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John Bale and the Development of Protestant Hagiography in England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Leslie P. Fairfield
Leslie P. Fairfield
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University, Indiana, U.S.A.
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Extract

One of the consequences of the Reformation in England (as elsewhere) was that for Protestants, at least, the image of sainthood changed considerably. Erasmus's Colloquies had poked fun at the kind of saint honoured by the Golden Legend; and Thomas Cromwell drove the point home in his Injunctions of 1536 and 1538. ‘New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth …’ and a new cause naturally creates its new heroes. The changing conception of sainthood in sixteenth-century England, culminating in Foxe's Actes and Monuments, has attracted not a little modern scholarly attention, as for example in Helen C. White's Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs. But one pivotal figure in this development deserves more intensive study: John Bale (1495–1563), the famous antiquary, dramatist and protestant propagandist. In the 1540s Bale published works on two protestant ‘saints’—Sir John Oldcastle and Mistress Anne Askew—which did much to imprint the new definition of sainthood on the English mind. For these little tracts alone (and particularly in the light of Bale's later relationship with John Foxe) Bale's contribution to protestant hagiography invites a closer look.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 145 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 145 note 2 The quotation is from the American poet, essayist and diplomat, James Russell Lowell, ‘The Present Crisis’ (1845).

page 145 note 3 Despite the abundance of scholarly literature on Bale, treatment of his contribution to protestant hagiography has been cursory. See White, Helen C., Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs, Madison, Wisconsin 1963Google Scholar, which does not deal with Bale's protestant saints’ lives at all; and Haller, William, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation, London 1963Google Scholar, which treats Bale's influence on Foxe's periodisation of history, but speaks only briefly about the former's contribution to the protestant martyrology (see 60–1; and also chapter iv, ‘The Book of Martyrs’, 110–39). Other shorter references to Bale's importance in this respect may be found in Aston, M. E., ‘Lollardy and the Reformation: Survival or Revival?’ History, XLIX (1964), 164 ff.Google Scholar; Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation, London 1964, 169–70Google Scholar; Jordan, W. K., Edward VI: The Young King, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1968, 27, 30, 147, 152Google Scholar; and Pineas, Rainer, ‘William Tyndale's Influence on John Bale's Polemical Use of History’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LIII (1962), 79–96Google Scholar; but no systematic treatment of Bale's contribution to the English protestant saint's life has yet appeared.

page 145 note 4 John Bale, A brefe Chronycle concemynge the Examinacyon and death of the blessed martyr of Christ syr Johan Oldecastell, Antwerp 1544; idem., The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, Wesel 1546, and The lattre examinacyon of Anne Askewe, Wesel 1547.

page 146 note 1 For this relationship, see John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Britannie… Catalogus, Basel 1557–9 (hereafter Catalogus), i. 763; John Foxe, Actes and Monuments, London 1570, i. 830; Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and His Book, London 1940, 29–30Google Scholar; and Garrett, Christina H., The Marian Exiles, Cambridge 1938, 78, 156Google Scholar.

page 146 note 2 For general autobiographical detail in Bale's own works, see Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 41, fol. 195; British Museum MS. Harley 3838, fol. 111v; John Bale, Illustrium maioris Britannie Scriptorum… Summarium, ‘Ipswich’ (i.e. Wesel) 1548 (hereafter Summarium), fols. 242v–3; idem., Catalogus, i. 702–3. For biographical information in modern works on Bale, see this writer's unpublished Ph.D dissertation, ‘The Historical Thought of John Bale (1495–1563)’, Harvard University 1969, 1–15, 38–48, 144–56; and also Blatt, Thora B., The Plays of John Bale, Copenhagen 1967, 9–62Google Scholar; Davies, W. T., A Bibliography of John Bale, Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers, Oxford 1940, v. 203–30Google Scholar; Jesse Harris, John Bale, Urbana, Illinois 1940, passim; and McCusker, Honor, John Bale: Dramatist and Antiquary, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 1942Google Scholar, passim. On the specific question of Bale's academic degrees, see Grace Book F, ed. Searle, W. G., Cambridge 1908, 241Google Scholar, for Bale's B.D. No Cambridge grace book records a D.D. for Bale; but by July 1534, he was being styled ‘theologie doctor’: see Borthwick Institute, York, MS. R.I. 28, fol. 85v (the register of archbishop Lee).

