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English Books of Martyrs and Saints of the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

J. T. Rhodes
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Extract

Martyrs were the first saints and some were among the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. Because it was the manner of their death that won them their place in heaven, martyrs were a special case; unlike other saints, evidence of heroic virtue in life and miracles were not required. Like the early martyrs, many sixteenth-century English martyrs were immediately recognized as saints by their co-religionists, without reference to judicial processes. But the status of martyr was not popularly accorded automatically to Catholics who died on account of their faith. Despite Southwell's ‘Epitaph’: ‘A Queen I liu'd, now dead I am a Saint/Once MARIE calde; my name now Martir is’, Mary, Queen of Scots, was not generally acclaimed as a martyr, even by Catholics.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 7 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1994

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References

Notes

1 e.g. Sts. Catherine of Alexandria, Erasmus, Thomas of Canterbury, Edmund of East Anglia.

2 Relics of the English and Japanese martyrs were eagerly sought at their deaths.

3 S.T.C. 10432.7, Guiney, pp. 242–54. Printed material on Mary remained in French, S.T.C. 3107–9.

4 e.g. de Losa, F.: The life of Gregorie Lopes, 1638,Google Scholar S.T.C. 16828, pp. 28–9, 194–6, 204; Torsellino, O.: The admirable life of S. Francis Xavier, 1632,Google Scholar S.T.C. 24140, Bk 1, 3, pp. 582–3. More generally, Bonner, G.: The Warfare of Christ London 1962;Google Scholar Howard, D. R.: The Three Temptations, Princeton 1966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 S.T.C. 11222–9, 20110. White, H. C.: Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs, Madison 1963, chs 5–6;Google Scholar King, J. H.: English Reformation Literature, Princeton 1982, ch. 9.Google Scholar

6 e.g. S.T.C. 19416; Roscarrock warns against ‘such pevishe pseudo-marters as ffoxe hathe inserted in that huge vayne volume of his Monumentes’, C.U.L. MS Add. 3041; Stapleton also denigrates Foxe, S.T.C. 1779, pp. 61–2; White: op. cit. ch. 7; Aston, M.: Lollards and Reformers, London 1984, pp. 291ff.Google Scholar

7 S.T.C. 18259.3 and 12934; Anstruther, G.: The Seminary Priests, Ware & Durham [1968], vol. 1, pp. 145–7.Google Scholar Nuttall, G. F.: ‘The English Martyrs 1535–1680: a statistical review’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 22 (1971) pp. 191–7,CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives a detailed chronology that might usefully be related to publications about the martyrs.

8 S.T.C. 4537, 369.5, 11728, 19406, 26000.9. In his 1570 account of the Carthusian martyrs of the 1530s, Maurice Chauncy similarly stated his credentials: The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers, ed. G. W. S. Curtis, London 1935, p. 35.Google Scholar

9 S.T.C. most helpfully references Protestant refutations of works about Catholic martyrs. Chrisman, M. U.: ‘From polemic to propaganda: the development of mass persuasion in the late sixteenth century’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 73 (1982), pp. 175–95.Google Scholar

10 Altman, C. F.: ‘Two types of opposition and the structure of Latin saints’ lives’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s.6, Cambridge 1975.Google Scholar

11 Heffernan, T. J.: Sacred Biography, New York 1988, p. 249.Google Scholar

12 McGrath, P. Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I, London 1967, pp. 168f;Google Scholar but Jesuit optimism was not always well founded, see Martin, A. L. The Jesuit Mind, Ithaca 1988, pp. 90f.Google Scholar

13 Guiney #58, with additional MSS: Bodleian Eng. poet. b. 5, Rawl. D. 111; Harvard, Houghton MS Engl. 1015; Arundel Harington MS ed. R. Hughey#66. Rollins, H. E.: Old English Ballads, Cambridge, 1920,Google Scholar #22, also copied in MSS Eng. poet. b. 5 and e. 122, printed in S.T.C. 10432.7 and excerpted in Guiney. #90, cp. parts of her #11,12.

