nor did yet ever see any light: that is, in the time of the Apostles, in the primitive age, in the time of Gregory I and the old Roman Church”

- A&M, 1583, bk. 1, pp. 25-26

As beginnings go this is a strong start for Foxe as it attacks head-on a central and popular Catholic argument: where was your church before Luther? Foxe’s answer is a simple one: where was your church?

Ancients and Moderns: How to fit John Foxe into the picture?

2012-02-16T10:30:00.000+00:00

Last week the Institute of Historical Research announced the programme for their 81^st Anglo-American Conference of Historians. This year the topic is on Ancients and Moderns. What do they mean by this? Well the primary question for the conference is how does the classical world resonate in our own times? In line with that question is how successive ‘epochs’ since the Renaissance have pictured themselves in relation to ancient civilizations?

Logo for the 81s Anglo-American Conference of Historians
hosted by the Institute of Historical Research

There are many ways to answer and look at those questions one of which is to turn to the revision of history produced in the sixteenth century. This is exactly what I plan to do in my paper for the Anglo-American conference. The paper entitled Ancient and Early Modern Martyrs: A Reformation reappraisal of Britain’s Roman heritage as told by John Foxe will look primarily at the history of the Roman period in the Acts and Monuments and what this tells us about Foxe’s view of his own times.

The entire first book of the Acts and Monuments was dedicated to early Christian and Roman history with Eusebius’ account of early martyrs utilized by Foxe as a parallel to Protestants martyred under Queen Mary. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. AD 263 – 339) wrote the first ever ecclesiastical history in the fourth century and Foxe located his work in the same tradition. In this, Foxe was the first in England to follow Eusebius’ lead since the Venerable Bede but he was not the only one to do so in Christendom in the late sixteenth-century. A German reformer named Matthias Flacius was also heavily involved in a collaborative project based in the city state of Magdeburg. This project, basing itself upon Eusebius’ church history, resulted in fourteen volumes charting Christian history from the birth of Christ right through to the thirteenth century. It was to prove a valuable inspiration and source for Foxe’s English-centric project.

Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 263-339)

The return to Eusebius by protestant reformers both in terms of content and in form had specific resonances for a revised history of Christianity, especially one based upon the idea of the true faithful as a persecuted people as Foxe’s was. Thus far there have only been a handful of studies on the Eusebius question and the Roman period in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and only two published:

Minton, Gretchen E., '"The Same Cause and Like Quarell" : Eusebius, John Foxe, and the Evolution of Ecclesiastical History', Church History, 71:4 (2002), 715-42 .
Freeman, Thomas S., Great Searching out of Bookes and Autors: John Foxe as an Ecclesiastical Historian, unpublished Ph.D (New Brunswick, The State University of New Jersey, 1995).
Pucci, Michael S., ‘Reforming Roman Emperors: John Foxe’s characterisation of Constantine in the Acts and Monuments’, in David Loades (ed.), John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 29-51.

The John Foxe project offers some additional research in its commentaries although these are preliminary in nature and, I should confess, were partly written by myself, and therefore represent my own limited investigations into this area thus far. Included amongst these commentaries is the fact that Foxe, like all humanist scholars of his age, followed Cicero’s leges historiae – i.e. that the first priority was truth. Foxe uses Cicero’s ‘laws’ not only to justify his own text but to derogatorily claim medieval chroniclers as having failed to attain the aspiration of Cicero (see commentary for 1583, bk. 1, p. 24). Another commentary remarks upon Foxe’s overriding prophetic framework based loosely upon that of John Bale’s Image of Bothe Churches (1545). Foxe structured his account of early martyrs via Eusebius but also through the lens of ‘two kingdom’ theory (the idea that there were a distinction between the affairs of this world and the kingdom of Christ) and the second of the visible and invisible church (see commentary for 1583, bk. 1, p. 53). For the account of the ten persecutions we know that Foxe relied heavily upon the German ecclesiastical history, the commonly named Magdeburg Centuries that I mentioned earlier, and a handful of other sources including, presumably, a copy of Eusebius’ ecclesiastical history. However, as discussed in the commentary for 1583, bk. 1, p. 57 investigations into this portion of Foxe’s book remains at a preliminary stage. It is therefore these ten persecutions that I will be most interested in looking at for my paper.

