James G. Clark's New History of the Dissolution of the Monasteries

Over on his blog, Matthew Lyon has posted an extended version of his review of The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History by James G. Clark. His review was first published in History Today. The review raises some intriguing notes about Clark's analysis of the story of how, in just four years (1536-1540) Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell destroyed the monastic movement in England after it had been present in England for almost a thousand years. For instance, in medias res:

. . . It has suited both Protestant and Catholic historiography to believe that the dissolution was part of a great struggle, that it was a considered, decisive and strategic blow by the new order against the old. But, as Clark makes clear, there was no grand plan. It may be a dismal thought that a thousand years of history, faith and culture can be swept away so easily by mere carelessness and incompetence, yet, on this reading, that seems to be the case. Certainly the Reformation account of monasticism, which Clark describes as “compelling in its perfect alignment of cause and effect”, is thoroughly picked apart. At no point, even in monasticism’s last months, does there seem to be a crux at which a final decision was made.

In Clark’s hands, then, the dissolution itself dissolves as a single event; instead it becomes a long, complex series of decisions and indecisions, with consequences both intended and unintended, and with individuals from the king down behaving in ways that are inconsistent and irreducible to generalisation. Not only is it not possible to say how monasticism responded to Henry’s reformation, it’s not possible to say how different orders or different houses responded. Just as profession was ultimately an individual choice, so was reaction to change. . . .

And toward the end of the review:

. . . Clark pursues his arguments through the meticulous accumulation of detail, much of it new. Every page is packed with it. But this is not detail for detail’s sake: it supports an argument against the dominant, ideological interpretations of the dissolution, presenting instead a profoundly nuanced portrait of individuals and institutions grappling with complex problems in a time of great turmoil and change. This is messy, granular stuff, and readers hoping for broad brushstrokes and the glories of a grand narrative may find it hard going; but it is glorious nonetheless – thrilling in its mastery of the sources and both provocative and persuasive in the richness and subtlety of its thought. . . .

I do think--even though I haven't read the book, just the available excerpts--that Lyons is correct to have wished that Clark had included more detail about "the spiritual and religious life of English monasticism in what turned out to be its final decades". Yes, the buildings were gone and the monks and nuns (what about the friars?) were pensioned off, but what about the prayers, the Masses, the praise of God seven times a day, and the rhythm of their days of work, charity, and hospitality--all that was lost from English culture and life? 

Perhaps that's the even greater loss that resulted from the dissolution of the monasteries, beyond the reach of a historian.

The North of England and the South of the USA

From History Today:

In his 1989 book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, the historian David Hackett Fischer explained how the regional patterns of emigration to the American colonies can help us understand the very different culture and political outlook of the peoples who live in the modern United States. While the Puritans from East Anglia established communities in New England, the Quakers went to Pennsylvania and what he calls the Anglican ‘Cavaliers’ made the valley of the Delaware their home. The ‘Mountain South’ was settled by a group he refers to as the ‘Borderers’ – a more accurate term than Scotch-Irish – with over 250,000 border English, Scots and Scots-Irish arriving in the Appalachian back-country between 1717 and 1775. . . .

The outlook of the Anglo-Scottish borderlands profoundly shaped the culture of the southern United States in a number of important and enduring ways. First, the seven centuries of warfare between English and Scottish kings meant that Northumbria in particular was much fought over – the ‘ring in which the champions met’ – and this made ordinary lives unusually precarious compared to the rest of England. Likewise, the lawlessness of these borderlands had created opportunities for theft and plunder on a massive scale, with the ‘Border Reivers’ building a whole way of life around the endemic theft of livestock. This created a very different and much more violent and militaristic society than in the rest of England. Societal structures were based around loyalty to local warlords, rather than the manorial system that prevailed elsewhere. Cumbrian and Northumbrian forms of tenancy were designed to maintain large bodies of fighting men to defend the border against the Scots, or to launch retaliatory raids against trespassers – the so-called ‘hot trod’ sanctioned by the ‘Marcher Law’ of the Borders. Here were the origins of the distinctive cowboy culture of the US, based as it was around the patrolling of grazing lands and the rapid pursuit of stolen goods via the armed posses familiar from American Westerns.

Please read the rest there. The writer of the article, Dan Jackson, the author of The Northumbrians: The North-East of England and Its People, A New History (Hurst, 2019), even points out connections between language and pronunciation in the American South and the North of England; place names and physiognomy show the inheritance of traits from English settlers in the South.

Barking Abbey and Its Female Scholars

From Eleanor Parker (A Clerk of Oxford) at History Today:

‘It is asked of all who hear this work that they do not revile it because a woman translated it. That is no reason to despise it, nor to disregard the good in it.’ . . .

The work she asks us not to disregard is a narrative of the life of Edward the Confessor, written in Anglo-Norman French (‘the false French of England’, the nun modestly calls it). Its author was an educated woman, able to turn a Latin source into engagingly chatty French verse and Barking Abbey must have been a congenial environment for her. Founded in the seventh century, Barking was one of the foremost nunneries in the country, a wealthy abbey which was home to many well-connected aristocratic and royal women. Its abbesses were frequently appointed from the sisters and daughters of kings and, around the time our nun wrote her Vie d’Edouard le Confesseur, Thomas Becket’s sister Mary – herself a woman of literary interests – was made abbess of Barking in compensation for her brother’s murder.

Across its long history of more than 850 years, Barking Abbey was a centre for women’s learning. It has been described as ‘perhaps the longest-lived ... institutional centre of literary culture for women in British history’ and it had a strong literary and scholarly tradition that spanned the Middle Ages. In the early medieval period, authors such as Aldhelm and Goscelin of St Bertin wrote learned Latin works for the nuns of Barking; later, several nuns composed their own poetry and prose – even their own plays. In the 12th century, when women were increasingly becoming patrons, readers and, in some cases, authors of literary texts, Barking produced more than one talented writer. The first female author in England whose name we know, Clemence of Barking, was a nun there; she wrote an accomplished Life of St Catherine of Alexandria, a saint associated with female learning.

Barking Abbey, according to British History Online, was an important house of women religious and it survived during the Dissolution of the Monasteries until the end of the year 1539:

The abbess of Barking had precedence over other abbesses, and she was one of the four who, holding of the king by barony, were summoned (fn. 60) with the bishops and abbots to do military service under Henry III and Edward I. (fn. 61) The chief officer of the convent was the prioress, and the second the high cellaress. Besides these there were also the kitchener, the under-cellaress, two chantresses, two sub-prioresses and two fratresses. All are mentioned in The Charthe (fn. 62) longynge to the Office of the Celeresse of the Monastery of Barkinge, which treats in great detail of the rents set apart for her, her duties, and the allowances of food and money to be made by her to the nuns, both at ordinary times and at special feasts, anniversaries and seasons. Thirty-seven ladies of the convent were to be provided for at the time when it was drawn up, and of these some were to have a double share. The prioress, high cellaress and kitchener were always among the 'doubles'; and on some occasions also other officers, probably in the order of their rank in the abbey.