14 Rollins: op. cit. #24, 25; ‘Seeke flowers in heaven’, The Poems of Robert Southwell, S.J. eds McDonald, J. H. & Brown, N. P., Oxford 1967, p. 52.Google Scholar

15 e.g. the case of Briant in Alfield; Heffernan, op. cit. p. 221.

16 S.T.C. 14475, 14527, 18482; in contemporary Persia S.T.C. 19776; fourth-century African persecutions S.T.C. 24714; also Brereley's sonnets on Sts. Vincent and Barbara, MS Eng. Poet c. 61. For the encouragement imparted by the English martyrs to Swedish Catholics, Garstein, O.: The Counter-Reformation in Sweden, Oslo 1980, vol. 2, p. 365.Google Scholar

17 S.T.C. 18082–3, 13376–7, 22946–8.

18 Prayers invoking the intercession of Fisher and More conclude their lives (see below); the dedicatory epistle of The English Martyrologe, S.T.C. 25771–2. Medieval lives of saints and martyrs usually conclude with a prayer to them, e.g. Voragine's Golden Legend or Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen.

19 Seventeenth-century listings included S.T.C. 19416, 25772, 26000.8.

20 For a concise summary: Anderegg, M. A., ‘The tradition of early More biography’ in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, eds Sylvester, R. S. & Marc'hadour, G. P., Hamden 1977.Google Scholar

21 EETS os 186 which includes R. W. Chambers ‘On the continuity of English prose’.

22 Van Ortroy, F. Vie du Bienheureux Martyr Jean Fisher, Analecta Bollandiana 10 (1891) 121–305,Google Scholar 12 (1893) 97–287; EETS es 117 (1921 for 1915).

23 EETS os 243 (1959). It is interesting to note that Roper's, Harpsfield's and Ro: Ba's lives of More may be found copied in the different MSS of Wolsey's life; B. L. Sloane 848 has notes from Wolsey's life with extracts from More's life of Pico de Mirandula. B. L. Arundel 152 also has extracts from Wolsey's life with material for the life of John Fisher.

24 e.g. Folger MS E.a.1; Bodleian Tanner MS 118 by Culpeper; Thomas Jollet's huge two-volume commonplace-book, c. 1605–8, Bodleian MS Eng. theol. b. 1–2; Thomas Meynell's commonplace book compiled c. 1613–31, C.R.S. 56, 1964, pp. 1–44.

25 Published correspondence ranges from the Annual letters of the Jesuits, to the letters of Verstegan, Richard, C.R.S. 52, 1959,Google Scholar and The Private correspondence of Jane, Lady Cornwallis 1613–1644, London 1842.

26 e.g. Roger Martyn's record of Long Melford in Dymond, D. & Paine, C.: The Spoil of Melford Church [Ipswich] 1989, pp. 1–9;Google Scholar Rites of Durham … written 1593, ed. Fowler, J. T., Surtees Society, 107 (1903);Google Scholar Catholic Antiquaries included John Stow, Thomas Habington, Henry Ferrers, Sampson Erdeswicke all of whom are mentioned in Mendyk, S.A.E.: Speculum Britanniae, Toronto 1989.Google Scholar

27 Chauncy, ed. cit. p. 37.

28 Baronius's life, S.T.C. 1019 was documentary; Stapleton's in his Tres Thomae, along with Thomas More, was more devotional. Unofficial martyrs included Thomas of Lancaster † 1322, Archbishop Scrope † 1405 and Henry VI † 1471, on whom see McKenna, J. W.: ‘Popular Canonization as Political Propaganda’ Speculum 45 (1978) pp. 608–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his ‘Piety and Propaganda: the Cult of King Henry VI’ in Chaucer and Middle English Studies …, ed. Rowland, B., London 1974.Google Scholar

