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‘The Condition and State of a Scholar’: Disputation in William Alabaster's Conversion Narrative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Abstract
This article examines the role of disputation in the conversion narrative of the clergyman and poet William Alabaster, written after he converted to Catholicism in the 1590s. Disputation, a mode of debate that had developed in the universities, is a preoccupation of the narrative, and is here used to place the work within the immediate history of religious disputation, and in the wider struggle over scholarship that accompanied post-Reformation religious controversy. The article asks why formal disputation was so important to religious writers and polemicists, drawing on Alabaster's perception of reason and its relationship to faith. It is asserted that the convert's eagerness for scholarly disputation arose from a fusion of religious with intellectual assurance: certainty in faith, and in the academic process. A comparison with examples taken from a long catalogue of works describing public, cross-confessional disputation is then used to enhance our understanding of Alabaster's influences; the building-blocks of his newfound religious identity. Taking Alabaster as its model, the article directs attention not only to the hitherto undervalued phenomenon of public or ‘professional’ religious disputation in post-Reformation England, but also to the role played by reason and scholarship in the thought and faith of Catholic—and Protestant—divines.
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Notes
An early version of this article was presented at the ‘Religious Lives: Catholic Culture in the Early Modern World’ conference at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in May 2012 (supported by the Society for Renaissance Studies), and I must thank the organisers (Dr Clare Copeland and Victoria Van Hyning) and delegates for their interest and comments. The article represents a development of sections of my doctoral thesis, entitled ‘“Dayes of Gall and Wormwood”: Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626’, completed at the University of Nottingham under the supervision of Dr Julia Merritt and with the support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
1 Alabaster, p. 120.
2 On the dating of the poems, see Alabaster, pp. 122–3; Sonnets, p. xiv; Shell, Alison, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 88;Google Scholar Caro (I), pp. 63, 67. Robert Caro notes the dialogic nature of Alabaster's devotional poems, which often interact with the poet's thoughts or will, or with God: Caro (II), esp. pp. 155, 169.
3 This verse, translated from the Latin, is presented by Featley, Daniel in ‘The Life and Death of John Reinolds’, in Fuller, Thomas, Abel Redevivus, or the Dead Yet Speaking (London, 1652), pp. 479–80.Google Scholar See Sutton, Dana F., Unpublished Works by William Alabaster (1568–1640) (Salzburg, 1997), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar Manuscript versions survive in the Bodleian (Rawlinson D.399, f. 199) and Cambridge University Library (Additional MS 8460).
4 Alabaster, p. 117; Green, Lawrence D., John Rainolds's Oxford Lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric (Newark NJ, 1986), pp. 26–7, 32.Google Scholar Green posits a debate between John and another Catholic brother, Edmund, in 1584 as a basis for the story: neither man was converted, but the event was an academic disputation, performed in Oxford.
5 Alabaster, pp. 114–15, 118.
6 In addition to the works cited below, see Ley, John, A Discourse of Disputations Chiefly Concerning Matters of Religion (London, 1658), pp. 31–3.Google Scholar
7 See N. D., A Review of Ten Publike Disputations (St Omer, 1604), passim; Ley, A Discourse of Disputations, pp. 33–45; McCoog, pp. 119–121.
8 For an overview of the sources for academic disputation in this period, see Shuger, Debora, ‘St Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 72 (2009), p. 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Previous studies of Alabaster include introductory sections in Sonnets, and a discussion of his conversion to Catholicism in Marotti, pp. 98–109. More recently, Molly Murray has directly examined Alabaster's narrative and its formal and stylistic precursors: Murray, passim. Alabaster's poetry is examined in Caro (I/II). He is also a subject of the AHRC-funded project ‘Conversion Narratives in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1700’, currently being undertaken at the University of York.
10 For example, see Questier, Michael C., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England,1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 28, 33–5, 159,Google Scholar on cross-confessional disputations held in lay households in the early seventeenth century; Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), p. 336 Google Scholar on encounters with separatists in the 1590s; Knox, S. J., Walter Travers: Paragon of Elizabethan Puritanism (London, 1962), p. 64 Google Scholar on the 1584 Lambeth disputation.
