Print Catholic

'Domme Preachers'? Post - Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture ofPrint

Alexandra Walsham

Past and Present, No. 168. (Aug., 2000), pp. 72-123.

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'DOMME PREACHERS'? POST- REFORMATION ENGLISH CATHOLICISM

AND THE CULTURE OF PRINT"

'Either the pope must abolish knowledge and printing, or printing must at length root him out', declared the martyrologist John Foxe in his famous Acts and Monuwzents, first published in 1563. 'God hath opened the press to preach, whose voice the Pope is never able to stop with all the puissance of his triple crown'. Foxe heralded 'the excellent arte of printing, most happily of late found out, and now commonly practised everywhere to the singular benefite of Christes Church', as a providential gift from God to the Reformation cause.' His assertion of an intimate link between the triumph of Protestantism and the advent of print was something of a topos in the writings of the Continental reformers. Luther had proclaimed Gutenberg's press as the Lord's 'highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward', an instrument of liberation and enlightenment which would emancipate the masses by placing in their hands the vernacular Scriptures2 This conviction found iconographical expression in the illustrated title-page of Henry VIII's Great Bible of 1539, which portrayed the Icing magnanim- ously dispersing the book of God's Word, z~erbuvzdei, to a populace imprisoned in ignorance and superstition by the papacy and priesthood (Plate

* I am grateful to John Bossy, Patrick Collinson, Anne Dillon, Arnold Hunt, Michael Questier, Alison Shell and Bill Sherman for reading earlier versions of this essay, and to members of the Catholic Record Society who made helpful comments when it was presented at the annual conference in 1997.

' John Foxe, Acts and ,Cfoiztr~r~cnts, ed. S. R. Cattley, 8 vols. (London, 1853-9), iii, 720; and his preface to The W'holc Workcs of W . Tylidull, John Frith und Doct or Barlies (London, 1573, STC 24436), sigs. A2'-3'.

Cited by M. H. Black in 'The Printed Bible', in S. L. Greenslade (ed.), Thz Ca~rlbridxc History of the Bibiz, iii, Thz W'zst, ,froril the Reforrilut~on to the Preseizt 1)uy (Cambridge, 1963), 432. 'See John King, Tudor Royal Iconogrupily :Litzrature und Art iiz an Agz of Reliyiolcs

Cris~s(Princeton, 1989), 51, ch. 2 pussbrl; R. W . Scribner, For the Sakz of S~ri~plc Folk: Poptrlur Propazanda ,hr thz Gcrtnun Rcjjrrilution (Cambridge, 1994), 104.

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1. The Byble in Englyshe [The Great Bible] (London, 1539, STC 2048), title-page.

Cambridge University Library: shelfmark Young 35 (By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

74 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 168

Such statements and images find an echo in the writings of modern historians. According to A. G. Dickens and others, the Protestant Reformation was 'from the first the child of the printed book', a movement which 'turned a technical invention into a spiritual obligation', and so imaginatively pioneered its use as a mass medium that the two can almost be regarded as inseparable twins.4 The obvious corollary of this line of argument is the lingering opinion that popery and the printing press should be situated in stark opposition. This too has its roots in confessional polemic. A broadsheet dating from 1625 depicts a balance in which the Bible easily outweighs a vast conglomeration of Catholic equipment: all 'the Popes Trinkets' - bells, beads, crosses -and 'the Dive11 to boot' cannot tip the scales in favour of 'false- hood' (Plate 2).5 It was commonplace for Protestant preachers and pastors to equate the credulity of country congregations with their orality, and to allege that residual Catholicism would soon evaporate if ordinary people acquired the ability to read.6 This paradigm has proved remarkably resilient. It is still sometimes supposed that the Church of Rome adopted an essentially negative and reactionary attitude to the new mode of communication made possible by the device of movable type. Those at the centre of attempts to combat the Lutheran schism signally failed to exploit the spread of literacy and the nuclear weapon of print. In the context of the Council of Trent, moreover, Catholicism is alleged to have developed an inherent and even neurotic distrust of the book as 'a silent heretic' and 'carrier of depravity' - sentiments seemingly embodied in that notorious mechanism of censorship, the Index, and in the book-burning activities of the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions. Traditional accounts of these organs of the Counter-Reformation not only hold them responsible for snuffing out humanism and Protestantism in the Iberian and Italian pen- insulas, but also for stifling intellectual impulses, 'fossilizing'

'A. G. Dickens, Rejbritlarli~n arid Society in Sisreentil-Csntztry Burope (London, 19661, 51; Fran~ois Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Readirig arld Writirig: Literacy I V I Frailcs

froin Culz~iri ro J~tles Ferry (Cambridge, 1982), 59. See also Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Pririr~rig Prsss as an Agsnt of Cliailge: Ci~it~rr~ui~icutions and Culrztral TrunsJ1rl7iarii1ils iii Early-,Clodern Burops (Cambridge, 1979>,ch. 4.

' A Sen-Yesres-Gift & ~ r rhe Pops ([London, c.16251, STC 20112;, a version of an illustration in Foxe.

An assumption implicit in works like George Gifford, A Briefs Disci~urse of Cerrairle Pozilres of the Religzon, nhicli is uiiiorig rhe Ci~initli~n Sort of Cliristiaris (London, 1581, STC 11845).

75 'DOMME PREACHERS'?

n ~ e a r - ~ e e r c s - ~ i f t'forthe Pope. &me kcthe differenceplainly ddiid~d,betwecnc ruth a ~ dFalthcd

Not all the Popeslrinkcts,whichhetrc are1rought forth, Can babnce the Blblc for wcighr, and trite worth : Your Bells, B d and CroKes, you Tee will not dw't, Or pull downe your Scale. wbth the Diuell to boot.

To the Tunccf, Thgmrmie t ,& .

2. A ,\-ex'-Yeeres-Gift for rile Pope ( [ L o n d o n , c. 16251, STC 20112) , detail: based o n a n illustration i n J o h n Foxe's Acts arid L\.latlutiletlrr.

(Bj,per~tiirrian of the Peppys I,ibrilry, i\/lagdaletle College, Gainbridge)

academic culture and creating a climate hostile to popular education and reading.'

But this cluster of interrelated assumptions has recently been the subject of some serious questioning. There is growing recogni- tion that the debate about making the Bible available in vernacular languages divided Christians on both sides of the confessional divide. In reaction against the anarchic forces released by the

- Virgilio Pinto Crespo, 'Thought Control in Spain', in Stephen Haliczer ied.:, Iiirjui~ztzoi~a ~ i d S o c r e t ~ tti Earl\ .Cfocfer~i Europe (London, 1987>, 175, I-', 185

76 PAST AiXD PRESENT iXLTMBER 168

Peasants' War, the reformers increasingly filtered the Scriptures to the laity through the sieve of the catechism. Clerical elites acted as mediators and 'gatekeepers', regulating the transmission of sacred knowledge to prevent its misappropriation, an insight that has enabled Gerald Strauss and Richard Gawthrop to argue that there is no necessary connection or causal nexus between Lutheranism and the expansion of l i t e r a ~ y . ~ The work of Bob Scribner has taught us how heavily the initial diffusion of Reformation ideas depended on oral and visual media, on preach- ing, pictures and plays, rousing songs and informal discussions of S ~ r i p t u r e . ~ As Patrick Collinson and Tessa Watt have shown, the first generation of English reformers likewise utilized drama, music and art in their bid to undermine the prestige of the papacy and spread their evangelical message, harnessing the services of playwrights and actors, balladmongers and minstrels, engravers and cartoonists to gain access to the uneducated.'' It was hybrid media combining text with image and sound which made most impact on a still largely illiterate populace. Some Protestant ministers, moreover, were slow and even rather reluctant to embrace print as a proselytizing tool, regarding the mechanical press as the handmaiden of the pulpit and books as a poor substitute for sermons. The 'dead letter' of a dusty tome on a shelf, protested dozens of dedicatory epistles, was vastly 'lesse effectual' than the living, spoken Word. Typography could never capture its quasi- sacramental and kinetic qualities. Others feared that the lazy and ill-informed might sit at home supposing 'a printed paper' would 'suffice to get faith for salvation', and so cease to attend services at their parish churches. If, in the end, many puritan preachers

"ee Bob Scribner, 'Heterodoxy, Literacy and Print in the Early German Reformation', in Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (eds.), Heres), aird Literac.~, 1000- 1530 (Cambridge, 1994), esp. 2-5-8; Jean-Franqois Gilmont, 'Conclusion', in Jean- Franqois Gilmont (ed. ), The Reforlnatio~i and the Book, trans. Karin Maag (Aldershot, 1998>, 413-5; Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, 'Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany', Pasr and Present, no. 104 (Aug. 1984:. See also Gerald Strauss, 'Lutheranism and Literacy: A Reassessment', in Kaspar von Greyerz (ed.:, Religzon and Socier.~ 111 Earl), .Zfodern Europe (London, 1984:.

R. K'. Scribner, 'Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas', repr. in his Popular Culture and Popular ~Cfozonenrs In ReJorlnarion Ger,nan) (London, 1981:; see also his For the S a k e of S~nrp le Folk.

lo Patrick Collinson, F Y O ~ I t11 Iconophobia: The Cultural Iwipact of the I c o ~ i ~ c l a s n ~ Second English f?ef~~rlnation (Reading, 1986:; and his The B l r r h p a n ~ s ig Protestant England: Religzous and Cultural Change Iri the Sixteenth and Sezozteenth Ce~zrurics (iXew York, 1988), ch. 4; Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Poplrlar P le t j , 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991).

'DOMME PREACHERS'? 7 7

succumbed to the merits of the new medium and generated a large body of practical divinity designed to meet the needs of lay people right across the spectrum of literacy, it should not be forgotten that, at least initially, Protestantism and print formed a somewhat uneasy coalition. l1

On the other hand, it is increasingly clear that older character- izations of Roman Catholicism as intrinsically hostile to print are themselves untenable. Long before Luther and Foxe, leading churchmen like the conciliarist Nicholas of Cusa were declaring the mechanical press a 'divine art' of inestimable evangelical potential. l2 The burgeoning of a religious book-culture predated the Protestant schism: in late medieval Bavaria, printed lists of miracles acted as an 'extended arm' of preachers charged with promoting pilgrimage to popular shrines; in Spain, the humanist Cardinal Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros was not only the master- mind behind a massive polyglot Bible, but an enthusiastic patron of spiritual works in Spanish and Latin; and in the Low Countries the shift in the sociology of book ownership produced by printing converged powerfully with tendencies inherent in the devotio nzoderna, helping to foster the trend towards individual meditation, silent prayer and interior dialogue with God enshrined in Thomas a IZempis's Illzitation of Christ.13 Across the Channel, print injected new life into manuscript classics like John Mirk's Festial of sermons and Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, both of which number among the earliest incunabula to appear from the presses of William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde.14 Even more significantly, on the eve of the Reformation, some fifty

l L Quotations from John King, Lectures irpon Jonas, Delzcered at Yorke (Oxford, 1599, STC 14976), sig. *T; and John Barlow, Hierotis Lust Fore-Well (London, 1618, STC 1438), sig. A4'. See also D. F. McKenzie, 'Speech-Manuscript-Print', Lib. Chrori. Criic. of Texas ur Austin, xx (1990:; Arnold Hunt, 'The Art of Hearing: Preachers and their Audiences 1590-1640' (Univ. of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 2000;; and my Prociderice iri Earb' iblodern England (Oxford, 19991, 53-'.

Eisenstein, Prirlririg Press as an Age~zr of Churige, 31'. l 3 See Philip M. Soergel, IY~(~ridmlrs~ r iills Suzrirs: Counter-KL.forlnarro,z Propaganda

In Bucarza (Berkeley, 1993;, 31-6; A. Gordon Kinder, 'Printing and Reformation Ideas in Spain', and Jean-Franqois Gilmont, 'Printing at the D a v a of the Sixteenth Century', both in Gilmont {ed.;, Kefortnarron und the Book, 296-8, 15, respectively. See also, Anne Jacobson Schutte, 'Printing, Piety and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years', and Richard Crofts, 'Books, Reform and the Reformation', both in A r c h ~ r fiir RLifor~nat~o~zsgesclzzclzte,lxxi (1980); R. N. Swanson, Religlo~z und Deror~on 111 Europe, c. 1215-1515 (Cambridge, 19951, 59-63.

l4 John Mirk, L~bcr Fesriz-ulzs and Qiratuor Serrno~zes ,(London, 1483, STC 1'951:; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golderi Lcgerid , (London, [1483], STC 248'3).


thousand Latin, English and bilingual texts designed to help laypeople pray were in circulation: liturgical and sub-scriptural literature which bears testimony to the strength and vigour of what Eamon Duffy has called 'traditional religion'. The appearance of handbooks like the Brigittine monk Richard Whitford's Werkefor Housholders (1531?) also reflected a growing demand for guidance in domestic and personal piety. In sponsoring translations of the Bible and vernacular versions of the primer, early reformers were simply hijacking and channelling a pre-existing fashion.''