29 An exception was the life of Edmund Gennings, S.T.C. 11728.

30 e.g. the thumb of Edmund Gennings reached the Benedictines at Louvain and a portion was given to a student at Douai; one of the quarters of John Jones OFM reached his brethren at Pontoise and the bodies of Dom John Roberts and Thomas Somers were recovered by Dom Maurus Scott and conveyed to Douai, as were the quarters of John Southworth, now at Westminster Cathedral. A relic of the martyred priest, John Nelson, was believed to cure the sick, S.T.C. 369.5 sig.e 6. Because they were not officially approved relics, they are not listed among the relics kept by the English communities listed in A. Raissius Hierogazophylacium Belgicum, Douai 1628.

31 Engraved portraits were included in books (e.g. Gennings’ life; Brousse's lives S.T.C. 3902) and as separate prints (e.g. of Campion, frontispiece to Pollen's, J. H. ed. of Allen's Briefe Historie, London 1908).Google Scholar By the 1630s many ‘portraits’ of Jesuit martyrs were available in paintings like those at Valladolid and in engravings. It was also the era in which representations of religious superiors become more common. There are interesting references to contemporary pictures of Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, Aloysius Gonzaga and Gregory Lopez in their lives: S.T.C. 20483 sig. **5, preface to 4912, 16828 p. 26. The Carmelites now at Lanherne have pictures of ten martyrs made by Mr. Gifford who was imprisoned with them in the 1640s; his daughter, Mary Gifford, entered the English Carmel at Antwerp in 1681.

32 Duffy, E.: The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven 1992, Ch. 11;Google Scholar A. E. Nichols: ‘Broken up or restored away’ in Davidson, C. & Nichols, A. E.: Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, Kalamazoo 1989;Google Scholar Phillips, J.: The Reformation of Images, Berkeley 1973, ch. 9 Google Scholar and for the impetus given to antiquarian studies by the destruction consequent on the Dissolution, Aston, M.: Lollards and Reformers, London 1984,Google Scholar ‘English Ruins and English History: the Dissolution and the sense of the past.’

33 e.g. Martyn's, Roger removal of items from Long Melford church; the considerable number of prereformation vestments that remained in Catholic hands; Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, ed. Foley, H., record the preservation of relics: vol. 2, pp. 231–3Google Scholar for relics of St. Chad; vol. 4, p. 454 for relics of St. Thomas Cantilupe and pp. 532–3 for a relic of St. Winifred.

34 e.g. Watt, T.: Cheap Print and Popular Piety, Cambridge 1991, ch. 5;Google Scholar P. Happé: ‘Protestant adaptation of the Saint play’ and Wasson, J.: ‘The secular Saint plays of the Elizabethan era’ both in The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, ed. C. Davidson, Kalamazoo 1986.Google Scholar

35 Wright, A. D.: The Counter-Reformation, London 1982,Google Scholar is a useful general introduction; Evennett, H. O.: The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, Notre Dame 1970;Google Scholar ‘Religious Art after the Council of Trent’, Male, E.: Religious Art, from the XIIth to the XVIIIth century, Princeton 1982;Google Scholar Hall, J.: A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art, New York 1983, ch. 8.Google Scholar

36 Eisenstein, E.: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge 1979, vol. 1, chs 1–2;Google Scholar Cressy, D.: Literacy and the Social Order, Cambridge 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 But in 1516 ‘Capgrave’ was lamenting his countrymen's ignorance of, or lack of interest in, their national saints, suggesting that the Reformers were not entirely responsible for the prevailing ignorance about British saints, S.T.C. 4602.

38 For the background to this issue, Foley: Records, vol. 4, pp. 682f.

39 A concern that was not limited to Catholics and which lay behind the bibliographical labours of John Bale and Matthew Parker and the foundation of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries.

40 Jones, C. W.: Saints’ Lives and Chronicles in Early England, Archon repr. 1968, Google Scholar passim.

41 e.g. John Falconer's preface to S.T.C. 21102, sig *8, notes ‘many Parishes in Wales and Cornwall, retayne no other names at this day, then such as anciently they receaved from holy Men and Women living in them’.

