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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Let us contemplate Thomas Cranmer, Primate of All England, sitting on an altar to preside over the trial of Anabaptist heretics. The time is May 1549; the altar, unceremoniously covered over to support the judge, is that of the Lady Chapel in St Paul’s Cathedral in London; several of the heretics on trial have denied the Catholic doctrine of the incarnation, and one will later be burned at the stake. In a compelling paradox, an archbishop tramples an altar of Our Lady in the course of defending the incarnation. One witness in the crowd of onlookers was a pious and scholarly Welsh Catholic, Sir Thomas Stradling, who later wrote down his reactions to the occasion. He interpreted it as the uncannily accurate fulfilment of an eleventh-century prophecy to be found in a manuscript in his own library: Cranmer, he pointed out, went on to be punished for his blasphemy first by the 1549 rebellions and then by his fiery death at the stake.’
1 Thomas, G.C.G., ‘The Stradling Library at St. Donat’s, Glamorgan’, National Library of Wales Journal, 24 (1986), 402–19 Google Scholar, at 408. There are several notices of this incident: [?N. Harpsfield,], Bishop Cranmer’s Recantacyons, ed. Lord Houghton with introd. by J. Gairdner, Philobiblon Society Miscellanies, 15 (1877-84) 15; A Chronicle of England … by Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald, ed. W.D. Hamilton, 2 vols, Camden Society, 2nd ser., 11, 20 (1875-7), 2:10; Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. Gough Nichols, Camden Society, 1st ser., 53 (1852), 58. For the surviving account of the trial of the antinomian radical John Champneis, see Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Cranmer, fol. 71V; other accounts in the register, notably that of the later martyr Joan Bocher, have been lost.
2 Halkin, L.E., Erasmus: a Critical Biography (Oxford, 1993), 224–5, 229 Google Scholar. The Ciceronian is tr. in Collected Works of Erasmus, XXVIII, ed. A.H.T. Levi (Toronto, 1986): see 381-2. Erasmus’s main Marian works are to be found in Collected Works of Erasmus, LXIX: Spiritualia and Pastoralia, ed. J.W. O’Malley (Toronto, 1999): cf. 25, 44-5, and for his embarrassment, ibid., 40.
3 Collected Works of Erasmus, LXVI: Spiritualia: Enchiridion; De contemptu mundi; De vidua Christiana, ed. J.W. O’Malley (Toronto, 1988), 71.
4 Halkin, Erasmus, 230.
5 Ibid., 229. Halkin points out that Erasmus’s close friend John Fisher continued in his preaching to make use of the Song of Songs in relation to Mary.
6 Ibid., 225: cf Modus orandi deum: Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam, 1969-), 5.1:146-7.
7 Halkin, , Erasmus, 209. Cf. Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. Allen, P.S., Allen, H.M., and Garrod, H.W., 12 vols (Oxford 1906-58), 8:421 Google Scholar, Ep. 2310, for a preacher’s attack on Erasmus for this change.
8 Opera Erasmi, 6.5:490-2.
9 On the Colloquies, see Aston, M., England’s Iconoclasts I: Laws against Images (Oxford, 1988), 197–9.Google Scholar
10 Cf. interesting remarks on this in Pelikan, J., Mary through the Centuries: her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven and London, 1996), 210–11.Google Scholar
11 Halkin, , Erasmus, 106/316: Collected Works of Erasmus, XXXLX-XL: Colloquies, ed. Thompson, C.R, 2 vols (Toronto and London, 1997)Google Scholar, 2:630-3, 636; An Admonition showing the Advantages which Christendom might Derive from an Inventory of Relics, in Calvin’s Theological Tracts and Treatises, ed. H. Beveridge, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1844-51), 1:287-341, esp. 316-18.
12 Collected Works of Erasmus: Colloquies, 1:355; Opera Erasmi 5.1 (Modus orandi deum), 155-6, 172; cf. Halkin, Erasmus, 2.2.2.
13 Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to he Read in Churches in the Time of the Late Queen Elizabeth (1852), 206-8. For discussion, see Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 320-5, esp. n.96.
14 Precationes aliquot novae (Basel, 1535): Levi, Collected Works of Erasmus, LXIX, 117-52, at 126-7, cited by Halkin, , Erasmus, 261, 334 Google Scholar. Cf. Erasmus’s attempts to balance his material in the Colloquies and elsewhere in his writings of the 1530s: Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 199; Halkin, Erasmus, 225.
