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The Roman Rite in Bale's King John

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edwin Shepard Miller
Edwin Shepard Miller*
Affiliation:
Stephens college, Columbia, Missouri
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Extract

Notice of King John has been concentrated on questions of date; revision; polemic purpose; treatment of history; influence of the Image of Hypocrisy, Kirchmayer's Pammachius, Lindsay's Satire of the Three Estates, and Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man; and relation to the morality play and the chronicle play, between which it seems transitional, with its effect upon the latter, especially upon the Troublesome Reign and Shakespeare's King John. Herbert Barke notices here and there the historical basis of its use of the Roman rite. Otherwise there has been almost no notice of a substance and technique that, beyond this basis, articulate structure, unite allegory and history, and must have made the propaganda emotional for a mid-sixteenth-century audience.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 1949 , pp. 802 - 822
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 Bales “Kynge Johan” und sein Verhältnis zur zeitgenössischen Geschichtsschreibung (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1937), pp. 78–79, 86, 101, 108–109, 118, 121–124, 125, 142–143.

2 Also upon the ministrants from the pope down : cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, friars, canons, etc.

3 With one exception, line numbering and quotations are from J. M. Manly, ed. Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Boston: Ginn, 1897), i, 525–618, who reprints from J. P. Collier (Camden Society, 1838).

4 The exception is the confession and absolution of John, printed for the first time by J. H. P. Pafford and W. W. Greg, eds. King Johan by John Bale, Malone Society Reprints (1931), pp. 78–79. The passage comes between the counterparts of 1767 and 1770 in Manly.

5 Matthew, xvi, 19: Et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum. Et quodcumque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in coelis; et quodcumque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in coelis.

6 Dramatic Writings of Bale (London: Early English Drama Society, 1907), p. 321.

7 See Abbot [Fernand] Cabrol, ed. The Roman Missal in Latin and English, 7th ed. (New York : Kennedy, 1930), p. 754; J. W. Legg, ed. The Sarum Missal, Edited from Three Early Manuscripts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1916), p. 254.

8 See Cabrol, p. 952; Legg, p. 284.

9 See also Matthew, xviii, 18.

10 John, xx, 22–23.

11 King John perhaps was presented at Cranmer's house, 1538-39. See Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office), xiv, ed. James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, Part 1 (1894), 22–23; Part 2 (1895), 337, 339.

12 Breviarium Romanum (Ratisbonae: Frederici Pustet, 1923), i, 1 (under “Formulae Brevissimae”).

15 In the early Church absolution was withheld for penance that was often canonical, public, rigorous, and long. Later it became the practice to absolve, as today, after confession, then to assign penance. The earliest record of indulgences is from the 11th century.

14 T. Brieger, “Indulgences”, New Schajf-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, v, 485.

16 Innocent III, with whom the historical John quarreled and with whom Usurped Power is identified (as in 1069), made “eare-confessyon a matere nessessary.” At his instigation the Fourth Lateran Council decreed (1215) that every Christian of the age of discretion confess at least once a year.

16 Cabrol, pp. 21–22:… quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere (percutit sibi pectus ter, dicens) : mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper virginem … orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.

17 In “gravissima mea culpa”, Dissimulation disagrees with the modern form (mea maxima culpa) and with medieval forms checked. These vary considerably. The modern form, though traced to the 14th century, did not become standard until late in the 16th. Bale may have been using a medieval form other than checked. If he changed the words, there seems no parody in them themselves.

18 See Adrian Fortescue, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, 3rd ed. revised and augmented by J. B. O'Connell (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1930), p. 422.

19 See [Christopher] Wordsworth, ed. Eorae Eboracensis, Surtees Society, cxxxii (1920), 149.

20 The question about “purgatory and holy bred” and the answer about prayers for the soul may have seemed either typical or, like the question and answer about “the new lernyng”, pointedly topical.

21 Edward Peacock, ed. Instructions for Parish Priests by John Myrc, EETS, O. S., xxxi, (1868, rev. 1902), 25–43. Cf. “certayne questyons what synne is, with the ordre of confessyon” [1536], Wordsworth, op. cit., pp. 147–154; and the “Form of Confession” from the “Prymer of Salysbury vse”, 1538 [the year King John probably was acted], William Maskell, ed. Monumenta Ritualia Ecdesiae Anglicanae, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1882), iii, 293–300.