Scholars of the reign of Mary I are likewise contesting the older view that her regime manifestly failed to understand the importance of the printing press and provided an unsympathetic atmosphere for its effective exploitation.16 In fact, a number of high-ranking Marian churchmen commissioned primers, homilies and devotional treatises to assist unlearned parochial clergy, particularly in the diocese of London, and Bishop Edmund Bonner's Profitable and Necessarye Doctryne (1555) has recently been heralded as 'a neglected masterpiece of Tudor catechesis'." The official pension paid to Miles Hogarde, the London hosier best known for his prose tract The Displayirzg of the Protestantes (1554), suggests that at least some prelates were also eager to take advantage of an emerging market for lively religious polemic. la

"Eamon Duffy, Tiic Strippitig tf the A l tars : Traditioizal Rcligzoti I N E t i g l a ~ d ,C. 1400-1580 (Kew Haven, 19921, 7, pt 1 puss~iii,esp. chs. 6-7; Richard Rex, Henry I'III u t ~ dthe Eni.lish Rc f i~r t~ iar lo t~ (Bas~ngstoke, 19931, ch. 4; G. L. Barnes, 'Laity Formation: The Role of Early English Printed Primers: The Synthesis of Private Devotion and Public Religion in the Late Middle Ages', 7 1 RL'IIRZOLIS H I C . , xviii (1991:; Richard Whitford, A IY'erke / i ~ r Housholders (London, [1531?], STC 25422.3;. For incunable Catholic bibles, see also David Daniell, W ~ l l z a i n T) , t~da ic : A B z o g r a p l ~ ~(New Haven, 1991>, 92-3.

l 6 J. X'.Martin, 'The Marian Regime's Failure to Understand the Importance of Printing', in his Rclzgzo~ts Rudiculs in Tlrdor E n ~ l a n d (London, 1989); D. M. Loades, T h e Rclgn of " J a r > T i i d o ~ - [London, 1979>, 342-3; and his 'Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558', in Gilmont (ed.:, R c f o r ~ i ~ a t ~ o nand the Book, esp. 285-90.

"Jennifer Loach, 'The Marian Establishment and the Printing Press', E ~ i g . Hist . Rcz, . , ci (1986); A. J. Slavin, 'Tudor Revolution and the Devil's Art: Bishop Bonner and Printed Forms', in D. J. Guth and J. W. McKenna (eds.), T ~ l d o r Rille and Rcz~olilriot~(Cambridge, 1982>, 3; Gina Alexander, 'Bonner and the Marian Persecutions', in Christopher Haigh (ed.:, Tiie E n ~ l i s i i ReJort~iario~r Kec2si.d (Cambridge, 1987>, 1'0-1; Duffy, Stripping c!f riii. Al tars, 534-43, quotation at 531; Edmund Bonner, A ProJirubie u t ~ d Xi.cessarje Docrrjne, z s t h C c r r u ~ ' n e Hoilie11i.s (London, [1555], STC 3281.5).

'"Miles Hogarde, Tire Dzspluqinf o/ the Protestatzres and S o n d r j rlreir Practices (London, 1556, STC 13557). Cf. J. W. Martin, 'Miles Hogarde: Artisan and Aspiring Author in Sixteenth Century England', Ri.t~aissuncc Q~tarr . , xxxiv (1981 ), who regards Hogarde as the exception that proves the rule.


Both in England and on the Continent Catholic controversialists did drag their feet at the beginning, partly because they believed that engaging in a battle of books would only lend credibility and legitimacy to the heretical rebels. Yet it would be entirely inap- propriate to describe Erasmian reformers and Tridentine leaders as Luddites or technophobes. The anti-Lutheran satire of Johann Cochlaeus, Thomas Murner and John Eck militates against the notion that the Protestants monopolized the medium of print in the 1520s and 1530s, even if their opponents rarely matched them in creative brilliance.19 By the end of the century, publications about thaumaturgic sites were beginning to play a crucial part in forging a distinctive confessional identity in the lands ruled over by the Wittlesbach dynasty.20 Equally striking are statistics arising from research in France, Italy and Spain, which suggest a steady increase in the output of religious books after a brief hiatus in the mid-sixteenth century. Devotional titles dominated the stock of bookshops and the contents of private libraries in early modern Castile, and they constituted some 57 per cent of publications emanating from Venetian presses by 1590 and around 48 per cent of works printed in Paris in 1643-5, figures which compare favourably with those compiled for Protestant England in the same period.21 Not only did the best efforts of the Spanish Inquisition fail to stop the circulation of censored literature in Catalonia and prevent authors from publishing abroad, but bishops can be found urging children 'to read good and devout books' and sponsoring the preparation of manuals to guide and nurture piety.22 And if some early Jesuits had scruples of

l9 See Mark U. Edwards, 'Catholic Controversial Literature, 1518-1555: Some Statistics', Archiz jiir Rcfilrinarions~csch~chte,lxxix (1988); David Bagschi, Luther's Earliest Opponents: Cutholic Conrroe,crsiaIi.~ts,1518-1525 (Minneapolis, 19911, esp. ch. 'and conclusion; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 229-39.

20 Soergel, 1YTondrol(sltr his Saints, chs. 4, 6 and passim. 21 See Jean Delumeau, Carlrolicisin hcrmcen Luther and I'oltazre: A Scm l'iezc (if the

Counter Reforination, trans. Jeremy Moiser (London, 19711, 40-1; Henry Kamen, The Plroenzx and tire Flainc: Caralonict und the Counter Reforiizatiotr (New Haven, 19931, 412-13; Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inqu~sition and the l'enerian Press, 1540-1605 (Princeton, 1977), 131; Sara T . Nalle, 'Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile', Past and Prcsenr, no. 125 (Nov. 19891, 84-6; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World I$ Catholic Rcnezcctl, 1540-1770 (Cambridge, 1998>, 51. For the statistics for England, Edith L. Klotz, 'A Subject Analysis of English Imprints for every Tenth Year from 1480 to 1640', Huntinzron Lzb. Quart., i (1938).

22 Kamen, Piiocnix and tire Fletnie, ch. 8, quotation at 351; Agostino Borromeo, 'The Inquisition and Inquisitorial Censorship', in John O'Malley (ed.:, Cetrhol~c~snizn Earb .2lodcrtr History: A Guide to Research (St Louis, 19881, esp. 266.


conscience about the incompatibility of publishing with their evangelical vocation, this soon gave way to a wholehearted endorsement of the use of print for the purposes of propaganda by Ignatius Loyola and other senior members of the Society. The consequence was a vast programme of publication and a commit- ment to religious education which continues to this day. Shortly after the promulgation of the first papal Index of 1559, Peter Canisius wrote to the general of the order, Diego Lainez, from Germany saying that it was 'intolerable' and a 'scandal'.23 The Schools of Christian Doctrine established in late sixteenth-century Italy are further testimony to the fact that Protestants were not alone in perceiving reading as a key to saving souls, reforming manners and eradicating rural superstition. The metaphor used by leading pedagogues is very revealing: their self-appointed task was to 'print Christ on the blank minds' of the young.24 Notwithstanding its initial anxiety that literacy might be a high road to heresy, in the long run the Counter-Reformation proved no less willing to take advantage of technological advance than its Lutheran and Calvinist counterparts.

With this body of research as a backdrop, this essay re-examines the relationship between post-Reformation Catholicism in England and the evolving culture of print. Drawing on decades of work by a succession of distinguished Catholic bibliographers, it suggests that the press had the potential to become a powerful surrogate for the personal pastoral discipline exercised by the Tridentine episcopate and parish clergy on the Continent, an alternative instrument of sacerdotal control for a church strug- gling to resist its abolition. In a country where the very presence of priests on English soil was a capital crime, books could penetrate where a tiny band of missionaries was unable to infiltrate and tread. As the Spaniard Luis de Granada wrote in his Menzon'all of a Christian Life in 1586, the reading of devotional tracts was 'verie profitable: for somuch as they be unto us as it were domme preacher^'.^^ Texts assumed vital importance to a faith dispos- sessed of the structures of authority and communication over which it had once held sway and anxious to convince foreign

23 John W. O'Malley, T h e A r s t Jesuzts (Cambridge, Mass., 1993>, 114-15, 314. "Paul F. Grendler, Schuuling tn Renaissance I r a b : L i t cruc j and Lcarntng, 1300-

1600 (Baltimore, 19891, chs. 12-13, quotation at 341. 25 Luis de Granada, A iZ/Ic~iiorz(tllof u Christlan L ~ f i ' , trans. R. Hopkins (Rouen,

1586, STC 169031, 12.

'DOMME PREACHERS'? 81

powers of the need for financial assistance, if not armed invasion, to reconvert heretical England. In my concluding section, however, I shall argue that dependence on print also pulled in the contrary direction. In the hands of the laity it could be an agent of autonomy, the backbone of a type of domestic piety it was possible to sustain in the virtual absence of a resident priesthood. To adapt a penetrating remark of John Bossy, I want to explore the possibility that as English Catholicism 'became more typographical, so it became less ~ac ramen ta l ' . ~~

It would be a grave mistake to suppose that Protestants had any kind of stranglehold on religious publishing in England in the post-Reformation and pre-Civil War period. Indeed, in the early decades of Elizabeth's reign it uras arguably their Catholic enemies who displayed greater initiative. Within five years of the 1559 Settlement, the Oxford scholars who had led the exodus to the Continent had already constructed a powerful propaganda machine. Between 1559 and 1570 some fifty-eight publications emanated from printing houses in Antwerp and Louvain, most of them engendered by Bishop John Jewel's Challenge Sermon of 1559 and his Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicarzae (1562). Thomas Harding, supported by John Rastell, Thomas Dorman, Nicholas Sander and Thomas Stapleton, mounted a formidable defence of traditional Roman Catholic theology and a sustained attack on the doctrinal errors now upheld as orthodox dogma in England. Coinciding with the foundation of the English seminary by William Allen in 1568, the focus of the movement shifted to Douai; and in 1578 the unstable political situation in the Low Countries precipitated a hasty relocation to Rheims. The Catholic printing industry gathered momentum in the following decades as new presses were set up by the Jesuits at Seville, Valladolid and Eu in Normandy. The latter was removed to St Omer in the Spanish Netherlands in 1608.21

26 John Bossy, Chrisriunit.y in the West, 140GkJ700 (Oxford, 1985>, 102. 2 - See A. C. Southern, Elf-ubetizan R~cusulzt Prose, 1559-1582: A Histuricctl ctnd

(:rirzcul Account of the Bouks of the Cathulic Refugees Printed arid Publashed Abroud ~2nd at Secret Presses 171 Etrglund (London, 1950), esp. chs. 2, 6; Leona Rostenberg, ?'he Mznoritj~ Press and the English Croz~'n, 1558-1625: A Studit in Repressiori (Nieuwkoop, 1971), esp. ch. 2. For a survey of the works generated by 'Great Controversy', see Peter Milward, Reiiglous Controzersies of the Elizuberhatr Ace: A St1r"rey of Printed Sotdries (London, 1978), ch. 1.


Back in England, Catholic publishing continued surreptitiously at secret locations in London and the country. Stephen Brinkley and his assistants, based first at Greenstreet House and later in a wood in Stonor Park, printed several books for Robert Persons and Edmund Campion in 1581 before their machinery was seized and they themselves were imprisoned for their seditious proceed- i n g ~ . ~ ~It proved difficult to eradicate this problem in the capital and, according to Gee's scurrilous Foot out of the Snare, in the 1620s there was quite a community of Catholic printers and vendors lurking in the vicinity of Holborn and C l e r k e n ~ e l l . ~ ~ In the 'dark corners' of the land it was a trifle easier to avoid detection. Nineteen items were issued from the press at Birchley Hall near Wigan, the family residence of James Anderton, between 1615 and 1621,30 and in Jacobean Staffordshire and Worcestershire one Francis Ash carried on a profitable trade in pictures, manuals and tracts without being d i s ~ o v e r e d . ~ ~ Others were not so lucky: in 1610 the spy William Udall claimed to have 'taken and delivered viii printing presses' in the same counties 'within thees four yeares', while Caernarvonshire justices suc-cessfully raided a cave near Penrhyn in 1587 where Y Drycl? Cristianogazli, a Catholic work in Welsh, had been produced a few months before.32 In provincial towns like Oxford and York recusant booksellers and binders were a constant source of irritation to the a ~ t h o r i t i e s . ~ ~

As well as publishing in small formats which could easily be concealed, many of those involved in this illicit trade resorted to subterfuge: counterfeit imprints, false dates and deceptive

See 'The Memoirs of Father Robert Persons', ed. J. H. Pollen, in hlzscelluneu I I [Catholic Record Soc. [hereafter CRS], ii, London, 19061, 28, 182-3; Letters and IZ/Ien~orzal~of Father Robert Parsons, S J , i, ' T o 1588!, ed. L. Hicks (CRS, xxxix, London, 1942), xxxi-xxxii.

2 g John Gee, The Foot out of the Snare . . . Whcrennro is Added . . . the Xu,iies o/ S ~ t c h as Disperse, Prlnr, B ind or Sell Popish Bookes, 3rd edn (London, 1624, STC 11703). The first edition (quoted hereafter) included, A Cute t iope (I / such Hookcs as . . . hue,e bee71 Vented zczrhzn T-do Yeeres Lust Petst it1 London, b j ~the Priests und their A ~ e t r r s(London, 1624, STC 11701:.

30 See STC, iii, 209; and A. F. Allison, 'Who was John Brereley? The Identity of a Seventeenth Century Controversialist', Rec~lsctnr Hzsr., xvi (1982-3).

31 [Michael Sparke], A Second Beacon Fired b j ~Scinrillu (London, 1652), 6. 32 British Library, London (hereafter Brit. Lib.), Lansdowne MS 153, fo. 11';

printed in 'The Reports of William Udall, Informer, 1605-1612', ed. P. R. Harris, Recusunt Hzsr., viii (1966>, 269. D . M. Rogers, ' "Popishe Thackwell" and Early Catholic Printing in Wales', Bz~~retphzcct lStndzes, 1534-1829, ii (1953).