15 Ibid., 226-8: Levi, Collected Works of Erasmus, LXIX, 79-108, esp. 98-9.
16 Halkin, Erasmus, 331.
17 For the texts of their correspondence, see B. Collett, A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage: the Correspondence of Marguerite D ‘Angoulême and Vittoria Colonna 1540-1545, Studies in Reformed Theology and History, n.s. 6 (2001), 125-43; and for Colonna, the Virgin, and Michelangelo, ibid., 87, 89-92.
18 Cottret, B., Calvin: a Biography (Grand Rapids, MI, and Edinburgh, 2000), 62.Google Scholar
19 Oberman, H.A, The Impact of the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1994)Google Scholar, 213, quoting Die Chronik des Bernhard Wyss, 1519-1530, ed. G. Finsler, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte, 1 (Basle, 1901), 16.
20 Address to German Nobility, 75: D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, 1883-) [hereafter WA], 6:447, 18, and n. For an illustration of a copy of Michael Ostendorfer’s 1520 print of the Regensburg pilgrimage, with an added hostile MS comment of 1523 by Albrecht Dürer, S. Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: the Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (1993), pl. 3. For the noticeable late medieval association between Marian devotion and anti-Semitism, see Rubin, M., ‘Europe remade: purity and danger in late medieval Europe’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 11 (2001), 101–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 118-19.
21 Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 35-6.
22 Bireley, R., The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700 (1999), 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Goertz, H.-J., Thomas Müntzer: Apocalyptic Mystic and Revolutionary (Edinburgh, 1993), 114–16.Google Scholar
24 Michalski, Reformation and Visual Arts, 92.
25 On Paris, 1528, and Geneva, 1532, see Cottret, Calvin, 49. On the image from Cadiz at St Alban’s College Valladolid, see Shell, A., Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660 (1999), 200–7.Google Scholar
26 Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 39-43. Lutherans nevertheless got no credit from Orthodox Christians for their positive attitude to the visual: the memories of 1520s northern atrocities like Riga remained strong. Michalski, Reformation and Visual Arts, 102, 114, 134-5, 148, 154.
27 Useful treatments in English are Brooks, P. Newman, ‘A lily ungilded? Martin Luther, the Virgin Mary and the saints’, Journal of Religious History, 13 (1984), 136–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and G. Müller, ‘Protestant veneration of Mary: Luther’s interpretation of the Magnificat’, in Kirk, J., ed., Humanism and Reform: the Church in Europe, England and Scotland, 1400-1643. Essays in Honour of James K. Cameron, SCH.S, 8 (1991), 99–112 Google Scholar. The work is to be found in WA, 7:538-604.
28 WA, 7:568, 11 and 15-16; 7:573, 32-3.
29 WA, 7:569,33-570. 3.
30 Cf. Halkin, Erasmus, 105.
31 WA, 7:569, 14-15.
32 WA, 7:601, 8-11.
33 Tappolet, W. with Ebneter, A., Das Marienlob der Reformatoren: Martin Luther, Johannes Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger (Tübingen, 1962), 357–65 Google Scholar. For further discussion of Luther and Mary, see Düfel, H., Luthers Stellung zur Marienuerehrung (Gottingen, 1968).Google Scholar
34 On Luther’s hymnology, Tappolet, Marienlob, 127-44, and on this poem, 141 -4. See also Brooks, ‘Lily ungilded’, 147, and Pelikan, Mary, 13.
35 Tappolet, Marienlob, 156. The editors of the Rheims Testament underlined Luther’s rationale when they complained that English Protestants only retained Marian feasts which were really Christocentric, ‘so that she by this meanes shal have no festivitie at al’: The New Testament of Jesus Christ (Rheims, 1582), 191. For Luther’s remarks on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1516-17, see Rubin, ‘Europe remade’, 121.
36 Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, ed. E.C. Whitaker, Alcuin Club Collections, 55 (1974), 140-1.It is a token of Cranmer’s characteristic self-effacement that the Feast of the Visitation was his birthday.
37 For a modernized and abridged text, Tappolet, Marienlob, 221-39. For a similar Marian sermon from Bullinger, preached and published in 1558 because ‘contumeliose nos loqui de beate virgine’, see ibid., 275-302.
