Shakespeare's Catholic Language

When the issue of Shakespeare's Catholicism or crypto-Catholicism, or Church Papism comes up, I always think of the Catholic language and imagery of his plays; the good friars, the true nun, etc. This article from The Guild of Our Lady of Ransom reminds us of how Shakespeare reminded his audiences of their Catholic past:

Shakespeare lived during the worst religious division England has known. It has been remarked that one of the most curious aspects of his writing is the apparent absence of any plays on the main themes of the age – belief, religion, and the church. . .

Nevertheless, he was born when the Catholic religion was effectively in retreat and indeed under accelerating persecution, under forbidding injunctions intending that ‘there remain no memory of the same’.‍ . . .‍

The official hope was that Catholic belief and practice would abate with the dying out of priests, places of worship and the forms of prayer and devotion that legislation now banned. . . .

The author, Edmund Matyjaszek, then cites two examples of Shakespeare recalling very Catholic words, practices, and images, one from Richard II and the other from Henry V:

'I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave … (Act 3, scene 2)

and 

‘Do we all holy rites:
Let there be sung Non Nobis and Te Deum,
The dead with charity enclosed with clay:
And then to Callice, and to England then
Where ne’er from France arrived more happy men.’ (Act 4, scene 8)

He could have also cited Henry V's words about how he was trying to make up for his father's sins against Richard II, before the Battle of Agincourt:

Not today, O Lord,
O, not today, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.
I Richard’s body have interrèd new
And on it have bestowed more contrite tears
Than from it issued forcèd drops of blood.
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up
Toward heaven to pardon blood. And I have built
Two chantries where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do—
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon. (Act 4, scene 1)

Although those last three lines seem to call the effectiveness of all those efforts of prayers and Masses for Richard's soul and his father's pardon into doubt. Nevertheless, as in Hamlet, Shakespeare has recalled the practice of Prayer for the Dead in Purgatory to the minds of his audience.

As Matyjaszek concludes his article:

How did the works of this possible crypto-Catholic (certainly one steeped in its imagery), spread throughout the whole world carrying this rich, resonant and sacramental imagery? At the core of all this is the “echo chamber of remembrance “ that is, in effect, the English language itself.‍

This continued to appear and inform the language and the culture throughout the 270 years of Catholic suppression, emerging to inform Newman’s ‘Second Spring’ that inspired the foundation of our Guild. This language not only underpins our country and its culture, but is still evident – and potent – in the most unlikely places today.

May 22, 1377: Pope Gregory XI's Bulls to England

On May 22, 1377, Pope Gregory XI, an Avignon-era pope who would finally return to Rome later that year (November 7) at Saint Catherine of Siena's insistence, sent a series of Papal Bulls to England condemning the teachings of John Wycliffe, an ordained priest of the Catholic Church. As Christian History magazine summarized the pope's efforts in a 1983 issue:

ON MAY 22, 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued five bulls condemning the work of John Wycliffe. Three of the bulls were sent jointly to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who held the ecclesiastical power in England, and to the Bishop of London, William Courtenay, who was eager to carry out the Pope’s wishes. Needing political support, the Pope issued a similar bull to King Edward III, who died before he received it. Wishing to put pressure on Oxford, Gregory sent the final bull to the university’s chancellor.

Since Father John Wycliffe's doctrines are usually thought to be precursors of the sixteenth century Reformers' thoughts and a legacy of dissent from Papal authority before the English Reformation, it seems appropriate to remember this date. According to Fordham University's Medieval Sourcebook, these are Wycliffe's teachings that Pope Gregory XI condemned as not conforming to the teaching of the Catholic Church (there were 24 in total; these are the first 12):

1. That the material substance of bread and of wine remains, after the consecration, in the sacrament of the altar.
2. That the accidents do not remain without the subject, after the consecration, in the same sacrament.
3. That Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar identically, truly and really in his proper corporeal presence.
4. That if a bishop or priest lives in mortal sin he does not ordain, or consecrate, or baptize.
5. That if a man has been truly repentant, all external confession is superfluous to him or useless.
6. That it is not founded in the gospel that Christ instituted the mass.
7. That God ought to be obedient to the devil.
8. That if the pope is fore-ordained to destruction and a wicked man, and therefore a member of the devil, no power has been given to him over the faithful of Christ by any one, unless perhaps by the Emperor.
9. That since Urban VI, no one is to be acknowledged as pope; but all are to live, in the way of the Greeks, under their own laws.
10. To assert that it is against sacred scripture that men of the Church should have temporal possessions.
11. That no prelate ought to excommunicate any one unless he first knows that the man is excommunicated by God.
12. That a prelate thus excommunicating is thereby a heretic or excommunicate. . . .