22 The forms in Wordsworth and Maskell take up the sins, Commandments, wits, works of mercy bodily and spiritual, gifts of the Holy Ghost, sacraments, and Beatitudes.

23 Cf. Wordsworth, pp. 151–152.

24 The oath “in Godes name” two lines above and one line below seems punningly juxtaposed to stress the parody between.

25 There is, of course, the irony of a Vice's warranting his soul for another's.

26 … quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere (percutit sibi pectus ter dicens) : mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

27 The earliest recorded was after John's time—in 1300 by Boniface VIII.

28 Cabrol, p. 22: Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et, dismissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitum aeternam.

29 In the Middle Ages the form depended on the case. For examples see W. G. Henderson, ed. Manuale et Processionale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, Surtees Society, lxiii (1875), 129; Maskell, iii, 326–330.

30 These exclude passages about rites and prayers for the dead, excommunication, and relics.

31 A famous example is the Bull “Exurge, Domine”, which itemizes among other offences 41 heretical sentences from Luther's writings. Reprinted Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (New York: Scribner's, 1882–1930), vi, 233–247.

32 Sometimes lists ended with such statements as “I schewe 30U no mo artycles of be sentence, tyl an-ober day” (Arthur Brandeis, ed. Jacob's Well, Part i, EETS, O. S., cxv, 1900, p. 21), “and many other poyntes also longe unto thys greate sentence” (Maskell, iii, 325), and “obur poyntes bene many & fele” (Peacock, p. 67)—statements that must have seemed insidious to those who, for all they knew, might have been excommunicated ipso facto already. The synod of Bamberg, 1491, itemized 100 offences punishable with excommunication ipso facto.

33 For the points in various medieval forms with instructions about frequency and manner of reading, see Brandeis, pp. 13–31; Andrew Clark, ed. The English Register of Godstow Nunnery, Near Oxford, Part i, EETS, O. S., cxxix (1905), 3; Henderson, pp. 119–122, 86*–93*; Maskell, ii, clxxii; iii, 309–326; G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge: University Press, 1926), p. 359; Peacock, 60–66; Josiah Pratt, ed. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 4th ed. (London: Religious Tract Society), v, 21. Cf. “The Grete Sentence of Curs Expounded”, Thomas Arnold, ed. Select English Works of John Wyclif (Oxford: Clarendon, 1871), iii, 267–337.

34 For medieval relation between major excommunication and the anathema, see Maskell, ii, clxv–clxvi, clxviii.

35 Henderson, p. 94*

36 Peacock, p. 67.

37 Brandeis, p. 13.

38 Maskell, ii, clxxvi.

39 Owst, p. 359.

40 Brandeis, p. 14.

41 Peacock, p. 67.

42 Ibid.

43 Brandeis, p. 14.

44 The lines “This thyng to publyshe I constytute yow thre, Gevyng yow my power and my full autoryte” are vague if representative. For a detailed example, see Brandeis, pp. 13–14.

45 Pratt, v, 21.

46 When England was under interdict for between six and seven years at the time of the historical John, all rites were stopped except baptism, confession, and the viaticum. See E. B. Krehbiel, The Interdict, Its History and Its Operation, with Especial Attention to the Time of Pope Innocent III, 1198–1216 (Washington: American Historical Assn., 1909), pp. 13–18. In his list in the play (1250–53) Clergy includes baptism among those stopped.

47 The type indicated here is general local, with everybody in general under it when in the locality but not when away.

48 In theory they gained more later by the submission of the excommunicate than they lost meanwhile by the interdict.

49 Cf. Henderson, p. 86*.

50 Henderson, pp. 121, 87*; Peacock, p. 61.

51 F. W. D. Brie, ed. The Brut or the Chronicles of England, Part i, EETS, O. S., cxxxi (1906), 169.

52 See Barke, p. 143.

53 G. E. Corrie, ed. Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, Parker Society (1845), pp. 179–180.

54 Henry Walter, ed. Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Portions of the Holy Scriptures by William Tyndale, Parker Society (1848), pp. 281–282.

55 Ibid., p. 271.

56 John Ayre, ed. The Catechism of Thomas Becon … with Other Pieces, Parker Society (1844), p. 556.

57 Medieval Stage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903), ii, 224.