38 Locher, G.W., Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives (Leiden, 1981), 60 Google Scholar; on the Marian festivals, ibid., 89, 91, and K. Biegger, De invocatione beatae Mariae Virginis’: Paracelsus und die Marienverehrung, Kosmosophie, 6 (1990), 86. For Zwingli’s defence of using the scriptural Hail Mary, see Oberman, Impact, 243. Note cautious comments on the liturgical use of the angelic salutation by the prominent Zürich pastor Ludwig Lavater, De ritibus et institutis ecclesiae Tigurinae (1559), qu. Private Prayers put forth by Authority during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. W. Keatinge Clay, PS (Cambridge, 1851), viii.
39 ‘Hac caussa credimus et Deiparae virginis Marie purissimum thalamum et spiritus sancti templum, hoc est, sacrosanctum corpus eius deportatum esse ab angelis in coelum’: Bullinger, H., De origine erroris libri duo (Zurich, 1539)Google Scholar, fol. 69V, and subsequent edns; the sentence does not occur in the much shorter first version, Zürich, 1529. On Zwingli and the Assumption, see Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, 89-90.
40 Tappolet, Marienlob, 327.
41 ’ Beveridge, Calvin’s Theological Tracts and Treatises, 1:118-20; this is Calvin’s riposte to 25 Articles put out on 10 March 1542 by the doctors of theology in the University of Paris. On Luther: Tappolet, Marienlob, 126.
42 J. Cadier, ‘La Vierge Marie dans la dogmatique réformée au XVIe et au XVlle siècle’, La Revue réformée, 9/no. 36 (1958/iv), 46-58, at 46 makes the point that there is no reference to Mary in Marlorat’s index to the Institutes.
43 Bouwsma, W.J., Cahin:a Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York and Oxford, 1988), 123, 267.Google Scholar
44 Taking their cue from Calvin, the notes to the Geneva Bible are remarkably taciturn on Maty, even in passages where it would be obvious to comment on her, with the notable exception of condemnations of papist misattribution to her of honorific titles at Ezek. 7.18 and 44.17: The Bible: that is the Holy Scriptures conteined in the Old and New Testament (1606), sigs HH8v and KK6r.
45 Sermons and Remains of Hugh Latimer, ed. G.E. Corrie, PS (Cambridge, 1845), 393. On Mary and the Lollards, see Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 130-9; Marsh, C., Popular Religion in Sixteenth Century England: Holding their Peace (Houndmills, 1998), 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
46 Sermons of Latimer, ed. G.E. Corrie, PS (Cambridge, 1844), 383,515; Corrie, Sermons and Remains of Latimer, 91, 117, 157-8; An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, the Supper of the Lord… and William Tracy’s Testament expounded. By Tyndale, William, ed. Walter, H. PS (Cambridge, 1850), 207 Google Scholar. Latimer was nevertheless equally prepared to use Mary’s silence (Luke 2.51) as an example to other women to keep silent: Corrie, Sermons and Remains of Latimer, 91.
47 Foster, CW., The State of the Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, as Illustrated by Documents Relating to the Diocese of Lincoln, Vol. 1, Lincoln Record Society, 23 (1926), 370.Google Scholar
48 The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: the Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. L. Harder, Classics of the Radical Reformation, 4 (Scottdale, PA, 1985), 362 and n.1, p. 719: the number seven derives from Mk. 6.3, where the mention of four brothers and plural sisters of Jesus indicates a minimum of seven children in the Holy Family.
49 Quoted in Mâle, E., Religious Art (1949), 167 Google Scholar. On the medieval background to celestial flesh doctrine, see Williams, G.H., The Radical Reformation (1962), 325–35.Google Scholar
50 Duke, A., ‘The face of popular religious dissent in the Low Countries, 1520-1530’, JEH, 26 (1975), 41–67 Google Scholar, at 52, quoting Gouda, Gemeentearchief, Oud-rechterlijk archief 147, fol. 45V, and Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae, ed. P. Fredericq, 5 vols (Ghent and The Hague, 1889-1902), 4:372.
51 ’ Corrie, Sermons of Latimer, 60.
52 Williams, Radical Reformation, 245.
53 Ibid., 329, 330-2. Hofmann may have been aware that one of Bernard of Clairvaux’s best-known sermons on Mary employed the metaphor of an aqueduct to describe her role in mediating grace. See Ellington, Donna Spivey, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul. Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC, 2001), 128.Google Scholar
54 On Bocher’s beliefs, and those of her contemporary English radicals, see Horst, I.B., The Radical Brethren (Nieuwkoop, 1972), 109–15 Google Scholar. See Williams, Radical Reformation, 394-5, 490-2.
