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An English Friar Minim in France1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
The Order of Friars Minim was founded by St Francis of Paula, whose birth took place in Calabria in 1416. The new friars received Papal approval in 1474. By the date of their founder’s death in 1507 they were organised in five provinces extending over Italy, France, Spain and Germany and were already setting out for the mission fields of the New World. But despite an extraordinarily rapid growth in the early sixteenth century, not a single one among more than 350 houses of the Order was to be found in England or Wales by the time that King Henry VIII began the spoliation of the monasteries. It was therefore only after Catholic men and women were forced to go abroad if they wished to give their lives to God in the cloister, that (as far as we know) the order received its first English subjects.
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Footnotes
1
Read as a paper to the thirteenth Conference on Post-Reformation Catholic History at Oxford, 1970.
References
2 ‘For the use of Friar John Francis, English Minim of the Province of Lyons’. The binder has cropped away the end of the fifth word.
3 Born in 1596, he entered the Order of Friars Minim in 1616 at Nigeon and died at Autun in 1664. He was the author of various other works, including several biographies. See Biographie Universelle (1855), tome 11, p. 205. Whitmore, P. J. S., The Order of Minims in Seventeenth-Century France (The Hague, 1967) p. 290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 The English College, founded by William Allen at Doway in 1568, was expelled from that town in March 1578 in consequence of the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands. It moved to Rhemes and did not return to Doway until 1593. Rhemes was certainly a city where the family of Guise had great influence, and this move of the English College thither was made a cause of bitter complaint against Mary, Queen of Scots, whose mother had been a Guise (Douay Diaries, ed. Knox (1878) p. 150). But the Queen of Scots herself had no hand in the move, still less in the foundation of the English College, though she did help to support both the seminary founded at Pont-a-Mousson in 1576 (which later became the Scots College at Doway) and the Scots College at Paris.
5 Guillaume le Ber was the friar principally concerned with the establishment in 1575 of his Order's house at Verdun, to which Jean François was first sent when he left Rhemes (see below). Le Ber became the first ‘Corrector’ (as the Superior is termed among the Minims) of Verdun in 1578, and it was during his term as Provincial of Lyons, 1584-87, that he accepted Jean François as a postulant. After being twice Provincial of France, from 1590-93 and again from 1596-99, Le Ber died at Nigeon on 24 April 1619. F. de La Noue, Chronicon (for which see note 9 below) pp. 287, 501, 613, 627.
6 Cannart died in the Convent at the Bois de Vincennes, where he had taught Jean Francois, early in the year 1589 after less than six years in the Order, leaving a very high reputation for holiness as well as learning. La Noue, op. cit., pp. 332-33.
7 ‘ Dinet's appointment as bishop was on 2 August 1599 (Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica (Munster, 1935) IV, p. 235), as he was finishing his term as Provincial of Lyons, 1596-99 (La Noue, op. cit., p. 627) Doni d’ Attichi is wrong in saying that Jean François represented the Lyons Province at the General Chapter held at Genoa in 1586, since Jean François was not professed until 6 January 1586, on his own testimony (see below). The occasion must be the next General Chapter to be held at Genoa, which was in 1596.
8 Etienne Auger was elected 33rd General of the Order by the Chapter held at Genoa in 1605, and died in office in 1608.
9 François de La Noue (Lanovius), Chronicon generale ordinis Minimorum, Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1635.
10 La Noue, op. cit., p. 631. Other references in the pages of La Noue refer to the success of Friar Jean François in propagating the Third Order of Minims (a body of pious associates to which St François de Sales, among other notable contemporaries, belonged) at Arbois in 1597 (p. 505) and again in 1607 at Ornans, another town in Burgundy (p. 414).
