Pole and His Books at Lambeth

The Reformation Cardinal exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library opened last week. It's an exhibition featuring some of his books (appropriately enough for a Library):

Pole’s was a life steeped in books. He was a scholar and a collector of one of the period’s most intriguing libraries, and it was in books that he fought his battles and made his strongest statements for reform. This exhibition gathers books from Oxford, London, and Rome to tell his story. The Pole who emerges is a complex and agonized individual, someone of sincerity and of evident charm, a connoisseur, a man of strong faith, a European statesman—and a battler for moderation within the limits of the possible.

There's an excellent digital exhibition for those of us who can't get to London before December 15, divided into "eras" of his life as a student, controversialist against Henry VIII, Cardinal scholar in Rome, Viterbo, and Trent, and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Mary I. Each section highlights books, letters, and other documents: the books he studied, the books he wrote, books he inspired to renew the life of the Catholic Church in England, and books evaluating his role in the English Reformation and that renewal. 

The summing up:

Since [his death], he has been at the heart of two contrasting legends of English history. In one he is seen as the cruel agent of ‘Bloody Mary’ and an instigator of the burning alive of approximately three hundred English and Welsh men and women for their non-Catholic religious beliefs. The other legend of Pole as a saint and almost a martyr for the Catholic faith began to form immediately after his death. Biographies of the late cardinal were written and edited by men who had known him, notably Ludovico Beccadelli, and by supporters, not least at New College in Oxford, where a third of the fellows refused to accept Elizabeth’s religious settlement of 1559, resigned their fellowships, and moved abroad.

The role that Pole had played, his legacy for English Catholics in particular and for the European Counter-Reformation more broadly, would remain as meaningful as it was complex.

You have click on each image in the sections, scroll down a narrative panel or click on arrows to follow the explanation about the context and the provenance of each book or document, and then close the tab to return to the exhibition page and open another image. 

Two of the most interesting in the section on Henry VIII and Pole's "disagreements" are a Psalter with St. Thomas a Becket's name all blotted out and Pole's copy of the Bishop of Exeter John de Grandisson's Life of Becket, one of only six copies of the work to survive Henry VIII's attacks on the martyred saint.

Image Credit (Public Domain:) El cardenal Reginald Pole, por Sebastiano del Piombo

Reginald Cardinal Pole Exhibition at Lambeth Palace

The Archbishop of Canterbury's London headquarters, Lambeth Palace, is presenting an exhibition in its Library on the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Cardinal Pole, beginning on October 5. The title of the exhibition is "Reformation Cardinal: Reginald Pole in Sixteenth-Century Italy and England":

Born in 1500 into the highest circles of the English aristocracy, becoming both cardinal and England’s last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole steered a perilous course through the storm of the European Reformation. A brilliant scholarly career in Italy took him to Rome, from where he launched an audacious campaign against Henry VIII’s regime and its anti-papal policies. His intellectual leadership of the Church mirrored his position in a circle of close spiritual friends, which included the artist Michelangelo. Returning to England after the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary, Pole reconciled the English Church to Rome and did much to re-establish Catholicism before his premature death at Lambeth in 1558. This exhibition brings together books from Oxford, London, and Rome to tell the story of this complex, charismatic individual.

I'll be on the lookout for more information about the exhibition next week.

Consulting the British History Online entry for Lambeth Palace, I found some information about the Cardinal Archbishop's time there:

To Cardinal Pole, who succeeded to the archbishopric, is attributed the foundation of the long gallery in Lambeth Palace. He was appointed to the deanery of Exeter by Henry VIII.; but was abroad when the king abolished the Papal authority in England, and, not attending when summoned to return, was proclaimed a traitor and divested of his deanery. In 1536 he was made cardinal; and when Mary ascended the throne he returned to England as legate from Pope Julius III., and had his attainder reversed by special Act of Parliament. "Few churchmen have borne so unblemished a reputation as this eminent prelate, and few have carried themselves with such moderation and meekness. He died November 17, 1558, being the very day on which Queen Mary herself died."

and

Several circumstances respecting Cardinal Pole are noticed as having happened here by Strype, Burnet, and other authors. Queen Mary is said to have completely furnished Lambeth Palace for his reception at her own cost, and to have frequently honoured him with her company. "In 1554, on his arrival from the Continent, having presented himself at court, he went from thence in his barge to his palace at Lambeth; and here he soon afterwards summoned the bishops and inferior clergy, then assembled in convocation, to come to him to be absolved from all their prejudices, schisms, and heresies. The following month all the bishops went to Lambeth to receive the cardinal's blessing and directions."

"On the 21st of July, 1556," says Strype, "the queen removed from St. James's in the Fields into Eltham, passing through the park to Whitehall, and took her barge, crossing over to Lambeth unto my lord cardinal's palace; and there she took her chariot, and so rid through St. George's Fields to Newington, and so over the fields to Eltham, at five o'clock in the afternoon. She was attended on horseback by the cardinal, &c., and by a conflux of people to see her grace, above ten thousand." In the winter of the same year the queen removed from St. James's through the park, and took her barge to Lambeth, where she visited Cardinal Pole. After dinner she resumed her journey to Greenwich, where she kept her Christmas.

In 1558 Cardinal Pole died at Lambeth Palace. His body lay in state forty days, when it was removed to Canterbury Cathedral for interment.

The website for Lambeth Palace includes a picture of the "descendant" of one of the fig trees Cardinal Pole had planted on the grounds:

Fronting the Great Hall on the west side of the courtyard is a magnificent White Marseille fig tree, which came to Lambeth Palace with the last Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1556. He served Mary I (Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) until they both died on the 17th November 1558. The tree was relocated to this position in 1828 when Edward Blore built the residential block, and it bears abundant fruit every autumn.

So the Archbishop of Canterbury can have his figgy pudding every Christmas!?!

It will be interesting to see how the curators use the books from Oxford, London, and Rome "to tell the story of this complex, charismatic individual."

Book Review: Dermot Fenlon's Study of Cardinal Pole and the Reformation

This book has been a challenge and a delight to read. A challenge because of the very careful research and scholarship Fenlon conducted requiring careful reading and attention, and a delight because he was a wonderful writer, thus making it a compelling read. As an example of the latter, here is his opening description of Reginald Pole's eventful life in the Preface:

Reginald Pole is a figure who slips into two overlapping historical perspectives. The first opens upon the history of Tudor England, the second upon that of the European Counter Reformation. In England, Henry VIII initiated two conflicting movements in the religious life of his country. The first began with his book on the sacraments and his attack on the Reformation, in the service of which he enlisted More and Fisher. The second began with his repudiation of papal jurisdiction, in the course of which he executed, among others, More and Fisher. The protagonists of the first movement became the victims of the second: they found a hagiographer in Reginald Pole. . . . (ix)

I could go to second the second paragraph of that Preface, but I think you get the idea of Fenlon's concision and balance in composition.