Note that the first three condemned Wycliffe's erroneous teachings about the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

In the Papal Bull dispatched to the chancellor of the University of Oxford, Adam de Toneworth, Pope Gregory chastised him for his neglect and inaction:

Gregory, bishop, servus servorum dei, to his beloved sons the Chancellor and University of Oxford, in the diocese of Lincoln, grace and apostolic benediction.

We are compelled to wonder and grieve that you, who, in consideration of the favors and privileges conceded to your University of Oxford by the apostolic see, and on account of your familiarity with the Scriptures, in whose sea you navigate, by the gift of God, with auspicious oar, you, who ought to be, as it were, warriors and champions of the orthodox faith, without which there is no salvation of souls, ---that you through a certain sloth and neglect allow tares to spring up amidst the pure wheat in the fields of your glorious University aforesaid; and what is still more pernicious, even continue to grow to maturity. And you are quite careless, as has been lately reported to us, as to the extirpation of these tares; with no little clouding of a bright name, danger to your souls, contempt of the Roman Church, and injury to the faith above mentioned. And what pains us the more, is that this increase of the tares aforesaid is known in Rome before the remedy of extirpation has been applied in England where they sprang up. By the insinuation of many, if they are indeed worthy of belief, deploring it deeply, it has come to our ears that John de Wycliffe, rector of the church of Lutterworth, in the diocese of Lincoln, Professor of the Sacred Scriptures (would that he were not also Master of Errors), has fallen into such a detestable madness that he does not hesitate to dogmatize and publicly preach, or rather vomit forth from the recesses of his breast, certain propositions and conclusions which are erroneous and false. . . .

Please read the rest there.

Pope Gregory XI may have dispatched these five Papal Bulls on May 22 but, according to the British Library page on John Wycliffe, they took some time to arrive:

These decrees did not arrive in England until Christmas 1377, whereupon Wycliffe was arrested. He was subsequently released and then summoned to a meeting with Archbishop Sudbury and Bishop Courtney. In the spring of 1378 Wycliffe appeared before the authorities in Lambeth, but the investigation was interrupted by Sir Lewis Clifford who was sent by Joan of Kent, the mother of the king.

The king mentioned above was the young Richard II, son of Edward, the Black Prince, who had predeceased his father (Richard's grandfather) King Edward III. The young king was 10 years old ruled with a council of advisors not including his uncle, John of Gaunt, but also without a regent. Nonetheless, his mother, who protected some of Wycliffe's followers, the Lollards, had some influence and power at Court, and thus was able to protect Wycliffe in this case.

As the British Library concludes, however, the association between Wycliffe and the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 led to further trouble for Wycliffe, even though he died in relative obscurity in 1384:

Despite this royal protection, in May 1382 Wycliffe was condemned at the Blackfriars Council. In June of the previous year there had been a rebellion in England, known as the Peasants’ Revolt: a group of rebels had marched on London, where they burnt buildings (including the Savoy Palace, the palace of John of Gaunt) and murdered anyone they encountered who was thought to be associated with the government. It’s unclear what influence Wycliffe’s works had on the rebels, but his ideas became associated with them.

In Henry IV's reign (who had supplanted Richard II), heresy laws were passed against Wycliffe's teachings and his Lollard followers were targeted, as the UK Parliament's website details:

In 1401 Parliament took action against believers known by the abusive term of Lollards or mumblers. The Lollards included some MPs – who from the 1380s began to speak out against important aspects of the Church and its thinking.