No event of importance is recorded in connexion with the dissolution. The net value of the abbey is returned in the Valor as £862 12s. 5½d.; another account (fn. 63) giving this as £862 12s. 5¾d. and the gross value as £1,084 6s. 2¼d. It was third in order of wealth among the nunneries; Sion, a foundation of not much more than a century, coming first, Shaftesbury second, and Wilton fourth. Audeley, the chancellor, writing (fn. 64) to Cromwell in September, 1535, asks that the visitation might be postponed that he might speak about it; but neither the purpose nor the result of his request are known. The abbey was finally surrendered (fn. 65) before Dr. William Petre, the royal commissioner, in the chapter-house, on 14 November, 1539. Twelve days later pensions (fn. 66) were granted to the nuns. The abbess received the large allowance of 200 marks yearly, and smaller sums were assigned to thirty other nuns: Thomasina Jenney, Dorothy Fitzlewes, Agnes Townesend, Margaret Scrowpe, Joan Fyncham, Margery Ballard, Martha Fabyan, Ursula Wentworth, Joan Drurye, Elizabeth Wyott, Agnes Horsey, Suzanna Suliarde, Margaret Cotton, Gabriel Shelton, Margery Paston, Elizabeth Badcok, Agnes Buknam, Katharine Pollard, Anne Snowe, Margaret Bramston, Mary Tyrell, Elizabeth Prist, Audrey Mordaunt, Winifred Mordaunt, Elizabeth Banbrik, Margaret Kempe, Alice Hyde, Lucy Long, Matilda Gravell and Margaret Grenehyll. Most of these, including the abbess, were still living and in receipt of their pensions under Philip and Mary. (fn. 67)

The book cover above is of Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, Edited by Jennifer N. Brown, Donna Alfano Bussell and published by Boydell & Brewer.

"A Relic of Papistry?" The Simnel Cake

History Today shares this post about the history of the Simnel Cake, a lighter fruit cake enjoyed either on Laetare Sunday as a break from the Lenten fast or at Easter. Alexander Lee cites the tradition as described by Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist and biographer of Charlotte Bronte, as she grew up in Cheshire after her mother's death:

Writing to her friend, the poet Mary Howitt, on 18 August 1838, she recalled with delight the local festivals she had enjoyed as a girl. There was ‘Lifting Monday’ and ‘Lifting Tuesday’, when the village girls would burst into houses and lift the menfolk into the air until they were given a gift. Then there were the May Day celebrations, when the streets were decorated with coloured sand and branches were hung above everyone’s doors. But by far the tastiest time of year was mid-Lent Sunday – also known as Laetare or Mothering Sunday. For then, Elizabeth explained:

Instead of frumenty [a sort of sweet porridge], we eat Simnel cake: a cake made variously, but always with saffron for its principal ingredient. This I should fancy was a relic of Papistry, but I wonder how it originated. Lambert Simnel, the imposter in Henry the Seventh’s time was a baker’s son, I think. The show windows are filled with them, [and] high and low eat them.

Since Gaskell’s day, simnel cake has changed a great deal. Now eaten at Easter, rather than in the middle of Lent, it tastes – and looks – quite different from how it did in the early 19th century. Although it is still a light, rich fruit cake, packed with raisins, sultanas and lemon zest, saffron is now rarely used. Two layers of marzipan or almond paste – unknown to the Georgian recipe – are also added, one in the middle and one on top; and 11 marzipan balls – said to represent the 11 faithful apostles – are generally used for decoration. The method is different, too. Whereas it was once boiled, then baked, it is today baked and then grilled.

Lee explains the supposed Tudor connection:

For some time, simnel remained an ambiguous word. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it continued to be used primarily to describe a type of flour – or occasionally as a metonym for baking generally. Lambert Simnel, the Tudor pretender who briefly threatened the rule of Henry VII in 1487, was, as Gaskell noted, probably the son of a baker who owed his name to the flour that was his father’s stock in trade. But at the same time, simnel could also be used to refer to any sort of bread or cake made with the flour. When Myles Coverdale produced his English translation of the Bible in 1535, he rendered Ezekiel 16:19 – which in the Vulgate reads Et panem meum quem dedi tibi, similam, et oleum, et mel (‘And my bread, which I gave to you, the flour and oil and honey’) – as: ‘Thou didst eate nothinge but symnels, honney and oyle’; but when Thomas Cogan’s The Hauen of Health (1584) was published five decades later, it included a reference to ‘Cakes of all forms, Simnels, Cracknels, Bunnes … and other things made of wheate flour’.

Please read the rest there. Modern recipes: Mary Berry, Nigela Lawson, and the BBC.

Lambert Simnel was the pretender who survived during Henry VII's reign. He was pardoned, employed by the king in his kitchen and as a falconer, married, and died between 1525 and 1535. He may have been the father of Richard Simnel, an Augustianian canon at St. Osgth's Priory in Essex, suppressed in 1539.

"Divided Loyalties in Tudor England"

Also from behind the History Today paywall, this essay on divided loyalties in families during the Tudor Era, which looks particularly at the Catherine of Aragon faction against the Anne Boleyn faction:

The role played by many noblewomen at the royal court, however, including many of the Howard and Boleyn women, made this more complicated than it might otherwise have been. They did not always follow the dynastic ‘party line’. Women who entered the queen’s household were required to take an oath of service, just as men were. This was in essence an oath of loyalty to one’s new mistress. Women took no comparable oath to the head of their family, but there is considerable evidence to show that their families expected them to fly their flag, promote their interests and seek patronage for their relatives. The dilemma faced by women when family interests and those of their mistress clashed is one that is rarely considered by historians, but it did sometimes occur and could cause anguish on all sides. Elizabeth Stafford/Howard, Duchess of Norfolk (c.1497-1558), is a prime example. The eldest daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and Eleanor Percy, her first betrothal was broken in 1512 in favour of Thomas Howard, then Lord Howard, later 3rd Duke of Norfolk, whose first wife had recently died without giving him a son and heir. Though he was 20 years older than her at the time, Elizabeth’s own status was greater than his; the Howards had not yet regained the dukedom of Norfolk, so the highest title that her new husband could aspire to was the earldom of Surrey, whereas Elizabeth’s own father was a duke and her natal family, the Staffords, had royal blood. Howard was, though, a rising star at the royal court, as Elizabeth was herself. . . . 

It would be wrong to suggest that Elizabeth was alone in her support of Catherine at this point. Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, was described by Chapuys in 1531 as ‘the only true comforter and friend the Queen and the Princess have’ and she passed on information about Privy Council discussions. Maria, Lady Willoughby, rode through the night and then talked her way into Kimbolton Castle in order to be with Catherine as she lay dying in January 1536. Many noblewomen were among those who had listened to and encouraged the pro-Catherine, anti-Anne prophecies of Elizabeth Barton, the ‘nun of Kent’, in 1534, including the aforementioned Marchioness of Exeter, alongside Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, Anne, Lady Hussey, and Mary, Lady Kingston. All of these women were seasoned courtiers, like Elizabeth, and would no doubt have known one another well.

