Early English Reformation Research Articles

John Bale, Imperial Monarchy, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract The episcopal mission of Englishman John Bale to Ireland in 1553 provides historians with a unique window into the interconnected British and Irish histories of the early English Reformation. Scholarship on Bale has long explored his life and theology in all European theatres of the Reformation in which he was involved. Yet, key features of his mission and theology remain underappreciated. Building on recent work that has contextualized Bale’s Irish mission and ecclesiology within the imperial outlook of the Edwardian regime and Reformation, the article examines Bale’s mission against the worlds of English evangelical and continental Protestant political theology he inhabited, and the mingling of Henrician and Edwardian ‘reformist’ energies in Ireland with which it intersected and clashed. It argues that, under conditions of English colonial rule and empire in Ireland, Bale expressed a political theology that, imperial by circumstance and implication, turned his spiritual vocation modelled on Christ into a receptacle for divine and princely sovereignty that set rival conceptions of royal authority, idolatry, and Anglo-Irish constitutional relations against each other. Evangelical political theology thus acquired different hues on either side of the Irish Sea, with important implications for how we understand the early English Reformation across England and Ireland.

Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527 ed. by Richard Rex

Reviewed by: Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527 ed. by Richard Rex Korey D. Maas Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527. Edited by Richard Rex. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2021. xvi + 306 pp. The bad blood between Henry VIII and Martin Luther has long held a prominent place in narratives and interpretations of the early English Reformation. The King's 1521 salvo against Luther's Babylonian Captivity, rewarded with the ultimately ironic "Defender of the Faith" title, never goes without mention. Nor do the hard feelings resulting a decade later from Luther's refusal to endorse the dissolution of Henry's first marriage, and from the intransigence attending England's bid to enter the Schmalkaldic League. Less well-known is the subject of Richard Rex's latest volume, what he dubs the "second controversy" between Henry and Luther. That this conflict has received less sustained attention is largely understandable, as it revolved around only two relatively brief letters. Luther wrote privately to Henry, expressing his belief that the King was becoming favorable to the Wittenberg theology and hoping that the imprudence of his earlier invective might be forgiven. Henry then replied publicly, saying, in effect, "You're badly [End Page 246] misinformed about my inclinations toward your still damnably heretical doctrines—but I'm glad we now agree about the foolishness of your earlier writings." Although the brevity and straightforwardness of the exchange itself might not demand extended scholarly analysis, Rex emphasizes that it quickly (if briefly) became an international affair, with more than a dozen editions of the two letters being published almost immediately across continental Europe. He highlights especially "the level of attention it attracted from leading Catholic scholars in Europe" (40), who "gave it all the publicity they could" (x), and who leveraged the opportunity to heap "praise on the king and scorn on Luther" (23). In addition to the texts of the original letters, the bulk of the volume is given over to transcriptions, translations, and annotations of the various pamphlets, letters, and prefaces produced in the months after the initial correspondence was made public. As such, it makes readily accessible to scholars a valuable cache of primary source material. The author's own 54-page introductory essay sheds further light on some important contextual questions. Perhaps the most obvious and baffling of these: What possible reason could Luther have had for suspecting a royal change of heart? Rex rightly notes that all objective indicators militated against that supposition, and that the most frequent explanation—that Luther had been misled by the exiled Christian II of Denmark—is unsupported by any extant evidence. Intriguingly, though, especially in light of long-running debates about who might have helped draft the King's contribution to the "first controversy" of 1521 (which the introduction illuminates), the author points to evidence indicative of Thomas More having a hand in Henry's 1526 reply to Luther. Similarly relevant to the earlier controversy, Rex deftly demolishes the "abiding myth" (2) that Henry was already at work on anti-Lutheran polemic as early as 1518. One significant question is unfortunately left unaddressed. While emphasizing that the attention given the correspondence by Catholic polemicists is one of the "remarkable features" (40) of the exchange, the author nowhere indicates—aside from the inclusion of one further contribution by Luther himself—whether the exchange [End Page 247] provoked any similarly polemical reactions from European Protestants. If it elicited only silence that is surely worth highlighting, if only because it further bolsters the implicit thesis that Luther's original missive constituted an unforced error and handed his detractors an embarrassingly lopsided rhetorical triumph. If, on the other hand, Protestants did weigh in against the King's letter, those interventions, too, surely deserve some attention. [End Page 248] Korey D. Maas Hillsdale College Hillsdale, Michigan Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Religious Patronage as Gendered Family Memory in Sixteenth-century England

Through an analysis of a large corpus of sixteenth-century wills and testaments, this article explores Englishwomen’s end-of-life religious patronage a site for the production of family identity and memory, and as a mechanism by which family and faith were woven together. It considers both the influence of the family on women’s post-mortem piety, and their role as executrices for their husbands. In doing so, it argues that women were integral to producing the commemorative practices that ensured their families’ immortality, and that these practices were in turn an important means by which religious practice and belief were renegotiated and refigured during the early English Reformation.