Inflation in William Harrison's Description of England

2012-01-24T13:55:00.000+00:00

Ever since money became a primary mode of exchange the economy has had an enormous effect on the ordinary day to day lives of people. Of course we are currently in one of those periods of decline with recovery seemingly still somewhere far off in the distance. During this recession many news outlets noted how different this economic downturn was to those in the past. No doubt that is true, but it is surely equally true of all economic downturns. No recession is precisely the same as another.

On the whole it can be said that the standard of living in England rose during the sixteenth century but there were nonetheless two periods of high inflation that caused serious problems for the population. In the last years of Henry VIII and first years of Edward VI debasement of the currency caused high inflation and then again towards the end of Elizabeth I’s reign prices rocketed due to bad harvests with somewhere around a 50% increase in costs.

What did the chroniclers say about these periods of inflation and about the general rise in living standards? Annabel Patterson argues that William Harrison (writing for the Holinshed Chronicles) commented on the economic situations – albeit in a fragmentary way – in his Description of England (see Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles, ch. 5). In the 1577 edition Harrison was optimistic and pointed out various ways that the people were better off: primarily the prevalence of chimneys which aired out houses, softer bedding material, and an increase of imported luxuries such as tapestries, pewter and plate. This account was written during an upturn in real wages. In his later revisions of 1587 Harrison amended his account to reflect on the downturn that had since occurred. For instance the ‘amendment of lodging’ was recounted in 1577 as ‘great’ but in 1587 noted also as ‘not generall’ (Patterson, p. 82).

Simple adjustment of the words in a text between editions can be a useful indicator of fluctuations on the market during the early modern period. It is equally true today. If we look at the language used during the years of ‘boom’ compared to these years of ‘bust’ slight variations in word-use have been used to portray varying economic security. Terminology used to describe the work of bankers and the stock exchange has been particularly revised. Such thoughts leads me to a question (one which I don’t really have an answer to): how much of what happens in the economy is actually due to the words used to convey the situation compared to what the situation is actually about? There is no doubt that words have power to control situations and direct them along certain lines. So how far is our economy effected by words rather than facts and figures? I’m no economist so I cannot answer such a series of questions but it is perhaps useful to consider these things when reading the newspapers and, equally as important, when reading medieval and early modern chronicles.

History Today: Student Page on the Protestant Reformation

2012-01-10T17:01:00.001+00:00

History Today online has added a new student page on the topic of the Protestant Reformation. With articles by Michael Mullett, Russel Tarr, and Andrew Pettegree and several other links to History Today articles this is nice introduction to the subject and, while not strictly speaking on the topic of intellectual history, does discuss nicely the theological debates and events surrounding Martin Luther, John Calvin and other well known leaders of sixteenth century reformers.

Have a look on the History Today Student Page.

Patrick Collinson's final publication

2012-01-06T10:00:00.000+00:00

The highly influential historian of post-reformation English religion, Patrick Collinson sadly passed away late last year but his passing came with one final publication. This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century (Manchester, 2011) is a collection of essays previously published independently between 1994 and 2009.

The book represents the final word by Patrick Collinson on the sixteenth century. Unlike his earlier work, post-reformation religious culture – whilst playing its role – is not its general focus. That said, there is a considerable religious thread throughout largely manifested through examination of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. For the most part though, this binding together of recent articles by Collinson, reflects his latter interested in ‘early modern English politics and self-fashioning Collectively’, as Collinson’s reviewer Sarah Waurechen argues.

It is to this review – to be found in Reviews in History - that I thought worthwhile linking to here. Sarah Waurechen sums up the collection as demonstrating Collinson’s view that:

“ the political community was active and engaged, and that certain ideas, texts, and moments in history served as rallying points around which an English national identity could form. The problem, though, was that this identity was an unstable one, and Collinson illuminates the fissures in Protestant discourses about the nation, and in the ways in which histories might reflect religious and political fault lines. For him, this explains why the nation eventually collapsed into civil war.”

