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The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
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Abstract

Discussion of the dispersal of Catholic literature in post-Reformation England tends to focus on the tenacity of recusants and ‘church papists’ in perpetuating allegiance to Rome. Relatively little attention has been paid to the extent to which Catholic texts, either in their original form or modified for a Protestant readership, formed a part of the mainstream culture of the reformed Church. This paper attempts to demonstrate the significance of Catholic literature in the Protestant context by showing the range of Protestant adaptations, the extent of Protestant readership and the influences of Catholic literature on Protestant writers.

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Articles
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British Catholic History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 67 - 90
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Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2014

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References

Notes

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6 See for example Alison Shell's graphic account of the prohibition, burning and expurgation of Catholic texts in ‘Anti-Catholic Prejudice in the 17th-Century Book Trade’, in Robin, Myers and Michael, Harris, eds., Censorship and the Control of Print in England and France, 1600—1910 (Winchester: St. Paul's Bibliographies, 1992, 33–58),Google Scholar p. 35.

7 Lisa, McClain, Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559—1642 (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 53.Google Scholar McClain goes on to say that ‘Some individuals sold such works privately from their homes or bequeathed them in their wills… Priests also delivered books… Catholics frequently lent their own books to others, and copied printed books by hand… Books were sent into prisons and across the country to friends and relatives… And often, when…searchers found Catholic books…they would fine the Catholic for possessing the books but then sell the books back to the Catholic and pocket the profit’ (ibid.).

8 Ibid., p. 53.

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14 Robert, Persons, The First Booke of the Christian Exercise Appertayning to Resolution (Rouen: Robert Persons’ Press, 1582),Google Scholar fo. 9r. While I refer to him (following ODNB) as Persons throughout, he is also known as Parsons, and where I cite from sources that refer to him as such I have retained the original spelling.

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27 Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, p. 75.

28 Ibid., p. 76.

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30 Robert, Abbot, The Second Part of the Defence of the Reformed Catholicke (London, 1607), 982,Google Scholar cited in Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 235.

31 Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, p. 75.

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35 Louis, L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1954).Google Scholar

36 Alec, Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 284–92.Google Scholar

37 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 150–57.

38 Robert, Crowley, A Deliberat Answere Made to a Rash Offer, which a Popish Antichristian Catholique, Made to a Learned Protestant (London: I. Charlwood, 1588),Google Scholar title page.

39 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 142.

40 Joseph, Hall, The Olde Religion (London: W. Stansby, 1628),Google Scholar chapter headings. For Hall, as for a number of Protestant writers, the ‘old religion’ was the faith of the early Church, before it had been corrupted by ‘popery’.

41 Hall, The Olde Religion, p. 62, p. 71 and p. 73.

42 Heinrich, Bullinger, The Olde Fayth, translated from the Latin by Miles, Coverdale ([Antwerp: M. Crom?], 1541),Google Scholar title page.

43 Baxter is of particular significance in this context, since it was Bunny's edition of Robert Persons’ work which first touched his heart ‘with a livelier feeling of things Spiritual’ (Richard, Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, London, 1696, p. 3).Google Scholar

44 William, Nicholls, ‘A Discourse of the Rise and Progress of the Spiritual Books in the Romish Church’, in Francis, de Sales, An Introduction to a Devout Life (London: E. Holt, 1701),Google Scholar sigs. A4r–a4v; sig. A8r.

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49 John, Joseph Collins, Bernard, McGinn and Stephen, J. Stein, The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, vol. 3 (New York: Continuum Publishing, 2000), Introduction, p. ix.Google Scholar

50 Rogers, in à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ (London: by Henrie Denham, 1580),Google Scholar sig. A9r-v.

51 Thomas, Rogers, in Diego, de Estella, A Methode vnto Mortification (London: J. Windet, 1586),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory, sig. A5r.

52 Ibid., sig. A6r–7v.

53 Thomas, Rogers, The English Creede, Consenting with the True, Auncient, Catholique, and Apostolique Church in al the Points, and Articles of Religion (London: J. Windet, 1585),Google Scholar part one, title page.

54 Rogers, An Historical Dialogue, preface, sig. Aiiir.

55 Rogers, Miles Christianus, p. 34 and p. 4.

56 Rogers, in à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ (London: Henrie Denham, 1580),Google Scholar sig. A8v–9r.

57 ODNB.

58 ODNB.

59 Edmund, Bunny, The Whole Summe of Christian Religion (London: Purfoote, T. for Harrison, L. and Bishop, G., 1576),Google Scholar sig. *3v.

60 ODNB.

61 Hagedorn, Reformation and Spanische Andachtsliteratur: Luis de Granada in England (Leipzig: Kölner anglistische Arbeiten, 1934), p. 52, pp. 72–3 and p. 80.Google Scholar

62 Friancis, Meres, in Luis, de Granada, Granados Spirituall and Heauenlie Exercises (London: J. Roberts, 1598),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory, sig. A4r-v.