11 There is some mistake here. If the text means to indicate that the Vice-Legate and the archbishop were the same person, then he cannot have been Cardinal de Joyeuse, for he never held either post. There is no date given for this incident, but probably Dony d’ Attichi has confused Cardinal de Joyeuse, who was archbishop of Toulouse from 1588 till 1604-05, with Francesco Maria Tarugi, an Oratorian, who was archbishop of Avignon from 1593, created a Cardinal in 1596, and translated to the see of Siena in 1597. Another possible identification would be with his successor Giovanni Francesco Bordini, another Oratorian, who was both archbishop from 1598 till 1609 and also, between 1596 and 1599, Vice-Legate. The latter was the actual governor of this Papal city on behalf of the Legate, who was generally a cardinal resident in Rome. A list of the Vice-Legates is given by Denys de Sainte Marthe, GalliaChristiana (1715), tome 1, column 846.
12 Gilbert Génébrard (1537-97) was a Benedictine of the abbey of Maussac in the diocese of Clermont. He studied at Paris, where he was made Professor of Hebrew and Scripture. Appointed bishop of Aix-en-Provence in 1591, he was deprived of his see in 1596 by the Aix Parlement as an ardent opponent of Henri IV. Many of his published writings were the fruit of his Oriental studies. Like Jean François, St François de Sales was delighted to proclaim himself a disciple of Génébrard.
13 Epitre de Théophile Cassegrain, ministre du Sainet Evangile, addressée à M. d'Évreux, avec trois thèses en théologie (10 November 1597), no place or date. There is a copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
14 Du Perron answered him by reprinting Cassegrain's letter and adding a reply: VÉpitre d'un ministre de la religion prétendu réformée désirant se faire catholique, addressée à Mgr VEvesque d'Evreux, avec la responce à icelle. Paris, D. Binet, 1598. The copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris lacks Du Perron's reply.
15 There is a life of Humblot in Dony d'Attichi's Histoire, pp. 454-86. See also Roberti, G. M., Disegoro storico dell'Ordine de’ Minimi (Rome, 1902-20), vol. 2, pp. 323–28.Google Scholar Whitmore (op. cit., p. 293) prints a list of eight of his published writings. Several of these are controversial works against the Calvinists, but they do not include his account of the debate with Cassegrain, which took place about 1598-99 while Dinet was Provincial of Lyons (see note 7 above). In 1599, Humblot was made Provincial of Provence, where he was succeeded in the same office by Jean François in 1602.
16 The minister evidently did not consider himself silenced, for he published an answer which gives us the title of Humblot's tract: Advertissement sur le libelle fameux publie par F. Humblot, sous le nom de ‘La Dispute solennelle agitée en la maison de ville de Mascon, entre ledict Humblot, Minime, et Théophile Cassegrain, Ministre’. Genève, E. Gamonet, 1600. There is a copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
17 La Noue (op. cit., pp. 575-76) records the death of this Scottish friar on 7 June 1632 after many years in the Lyons Province, and states that prior to his reception into the Order he had taught theology at Lyons College ‘during the absence of the Jesuits’. He also mentions that Baird published at Lyons in 1625 a work in French entitled L'Entretien de Pâme devotesur les excellences, grandeurs & perfections de Dieu. Whitmore (op. cit., pp. 27-28) says that with another Minim, his fellow-Scot Ian Brown (Jean Bruno), he taught Oriental languages and that he also was a friend of Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), the greatest savant produced by the Order.
18 The book of this Franciscan mystic, who was born about 1248 and died in 1309, was taken down by Brother Arnold, her confessor, and turned into Latin as Libellus spiritualis doctrinaeac multiplicium visionum et consolationum divinarum. The preface to the English translation of 1871 mistakenly states that the work was first printed at Paris in 1598, an error repeated by a writer in the Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913), vol. 1, p. 482.Google Scholar But an edition printed at Venice by the de Sabio brothers in 1521 is mentioned by Paul Concoeur, Le Livre de la bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno (Paris and Toulouse, 1925), p. xi, and there is in the British Museum Library an edition of the Latin original printed at Venice about 1525 and also an Italian translation published at Genoa in 1536. It is quite likely, however, that the Paris edition printed by Guillaume Chaudierè in 1598 may have made the work known to Friar Jean François.