Other resources:

Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago Press: Chicago, 1994)

2011-12-15T09:10:00.000+00:00

BOOK REVIEW

Annabel Patterson’s 1994 Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles is a seminal work that brought the study of Holinshed back into historiographical favour. For a long time Holinshed was perceived as only worthwhile studying as the base matter for the historical plays written by William Shakespeare. Its content as far as historians and literary scholars were concerned was of nothing of importance – simply the final who-rah for the dying chronicle tradition. This belief of course is in struck contrast to its ecclesiastical brother, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, which has received serious scholarly study for many decades.

Patterson’s thesis is divided into three main sections. The first is to me the most interesting (although I differ to Patterson in this as she sees these chapters as introductory matter for her more original research). The first four chapters focus on the intentions behind the Holinshed enterprise, its authors and the protocols involved in a collaborative project such as this, and the revisions made to the text for the second edition. The first chapter (entitled Intentions) notes the members of the Holinshed ‘syndicate’ both for the first edition and second but talks more about issues of censorship and cohesiveness of narrative (or lack of) between the contributors than about the men themselves. It is interesting, for example, that each contributor seems to have dedicated their piece to rival patrons. Patterson also makes the case for Abraham Fleming as holding the role of chief editorial control of the second edition (which differs from some other interpretations).

The second chapter (entitled Authors) is a short biographical account of each author of the Chronicles providing little that cannot be found elsewhere – but nevertheless useful in such a book as this. The third chapter (entitled Protocols) is much more interesting. Here Patterson lays out some of the historiographical and contextual protocols that lie beneath the narrative that each author contributed. Thus elements such as referencing sources, adding a variety of opinions and voices to the arguments, and the use of eye witness accounts and anecdotes are reported as the basis for studying the various narratives. The final chapter in the first section (entitled Revision) has a more limited focus. It is about – of course – revisions made between the first and second editions of the Chronicles but more specifically it is about William Harrison’s prologue: Description of England. This chapter has the feeling of preliminary work with much more to be done at a later date. The revisions made by Harrison are interesting – they say much about his changing religious views (or at least about what he felt comfortable sending to print) and about his views of the Elizabethan state in general.

Holinshed's Chronicles - Title page
from the 1587 edition

The second section is used by Patterson to discuss the differing themes in Holinshed’s Chronicles: ‘economics’; ‘government’; ‘religion’; and ‘law’. Although this section represents a more traditional approach to history research it is also where Patterson sees her conclusions as offering the most important results. These chapters are, however, not so much about these themes in of themselves but about the perceptions of them in Holinshed. This is not so much an attempt at institutional history but rather more an intellectual history focused around Holinshed and his collaborators; and thus in turn a study of late sixteenth-century Elizabethan historical scholarship. Indeed the contributors for the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles reads like a ‘who’s who’ of late Elizabethan scholarship: Raphael Holinshed, Reyner Wolfe, Richard Stainihurst, Edmund Campion, William Harrison, Henry Bynneman, Abraham Fleming, John Hooker, John Stow, Francis Thynne, and William Patten.

In the chapter on ‘Economics’ Patterson explains how the chroniclers believed that educated citizens should be alerted to price and currency fluctuations. They achieved this aim chiefly through inserting information about economics in fragmented pieces throughout the text. ‘Government’ is the topic of the sixth chapter. Here Patterson takes Sir Geoffrey Elton to task over his conceptualisation of Parliament’s role in the sixteenth century showing that study of Holinshed can produce an alternative take. Patterson argues that Holinshed regarded Parliament as the institution on which a secular history should be focused upon. As an ‘evolutionary’ account of government, Holinshed shows how Parliament reached its peak in the reign of Richard II and that parliamentary responsibility was not sustained thereafter.

Chapter seven is entitled ‘Religion’ but as Patterson points out this is not about doctrine or practice but ‘the convergence of church and state in the enforcement of religious orthodoxy’. In particular Patterson focuses on the re-evaluation of the fifteenth century Lollard movement by Hall, Bale, Foxe, and Holinshed.

The trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton which resulted in his acquittal much to the fury of Mary’s government is the subject of chapter eight entitled ‘Law’. Throckmorton was accused of complicity in a Protestant conspiracy but through extensive knowledge of the law was able to tear apart his accuser’s case. According to Patterson:

‘in Holinshed’s eyes, Thorockmorton’s trial stood for his own theory of law in relation to the ancient constitution, and Throckmorton himself became the most articulate spokesman for what “indifference” meant in the territory of law’ (Patterson, p. 155).