Read the rest of "Divided Loyalties in Tudor England" by Nicola Clark, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Chichester and the author of Gender, Family and Politics: The Howard Women, 1485-1558 (Oxford, 2018) while you can!

The Holy Bible in England Before and After the Reformation

Interesting that History Today has presented online two stories about the Holy Bible and how it was produced in England before and after the Reformation: illumination by monks in monasteries and on the printing press after Gutenberg:

"Secrets of Scriptoria" by Kate Wiles from June of 2014 begins:

The commonly accepted idea of a medieval scriptorium is of a low dark room dedicated to the purpose of producing manuscripts, with rows of highly trained scribes hunched over desks in alcoves working in serious silence. But the reality is that, while that set-up might be true of later medieval Britain, there is little evidence to support such a picture in the Anglo-Saxon or early post-Conquest period.

Instead the term ‘scriptorium’ encompassed a variety of situations, of which no two are the same. An early medieval scriptorium could be anything from a room or building in which scribes worked, a collection of scribes with a co-ordinated, organised structure or, more loosely, a general location where manuscripts were produced. At its most basic it might amount to two scribes working together on more than one manuscript. Very often this is the most we can confidently show to have existed at any so-called scriptorium.

And later states:

A different kind of scriptorium emerges from studying a group of manuscripts from 12th-century Malmesbury, produced by up to 54 different scribes, including the historian and chronicler William of Malmesbury (1115-c.1140). These manuscripts were made as part of a drive by Malmesbury’s abbot, Godfrey of Jumièges (1090-1105), to produce a complete library containing all the most important texts the abbey should own. While William himself started many of the books and evidently co-ordinated their production, the bulk of the work was by an array of different scribes. The ability of these men varies. William had three assistants who stand out as being well-trained, but most of them had limited skills and were probably not dedicated scribes. They worked in short stints, sometimes writing a few pages, sometimes only a few lines, occasionally coming back later to do more. It seems likely that William called on whichever monks he could find who were capable of copying a section of text and willing to do so in between carrying out other duties, but few stuck at it for long.

Please read the rest there. (Image credit: Saint Matthew in a mediæval scriptorium (Book of Prayers, 15th century)

The other article, "Gutenberg’s Bible: The Real Information Revolution" by Justin Champion, discusses the issues of authority and interpretation that arose after the Latin (Vulgate) version of the Holy Bible was printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1454:

The Catholic Church saw an opportunity in applying their textual erudition to claim that the written word of God might be fallible, without the supporting buttress of papal tradition. From the mid-16th century onwards a battle of Bibles was in full swing. The oppressed Protestants who fled the Marian persecutions produced a handbook of resistance in the form of the Geneva Bible of 1560. Replete with a full apparatus, especially an embedded marginal commentary, the godly were guided to a proper account of their duties as Christians. The Geneva Bible, itself a triumph of typological design, continued to be published into the late 17th century. James I and VI despised the ‘marginal notes that slight the text’ and encouraged the production of a ‘safe’ version, which instructed the laity to listen to their parish clergy rather than interpret revelation for themselves.

Alongside the authorised Bibles grew an increasingly sophisticated and profitable market in ancillary works: concordances, commentaries and annotations, which aided the reader’s encounter with the words of God. English Bibles came complete with instructions on how, when and why specific chapters and verses ought to be read. The printed format (the introduction of page numbers, chapter and verse divisions) enabled even the less learned to make sense of scripture. With this literary technology, readers could exchange and share their views of specific passages.

For those who could not read, domestic spirituality enabled collective understandings. Harnessing those encounters with the word of God enabled ministers, MPs and magistrates to justify their governments and rule. Oliver Cromwell ensured that his armies were sustained by a Souldier’s Pocket Bible(1642), legitimising their role in fighting ‘God’s Battles’.

The legacy of the Gutenberg Bible was a revolution in the relationship between reading and authority in the early modern period. This encompassed the practices of lowly men like Nehemiah Wallington, who experienced their world through the providential lens of the Bible, or at the other extreme, scholars such as Isaac Newton and John Locke, who owned multiple copies for forensic textual comparison and exchanged commentaries on their findings.

Please read the rest there. Image credit: (Early wooden printing press, depicted in 1568)

WWI and the Ruins of Medieval Churches

I've heard of the German "Baedeker Bombings" of World War II, in which the Luftwaffe selected non-military, cultural sites in England for bombing based on a popular guidebook. This blog describes the bombings:

The next day Baron von Sturm (a spokesman for the German Foreign Office) said “’We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide.” von Strum’s comments led to the raids being called the ‘Baedeker Raids’ by both the Germans and the Allies. Although Goebbels agreed with the tactic he was furious with von Strum for his thoughtless, off-the-cuff comment. Goebbels had wanted to take the moral high ground, describing the British attacks as ‘terror bombing’, but now von Strum had effectively admitted that the Germans were deliberately targeting cultural and historical sites. Exeter was bombed again within hours of von Strum’s statement. A third raid on Exeter took place on 3rd May when high explosives, incendiaries and parachute mines were dropped by 90 planes, devastating the city’s shopping centre. 163 people were killed and 131 seriously injured in the attacks on the town which was poorly prepared for such raids, as were the other locations chosen from the guidebook. . . .

Exeter was not the only city to be targeted. 400 people were killed in raids on Bath on two consecutive nights (25th + 26th April), during the raid the railway station was put out of action and communications severely affected. After the raids on Bath Goebbels reported that Hitler intended to “repeat these raids night after night until the English are sick and tired of terror attacks” and that he “shared [Goebbels’] opinion absolutely that cultural centres, health resorts and civilian centres must be attacked… there is no other way of bringing the English to their senses. They belong to a class of human beings with whom you can only talk after you have first knocked out their teeth.”

But according to this article from History Today, there was bombing during the First World War--the war to end all wars--that also focused on cultural, indeed religious, sites in an effort to drive down civilian morale:

Throughout the four years marking the centenary of the First World War, we have seen a succession of sombre events marking its many major and minor tragedies. Among the most poignant datelines are those recalling a litany of medieval landmarks that fell along the frontline almost from the opening hours of the war: at first, simply shattered by the German army's rapid advance and then steadily eroded by mutually destructive attrition. Treasured symbols of its commercial and cultural power in the later Middle Ages, Belgium's heritage churches bore the full ferocity of the first salvoes. Liège's late Gothic cathedral of St Paul came under enemy bombardment on the second, sweltering day of the war and, following the fall of the medieval walled city of Namur on 23 August 1914, the German Third Army took Dinant on the same day. There they toppled the distinctive Reformation-era pyriform dome of its collegiate church, an act of destruction that was eclipsed by the massacre of 600 townspeople. No doubt in the next four years most of the major milestones in the conflict will be marked, but, perhaps increasingly, we will also remember and reflect on those experiences – mechanisation, civilian bombardment – which, after the passage of a century, we can see more clearly represent moments of great cultural transformation.