page 146 note 3 E.g. Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 73, fol. v, regarding Joachim von Watt's Vom Alien und Neuen Gott, Basel 1521: ‘Ex alio eciam autore nephando in libro suo de veteri et novitio deo …’.

page 146 note 4 The MSS. and their approximate dates are as follows: (1) Cambridge University Library MS. Ff. 6.28 (somewhere between 1513 and 1522); (2) Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 72 (ca. 1517–23); (3) Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 73 (ca. 1520–7); (4) British Museum MS. Harley 1819 (1527–8); (5) Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 41 (ca. 1520–40); and (6) British Museum MS. Harley 3838 (1536–40). For a detailed discussion of the dating of these MSS., see Davies, op. cit., 240–3, and McCusker, op. cit., 97–110; see also this writer's unpublished dissertation (above, note 5), 357–71, which corrects Davies and McCusker in certain respects. There are also extant MSS. in Bale's hand from the years after 1540, but these do not bear on his early development.

page 147 note 1 Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 41, fols. 197–220v.

page 147 note 2 Compare, for example, Bale's life of Elijah (Ibid., fols. 219 ff.) with the similar life—written by a fifteenth-century Carmelite—which Bale had copied into one of his earlier notebooks (Cambridge University Library MS. Ff. 6.28, fols. 35v ff.). Bale's version is condensed, but by no means original. This sort of example could be multiplied several times.

page 147 note 3 Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 41, fols. 198, 2O2v–3. For the various assumptions underlying most medieval hagiography, see for instance Delehaye, Hippolyte, The Legends of the Saints, South Bend, Indiana 1961Google Scholar, passim, but especially 60–106; also Auerbach, Erich, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, trans., Manheim, R., New York 1959, 11–76Google Scholar; and Hanning, Robert, The Vision of History in Early Britain, New York 1966, 6–9Google Scholar, for the complex of thought connected with typological interpretation; and also White, op. cit., 3–25.

page 147 note 4 For Lord Wentworth's influence, see Bale, Catalogus, i. 702; for the importance of Henry VIII's example, see idem., Summarium, fols. 229v–30; and for Bale's sentiments toward the Carmelite Order in 1536, see his ‘Anglorum Heliades’, a history of the Carmelites in England, written just as Bale was on the brink of leaving the order: British Museum MS. Harley 3838, especially fols. 40–3.

page 148 note 1 The documents bearing on Bale's preaching and arrest in 1536–7 are as follows: Public Record Office, London, SP 1/111, fols. 183–7; SP 1/114, fol. 54; SP 1/115, fol. 63; and British Museum MS. Cotton Cleopatra E. IV, fol. 167 (new foliation). The full story is found in Davies, op. cit., 208–9, and in McCusker, op. cit., 5–14. For references to Bale's company of players, see Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, London 1862–1910, ed. Brewer, J. S. (hereafter L & P), xiv–iGoogle Scholar, no. 47; and xiv-2, no. 782 (pp. 337, 339).

page 148 note 1 This itinerary may be tentatively deduced from a consideration of Bale's books published during this period. A Christen Exhortacyon unto Customable Swearers was published in 1543 by Christopher van Endhoven's widow in Antwerp; and then a series of Bale's works came from the press of A. Goinus in the same city. Bale's edition of Rhithmi vetustissimi, Wesel 1546, sig. A2, also mentions that Bale had been at Antwerp two years previously. About 1546 Bale apparently moved to Wesel, where ten of his books (beginning with The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe) emerged from the press of Dirik van der Straten. (This writer is indebted for this information to Miss Katharine Pantzer of Houghton Library, Harvard University, editor of the soon-to-appear revised edition of the Short-Title Catalogue).