The final section of Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles moves away from the generalised and onto the tightly focused subjects of censorship and the ‘surprising’ (Patterson’s word) attention of the Chronicles to the underprivileged. First we are treated to the idea of ‘popular’ history as found in the Chronicles especially where Holinshed and his collaborators focused on the Babington Plot and the phantom pregnancy of Queen Mary. This chapter looks at the multi-vocal voice of the ordinary people (as far as it could be reconstructed or moulded into the chronicle framework). Thus the account of the celebration for Mary’s claimed pregnancy includes gossip between ordinary people about whether or not they believed the queen to indeed be with child.

The next chapter looks at gender history – or more specifically the visibility of women in the Chronicles. Patterson notes that although Holinshed included several tales about women (other than the obvious female monarchs of the period) it was largely Abraham Fleming who, in an uneven form, brought in stories concerning women.

We then move onto the topic of censorship (a thread that has run throughout the book). Patterson interestingly shows how Holinshed and his successors were not only aware of the issues of censorship but on how they provided a commentary on ‘freedom of information’ through the use of history. The argument here is that Elizabeth’s government was strong on enforcement of censorship and closely aligned to that of her sister’s policy. The authors of the second edition of Holinshed, Patterson argues, were deeply aware of this continuity and sought to make their perceptions known to their readership.

Finally, Patterson looks at ‘reception’ – to how the chronicle was transmitted to future generations and how it was received by them. To my mind there is much more that could be said on this subject such as the use the chronicles were put to by each generation and if elements of Holinshed’s text found their way into other formats or not.

As yet Patterson’s work has not been superseded (although the Holinshed Project promises further reassessment and refreshment of the subject in the near future). The digitalisation of the Chronicles by the Holinshed Project is a giant leap forward for the study of both editions and will hopefully direct the rigor of historical scholarship in the same way that the Foxe Project has managed over the last twenty years for the Acts and Monuments. Since Patterson’s monograph was published various articles have discussed Holinshed – most of which have made some sort of reference to Patterson’s research. However, the only further monograph to have yet appeared was published in 2010 by Igor Djordjevic entitled Holinshed’s Nation: Ideals, Memory, and Practical Policy in the Chronicles.

Fact and Fiction in sixteenth century history and the rise of the historical novel

2011-11-30T14:34:00.001+00:00

The Musketeers

Over the last few months I have been preoccupied with investigating the history of historical fiction and its relationship to academic history for the recent IHR winter conference: Novel Approaches: From academic history to historical fiction. The results of this investigation now form a series of blog posts on the IHR Digital blog and have also been attached to the virtual conference website that I helped to develop. Although this is somewhat of a diversion from my own research interests (and expertise) my examination into historical fiction from the seventeenth century right through to the present does nevertheless have a resonance with my studies of sixteenth century scholars.

The historical novel developed first in France in the seventeenth century as an alternative representation of the historiographical debates over Particular and Secret histories as opposed to the more traditional universal histories. Particular and Secret history is, in essence, a focus on individual empowerment and its role in historical causation. The arguments suggested that historical events were caused or given form through the peculiarities of the individuals involved. In the nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott (often claimed as the first historical novelist of modern form) drew out in his Waverley novels the historiographical debates of his time over nationhood and historical difference. In the second half of the twentieth century the rise of postmodernism as a significant force in philosophical theory drove historians to debate whether all history was indeed historical fiction or historical truth. The nature of ‘truths’ about the past was put under the microscope and many historians to this day conceive of the past as holding many truths and representations including the fictional.

Back in the sixteenth century however, fiction and fact were often interchangeable. One only has to look as far as John Foxe’s narratives and imagery of the Marian burnings to see how the two meshed together to form a truth about the past. King N. King has written a fascinating account on the ‘literary aspects’ in the Acts and Monuments arguing that:

‘English Protestants of the early modern era readily understood that stories about the pain and suffering of martyrs provided exciting reading that afforded both edification and enjoyment’.