Several years ago, I listened to and commented upon a lecture by Eamon Duffy on Reginald Cardinal Pole in which Duffy addressed the need for a new biography of Pole (which this book is not: neither new nor a biography), in spite of Thomas F. Mayer's Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, recently published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 and available in paperback. In my 2019 post, I asked:

So why does Duffy want a new biography--or perhaps one that's more accessible (price!)--than this recent effort?

Duffy's main issue is that Mayer has no sympathy for his subject: he did not like Reginald Cardinal Pole and Duffy says it shows: in fact, Duffy states, Mayer "loathed Pole"! Duffy also cites Mayer's entry for Pole in the new Dictionary of National Biography, noting the same problem.

Duffy believes that Reginald Pole was "a holy man; a troubled man" and that Mayer judges him too harshly. Mayer thought he was a hypocrite and a sham! Duffy opines that Mayer's biography of Pole is "dense" and "elusive" . . . 

The reason I bring this point up is that Fenlon is sympathetic to Pole and his circumstances. He does acknowledge Pole's reticence and reserve, his taciturnity and the silence that seemed to indicate his consent to what others were saying, but Fenlon appreciates Pole's situation. He notes that reserve and seeming compliance with Henry VIII's Great Matter, when Pole was asked to help find support for Henry's point of view and finally asked, like More, to be exempted from this process on the grounds of conscience. Finally, he had to respond after the executions of More and Fisher, to what Henry VIII had done to the Unity of Church. His family was in danger after he wrote that letter to Henry, but so was Pole, even though he was on the Continent. The same situation--and response from Pole--occurs when he is asked to help lead the Council of Trent while he holds a view of personal Justification and Salvation that is similar to Martin Luther's at the same that he wants to maintain the Unity of Church and his own unity with the Church in all (other) ways. He stays silent until he has to speak.

Fenlon carefully guides the reader through the Italian and Roman landscape of the Reformation era (responding to calls for curial and Church reform and examining Lutheran objections) and the Counter-Reformation era (after it was clear to Pole and others that reunion with the Lutheran and Calvinist (etc) dissenters was impossible. Then Pole assents to the Catholic doctrine of Justification as defined by the Council of Trent. 

As I read Fenlon's recounting of this long crisis in Pole's life, I thought of Philip Hughes's description of Pole's character in Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England:

Hughes demonstrates that for all [Pole's] knowledge and love of Jesus and His Church, he lacked "irascible passion"; he was too ready to be a victim--and that he had "a temperament that instinctively turned from the hard, unpleasant realities of a problem to the ideal way in which it ought to be solved." (p. 43) Although Pole was a man of action and ready to promote reform and renewal, Hughes claims that he lacked audacity: he was not bold and he could not be stirred to righteous anger. Therefore, he wasn't able to take crucial action in a crisis. 

If Pole was "too ready to be a victim" he certainly became a victim of Pope Paul IV, the former Cardinal Carafa. On page 249 Fenlon describes the future pope's tendency to suspicion:

Suspicion, it would seem, was endemic to Carafa's mind. It could be forgotten for a while in a violent upsurge of emotional generosity: but under impulse it would start smoldering again. His temperament was absolute: equivocation seemed to him the mark of treachery.

Fenlon notes that as a Cardinal, Carafa could be persuaded to calm down and reconsider his suspicion of another. But as pope, "charged with the responsibility of protecting Christendom" (pp. 249-250), he could not be moved. Fortunately for Pole, neither could Queen Mary I, who refused to let Pole return to Rome to face the Inquisition, so that he remained her Archbishop of Canterbury, trying to re-establish Catholicism in England.

A most rewarding read; of course I bought my copy from a second-hand bookseller. It came to me unmarked and pristine. I've made my usual notations and the book kind of curled on its spine. I'm searching for a copy of Fenlon's paper, "The Counter Reformation and the Realisation of 'Utopia'" in Historical Studies: Papers Read in the Ninth Conference of Irish Historians, ed. J. Barry, 9 (Dublin, 1973).

Vittoria Colonna and Pole's "Spirituali" after Trent

I've nearly finished reading Father Dermot Fenlon's book about Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, the Council of Trent, and the Counter-Reformation in Italy (and in England, to a lesser extent). One figure among the spirituali Cardinal Pole gathered around him in Viterbo is Vittoria Colonna, who died on February 25, 1547. According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia:

She was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, lord of various Roman fiefs and grand constable of Naples. Her mother, Agnese da Montefeltro, was a daughter of Federigo da Montefeltro, first Duke of Urbino. In 1509 Vittorio was married to Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, a Neapolitan nobleman of Spanish origin, who was one of the chief generals of the Emperor Charles V. Pescara's military career culminated in the victory of Pavia (24 February, 1525), after which he became involved in Morone's conspiracy for the liberation of Italy, and was tempted from his allegiance to the emperor by the offer of the crown of Naples. Vittoria earnestly dissuaded him from this scheme, declaring (as her cousin, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, tells us) that she "preferred to die the wife of a most brave marquis and a most upright general, than to live the consort of a king dishonoured with any stain of infamy". Pescara died in the following November, leaving his young heir and cousin, Alfonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, under Vittorio's care.

Vittoria henceforth devoted herself entirely to religion and literature. We find her usually in various monasteries, at Rome, Viterbo, and elsewhere, living in conventual simplicity, the centre of all that was noblest in the intellectual and spiritual life of the times. She had a peculiar genius for friendship, and the wonderful spiritual tie that united her to Michelangelo Buonarroti made the romance of that great artist's life. Pietro Bembo, the literary dictator of the age, was among her most fervent admirers. She was closely in touch with Ghiberti, Contarini, Giovanni Morone, and all that group of men and women who were working for the reformation of the Church from within. For a while she had been drawn into the controversy concerning justification by faith, but was kept within the limits of orthodoxy by the influence of the beloved friend of her last years, Cardinal Reginald Pole, to whom she declared she owed her salvation. Her last wish was to be buried among the nuns of S. Anna de' Funari at Rome; but it is doubtful whether her body ultimately rested there, or was removed to the side of her husband at San Domenico in Naples.

She wrote many Petrarchan sonnets to Michelangelo on religious themes; here are two "Recomposed by Anna Key" on Dappled Things, and you may find a translation of a poem he wrote to her on this page ("XII/ To Vittoria Colonna/A Matchless Courtesy)

Here's another biographical source, focused on her poetry.

In Father Dermot Fenlon's Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation, Vittoria Colonna appears last in Chapter 13, "The Tridentine decree and the end of the Viterbo circle", pages 213-217. Fenlon describes how she wanted to help protect Alvise Priuli so he could peacefully achieve "simple acquiescence in the doctrine [of Justification] put forward at the Council" and remain in the Church, as she had. On page 215, he comments that "With her death, the Viterbo circle came to an end". In later chapters, the effect of her death on Cardinal Pole's last years is mentioned, but her efforts to help Priuli is her last dated correspondence.

Image Credit (public domain): Sebastiano del Piombo - Vittoria Colonna (?)