33 See, for example, J. C. H . Aveling, Cutholzc Recnsctncj zn the Czty of York , 1558-1791 (CRS Monograph Ser. ~ i , London, 19701, 32, '5.


pseudonyms. The papacy itself recognized the necessity of sanc- tioning these devious strategies in a context of persecution, and special faculties were granted to Robert Persons and Edmund Campion, later extended to Henry Garnet and Robert Southwell, overriding the Tridentine decree Decretum de Editiorze et USLL Sacrorz~nzLibrortotz, which forbade the printing of books anonym- o ~ s l y . ~ ~Such tactics have made the task of identifying 'Catholic' books produced between 1558 and 1640 particularly challenging. Allison and Rogers list some 932 items in English printed abroad or secretly in England, to which must be added 1,619 publications in Latin and Continental vernacular^.^^ In the second half of the seventeenth century, when Catholic publishing activity declined from its pre-Civil War peak, recusant writings still outnumbered those of the Baptists and quaker^.^^ While these figures represent only a small percentage of the total output for this period, they are nevertheless impressive for a church 'under the cross'.

They alert us, moreover, to only one sector of English Counter- Reformation book culture, unduly privileging printing over the thriving tradition of scribal publication, which, as Harold Love has remarked, was a safer medium for the transmission of sub- versive and oppositional materiaL3' Syndicates of scribes, such as the one Nancy Pollard Brown has discovered in Elizabethan Spitalfields, ensured that much devotional and controversial material circulated through the Catholic ~ n d e r g r o u n d . ~ ~ The commonplace book of the scrivener Peter Mowle contains master copies of the works he wrote out for his East Anglian gentry clients, texts ranging from the Jesus Psalter and prayers of

3J See Public Record Office, London, State Papers (hereafter PRO, SP: 12 137 26, $8; printed in A. 0 . Meyer, Englaiid ctnd rhi C t h o l z c C h u r i h under Q~ceen Elizabctii, trans. J . R. McKee (London, 1963, Appendix s\-II ; Letters (2nd h l e r ~ ~ o r i u i s o/ Fa tho . Roberr I'ursolis, i, ed. Hicks, 356. For the Tridentine decree, see Tiic Cetiions et111f Decrees c f t h c Collncilof Trciir, ed. and trans. H. J. Schroeder (Rockford, Ill., 1 9 X , 19.

35A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, Tire Co~ire inporur~ , Prii7tcd Lirerctt~tre o f tile Eiiglisir Ci~~lirrcr-Rcfilrii~arion Curu l i~zuc ,2 vols. berz~'een1558 und 1640: A n Airirorurcd (Aldershot, 1989-1994: (hereafter A K C R : , i, Works in Laiigiiages otiier tiictn Engl~si i; ii. IY;~rki in Eiiglish. Vol. ii supersedes Allison and Rogers's .4 (;ataioguc of Cari~oli'c Books in English Printed dbroctd or Secrerl , in 1:'ii~iund. 1558-1640, first publ. in Biocruph~cu l S t~ idzes , 1533-1829, iii (1955-6:.

36 See Thomas H. Clancy, E i i ~ i ~ s l iCutir,~lic Books, 1631-1700: A H1blioi.r~zpi7y,2nd edn (Chicago, 19961, xii.

3^ Harold Love, Scribal P~lblicctriun iir Sci.oitcorril-Ceiit~~r-yEnciand (Oxford, 1993), 185, 292-3, and ch. 5 puis~ in .

38 ru'ancy Pollard Brown, 'Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England', in Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (eds.1, I:'nclzsil Muiiilscrzpr Studies, 1100-1 700, i (Oxford, 1989).

84 PAASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 168

Sir Thomas More to Laurence Vaux's Catechisnze and Robert Southwell's St Peters C o ? n p I a i ~ t . ~ ~ The authorities were constantly intercepting short tracts outlining 'certain papistical reasons' for recusancy, and little pamphlets filled with scribbled 'questions and answers concerning the Protestant religion' were found on the person of many a missionary priest.40 Anthologies of protest songs and ballads provide further evidence of the role manuscripts played in sustaining the morale of the recusant community,41 as do eyewitness accounts of the heroic conduct of Catholic martyrs like Margaret Clitherow which passed from hand to hand among the devout. Accumulating miraculous accretions in the course of transcription, they testify to the tenacious influence of an existing repertoire of hagiographical motifs and to the chinese-whispers effect of oral communication. Dr Humphrey Ely was only one of those who sent the lives of saintly priests, 'fayre written in folio', to the Jesuit John Gibbons, whose Concertatio Eccleslae Catholicae in Anglla first appeared in 1583. Like the expanded editions of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, its enlargement by John Bridgewater later that decade bears witness to an ongoing process of verbal and scribal t r ansmi~s ion .~~ The survival of handwritten copies of politically sensitive texts like Leicester's Conznzonzcealth (1585), 'Robert Doleman's' CorCference about the Next Stlccessiorz (1595) and Edmund Campion's famous 'Brag' likewise attests to the interdependence of manuscript and print.43 And when Philip

39 St Mary's College, Oscott, Ills Shelf RZZ3. "See, for example, PRO, SP 12,142'20 and 12!279.90; Rccords oJ tile Englzsh

Prorince oJ the Society oJ J'eszrs, ed. Henry Foley, ' vols. in 8 (London, 18"-831, iv, 646.

"See Tudor Songs (2nd Builctds froni M S Cotton L7espusiun A-25, ed. Peter J. Seng (Cambridge, Mass., 1978:; Arthur F. Marotti, .2.lunuscrzpr, Print and the Englisir Renctissunce Lyric (Ithaca, 1995:, 41-8.

42 John Gibbons and John Fen [eds.:, Cuncerrario Eccleslac Cutholicue ztr Angliu (n.p., 1583:; ed. and augmented by John Bridgewater (1589). For the reference to Humphrey Ely, see Brit. L.ib., L,ansdowne MS 96, no. 26. Much martyrological material of this kind remains in manuscript, notably in Christopher Grene's 'Collectanea', preserved at Stonyhurst and Oscott, selections from which have been published in Cnpzihlishcd Docu,nents Relarlrr~ ru the E n g l ~ s h iblurt jrs , i, 158441603, ed. J. H. Pollen ICRS, v, London, 1908). Two scribal copies of John hlush's 'A True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mrs. Margaret Clitherow' survive: York Minster Library, MS T . D. I; and York Bar Convent, MS V 69. These narratives are discussed in Anne Dillon, 'The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1558-1603' (Univ. of Cambridge PhD thesis, 19991, chs. 2, 5.

43 Thomas H. Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers: T h e Alle71-Persons P a r t j and riie Poliricul Thuzii./it oJ the Counter R e f i l r i n u t ~ o ~ ~ 171 England, 1572-1615 (Chicago, 1964:, 23', 239; Brown, 'Paperchase', 121, 128.


Howard, earl of Arundel, went into exile in 1585 he allegedly left a letter to the queen justifying his flight, which was 'published and dispersed in manner of a slaunderous libell after his departure . . . in sondrye partes of the realme'.44

The network for distributing recusant books and news grew ever more elaborate and extensive as the period progressed. Based in Antwerp from 1589 until his death in 1620, the emigre Richard Verstegan acted as a general postmaster of information relating to English Catholic affairs, liaising regularly with key figures in Rome and leading Jesuits in Spain and expertly managing the propaganda and intelligence wings of the mission.45 Merchants were handsomely rewarded for smuggling consignments of books across the Channel and landing them in isolated coves off the Cornish, Dorset and North Sea coasts, or bribing customs officers to turn a blind eye to the forbidden contents of their holds. In May of 1592 the privy council ordered searches of all vessels docking in London for 'traiterous and sedicious bookes' brought in 'wrapped upp amongest marchandizes', while reports reached Sir Julius Caesar in 1609 concerning a fisherman of Barking who conducted a profitable sideline in 'papistical' literature concealed beneath his smelly catch.46 The cost of this high-risk enterprise was inevitably passed on to the consumer: in 1624 a Rheims New Testament sold for twelve shillings and a little octavo of St Augustine's Confessions for no less than sixteen. John Gee reported that as much as six or seven shillings was 'squeezed from some Romish Buyers' for copies of George Musket's The Bishop of London his Legacy (1623): 'A deare price for a dirty Lie'. Robert Sheldon was no less indignant at the cheek of charging an angel for 'a prophane Pamphlet, comprised in a sheet or two of paper', but the expense of 'popish' books probably did more to hinder their circulation than it did to fill Jesuit coffers.47

44 H. R. Woudhuysen, S i r Piz111p S i d n i y and tile C ' Z ~ C U ~ U ~ I U N 1558-of ~Z/Iunn.~crzpt.~, 1640 (Oxford, 1996>, 52-3.

45 See Tire Letters und Uesp(trcires oJ Rzchurd L'crsteggalr c .1550-16408 , ed. Anthony G. Petti (CRS, lii, London, 1959), introduction.

J6 Acts of the P r i v ) C o z ~ ~ l c i l q/ E n ~ l u n d : .Vex Series: 1542-1631, ed. John Roche Dasent ct dl . , 46 vols. (London, 1890-1964) (hereafter A P C ) , 1591-2, 486-7; 'The Reports of William Udall', ed. Harris, 260.

J i Gee, Foot our of tiic S n ~ r e , 93; Richard Sheldon, Tize lClorivcs of Riciiurd Slicldon, P r . for iiis Just , I ' o l z ~ ~ t d r y , dnd Free Reno lrnc in~ oJ' Cow~inun io?~ tile Bisliop of R o n ~ e ? ~ i t l i (London, 1612, STC 223971, 2nd pagination, 23. See also Lewis Owen, Tiie R u n n ~ n g Register (London, 16261, 14.

86 PAST AND PRESENT SUMRER 168

On the domestic front, dozens of individuals assisted in dispersing books and manuscripts: from seminary priests like Thomas Awfield, who transported over three hundred copies of William Allen's True, Sivtcere and Modest Defence (1584) from Flanders before being caught and sentenced to death, to servants, such as Edward Coke of Paternoster Row, who on apprehension con- fessed himself to be a 'perillous person'.48 The printer Roger Heigham regularly sent his wife over to England 'under the habite of a Duchwoman' to disseminate his wares: two more dangerous dames than Mrs Heigham and one Mistress Daubrigscourt, wrote the spy William Udall to his superiors in 1609, could 'hardly be found'.49 Mary Silvester, a laundry maid who served in the house of the Spanish ambassador, was another female dealer in printed works imported from 'forraine parts': among nearly two hundred discovered in a trunk in 1640 were 'Jesus psalters, Invectives and rimes against Luther and Calvin'.'' Such brokers in 'naughty books' supplied pious Catholics with townhouses in London like Lady T r e ~ h a m , ~ ~ but some of their briskest trade was conducted in prisons such as the Marshalsea, where William Hartley had the audacity to do business in devotional tracts from his cell in 1585-6.j2 It was common practice for undercover agents to plant them in the houses of heretics to throw government officials off the scent, and some even deposited them in reformed places of worship, as a hint to convert and a kind of Trojan horse. In 1582 a 'seditious pamphlet' was found in the church porch of St Giles Cripplegate by the sexton coming to ring the bell for the 6 a.m. lecture.53 Illegal publications were carried to the country by women pedlars, 'who with baskets on their armes' engaged in door-to-door sales in outlying villages: a Protestant writing in 1602 suspected that under this disguise 'many young Jesuites, and olde Masse-priests range abroade, and drawe disciples

'' T h e Liye oiid E12d c~f Tiii~iiias A e ~ f e e l d ~ i i d Thoiizcrs KEblrq Truitours Errcured (London, [1585], STC 9 9 7 , sigs. AT, A6'; Cnpublished Doci~inrnts Rrluriiig ro rile Englisii .Wartqrs, i, ed. Pollen, 25.

'The Reports of Vi'illiam Udall', ed. Harris, 262, 264. 'O PRO, SP 16 453 105. " Brit. Lib., Lansdowne :US 33, fo. 149'. ' 2 linglzsli ,Ili2rrjrs, ii, Tlie T'eii. Piiilip H(,ewrd Edrl o j i l r u n d r l , 1117-1591, ed. J . H.

Pollen and W.. ;Mac:Mahon (CRS, xxi, London, 1919), -5. See also Brit. Lib., Lansdowne MS 33, fo. 152'.

'3 L e r t e r ~ aiid .\leniorii21s o j Fotlirr Rohrrt Persons, ed. Hicks, 85; C~lei1di2r o j Store Ptrper.\, Do~ne.\tic, 1581-90, 62.

87 'DOALME PREACHERS'?

after them'.54 Mainstream booksellers and stationers in Paul's Churchyard cashed in on this lucrative trade by acting as middlemen and there was also a flourishing black market in literature confiscated and then resold by corrupt pursuivants attached to the High Commission.55 Finally, Catholic texts were carried to the English public, rather ironically, by Protestants themselves. Printed for refutation by zealous reformers, they might inadver- tently reinforce the views of religious conservatives, and at least some high-ranking clerics began to think that this was rather unwise. Replying to Archbishop Matthew Parker's advice to display Jewel's answer to Thomas Harding in churches in his diocese, the bishop of Norwich feared that some parishioners might, 'like unto the spider', suck from this work material which would merely confirm them in their false beliefs.j6

The enormous amount of time and effort government officials spent attempting to intercept recusant books was a back-handed compliment to the sophistication of this communications system. For Sir Francis Walsingham the seizure of chests of bibles, primers and polemical tracts went hand in hand with the capture of 'fardels of other popish tromperie' and 'trash' - icons, rosary beads and paraphernalia for performing the mass.57 One batch of literary contraband captured in 1584 included some seven hundred broadsheets 'conteyning a miracle wrought uppon an englishe woman at Bruxelles' in 1573.58 Proclamations were regularly issued against the importation of 'venomous and lying books', pamphlets and bulls from over the sea; parliament exercised itself on the subject intermittently; and the privy council sent an endless stream of letters ordering raids on the homes of suspect persons,j9 An investigation of the library of the noted antiquary John Stow

"John Rhodes, An A~ise-ere t~ u Ronz~sh Rinre L ~ t e l y Printed, oud Enrituled, A Pr~~perSee- Uolli2d, K'lierei~i are Cti~ituy~iedCatlioiiki Questions to the Protestcrnr (London, 1602, STC 20959), sig. A2'-". "For examples of stationers as middlemen, see Caloiciur of Sratr Pupers, Doinesric,

1603-1610, 272; 1633-3, 481. For corrupt pursuivants, Letters unci Despcrrches o i Richi2rd L'erstegu~i, ed. Petti, 7-8; 'The ~ e ~ o r t s of William Udall', ed. ~ a r r i s , 239, 261, 265.