19 This indicates that he was living in the Chalon Convent during the period before his appointment as Provincial, which occurred in 1605. Whitmore (op. cit., p. 341) preserves a record from the archives of Chalon of the payment of 10 ecus to ‘R. P. Jean-François’, a Minim who preached a Lenten course of sermons there in 1601, Doubtless this was our Englishman.
20 The house at Nigeon was given to the Minims in August 1493 during the lifetime of their Founder, and through his own efforts (La Noue, op. cit., pp. 40-41). Formerly a separate village or hamlet outside the walls of Paris, as it still was when Jean François wrote his letter thence, Nigeon-les-Paris was situated just beyond Chaillot. The Convent of ‘Les Bons Hommes’, as the Minims were popularly known in France (Jean François mentions this nickname in this letter to his parents), is shown in several of the early maps of Paris, for example in that of François Quesnel dated 1609. It lay on the right bank of the Seine just downstream of the bend which the river makes at Chaillot, on a site till recently known as the Quai de Passy, stretching between the Pont de Passy and the Pont de Grenelle, at present (1970) renamed the ‘Avenue du Président Kennedy’. Later, a third house of Minims was founded, this time within the city of Paris itself (La Noue, op. cit., pp. 430-41). The second foundation had been that in the Bois de Vincennes, where Jean François made his studies.
21 Crowley himself on other occasions was equally careful to put the whole of his opponent's case before his readers, as, for example, in his several controversies with Shaxton (see note 25), Hogarde (see note 26), Watson (see note 27), Pounde (see note 28), and Rishton (see note 29). In several instances, the text of his opponent is preserved only by Crowley's quotation of it.
22 Replication, folio 9 recto (as the book is foliated, not paged, references are given to the recto or verso of a folio). The italics in this passage are mine. Crowley's use of the word ‘Table’ here preserves its basic meaning of a board or tablet. Notice-boards were written and hung up in mediaeval churches to tell pilgrims and visitors the history of the place and to list the relics and other treasures that could be venerated there. The Bodleian Library now possesses the sole example of such a Table that has survived the Reformation in this country, except for some fragments at York. This is the ‘Magna Tabula Glastoniensis’, an explanatory table of six large parchment sheets written at Glastonbury Abbey in the fourteenth century and mounted on wooden boards which are hinged together like the covers and leaves of a book. For an illustration of this Table see J. Armitage Robinson, Two Glastonbury Legends (Cambridge, 1926), p. 41.
23 The Opening of the wordes of the Prophet Ioell … Compiled by Robert Crowley in the yeare of our Lord. M.D. XLVI. London, 1567.Google Scholar This is no. 6089 in Pollard and Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue of... Books printed in England... 1475-1640 (London, 1926), hereafter abbreviated as STC.
24 Not in STC, but the title is quoted in Anthony, Wood's Athenae Oxonienses ed. Bliss (London, 1813-20), Vol. 1,Google Scholar column 544. No copy is now known except a fragment in the Library of Merton College, Oxford.
25 Nicholas Shaxton (14857-1556) was a Cambridge graduate and a fellow-member with Cranmer of the group of secret Protestantizers who met at the ‘White Horse’ there. In 1535, under the patronage of Anne Boleyn and Cromwell, Shaxton was made bishop of Salisbury, but he resigned in 1539 over the Six Articles. In 1546, he was tried, along with Anne Askew and others, for heresy, but recanted and publicly subscribed a set of thirteen articles. Thereafter he appears consistently to have maintained Catholic beliefs. He died in Mary's reign while acting as a suffragan bishop to Thirlby of Ely. Crowley's book entitled The Confutation of. xiii. Articles, whereunto Nicholas Shaxton... subscribed (STC 6083), was printed at London without date. He states that Shaxton's Articles were put into print in 1546, but no copy of them is now known. Crowley, however, has preserved their text by printing them along with his confutation of them.