Pole and Pate in Tridentine Italy on the Doctrine of Justification

As I'm reading Father Dermot Fenlon's Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation, I just read about one Richard Pate, the Bishop of Worcester appointed by Pope Paul III in 1541 after Henry VIII dismissed the incumbent Italian bishop, Cardinal Jerome Ghinucci in 1535 (the Pope was acting as if nothing had changed!). Bishop Richard Pate would not really take up his see until Queen Mary I came to the throne and was one of the co-consecrators of of Reginald Cardinal Pole in 1556 as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Like many during Henry VIII's reign, and beyond, he had an interesting career. According to the old Dictionary of National Biography (published 1885-1900), he had one great advantage: one of his uncles was Bishop John Longland of Lincoln, his mother's brother, as he was the:

son of John Pate by Elinor, sister of John Longland [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln, was born in Oxfordshire, probably at Henley-on-Thames, and was admitted on 1 June 1522 a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. on 15 Dec. 1523, according to Wood (Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 63). This degree having been completed by determination, he went to Paris, and there graduated M.A. On 4 June 1523 he was collated by his uncle to the prebend of Centum Solidorum in the church of Lincoln, and he resigned it for that of Cropredy in 1525. He appears to have resided for some time at Bruges, as John Ludovicus Vivès, writing from that city on 8 July 1524 to Bishop Longland, the king's confessor, says: ‘Richard Pate, your sister's son, and Antony Barcher, your dependant, are wonderfully studious’ (Brewer, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 203). In 1526 he was made archdeacon of Worcester. On 11 March 1526–7 he had the stall of Sanctæ Crucis, alias Spaldwick, in the church of Lincoln, and on 22 June 1528 the stall of Sutton cum Buckingham in the same church. On this latter date he was also made archdeacon of Lincoln upon the death of William Smith, doctor of decrees. . . .

He served Henry VIII as Ambassador to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and heard Katherine of Aragon's nephew express his complaints about "the course adopted by the king of England, and energetically defended his own action on behalf of his aunt, Catherine of Arragon (sic). Subsequently he accompanied the emperor to the Low Countries."

Peter Marshall, in Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England, according to Wikipedia notes that Pate in 1537 [perhaps influenced the Emperor?] ". . . was removed from that position, after he had advocated for the legitimate status of Princess Mary; but he was reinstated in 1540.[2]" He also notes that that Pate was thought lukewarm toward the king's marital matters, and was recalled to England soon after that reinstatement (p. 235). But he stayed on the Continent and went to Rome, where he was named the Bishop of Worcester as noted above. On page 238 of the same volume, Marshall notes that Pate and his chaplain, Seth Holland, were attainted as traitors by Parliament in 1542.

As Pope Paul III's Bishop of Worcester, Richard Pate attended the Council of Trent. When Reginald Cardinal Pole left the first session of the Council of Trent because of illness, Pate remained as one of the spirituali of Pole's community, and he argued for a more Lutheran doctrine of Justification. (Chapter 9. The 'spirituali' at Trent)

Fenlon states on page 149 that on 9 July 1546 Pate argued "'faith alone' was the instrument of justification, while seeming to imply as well, that good works performed after justification were not meritorious, although they remained necessary as being in accordance with the will of God." Later that month, on 20 July, Pate supported the statement that "justice increased to the extent faith increased; good works were the fruit of justification, and a sign to man that his salvation was assured." (pp. 149-150) Fenlon also comments that Pate was "significantly more opposed to the doctrine [on Justification] was about to define . . . [than] any other prelate present at Trent" (p. 150), and after a detailed survey of Pate's educational, clerical, and diplomatic career (pp. 149 to 160) concludes that Pate "was convinced of Luther's orthodoxy on the fundamental question of salvation". (p. 150).

How Pole and Pate will respond to the Doctrine of Justification as defined by the Council of Trent, I have yet to find out. This is a post in medias res. The next chapter is 10. Pole's Protest!

The Dictionary of National Biography continues his life story:

Pate attended the council of Trent as bishop of Worcester, his first appearance there being in the session which opened on 21 April 1547. He was also present at the sittings of the council in September 1549 and in 1551. He remained in banishment during the reign of Edward VI. In 1542 he had been attainted of high treason, whereupon his archdeaconry was bestowed on George Heneage, and his prebend of Eastharptre in the church of Wells on Dr. John Heryng.

On the accession of Queen Mary he returned to this country. His attainder was reversed, and on 5 March 1554–5 he obtained possession of the temporalities of the see of Worcester (Rymer, Fœdera, xv. 415). . . .

Historian Jack Scarisbrick describes how Pate finally took up the see of Worcester in this 2019 Catholic Herald article:

. . . Worcester was very complicated. For a while in 1554 there were four people with the title of bishop: the long-since-resigned Hugh Latimer; his successor Thomas Heath, future archbishop of York, who was deprived of his see in 1551 by the Protestant regime and replaced by one Thomas Hooper (who was eventually burnt, along with Latimer and Cranmer).

Heath was restored to Worcester by Mary – only to be soon translated to York, thus making way for Pate – and enabling the latter at last to take up residence in the see of which he had been pastor in absentia for 13 years.

The Dictionary of National Biography entry concludes:

Queen Elizabeth deprived him of the temporalities in June 1559, and cast him into prison. He was in the Tower of London on 12 Feb. 1561–2, when he made his will, which has been printed by Brady. On regaining his liberty he withdrew to Louvain, where he died on 5 Oct. 1565. Mass is still said for him every year at the English College, Rome, on the anniversary of his death. 

One of the figures in Holbein's celebrated picture of ‘The Ambassadors,’ now in the National Gallery, is believed to represent Pate (Times, 8 Dec. 1891).

I wonder if that annual Mass is still celebrated at the VEC in Rome? 

The identity of the figures in Holbein's The Ambassadors I think is settled now (and one of them is not Pate!) according to The National Gallery in London.

Father Dermot Fenlon, RIP: Newman and Pole

A Facebook friend sent me a link to an obituary of Father Dermot Fenlon, one of the famous "Birmingham Three" who were removed from St. John Henry Newman's Birmingham Oratory in 2010 before Newman's beatification that September by Pope Benedict XVI. There's a blog dedicated to their defense, particularly to him (which actually linked to this blog in 2011 when I posted a story about the connection between Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance movement against Nazism and Newman, one of Father Fenlon's contributions to Newman scholarship). 

He died on August 17, 2022. According to the homily delivered at his funeral he was

. . . Born in 1941, the son of Dermot & Mary (nee Tutty) Fenlon. His elder brother Frank predeceased him. He grew up in Booterstown, Co. Dublin. After attending Willow Park Primary School and Blackrock College, he tried his vocation, as they used to say, with the Holy Ghost Fathers (the Spiritans) but then left and opted for the study of history at UCD, where he took his B.A. and then M.A, under the direction of Professor Desmond Williams. It was around this time that he published for the first time on 17th-century Irish history in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

He then went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where his supervisor was the preeminent historian of Tudor England Geoffrey ( G.R. ) Elton (later Sir Geoffrey Elton). There he worked on Cardinal Reginald Pole (eventually the subject of his book published by Cambridge University Press). In 1969 he became a University assistant lecturer, later University Lecturer in history and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. There he remained for 10 more years, when he published articles on Thomas More and the French historian Lucien Febvre. He enjoyed a universal reputation in Cambridge, a reputation that is untarnished to this day. A promising academic future beckoned to him, but then he abandoned it to study for the priesthood.