63 Francis, Meres, in Luis, de Granada, The Sinners Guyde (London: J. Roberts, 1598),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory, sig. A3v.

64 In Luis, de Granada, Of Prayer and Meditation (Paris: T. Brumeau, 1582),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory, sig. ¶4r–v.

65 Francis, Meres, The Sinners Guyde (London: J. Roberts, 1598),Google Scholar epistle dedicatory, sig. Aiiv.

66 ODNB.

67 Arber, E., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554—1640, 5 vols. (London: privately printed, 1875–94), vol. 1, pp. 791–2.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., p. 561.

69 Gary, Taylor, ‘The Cultural Politics of Maybe’, in Richard, Dutton, Alison, Findlay, and Richard, Wilson, eds., Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 242–58; p. 250,Google Scholar has uncovered evidence indicating that Mabbe was actually imprisoned on suspicion of being a Catholic spy, and Geraldine Hodgson, E., English Mystics (London: Maubray, 1922), p. 226,Google Scholar famously remarks of Vaughan that, ‘if ever an Anglo-Catholic mystic existed after the Reformation, Henry Vaughan was one’.

70 Richard, Baxter, Against the Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction (London: for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691), 538.Google Scholar

71 PLRE 149.199.

72 PLRE 154.96. This is catalogued as ‘Resolut. pars ultraque’, and the PLRE entry comments, ‘It is assumed that by pars utraque the compiler means both Persons’ original and Edmund Bunny's Protestant adaptation’.

73 PLRE Ad4.278.

74 PLRE 3.129, volume entry (http://plre.folger.edu/booksDetail.php?id=544).

75 PLRE 3.129, 3.131, 3.147, and 3.201.

76 Townsend, J.C. et al., Townsend-Townshend, 1066–1909, revised by Margaret, Townsend (New York: s.n., 1909), p. 13.Google Scholar

77 PLRE 225.2. Inventoried on Slade's imprisonment in 1583.

78 PLRE 251.5. Inventoried on seizure in 1584.

79 PLRE 242.15. Inventoried on seizure in 1586.

80 PLRE 244.5. Inventoried on seizure in 1586.

81 PLRE 251.3, 251.6.

82 PLRE 244.8.

83 PLRE 3.148.

84 PLRE 3.179.

85 PLRE 259.41. Inventoried in 1626.

86 PLRE 149.248.

87 PLRE Ad4.290.

88 Birrell, ‘English Catholic Mystics in Non-Catholic Circles’, The Downside Review, 94 (1976), pp. 60–81, 99–117 and 213–28;CrossRefGoogle Scholar p. 65.

89 See Greg, W.W., A Companion to Arber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 347–8.Google Scholar

90 ODNB.

91 PLRE 4.173, 4.178, 4.226, 4.239, 4.260.

92 PLRE 4.34, 4.354.

93 PLRE 154.20, 154.63, 154.59.

94 PLRE 154.49–54, 154.91–2, 154.117.

95 PLRE 154.5, 154.116, and 154.13, 154.14, 154.90.

96 PLRE 154.15, 154.192.

97 PLRE 149.184, 149.194, 149.205.

98 PLRE 149.54, 149.6.

99 In addition to Robert Southwell, Saint Peters Complaint (PLRE Ad3.97), Sibthorp probably owned a Catholic edition of Augustine's Confessions (PLRE Ad3.76) and perhaps John Cosin, A Collection of Private Devotions (PLRE Ad3.99), an adaptation for Protestant consumption of the post-Tridentine Primer.

100 PLRE 3.11, 3.161, 3.172.

101 PLRE 3.119.

102 Houliston in Robert, Persons, Robert Persons S.J.: The Christian Directory (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. xi–xiv.Google Scholar Harington's name is perhaps inappropriate here; Gerard, Kilroy, Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005),Google Scholar makes a strong case for him being a crypto-Catholic.

103 See Christopher, Devlin, Hamlet's Divinity and Other Essays (London: Hart-Davis, 1963), 36–41,Google Scholar Peter, Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 44–52,Google Scholar Donna, Hamilton, ‘Shakespeare and Religion’, in The Shakespearean International Yearbook, I (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 187–202,Google Scholar and John, R. Yamamoto-Wilson, ‘Shakespeare and Catholicism’, Renaissance and Reformation Review 7.2–3 (2005): pp. 347–361;Google Scholar p. 354.

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107 Ibid., p. 16.

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128 Christian Exercise, pp. 41–2.

129 Daniel, Featley, in Thråenoikos the House of Mourning…Delivered in LIII Sermons (London: G. Dawson, 1660).Google Scholar This work is an anthology of sermons by Featley, Martin Day, John Preston, Richard Holdsworth, Richard Sibbs, Thomas Taylor, Thomas Fuller and others (title page).

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