55 Ibid., 176-8.
56 Ibid., 490-3, 562, 610, 666-8, 745. For a late sixteenth-century echo of Italian unitarianism in Menocchio the Friulian miliar, see del Col, A., tr. and Tedeschi, A.J., Domenico Scandella known as Menocchio: his Trials before the Inquisition (1583-1590) (Binghamton, NY, 1996), esp. liii–liv, 4, 6–8, 54.Google Scholar
57 One notices, for instance, that when a group of Swiss radicals in Appenzell fell under the spell of a local woman, she proclaimed herself to be a new and female Messiah, but not the new Mary: A. Jelsma, ‘A “Messiah for women”: religious commotion in the north-east of Switzerland, 1525-1526’,SCH, 27 (1989), 295-306.
58 Biegger, De invocatione’, provides an edition of the main Marian tract and invaluable general discussion; see also Gause, U., Paracelsus (1493-1541): Cenese und Entfaltung seiner frühen Theologie (Tübingen, 1993)Google Scholar. Biegger, ‘De invocatione’, 60-8, seeks to date the work at c.1527, but much is uncertain in Paracelsus chronology. The text of De Trinitate can be found in Goldammer, K., ed., Paracelsus: sammtliche Werke: Abtl. II: theologische und religiotisphilosophische Scriften, Band III: dogmatische undpolemische Einzelschriften (Wiesbaden, 1986), 233–66 Google Scholar, and see discussion, ibid., xlii-xliv. 1 am much indebted to Charles Webster for pointing me to mate rial on Paracelsus.
59 Biegger, De invocatione’, 26-38, 201.
60 Ibid., 51, 163, 197, 254-5.
61 Ibid., 238, 248, 262.
62 Williams, Radical Reformation, 286-8, 292.
63 Boehme, J., The Way to Christ (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, esp. 9, 44, 150. The English conformist polemicist Thomas Rogers claimed in the 1580s that the women of the radical sect the Family of Love believed that they were all Marys, ‘and say, that Christ is come forth in their fleshe’: P. Crawford, Women and Reformation in England, 1500-1720 (1993), 122, qu. T.Rogers, The Family of Love, sigs kv, kii. The beliefs expressed by the Familists themselves contain no trace of this canard: cf e.g. C. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society (Cambridge, 1994), Ch.2.
64 Cf. e.g. Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. G.W. Bromiley (Philadelphia, PA, 1953), 256, Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, 87, and Bullinger’s use of’Deipara’, above, n.39; A Disputation on Holy Scripture… by William Whitaker, ed. W. Fitzgerald, PS (Cambridge, 1849), 538, 603.
65 Cf. e.g. Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures. By William Tyndale, ed. H. Walter, PS (Cambridge, 1848), 315; Walter, Answer, 28; Tappolet, Marienlob, 55 (Luther); Hackett, H., Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Houndmills, 1995)Google Scholar, 204 (William Perkins); above, 203. It may be that some early Reformers saw the Assumption as a possible argument against the doctrine of psychopannichia (soul-sleep) held by some radicals.
66 For some English examples, Walter, Treatises by Tyndale, 159; Walter, Answer, 131; Joliffe, H. and Johnson, R., Responsio venerabilium sacerdotum, Henrici Joliffi et Roberti Jonson (Antwerp, 1564)Google Scholar, fol. 165V (John Hooper); The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, ed. J. Ayre, 2 vols in 4, PS (Cambridge, 1845-50), 3:611, 4:1045-6, 4:1053; A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures …by W. Fulke, ed. C.H. Hartshorne, PS (Cambridge, 1843), 35; Fitzgerald, Disputation by Whitaker, 504-5.
67 Steinmetz, D., Calvin in Context (New York and Oxford, 1995), 86 Google Scholar, citing WA, 44:324: Luther’s lectures on Genesis, 1545.