Father Vincent Twomey continued in his homily to described how Father Fenlon's interest in Newman led him to the Oratory in Birmingham:

During his time in Cambridge, he had developed a great interest in Cardinal John Henry Newman, who, after his conversion, became a priest in the order St Philip Neri founded, the Oratorians. This in turn led him to study St Philip Neri the great counter reformation theologian, scholar and poet. Not only did he become a world expert on the life and times of these two saints, but, it would seem, his study of them led him back to God.

In 1978 he entered the Pontifical Beda College in Rome. Ordained in 1982, he served as a priest in the East Anglia diocese. But his love of St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman led him to enter the Birmingham Oratory in 1991 which had been founded by Newman. There he spent two decades as Newman archivist.

And Twomey also recounts the troubles at the Oratory in 2010 and Father Fenlon's exile, later years, and death. Please read the rest there.  

I've ordered a copy of Father Fenlon's book on Cardinal Pole:

Reginald Pole was one of the most complex figures in sixteenth-century history. The only Englishman to follow a career at the Roman Curia in the crucial decades of the Reformation, the victim successively of the Tudor Reformation and the Roman Inquisition, his life was marked by misunderstanding, failure and tragedy. This book is a study of his career in Italy, his involvement in the Council of Trent and his share in the vain attempt to obtain reunification with the Protestants. Dr Fenlon discusses in great detail Pole's attitudes towards the doctrine of the Protestant reformers, its influence within Italy and the development of his group of `spirituals' at Viterbo. But this is not simply a biography of Pole nor an analysis of his influence. Rather it is an examination of the crisis the Catholic Church and its adherents faced in the Reformation, the conflict exemplified in Pole's personal experience and that of the groups among which he moved, between obedience to the established ecclesiastical order and sympathy with Luther's tenets. The crisis and its resolution reflect the genesis of the Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation which resulted in the final confessional divisions of Christian Europe.

Although it deals mainly with that particular Italian period of Reginald Cardinal Pole's life, I am eager to read more about the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, whom (and his mother) I have blogged about often. The Table of Contents and the Preface are available here and ten pages of chapter one here.

Here's the complete article about Newman and Scholl published in the National Catholic Register, describing Father Fenlon's research. I would like to be able to read this article, "Elite and Popular Religion: The Case of Newman" but it's behind a paywall and would cost as much as the book! There's also a video of Father Fenlon discussing Newman and education.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. May Father Dermot Fenlon rest in peace. Amen.

Tuesday, November 17: Saints and Sinners

Quite a remarkable day: Queen Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole died today in 1558, ending the restoration of Catholicism in England for 292 years--until the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.

The composer Hugh Aston might have died on the same day--or near it--because he stopped receiving a pension on that date:

English composer. Hugh Aston, with seven large-scale works to his credit, is the most important of the less famous composers represented in the Forrest-Heyther and Peterhouse partbooks. He graduated Bachelor of Music at Oxford in 1510. It was fitting therefore that the choirmaster's post at Cardinal College, Oxford which Taverner was persuaded to take was first offered to him. Aston may have been in London and associated with the royal court from 1510 to 1525. Aston was master of the choristers at St Mary Newarke College, Leicester in 1525, and remained there until the College was dissolved in 1548. Drew a pension in Newarke granted in 1544 until Nov. 17, 1558. He was not the eponymous Archdeacon of York (d. 1522) or Canon of St. Stephen's, Westminster (d. 1523). . . .

Much of Aston's music is in fact very vigorous and forceful, sometimes rather in the manner of Taverner, but with a fondness for tiny florid touches which sometimes produce rather rough unessential dissonances. Some of the imitative writing for full choir in the Mass Videte manus meas (cantus firmus an antiphon from Vespers of Easter Tuesday) is similar in its energetic quality to parts of Taverner's Gloria tibi Trinitas, especially at 'rex coelestis' or 'descendit de coelis'; but in general there is a far more mechanical handling of less interesting shapes.

The best of Aston is probably to be found in the antiphons Gaude virgo mater Christi and Ave Maria divae matris Annae. The melodic style here occasionally points ahead quite strikingly to that of later composers in the new boldness of outline of some important melodic phrases; in particular one notes in several places a new kind of melodic expansion in which an important interval is enlarged when imitated to help create a sense of growth and climax.

Stile Antico included his Gaude virgo mater Christi on their Music for Compline CD and the Blue Heron ensemble included that Marian antiphon and two others, including Ave Maria divae matris Annae on their first CD of Music from the Peterhouse Part Books. I own those two CDs and have ordered this CD set which includes one of his Masses (featuring Thomas Cardinal Wolsey on the cover!).

And there are at least three saint's feast days to be celebrated: Saint Hugh of Lincoln, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus, depending on Rite and location. I plan to attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite tonight, at which the latter will be remembered:

Gregory, bishop of Neocæsarea in Pontus, was illustrious for his holiness and learning, but still more for his miracles, which were so startling and so numerous that he was called the Thaumaturgus; and, according to St. Basil, he was considered comparable to Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles. By his prayer he removed a mountain, which was an obstacle to the building of a church. He also dried up a lake which was a cause of dissension between brothers. The river Lycus, which was inundating and devastating the fields, he restrained by fixing in the bank his stick which immediately grew into a green tree, and served as a limit which the river henceforth never overpassed.

He frequently expelled the devils from idols and from men’s bodies, and worked many other miracles, by means of which he led multitudes to the faith of Christ. He also foretold future events by the spirit of prophecy. When he was dying, he asked how many infidels remained in the city of Neocæsarea; and on being informed that there were only seventeen, he gave thanks to God, and said: When I was made bishop, there were but seventeen believers. He wrote several works, by which, as well as by his miracles, he adorned the Church of God.

He is also honored today in the Orthodox Church: Troparion and Kontakion here.

Queen Mary I, rest in peace.

Reginald Pole, rest in peace.

Hugh Aston, rest in peace.

St. Hugh of Lincoln, pray for us.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us.

St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, pray for us.

Much Ado About the End of November

November 30th is an important day: it is the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, and thus the day to start the St. Andrew Christmas Novena, with this prayer said 15 (fifteen) times each day for 25 days:

Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment at which the Son of God was born of a most pure Virgin at a stable at midnight in Bethlehem in the piercing cold. At that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, to hear my prayers and grant my desires. (Mention your intentions here) Through Jesus Christ and His most Blessed Mother. Amen.