Tyndale, Erasmus, and the Early English Reformation

Abstract This essay reconsiders the relationship between William Tyndale, the English reformer and bible translator, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Modern Tyndale biographers have distorted their account of this relationship because of their commitment to interpreting events associated with Tyndale through a hagiographical lens. The essay reviews evidence of Tyndale’s knowledge of Erasmus’ writings and argues that Tyndale used Erasmus to support his positions, but also differed from him when occasion demanded. Diglot bibles printed from the 1530s to c. 1550 paired Tyndale’s and Erasmus’ bible translations beside each other and thereby established an interpretation that has endured into modern times.

RICHARD PATE, THE ROYAL SUPREMACY, AND REFORMATION DIPLOMACY

ABSTRACTIn December 1540 one of Henry VIII's clerical diplomats defected to the papacy. As contemporaries believed that a king could be judged by the ambassadors he sent to represent him abroad, Pate's defection caused the English king considerable embarrassment. His acceptance of the bishopric of Worcester from the pope in July 1541 made Pate a figure of symbolic importance to opponents of Henry VIII's royal supremacy. This article examines Pate's diplomatic career, paying particular attention to how Pate negotiated the competing claims on his loyalty of the pope and Henry VIII. Although Pate was expected to represent Henry's church policy, his experiences in embassy also provided opportunities for conservatism, as Henry sought to maintain amicable relations with the emperor and deny charges of heresy. Pate's case raises important questions about the religious sympathies of those chosen by Henry to represent him abroad and had important consequences for the practice of diplomacy in the early English Reformation. Pate also offers important insights into the motivations of Henrician Catholic exiles, their views of the Henrician church, and their political opposition to it.

Scripture, History, and Polemic in the Early English Reformation: the curious case of Robert Barnes

AbstractThough the early Protestant emphasis on the principle of alone has long been recognized, scholars in the last century also increasingly highlighted the extent to which evangelicals made conscious polemical use of extra-biblical historical sources and arguments. In so doing, some authors also deemed such evangelical uses of historical argument logically incompatible with a professed commitment to the principle of sola scriptura, suggesting that Protestant appeals to history in fact reveal an unstated lack of confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture alone. Questioning this received wisdom, the present essay attempts to demonstrate that at least one early English evangelical—Robert Barnes (1495-1540)—was not only able to harmonize historical polemic with a high view of Scripture's sufficiency, but that the primarily historical methodology evident in his publications of the 1530s was in fact derived from, and put to use in defense of, his commitment to the principle of sola scriptura. Di...

Some Neglected Aspects of the Exegetical Debate on Resurrection and the Immortality of the Soul between William Tyndale and George Joye in Antwerp (1534-1535)

The debate between William Tyndale and George Joye on "translating resurrection" (changing Tyndale's "resurreccion" into "the lyfe after this" or some other similar expression in twenty-two places in a 1534 Antwerp reprint of Tyndale's 1526 Worms New Testament) has received relatively little scholarly attention. Based on primary sources, this article presents an original account of the history of the debate and highlights some generally neglected elements in it. Tyndale's charges against Joye are examined in the light of the available evidence and Joye's Apologye (1535). Based on the available sources, it becomes clear that Tyndale's second foreword in his November 1534 New Testament is largely responsible for the misrepresentation of Joye's standpoint in current secondary literature and that Joye's motive for changing Tyndale's New Testament was not the negation of the bodily resurrection but a reaction to Luther's (and Tyndale's) tenet on soul-sleep by applying the findings of the exegetical studies of his times (e.g. by Huldrych Zwingli) to the translation of text. Thanks to the debate, we have a better understanding of the eschatological ideas of the early English Reformation.

Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. By Andrew Pettegree; The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe. Edited by C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn‐Schütte and The Gospel and Henry VIII. Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. By Alec Ryrie

Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. By Andrew Pettegree; The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe. Edited by C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn‐Schütte and The Gospel and Henry VIII. Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. By Alec Ryrie

:The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation.(Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.)

:The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation.<i>(Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.)</i>

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. By ALEC RYRIE (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2003; pp. xix + 306. £45). ALEC RYRIE'S study of English evangelicals in the last years of Henry VIII has a significance which ranges far beyond its apparently modest choice of subject. The author has avoided the sort of neat categorisation which has constrained Reformation history in the past and sought instead to illustrate the complexities and diversities of England's unique experience of religious change. In particular, he wrests Reformation terminology away from the template provided by either European reformers, or later English Protestants, and assesses the developments of the 1540s on their own terms, and in their own specific context. There emerges from this an understanding of the later Henrician Reformation which is not shackled by the need constantly to compare reformist attitudes to a ‘pure’ model of Protestant belief (if any such thing exists) but instead explores the fascinating phenomenon of one country's distinctive response to the evanglical impulse.