Notre Dame of Reims, the cathedral of coronation for France's kings, was a particular target of German bombs:

A presage of what was to follow in the four years of war was offered at Reims, scarcely six weeks after the conflict began. On Saturday 19 September a shower of German incendiaries set the 13th-century cathedral ablaze. In the stillness of a misty autumn twilight, bystanders paused aghast at the edge of the Place du Parvis as fire seized the roof timbers and the scaffold, which, by a fateful irony, still surrounded the northern tower of the west front after a stint of restoration work. The fire reached such intensity in the hours that followed that it softened the mortared joints of the statues covering the facade. Suddenly, the sculpted head of the Smiling Angel – le sourire de Reims – broke from its shoulders and fell. . . . 

World War I bombings finished what Protestant iconoclasm had started:

Such widespread destruction of medieval heritage was unprecedented in the modern era. As the French press ruefully observed, even their Revolution – powered by a radical secularism – had not seen the razing of so many ancient sites. Not since the 16th-century Wars of Religion had churches in a whole chain of regional capitals suffered in such a way. It also represented a new departure in modern warfare because, as the conflict intensified, these medieval landmarks were made the deliberate target of offensive action. In this respect, the attack on Reims represented a turning point. The early damage wrought by the invasion force had been largely collateral. At Reims, however, the Germans fired on the cathedral. Earlier, on first entering the city, they had established a temporary encampment in the Place du Parvis but, as the allied counterattack began, they had withdrawn to a strategic position to the north to concentrate their fire on the centre of the city.

Thereafter, the great cathedrals and other medieval landmarks were targeted right along the Front. . . .

The article goes on to demonstrate that there was a spiritual reaction to this modern iconoclastic warfare on the Continent and in England:

The attention given to the great cathedrals and abbey churches also engendered a level of spirituality, which some had considered lacking in the early stages of the war. Public worship and private devotion in these spaces surged, even among the rubble. Church leaders, roused into guiding the public response, used the fragility of their most ancient places of worship to reinvigorate intercession. Cardinal Louis-Henri-Joseph Luçon, Archbishop of Reims, performed the Stations of the Cross daily, picking his way around the fallen vault of the nave. In England parallel efforts were carried forward by Canterbury, York and the senior bishops, in which the historic resonance of their great churches was self-consciously harnessed to the imperatives of the Home Front. National Days of Intercession, first tried during the Boer War, called the public into these ancient places of worship; at Salisbury and Exeter Cathedrals and Westminster Abbey local people were reminded of the bishops' wish that everyone pause and enter their churches for prayer at noon each day. At a time when troops from across the Empire were passing through many cities and towns, it would appear the antiquity of these places spoke to those with little first-hand knowledge of the Old Country they served.

James G. Clark, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, demonstrates how this spiritual revival continued after the First World War ended, as Church of England bishops encouraged travelers on the Great Western Railway to make pilgrimage visits to great medieval (formerly Catholic) cathedrals and churches in the Midlands and Wales:

England's largest railway company, Great Western (GWR), embarked on its own promotion in 1924: recruiting academic medievalists – Montague Rhodes (MR) James, provost of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and Sir Charles Oman, Oxford's Chichele Professor, and launching a trio of guidebooks to the cathedrals, abbeys and castles of the region served by GWR. Announced by a poster campaign to rival the Art Deco imagery of the French railway companies, the guides called on their customers to practice a new kind of touring, sober and reflective, 'not to be unloaded for ten minutes from a charabanc', as the guide admonished, but to pause amid 'these precious monuments of English piety'.

Please read the rest there.

At the University of Exeter website, Professor Clark comments upon his research and writing:

My historical interests are focused on the period between the Black Death and the Break with Rome. While a medievalist by training, I explore themes in religion, intellectual and cultural life which reach across the traditional boundaries of medieval and early modern; likewise, my approach is informed not only by the sources and methods of the historian but also by those of researchers in literary, artistic and material culture.

I'd say this article is a good example of his reaching "across the traditional boundaries of medieval and early modern" history!

Oxbridge and the Stamford Oath

William Whyte writes for History Today on the monopoly Oxford and Cambridge held on university education in England from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century:

From 1334 onwards, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were required to swear an oath that they would not give lectures outside these two English universities. It was a prohibition occasioned by the secession in 1333 of men from Oxford to the little Lincolnshire town of Stamford. They were escaping the violence and chaos which often attended medieval university life – the frequent battles between students, and between students and other communities within the town – the same conditions, in fact, which had led an earlier generation of scholars to up sticks and leave Oxford for Cambridge. But their action now threatened both universities, and so the Stamford experiment had to be suppressed. The sheriff of Lincoln, the lord chancellor, even the king, Edward III, were all called into play and the result became known as the ‘Stamford Oath’; an oath which Oxford and Cambridge graduates continued to swear until 1827. 

England was thus different than countries on the European Continent or even than Scotland:

This was in sharp contrast to the European experience. Just as Oxford and Cambridge were establishing and policing their unique right to produce graduates, ever growing numbers of universities were being founded across the Continent. In the 14th century new institutions appeared in towns from Pisa to Prague; from Kraków to Cahors. In the years that followed, the gap in numbers between English universities and those on the Continent grew even greater, with over 100 founded or refounded in Europe after 1500. Oxford and Cambridge remained the only universities in England. Indeed . . . in the mid-17th century, universities were springing up in such unlikely places as the small towns of Prešov in Slovakia and Nijmegen in the Netherlands. The English experience was also very unlike that of the Scots, who acquired five universities between 1451, when Glasgow opened, and 1582, when Edinburgh was established.

Whyte explains that religion played a role:

Just as the two universities wanted to control the supply of teachers and students, so the English Church and state wanted to control the universities. Universities could be – indeed, were – the source of dangerous heresies, where people learnt to think the wrong things. Oxford gave birth to the reforming, proto-Protestant Lollard movement in the 14th century. Cambridge was home to an alarming nest of evangelicals – humanist-inspired converts to church reform like the martyrs Robert Barnes (c.1495-1540) and Thomas Bilney (1495-1531) – 200 years later. With only two universities it was easier to control theological debate and even to use one of the institutions to oversee the other. It is no coincidence that the Cambridge-educated bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, together with the Cambridge-educated archbishop Thomas Cranmer, were sent to loyalist, Catholic Oxford to be tried and burnt in the 1550s.

This control was also used to remove Catholics from the universities and to restrict Protestant dissenters from attending them: Anglicans removed Puritans and Puritans removed Anglicans. Two years before the Catholic Emancipation Act passed in 1829, which opened the way for Catholics to attend Oxford or Cambridge again after a few centuries--although receiving a degree would be difficult since graduates still had to swear an oath to uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England--the Stamford Oath was disavowed. 

Whyte describes why:

If the existence of this alliance helps explain why Oxbridge was successful in blocking any rivals, then the breakdown in this relationship also helps account for what happened next. The 1820s were a period of acute crisis for Church, state and the two universities alike. The decision to grant full civil liberties to Dissenters in 1828 and then to Roman Catholics in 1829 reflected – and helped enact – a breakdown in the exclusive link between the Church of England and the government. It also called into question the privileged position of Oxford and Cambridge. Still redoubts of Anglican orthodoxy, still loyal to the confessional state, they both looked, as the poet and critic Matthew Arnold would later observe of Oxford, homes ‘of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties’.