The prayer is all focused on the Nativity of Jesus (and doesn't even mention St. Andrew) and is named for the saint because we start praying it on his feast day!

As the Tudor Society explains, in 1554, the Feast of Saint Andrew was the date of the official reconciliation between England and the Catholic Church:

In Mary I's reign, 30th November became a day to celebrate the reconciliation of England and the papacy due to it being the anniversary of that reconciliation in 1554. On that day in 1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, papal legate, announced to Parliament and the King and Queen:

“And we, by the apostolike authoritie given unto us by the most holie lord pope Julius the third […] do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with the whole realm, and the dominions thereof, from all heresie and schism, and from all and every judgements, censures and pain for that cause incurred. And also wee do restore you againe to the unity of our mother the holie church [...]”

It was decreed that on 30th November every year “a solemn procession shall be held, in which not only the clergy of every place, but also the faithful members of Christ of the secular order, shall gather and renew the memory of so wonderful a blessing received from God... and that on the same day, in the church from which the procession shall set out, during the solemn rites of the mass, a sermon shall be preached to the people in which the reason for this solemnity shall be explained.”

In 1577, St. Cuthbert Mayne suffered martyrdom, found guilty of treason:

He was brought to trial in September; meanwhile his imprisonment was of the harshest order. His indictment under statutes of 1 and 13 Elizabeth was under five counts: first, that he had obtained from the Roman See a "faculty", containing absolution of the queen's subjects; second, that he had published the same at Golden; third, that he had taught the ecclesiastical authority of the pope in Launceston Gaol; fourth, that he had brought into the kingdom an Agnus Dei and had delivered the same to Mr. Tregian; fifth, that he had said Mass.

As to the first and second counts, the martyr showed that the supposed "faculty" was merely a copy printed at Douai of an announcement of the Jubilee of 1575, and that its application having expired with the end of the jubilee, he certainly had not published it either at Golden or elsewhere. As to the third count, he maintained that he had said nothing definite on the subject to the three illiterate witnesses who asserted the contrary. As to the fourth count, he urged that the fact that he was wearing an Agnus Dei at the time of his arrest was no evidence that he had brought it into the kingdom or delivered it to Mr. Tregian. As to the fifth count, he contended that the finding of a Missal, a chalice, and vestments in his room did not prove that he had said Mass.

Nevertheless the jury found him guilty of high treason on all counts, and he was sentenced accordingly. His execution was delayed because one of the judges, Jeffries, altered his mind after sentence and sent a report to the Privy Council. They submitted the case to the whole Bench of Judges, which was inclined to Jeffries's view. Nevertheless, for motives of policy, the Council ordered the execution to proceed. On the night of 27 November his cell was seen by the other prisoners to be full of a strange bright light. The details of his martyrdom must be sought in the works hereinafter cited. It is enough to say that all agree that he was insensible, or almost so, when he was disembowelled.

He is one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales.

In 1586/1587, Blessed Alexander Crow was hanged, drawn, and quartered in York. He was included among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1987.

In 1675, Cecilius Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, "Absolute Lord of Maryland and Avalon" died in England. He had fulfilled his father's goal of establishing a colony in British America where Catholics could worship freely (and other Christians too!). The Catholic Encyclopedia entry for him emphasizes several difficulties in his endeavors:

It was Lord Baltimore's intention, at first to come to America with the colonists, but as there were many enemies of his colonial project at home, he concluded to send his brothers, Leonard and George, at the head of the expedition. The former was appointed governor. The enemies of the charter, chiefly members of the London Company, did everything in their power to defeat the objects of the proprietor. It was claimed that the charter interfered with the grant of land of the Virginia Company and that, owing to its liberality, it would attract people from other colonies and depopulate them. The arguments of the enemies of the charter were of no avail, and finally the colonists, numbering twenty gentlemen and about three hundred labourers, embarked on the Ark and the Dove, in the harbour of Cowes, Nov., 1633. Before sailing, Leonard received instructions for the government of the colonists. Religious toleration was the keynote of Baltimore's policy throughout his long career. In spite of the fact that the Catholics were persecuted when Calvert's government was overthrown, every time his authority was restored persecution ceased and every faith had equal rights. When the Puritans were persecuted in Massachusetts, Baltimore offered them a refuge in Maryland, with freedom of worship. . . .

His absence from the colony produced a peculiar condition, the absence of laws. The charter gave the proprietor the right to make laws with the advice and consent of the freemen. The latter met in 1634-35 and passed "wholesome laws and ordinances." Feeling that this act had infringed on his rights, in his commission to the governor, April, 1637, the proprietor expressed his disapproval of all laws passed by the colonists. For the endorsement of the assembly of 1637-38, he sent a body of laws with his secretary, John Lewger. These laws were rejected by the assembly, as they were considered unsuited to the colony. A few laws not differing materially from those sent by Baltimore were agreed to and sent to the proprietor for his consent. At first his approval was withheld, and the colony was without laws. Later, however, his sanction was given to the laws in a commission to the governor, authorizing him to give his assent to the laws made by the freemen, which would make the laws binding until they were either approved or rejected by the proprietor. With this commission the privilege of initiative in matters of legislation was conceded to the colonists, the proprietor retaining the right of absolute veto. As this power was never used by Baltimore except in extreme cases, the colonists practically enjoyed freedom in self-government. . . .

Cecilius Calvert ruled over the colony for nearly forty years. Although he never interfered with the administration of details, he ruled at every turn with an iron hand.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us!

Saint Cuthbert Mayne, pray for us!

Blessed Alexander Crow, pray for us!

And may Cecilius Calvert rest in peace!

Reginald Pole and Last Session of the Council of Trent

Found when looking for something else*: a presentation on Reginald Cardinal Pole's works published for the Council of Trent by the Aldine Press in 1562: De Concilio liber and Reformatio Angliae. 

Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, was dead of course (+11/27/1558) when Pope Pius IV convened the last session of Council of Trent. Pole had died under the cloud of suspicion of heresy during the reign of Pope Paul IV, who had stripped him of his title as Papal Legate. Mary I showed some of her father's spirit in responding to Papal authority and had not permitted Pole to leave England for Rome to face those charges. Others in Pole's circle, like Giovanni Cardinal Morone, suffered imprisonment and interrogation by the Roman Inquisition. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was vindicated after his arrest, imprisonment, and investigation:

[He] was arrested by the pontiff's order, confined in the Castle of Saint Angelo (31 May, 1557), and made the object of a formal prosecution for heresy, in which his views on justification, the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics and other matters were incriminated and submitted to rigid inquiry.

The cardinal strenuously repudiated these charges, but he was kept in confinement until the death of Paul IV. In 1560 his successor Pius IV authorized a revision of the process against Morone, and as a result the imprisonment of the cardinal and the whole procedure against him were declared to be entirely without justification; the judgment also recorded in the most formal terms that not the least suspicion rested upon his orthodoxy.