56 John Strype, Tiie Lzfe and Acts ~ j , C f ~ t r h e ~ ~ Ptrrker, 3 vols. (Oxford, 18211, ii, 153.'-Rostenberg, .Cli~iorit.~Press and the E~yl ish Croz,ii, 43-6. "Brit. Lib., Lansdowne :US 42, fo. 1-4'. "See, for example, Tudor Ro~~i21 Proclcrmi2rio1is,ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F.

Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1964-9), ii, nos. 561, 5--, 580, 598, 6-2; APC, 1581-2, 149-54, 185-6, 298; APC, 1591-2, 486-5; APC, 1601-4, 412-13; APC, 1616-17, 40-1. For the results of a series of searches in 1584, see PRO, SP 12'172 102, 105, 111, 113, 114.

88 PAST AND PRESEST NUMBER 168

in February 1569 revealed him to be 'a great fauv[oure]r of Papistrye', and 'uppon searche' of 'the lodgeinge and studie' of George Brome and his sisters Elizabeth and Bridget in 1586 commissioners discovered a stash of 'supersticious bookes' hidden in a basket of 'hey and pewter dishes'.60 According to Catholic sources, those employed as searchers were a crew of unscrupulous hooligans. They burst in on Sundays and holy days while families were at prayer and ransacked 'every corner -even womens beds and bosomes' with such insolence that their villainies were 'halfe a M a r t y r d ~ m e ' . ~ ~ Some officials were indefatigable: in 1585 the vice-chancellor of Oxford University had the city's sewers searched for a work by William Allen which the quick-witted wife of a courier had swiftly conveyed into a nearby privy. Once recovered, the offending item was openly burned in the street.62 Indeed, dozens of Catholic texts were publicly incinerated in the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline periods. Along with religious pictures and other liturgical items, many missals, primers and works of controversy were piled onto bonfires of vanities ignited next to Paul's Cross and in Cheapside, Smithfield and the market squares of provincial towns.63 Overseen by the common hangman, these incidents of ritual destruction need to be seen as part of a concerted effort to erase recognized icons and symbols of Roman Catholic identity.

What were the 'seditious' and 'superstitious' books which the Elizabethan and early Stuart government was so anxious to sup- press and destroy? A large proportion of this illicit literature was political: texts enshrining the militant resistance theory of the Allen-Persons party; texts in support of Mary Queen of Scots and invasion by Spain; texts appealing for toleration and clem- ency; texts tackling contentious issues like the succession, the right of the pope to depose an heretical monarch, and the royal

b0 Brit. Lib., Lansdowne MS 11, fos. 4'-8'; printed and analysed in Janet Wilson, 'A Catalogue of the "Unlaurful" Books Found in John Stow's Study on 21 February 1568:9', Reclrsi2nt His t . , xx (1990), 2; Brit. Lib., Lansdowne :US 50, fos. 163'-164'.

61 Letters and Despcrtclics oJRzcizi2rci IJerstetoii, ed. Petti, 7. 62 r i i p ~ l b l ~ s h t ' d Rt'lutiiig to the Englis i~ ,2lartjrs, i, ed. Pollen, 108-9. D o c ~ o n e i ~ t s 63 See, for example, PRO, SP 123158336; 14:75!28; 141116148; APC, 1197-8, 387;

Albert J. Loomie (ed.), Spi2zn and the racobean Catholics, ii, 1613-1624 (CRS, lxviii, London, 19-81, -2-4; Records of tiic Entl ish Proziiice, ed. Foley, ii, 85; vii, pt ii, 1122.

89 'DOAlAlE PREACHERS'?

supremacy; texts like the notorious Treatise of Treasons (1572) and William Allen's Ad~~zonitiolzto the lobilitjl and Peo$le of E~zgland (1588).64 Polemical theology also poured forth from the pens of clerical exiles in a constant stream, with Matthew IZellison and William Bishop succeeding Thomas Harding and John Rastell as chief protagonists in the reign of J a m e ~ . ~ ' A particular landmark was the French Cardinal Robert Bellarmine's monumental assault on Protestant doctrine, Disputatio~~es . . . de covztroversiis Christianae j'idei (1586), which learned Catholics believed to be ~ n a n s w e r a b l e . ~ ~Writing in 1625, the Huntingdon schoolmaster Dr Thomas Beard observed that 'the Jesuites and Romish Priests, multiply Bookes and Pamphlets against us . . . not shaming to load us and our just cause, with impudent lyes and slaunders'. He urged his colleagues to 'encounter them at theyr owne weapon, and citn vipellere, set book against book, though not vzztltzero (for therein they have the vantage of us) but pondere, equal1 to their best'.67 Convinced that failure to reply to the belligerent taunts of the enemy was tantamount to admitting defeat, both sides believed that it was vital to have what Michael Questier has called 'a systematic answering machine'. This was the impulse behind the establishment of the College d'Arras in Paris and its Protestant counterpart in London, Chelsea College.68

Designed for an academic audience well-versed in doctrinal arcana, it is doubtful that these dense and bulky tomes made much impact upon the ordinary laity. In principle, committed Catholics required a special dispensation to read heretical tracts and, according to the Council of Trent, even orthodox polemic

'' [John Leslie], A Treatise o j Treciso~is ugui~ist Q. Elizaberii, i2nd the Croune of Engli2n~i([Louvain], 1572, STC 7601); William Allen, A n Adrrioriition to the .Yobilitj arid People of Eng la~id and Ireland ([Antwerp], 1588, STC 368).

6' For an overview, see Milward, R ~ l i g i o u s Co~itroz~ersies of tire Elizi2bethan Age , chs. 1, 3, 6; and his Religiozcs Controzersies of tile rcicobecin Age: A S ~ l r v e j ,of l 'r i~i ted Sozrrces (London, 1978), chs. 3, 4. ''Robert Bellarmine, Dispzctcitiones . . . de co~itroz~ersiis (Paris, 1586); Cliristiunue$dei

Records of tile E ~ i ~ l i s i z Proz,znce, ed. Foley, vii, pt ii, 101 1. '-Thomas Beard, Anriclirisr the Pope of R o ~ n e : or, tile Pope o f R o ~ n e ' s Antichrist

[London, 1625, STC 1655), sig. A2'. 6\Michael Questier, Co~iversion, Politics and Religion 211 England, 1580-1625

(Cambridge, 19961, 17-18. See also Anthony Milton, C ~ t l i o l i c and Reformed: The Rorriari und I'rotestant Chzrrches i n English Protestiznt Ti io~rght , 1600-1630 (Cambridge, 1995), 32-4; and the remarks of the writer of a 'Relation of the English Mission in the States of Flanders' (Jan. 16161, in Culendar o f Sti2re Papers, ,Zlilun, i, 653: the 'books which the heretics issue every day . . . might do much harm to souls if not confuted'.

90 PAST AND PRESEST SUMBER 168

could 'not be permitted indiscriminately'. Unsafe in the hands of the ignorant, only the educated could be allowed to study Romanist propaganda for the sake of confirming their faith.69 We may be even more sceptical about the ability of these books to change the opinions of an initially hostile reader.70 Shorter manuals and 'pamphlets of small compass' containing clear summaries of 'points controverted', such as Richard Bristow's Motives and Demaundes, were more likely to influence those 'that hath but little will, or little leasure to read', as the Jesuit John Sweet observed in 1617.71 IZeepe your Text, secretly published in Lancashire in 1619, for instance, 'sett downe a method' by which recusants could defend their faith against the arguments of railing Protestants, whether in informal local disputes or under legal cross-e~amination.~'Tables and broadsides listing Protestant her- esies distilled the essence of the Reformation schism into the space of a single sheet.73 One of Richard Verstegan's satirical prints depicted the Calvinist communion as a tavern breakfast; another was designed 'to put an heretyke in doubte of his owne religion'. Inverting a Lutheran pictorial motif, diagrams dis- playing 'the Protestants petigrew' sought to discredit the opposition by showing it splintering into a mass of fissiparous sects (Plate 3).74

6q Letters and .Ilenzorials of Father Robert Persoirs, ed. Hicks, 356; C u ~ i o ~ i sand Decrees of the Corr~rcil of Tren t , ed. Schroeder, 53. See also Elizcrbetha~r Cusu i s t r j , ed. P. J. Holmes [CRS, Ixvii, London, 1981), 49-50, 92-3.

-" See Questier, Co~iz,ersio~i , 39.Politics und Reli t ion, ch. 2, esp. 36-5, " Richard Bristow, A Briefe Treatrse of Diz,erse Plarne i21id Sure K'aj'es to F i~rde out

the Trl(tiie In tiiis T j i n e of Heresie (Antwerp, 1554, STC 3-99) (known as the 'Alotives'); and his Dei~ i~rrndesto be Proponed of Catlioliques to tile Heretikes (Antwerp, 1576, STC 3800.5). John Sweet, ,Clonsigr Fute 1'111 (St Omer, 161-, STC 23529), 153; and see the remarks of George Gilbert in Letters i21id ,Clonoricrl of F ~ t i i e r Robert I'erso~rs, ed. Hicks, 336.

[Fran~ois Veron], Keepe j,onr T e . ~ r : or, A Shor t Discourse, R'lierein I S Se t t Doa,ne a i\lethode to Instrl(ct, H ~ i c a Cutiiolike ;tizouth bur Coiiipete~rrlj L e u r n e d , mcrj' Dejend his F a j ~ t h ([Lancashire, Birchley Hall Press], 1619, STC 23924).

^3 See the two printed tables in Latin describing heretical sects preserved in Brit. Lib., Lansdowne MS 96, nos. 51, 52. Part 6 ( A Bree j S U I I I I I I U Y ~ ~ Religion)of C l i r i s t i ~ ~ i of A ,Cl~nuul or .Ilediti2tion (Douai [Greenstreet House Press], [1580-11, STC 172-8.4) is adapted from a lost broadsheet by Richard Bristow.

Letters i21id Despatches 01Riclii2rd Ver~tegulr ,ed. Petti, 115, 115-18, 196. The broadsheets were T j p u s haeretici2e sj~iagogue ([Paris, 15853) and Speculrrn~ p r ~ ] Cizristiunzs seducris (Antwerp, l590), respectively. 'A Showe of the Protestants Petigrew' is a fold-out plate in T h e Apoiogie of Fridericu., Srapizj,ln., . . . I1irrei2tzny qf the True und Rigiit Cnderstu~rding c~f HOIJ Scripture: Clfrlie Trcrnslcrtion (11tiit Brble rnrt~ tiie I ' l (1g~r Tongue: Of Disogrenient in D(~crr i~re trans. Thomas oinonge the Pr<~tesranrs, Stapleton (Antwerp, 1565, STC 23230).

3. ' A Showe of the Protestants Petigrew', in The Apologie of Fridericus Staphylus . . . Intreating of the True and Right Understanding of Holy Scripture: Of the Translation of the Bible in to the Vulgar Tongue: Of

Disagrement in Doctrine amonge the Protestants, trans. Thomas Stapleton (Antwerp, 1565, STC 23230), fold-out plate, between sigs. Gg4 and Hhl.

British Library, London: shelfmark 698.d. 1 (By permission of the British Library)

--


Over time, Catholic controversialists developed some clever polemical techniques, such as using misleading titles to trap the unwary, and disguising themselves as moderate Protestants or neutral observe^-s.75 A brief but perfunctory denunciation of popery in the preface could act as an effective smokescreen and enable a recusant book to slip past an overworked censor.76 This device dates back to the mid-1520s, when Jerome Emser issued an illustrated German New Testament masquerading as a Lutheran edition but crammed full of caustically anti-Protestant glosses and notes.77 James Anderton, a Lancashire gentleman who wrote under the pseudonym John Brerely, seems to have been the first Catholic writer to make extensive use of the method of refuting the heretics out of their own mouths, a trick mimicked by the missionary priest Richard Broughton in his Flrst Part of Protes ta~l ts Proofes, for Cathollkes Rellglo~l and Recusancjl (1607).78 The evolution of this strategy partly reflected the cracks emerging within the Church of England itself, not least the attacks of Richard Bancroft on the 'daungerous positions' of the puritans in the early 1590s. Never were Calvin and Beza 'so much defamed by their owne discyples', Verstegan had declared triumphantly: 'me thinckes I could oute of sundry our late Englishe heretical1 bookes . . . drawe foorth very espetiall matter to move any indif- ferent Protestant' to question their religion.79 But the tables were very soon turned: Protestants like the apostate Thomas Bell took full advantage of the unseemly squabbles between the seculars and Jesuits during the Archpriest and Appellant controversies, a quarrel they chose, to their cost, to prosecute in the public forum of print. The dissemination of tracts like William Watson's notorious Quodl~be t s(1602), Christopher Bagshaw's Sparulg D~scouerze of our E~lgl lsh Jeszuts (1601) and Robert Persons's Manlfes tat lo~l of the Grea t Folly and B a d Splr l t of Certajlne zn England C a l h ~ l g

' 5 Clancy, Errglish Carholzc Books, 1641-1700, xii. -6 See Alison Shell, 'Catholic Texts and Anti-Catholic Prejudice in the Seventeenth

Century Book Trade', in Robin ,Myers and Michael Harris (eds.), Cerrsorship cznd the Corrrrol o.f I-'rinr irr E t ~ z l a n d and France, 1600-1910 (Kinchester, 1992), 42.

hiartin D. W. Jones, Tlrr Corrrrrer-Refor~~zario~z (Cambridge, 1995), 55. q8John Brereley [James Anderton], T h e Apolozie 11.f rhe Roilzanr Church ([English

secret press], 1601, STC 3601); Richard Broughton, The First Part o/ Prorrz.rarrrs ProoJes, /or Carholikez. Religion and Reclrsarrcy (Paris [English secret press], 160', STC 20418:. ''Richard Bancroft, Dau,zzerorrs Poz.itiorrs arrd Procrrdzt~gz. . . . /or the Presbirerzall

Disczplir~r(London, 1593, STC 1314); Letters and Despatclies o/ Richard IJerstegarr, ed. Petti, 119, 131, 142.