page 148 note 3 Examples of the latter are found in British Museum MS. Harley 3838, fols. 156–249; and in Bodleian Library MS. Selden supra 41, fols. 107–95.

page 149 note 1 British Museum MS. Harley 3838, fols. 1–112.

page 149 note 2 See Bale, John, Kynge Johan, ed. Collier, J. P., London 1838Google Scholar; and also the valuable critical edition by Adams, B. B., ‘John Bale's Kynge Johan, Edited With An Introduction And Notes,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1963Google Scholar; and also Blatt, op. cit., 99–129.

page 149 note 3 For a full discussion of all this, see Haller, op. cit., 60–71.

page 149 note 4 The revised edition of the Short-Title Catalogue (hereafter STC), in preparation Houghton Library, Harvard University, gives‘1545?’ as the date for the first edition, and Stephen Mierdman as the printer. The three parts must have been published by September, 1546, at any rate, for they were banned in that year by royal proclamation: see Guildhall, London, MS. 9531/12, fol. 92v (Bishop Bonner's register). Foxe erroneously assigned the proclamation to 1539: see Actes and Monuments, London 1563, 572–4. Bale must have been nearly finished with The Image in 1543, however, for in a work published in that year he referred to his commentary (already written) on Revelation, xxii: John Bale, A dysclosynge or openynge of the Manne of synne, Antwerp 1543, fols. 7v–8.

page 150 note 1 Bale was, of course, by no means the first historian to use the Book of Revelation as a key to Church history. For the historical exegesis of Revelation during the Middle Ages, see Kamlah, Wilhelm, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie, Berlin 1935. But Bale was the first to use Revelation as the basis for an elaborate protestant interpretation of Church history. Previous Continental historians of the Melanchthonian school (Carion and Sleidan, for example) had tended to think in terms of a four-monarchy scheme from the Book of Daniel: not as useful for post-Ascension history as the seven-fold scheme from Revelation.Google Scholar

page 150 note 2 See Haller, op. cit., 58–70; and Levy, Fritz, Tudor Historical Thought, San Marino, California 1967, 89–97Google Scholar.

page 150 note 3 It is true that in Kynge Johan Bale had painted his hero's beliefs in protestant hues: see Kynge Johan, ed. J. P. Collier, 16–17. But what might pass scrutiny in a popular dramatic performance would not survive criticism in a more serious saint's life, especially since the gap between Bale's portrayal and reality was so great.

page 151 note 1 For a thorough discussion of this MS. (Bodleian Library MS. e Musaeo 86) see Crompton, J., ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum,’ in this Journal, XII (1961), 35–45, 155–66Google Scholar. The manuscript has been published as: Thomas Netter of Walden, Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. Shirley, W. W., London 1858Google Scholar, in which Oldcastle's examination is found on 433–50. Another version of the examination (virtually identical with the one in Fasciculi Zizaniorum) may be found in Wilkins, David, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hibemiae, London 1737, III. 353–7Google Scholar.

page 151 note 2 Bale filled in certain blank leaves of the manuscript with his own notes (Bodleian Library MS. e Musaeo 86, fols. 98v–103v) and dated these notes ‘1543’—i.e., during his first exile.

page 151 note 3 The examinacion of Master William Thorpe preste … The examination of syr Ihon Oldcastell, ed. William Tyndale or George Constantine, Antwerp (J. Hcochstraten) ca. 1530. Another contemporary account of Oldcastle is found in Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, London 1864, ii. 297–9. This account is short and would have been of little use to Bale alongside the material in ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum’—even assuming that Bale in exile would have had access to the Walsingham chronicle. The argument that Bale used Walsingham heavily is not convincing; cf. Oliver, L. M., ‘Sir John Oldcastle: Legend or Literature?’ The Library, 5th series, I (1946–1947), 179 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 151 note 4 Sir Thomas More thought it was Constantine; and as More had kept the latter captive in his home in Chelsea, he certainly had access to first-hand information. But Foxe, like Bale, thought that the editor had been Tyndale, and Foxe reprinted the tract from a copy in Tyndale's handwriting: see Mozley, J. F., William Tyndale, London 1937, 346.Google Scholar

page 151 note 5 Rainer Pineas, art. cit. in Archiv für Reformationgeschichte, liii. 90–2.