26 On Miles Hogarde (15057-1557?) see L. I. Guiney, Recusant Poets (London, 1938), pp. 129-31. Crowley, in his The Confutation of the mishapen Aunswer, 1548 (STC 6082) reprints, a portion at a time, the whole of an original anti-catholic ballad entitled The Abuse of the blessed sacrament of the aultare which attacks the doctrine of the Real Presence, Each section of the ballad is followed by the appropriate section of Miles Hogarde's Aunswer to the wicked Ballade, his answer being also in verse. Finally comes a portion of Crowley's own prose Confutation of Hogarde. Neither the original ballad nor Hogarde's verse answer to it appears to have survived, at least in print, except as flies preserved in Crowley's amber.
27 Thomas Watson (1513-1584), the future bishop of Lincoln, who outlived all the other Marian bishops except Thomas Goldwell, and died in prison at Wisbech, was a prominent preacher from the start of Mary's reign. His Two notable Sermons (STC 25115), on the subjects of the Real Presence and of the Mass, were preached before the Queen in Lent 1553 (1554 new style) and published by the royal printer John Cawood a few weeks later, on 10 May. It was the doctrine set out in these two sermons that Crowley went about to confute fifteen years later in his A setting open of the subtyle sophistrie of Thomas Watson … in hys two Sermons before Quneee Mary, London, 1569 (STC 6093), in which he reprinted Watson's sermons entire.
28 For the life of Thomas Pound (1539-1615) see Foley, H. Records of the English Provinceof the Society of Jesus, Vol. 3 (1878), pp. 567–657.Google Scholar Crowley's An Aunswer to sixe Reasons,that Thomas Pounde, Gentleman and Prisoner … required to be aunswered was publishedin 1581 (STC 6075). The Six Reasons were drawn up as a result of a personal encounterbetween Thomas Pound in prison and Crowley who, with another minister, Henry Tripp,was visiting Catholic prisoners in the hope of persuading them to Protestancy. Crowleyprefixed the text of the whole of Pound's Six Reasons before his own reply.
29 Appended to the secretly-printed English translation of Albin de Valsergue, entitled A Notable Discourse … discussing, who are the right ministers of the Catholike Church (STC274; Allison and Rogers, A Catalogue of Catholic Books (1956) no. 3), which came out fromWilliam Carter's press in 1575, was an anonymous Offer made by a Catholike to a learnedProtestant, which was from the pen of the English secular priest Edward Rishton (1550-1586).Crowley, saying that he would leave the answering of the Frenchman to Beza or anotherof his compatriots, published-in 1588 A Délibérât answere to a rash offer (STC 6084). Inthis he quotes whole and verbatim the text he is concerned to refute.
30 The Psalter of David newely translated into Englysh metre (by Robert Crowley) in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the mynde, be reade and songe of al men, [London], Imprinted by Robert Crowley, 1549 (STC 2725).
31 William Salusbury (c. 1520-1600) became a convert to Protestancy while at Oxford, underthe influence of John Jewel. Robert Crowley published three works of Salusbury's in 1550(STC 21612-4), two of them in or about the Welsh language, and in 1551 he issued for Salusburythe latter's Welsh translation of the liturgical Epistles and Gospels for the whole year (STC2983=21617).