:The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation

:<i>The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation</i>

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. By Ryrie Alec. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xx + 306 pp. $65.00 cloth.

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. By Ryrie Alec. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xx + 306 pp. $65.00 cloth.

The Challenge of Interpretation: Using Documents of the Early English Reformation Period

The purpose of this article is to comment on methodological approaches to the use of original documents in the early English Reformation. Primary sources, such as episcopal registers, are in manuscript and in Latin—all of which makes them remote from the modern scholar. This article constructs a guide, consisting of ten precepts, to using such documents and concludes with a catalogue of all such manuscripts for the early English Reformation period.

The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation by Alec Ryrie (review)

REVIEWS 278 artist from Florence, as apparently many did, and his connections with the Carmelite church. In the latter portion of this section, Rowland discusses the full history of the Carmelites, an order founded by the Old Testament prophet Elijah and had first established themselves on the slopes of Mount Carmel. Their spread to Italy had been a slow one, and it was not until 1317 that Pope John XXII issued a bull granting the order the same rights as the other preaching communities, the Franciscans and Dominicans. Paintings were part of a far-reaching publicity program in which Carmelite centers in Florence, Siena, and Pisa hosted unusually innovative altarpieces and frescoes. These pieces also promoted their associations with Old Testament figures such as Elijah and Elisha, and smaller commissions made for personal devotion included insertions of Carmelites into historical sequences, such as the institution of Saint Peter’s appointed role as head of the Catholic Church surrounded by representatives of numerous orders. The year the Pisa Altarpiece was completed, Rowlands observes, also marked the 200th anniversary of Pope Honorious III’s confirmation of the Carmelite Order, and may have been commissioned to commemorate this event. At this point, it should be noted that the influences of Ser Giuliano and the Carmelites upon Masaccio’s Pisa Altarpiece has not received a great deal of attention until now. And yet, it is somewhat difficult to see how this summary of the history of the Carmelites has any strong bearing on the matter. Aside from the possible commission of the piece to specifically commemorate the 200th-year anniversary that Rowlands briefly mentions, there does not appear to be any significant Carmelite influences on the iconography of the altarpiece itself. The last section of the book is devoted to the later history of the Pisa Altarpiece and how different parts of it have become a part of various collections. Ser Giuliano’s chapel was destroyed in 1568 for renovation of the church, and the Masaccio’s altarpiece would have been moved to a new chapel or to the sacristy. Not long afterwards, the panels were broken up, and there are references to the scattered parts as early as 1612. What follows is the provenance of some of the individual pieces up to their current collections. This small book functions splendidly as separate independent topics of discussion , but perhaps like the Pisa Altarpiece, readers must reconstruct these pieces in the manner they see most fitting. It may not be remarkably groundbreaking , but it is a convenient source as a brief introduction to the scholarship on Masaccio’s life, the Pisa Altarpiece, and the Carmelites. LISA TOM, Art History, UCLA Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2003) xix + 306 pp., ill. In his work on evangelicals during the last decade of Henry VIII’s reign, Alec Ryrie argues against both A. G. Dickens’s depiction of this period as a “quiet advance” for Protestants on the one hand, and the more recent notion of these years as a “conservative reaction” on the other. Instead, Ryrie posits a “profoundly ambiguous” monarchial attitude toward reform, an attitude that left enough religious wiggle-room to permit a significant degree of evangelical REVIEWS 279 thought and activity to survive and even to thrive until Edward’s succession to the throne. This very ambiguity, however, led to a conflict of loyalties for the evangelical subjects—to their faith and to their king. This conflict provides the lens through which Ryrie proposes to view the last decade of Henry’s life. Part 1 reviews the historiography of the period beginning, perhaps inevitably, with John Foxe and the profound impact his work has on perceptions of the early 1540’s even to this day. Foxe and other later-sixteenth-century Protestant writers wanted to acknowledge Henry’s break from Rome, but could not countenance his persecution of evangelicals. The fact that Henry had them burnt was difficult enough, but the legislative permanence of the Act of Six Articles —represented later by Foxe as the “whip with six strings” was perhaps his most unforgivable deed...