Leanda de Lisle Provides Context for the Reign of Charles I

Leanda de Lisle writes brilliantly in an article for History Today about the reign of Charles I, particularly its religious context:

Charles’ reign began during the Thirty Years War. This was the world of Charles’ sister, the Winter Queen, of Protestant churches in flames and the advance of the Counter-Reformation, of a Spanish empire on which the sun never set and the new Puritan colonies of the Americas, a London of fast-moving media reporting on politics from Parliament as well as on the conflict in Europe. England – Britain – is part of this wider world.

Henry VIII’s nationalised form of Anglo-Catholicism did not survive him. From the reign of Edward VI, English Protestants saw the Church of England as part of international Reform Protestantism – a stripped-down Protestantism that would later be labelled Calvinism – just as Scottish Protestants did their Presbyterian kirk. The fate of British Protestantism was linked to what happened to their fellow Calvinists in Europe; there, Protestantism was in retreat. In the 1590s, Protestants held half the land area in Europe. A century later they would hold only a fifth.

Anxiety over Calvinist survival on the continent gave an edge to concerns at home about the half-reformed nature of the Church of England, with its episcopate (government by bishops) and other pre-Reformation hangovers. There was mistrust of Stuart enthusiasm for Elizabethan compromises, particularly among those labelled Puritans.

Protestantism had only survived where it had been imposed or permitted by rulers. To defend themselves, British Protestants had therefore developed ‘resistance’ theories, arguing that kings took their authority from the people, who had the right to overthrow any monarch of the ‘wrong’ religion, which included being the ‘wrong’ kind of Protestant. ‘Popery’ was the term applied to those who sought to spread Counter-Reformation; it was also applied to any reversal of Calvinism.

James had confronted resistance theory by arguing that kings, like bishops, drew their authority from God and that only God could punish them. Divine Right Kingship was not some mere expression of megalomania: it was a defence against religious extremists, both Protestant and Catholic. Charles grew up aware that resistance theory had cost his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, her throne (at Protestant hands); it had justified kidnap and murder attempts against his father (at Protestant and Catholic hands); and it lay behind the assassination of his wife’s father (at Catholic hands – a reminder that a monarch faced threats even from those of their own religion). He embraced his father’s writings and his accession revealed a dynamic monarch.

In the first weeks of his reign, in 1625, he ended his father’s ‘long corrupted peace’ and took his kingdoms into the Thirty Years War, fighting for the interests of the Stuarts and the Protestant cause. At home he created a theatre of ceremony, ritual and beauty, designed to shape a deferential and hierarchical society appropriate to divine right monarchy.

The informality and hard drinking habits of James’ court were brought to an end. Charles asked that nobles not ‘enter his apartments in confusion as heretofore’. Each rank was to have its appointed place. In religion, Charles sought a move away from Calvinist sermons and extempore prayers to rituals and ceremonies, with pre-Reformation origins, but which were nevertheless Protestant and set in buildings fit for purpose. His reforms would have a lasting influence on the Church of England, which still mark it – and English culture – today.

Please read the rest there. She wants us to have a more measured and balanced view of Charles I, to strip away the accumulated easy mythology of the man, his marriage, and his reign. I haven't read the book, but it seems to me that she makes a compelling case in the articles I've read about it.

I wonder if she will write a biography of James II!

Image credit: "Charles depicted as a victorious and chivalrous Saint George in an English landscape by Rubens, 1629–30."

How the Tractarians Changed Christmas

Charles Dickens' revival of Christmas concentrated on celebrations at home and in the city. The Oxford Movement, also called the Tractarian movement, influenced the liturgical celebration of the Christmas in the Church of England, according to this 1993 article in History Today by the then Anglican chaplain at Keble College, later Bishop Geoffrey Rowell:

Although Christmas was a time of festivity its church celebration in the nineteenth century owed much to the Oxford Movement. A significant feature of the concerns of the Tractarians was the revival and enrichment of the Prayer Book forms of service, and a proper observance of the seasons and festivals of the church calendar. It was no accident that John Keble's influential book of poems of 1827 entitled The Christian Year, providing verses and meditations on the Prayer Book services and on the Sundays and holy days observed by the Church of England. At St Saviour's, the church built by Dr Pusey in the slums of Leeds, a midnight Eucharist was celebrated on Christmas Eve in contrast to Leeds Parish Church where W.F. Hook had begun a midnight Eucharist on New Year's Eve, as an Anglican response to Methodist watch-night services. . . .

What began as part of the Catholic revival in the Church of England spread to other sections of Anglicanism, and indeed to other churches. In 1887 John Hunter, a notable Church of England minister in Glasgow pioneered the keeping of Christmas Day in the kirk. In 1875 a clerical journalist, the Reverend C.M. Davies, whose collected articles on the London religious scene are invaluable vignettes of church life, noted that Christmas decorations in churches and special Christmas observances were no longer a party badge of High Churchmanship.

This influence of the Oxford Movement extended to music, mostly through the work of John Mason Neale, who published Carols for Christmastide in 1853, while the popularity of the Nine Lessons and Carols grew through the latter part of the century, into the 20th and still today--as evidenced by the broadcast around the world of the service at King's College Cambridge.

As Rowell concludes:

In the course of the century, under the influence of the Oxford Movement’s concern for the better observance of Christian festivals, Christmas became more and more prominent. By the later part of the century cathedrals provided special services and musical events, and might have revived ancient special charities for the poor . . .

So it wasn't just Dickens!

More's Many Faces? One More Time

Joanne Paul has written a book about Thomas More for the Classic Thinkers series published by Wiley that will be available in just a few days:

Thomas More remains one of the most enigmatic thinkers in history, due in large part to the enduring mysteries surrounding his best-known work, Utopia. He has been variously thought of as a reformer and a conservative, a civic humanist and a devout Christian, a proto-communist and a monarchical absolutist. His work spans contemporary disciplines from history to politics to literature, and his ideas have variously been taken up by seventeenth-century reformers and nineteenth-century communists.

Through a comprehensive treatment of More's writing, from his earliest poetry to his reflections on suffering in the Tower of London, Joanne Paul engages with both the rich variety and some of the fundamental consistencies that run throughout More's works. In particular, Paul highlights More's concern with the destruction of what is held 'in common', whether it be in the commonwealth or in the body of the church. In so doing, she re-establishes More's place in the history of political thought, tracing the reception of his ideas to the present day.

Paul's book serves as an essential foundation for any student encountering More's writing for the first time, as well as providing an innovative reconsideration of the place of his works in the history of ideas.

One of the blurbs, by historian Suzanne Lipscomb, praises the book for having one, united view of More:

"For too long, there have been multiple Mores: Thomas More the 'man for all seasons' has also seemed to be a man of many faces: More's identities as a statesman, humanist, and saint have seemed riven from each other and bafflingly incompatible. In this brilliant, lucid, and pithy account, Joanne Paul reunites More with himself by identifying the central idea that animated his thought and action. This is an original and illuminating work that should be compulsory for any reader of Utopia."