Tlzewlselves Secular Priestes (1602)was distinctly counterproduct- ive: it did nothing but cast a spotlight on the damaging rift which had developed within Catholic ranks."

In the face of such scandals, many leading figures in the English mission began to fear that works of controversy were having a detrimental effect, filling 'the heades of men with a spirite of contradiction and contention' and with 'brawles of wordes, Pugnis verborurn'. Of first importance in the eyes of Robert Persons and William Rainolds was the publication of works designed to cultiv- ate repentance and piety.'l This enterprise was well underway before the arrival of priests from Douai and Rome, but it gathered momentum with the entrance of the Jesuits upon the scene. Loyola's influential Spir i tual Exercises spawned a mass of devotional paperbacks in portable formats, small godly books which sought to teach the faithful how to meditate, confess, say the Rosary and receive the Holy E u c h a r i ~ t . ~ ~ Many were English versions of the works of Spanish and Italian churchmen like Luis de Granada, Fulvio Androzzi and Luca Pinelli and some such texts even made their way into Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh.83

Thomas Bell, T h e A?zaro~?iie o~JPopzz.ir Tyrcznnie (London, 1603, STC 1814); Bell claimed to have invented this technique: see his Tiroviaz. Brls .\.loriies: Corrcernin? Ronz~sh Foitli o?zd Reli,qiot~ (Cambridge, 1593, STC 1830), sig. 72'; Brit. Lib., Lansdowne :MS 75, fo. 40'. William Watson, A Decacordo?z o/ Ten Quodlibetzcall Questio?zs Concert~zn,q Rrlzgzon cznd Store ([London], 1602, STC 25123); Christopher Bagshaw, A Sporin,q Diz.coerrie o.f our E?zglish Jesilzrs ([London], 1601, STC 25126); [Robert Persons], A :Zfan$ez.rarzo?z of the Grea t F o l k cznd B a d Spiri t o.f Cerroyne in lirylo?zd Collin,q Thei?zselrez. Srcular Prirstrs ([Antwerp], 1602, STC 19111). Bancroft, then bishop of London, seems to have sanctioned Appellant publications against the Jesuits for this very reason: see Rrcords [I/' tlie English Province, ed. Foley, i, 39, 42; H. R . Plomer, 'Bishop Bancroft and a Catholic Press', The Library, new ser., viii (190-:; G. Jenkins, 'The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers, 1601-1603', T h e Library, 5th ser., ii (1917-8). "William Rainolds, A Re.firrariorr o J S u n d r y Rrprrhrnsioris, Ca i i l s , and Fczlsr Slrzghtes

(Paris, 1583, STC 20632), sig. a3'; Robert Persons, Tire First Booke oJ the Cirrisria~z I:.~rrciz.r, Appertairrin,q ro Resolutio~z ([Rouen], 1582, STC 19353), 2.

82 On devotional literature, see the introduction to John R. Roberts, A Critical A t ~ r h o l o g ~of Etrg1iz.ii Rrcusczrit Driorioriol Prosr, 1558-1603 (Pittsburgh, 1966:; and T . H. Clancy, 'Spiritual Publications of English Jesuits, 1615-1640', Rrcuz.anr Hist . , xix (1989). Ignatius Loyola, A ~Morruall oJ I)erout ~Mrdirations and Exrrcisrz., I?zz.trrrcti?zg Hoe- to Pray .\.lenrczll~. I)rau,rre orrr o/ the Spirituczll lisrrcises . . . b~ T . dr Villczcastirr, trans. H . More ([St Omer], 1618, STC 16877). "Examples include Peter Canisius, Cryirnodrb o Adyz.c Crist?zo,qoul . . . (Paris,

1609); Morys Clynnog, Arrouczetir Grisr?zogoul, L e Cair Ced i C.y?z?zrrys . . . (Milan, 1568); Griffith Robert, Yrigl.y?ziorr A r Y Pezder ([Wales?, 1580-90?], STC 2107'.5); Pietro Teramano, Dechreuczd a R l~y~fed l ius Es~?iudiad Ig1,i::yz. Y r Argltcdires Fair o Lorety (Loreto, 1635); and the publications of the Irish Franciscan, Giolla Brighde 0 Heoghusa, A R C R , ii, 575--.


Nicolas Berzetti's The Practzce of Medltatzng (1613), Vincenzo Bruno's Slzort Treatzse of the Sacrament of Penance (1597) and John Bucke's Instrzlctlo~~sfor the Use of tlze Beades (1589) are typical of this voluminous genre. Compiled 'for the benefite of unlearned', the latter is a tiny octavo manual illustrated with woodcuts, which includes an elaborate folding plate to guide the reader through his or her daily devotions (Plate 4).84 In the second half of the seventeenth century, coinciding with the rise of the school of piety associated with Bishop Francis de Sales, there was a shift towards translations from French. Promoted by the Benedictines, the writings of native mystics including Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and Augustine Baker also enjoyed a notable revival.85 It is not surprising that indigenous devotional books are somewhat thin on the ground: many missionary priests and their auxiliaries abroad had far more pressing priorities than the rigours of original composition.

Much Catholic literature was liturgical or paraliturgical in character. Some intriguing examples of tables and ABCs devised to help priests consecrate the sacrament and recite the mass sur- ~ i v e , ' ~together with a multitude of Tridentine primers, psalters and breviaries, probably a minute fraction of the thousands printed in this era. Nuns, friars and monks must have furnished a significant market for these manuals (some five thousand men and women entered religious houses on the Continent between 1598 and 1642), but they were also widely used by the laity, as attested by the popularity of the Oj$czu~)z Beatae Marzae Vzrgznzs, a revised version of a medieval book of hours, and of the Jesus Psalter, reprinted forty-one times between 1570 and 1640.'- Here care must be taken not to overlook books left over from the pre- Reformation period. Many early Tudor religious works evaded the iconoclasts and were secreted away by lay conservatives wait- ing 'for a day'. Among the items bequeathed to Christopher Monckton by Anthony Marston of Londesborough, in 1573, for

Nicolas Berzettl, T h c I'rui.rzci o f ,lft.dzriirrit~ ;crrh I'ri~lir the ,lfisrt.rzcs r,/ orir Lord, the B1esst.d I f t .r~z>i uiid Suiirrs (Mechlin, 1613, STC 1125); Vincenzo Bruno, il Short Trcarrsc of rhi Sucriiiirt.tzr r$ I3t.iiutii.e ([English secret press], 1597, STC 3911.5;; John Bucke, Itzsrrtrcrir,ii, J J ~ rile C s i o f rlii Bcactcs (Louvain, 1589, STC 3000;. "Clancy, Eiglzsli Carhr~lrc llr,r,ks, 1611-1700, x. 'Qn example is preserved in Brit. Lib., Lansdoxvne MS 96, no. 58. The text of

T I E A21aiirrcr Hozc ro Hc lp a I'rzr~r rtl S a j d f d i i c was included in Robert Bellarmine, i l Shorr Clirzsriarl llocrriire ([St Omer], 1633, STC 1811:. '-See J. M. Blom, Tht. I'osr-Trideirrtnc Eiiqlish I'rrniir (CRS hlonograph Ser., iii,

London, 1982); J. D. Crichton, 'The Manual of 1611', Rcc~isiinr Hisr., xvi (1982-3:.

4. John Bucke, Instructions for the Use of the Beades (Louvain, 1589, STC 4000), fold-out table. British Library, London: shelfmark Huth 75

(By permission of the British Library)


instance, was the fifteenth-century Dominican friar Johannes Herold's famous Sermones d i s c i p ~ l i . ~ ~ Elizabethan casuists appear to have dealt with cases of conscience about the lawfulness of using old Roman brevaries and missals on a fairly regular basis: if the new edition authorized by Pius V could not be obtained, they ruled, this was admissible, provided that the 'superstitious rubrics' regarding indulgences were systematically deleted.89

More symptomatic of the priorities of the Catholic reformers, and of the onward march of religious confessionalization in Europe, was the proliferation of catechisms. Laurence Vaux's Catechisine or Christian Doctrine (1567), written after a 'simple and rude maner' to meet the needs of 'yong scollers' and uneducated laypeople, was an enduring favourite. It was also rather old-fashioned, making no concessions to the straitened condition of Catholics in Protestant England and endorsing religious practices upon which the Council of Trent most certainly frowned, not least the anointing of women receiving extreme unction upon the bare 'bealy'.'O More progressive and pace-setting were Robert Bellarmine's Shorte Catechisme, translated into English in 1614, and the Dutch Jesuit Peter Canisius's Certayne ILrecessarie Principles of Religion (1578-9), which also presented itself as 'very commodious for Infants and sucking babes', 'little ones and youngling^'.^' The professed aim of such tracts - to enlighten the ignorant poor - should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric. By the 1640s, when the Catholic community was visibly retracting into upper-class households, Richard Lascelles's A Little Way How to Heare Masse with Projit and Devotion could assume aristo- cratic readers with resident ~haplains,~%ut half a century earlier

Hugh Aveling, Post Ke/orntatiotl Catlzolic~stn in East Yorkshire, 1558-1790 (East Yorkshire Local Hist. Soc., no. 11, n.p., 1960), 15. The edition in question was probably Joannes Herolt, Seriizotzes discipuli de teitzpore er sanctis (London, 1510, STC 13226).

s9 Elizabethan Cusuisrty , ed. Holmes, 24, 93-4. 90 Laurence Vaux, A Cutechisnze or C h r i s t ~ u n Doctrzne, Secersar j /or Cilildren and

Ignorant People (Louvain, 1568, repr. 1514, [1581?], 1583, 1590, 1599, 1605, 1620, STC 24625.5-24627a.4:; ed. T . G. L a x (Chetham Soc., new ser., iv, Manchester, 1885); quotations from 'The Printer to the Reader', 'The Author to the Reader' and 68.

9LRobert Bellarmine, A Shorte Cutech1siize . . . Illurtrared with Images (Augsburg, 1614, STC 1843); St Peter Canisius, Certuyire Secessarze Prznc~plec o/ Religion (Douai, [1578-91, STC 4568.5:, sig. 76".

92 Richard Lascelles, A Lit t le IYYaUv Hozt to Heare ;Lfarse u i t h Profit and Dee,orzon (Paris, 1644), dedicated to Lady Ann Brudenell.

97 'DOhfhfE PREACHERS'?

the social base and milieu of the movement was far more heterogeneous.

In a context in which the vernacular Bible gave Protestant ministers a clear advantage in proselytizing the laity, it was perhaps inevitable that Catholic leaders would concede the need for an English version of the Vulgate, though not without strong reservations about the dangers of degrading Holy Writ. As early as 1567 Thomas Harding and Nicholas Sanders wrote to Cardinal- Protector Morone in Rome recommending that swift action be taken to counteract unorthodox editions, and in 1578 William Allen argued that while it might be 'desirable that the sacred writings should never be translated into the vernacular, nevertheless since in these days, either because of the spread of heretical opinions or for some other reason, even men of good will are apt to be inquisitive, and moreover there may arise the need for reading the Scriptures in order to confute the adversaries, it is more satisfactory to have a faithful Catholic translation than that they should endanger their souls by using a corrupt ~ n e ' . ' ~ Anxiety that the laity might slide into heresy as a result of free and unsupervised reading of the Scriptures remained high, and when the Rheims New Testament appeared in 1582 the text was constrained within a cage of prescriptive annotation^.'^

Writing in 158 1 the Protestant divine William Fulke claimed that the 'papists' had at last abandoned their vain attempt to prove Catholicism was the true religion in favour of a narrower aim: 'to reteine such as they have seduced in obstinacie of e r r ~ u r ' . ~ 'While this shift should not be overstated, there are grounds for thinking that, as hope faded for England's return to Rome by dynastic alliance or a military coup, Catholic clergymen

93 T h e Letters atid .Cfeitzorials of W~l l ia i t z Cardinal Allen, 1532-1594, ed. T . F. Knox (Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws, ii, London, 1882), 64-5, quoted in translation in Southern, Elizabethan Reciisai~t Prose, 233.

9"11e Seza Testczitzent of Jestts Christ , Trutislutcd Fu i th f i t lh into English . . . ztith . . . Atitiotatiotis, atid Other Xecessarie Helpes . . . S p e c i u l l ~ for the Dzscoe,erie of the Corriiptions of Divers Lu te Trunslat1ons, atid for Cleeri i~g the Coi~troaersics it1 Religion, of these n a i e s (Rheims, 1582, STC 2884); see esp. the 'Preface to the Reader' by Gregory Martin. Although the translation of the Old Testament was complete at this time, its publication was delayed until 1609-10: The Holie Bible Faz th f t t l l~ Tra i~s la ted into English, Ottt of the Authcntzcull Latiti, 2 vols. (Douai, 1609-10, STC 220';. See also my 'Unclasping the Book? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Vernacular Bible' (forthcoming).