11 Costello, William T., The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge Mass., 1958), pp. 14–31;Google Scholar Curtis, Mark H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642 (Oxford, 1959), esp. pp. 88–9;Google Scholar Mack, Peter, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 58–60;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Greenslade, S. L., ‘The Faculty of Theology’, in McConica, James (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 296–7.Google Scholar
12 On the ‘mechanics’ of controversy, see Milton, Anthony, Catholic and Reformed: The Romanand Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 4.Google Scholar
13 Hughes, Ann, ‘Public Disputations, Pamphlets and Polemic’, History Today, 41 (1991), p. 33;Google Scholar Hughes, Ann, ‘The Pulpit Guarded: Confrontations between Orthodox and Radicals in Revolutionary England’, in Laurence, Anne, Owens, W. R. and Sim, Stuart (eds), John Bunyanand His England, 1628–88 (London, 1990), pp. 31–50.Google Scholar Recently, Keith Stanglin has described the educational backdrop to such events in recovering Arminius’ disputations in the Netherlands, and Nabil Matar and Anna Sapir Abulafia have studied early modern Anglo-Muslim and medieval Christian-Jewish disputations respectively: Stanglin, Keith D., The Missing Public Disputations of Jacobus Arminius (London, 2010), esp. pp. 9–12, 20–5;Google Scholar Matar, Nabil, ‘The Anglo-Muslim Disputation in the Early Modern Period’, in Birchwood, Matthew and Dimmock, Matthew (eds), Cultural Encounters Between East and West, 1453–1699 (Newcastle, 2005), pp. 29–42;Google Scholar
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14 McCoog, pp. 119–139; Shuger, Debora, ‘St Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 72 (2009), pp. 313–36.Google Scholar
15 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Spider and the Bee: the Perils of Printing for Refutation in Tudor England’, in King, John N. (ed.), Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 2009), p. 165;Google Scholar Zlatar, Antoinina Bevan, Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2011), at p. 19.Google Scholar
16 Alabaster, pp. 113–19, at 118; Caro (I), pp. 64–7; Murray, p. 196.
17 Arthur Marotti and Molly Murray both note the influence of Augustine on Alabaster's work, the latter citing a shared desire for disputation: Alabaster's conversion, like that of Augustine, inspires him to convince others. Marotti, p. 100; Murray, pp. 200–205, at 205. Given this, it is interesting that Alabaster credits his own conversion to his reading of Rainolds’ work, rather than his discussions with Wright. Caro offers a clue, in examining the influence that Wright— author of The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1601)—exercised over Alabaster's poetry; specifically his view of meditation as a ‘means of self-persuasion’. In the narrative, written from a position of certainty, meditation gives way to anti-Protestant disputation, and so Wright gives way to Rainolds. Caro (I), at p. 76 (for Caro's own explanation, see pp. 65–7).
18 Sonnets, p. xv.
19 Alabaster, p. 132 (emphasis added).
20 Alabaster, pp. 133–4.
21 Alabaster, p. 134.
22 Alabaster, pp. 134–8 (at 138), 149.
23 Alabaster, pp. 142–5. Here, Alabaster offers an early critique of avant-garde conformity, as a sign of the novelty, unbelief and intellectual inconsistency of English Protestantism: Andrewes was ‘in common Protestants account, a man of principal learning above all others, for that he can make more [use] thereof by holding some mingled Catholic positions in divine things… and partly for patching up opinions of a certain mixture of all sides of religions’. It was an opinion Alabaster himself admits having held before his conversion, though it was ‘the most vain and perilous of all the rest… a kind of Atheism suggested by flesh and blood’: Alabaster, p. 112.