But then, in a post for History Today, Paul seems to divide More again:

2016 is the year of Utopia, marking 500 years since the publication of Thomas More’s influential text. Central to the celebrations is a timely re-evaluation of the man who stands behind the enigmatic masterpiece. More’s reputation has ranged from saintly scholar to sex-crazed zealot, with Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall bringing each of these visions to life, albeit almost 60 years apart. 

It is 500 years since the publication of Utopia, but it is also 50 years since the release of the Oscar-winning film based on Bolt’s play (first performed in London in 1950). Of course, neither Bolt nor Mantel is entirely accurate; that is what makes their work fiction. What is interesting is what the deviations from historical record in A Man for All Seasons tell us about Bolt’s time. This raises the question: if Bolt’s 1950s needed More the defender of individual conscience, why do we need More the zealous persecutor of heretics?

Bolt's More; Mantel's More; Paul's More; my More; your More: can't we just have one More? Or can't we just accept that Thomas More, like every other human being ever born, is complex and contradictory, both great and fallen, both a success and failure at what he loved and wanted the most? (Well, except for Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who were sinless!)

Does every generation really "get the More it needs" or does someone create a More for his or her own purpose? Instead of looking at the different views of More, shouldn't we just look at More?

History Today vs. English Heritage: "The DARK Ages"

The English Heritage Society referred to the period from 400 to 1066 A.D. as "the Dark Ages" at an exhibit at Tintagel Castle, and one of the writers at History Today doesn't like it:

The term ‘Dark Ages’ found a foothold in the 17th and 18th centuries, with historians like Edward Gibbon writing about the ‘darkness’ of the period, and reached its peak in the mid-19th century as, with a fervent belief in the dawn of a modern age, a growing Empire needed to build a dark past from which to emerge. The Dark Ages cling to Victorian ideals.

As a concept it is steeped in intellectual and cultural superiority used to dismiss the early Middle Ages as a period of ‘intellectual darkness’ before the Renaissance. In fact, we know far more about late Anglo-Saxon England than we do about Roman Britain.

The phrase feeds into a romanticised view of the period: lost to the mists of time, savage and lawless. But that could not be further from the truth. We might not have the overwhelming wealth of materials of later periods but enough survives to see the extent of their intellectual and cultural development. Pre-Conquest England was not without law, culture and politics.

Not to mention the anti-Catholic aspect of the nomenclature.

English Heritage defends its choice of term:

When considering how to refer to the period of time between c.400 - 1066 in our interpretation at Tintagel Castle, and other historic sites in our care, English Heritage carefully considered a number of factors, in full understanding of the conflict and confusion that the term 'Dark Ages' can create. We considered a number of alternatives all of which ultimately also proved to be problematic.

In relation to the interpretation scheme at Tintagel Castle, the terms 'post-Roman' and 'pre-Saxon' are difficult, particularly in the context of Cornish history. More scholarly names such as 'late Antiquity', 'migration period' or 'early Christian' are all potentially problematic for the general public. 'Early medieval' or 'early Middle Ages' is perhaps the most suitable, but we have found that these terms are popularly associated with the period around 1066 and the Normans; potentially confusing at a site such as Tintagel which also has medieval buildings.

Just label the period: c.400 to 1066 A.D. and leave off the descriptive. I think it's disingenuous for English Heritage to pretend that "the Dark Ages" is not a pejorative term. This site reflects the usual interpretation of the term "the Dark Ages" as an age of superstition, which equals religious faith:

Despite the religious conflicts, the period of the Dark Ages was seen as an age of faith. Men and women sought after God; some through the staid rituals of the Catholic Church, others in more Orthodox forms of worship. Intellectuals view religion in any form as, itself, a type of “darkness.” These thinkers assert that those who followed religious beliefs lied to themselves, creating a false reality. They were dominated by emotions, not fact. Religion was seen as contrary to rationality and reason, thus the move towards enlightenment -- a move away from “darkness.” Science and reason gained ascendancy, progressing steadily during and after the Reformation and Age of Enlightenment.

To some extent, the period of the Dark Ages remains obscure to modern onlookers. The tumult of the era, its religious conflict and denigration, and debatable time period all work together to shroud the period in diminished light.

The early Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch is usually credited with ascribing the term to the period after the Fall of Rome until his contemporary age's rediscovery of classical language and literature:

It is generally accepted that the term was invented by Petrarch in the 1330s. Writing of those who had come before him, he said that "amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius, no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom" (Mommsen, 1942). Christian writers had traditional metaphors of "light versus darkness" to describe "good versus evil." Petrarch was the first to co-opt the metaphor and give it secular meaning by reversing its application. Classical Antiquity, so long considered the "dark age" for its lack of Christianity, was now seen by Petrarch as the age of "light" because of its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's time, lacking such cultural achievements, was now seen as the age of darkness.

Why did Petrarch call it an age of darkness? Petrarch spent much of his time traveling through Europe rediscovering and republishing the classic Latin and Greek texts. He wanted to restore the classical Latin language to its former purity. Humanists saw the preceding nine hundred year period as a time of stagnation. They saw history unfolding not along the religious outline of St. Augustine's Six Ages of the World (from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, from David to the exile of the Hebrews in Babylon, from the return to the time of Jesus, the Christian era) but in cultural (or secular) terms, through the progressive developments of Classical ideals, literature, and art.

Petrarch wrote that history had had two periods: the Classic period of the Romans and Greeks, followed by a time of darkness, in which he saw himself as still living. Humanists believed one day the Roman Empire would rise again and restore Classic cultural purity. The concept of the European Dark Ages thus began as an ideological campaign by humanists to promote Classical culture, and was therefore not a neutral historical analysis. It was invented to express disapproval of one period in time, and the promotion of another. [Emphasis added!]

There They Go Again: the Saint or Sinner Choice

It will be a couple of weeks before I'll see the May 2016 issue of the BBC History Magazine at our local Barnes & Noble, but their cover story, by Joanne Paul, has the headline I'm tired of seeing, posing a poor question: "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?" If it must be answered, it's simple: "Both". The Catholic Church never says that a saint is not a sinner or that a sinner cannot become a saint. Moral perfection is not a requirement, although of course the desire never to be separated from God is necessary for sanctity. 

The subtitle is also interesting: "The real character of Henry VIII's controversial statesman". That second adjective, "controversial", could apply to almost all of Henry VIII's statesmen, Wolsey, Cromwell, Wriothesley, etc. I eagerly await this article by Joanne Paul, who is working on a monograph for Wiley's Polity Classic Thinkers Series and other works considering More as a statesman, according to her website:

Thomas More's works are analysed in history, politics, literature, philosophy and theology departments throughout the world. He remains one of history's most alluring and enigmatic figures - his reputation fiercely debated since the moment of his execution in 1535.