95 William Fulke, A Briefe Confi i tat ioi~, of a P o p ~ s h Dzscoiirse (London, 1581, STC 11421), sig. 1:


began to redirect their energies towards succouring the minority who had stoically resisted absorption into the established church. Sometimes the intended audience could be very intimate indeed: when Sir Herbert Croft became a Catholic late in life and retired to the monastery of St Gregory, Douai, he commissioned the publication of eight copies of a series of letters to his wife and children entreating them to embrace his new-found faith.96 Anthony Batt's A Poore Mans Mite (1639) was a private letter about the rosary sent to his exiled sister which circulated among members of her confraternity before reaching a wider constituency with the aid of print.97 Strictly speaking, however, it is misleading to define books produced in this period as 'recusant literature', since many were not intended for stalwart separatists alone but for a religious community with fluid and shifting bound- aries. While Thomas Wright's Disposition or Garnishmenre of the Soule (1596) was meant for 'the vew and censure of three sortes of persons; Catholicks, protestantes, & demi-Catholickes . . . some call them Church-papistes, others Scismatiques', the author of A Mj~rrhine Posie of the Bitter Dolours of Christ lzis Passion (1639) hoped that 'all they who goe by the name of Christians' would peruse this pamphlet 'and take some benefit by it' and to that end abstained from 'all Controversies in Religion', that none might be deterred from reading it.98

It may be that many ostensibly apolitical works of devotion should actually be interpreted as subtle and sophisticated exercises in sect formation. One subgenre which invites this kind of specu- lation is the body of treatises dedicated to convincing the laity that steadfast recusancy was the only way to avoid damnation. In denouncing 'schismatics' who to varying degrees conformed with the heretical regime, missionary leaders like Robert Persons were attempting to create a pristine public image for a religion coming to recognize that a measure of compromise and equivocation was vital to its long-term survival. Modelled on St Paul's letters to the long-suffering congregations of Christians in Ephesus and

96 T . A. Birrell, 'English Counter-Reformation Book Culture' (review of ARCR, ii:, Rcciisanr Hisr., xxii (1994), 119.

Anthony Batt, A Poore .Cfans ;Llite ([Douai], 1639, STC 1589.5). "Thomas Wright, T h e Disposition or Gurnzshmenre of the Soiile to R e c e i e , ~ Worrhih'

the Blessed Sucra~izenr (Antwerp [English secret press], 1596, STC 26038.8); Ch. A%. [Matthew Kellison], A .Cfjrrhitze Posic of the Hitter Doloiirs of Christ his Passion (Douai, 1639, STC 17129), 12.

9'

99 'DOhLME PREACHERS'?

Corinth, tracts like Thomas Hide's Consolatorie Epistle to the Afflicted Catholikes (1580) seem to have been designed to daunt the Protestant enemy as much as strengthen the resolve of the faithful. Addressed to a heroic remnant, they celebrate and flaunt a faith which positively thrives in the face of a swelling tide of savage l eg i~ la t ion .~~ Histories too were part of a process of polemical mythmaking. Running through fifteen editions within its first decade (including translations into French, Spanish, Italian and German), Nicholas Sanders's De origine et progressu sclzismatis Anglicani powerfully shaped Continental perceptions of the English Reformation as a ruthlessly intolerant Calvinist revolution. Augmented by Pedro Ribadeneira in 1610, it played no small part in destabilizing late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- century foreign relations.loO Similarly, emotive descriptions of Catholic executions were as much an incentive to military inter- vention by Philip I1 and the cue for a papal crusade as a method of fostering the solidarity of a beleaguered community. Depicting Protestant atrocities in harrowing detail, the graphic martyrological engravings published by Verstegan and Cavalleriis were no less influential in the creation of a counter 'black legend' (Plate 5).lo1 Individuals caught distributing such 'pectores of

99 Thomas Hide, Concolatorie Epfctle ti, the AiJ71ctcd Curholikec (Louvain [London secret press], 1580, STC 13377). See my Church Pupzsrc: Cut1zolicism, Con/ornii'r.y und C,'onfessional Polo~zic iti Euri). .Cfodern England !Roy. Hist. Soc. Studies in Hist., lxviii, Koodbridge, 1993), 45-9. The most famous of such tracts is Robert Persons, A Brief D i ~ c o u r s Contejizing Gertuj i ie Reasons W h y Cutl~oliy~ees Re j i ce to Goe to Church (Douai [London secret press], 1580, STC 19394).

loo Sanders's unfinished Latin manuscript, Dc origlne cic progrccszi schici~~uric A~rglicuizz, was completed by Edward Rishton and published in Louvain In 1585. Also influential was Bishop Yepez of Taraqona's Hictoria purticirlar de lu persecution de Inqlaterra (Madrid, 1599).

lo ' See Dillon, 'Construction of Martyrdom', esp. chs. 2-5; A. G. Petti, 'Richard Verstegan and Catholic Martyrologies of the Later Elizabethan Period', Recucunt Hict . , v (1959-60); and more generally, J. T . Rhodes, 'English Rooks of Martyrs and Saints of the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century', R e c u ~ u t i t Hisr., xxii (1994). Important examples of martyr literature include: Robert Persons, Dc pcrserzirzonc Ariglicaiza (Paris, 1582); William Allen, A HrlcJe Hisroric of the (;loriozic ,Murtjrdoni if

xi i R x e r e ~ r d P r ~ e s t s ([Rheims], 1582, STC 369.5); Thomas Worthington, A Relarioiz of S ~ x t e ~ r e Glorifii'd in E~zglaizd I I Z ~Zbnetlzes (Douai, 1601, STC .Martyrs: T i c e l ~ ~ e 26000.9); and his A Catalogzie o/;Llarrjrs zti liizglaiid: for the Profescloiz qfrlze Carholiqiie F ~ t z t h , since . . . 1535 ([Douai], 1608, STC 26000.8). For the engravings, see Richard Verstegan, Tlzeatrtci~z crtedel~tattci~z haereticortci~z izo\tri tei~zporzs (Antwerp, 1587); and Johannes Baptista de Cavalleriis. Pcclcsiue A4irgl ica~~e i~lart jrzi i~ztrophaea czae Saizcrorzii~~ (Rome, 1585).

100 PAST AND PRESENT NUhiBER 168

parsecusnes' were particularly galling to a government anxious to avoid being tarred with the same brush as John Foxe had used so brilliantly on Bloody Mary Tudor.'OZ

This vibrant book culture needs to be seen as one manifestation of a European-wide movement rivalling the brotherhood of Reformed churches scholars call 'international Ca lv in i~m ' . ' ~~ Through the efforts of ministers trained in Rome, Douai and Valladolid, the works of Tridentine giants like Bellarmine, Luis de Granada and Bishop Francis de Sales were rendered familiar to English Catholic readers; in turn their own writings were transmitted into other languages and regions. Campion's Decenz Rationes went through over sixty editions before 1632 - some forty-five Latin, two Czech, one Dutch, four Flemish, four French, nine German, one Hungarian, two Polish and, surpris- ingly, only one in English.lo4 And just as accounts of the 'glorious combats' and gruesome crucifixions of Jesuit evangelists in Japan inspired those who lived 'in the happie danger of being partakers of the like crownes' in England, so did the martyrdoms of Margaret Clitherow and Edmund Campion etch themselves on the imagination of French men and women who supported the Guise and the League.''' British missionaries made their mark as far afield as Goa, where Thomas Stephens brought out a catechism in Canarese, and Peru, where Catholic converts were regaled with edifying tales of imprisoned recusants and their heroic local pat- roness, Louisa de Carvajal.lo6 Printed books thus served as cultural ambassadors, cementing intellectual as well as political links between states in the forefront of efforts to re-Catholicize lost parts of Europe and Christianize the New World.

Reczrsant Docuitzents froitz the Ellesiizere AManuscripts, ed. A. G. Petti (CRS, lx, London, 1968), 51, 89.

103 Cf. Francis Hinman's analysis of the international transmission of Calvinism in 'Calvin's Works in- rans slat ion', in Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis (eds.), Calz'~nzsitz ivl llurope, 1540-1620 (Cambridge, 1994).

I0%s noted by A. I. Doyle in a review o fARCR, i, in Reczrsunt Hzst., xx (1990), 156. lo' Joao Rodriguez Girao, The Palitze <I/Christiavl For t i tude: or, The Glorious Colnbats

<I/Christians it1 Juponia, trans. Edmund Neville ([St Omer], 1630, STC 18482), sig. *6';T h e Theater o/ Iapotiias Consrancj , trans. William Lee ([St Omer], 1625, STC 14575);A RrieJe Relation q / t h e Persecutzon L u r e l ~ .Wade against the Catholike Christians, in the Kingdoitze o /Japonia , trans. W. \Y[right] ([St Omer], 1619, STC 14527). On the use of Verstegan's prints by the League, see Dillon, 'Construction of Martyrdom', chs. 3-4.

' 06 Birrell, 'English Counter-Reformation Book Culture', 115.

Pcrfccutioncs ~ lducr i i~s Cnrholicos i Pro;c- R.untibus Cnluiniilis cscits i : ~ Anglia.

5. Richard Verstegan, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorurn nostri temporis (Antwerp, 1587), 77.

Execution of Margaret Clitherow at York, 1586. British Library, London: shelfmark 4570.d.21

(By permission of the British Library)

102 PAST AKD PRESENT KUMBER 168

It is clear, then, that Catholic leaders rapidly made a virtue out of the necessity of their dependence on print, treating it not only as a valuable auxiliary but also as a creative opportunity. Likening their literary efforts to 'the breade of Angels', 'good and holesome foode', 'sweet and savorie honie combes', they came to regard books as the lifeblood of the scattered constituency they served, as well as a 'soveraygne salve' of the souls of besotted Protest- ants, 'Antido[t]es whereby to repel the dispersed contagion of dangerous infection'.lo7 '[Tlhere is nothing which helps and has helped and will protect in the future and spread our cause so much', Robert Persons wrote to Claude Aquaviva, father-general of the Jesuits, in 1581; 'books penetrate where the priests and religious cannot enter and serve as precursors to undeceive many', declared the director of the St Omer press, John Wilson, in 1616.log The enterprising publishing programme of the exiles was not, however, without its critics. Some lay Catholics implored propagandists on the Continent to slacken the pace of production since it stoked the fury of the authorities and excited harsher persecution. George Birkhead condemned these advocates of cau- tion as 'tepidi et schistnatici', but such dissenting voices deserve emphasis amid so many expressions of enthusiasm for the press. log

But just how influential were Catholic publications in the battle for hearts and minds? Prelates, preachers and privy councillors feared illicit literature might bewitch simple souls liable to be deceived by a 'pretended shew of godlines' and unable to 'discerne the errors therein c~nte ined ' . "~ Counter-Reformation clerics shared the anxieties of reformed ministers about the corrupting potential of texts launched from across the confessional divide.

lo-Luis de Granada, O f P r d j e r , d ~ z d .Clcdlrar~on, trans. Richard Hopkins (Paris, 1582, STC 16907), sig. b7"; St Peter Canisius, A S ~ l ~ i i ~ r i eof Cizrisridn Doctrine, trans. Henry Garnet ([English secret press, 1592-61, STC 45-1.5>, sig. '2";Stanislaus Hosius [bishop of Worms], A ,$lost Excellent Treutisc of tizc Beg.vlzlzjng of Hercsjes ipi olrre T j ~ n e ,trans. Richard Shacklock (Antwerp, 1565, STC 13888), sig. a7'; John Brereley, Suzpict Austiiies Rellgzoii ([English secret press], 1620, STC 3608), 1.

lo'Letters ulzd ,\leiuoritrls oj Father Robert Persons, ed. Hicks, lo-; Cdlo idar of Srdte Pdpers, ,\lilan, i, 654.

'OY 'Father Persons' Memoirs', ed. J. H. Pollen, in ,\liscelltr~ied IT' (CRS, iv, London, 1907;, 154-5,

'loSee T u d ~ r ed. Hughes and Larkin, ii, 501-2. This particular Rojtrl P r o ~ c l d ~ i ~ d t ~ o i s , quotation comes from a proclamation against the books of the separatists Robert Browne and Robert Harrison, but similar objections were made against Catholic texts: see, for example, zbid., iii: 13.


To contribute to the purchase of books like Foxe's A c t s and Monuments and John Jewel's Apolog j~for one's parish church was to commit a mortal sin, and a parent who bought a heretical tract for his or her son or daughter which drew them from the faith could, by extension, be held guilty of spiritual murder."' Concomitantly, both groups had immense confidence in the power of their own propaganda. Christopher Greathead, a lay Catholic evangelist hauled before the high commission in York in the 1580s, was reputed to be 'a great seducer of others by books', and during his saintly adolescence Brother Edward Throgmorton purchased and dispersed primers among his father's tenants and the children of the poor, anticipating the methods of the SPCK. ' I 2

On the Protestant side, the convert Francis Walsingham was supplied with copies of Thomas Bell's virulent S u r v e j ~ of Popery and Arzatomie of Popish Tyranrzie while in prison and told that 'by the time you have read these books, and marked them well, you will have no mind to be a Papist'.l13 Jesuits and seminarians made similar brags, and the potted autobiographies preserved in the matriculation registers of the English College certainly suggest that large numbers of students owed their 'conversion' or 'recon- ciliation' to the Church of Rome to reading Catholic tracts, as do confessions prised out of captured priests.'14 It would be a mistake to ignore the significance such individuals attached, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, to print as a catalyst of religious enlightenment. It was upon 'diligently reading' Thomas Dorman's Disprozde of M , L\Towelles Reproufe (1565) that the Warwickshire Protestant minister John Good conceived a virulent 'hatred of heresy' and decided to defect. Under interrogation the countess of Arundel ascribed her 'Revoulte from Religion' to the study of 'certeyne books', while the future Benedictine monk Augustine Baker wrote of the divine inspiration which had infused him upon perusing various controversial treatises he had initially taken up 'but for recreation and divertisement of mind'.'15

"' Ellzabethapi Cas~ristry, ed. Holmes, 22, 119. "* Aveling, Catholic R e c u s u n c ~ iii the C l t j q l Y o r k , 161; Record.! the Epiglish

Prozilzce, ed. Foley, iv, 292. 11' Ibid., ii, 345, 348-9. ""or just a few examples, see ibid., iv, 431, 141, 519, 603, 655, 657; vii, pt ii,

97-; Ciip~lblished Docuwioits Reltrrilzg to the Epiglisiz ,2farryrs, i, ed. Pollen, 31-2. Records o/ the English Proziiicc, ed. Foley, iv, 17; Vc'clz. Philip Hou'trrd, ed. Pollen

and MacMahon, 55; ,\ler?ioritrls of Fdtizer A~lg~rs t i i i e Buker upid other Docuwicnrs Reluri~ig l o the Englisiz Belzcdictriics, ed. J. McCann and H. Connolly (CRS, xxxiii, London, 1933:, '5-6.