68 Works of Roger Hutchinson, ed. J. Bruce, PS (Cambridge, 1842), 148.
69 On More, see Walter, , Answer, 96; cf. Remains of Myles Coverdale, ed. Pearson, G. PS (Cambridge, 1846), 414.Google Scholar
70 [T. Swynnerton], J. Roberts [pseud.], A mustre of scismatyke bysshoppes of Rome (1534), sigs Eviiir-Fir. For the importance of the argument over ‘unwritten verities’, see P. Marshall, ‘The debate over “unwritten verities” in early Reformation England’, in Gordon, B., ed., Protestant History and Identity in 16th Century Europe (Aldershot, 1996), 60–77.Google Scholar
71 Documents on the Continental Reformation, ed. W.R. Naphy (Basingstoke, 1996), 97 (Zwingli); Tappolet, Marienloh, 227, 246 (Zwingli and Osiander); The Decades of Henry Bullinger, cd. T. Harding, 4 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1849-52), 4:437; Cadier, ‘Vierge Marie’, 47 (Calvin); Works of Archbishop Cranmer, ed. J.E. Cox, 2 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1844-6), 2:60; The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, ed. R. Eden, PS (Cambridge, 1842), 426-7 (Caelius Curio and Philpot); Corrie, Sermons and Remains of Latimer, 104-6; Early Writings of Bishop Hooper, ed. S. Carr, PS (Cambridge, 1843), 161; Ayre, Works of Jewel, 3:440.
72 Tappolet, Marienlob, 245, 280. More cautiously, Archbishop Cranmer’s theological common-place books noted that the allegorical argument from Ezek. 44 was a possible direction to take: Cox, Works of Cranmer, 2:60.
73 Walter, Answer, 33; Bouwsma, Calvin, 267; Fulke’s Answers to Stapleton, Martiall and Sanders, ed. R. Gibbings, PS (Cambridge, 1848), 272; Fitzgerald, Disputation by Whitaker, 538.
74 Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.7.5: Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. W.R. Speed Hill et al., 7 vols (Cambridge and Binghamton, NY, 1977-94), 1:179.27. On Catholic awareness of the Protestant problem in relation to the Perpetual Virginity, see [P. de la Place], Commentaires de I’estat de la religion et Republique soubs les Rois Henry et Francois seconds et Charles neufieme ([Paris], 1565), 291-4, and S.M. Manetsch, Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France 1572-1598 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2000), 274–5. I am grateful to Philip Benedict for pointing me to these references.
75 Naphy, Documents, 97.
76 Ibid., 101.
77 Tappolet, Marienlob, 246; see above, 208.
78 Walsham, A., Providence in Early Modem England (Oxford, 1999), 80, 91–3.Google Scholar
79 Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety (Cambridge, 1991), 120–1 Google Scholar, and on Protestant attitudes to Joseph, cf Hartshorne, Defence by Fulke, 535-6.
80 Cf. Calvin, Theological Treatises, ed. J.K.S. Reid, Library of Christian Classics, 22 (1954), 97, the Latin catechism of Geneva, 27 Nov. 1545, almost certainly composed by Calvin; A Catechism in Latin by Alexander Nowell… Together with the Same Catechism Translated into English by Thomas Norton, ed. G.E. Corrie.PS (Cambridge, 1853), 150; I. Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530-1740 (Oxford, 1996), 336.
81 Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570), ed. R.B. Bond (Toronto, 1987),200, a 1547 reference where an allusion to Luke 1.52 in the Magnificat was made more explicit in 1563 (cf. Certain Sermons or Homilies (1852), 139); Homilies, ed. Bond, 169; Certain Sermons or Homilies (1852), 150.
82 EA. McKee, Katharina Schiitz Zell, 2 vols, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 69 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 1999). For similar comment, see Russell, P., Lay Theology in the Reformation. Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany 1521–1525 (Cambridge, 1985), 203, 201, 222 Google Scholar. On Counter-Reformation discussion of the humility of Mary, see particularly Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul, 182-4.
83 C.B. and Atkinson, J.B., ‘The identity and life of Thomas Bentley, compiler of The Monument of Matrones ’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 (2000), 323–47 Google Scholar, at 328.
84 Perhaps most telling is Hackett’s balanced discussion of the much-exploited sermon of Dr John King preached immediately after Elizabeth’s death: Hackett, Virgin Mother, 225.
85 For the importance of the private chapel of the statesman Robert Cecil at Hatfield, begun in 1607, see Croft, P., ‘The religion of Robert Cecil’, HistJ, 34 (1991), 773–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 787-9.
86 Cadier, ‘Vierge Marie’, 49-53: C. Drelincourt, De l’honneur qui doit estre rendu a la saincle et bienheureuse Vierge Marie: Auec la response a Monsieur I’euesque de Belief sur la qualilé de cét honneur (Paris, 1642).
87 Ayre, Works of Jewel, 3:578.