My monograph on More focuses on his place within the history of political and philosophic thought, and will be published as a part of Polity's Classic Thinkers Series, October 2016, coinciding with the quincentary of More's most famous text, Utopia (1516). I have published on Utopia in History Today (April, 2016), and I am currently developing a monograph on Utopia for Palgrave, at the request of the editors.

You can be sure that I'll let you know what I think of this article once I obtain the magazine. In the meantime, I have a little bit of a lull before starting on two projects for June (one article and one presentation), a presentation in July, and one in August--and then a nice break until November, when I'll teach a class at the Regan Catechetical Institute for Catholic teachers in the Diocese of Wichita. 

Defending "Utopia"

December 2016 will mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia. In History Today, Joanne Paul writes about the place of Utopia in More's reputation as a statesman:

It may be time, however, to reassess the place of More’s Utopia in this litany of his shortcomings. This year we have an opportunity to do so, as it marks the quincentenary of the publication of Utopia in Louvain in December 1516.

Guy suggests that More’s imaginary country is ‘totalitarian par excellence’, citing its lack of pubs, brothels and ‘secret meeting place[s]’, as well as the mandate against discussion of public policy outside of the popular assembly. This totalitarianism, Guy suggests, lies at the heart of More’s later attitude towards heretics and suggests that his ‘repressive discipline’ against them was similar to the ‘totalitarianism of Utopia’.

Describing Utopia as totalitarian (a 20th-century term) paves over what More was attempting to do in his text, which was to remind his readers of the importance of community. For More, the prioritisation of self-interest had the effect of tearing apart the bonds that ought to unite people. To use examples from Utopia: land-owners who enclosed common land for sheep-grazing, or greedy kings who overstretched themselves in their conquest of new lands both tore apart the unity of the commonwealth. The island of Utopia becomes the inverse of such tendencies. Homes are allocated to families for only a decade at a time, there are no locked doors and no personal possessions.

Rather than totalitarian, Utopia is fundamentally republican. Like property, political power is shared, reflecting More’s belief that authority resides in the body of the people. Within Utopia’s cities, households elect representatives who, in turn, elect both the councillors and their prince. Council and prince together make decisions in regular consultation with the people. The country as a whole is ruled by a general council, the members of which are, once again, elected directly by the people. Thus, although discussing public matters outside the public forum is punishable by death, for fear of the division and distortion of public opinion, the people are directly involved in every political decision made on the island.

Read the rest there.

More lived in a kingdom ruled by a monarch and he served that monarch while also representing the people as a member of Parliament. He wanted his prince, Henry VIII, to make decisions for the kingdom in consultation with Parliament, and therefore he defended Parliament's right to free speech in debating the king's policies and voting on the funding of the same. The Center for Thomas More Studies offers many tools for the interpretation of Utopia here.

Truth in Historical Interpretation

Suzanne Lipscomb writes about historians and the interpretation of the the facts of history in History Today:

History is debate, history is discussion, history is a conversation. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in 1957, ‘history that is not controversial is dead history’. While some of this controversy comes from the pronouncements of historians as public intellectuals addressing the present day, much of it comes from them arguing with each other. The collective noun for historians is – honestly – an ‘argumentation’.

This is not in contradiction to saying that historians aim at truth. What sort of truth we might achieve is debatable. Justin Champion, in writing about what historians are for, states that ‘historical claims to truth are aesthetic and ethical, rather than empirical and objective’. Peter Novick argued that historians make up stories and ‘make no greater (but also no lesser) truth claims than poets or painters’. I think this is to go too far. The past did exist, the events of history did happen. Our job as historians is to get at them as best as possible, on the basis of the evidence we have, in a way that is epistemic: that fits with the facts we can establish. It is this forensic, interrogatory process that is the joy of being an historian.

Yet the truth is, if you take a group of historians working on the same problem, writing at different times and in different places – even if they all use their evidence in a scrupulous, honest, critical and informed way – the conclusions they reach may differ. This is because we are all different people; our context, our formation, our insights are different and the histories we write are personal. If it were not so, there would be little point training up more students to be historians.

This is still a pursuit of truth.

Read the rest here. In another blog post, she offers some good advice for making sure that the facts historians use for their interpretative narratives are correct:

I thought I would presumptuously suggest a Code of Conduct for how historians should use evidence:

• Use evidence to support your interpretation and seek to understand that evidence correctly.
• Do not wilfully present evidence out of context, especially not in such a way that the lack of context will render the meaning of the evidence different, unclear or manipulable.
• Do not cite evidence from sources that you elsewhere discount.
• At best, do not waste a reader’s time on unsubstantiated sources.
• At least flag up evidence that is drawn from such sources; do not use it silently.
• Triangulate; search ardently for evidence that might undermine, as well as corroborate, your hypothesis.
• Avoid assumption creep: do not allow assertions to move from ‘possibly’ to ‘probably’ to ‘definitely’; do not build more elaborate layers of interpretation on a foundation that is rocky.
• Do not rely on the secondary assertions of other historians; ad fontes! Go back to the original sources.
• Guard against confirmation bias; interrogate the ‘facts’ anew and bring a fresh analysis to them; do not mould the facts to your interpretation.
• Root out and resolve any internal inconsistencies in your argument.
• Cite sources so that they can be traced, with page numbers, archival call numbers and publication details.

No Martyr Here: The Victim Status of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Amy Fuller writes in History Today online:

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th-century poet, playwright and nun. In her native Mexico today she is celebrated as an icon: her old convent is now a university bearing her name; she is the subject of a movie and many plays and novels, and she even features on the 200 peso banknote. Yet, despite her fame, her story has been distorted and the more that is written about her, the further we get from the true historical figure.

The misrepresentation of Sor Juana's life began in the 1930s but gained traction thanks largely to Octavio Paz’s 1982 biography and the 1990 movie, I the Worst of All. Her privileged life and the support of the Church and court have been ignored. Instead, the popular narrative tells us that Sor Juana was persecuted by the Inquisition for stirring up controversy. As a result, she is now known as a subversive upstart who was silenced and forced to give up her career and possessions, and her tragic death from the plague is framed as a martyr’s atonement to make up for her ‘transgressions’.

Though she is relatively unknown in the UK, a production of The Heresy of Love, which is based on Sor Juana’s life, has been thrilling crowds at London’s Globe since the end of July. This critically acclaimed play by Helen Edmundson was written in 2012 and builds upon the existing mythology, ramping it up even further. Within this new version of events, Sor Juana’s beauty and sexuality become central to her persecution: she is torn down by bitchy female rivals as well as male authority figures. Her punishment too goes to new levels as she mortifies her own flesh, even cutting her face, and the books in her library are publicly burned by order of the Inquisition.

Fuller goes on to argue that much of this interpretation of Sor Juana's life is creating a martyr-victim when there isn't one, and that anti-Catholic and anti-clerical politics played a crucial role:

The creation of Sor Juana’s ‘persecution’ coincided with a rise in anti-clericalism and the reclaiming of Mexico’s history after the Revolution. This predominately focused on presenting a Mexico that rallied against outside influence in order to free itself from the colonial power of Spain and the invading force of the US. In order to fit this narrative, Sor Juana’s works were presented as rebellious and anti-Spanish. But, in reality, each of her volumes was praised by the Inquisition and prefaced with dedicatory letters and poetry from Spanish nobility and clergy celebrating her as an icon of the Spanish Empire. In return, she commended the crown for having saved the indigenous Mexicans from the ignorance of paganism.