Inspired by the writings of the Oxford academic John Wyclif, they objected to the meanings attached to certain rituals used in church worship. They also felt that more attention should be given to God’s own words as revealed in the Bible, than on interpretations made by the Church.

Before the fifteenth century the English Church had been largely free of this kind of heresy or deviation from its teachings. But in 1401 Parliament enacted a law called De Heretico Comburendo - On the burning of heretics - by which Lollard leaders were liable for imprisonment, trial and execution. It is thought that about 100 people were burned for heresy under this Act.

This act and two others of Richard II and Henry V were revived by the 1554 Parliament of Mary I, thus leading to renewed prosecution of heresy during her reign. These laws had been repealed by Henry VIII and Edward VI, but had been in force during Henry VIII's reign for some time (and his father's reign too) while Thomas More was Chancellor, investigating and prosecuting laws against heresy.

Image Credit (public domain): "Louis I, Duke of Anjou leading Pope Gregory XI to the palace at Avignon, while cardinals follow", from Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis (end 14th C) - BL Royal MS 20 C VII by Virgil Master and his atelier

Shakespeare's Henry V's Prayers for Richard II

In Shakespeare's historical play Henry V, the king leaves his headquarters to mingle with his soldiers on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. After some discussion of the relationship between the justice of the king's cause and his subject's responsibility for doing the right thing, Henry V reflects upon his father Henry IV's role in the death of the deposed Richard II.

Richard II died in Pontefract Castle--probably of starvation--on February 14, 1400 (the usually accepted date). He had surrendered to Henry IV at Flint Castle on August 19, 1399, on promises that his life would be spared. He was held in the Tower of London and abdicated on September 30 that year. Parliament formally deposed him on October 1 and Henry IV was crowned on October 13. Richard was moved to Pontefract Castle. After the discovery of the Epiphany Plot, in which several noblemen planned to kidnap Henry IV at Windsor on Epiphany (January 6, 1400), kill him, and restore Richard II to the throne. Richard was not allowed to remain alive, a target for conspiracy--Mary, Queen of Scots' situation during Elizabeth I's reign comes to mind--even though he might have known nothing of the plot, which also called the Revolt of the Three Earls.

In terms that defied the Church of England's rejection of the doctrine of Purgatory and the practice of prayer for the dead, Henry V describes how he has tried to demonstrate his repentance for the death of Richard at the hands of his father. He has founded chantries, those chapels set aside for praying the dead, which had be suppressed by Edward VI; he has paid poor men and women, as Henry VIII had done in his will, to pray. He prays and promises to do more:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard's body have interred anew;
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.

I've always wondered how post-Reformation audiences responded to these words? Henry offers these prayers not for his father's sins, but for Richard II's soul. Henry V's repentance for his father's sins recalls Catholic teaching and piety and would have reminded them that at one time--not so long ago--English kings and queens were Catholics, as the gloriously gorgeous Wilton Diptych attests.

The word chantry might have reminded some in the audience of the celebration of the Catholic Mass, which of course had been declared illegal. It might have reminded them of ordained Catholic priests, who were now traitors, hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. Recusant Catholics or Church Papists in the audience would have definitely known what Shakespeare was describing.

Happy St. Valentine's Day! Best wishes for a holy and spiritually beneficial Ash Wednesday and Lent! I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show Friday morning to continue my discussion with Anna Mitchell on Hilaire Belloc's Characters of the Reformation--preview to come tomorrow!

The Wilton Diptych and "Popular Medieval Piety"

The Catholic Herald (UK) features an introduction to the week ahead in the UK version of the Magnificat monthly prayer magazine. Leonie Caldecott introduces the Wilton Diptych in this week's column:

This week I have been looking at the Wilton Diptych with our summer school students. It is remarkable that such a powerful pre-Reformation image should have survived, with its connotations of England as Our Lady’s Dowry. But the mysterious painting is much more than a symbolic exercise. The portrayal of the mother of Christ is one of the most beautiful and tender I have ever seen: her face has a marvellous spiritual maternity about it.

Apart from her face, the eye is also drawn inexorably toward her left hand, painted disproportionately larger than the rest of her body. This hand, like a human monstrance, holds out the Christ child’s foot for us to venerate.