32 The Vision of Pierce Plowman, now fyrste impryntedby Robert Crowley, 1550 (STC 19906).
33 His first appointment after his return from exile in 1559 was to the Archdeaconry ofHereford, where he held a prebendal stall. In 1563, he is found as Rector of the London CityChurch of St Peter-le-Poer, and from 1 September of that year he held the Prebend of Morain St Paul's Cathedral, but he had been deprived of this by 24 September 1565, when hissuccessor was appointed (Le Neve, J., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857, revised by Horn, Joyce M., Vol. I (London, 1969), p. 43).Google Scholar That was only two days before he was appointedVicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, but his opposition to Archbishop Parker over the VestiarianControversy led to his imprisonment in 1566, and he seems then to have forfeited all hispreferments, including his archdeaconry. In 1576, however, he was appointed Vicar of StLawrence Jewry, and resigned two years later to become for the second time Vicar of StGiles, Cripplegate, which post he held for ten years up to his death. (Hennessy, G., Novumrepertorium ecctesiasticum parochiale Londinense, London, 1898, pp. 38, 172 bis, 267, 376).Google Scholar
34 Replication, first page of the ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’.
35 Ibid.
36 Replication, folio 30 recto. As a convert who had long severed his ties with home and family Jean François probably did not speak much of his own origins. Hence we may guess that itwas his French biographer who presupposed the ‘well-born and virtuous Catholic parents'who would account for his hero's later development. But truth is notoriously stranger thanfiction.
37 Replication, folio 5 recto. The phrase probably means ‘the scrivener, who was MasterKing's servant’, but could possibly mean ‘the servant of the scrivener Master King’.
38 It is not clear which Waltham parish Crowley is describing. In addition to Waltham Holy Cross, which includes the town of Waltham Abbey, there are parishes at Great Waltham,Little Waltham and Walthamstow. Since, as Crowley's title page to the Replication states,Samuel was in his eighteenth year when he ran away from home on 8 April 1583, his birthand baptism must have occurred not earlier than 8 April 1565 nor later than 7 April 1566.
39 Crowley was twice vicar of St Giles, see note 32 above. Samuel's birth and baptism wouldhave fallen in Crowley's first period as vicar, and the time when he lived with Crowley, ashis pupil, in the second.
40 Replication, folio 4 verso. Crowley adds that Smith ‘is nowe gone to God’. He has notbeen identified.
41 Ibid., folio 3 recto. Among the friends mentioned by Crowley in this passage is ‘MasterPaule Swallow’, not otherwise identified. In a list of Protestant ministers given by Jean François himself (folio 26) occurs the name Trippe. This is Henry Tripp (died 1612), Rector of St Stephen's, Walbroke, who accompanied Crowley on his preaching mission to Catholics in prison, and whose own answer to Pound's Six Reasons was printed as part of Crowley's Aunswer in 1581. See note 27 above.
42 It is not surprising that Samuel Debenham's name is not to be found in Charles J. Robinson's A Register of the Scholars admitted into Merchant Taylors’ School, Vol. I, 1562-1699 (Lewes, 1882). The earliest part of this register had to be compiled from various sources, since no systematic school lists survive before the beginning of the seventeenth century. The author in his preface writes ‘it must not be supposed that during this period anything like a complete list of the boys educated at the School can be made.’
43 J. and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), Pt. 1, Vol. 2, p. 27.Google Scholar
44 Replication, folio 6 verso.
45 Ibid. The interlude was therefore probably written about March 1582, just before Samuel left Crowley's house to start keeping terms at Cambridge.
46 The eve of St James was 24 July, and this fell on a Sunday in 1583, according to new style reckoning.
47 Replication, folio 7 verso.
48 The first and second Diaries of the English College, Douay, ed. Knox, T. F. (London, 1878), p. 199.Google Scholar
49 Louis de Guise (1556-1588) succeeded his uncle Charles de Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, as Archbishop of Rhemes in 1574. Louis was created a cardinal by Gregory XII in 1578, and on 24 December 1588 was assassinated in the château of Blois shortly after his brother Henri, the Duke.
50 There is a ten page account of Thomas Felton, and of his father, also a martyr, in Doni d'Attichi's Histoire, torn. 2 pp. 30-39, but it does not appear that the writer had access to any sources not known to English martyrologists.
51 Douay Diaries, p. 200.
52 Replication, folio 8 verso and folio 9 verso—folio 10 recto.
53 Op. cit., folio 49 verso.
54 Op. cit., folio 6 verso.