42 e.g. Janofsky, K. L.: ‘National characteristics in the portrayal of English saints in the South English Legendary ’ in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R. & Szell, T., Ithaca 1991, pp. 83–7.Google Scholar

43 In addition to visual representations legends were publicly written on tables in churches as memoriae. For St. Walstan's life see James, M. R. in Norfolk & Norwich Archaeological Society, 19, pp. 238–67;Google Scholar St. Werburg's life written up at St. John's, Chester, EETS os 88, p. 151; Wilson, R. M.: The Lost Literature of Medieval England, London 1970, pp. 87f,Google Scholar includes a description of the ‘Magna Tabula’ of Glastonbury, now preserved in the Bodleian, which had previously belonged to Lord William Howard of Naworth, on whom see below.

44 EETS os 88; S.T.C. 3506; Gerould, G. H.: Saints’ Legends, Boston 1916, pp. 277–9.Google Scholar

45 MacLean, S-B: Chester Art, Kalamazoo 1982, pp. 81–5.Google Scholar

46 e.g. John Falconer's preface to S.T.C. 21102, sig. **3v-5.

47 S.T.C. 1778–80. O'Connell, M.: Thomas Stapleton and the Counter-Reformation, 1964.Google Scholar

48 The arguments of his preface to Bede were elaborated in A fortresse of the faith first planted amonge usenglishmen, and continued hitherto in the universall church of Christ, S.T.C. 23232–3, 1565, 1625.

49 The engravings of his Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea, Roma 1584, were derived from the mural paintings in the chapel of the Venerabile. Like most illustrations of the sufferings of the English martyrs they were accompanied by Latin texts. Other illustrations included Descriptions quaedam illius inhumanae etmultiplicis persecutionis, quam in Anglia propter fidem sustinent Catholice Christiani, Roma 1584; for Verstegan's engravings, Petti, A. G.: ‘Richard Verstegan and Catholic martyrologies of the late Elizabethan period’, Recusant History 5 (1959) pp. 64–90;CrossRefGoogle Scholar the illustrations of the Carthusian martyrs in Chauncy ed. cit. and Gennings Life, S.T.C. 11728, which has the only set of engravings of suffering Catholics to carry an English text.

50 Notably Wilson's English Martyrologe, 1608, 1640, B.L. MS Stowe 949=53, edited in EETS os 86 (1886) and Roscarrock's collection, CUL MS Add 3041.

51 CUL MS Add. 4457, S.T.C. 17181.

52 Porter, Jerome OSB: Edwardus Redivivus. The Life of St. Edward, King and Confessor. Collected out of Allured Abbot of Rheival, J. Capgrave, W. Malmesbury, R. Hovedine, M. Westminster, N. Harpsfield and others, 1710.Google Scholar The authorities cited suggest rather more historical ballast than the text demonstrates.

53 S.T.C. 21102; another life was copied in B.L. MS Stowe 949 and verses to her are included in Bodleian MSS Eng. Poet b. 5, pp. 98 (a longer version of the translated verse printed on sig.8v), 122–3 and Eng. poet e. 122, fols 43–45v, 46–74. Another life cited by Gerould, G. H.: Saints'Lives, Boston 1916, p. 329,Google Scholar does not seem to exist.

54 Pilgrimage to Holywell continued through penal times. Fr Garnet was there 1602, 1605 (Caraman, P.: Henry Garnet, London 1964, p. 298)Google Scholar and Pakington, Humfrey in 1621 (Recusant History 12 (1974) p. 210)Google Scholar while Fr Oldcome commended himself to her at his execution 1606: his throat cancer had been cured at Holywell (Caraman op. cit. p. 428). Seventeenth-century miracles at Holywell, Analecta Bollandiana 6 (1887) pp. 305–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Foley Records, vol.4, pp. 536–7. etc. It may be no more than an accident of survival, but the only three individual lives of British saints from this period were major pilgrimage shrines of national importance in the Middle Ages.