104 PAST AND PRESENT KUMBER 168

No single Catholic work had a greater reputation as a stimulus for religious renewal than Robert Persons's Fzrst Booke of the Christian Exercise (or the Book of Resolution), originally published in 1582. Inspired by the Italian Jesuit Gaspar Loarte's Exercise of a Chrzstian Life and drawing liberally on Luis de Granada's The Sinners Guyde, this bulky duodecimo tract became an immediate bestseller.l16 Catholics boasted that the 2,500 copies of the first edition had been snapped up by the spiritually starved English public and literally fingered to pieces, 'statim distracta': 'the number of conversions of heretics to the faith by reading it can scarcely be believed'."' Endorsing these self-congratulatory reports, a spy told Sir Francis Walsingham that, together with the Rheims New Testament, the book was 'as much sought for, of the protestanttes as papiste~' ."~ Thomas Poulton from Buckinghamshire was only one of many apprentice priests who claimed that the book had revolutionized their lives. Upon reading it, he remembered, 'a marvellous light broke in upon rne'.ll9

The Book of Resol~ltion was a runaway success not so much because it pandered to a taste for forbidden fruit, but because it met a genuine need. It filled a glaring gap in the existing range of Protestant literature. Spiritual and devotional writing was a genre which the reformed ministry was slow to develop, as Counter-Reformation priests never tired of pointing out triumphantly and even godly preachers were obliged to admit begrudg- ingly. This was a serious shortcoming which, as Richard Rogers noted ruefully, 'the Papists [continually] cast in our teeth'. 'Let it be observed what advantage the common Adversarie hath gotten by their pettie Pamphlets in this kinde', lamented John Phillips, vicar of Faversham, in the preface to a catechism entitled The Christians ABC (1629). In his Ancilla Pietatis: Or, the Hand- Maid to Private Dezlotion (1626), Daniel Featley tried hard to find

Persons, The First Bookc <J/the Chrzsritriz Exerczse (see n. 81, above;. Other editions appeared in 1585, 1598, 160', 1622 and 1633 (STC 19354-19354.9). Gaspar Loarte's Essercitdtio dclld V i td Crisrzuiztr (Venice, 1561), was translated and published by Vi'illiam Carter in 1579 (STC 16641.5); an English version o f Luis de Granada's G L de Pecudores (1556-'3~ did not appear until 1598 (STC 16918).

11" 'Father Persons' ,Memoirs', ed. Pollen, 153-5; a letter from Persons to Aquaviva, 12 Feb. 1585, quoted in Victor Houliston, 'Vi7hy Robert Persons ~vould not be Pacified: Edmund Bunny's Theft o f The Book o f Resolution', in Thomas ,M. McCoog (ed.) , T h c Reckuizcd Expense: Hdnurnd Can2pioiz uizd the E u r l j Hnglls/z Je.i~~its (Woodbridge, 1996), 168.

""RO, SP 121168131. Record.! of the Englisiz Pruz'ince, ed. Foley, i, 158-9.


a convincing excuse: 'the Romanists for the most part exceed in bulke, but our Divines in weight. The Church of Rome (like Leah) is more fruitfull; but her Devotions (like Leah in this also) are bleare-eyed with superstition'. 120

Conscious of lagging behind, Protestants copied older techniques and recycled pre-Reformation classics like the confessions of St Augustine and Thomas a IZempis's Irnitation of Christ.12' Others resorted to blatantly plagiarizing the writings of living Catholic priests. Thus in 1584 the Yorkshire minister Edmund Bunny produced a bowdlerized version of Persons's First Book of the Christian Exercise, from which he carefully removed the passages on purgatory and free will but retained over 90 per cent of the original text intact. The Jesuit was justifiably outraged by this audacious piece of literary piracy and reissued the tract with the revised title A Christian Directorie, 'purged from M. Bunnyes corruption[s]'. Ironically, this devotional manual went through more Protestant impressions that Catholic ones: by 1600 the tally was twenty-four to four.'22 The playwright Robert Greene attrib- uted his death-bed repentance to it and it was through reading an old torn copy lent to his father by 'a poor Day-Labourer' in the town of Kidderminster that Richard Baxter felt the first stirrings of his religious vocation. Thereby, he wrote, 'it pleased God to awaken my

Persons was not the only Catholic writer to be kidnapped and subjected to heretical castration. Francis Meres and Thomas Lodge ruthlessly pillaged the works of Luis de Granada for the benefit of Protestant readers, and Henry Garnet's translation of Luca Pinelli's Meditatiorzi brevi del santissirno sacramerzto (c. 1600)

lZ0 Richard Rogers, S e ~ e n Treatrses (London, 1603, STC 21215), sig. A6'; John Phillips, The Chrrsriails A B C : or, A Christiun Alphabet, Conrejnrng Grounds o/ Knowledge unto Suleatron (London, 1629, STC 1987'.5), sig. A4'; Daniel Featley, Aricillu Pietatis: or, The Hand-,Zlald to Prizate Decorion (London, 1626, STC 10725), sig. A6'.

121 See Helen C. Vi'hite, Englrsh Dccotional Literature (Prose:, 1600-1640 (,Madison, 1931), ch. 3.

' ' ' A Booke o/ Christian Exercise, Appertarnrng to Rcsol~rtron . . . Perused, and Accoi~zpuilied S o w u'rth a Treatise Tending ro Pacrficdrioil: by Hdi~zund B u n n y (London, 1584, STC 19355); Robert Persons, A Chrrstiun Dlrcctorie Gi~ldii lg IIIen 111 thelr Salzatlon (St Omer, 1607, STC 19353.5). See Brad S. Gregory, 'The "True and Zealouse Service of God": Robert Parsons, Edmund Bunny, and the First Booke o f the Chrrstlan Exercrse', J l Eccles. Hist., xlv (1991), 239, 253, and passiwi; Houliston, 'Why Robert Persons ~vould not be Pacified'.

12' Robert Greene, The Rcpcnrunce of Robcrr Grsene (London, 1592, STC 12306), sig. B2"; Richard Baxter, Reiiqniae Busterranac (London, 1696), 3.

106 PAST AND PRESEKT KULMBER 168

was quickly matched by an excised edition by Christopher Sutton, canon of Westminster. 124 A selection of devotional writings of the German Jesuit Jeremias Drexelius prepared by the Cambridge divine Ralph Winterton was reprinted at least fifteen times following its first appearance in 1632.12' At the less expensive end of the market, John Taylor's The Life arzd Death o f . . . the Virgin Mary (1620) was based on an old prose tract the 'water-poet' had picked up in Antwerp and from which, 'like a Bee', he had 'suck't the sacred hony of the best authorities of Scriptures', leaving 'the poyson of Antichristianisme' behind. A kind of hybrid between a medieval saint's life and a penny godly, it misled more than one unsuspecting reader, and can be found in both an inventory of works 'of the Roman religion' and the otherwise impeccably Protestant library of the Northamptonshire gentlewoman, Judith 1 ~ h a m . l ~ ~

Catholic works also appeared from mainstream presses without being disinfected, sometimes on the assumption that their contents were sufficiently damning in and of themselves. Others were the work of stationers with 'popish' sympathies, including Gabriel Cawood and Valentine Simmes. 127 Many commercial publishers, however, printed such books simply because they could command a high price from prospective buyers. Clement Knight's A Marzual of Godly Prayers Distributed According to the Dajles of the Weeke (1620), for instance, was a thinly disguised reprint of one of the most popular recusant primers. lZ8 No fewer than thirteen editions of Robert Southwell's Saint Peters Cornplaint were printed in the public domain between 1595 and 1640, compared with just two

1 2 % r t r n u d ~ ~ ~ und Heutenlie Hxerci.ies and The Siiiners D e t o t i o ~ i , Gru~iudos Sp i r r t~~ tr l l G i ~ j d ewere all translated and edited by Francis Meres and published in London in 1598 (STC 16902, 16920, 16918;; T h e Flomers o/Lodomicke t ~ / G r a n a d o , trans. Thomas Lodge (London, 1601, STC 16901;; Luca Pinelli, B r c f i .Clcditutions of the .Most Holy Strcrui~ient and o/ Preptrrtrtion, for R e c e ~ i n g the Sawic, trans. Henry Garnet ([English secret press], c.1600, STC 1993'); GodLv lLfedltdtiotis ~ l p o ~ n the ~2losr Holy Sacrtrnrent of the Lordes Snpper , trans. and ed. Christopher Sutton (London, 1601, STC 23491:.

12' Cited in Anthony Milton, 'A Qualified Intolerance: The Limits and Ambiguities of Early Stuart Anti-Catholicism', in Arthur F. Marotti (ed.), Cdtholicisr~~und A n t i - Cuthullciswi in Hizgldnd (Basingstoke, 1999), 92-3.

12' John Taylor, The Llfe dnd Death o f . . . the Virgln .Cltrrj (London, 1620, STC 23'-O), sig. A%'; Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. 14. 25 (3), fa. I-; Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, I. L. 1016. I owe both these refer- ences to Arnold Hunt.

12- Brown, 'Paperchase', 138-9. 12' A .IItrnudl o f Godly Prtrjers Distrib~rted According to the Du.ves o/ the Wecke

(London, 1620, STC 1-2-8.1): printed by Bernard Alsop for Clement Knight.


clandestine impressions. John Wolfe entered his rights to A Short Rule of Good Life in the Stationers' Register in November 1598; another version was licensed to the bookseller William Barrett in the reign of ~ a m e s . ' * ~ Significantly these constitute a category of literature which Allison and Rogers excluded from their catalogue, and as Alison Shell has pointed out, this has had the effect of minimizing the importance of certain 'recusant' authors, as well as concealing the high level of Catholic seepage into a context in which Protestant writers officially enjoyed a total monopoly. 130

Zealous Calvinist preachers were quite willing to exploit the ensuing confessional confusion and republish medieval devotional works with deliberately ambiguous titles, hoping, perhaps, to win over the bewildered. The compiler of the Manuale Catholicoruwz: A Marzuall for True Catholickes (161 l) , an anthology of meditations and prayers by the Church Fathers, was none other than the puritan divine William Crashaw.131 John Cosin's Collection of Private Dezlotiorzs (1627) seems to have been a calculated attempt to stem the tide of lady courtiers crossing over to Rome because of its rich liturgical tradition: modelled on the pocket office, it included a calendar of martyrs from which the Marian Protestants immortalized by Foxe were conspicuously omitted. 132 In the context of concerns about the rise of Arminianism, Cosin's prayer book was perceived as an insidious attempt to subvert the orthodox religion. William Prynne was particularly outraged by the frontispiece, which incorporated what he called 'an undoubted Badge, and Character of a Popish, and Jesuitical1 Booke', that idolatrous emblem, the letters IHS.133 Fresh allegations of a

12' Robert Southu~ell, S. Peters Coniplaiizt (STC 22955-22955.5, 22955.7-22968); and his A Short Rnlc ( I / Good Lqe (London, [159'?], STC 22969). See also R . Loomis, 'The Barrett Version of Robert Southwell's Short Rule of Good Life', Rccusant Hist., vii (1963).

130 Alison Shell, Cutholiczsni, Coiztro~crsj trnd the Eligllsh Literdry Iniugzntrtzo,i, 1558-1660 (Cambridge, 1990), 14, 61-3, and ch. 2 pdssl~n.

lil William Crashaw, ,\ldnziulc Cutholicor~on. . . A .Cltriznall for True Cutholicks (London, 1611, STC 6018). For an earlier example, see John Phillips, The Per/ect Ptitiz ti, Parudice: Conrulizlizg Dleers .Most Wh0/~0111~Ghostb and Pra-vers (London, 1588, STC 19872). See also Eamon Duffy, 'Continuity and Divergence in Tudor Religion', in R. K. Swanson (ed.), Cn1t.i dnd Ditersi t~ zn the Church (Studies in Church Hist., xxxii, Oxford, 1996), 189-205.

13* John Cosin, A Collection of Prreute Deeotloizs (London, 1627, STC 5815.5). 133 William Prynne, A Bricjc Sure (rj,und Censnrc i ~ f.\lr Cozen h ~ s Conzening Dei'~tloiz.~

London, 1628, STC 20155), 1 . See also, H[enry] B[urton], A Tryall 11/ Priture ~ c i o t i o n s(London, 1628, STC 4157); and The Correcpondence 11/ J ~ h i l C ~ S I I I D. D., Lord 13irhi1p o/ Dnrhawi, ed. George Omsby, 2 vols. (Surtees Soc., lii, lv, Durham, 1869-72;, i, pp. xix-xxi, 125-31.