24 Alabaster, p. 144.
25 Marotti, p. 106. William Rainolds was certainly aware of the Tower debates: Refutation, p. 11.
26 Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context’, The Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000), pp. 600–608;CrossRefGoogle Scholar McCoog, pp. 128–31.
27 Campion, Edmund, Ten Reasons, ed. Pollen, J. H. (London 1914), pp. 89–91, 145.Google Scholar
28 See Holleran, James V., A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion's Debates at the Tower of London (New York, 1999), p. 18; McCoog, p. 123.Google Scholar
29 The Protestant accounts of the Campion disputations are Nowell, Alexander and Day, William, A True Report of the Disputation or Rather Private Conference (London, 1583)Google Scholar and Field, passim. Catholic reports include an account of the first debate in the Tresham papers, printed in HMC, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. 3 (London, 1904), pp. 8–16 and items held in the British Library (Harleian MS 422, ff. 136r-172v, Additional MS 11055, ff. 188r-192v, Additional MS 39828, f. 38) and the Bodleian (Rawlinson D.353, ff. 1–35). Summaries were produced by Catholics on the continent, including Paolo Bombino and Daniello Bartoli. For an overview, accompanying edited transcriptions of the Catholic reports, see Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge, esp. pp. 220–9. On the origins of Campion's challenge, and the authorities’ eventual acceptance, see Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England’, esp. pp. 611, 620.Google Scholar
30 Paolo Bombino's account of the first Campion debate, in Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge, p. 184.
31 Field, sig. Hr.
32 Field, sig. O.iir.
33 Field, sig. Aa.iir.
34 Field, sigs H.ir H.iiiv, L.ir, L.iir, L.iiiir, M.iir, P.ir, P.iiiir, Q.iiiir, R.iv, R.iiiir, U.iir, Bb.iiiir, Dd.ir, Dd.iiir, Ee.ir, Ee.iv.
35 It is worth emphasising that these are representations of the Jesuit, disputed by Catholic reports, and that even by the Protestant accounts he called for disputations in a more equitable setting, in the universities: Field, sig. Hr. He is also reported to have brought the techniques of syllogistic reasoning to his trial for treason: Howell, T. B. (ed.), A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and other Crimes and Misdemeanors: from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783, vol. 1 (London, 1816), col. 1061.Google Scholar
36 Field, sig. X.iir.
37 Rainolds, John, The Summe of the Conference betwene John Rainolds and John Hart (London, 1584), pp. 20–1.Google Scholar
38 Lake, Peter, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Cust, Richard and Hughes, Ann (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642 (London, 1989), p. 76.Google Scholar These efforts were also part of a larger movement. In 1582, the Privy Council sent a directive to Archbishop Whitgift, recommending proceedings and individuals to be used in conference and disputation with Catholics: Strype, John, The Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, John Whitgift (London, 1718), pp. 98–9;Google Scholar Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS 538, vol. 47, ff. 18–19.
39 Persons, Robert, A Defence of the Censure (Rouen, 1582), pp. 9–11;Google Scholar Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, ‘Puritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England’, p. 607.Google Scholar
40 Murray, p. 196.
41 Sonnets, p. xvii; Caro (I), p. 78n; Murray, p. 197.
42 N. D., A Review of Ten Publike Disputations (St Omer, 1604), passim.
43 Murray, p. 197.
44 Alabaster, p. 111.
45 Alabaster, p. 124.
46 Refutation, pp. 6–7; Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1986), esp. p. 41;Google Scholar More, Thomas, The Complete Works of Thomas More, vol. 6, part 1, ed. Lawler, Thomas M. C. et al (New Haven, 1981), pp. 345–6;Google Scholar McCutcheon, R. R., ‘Heresy and Dialogue: The Humanist Approaches of Erasmus and More’, Viator, 24 (1993), p. 358.Google Scholar
47 Fulke, William, A True Report of a Conference (London, 1580),Google Scholar sig. A7r.
48 Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640, esp. pp. 41, 63.Google Scholar
49 Alabaster, p. 126
50 Alabaster, pp. 103, 112–13, 126.
51 Alabaster, p. 126. See Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640, p. 227, 235–6;Google Scholar Schreiner, Susan, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford, 2010), pp. 24–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
52 Alabaster, p. 126.
53 Refutation, pp. 7–9, at p. 8. Murray suggests that Rainolds’ primary influence on Alabaster was stylistic and formal, noting that Alabaster's narrative lacks a detailed description of the preface's actual content. This mirrored phrasing, however, indicates that the content, learning and certainty of Rainolds’ early arguments had a significant impact. Murray, pp. 198–9.