page 151 note 6 John Bale, A brefe Chronycle concernynge … syr Johan Oldecastell (hereafter A brefe Chronycle), Antwerp 1544. For the place of publication and the printer (A. Goinus) see the revised edition of STC, no. 1276.

page 152 note 1 1 For information regarding Oldcastle's plot, see Waugh, W. T., ‘Sir John Oldcastle,’ English Historical Review, XX (1905), 434 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. and 637 ff.

page 152 note 2 John Bale, A brefe Chronycle, fol. 54v.

page 152 note 3 Ibid., fol. 2v.

page 152 note 4 Polydore Vergil's Anglicae Historiae Libri XXVI had been published at Basel in 1534. Bale had other bones to pick with Polydore as well—especially the Italian's coolness toward the historicity of the Arthurian legends. See Kendrick, T. D., British Antiquity, London 1950, 78 ff.Google Scholar; and also Haller, op. cit., 62–3 and Levy, op. cit., 96–7.

page 152 note 5 John Bale, A brefe Chronycle, fol. 6; cf. Polydore Vergil, op. cit., 435–6.

page 153 note 1 In fact, Bale seems to have invented out of whole cloth an interview between Oldcastle and Henry v, emphasising, the former's wholesome loyalty to his monarch. In this short passage (John Bale, A brefe Chronycle, fols. 13v–14) Oldcastle assures Henry of his total obedience, but adds that of course he opposes the pope with all his heart. This passage appears in none of the sources which Bale used, and indeed would be anachronistic if it did.

page 153 note 2 Ibid., fols. 7–8. In point of fact, Bale was wrong about the Praemunire legislation. Oldcastle's wife's grandfather, the Lord Cobham (whose title Oldcastle had assumed upon marriage) had been the one involved in this. Oldcastle himself evidently did not sit in Parliament until 1404: see Waugh, art. cit., 437.

page 153 note 3 The examination of… syr Ihon Oldcastell, ed. William Tyndale or George Constantine, sig. H3v; John Bale, A brefe Chronycle, fol. 16v.

page 154 note 1 The examination of … syr Ihon Oldcastell, sig. H4v; John Bale, A brefe Chronycle, fol. 18.

page 154 note 2 For Bale's rather erratic eucharistic thought, see Dugmore, C. W., The Mass and the English Reformers, London 1958, 234–6.Google Scholar

page 155 note 1 The 1548 edition came from the press of A. Scoloker and W. Seres (STC no. 1278).

page 155 note 2 John Bale, The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe, Wesel 1546 (November); John Bale, The lattre examinacyon of Anne Askewe, Wesel 1547 (January).

page 155 note 3 The scattered bits of biographical data concerning Anne Askew have recently been summarised in Wilson, Derek, A Tudor Tapestry, London 1972, especially 159–67, 180–224 and 229–34Google Scholar. For the atmosphere at Court at the end of Henry VIII's reign, see also Smith, L. B., Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, London 1971, 240 ff.Google Scholar

page 156 note 1 Both volumes have a ‘Marburg’ colophon, but for the actual printer, see McCusker, Honor, ‘Some Ornamental Initials Used by Plateanus of Wesel’, The Library, 4th series, XVI (1936), 452 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 156 note 2 For Bale's sources of information, see John Bale, The first examinacyon, fol. 5; and idem., The lattre examinacyon, fols. 11, 43v–4.

page 156 note 3 Ibid., fol. 8.

page 156 note 4 Ibid., fol. 37v.

page 157 note 1 John Bale, The first examinacyon, fols. 7–9v. Bale did not wholly repudiate the notion of the miraculous, but preferred to attribute miracles to God alone, and not to the saints—who (insofar as they were true saints) were noted for their faith, not for any extraordinary power over nature, Bale felt. He did accept the story that a thunder-clap had signalled Anne's execution, and he felt obliged to show that this phenomenon had indicated God's displeasure with Anne's executioners, and not with Anne herself (John Bale, The lattre examinacyon, fols. 67–8).