Foxe includes many fictional (and widely-known fictional) pieces in his Acts and Monuments. The distinction for him was not whether or not these represented authentic historical evidence but whether they were rightly used or abused. For instance the tales of saints in the hagiographical Golden Legend are vilified by Foxe as full of falsities and lies whilst the account of Jack Upland – which Foxe and others believed had been written by Geoffrey Chaucer – told a tale against friars and were therefore considered truthful in representing the beliefs and thoughts of a past society.

The Holinshed Chronicles produced largely as a collaborative project a short time after Foxe further supports the argument that literary elements were considered equally as valuable as historical fact. Annabel Patterson has argued that:

‘They also had at their disposal a number of literary techniques and genres, which enliven and intensify the text they were constructing out of extremely diverse materials, but they did not make the mistake of some modern theoreticians in confusing literary methods with an endless, indiscriminate textuality’ (Patterson, p. 55)

In Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles Patterson added that sixteenth century chroniclers:

‘were convinced that what we call “literature” was integral to the cultural history they were compiling, an indispensable part of the record, both of the individual career and of the bildungsroman of the nation as a whole.’ (Patterson, p. 55)

Let’s deconstruct that a little. First what is bildungsroman? According to the Oxford English Dictionary bildungsroman means ‘a novel dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education’. It is a coming of age story or educational tale depicting the psychological and moral growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood. Patterson’s use of the term here is to suggest that Holinshed’s chronicles were forging a tale of England’s growth from childhood (medieval) to adulthood (early modern). Patterson is also highlighting the cultural aspects of Holinshed’s chronicle. This was not just a political record or exegesis as chronicles had been in the past; Holinshed was forging a concept of England as a nation.

In the sixteenth century fiction and fact were often interchangeable and both were set to work towards the common goal of achieving a particular truth about the past but not necessarily concerned with the truth as we would accept it today. History, in the sixteenth century often focused on past perceptions as well as fact and the dividing line between the two was not always clear-cut.

Further Reading

John N. King, ‘Literary Aspects of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments’,John Foxe Online (2004).

Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago Press: Chicago, 1994)

For my ‘history of historical fiction’ blog posts see the IHR Digital Blog or for a pdf copy and an index to the blog posts visit the A History of Historical Fiction post on the Novel Approaches website. In addition the site contains a wonderful collection of podcasted lectures, book reviews (including one by myself on John Arden's Books of Bale novel), articles, and bibliographies.

The John Foxe Project

2011-10-24T16:56:00.002+01:00

The Book of Martyrs (or by its original name the Acts and Monuments) represented a memorial and record of the Marian persecution of Protestants in the 1550s. Its author John Foxe forever etched into the English psyche the idea of “Bloody Mary” but he did so much more. This was an ecclesiastical history that claimed to reveal the falsities of the Roman Catholic Church and of England’s traditional history. Foxe revised that history to fit a protestant viewpoint and helped to set English historiography onto a path that we continue to follow in some form today.

For over 20 years The John Foxe Project (now renamed TAMO - The Acts and Monuments Online) has tirelessly worked to bring the Acts and Monuments into the digital age at first as a CD-Rom and then as a searchable website. The final instance of this website was published earlier this year and allows researchers, for the first time ever, to easily access all four editions of the Acts and Monuments in their entirety that were published in Foxe’s lifetime. Along with various essays, bibliographies and apparatuses this resource provides new scope for studies of Foxe, the English reformation, English writing of history, and much else besides.

Links
My post about this project on the IHR Digital blog

University of Sheffield Project Press Release

John Bale

2011-10-24T16:50:00.001+01:00

John Bale (1495-1563) is a little bit of an enigma for historians. In his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry John N. King labels him as an ‘evangelical polemicist and historian’ but Bale is so much more than this. John Bale is a scholar, a bishop, a playwright, a matryrologist, a historian, a polemicist, a bibliophile, a collector of ancient manuscripts, and more. Bale’s profile as formed by historians is shaped in large part through his own autobiographical accounts which makes our understanding of Bale immediately complicated by biased and fictional representations. Thus the life and career of Bale is on the one hand detailed and rich and on the other difficult to categorise and distinguish truth from fiction.