The reformation of the deathbed in mid-sixteenth-century England

This paper examines the religious controversies and reforms of the early English Reformation (c.1530 to 1560) and considers how they impacted upon the spiritual preparation of the dying. The advent of Lutheran ideas in the 1520s challenged traditional beliefs about the role of the Church and the sacraments in the salvation of the individual and the fate of the soul after death. These ideas were rapidly disseminated through preaching and the transmission of reformist literature in those parts of England with the closest links to the continent, most notably London. Whilst Henry VIII accepted reform only in so far as he regarded it as personally and politically expedient, his son, Edward VI, was committed to the destruction of traditional Catholicism and presided over a rapid succession of religious changes. Through an analysis of Henrician and Edwardian religious policy, reformist literature and deathbed descriptions taken from legal depositions, this paper looks at the interaction between reformist ideas and centrally imposed reform and at how these shaped individuals' religious experience of dying during this period.

:A Brefe Dialoge bitwene a Christen Father and his Stobborne Sonne: The First Protestant Catechism Published in English

This is a new, critical edition of William Roye's A Brefe Dialoge bitwene a Christen Father and his stobborne Sonne, which was, in 1527, the first Protestant catechism to be published in English, and which represented the first to provide an extended and detailed statement of the new reformed doctrine in the vernacular. It was thus enormously influential on English Reformist thought, outlining a combination of doctrines that were to appeal to English reformers for decades to come. The Brefe Dialoge electrified the spiritual imagination of English-speaking reform-minded believers as intensely as Tyndale's 1526 English New Testament. The introduction carefully establishes the historical, religious, social, and cultural contexts out of which the work was born. It also provides details about Roye's life, other works, and commitment to the Reformist cause. The text of the catechism is accompanied by an extensive and detailed commentary that provides readers with clear readings for difficult passages, establishes a theological context for ideas expressed in the text, provides analogous readings from other early Reformation tracts, and glosses all the biblical citations and allusions. The Brefe Dialoge will be of value to students and scholars interested in the history, theology, and literature of the early English Reformation period.

The Native Roots of Early English Reformation Theology

The rapid spread of Lutherʼs theology following the events at Wittenberg is one that is historically well attested. However, in this essay Ian Stackhouse questions the impact that the Reformation in Europe in these early years has upon England. Although Luther and Zwingli undoubtedly have their place in English Reformation historiography, the point being made here is that early English Reformation theology owes as much to the enduring strength of a native brand of heresay dating back to Wycliffe and the Lollards. Promoting a biblical morality coupled with a mild iconoclasticism it is Lollardy that surfaces as much as anything else on the English scene. According to the writer this holds true both at the popular level and the academic level. In particular he focuses on the works of William Tyndale and presents him in the final analysis as more a disciple of Wycliffe than Luther.

Religious Instruction for Children and Adolescents in the Early English Reformation

In an article published inPast and Presentsome years ago, Professor Strauss drew attention to an area of activity that early sixteenth-century reformers considered to be of vital importance - evangelical effort amongst the young. The overwhelming impression left by this article and by a subsequent full-scale study of the indoctrination of the young in the German Reformation is that – in Professor Strauss's terms – failure, not success, was the dominant note.

The Doctrine of Predestination in the Early English Reformation

It has typically been said of the English Reformation that the doctrine of unconditional predestination (that is, predestination without foreknowledge of merit or repentance but soley as an act of God's will to redeem some of mankind as a manifestation of grace) was neither emphasized nor of central importance until the “Genevan” influence of the returning Marian exiles and the wide dissemination of Calvin's writings in England after the accession of Elizabeth. It is the purpose of this article to show that, (1) a soteriologically rooted doctrine of unconditional predestination of the type characteristic of the so-called “Rhineland Reformers” was central to key figures of the early English Reformation, was accepted and expressed by many other leaders and theological writers of the English Reformation prior to the accession of Mary and was upheld by important and influential continental divines resident in England; (2) the doctrine of predestination in the English Reformation had been developed to the point of reprobation and double predestination and frequently expressed as such before 1553; (3) while this predestinarian emphasis in English Protestant theology was to a large extent the result of the influence of the continental Reformation, it had been received prior to the return of the Genevan exiles and the pervasive influence of Calvin in Elizabethan England. Thus the Genevan influence reinforced and further refined English predestinarian theology. It might be added that Calvin's influence ought not to be considered an unusually harsh one with respect to predestination; not only does Calvin follow the general pattern of earlier Reformed theology, but also does Reformed theology in the later part of the sixteenth century tend toward a more rigid and scholastic version of the doctrine quite apart from Calvin, whose real influence could well operate in the opposite direction, as the recent study by Brian Armstrong shows.

Lutheran Influences in the Early English Reformation: Richard Morison Re-examined

Lutheran Influences in the Early English Reformation: Richard Morison Re-examined