This cooperation between Sor Juana and the Spanish crown and the Church does not fit the acceptable image of a Mexican heroine. It is much more appropriate to have her rebel against her ‘oppressors’ and suffer for having done so.

Indeed, in a plotline that is continued in The Heresy of Love, Sor Juana is presented as finding favour and safety only temporarily with the Viceroyals. Once their tenure is complete and they return to Spain, she is thrown to the wolves. As such, her narrative becomes a metaphor for Mexico itself: tyrannised by Spain and then left to rot.

Far from being silenced within her lifetime, this actually began in the 20th century and continues today. Her own image, largely self-made, was deemed unacceptable for a modern day Mexican national treasure and decimated. As a result she has become a victim after all.

You can imagine that part of the pleasure some members of the audience received from attending the play The Heresy of Love is that it confirmed their views of organized religion and the Catholic Church.

Note that Amy Fuller has studied the works of Sor Juana and wrote her PhD dissertation on the nun's one act plays in the Eucharist:

The seventeenth-century Mexican poet, playwright and nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, is best known for her secular works, most notably her damning indictment of male double standards, Hombres necios (Stupid Men). However, her autos sacramentales (allegorical one-act plays on the Eucharist) have received little attention, and have only been discussed individually and out of sequence. By examining them as a collection, in their original order, their meaning and importance are revealed. The autos combine Christian and classical ‘pagan’ imagery from the ‘Old World’ with the conquest and conversion of the ‘New World’. As the plays progress, the mystery of Christ’s ‘greatest gi ft’ to mankind is deciphered and is mirrored in Spain’s gi ft of the True Faith to the indigenous Mexicans. Sor Juana’s own image is also situated within this baroque landscape: presented as a triumph of Spanish imperialism, an exotic muse between two worlds. 

Amy Fuller gained her PhD in Spanish Studies from the University of Manchester in 2010, and is a Lecturer in History at Nottingham Trent.

Katherine Parr, RIP

Henry VIII's sixth wife and surviving widow, Catherine Parr, died on September 5, 1548. One of her biographers, Linda Porter, discusses the relationship between the monarch and his last wife for History Today:

It was noted that “the king espoused the queen privately and without ceremony”. The bridegroom was, however, enthusiastic as he took his vows “with a joyful countenance”. Henry was 52 years old and ailing. His new wife, Katherine Parr, was not quite 31, twice-widowed and an experienced stepmother. Surely this was a marriage born of common sense, where passion would play little part? The Victorians depicted it as the union of an irascible tyrant with a worthy matron. The truth, however, was very different.

Henry was looking for a wife, not a nurse or homemaker. He wanted a companion for his bed who might provide further heirs and could carry the role of queen consort impressively. Katherine, who had given up another man to marry the king, was well aware that her duties would definitely run to more than polite conversation and soothing the royal brow. Her determination to be a success led to a deep bond of affection between the royal couple which may, in 1546, have saved her life.

It is not surprising that Henry was drawn to the comely widow. She was a slim, attractive redhead whose unimpeachable reputation hid a sensual nature. Her other suitor, Sir Thomas Seymour (the king’s brother-in-law), had already realised this and probably Henry did, too.

Until now, the curtains around the marriage bed of Henry VIII and his last wife have remained firmly closed. Yet theirs was undoubtedly a sexual relationship. Katherine took seriously her vows to be “bonaire and buxom in bed and in board”. She took milk baths to keep her skin soft and the day after her wedding, she ordered “fine perfumes” for her bedchamber at Hampton Court. She was clearly determined to make her body and her bedchamber as enticing as possible.

Henry lumbering into view in his nightshirt must have been a daunting sight. A year before his final marriage it had been noted that he was “already very stout and daily growing heavier… three of the biggest men to be found could get inside his doublet”. Pain and the disease in his legs had left their mark on him. Between 1543 and 1545 he got through 300 pairs of hose a year. This was the man that Katherine had taken as her third husband. Very soon he doted on her – but could she possibly have loved him?

At the outset, almost certainly not. She married him for the advancement of her family and because he could not be refused. She was dutiful and keen to convince herself that her fate was God’s will. Yet Katherine was also a loving and optimistic woman, as well as intelligent. She knew the opportunity that had come her way and thought hard about how to turn it to her advantage.

Developing a good relationship with all three of the royal children was certainly important but at the heart of Katherine’s strategy was the king himself. Henry was not simply an overweight monster but a lonely and unhappy man after the disaster of his marriage to the foolish Katherine Howard. Katherine Parr recognised his need for love and attention. Circumstances permitted her to establish herself swiftly as a major influence in his life, as the plague kept them continuously outside the capital and in each other’s company for six months. It was an ideal foundation for their relationship. So the king showered her with jewels and beautiful clothes, entrusted the country to her regency while he fought the French one last time in 1544, and greatly hoped for children with her.

Porter might be ascribing a thought and decision-making process that we can't verify, but it does comport with Katherine's actions in reaching out to Mary and Elizabeth and mothering Edward.

Henry and Katherine shared many interests, from hunting and archery to music, masques and books. She was a graceful dancer and they both loved the Venetian Bassano brothers, musicians patronised by Katherine. Henry, a cultured man, was delighted to have a queen who commanded respect from ambassadors and with whom he could discourse. Both husband and wife were committed to the 16th-century belief in lifelong learning. Katherine brushed up her Latin and also began to edit and write religious books, as her commitment to advancing the cause of further reform grew. In 1545 she became the first queen of England to be published when copies of her Prayers or Meditations were produced by the king’s printers. Her influence over Henry seemed unshakeable.

Porter then goes on to describe the crisis in this marriage and its source: religious controversy in England between Catholics and Evangelicals. Read the rest there.

It seems that William P. Haugaard's 1969 article in the Renaissance Quarterly published by the University of Chicago Press, "Katherine Parr: The Religious Convictions of a Renaissance Queen" is one of the main resources for our understanding of Parr's religious beliefs and influences. I do find it fascinating that Katherine Parr's first published translation in 1544--while Henry was in France and she was Regent--was of Bishop John Fisher's Psalmi seu Precationes when Henry VIII had beheaded the holy bishop just nine years earlier. While Haugaard does not mention Fisher as the original author of the Psalms or Prayers in Latin, he does note that the private, devotional nature of the work meant it would not offend a Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist, and that it was popular, being reprinted during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I! The University of Chicago Press published Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence, edited by Janel Mueller in 2011, which includes the Psalms or Prayers and The Lamentation of a Sinner, Parr's more obviously Protestant work.

Katherine Parr, married four times and widowed three, died after bearing her first and only child, Mary. Linda Porter discussed the fate of that orphaned baby (after Parr's fourth husband, Thomas Seymour died) also in the virtual pages of History Today.