55 S.T.C. 25771–2. 1608 was the year in which Wilson took over as manager of the English College press at St. Omers.

56 Those without a known day are assigned to empty days, but marked with an asterisk, setting them slightly below saints whose feast-days were included in official liturgical calendars.

57 Capgrave S.T.C. 4602, was cited among Wilson's sources: Lucas, P. J.: ‘John Capgrave and the Nova Legenda: a survey’, The Library 5 25 (1970) pp. 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Whitford, 5.7:C 17532, edited in H.B.S. 3 (1893), was not cited by Wilson, though he was used by Roscarrock.

58 Preface to S.T.C. 4602.

59 S.T.C 25771, sig. *7V.

60 Francis Bell's preface to S.T.C. 6185; John Falconer's to S.T.C. 21102; Tobie Matthew's preface to S.T.C. 20483; Henry Hawkins, S.T.C. 12957, sigs a. 3v–4, seems to mock the scrupulosity of some in matters of history, yet its sources are the approved lives of Saints. Roscarrock's attitude, CUL MS Add 3041, is typical: ‘humbly submitting myself and this my labour, not only to the censure of the Catholic church, but also unto all such as are better learned, travailed and informed in this argument than I am’.

61 But it must also be noted that Matthew and Matthieu, S.T.C. 20483, 17663, both tried to make a rational appeal to Protestants, cp. White, H. C.: English Devotional Literature (Prose), 1600–1640, Madison 1931, pp. 140–1.Google Scholar

62 CUL MS Add 3041. For Roscarrock's life see Rowse, A. L. in Studies in Social History. A tribute to G. M. Trevelyan, ed. Plumb, J. H., London 1955 Google Scholar and Nicholas Roscarrock's lives of the Saints: Cornwall and Devon, ed. Orme, N., Devon and Cornwall Record Society n.s. 35, 1992. Also Guiney, pp. 199–201 Google Scholar and Whiting, R.: Blind Devotion of the People, Cambridge 1989,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who makes considerable use of the MS.

63 Symbolized by their gold rosary, Rowse art. cit. p. 14; also Wilkins, E. U.: The Rose Garden Game, London 1969, illus. 12 and p. 217.Google Scholar

64 Rowse art. cit. A letter from Lord William to Cotton, suggests that by 1621 Roscarrock was blind, Surtees Society 68 (1877) pp. 451–2.Google Scholar For Lord William's marriage of his daughter to Cotton's son, Reinmuth, H. S.: ‘Lord William Howard and his Catholic Associations’, Recusant History 12 (1974) pp. 226–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 e.g. Henry Ferrers of Badesley Clinton who owned B.L. MS Sloane 683 and Bodleian Laud misc. 733 before they passed into Roscarrock's possession. Roscarrock also owned B.L. MSS Harley 2965, 5240 and annotated other books e.g. MS Harley 3776 and Ushaw College's copy of S.T.C. 4602.

66 Surtees Society 68 (1877) pp. 469–87;Google Scholar Mathew, D.; ‘The Library at Naworth’ in For Hilaire Belloc, ed. Woodruff, D., London 1942.Google Scholar The library was sold in 1993 and acquired by Durham University library.

67 Surtees Society 68, 1877, p. 472 Google Scholar #660. The identification of this life is suggested by the appearance of Roscarrock's name on the (incomplete) MS at Ushaw College; a complete copy is Bodleian MS Eng. hist, c. 332 (not Eng. misc. as given in Ker, N. R.: Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd ed. London 1964, p. xv, n. 4).Google Scholar

68 The translator may have been John St. George of Hatley St. George, Cambs, despite Anstruther's conjecture, The Seminary Priests, vol. 2, Great Wakering 1975, p. 275,Google Scholar that his son William St. George was a convert; it was William who presented the original Latin MS to Douai College and it remains in Douai municipal library.