As H. George Fletcher comments in his presentation, publication of Pole's Book of the Council, written for the first session of the Council of Trent in 1542, 20 years earlier, and the records of Legatine Council he had held in England to begin the re-establishment and the reforms of the Catholic Church, was meant to offer a "posthumous vindication" of Pole's life and work for the Church.

In both Eamon Duffy's presentation on Cardinal Pole and H. George Fletcher's, Pope Paul IV does not come off well. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia calls his pontificate a great disappointment. 

Fletcher's presentation, made at the Grolier Club in 2015, offers some narrative on Pole's life and and works, but is mostly concerned with his acquisition of one of the books published by the Aldine Press in 1562 and whether it could be a copy sent to the last session of the Council of Trent and used by a peritus assisting one of the delegates there.

*Oh, what was I looking for? Some more information about this image.

Eamon Duffy on Reginald Pole

Eamon Duffy, who included a chapter on Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in his 2017 Reformation Divided:Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England, presented a lecture for the Ordinariate's pilgrimage to Canterbury last Saturday, July 13. There's a video/audio recording of his talk uploaded here.

One of the interesting aspects of his talk is that he calls for a new biography of Reginald Pole in spite of the fact that the late Thomas F. Mayer of Augustana College wrote a biography, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet, published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 and now available in paperback:

This is the first biography in ninety years of Reginald Pole (1500-1558), one of the most important international figures of the sixteenth century. Pole's career is followed as protege; and then harshest critic of Henry VIII, as cardinal and papal diplomat, legate of Viterbo, a nearly successful candidate for pope, and finally as legate to England, archbishop of Canterbury, architect of the English Counter-Reformation, and victim of both Pope Paul IV and of himself.

• A comprehensive, illustrated biography of Cardinal (Reginald) Pole, one of the most influential and charismatic figures of the sixteenth century
• Covers Pole's career from his years as Henry VIII's protégé to his years in Italy, and his return to England during the reign of Mary I as archbishop of Canterbury
• Delves deeply into archival material, including the records of the Inquisition, and includes startling new evidence about Pole's sexual orientation [ugh]

So why does Duffy want a new biography--or perhaps one that's more accessible (price!)--than this recent effort?

Duffy's main issue is that Mayer has no sympathy for his subject: he did not like Reginald Cardinal Pole and Duffy says it shows: in fact, Duffy states, Mayer "loathed Pole"! Duffy also cites Mayer's entry for Pole in the new Dictionary of National Biography, noting the same problem.

Duffy believes that Reginald Pole was "a holy man; a troubled man" and that Mayer judges him too harshly. Mayer thought he was a hypocrite and a sham! Duffy opines that Mayer's biography of Pole is "dense" and "elusive" as this review seems to agree:

Pole's life was lived in a number of contexts; he was a cousin of Henry VIII, a major figure in the European reform, and Mary's advisor and archbishop of Canterbury. In addition to his many roles, however, Mayer argues that Pole's biography is complicated by the nature of the sources about and by him. Pole was a prolific writer, but refused the appellation, arguing that he never wrote to publish. Partly for this reason, the authorship of works attributed to him, and his circle, is confused. Further, Pole and his contemporaries wrote and rewrote his life story, both during his life and after his death. As a result of all of this textual revision, Mayer argues that "Pole always existed in two phases, the life as lived and the life as written" (p. 3). Rather than trying to evade this difficulty, Mayer has chosen to build his biography around it, giving equal focus to the texts and the man, and hoping that the juxtaposition will help to explain both. This ambitious aim has spawned more than simply the biography, which stands as the keystone to an entire Polian edifice.[2] . . .

This is not an easy book. For those who are not already familiar with the broad outlines of Pole's life, it may be difficult to follow.[3] This biography is concerned with drawing the links that lie below the surface of such a narrative, setting Pole's life in the nest of his relationships with people like Contarini, Morone, Priuli, Bembo, Carafa and Vittoria Colonna. An astonishing amount of work has gone into tracing those networks, and the density of the narrative can be dizzying at times. However, it provides a remarkable richness of context, and allows Mayer to draw a character of formidable complexity. He paints a picture of Pole as an influential thinker, a conscientious and tolerant reformer, a warm and sustaining friend and a prolific writer who was, admittedly, a bad diplomat and politician. Mayer concludes that "Pole had greatness thrust upon him and it missed" (p. 439); what strikes the reader is how effectively Pole avoided greatness. He was placed in numerous positions of influence, importance and opportunity, and regularly fled them, only to be offered another chance. Mayer argues that Pole "succeeded best in private away from the public stage" (p. 442), but given his birth, his education, and the times, it seems that Pole never had the option of privacy.

Although it's not a complete biography by any means, I think Philip Hughes' analysis of Reginald Cardinal Pole's role in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the revival of Catholicism in England in his book Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is masterful. Hughes notes Pole's strengths and weaknesses, as I commented in my review a couple of years ago:

Hughes covered three periods of the efforts to revive, save, and restore Catholicism in England after the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI:

looking first at the Marian efforts to re-establish the Catholic Church with the papacy and hierarchy in England (during the reign of Mary I), then the long recusant period of missionaries, martyrs, and hopes of political conquest (during the reign of Elizabeth I), and finally the divisive disasters of the effort to bring on-site leadership to the clergy and the laity with the Archpriest controversy and the Bishops of Chalcedon failures (during the reigns of James I and Charles I).

Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England is divided into three parts, one for the leading figure of the eras described above: 1) Reginald Cardinal Pole; 2) William Cardinal Allen; 3) Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon. For each man Hughes provides an insightful character sketch and analysis, noting his strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses contribute, of course, to each man's successes and failures.

Of Reginald Pole, Hughes demonstrates that for all his knowledge and love of Jesus and His Church, he lacked "irascible passion"; he was too ready to be a victim--and that he had "a temperament that instinctively turned from the hard, unpleasant realities of a problem to the ideal way in which it ought to be solved." (p. 43) Although Pole was a man of action and ready to promote reform and renewal, Hughes claims that he lacked audacity: he was not bold and he could not be stirred to righteous anger. Therefore, he wasn't able to take crucial action in a crisis. Nevertheless, Hughes does not blame the failure of the Marian revival and re-establishment of the Catholic Church in England on Pole's character; he acknowledges that time was the main factor. Mary and Pole died too soon to effect a long-lasting Catholic revival. They left great resources for Catholicism in England, however, in the good bishops they'd appointed, but they left also left the disastrous legacy of the burnings of Smithfield to the memory of Protestants in England. Unlike Eamon Duffy, who proposed that the prosecution of heretics was working in Fires of Faith, Hughes notes that even this effort was made ineffective by the too early deaths of Mary and Pole, especially without a Catholic heir. The other great legacy Mary and Pole left to Catholics in England was William Allen.

Two Deaths and One Burial

Queen Mary I, England's first and only Catholic Queen Regnant, and the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Cardinal Pole, both died on November 17, 1558.