According to England's National Gallery of Art:

The 'Wilton Diptych' was painted as a portable altarpiece for the private devotion of King Richard II, who ruled England from 1377 to 1399. The diptych is thought to have been made in the last five years of Richard's reign, although its artist remains unknown. It is called The Wilton Diptych because it came from Wilton House in Wiltshire, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke.

A diptych is a painting, carving or piece of metalwork on two panels, usually hinged like a book. The panels of the Wilton Diptych are made of North European oak, but have been transformed by immaculate painting and gilding, into a heavenly vision. On the inside, Richard II is presented by three saints to the Virgin and Child and a company of eleven angels. Nearest to Richard is his patron saint John the Baptist. Behind are Saint Edward the Confessor and Saint Edmund, earlier English kings who came to be venerated as saints.

The outside bears Richard's arms and his personal emblem of a white hart chained with a crown around its neck.

In 1993 the National Gallery held a special exhibition on the Diptych, resulting in a book and noted in this article from The Independent:

The Wilton Diptych has been a mystery for centuries. The painting's blend of naturalism and otherworldliness is both subtle and slightly puzzling: its most famous figures, those faintly insouciant long-necked angels with the most famous angels' wings in art, are a strange and compelling hybrid of real people and real birds, supernatural beings formed from a blend of observation and imagination. But they are just one part of an intricate symbolic scheme that has never been satisfactorily deciphered.

What, exactly, is the nature of the encounter which the picture depicts? What is the relationship between the kneeling King Richard II, flanked by three saints in a wild and wooded landscape, and the Madonna and Child in a paradise garden crowded with angels? Some momentous event appears to be taking place: that much is clear from the busy gesticulation of four of the angels, who are pointing at the figure of Richard; and also from the strange, open-handed gesture of the king, who appears to be waiting for some sign (approval? benediction?) from the Virgin and Child. Something is happening, some kind of transaction that bridges the two abutting hinged panels, worldly and heavenly, of which the diptych is made - but just what that might be has escaped us, separated as we are from the picture by a distance of six centuries.

The National Gallery exhibition (and its superb catalogue) may, however, mark a watershed in the history of the painting's interpretation. Recent cleaning of the picture has revealed a tiny detail, no more than a couple of centimetres across and previously obscured by dirt. The stave of the red and white banner held by the angel on the extreme left of the right-hand panel is crowned by a minute orb, previously thought to be blank. Restoration has revealed a tiny picture within the circumference of this orb: the image of a green island with trees on its horizon and a turreted white castle at its centre, floating in a dark sea which - according to the National Gallery's team of restorers - was originally painted silver but is now permanently tarnished.

This image, discovered in the greatest surviving painting of Richard II, inevitably calls to mind lines in the greatest piece of literature about him: John of Gaunt's description of England, in Shakespeare's Richard II, as 'this little world, / This precious stone set in a silver sea'. This suggests that Shakespeare may well have known the Wilton Diptych, or at least an image of an island very like the one that has been found in the picture. It may also provide the key to unlock the meaning of the painting.

The article by Andrew Graham-Dixon goes on to discuss the connection between the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and sums up the different, pre-Reformation piety it depicts:

This image of royal piety contains within it an entire world of popular medieval piety that has long sunk from view in this country, submerged by the great tide of the English Protestant Reformation: a world where people believed, fervently, in the power of prayer to incite divine intercession in the affairs of men; a world where not only kings but common people would plead with images of saints or of the Virgin to deliver them from their troubles.

Of course, what the author does not realize is that such a world still does exist: I was part of it this past weekend on Saturday, when a large group of Catholics processed behind the Holy Eucharist around the Century II Exhibition complex on a hot, steamy summer evening and knelt on concrete and grass to adore and worship Jesus Christ present on the Altar, singing hymns and walking on rose petals. It may be a small world, but we still believe, "fervently, in the power of prayer to incite divine intercession in the affairs of men . . ." We demonstrated that belief on the sidewalks of Wichita, Kansas at the Midwest Catholic Family Conference, chanting ancient hymns and modern psalms, with banners and incense, sweat and tears.