69 Porter, Flowers of… the … Saincts, S.T.C. 20124, sig. e. 2. commented that one reason for English people being deprived of the lives of their saints was because they were in Latin, ‘which is not for the capacitie of the unlearned’. Allen had remarked that he wrote in English for his own countrymen, but in Latin for learned Europeans, S.T.C. 369.5, sig. a. 2V.

70 S.T.C. 20124.

71 And St. Patrick from Jocelinus, S.T.C. 14626.

72 A copy of Cepari's life of Aloysius Gonzaga at Ushaw has a prayer written into the book asking prayers for the (?Carmelite) nun who possessed it and for her and the reader's growth in virtue like Aloysius’.

73 B.L. MS Stowe 53 (formerly 949), edited in EETS os 86, pp. 9–10.

74 e.g. Kieckhefer, R.: Unquiet Souls, Chicago 1984, ch. 4;Google Scholar Hirsh, J. C.: The Revelations of Margery Kempe, Leiden 1989, chs 3–4.Google Scholar

75 Ten issues 1609–38, S.T.C. 24730–7.

76 Publication of Legenda Aurea generally petered out during the 1530s; Reames, S. L.: The Legenda Aurea, Madison 1985, chs 1,10.Google Scholar British interest was added to the 1628 and subsequent editions of Villegas by the addition of some Irish saints’ lives, previously printed in S.T.C. 14626.

77 Some 15 in the 1620s: A&R 96, 225, 238, 244, 268, 420, 435, 536, 595, 713, 742, 765, 854–6; about two dozen in the 1630s: A&R 71, 102, 109, 111, 127, 301, 368, 387, 406, 412, 436, 471, 490, 540, 548, 644, 658, 725, 824, 857–60, 869. Among the saints to be beatified or canonised during this period, whose lives were also published in English, were Sts. Elizabeth of Portugal, Aloysius Gonzaga, Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila.

78 Clancy, T. H.: ‘Spiritual publications of English Jesuits, 1615–1640’, Recusant History 19 (1989) pp. 426–46,CrossRefGoogle Scholar espec. pp. 427–9.

79 MS in the Osborn Collection at Yale University, pp. 254–5; for further discussion of these listings see my article on ‘Dom Augustine Baker's Reading Lists’ in Downside Review 111 (1993) pp. 157–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 By Silva, S.T.C. 11314.2.

81 These can probably be identified as S.T.C. 3271, 6185, 5350.7, 4830, 14626 and 12349. The life and institutions of St. Gertrude, in two volumes and the life of St. Vincent are both stated to be manuscripts; the life of St. Cecilie is noted as ‘a verie little booke’. I am grateful to the curator of the Osborn Collection at Yale, Dr. S. R. Parks, for access to this manuscript.

82 Respectively S.T.C. 3902, 20483, 21316, 1778–80.

83 S.T.C. 4830 and 3271–2.

84 Nuns’ chaplains often had an impressive literary output: e.g. John Fen at St. Monica's 1609–14, Francis Bell OFM at Brussels 1623–30 who was succeeded by Giles Willoughby OFM 1631–5, Augustine Baker OSB at Cambrai 1624–33, Miles Pinkney with the Augustininan nuns at Paris 1634–74.

85 Aumann, J.: Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, London 1988, p. 178.Google Scholar

86 Allison, A. F.: ‘Franciscan Books in English, 1559–1640’, Biographical Studies 3 (1955) pp. 16–65.Google Scholar

87 The MS of this translation survives in Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 426. The 1610 edition was printed without the preface, restored in the 1635 edition. McCann, T. J.: ‘“The known style of a dedication is flattery”: Anthony Browne, 2nd Viscount Montague of Cowdray and his Sussex flatterers’, Recusant History 19 (1989) pp. 396–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Jeffrey, D. L.: The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality, Lincoln, ??????Nebraska 1975, chs 2–3.Google Scholar