page 157 note 2 Gardiner, Stephen, The Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. Midler, J. A., New York 1933, 278.Google Scholar

page 157 note 3 John Bale, The lattre examinacyon, fols. 45, 47.

page 158 note 1 See his plays, or his introduction to Stephen Gardiner's De Vera Obedientia, ‘Roane’ 1553.

page 158 note 2 One minute factor confirming a part of Anne's account is found in the recollections of John Louthe. The latter records a discussion between Anne and the Lord Mayor of London, concerning the putative fate of a mouse who might inadvertently eat consecrated bread: Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. Nichols, J. G., London 1859, 41Google Scholar. Anne also mentions the incident in her account: John Bale, The first examinacyon, fol. 8.

page 158 note 3 John Bale, The lattre examinacyon, fol. 11v.

page 158 note 4 See for example Ibid., fol. 25.

page 158 note 5 For instance, John Bale, A dysclosynge or openynge of the Manne of synne, ‘Zurik’ (i.e. Antwerp) 1543, fol. 60v: ‘a mutuall pertycypacyon of christes bodye and blood …’. See also idem., The Image of bothe churches, London (S. Mierdman for R. Jugge) ca. 1548, ii, sig. H3: ‘mutual perticipacion of Christes body and bloud …’.

page 158 note 6 John Bale, The first examinacyon, fol. 38.

page 158 note 7 Guildhall, London, MS. 9531/12, fol. 101: printed in Foxe, Actes and Monuments, London 1563, 672–3.

page 159 note 1 One would still give a good deal to known what bishop Gardiner's specific objections to the pamphlets were (Gardiner, op. cit., 278). No one seems to have challenged their accuracy on matters of fact. It is possible that Gardiner's complaint may have been directed against Bale's vituperative commentary, rather than toward Anne's narrative, but this is not the plain sense of Gardiner's words.

page 159 note 2 Editions came from the London presses of N. Hill (probably), W. Hill, John Day and W. Copland, respectively (in the revised edition of STC, nos. 851, 852, 853, and 853.5). For the figure of 700 or so as the maximum number of copies in an edition, see Bennett, H. S., English Books and Readers, 1475 to 1557, Cambridge 1952, 228.Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 C. H. Garrett, The Marian Exiles, 78, 156.

page 160 note 2 For general comments on the influence of Bale on Foxe, see especially Haller, op. cit. 55 ff., and Levy, op. cit., 98–101. Bale had in the meantime produced one other work which was a saint's life in a sense: The vocacyon of Johan Bale to the bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande, ‘Rome’ (i.e. Wesel) 1553. This little autobiographical tract is in effect a saint's life written modestly by the ‘saint’ himself. In comparison with the Oldcastle and Askew pamphlets, however, this work (achieving only a single fugitive edition in Bale's lifetime) was much less significant in establishing the protestant saint's-life genre—though the pamphlet is in retrospect interesting as a step in the direction of English autobiography (see Fairfield, Leslie P., ‘The vocacyon of Johan Bale and Early English Autobiography’, Renaissance Quarterly, XXIV (1971), 327–40Google Scholar).

page 160 note 3 Foxe did accept willingly Bale's argument about the Oldcastle fracas at St. Giles's fields in 1414—that the whole story was a papist lie. Acknowledging that Walden, Fabyan, Polydore Vergil and others mentioned the abortive coup, Foxe nevertheless asserts (a bit weakly) that those writers failed to treat the incident ‘in al poyntes rightli…’ (Foxe, Actes and Monuments, London 1563, 275). His account follows Bale's closely. Here is evidently one instance in which Foxe allowed his protestant assumptions (and his admiration for Bale) to overcome any urge to probe into the sources too deeply. When attacked later for his version of the Oldcastle story, Foxe fortified the same position elaborately, though still with more rhetoric than proof: Actes and Monuments, London 1576, i. 547–65. Bale's image of Oldcastle, the protestant saint, was too attractive to renounce.