Bale was born to a humble life in the small village of Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk to Henry and Margaret. He was one of several children and as such was delivered to the Carmelite Friars early in life as was often done at the time. As a Carmelite, Bale received scholarly training at Jesus College, Cambridge and travelled to Louvain and Toulouse to carry out research into the history of his order. By 1530 he had graduated with a DTh (Diploma in Theology) and become prior in Maldon, Essex. Three years later he was promoted to the convent at Ipswich, then a year later to Doncaster.

It was around this time that Bale converted to a reformist position against the Church of Rome, broke his oath to the Carmelites and married a woman (possibly a widower with a child in tow) named Dorothy. Later in life Bale attributed his conversion to Thomas, first Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead but the exact details and chronology is unknown. We do know that Bale was arrested on suspicion of heresy several times, first in 1534 and then again in 1537. On the second occasion it would seem that Bale was helped out by friends such as the antiquarian John Leland and the principal secretary Thomas Cromwell, whom Bale had begun to work for as chief playwright of evangelical plays. In 1536 he finally left the Carmelites for good, taking the post of a stipendiary priest at Thorndon in Suffolk.

In 1539 Bale was forced into exile due to the major shift in religious policy by Henry VIII but upon the succession of Edward VI, Bale was given the post of Bishop of Ossary in Ireland. This post proved difficult for Bale and upon the succession of Mary he was forced to flee for his life and travel abroad for a second period of exile. Upon the succession of Elizabeth I, Bale (now quite elderly) was appointed a canon at Canterbury Cathedral where he died in late 1563.

Bales major contribution to the reformation can be found in his polemical plays (especially his adaptation of King Johan), in his evangelical appraisal and appropriation for an English audience the continental apocalyptic tradition which argued that human history had been predicted in scripture and that the rise and fall of the Roman Catholic Church had been prophesised (The Image of Bothe Churches), and in his detailed catalogues of English writers and texts. The latter work, of which there are two editions, is named the Catalogus and contains the results of extensive research into England’s historical source material. The Catalogus was also as much theological polemic as it was catalogue: containing a complex history of the papacy and its fall to the antichrist (later republished as the Acta Romanorum pontificum).

In addition Bale wrote several martyrological accounts (John Oldcastle and Anne Askew) which would later inform and influence his friend and colleague John Foxe, the author of the Acts and Monuments. Indeed recent scholarship has unearthed a strong connection between the two men that suggests that Bale acted as mentor and encourager to Foxe’s project. Bale also helped Matthew Parker, Queen Elizabeth’s first archbishop of Canterbury to find lost ancient manuscripts for his own evangelical “propaganda” campaign. Finally, Bale wrote a polemical and autobiographical account of his time in Ireland (The Vocacyon of John Bale) which gives us a fascinating glimpse into Irish history and more particularly, English views of the Irish at this time.

Historical research is increasingly finding John Bale to be an important and essential influence on English scholarship during the sixteenth-century whether through his own activities or through his publications and writings. Bale helped to shape the English reformation on various levels but, also, helped to create the myth of protestant suffering and victory. As in his own autobiographical accounts Bale’s works carry a certain mythological and fictive element to them. Indeed, Lesley P. Fairfield, one of Bale’s many modern biographers called Bale ‘mythmaker for the English Reformation’. Such a title for a biography at once gets to the crux of Bale and offers us a warning not to examine him and his work without a significant amount of caution.

The Courtenay conspiracy

2011-10-17T10:00:00.001+01:00

Kenneth R. Bartlett, ‘The English Exile Community in Italy and the Political Opposition to Queen Mary I’, Albion, 13:3 (1981), pp. 223-241.*

I’ve been meaning to read the 1981 article by Kenneth R. Bartlett for a while concerning the English exile community in Venice during the reign of Mary I. I first discovered it during my PhD but laid it aside as it was not directly relevant to my studies at the time. I’m glad that I’ve finally found a reason (and opportunity) to make amends in this regard. Bartlett’s topic (which incidentally derives from his own PhD thesis) certainly makes for an interesting parallel to the thesis of Christina Garrett in her largely biographical investigation of the English exiles that ended up in various cities along the Rhine. Bartlett certainly brings to my attention the fact that there was an exile community in Venice largely, but not entirely separate, from the exiles in Strasbourg, Frankfort and Basel.