Also on that date Hugh Aston, the composer and chorister, was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Leicester. According to HOASM, Aston or Ashton or Assheton is

the most important of the less famous composers represented in the Forrest-Heyther and Peterhouse partbooks. He graduated Bachelor of Music at Oxford in 1510. It was fitting therefore that the choirmaster's post at Cardinal College, Oxford which Taverner was persuaded to take was first offered to him. Aston may have been in London and associated with the royal court from 1510 to 1525.Aston was master of the choristers at St Mary Newarke College, Leicester in 1525, and remained there until the College was dissolved in 1548. Drew a pension in Newarke granted in 1544 until Nov. 17, 1558. He was not the eponymous Archdeacon of York (d. 1522) or Canon of St. Stephen's, Westminster (d. 1523).

He has 'A Hornepype' for keyboard in a MS in the British Museum; he may also have composed My lady Careys dompe and The short mesure off my lady Wynkfyld's rownde.

Much of Aston's music is in fact very vigorous and forceful, sometimes rather in the manner of Taverner, but with a fondness for tiny florid touches which sometimes produce rather rough unessential dissonances. Some of the imitative writing for full choir in the Mass Videte manus meas (cantus firmus an antiphon from Vespers of Easter Tuesday) is similar in its energetic quality to parts of Taverner's Gloria tibi Trinitas, especially at 'rex coelestis' or 'descendit de coelis'; but in general there is a far more mechanical handling of less interesting shapes.

The best of Aston is probably to be found in the antiphons Gaude virgo mater Christi and Ave Maria divae matris Annae. The melodic style here occasionally points ahead quite strikingly to that of later composers in the new boldness of outline of some important melodic phrases; in particular one notes in several places a new kind of melodic expansion in which an important interval is enlarged when imitated to help create a sense of growth and climax.

The Blue Heron vocal ensemble has recorded three of Aston's Marian Antiphons on their first of five CDs devoted to the music of the Peterhouse Partbook. Stile Antico also included Gaude Virgo Mater Christi on their Music for Compline CD.

Known and Unknown Martyrs in 1539

Along Old Kent Road, there was a spot called St. Thomas's Waterings or St. Thomas-a-Watering, where pilgrims to Canterbury, including Chaucer's crossed a stream on their way. It was therefore a well-travelled spot and thus a good place for executions and the display of traitors' remains. As British History Online notes:

This spot was in the old Tudor days the place of execution for the northern parts of Surrey; and here the Vicar of Wandsworth, his chaplain, and two other persons of his household, were hung, drawn, and quartered in 1539 for denying the supremacy of Henry VIII. in matters of faith.

And in another place, BHO names the Vicar:

In our account of the Old Kent Road (fn. 4) we have mentioned the fate of Griffith Clerke, Vicar of Wandsworth, his chaplain, and two other persons. They were hanged and quartered at St. Thomas a Waterings on the 8th of July, 1539, for denying the royal supremacy.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia has these details about those martyred on July 8, 1539, highlighting the Venerable Waire, and:

English friar and martyr, hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Thomas Waterings in Camberwell (a brook at the second milestone on the Old Kent Road), 8 July, 1539. All authorities agree that there were four martyrs at this time and place, and all agree that one of them was the Vicar of Wandsworth, Surrey. It is certain that the name of the last was John Griffith, generally known as Ven. John Griffith Clarke, and that he was chaplain to Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, who was executed, 9 December, 1538, or 9 January, 1538-39, and that he was also Rector of Dolton, Devon. Stow is the only person to mention "Friar Waire". Sander speaks of "a monk whose name was Mayer"; but he wrote in Latin and his work was printed abroad. It is clear that Waire was a friar, for both Wriothesley and Lord Lisle's servant, John Husee, speak of two friars as having suffered with Griffith. Of the two unnamed martyrs we know that one was a priest and Griffith's curate or chaplain at Wandsworth. The other was either a friar, as Wriothesley and Husee say, or one of Griffith's servants, as is asserted by Stow and Sander. It is possible that Friar Waire is to be identified with Thomas Wyre, one of the signatories to the surrender of the Franciscan friary of Dorchester, 30 September, 1538. However, it is uncertain to what order he belonged. If he was a Franciscan it is remarkable that his death is not recorded in the "Grey Friars' Chronicle", and that no mention is made of him in such English Franciscan martyrologists as Bouchier or Angelus a S. Francisco.

Venerable Waire and Venerable John Griffith Clarke are among those declared Venerable at the beginning of the Cause for the English Martyrs during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII. Just enough is known about them for them to be so honored, but:

though they all died heroically, their lives were so retired and obscure that there is generally but little known about them. It may, however, be remarked that, being educated in most cases in the same seminaries, engaged in the same work, and suffering under the same procedures and laws the details which we know about some of the more notable martyrs (of whom special biographies are given) are generally also true for the more obscure.

In the article about the English Reformation Martyrs for the Catholic Encyclopedia, author J.H. Pollen made these comments about the two known martyrs of July 8, 1539:

1539: Friar Waire, O.S.F., and John Griffith p. (generally known as Griffith Clarke), Vicar of Wandsworth, for supporting the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, drawn and quartered, (8 July) at St. Thomas Waterings.

In 1536, Reginald Pole, in exile, wrote "Pro ecclesiasticæ Unitatis defensione" (Defense of the Unity of the Church) to protest against Henry VIII's usurpation of the title of Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England, making himself the Vicar of Christ. Soon after sending it to Henry, Pole was named a Cardinal by Pope Paul III and then Legate. He was involved in efforts to make the Pilgrimage of Grace more successful. His brothers and mother were arrested in connection with the Exeter Conspiracy; his brother Henry Pole, Baron Montagu was executed on January 9, 1539 and his mother remained under arrest until her beheading on May 28, 1541. If Venerables Waire and Griffith Clarke were accused of supporting Pole, the charges against them included not just denial of the Supremacy, but involvement in rebellion against the king. We don't know if they had been held in prison like the trio of Queen Katherine of Aragon's chaplains and counselors, Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell, refusing to accept Henry VIII's new title, or if they had, like the great abbots of the monasteries of Reading, Glastonbury, and Colchester, taken the oath and then regretted it, hoping for a return to the unity of the Church under the Vicar of Christ. Either way, they were brave men, even in obscurity. May the same be known of us someday, however dimly.

Queen Mary I and Reginald Pole, RIP

Hopes for the Catholic revival in England ended on November 17, 1558, when Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury both died. The National Catholic Register has posted my comments on how Catholics should respond to the history of her reign--particularly the burning of Protestants and heretics at the stake:

On November 17 in 1558, the first and only Catholic Queen Regnant of England died. She was Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon. She is better known as “Bloody Mary” because of the almost 300 men and women burned alive at the stake after being found guilty of heresy during her reign. These men and women included bishops and ministers of the Church of England, many Protestant laity, and some who denied basic Christian doctrines, such as the divinity of Jesus or of the Holy Spirit. Those men and women, particularly celebrated by John Foxe in his “Book of Martyrs”, have haunted Catholicism in England and in the modern world for centuries.

How should Catholics respond to these haunting echoes of the past? Very carefully and precisely.