89 S.T.C. 11314.2; Allison, pp. 44–7.

90 Guilday, P.: The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, London 1914, pp. 297–300.Google Scholar

91 Allison, #13, 15, 16, 37 and pp. 48–9, 57.

92 By Giles Willoughby OFM, S.T.C. 19794.

93 Compare Clancy, T. H.: ‘Spiritual Publications of English Jesuits, 1615–1640’, Recusant History 19 (1989) pp. 429–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 S.T.C. 19167, 1628. Her life was also included in Jollet's common-place book, Bodleain MS Eng. theol. b. 1, and she was the subject of a verse life, apparently not extant, by Lady Falkland.

95 A&R 238, 245, 869.

96 Two other English Franciscans were involved in this publication, S.T.C. 17663; George Perrot probably wrote the dedication and Christopher Davenport the ‘commonitory’. Her life was also included in Recusant manuscripts, CUL MS Add 4457 and Bodleian MS Eng. theol. b. I. For the earlier confusion surrounding her life and visions, Barratt, A.: ‘The Revelations of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary: Problems of Attribution’, The Library 6 14 (1992) pp. 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97 For more emotional and revealing saints’ lives of the period, Kieckhefer, R.: Unquiet Souls, Chicago 1984, Chs 2, 6.Google Scholar

98 S.T.C. 6185. On the visionary aspects of Sr. Joan's life and her reputation, Surtz, R. E.: The Guitar of God, Philadelphia 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

99 S.T.C. 20483.

100 Bell, R. M.: Holy Anorexia, Chicago 1987, pp. 171–5Google Scholar and figs 13–17.

101 S.T.C. 6185, pp. 221–2, ‘Truth is the soul of a history, and the history that wanteth it, is as a body without a soul, for it deserveth not the name of a history, chiefly if it be of saints, where to he is sacriledge … The truth which hath been kept, in writing the life of this holy Virgin, is/the greatest which in the law of history can be found, collected out of these papers following.’ He then proceeds to list his sources and archives.

102 Surtz: The Guitar of God, ch. 5, especially pp. 136–8.

103 Anstruther, G.: Vaux of Harrowden, Newport 1953, pt, II, ch. 4 Google Scholar etc. One wonders if the dedication caused her further difficulties with the authorities.

104 Other translations from the Exercises in S.T.C. 16876.5, 16877–8.

105 Gannon, T. M. & Tribe, G. W.: The Desert and the City, Chicago 1984, chs 7–10.Google Scholar

106 cf. Campion's brag: ‘Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience’, Caraman, P.: The Other Face, London 1960, p. 115.Google Scholar

107 e.g. N. Lancicius, S.T.C. 15188.7, pp. 5, and 113, tells how Ignatius, having turned from sin is said to have ‘employed all his endeavours to draw his neighbours out of the same mire: and spent his whole life-time after in those endeavours, to the good of infinite multitudes of souls, and the notable benefit and profit of the Church.’ Francis Xavier prayed for the conversion of pagans, S.T.C. 24140, p. 506 and Peter of Alcantara, S.T.C. 19794, sigs d. 8-e.1.

108 S.T.C. 24140, sigs A 3v.–4.

109 e.g. Smith, R.: Life of the most honourable.… La. Magdalen Viscountesse Montague, 1627,Google Scholar S.T.C. 2281, sig. *3r–v states the advantages of the plain style he adopts.

110 Prefatory material to B.L. MS Stowe 53 (olim 949), EETS os 86.

111 S.T.C. 4912, sigs *4v–5v.

112 Love, H.: ‘Scribal publication in seventeenth-century England’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9 (1986–90), pp. 130–54.Google Scholar

113 For an introduction to the diverse writings of the Cambrai nuns, Latz, D. L.: ‘Glow-Worm Light’: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women, Salzburg 1989.Google Scholar

114 EETS os 206.

115 B.L. MS Stowe 53, EETS os 86 (1886). The compiler does not name his sources, but the editor, Horstmann, gives Capgrave as the main one. The prefatory extracts from Cyprian and Jerome are not taken from the translation of Jerome's letters printed in 1630, S.T.C. 14502.