Edward Courtenay (1526-1556)

The Venice exiles whilst made up largely of protestant reformers, were nevertheless not primarily religious in their exile from Mary’s England, but political. Many had been involved in Northumberland’s failed plot to supersede Princess Mary to the throne through the use of Lady Jane. Indeed, Bartlett argues that their aspirations continued through a conspiracy led primarily by Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon and through allegiance to the Venetian Republic whom had strong reasons to block and then disrupt the marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain. The conspiracy against Mary was therefore three-pronged in nature: from the perspective of the English political exiles in Venice it was about establishing an independent and Protestant monarchy in England. For the Venetian Republic it was a directed policy against Imperial Hapsburg power becoming ‘permanently established in England’. Then thirdly the conspiracy related to political manoeuvring in England’s Parliament and from the Dudley faction in France.

So what does all this have to do with scholarly activity in the sixteenth century? Well it actually has a potentially important role to play, albeit in a round-about way. Bartlett claims that the Venetian exile community ‘was to have the greatest influence on the political complexion of the next reign’ – that being the protestant reign of Elizabeth I. Bartlett stresses that 24 of the 42 former exiles that returned to Parliament between 1559 and 1593 had spent at least part of their time in exile in Italy. These were the movers and shakers of Elizabeth’s government and thus a significant influence on the scholarly activities that were allowed, encouraged and produced during the early period of Elizabeth’s reign. Also of particular importance was the connection of William Cecil who would of course go on to become Elizabeth’s principal secretary. During the reign of Mary, Cecil maintained relations with the exile communities both in Germany and Italy/France and only narrowly escaped punishment for suspicion that he had been involved in the Dudley conspiracy.

* Link is to the article held on JSTOR which is only available via subscription.

The use of sources

2011-09-15T13:35:00.000+01:00

Annabel Patterson,
Reading Holinshed's
Chronicles (1994)

Over the last month or so I have been reading Annabel Patterson's 1994 book Reading Holinshed's Chronicles. Here is the first of several thoughts I have on the subjects that she brings up.

In her chapter on Protocols Patterson discusses the multivocality in Holinshed in some detail. The marginalia contained notes to sources where relevant although these were far from complete. Holinshed himself noted that he had ‘rather chosen to shew the diversitie’ of opinion among those sources that he relied upon rather than ‘by over-ruling them…to frame them to agree to [his] liking’ (Patterson, p.35). Patterson notes that other histories written in the sixteenth century (such as that by Hall, Grafton and More) gave lip service to referencing sources although the re-issue of Fabian’s chronicles in 1559 did contain additional marginalia that noted the original source material. Perhaps, then the protocol of noting sources in the margins was beginning to take shape as early as the 1550s. Certainly John Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, added copious marginalia noting his sources although these were often far from an accurate guide to what he had actually used. For instance, many if not all his references to the Venerable Bede derived from other sources (prominently John Bale’s recent catalogue of English writers) and not from a copy of Bede at all. In my researches on Foxe I could find no evidence that he had ever actually read Bede’s ecclesiastical history for himself.

What is interesting about this marginalia (beyond the fact that it helps us to identify the sources that were used to compile the accounts in Holinshed and Foxe) is the reason for their inclusion. As stated above, Holinshed had chosen to show the diversity of opinion in his sources. The printer who had re-issued Fabian claimed a similar reasoning as to show ‘the diversities’ of Fabian’s sources. Foxe made similar claims. One of Patterson’s central arguments in her Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles focuses on the role of censorship in the writing of the chronicles. In relation to the noting of sources, Patterson recognises that these marginalia might, in part, provide protection from censorship or rebuke as the words are clearly labelled as that of another. However, Patterson is right to argue also that there was more to it than that.

John Foxe often added marginalia to prove that he was telling the truth. It was rare that Foxe would change an account taken from an original document. What he would do instead is twist the meaning of that account by taking it out of context or ignoring other information contained in the source that was less useful to his argument. He did this under the belief that the old chroniclers had been corrupted by the antichrist and had therefore written only a partially true account themselves. Foxe therefore saw himself as doing a service by shifting the truth from the false. So for Foxe sources were referenced to deepen the truth-claims that he was making. What he wrote was not his own opinion but that of past writers (Catholic monks at that) who could not entirely suppress the truth.