Please read the rest there.

We must also remember that Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury died the same day. The Catholic Encyclopedia has this comment on his character:

Throughout his life Pole's moral conduct was above reproach, his sincere piety and ascetical habits were the admiration of all. "Seldom", writes Dr. James Gairdner, than whom no one is more competent to pronounce judgment, "has any life been animated by a more single-minded purpose". As compared with the majority of his contemporaries, Pole was conspicuously gentle, both in his opinions and in his language. He had the gift ofinspiring warm friendships and he was most generous and charitable in the administration of his revenues.

Dr. James Gairdner was a British historian specializing in the Tudor era.

Sir Geoffrey Pole, in the Tower

According to the Tudor Society Blog, on October 26 in 1538, "Geoffrey Pole, brother of Cardinal Reginald Pole and son of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was interrogated in his prison at the Tower of London regarding letters he and his family had received from his brother, and words which he had uttered showing his support for the Cardinal, who had denounced the King and his policies in his treatise, Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione".

The History of Parliament website has more detail about Pole's time in the Tower and the link between his cardinal brother's opposition to Henry VIII's division of the Church and his family's troubles:

It was the raising of his brother to the cardinalate which preluded Pole’s and his family’s downfall. He was the first to lapse into disfavour, perhaps because of his debts. On 1 Feb. 1537 he was warned that John Gostwick, treasurer of the first fruits and tenths, ‘looks for you for the King’s money’, and when Prince Edward was christened in the following October the King refused to receive him at court. In a letter to Chancellor Audley, written from Lordington probably on 5 Apr. 1538, he voiced his distress at the humiliating prospect of visiting London on legal business after Cromwell and others had warned him not to wait upon the King: he may have spared himself, for a week later he joined his fellow justices in examining suspected thieves at Chichester. As late as 9 July he was reappointed to commissions of the peace but at the end of August he was arrested in Sussex and lodged in the Tower: according to Chapuys, he was suspected of having corresponded privately with the cardinal.9

Pole remained in prison for nearly two months, while Cromwell was hearing an improbable story that the cardinal had secretly visited England to confer with his relatives. On 26 Oct. 1538 the first of seven interrogations was conducted by Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton. Although Southampton was less concerned with Pole’s views than with those of greater figures, two days later John Hussee reported to his master Viscount Lisle that Pole had hurt himself badly in an attempt at suicide, and it was perhaps soon after this, when he was rumoured to be in a frenzy, that Lord Montagu countered his wife’s fears with the reply that it did not matter what a madman said. His kinsmen had indeed but little confidence in him: the cardinal had urged him not to meddle and in the summer of 1538 Montagu had sent to his house to destroy incriminating letters. The government had shrewdly picked on the weakest of its suspects: Pole revealed enough for Montagu and the Marquess of Exeter to be arrested and for a string of confessions to be wrung from their friends and servants.10

By 12 Nov. Pole’s own interrogations were over and his mother’s about to begin. Having thrown himself on the King’s mercy, he was tried at Westminster on 4 Dec. with Sir Edward Neville, a mariner named Hugh Holland, and two priests, John Collins and George Croft. He was accused of having praised the cardinal to Montagu in 1536, of treasonably corresponding with the exile through the seaman Holland, and of declaring that he would make only a formal appearance in arms against the northern rebels. Clearly he would have fled abroad if Holland had agreed to take him, although he denied any intention of joining his brother. The messages he had sent to Reginald included a warning against the King’s plans for assassination and the bleak prediction: ‘The world in England waxeth all crooked, God’s law is turned upsodown, abbeys and churches overthrown ... and I think they will cast down parish churches and all at the last’. All the defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death. The sting of Pole’s confession had lain in the rash statements he attributed to Montagu and Exeter, condemned on the two previous days, and propagandists made play of Montagu’s conviction out of the mouth of his brother. Exeter, Montagu and Neville were beheaded on 9 Jan. 1539, when Chapuys wrote that their accuser had tried to suffocate himself and might escape with life imprisonment: he had in fact been pardoned a week earlier and by April he seems to have been back in Sussex, where his name was included on a muster certificate.11

Geoffrey Pole

died shortly before his brother in November 1558 and was buried in the church of Stoughton near Chichester, where his widow also asked to be laid in her will of 12 years later.14

Pole’s royal blood and religious dissidence continued to haunt his children. Two of his sons, Arthur and Edmund, embarked on a futile conspiracy in 1562 and disappeared as prisoners in the Tower, and the second son Thomas inherited Lordington only to die without issue, the manor passing to another brother Geoffrey, a recusant who alienated it before his death in exile.15

There is a modern translation of Reginald Cardinal Pole's open letter to Henry VIII available, with a .pdf here.

The Former Bishop of St. Asaph Dies in Rome

Thomas Goldwell, the former Bishop of St. Asaph's in Wales (mostly) died on April 3, 1585 in Rome. He was the last surviving bishop of the Catholic hierarchy of England and had endured many dangers and changes in fortune, because he was true to his Catholic faith from the reign of Henry VIII to the reign of Elizabeth I. He was in exile during the reign of Henry VIII with Reginald Pole and then returned to England during the reign of Mary I before departing again after Elizabeth I's supremacy was legislated. Goldwell traveled with Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons on their mission to England in 1580, intending to return in spite of his age to minister to the Catholic underground. He became ill, however, while still on the Continent and so returned to Rome.

He was a Theatine, having joined the order founded by Gaetano dei Conti di Tiene, Paolo Consiglieri, Bonifacio da Colle, and Giovanni Pietro Carafa, afterwards Pope Paul IV while in exile with Pole, so when he went into exile the last time, he served that order at San Silvestro al Quirinale (pictured). The Catholic Encyclopedia describes his career in Italy:

He then became an active Catholic exile. He started at once for Rome, but was detained at Louvain by sickness. He refused the offer of an Italian bishopric, preferring to devote himself to his order (the Theatines) and to the conversion of England. In 1561 he was made superior of his old convent at Naples, and also warden of the English Hospital at Rome. He was the only English bishop at the Council of Trent, where he was treated with marked respect. He was there engaged in the revision of the Breviary and the Missal; and also urged the council to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth. . . . In 1563 Goldwell was vicar-general to the Archbishop of Milan, St. Charles Borromeo. In 1567 he was made vicar of the cardinal archpriest in the Lateran, and in 1574 the Cardinal Vicar Savelli made him his vicegerent; he thus became, so to speak, the "working" bishop of Rome. . . . One of the last acts of his long and strenuous career was to serve on the Congregation for the Revision of the Roman Martyrology, in 1582. On the death of the Bishop of Lincoln, in 1584, Goldwell became the sole survivor of the ancient English hierarchy. He died the next year, and was buried at St. Sylvester's.

The Bishop of Lincoln who died in 1584 was Thomas Watson. He was 69 years old when he died in captivity at Wisbech Castle on October 15, after spending 25 years in captivity during Elizabeth I's reign, including time in the Tower of London.