54 Romish Fisher, pp. 8–9, 18, 24, sigs T4v–Vv. Further, see A. C., An Answer to a Pamphlet (St Omer, 1623), pp. 49, 61, 63.
55 Featley, Daniel, Transubstantiation Exploded (London, 1638), pp. 26, 210.Google Scholar
56 White, Francis, A Replie to Jesuit Fishers Answere to Certain Questions (London, 1624),Google Scholar sig. b5r.
57 Alabaster, p. 109. Caro describes Alabaster as having a ‘humanistic’ background, but his narrative is very explicit on the form of reason and argument to be applied in divinity: Caro (I), p. 66.
58 In addition to Morgan and Schreiner, see , Willem J., ‘Scholasticism Revisited: Methodological Reflections on the Study of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought’, in Chapman et al., pp. 156, 162–3;Google Scholar McConica, James, ‘Elizabethan Oxford: The Collegiate Society’, in McConica, James (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1986), p. 708;Google Scholar Armstrong, B. G., Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison, 1969), pp. 127–8.Google Scholar
59 Alabaster, p. 128.
60 See Murray, pp. 190, 194.
61 See Lake, Peter, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, p. 74.Google Scholar
62 Marotti pp. 99–101, 108.
63 Marotti, p. 107.
64 A crucial work is Chapman, et al., passim. In addition, see Shuger, Debora, ‘St Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 72 (2009), pp. 334–5;Google Scholar Schreiner, Susan, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford, 2010),Google Scholar passim.
65 Coffey, John and Chapman, Alister ‘Introduction: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion’, in Chapman et al., pp. 2, 4–5, 12–13, 16;Google Scholar Van Asselt, Willem J., ‘Scholasticism Revisited: Methodological Relections on the Study of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought’, in Chapman et al., p. 169.Google Scholar This single sphere of understanding can be seen with particular clarity in Field's report of the Campion debates, where Campion reportedly defends transubstantiation with the assertion that Aristotelian accidents (circumstances), without substance, could nourish, Fulke replies: ‘Philosophy, Physic, and Divinity are much beholden to you. It was never heard of before, that bare accidents without substance could feed or nourish.’ Field, sigs U.iv-U.iir.
66 Fulke, William, A True Report of a Conference (London, 1580),Google Scholar sig. A3r. Romish Fisher, sig. H4v; Field, sig. Aa.iiiiv; Av labaster, p. 120.
67 Romish Fisher, sig. Iv. Alabaster reports finding ‘no stay nor rule nor certainty at all’ in English Protestantism: Alabaster, p. 112, and Rainolds, William similarly found ‘no kind of stay or assurance, no manner of certainty’: Refutation, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
68 Featley, Daniel, Transubstantiation Exploded, p. 257.Google Scholar
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70 Field, sig. O.iir.
71 Alabaster, p. 126. For an illustration of this from the opposite direction—the necessary truth of seemingly incomprehensible matters of faith—see p. 135.
72 Alabaster, p. 130; Marotti, p. 101.
73 Sonnets, p. 39; Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, p. 91.
74 Alabaster, pp. 118, 121.
75 Indeed, it is presented by Field as a matter of academic custom.
76 Fulke, William, A True Report of a Conference (London, 1580),Google Scholar sig. B3r.
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92 Comment from Peter Lake, during the Tudor and Stuart History round table on the public sphere, at the Institute of Historical Research, July 2nd, 2012.