116 CUL MS Add 4457, which would repay further study. The life of Elizabeth of Hungary is said, fo. 178v, to have been compiled by a virtuous gentleman N.R. Could it be Nicholas Roscarrock?

117 S.T.C. 4830.

118 S.T.C. 22811 by Richard Smith. It was originally published in Latin, 1609, with German translations 1611, 1619. Southern, A. C. (ed.): An Elizabethan Recusant House, London & Glasgow 1954.Google Scholar

119 S.T.C. 3902, ed. Birrell, T. A.: The Lives of Ange de Joyeuse and Benet Canfield, London 1959.Google Scholar The translator, Robert Rookwood, was a secular priest who remained at the English College in Rome from his ordination in 1621 until 1626, when he became chaplain to the Poor Clares at Gravelines, going as chaplain to the new foundation at Rouen in the 1640s, where he translated the Annals of Baronius; he died in 1668.

120 S.T.C. 3902, sigs *7v–8.

121 S.T.C. 22811, sig. *4v.

122 Simpson, R.: Lady Falkland, her life, London 1861;Google Scholar [Palmer, W.]: The Life of Mrs. Dorothy Lawson, of St. Antony's …, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1855.Google Scholar

123 Chauncy: Passion … of the … Carthusian Fathers, pp. 38–9.

124 In addition to the collections already noted, may be added a translation of Binet's life of Ignatius Loyola in B.L. MS Sloane 629, #5; an incomplete life of Thomas a Villanova, MS Sloane 2361; a collection of lives of sixteenth-century Augustinian, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in Mexico, MS Sloane 1470; a short prose life of St. Mary the Egyptian, MS Sloane 2569; Lady Falkland composed verse lives of Sts. Mary Magdalen, Agnes and Elizabeth of Portugal. And there must be many more seventeenth-century saints’ lives in English extant or referred to in manuscript sources. A 1595 life of St. Etheldreda, Oxford Corpus Christi MS 120, cited by Gerould, Saints’ Legends, p. 318, is not sixteenth century, but probably dates from the late fourteenth or fifteenth century.

125 e.g. Southwell: Saint Mary Magdalens funeral! teares, S.T.C. 22963 etc; I. C: Saint Marie Magdalensconversion, S.T.C. 4282; Sweetnam: S. Mary Magdalens pilgrimage to paradise, S. T.C. 23532 and numerous works by Protestant writers. Jacobs, L. L.: ‘The image of Mary Magdalen in seventeenth-century poetry’, Publications of the Mississippi Philogical Association (1987) pp. 62–78;Google Scholar Malvern, M. M.: Venus in Sack-cloth, Carbondale 1975;Google Scholar Martz, L. L.: The Poetry of Meditation, New Haven 1965, pp. 191–3, 199–203.Google Scholar

126 Ridyard, S. J.: The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 1988, pp. 236, 234.Google Scholar

127 The saintly women were all nobly born or, like Margaret Clitherow and Anne Line, sufficiently well-off to enjoy a reasonable degree of independence.

128 That sexual division survived from the Middle Ages and in some ways became more rigid for women in the XVIIth century. The opposition encountered by Mary Ward was associated with her desire to embrace a way of life regarded as unsuitable for religious women who, after Trent, were restricted to the cloister.

129 Bossy, J.: The English Catholic Community, London, repr. 1979, pp. 254–7.Google Scholar

130 e.g. S.T.C. 11314.8, 1020, 11617.4–.6, 14077c.23c.

131 There were biographies of him by Valiero, 1586; Bascapé, 1592, 1610; Giussano, 1610.

132 Tobie Matthew commented that ‘the church walks on with a foot of lead in such occasions as these, and makes not such haste, but upon extraordinary inducements’ to beatify anybody, S.T.C. 20483, sig. **5v.