In Holinshed and Foxe sources were also noted so that the author could challenge their authenticity or even (in some cases) interact with that source. Patterson has noted the inclusion of ‘I’ in various passages of Holinshed’s chronicles where the author has argued his opinion against that of the original source (Patterson, p. 36-7). Indeed, Patterson shows that Foxes’ Acts and Monuments were used as a counter-balance to Holinshed and his successors in the accounts of Edward VI and Mary Tudor. Holinshed intended for a more neutral stance on religion whilst Foxe obviously focused on his protestant revision of the past. A comparison of Holinshed and Foxe is therefore interesting as opposing histories of their own period.

In the Acts and Monuments Foxe used a similar strategy when dealing with Polydore Vergil’s history. Vergil was viewed by Foxe as the most recent in a line of Popish writers whose goal was to distort the truth and destroy evidence that did not support the Roman Catholic position. Indeed Foxe and others charged Vergil with the destruction of manuscript sources (a charge that was made somewhat ridiculous as it had been a partially protestant act that had destroyed the monastic libraries and thus hundreds of old manuscripts). In the Acts and Monuments Foxe often noted Polydore Vergil in the margins in comparison to other older sources to show how distorted history had been written by Vergil. Any error or uncertainty in Vergil was abused to its fullest in Foxe’s revisions.

All of this suggests that sources were noted in sixteenth century histories (especially near the end of the century) as a means to defend and strengthen truth-claims, to protect against censorship or claims of heresy and treason. Although sources were noted to allow others to find their base material this was not the priority and only served the purpose of making it more difficult for opposing historians to attack their truth-claims. The reason for this evolution in historiographical practice I think must derive in part from increased debate and disagreement between historians over the authenticity of past accounts (made more essential due to the opposing sides of the reformation), the increased availability of accounts made possible from the expansion of the printing press as a medium of distribution, and from humanist as opposed to scholastic methods of looking at texts.

PhD Thesis: Rectifying the ‘ignoraunce of history’: John Foxe and the Collaborative Reformation of England’s Past

2011-09-07T15:40:00.000+01:00

Front Page from the first edition of the
Acts and Monuments (1563) taken
from The Acts and Monuments Online

My intention today is not so-much to promote my own work, but to state where I am coming from in terms of my own academic background. The most important element of this is my doctoral thesis which focused on the research and writing by John Foxe and his colleagues to re-appropriate English history in a protestant mould. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments is the largest evangelical text produced during the sixteenth century reformation in England. Its main purpose was to promote the reformist agenda at court and to the English population at large.

Although (from its inception) the Acts and Monuments has been best regarded as a martyrology and memorial for those protestants who were burnt at the stake during the reign of Mary I, it is in actuality an ecclesiastical history which traces the Christian church from its foundations to Foxe’s present day. It is this element that I studied at the University of Sheffield between 2005 and 2009.

My thesis focused on Foxe’s attempts to rectifying the ‘ignoraunce of history’ (his words) held by the English people. In particular, it looked at Foxe’s writing of medieval history from the arrival of the Anglo Saxons through to the thirteenth century. I attempted (where possible) to track down Foxes’ sources which were sometimes manuscript or printed copies of medieval chronicles, recent publications such as histories, polemics, catalogues, or treatises, or occasionally based upon official documents searched out in archives. I also tried to trace Foxes’ contacts: names such as John Bale, Matthew Parker, John Day, Edmund Grindal and many more came up time and again and to varying degrees.

The context in which Foxe wrote brought my attention to the wider international reformation with connections found between Foxe and the Magdeburg Centuriators of Germany (another gigantic ecclesiastical history project from this period) and various continental scholars. However, the main basis for my work was the identification of source material that Foxe used and the way that he used it – not to tell lies or falsify as some have claimed in the past, but to tell a specific version of the past based upon what is said in his sources (and what Foxe believed was not said in his sources).

So that is where I am coming from. A study of how Foxe and others compiled the medieval portion of the Acts and Monuments. My studies are now shifting towards a wider investigation of sixteenth century scholars and historians but also towards that moment of transformation which occurred during the reign of Mary I. Exile not only radicalised many scholars from England in the 1550s but it also set English scholarship on a slightly different path – one that showed itself quite clearly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.