John Bale and the Development of Protestant Hagiography in England

Abstract

One of the consequences of the Reformation in England (as elsewhere) was that for Protestants, at least, the image of sainthood changed considerably. Erasmus'sColloquieshad poked fun at the kind of saint honoured by theGolden Legend; and Thomas Cromwell drove the point home in his Injunctions of 1536 and 1538. ‘New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth …’ and a new cause naturally creates its new heroes. The changing conception of sainthood in sixteenth-century England, culminating in Foxe'sActes and Monuments,has attracted not a little modern scholarly attention, as for example in Helen C. White'sTudor Books of Saints and Martyrs.But one pivotal figure in this development deserves more intensive study: John Bale (1495–1563), the famous antiquary, dramatist and protestant propagandist. In the 1540s Bale published works on two protestant ‘saints’—Sir John Oldcastle and Mistress Anne Askew—which did much to imprint the new definition of sainthood on the English mind. For these little tracts alone (and particularly in the light of Bale's later relationship with John Foxe) Bale's contribution to protestant hagiography invites a closer look.