108 PAST AND PRESEKT NUAMBER168

Laudian plot to propagate popery arose after the republication in 1637 of a virtually unexpurgated version of Bishop Francis de Sales's An Irztroductiorz to a Devout Life, which had been translated into English by the Catholic priest John Yaxley in 1613.134 While there was probably little substance to such claims, they do warn us against assuming that the worlds of Catholic and Protestant publishing were mutually exclusive and that their readers belonged to rigidly segregated denominational groups. They also afford oblique evidence of the skill and success with which early modern Catholics harnessed the technology of print.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of clerical endeavours to annex the new medium as a tool of Tridentine hegemony should not be exaggerated. Prescriptive tracts did not always live up to their pretensions as 'domme preachers'. The continuing composition of treatises of 'schism', for instance, arguably documents a partial pedagogic failure: it indexes the persistence of church papistry despite repeated directives from the missionary hierarchy, and reveals a laity resistant to the indoctrinating efforts of an inflexible ecclesiastical elite. 135 Attention might also be drawn to the tension between the need to rely on books as locums for priests and intrinsic distrust of the interpretative liberties lay readers might take with their texts. Print could be a double-edged sword, promoting habits of thought which recoiled against the principle that exegesis was the preserve of the ~ 1 e r g y . l ~ ~

It is a commonplace that every puritan family possessed a well- thumbed Geneva Bible. Reading it and other works of practical divinity aloud was one of the prime duties of the husband, father and master, a central feature of what Christopher Hill has called

""rancis de Sales, An Introducr~on ro tr Detoure Lzfc (London, 1616, 1637, STC 11319, 11321), an expurgated version of Yaxley's translation (Douai, 1613, STC 11316.5). For the controversy over its republication in 1637, see William Prynne, Ctrnrerblrrics Doowie (London, 1616), 188; Srndrt Rojtrl ii, Ro~jalP r o ~ l d ~ i a r ~ ~ n ~ , Proclui~ztrtzons of King Chtrrles I , 1625-1646, ed. J. F. Larkin (Oxford, 1983), 557-8; Letters of Thonius Fitzhcrbcrt, 1608-1610, ed. L. Hicks (CRS, xli, London, 1948), 40'.

'35 See my Chnrch Ptrpr.it.i, chs. 2-3, esp. 26, 19, '1. ""ee Bagschi, Llrther's Edrlrest Opponents, esp. 213-14; and Ceri Sullivan,

Disi~zenibcred Rherorlc: Hnglzsh Rccustrnt Wrrtzng, 1580-1603 (Madison, 1995), esp. 46, 48.

109 'DOMAME PREACHERS'?

the 'spiritualization of the h o ~ s e h o l d ' . ' ~ ~ Godly books figured prominently in the voluntary religion of fervent Protestants from all social levels: from pious gentlewomen such as Lady Margaret Hoby who pored over edifying tracts as they sat at their needle- work to illiterate fisherman like one Rawlins White, who absorbed the Old and New Testaments by listening to his young son read them, chapter by chapter, 'every night after supper, summer and winter'.13' Printed texts became an integral part of their confessional identity. While 'prayer book Protestants' followed the service in personal copies of Cranmer's liturgy, carrying the Bible to church and marking the lecturer's texts was a characteristic gesture of the self-styled e 1 e ~ t . l ~ ~ The stereotype can be found enshrined in pictures contrasting 'superstitious' Catholic con-gregations fingering their rosary beads with literate Protestant ones diligently following the preacher's discourse in a book on their knees (Plate 6).

But there is a strong case for suggesting that the piety of the post-Reformation Catholic community was no less bibliocentric than its Protestant counterpart. In the households of nobility and gentry like the Meynells of North IZilvington in Yorkshire,140 primers and manuals of prayer replaced sermons, the Scriptures and the collected works of William Perkins and Richard Sibbes, while a recusant matriarch often filled the shoes of the puritan paterfamilias. Dame Dorothy Lawson of St Anthony's near Newcastle upon Tyne established the practice of reading pious books and saints' lives in the company of her serving-men and charnberrnaid~, '~~and similar customs seem to have prevailed in the homes of the Babthorpes at Osgodby, the Montagues at Battle and the Wisemans at Braddocks, where religious life revolved around regular confession, frequent communion and careful per-

13- Christopher Hill, 'The Spiritualization of the Household', in his Socletj und Purlttrnlsr~~112 Pre-Retolutiondry Engltr~id (Harmondsworth, 1964;.

'" The D~trrj of Lddy ilIargaret H ~ J ~ J , 1599-1605, ed. Dorothy ,M. Meads (London, 1930), 98, 126, 129; Foxe, Acts dnd i2,lonzinie11rs, ed. Cattley, vii, 29.

119 For 'Prayer-Book Protestants', see Judith Maltby, Praycr Book trnd People in I<Izztrbethtrn und Etrrb Srudrr England (Cambridge, 1998), 13-14, 24-30. For carrying bibles to church as a mark of puritanism, see the character of the 'she precise hypocrite' or 'she puritan', in John Earle, .IIicrocoswio~ruphy: or, A Piece of thc lbbrld Discoter'd: In E.isujs and Chdrdcters (London, 1732 edn), 110-13.

~2fiscellunetr,ed. E. E . Reynolds (CRS, Ivi, London, 1964), xxiv-v. 141 William Palmes, The Ll/e o/,Cfrs Dororizj Lazson, o/Sr Anthonj's, nedr Sezcustle-

on-Tjne (London, 1855), 48.

110 PAST A K D PRESENT K U M B E R 168

usal of devotional handbooks.14* This style of domestic piety predated the two Reformations and can be found captured in snapshot in fifteenth-century paintings of fashionable ladies poring over illuminated b 0 0 k s . l ~ ~ But it was also infused with the militant and muscular brand of spirituality patented by the Society of Jesus. The library of the Brome sisters confiscated by the authorities in 1586, for example, included Tridentine bestsellers by Robert Persons, Gaspar Loarte and Luis de Granada, as well as several old Latin ~ s a 1 t e r s . l ~ ~

The private meditation on texts practised by devout women like the young Mary Ward was quasi-monastic and anchoretic in character: pious ladies and gentlemen recited the hours of the Virgin in their closets and chambers in deliberate 'imitation of Religious persons'.14' Certainly the daily cycle of worship observed by Roman Catholics who opted for a cloistered life on the Continent was increasingly predicated upon and penetrated by print. Abbesses and mother superiors are prominent among the dedicatees of English recusant literature, and inferences can also be drawn from the fact that many such tracts remain in the hands of convents originally located in the Low Countries. A manuscript note on the flyleaf of the Bibliotheque de Troyes's copy of Andreas de Capillia's Manual of Spiritual1 Exercises (1625) declares 'This Booke belongs to the English Benedictin Nunnes of our B11 Lady of Good Hope in Paris', and the library of the Brigittine sisters of Syon Abbey is an extraordinary monument to religious communities which were also what Brian Stock has called 'textual ~ornmunit ies ' . '~~

lJZ our Cdrholic ForeJuthers, ed. J . Morris, 3 vols. (London, 1872-'j, T h e Troubles i ~ f

iii, 467-8; A 7 1 Ell-abcrhail Recusanr House, Co~iipri.izilg the Life l ~ j the Ltrdy d2Jtrgddleilc, Visci~untcssc ,\lontdgue 3538-1608,, ed. A. C . Southern (London, 1953), 3--50; Johii Gertrrd: The Aurob~ogrdphj (1.1i7,i Elisuberhaii, ed. and trans. Philip Caraman :London, 1951), esp. 28-9. lJ3See Susan Groag Bell, 'Medieval W o m e n Book Owners: Arbiters o f Lay Piety

and Ambassadors o f Culture', i n Judi th M. Bennett ( ed . ) , Slsrers apid WIi1rko.i thc ,$fiddle Ages (Chicago, 1989); Sandra Penketh, 'Vi'omen and Books o f Hours', in Lesley Smith and Jane H . M . Taylor (eds . ) , U"i~wzcil dild the Book: Assesszng the T71s14trI Etzdeiice (London, 1996); and the essays in Lesley Smith and Jane H. M . Taylor (eds . ) , WI i~n~en ,the Book upid the God!),: Selected Proceediiifs o j t h e S t Hlldu's Colzfire,ice, 1993 (Cambridge, 1995). laBrit. Lib . , MS Lansdo~vne 50, fo. 163'. lJ5M. C. E. Chambers, The Lqe of '\.fury W'uril '1585-1645,, 2 vols. (London,

1882-5), i , 49-53; Bart, Poorc .Cldns .Mzte, 39. lJ6Birrell, 'English Counter-Reformation Book Culture', 116-17; Andreas de

Capillia, A ,2ldnuai ~ J S p ~ r r t ~ l d l l Exercises, trans. Henry Manfield (St Omer , 1625, STC ,o,!r L L p. I ! :

6. John Foxe, Actes and Momtmats (London, 1610 edn, STC 11227), detail from title-page. Cambridge University Library: shelfmark K*7.1

(By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)


The prominence of wives, widows and spinsters in Catholic book culture is certainly striking, though it might partly be an illusion created by the natural bias of biographical sources towards staunch recusants and away from 'schismatics', a group which may have been disproportionately male.147 Indeed, to gloss a remark of John Bossy, 'if we are looking for a typographical pietas practised by silent readers', one place we are sure to find it is among occasional conformists ignoring the Protestant liturgy and studying spiritual books in their seats.14' Perusing a devotional text during sermon time was a tell-tale feature of the church papist light-heartedly sketched by the character writer John Earle, and Archbishop Grindal's visitation articles for the province of Canterbury in 1576 enquired about religious conservatives 'that useth to pray . . . upon any superstitious popish primer'. 149 In one sense this practice simply represents a continua- tion of privatizing tendencies inherent in late medieval piety: in his Wevkefov Housholdevs Richard Whitford had encouraged earn- est lay people to 'kepe their syght in the chirche close upon theyr bokes or bedes' during the mass.150 Yet, at another level, it was a distinctly belligerent gesture. 'When others on their knees are at praiers', it was reported of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, he 'will sett contemptuously reading on a book, most likely some Lady Psalter or portasse which have been found in his pue'. John Hareley of Brompton came to church, it was complained in 1577, 'but doth there in the time of devine service reade so loude uppon

N 146 con1

4603); copy reproduced in facsimile in Englzsh Recttsant Li terature, ed. D. M . Rogers, 393 vols. (London, 1968-79), lv. The library of the nuns of Syon Abbey, formerly at South Brent, Devon, is on permanent loan to the University of Exeter. Brian Stock, The I~irplzcattons o/ Li teracy: W r i t t e n Language and ~Clodels of Interpretation 112 rile eleven ti^ and Twel f th Centttrzes (Princeton, 1983), esp. ch. 2.

147 On this point, see my Church Papists, 78-81; cf. John Bossy, The Engllsll Catilolic Comintoztty, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), 153-8.

14* Bossy, C l ~ r ~ s t i a n i t jin tile Wes t , 101. 149 Earle, Mtcrocosn~ograp l~y ,28-9; Docuinenrary Annals of the Re forn~ed Church of

England, ed. Edward Cardwell, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1843), i, 309. 15' Whitford, Werke for Housllolders, sig. Dlv . See Paul Saenger, 'Silent Reading:

The Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society', Via tor , xiii (1982); and his 'Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages', Scrltrura e Civi l i ta, ix (1985); Colin Richmond, 'Religion and the Fifteenth Century Gentleman', in Barrie Dobson (ed.), Tile Cilurci~, Politics and Patronage (Gloucester, 1984), esp. 199; Andrew Taylor, 'Into his Secret Chamber: Reading and Privacy in Late Medieval England', in James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor (eds.), The Practice and Representatzon of Reading in England (Cambridge, 1996); Duffy, Stripping of the A l tars , 121, downplays the privatization of late medieval religion.


his latten popishe primmare (that he understandeth not) that he troubleth both the minister and people'.15' In these cases books are clearly being used as confessional emblems, stage props, so to speak, in the drama of dissent. We need to set aside the cliche that popery was an intractable enemy of the press and replace it with an awareness of the existence of two rival cultures of print.

The annual letter of the Jesuit mission for 1624 recounts the tale of a poor Warwickshire woman who embraced Catholicism after she understood a Protestant preacher to say that the illiterate could not hope to gain ~a1va t ion . l~~ The anecdote was intended as a sideswipe against Calvinism as a creed that favoured the elite and marginalized those who could not read. However, it might be thought that the book-centred religion encouraged by the seminary priests and the Society of Jesus was no less alien to the unlearned than revisionist historians have insisted was Protestantism. Christopher Haigh has implied that while Tridentine piety found a niche in the seigneurial household, it had little appeal to a peasantry wedded to folk custom, prophy- lactic magic and mechanical ritual. Sternly moralistic and doc- trinally rigorous, it too was doomed to fail among ordinary parishioners with survivalist sympathies residing on the fringes of England. Together with a missionary strategy which concen- trated on wealthy 'schismatics' at the expense of plebeian 'heretics', it constituted another nail in the coffin of Catholicism as a popular faith. lS3

More than one aspect of this thesis has recently been qualified and criticized. On the one hand it is no longer so clear that the clergy focussed their proselytizing efforts solely upon the gentry and a r i s t ~ c r a c y . ' ~ ~ On the other, the notion that Roman Catholic publications served only to estrange the unlettered now seems

Quoted in Bossy, Englzsh Catholic Comtrurnz:~, 122; 'Diocesan Returns of Recusants for England and Wales, 1577', ed. Patrick Ryan, in Rlzscella~zeaX I I (CRS, xxii, London, 1921), 79.

'52 Records oj :he English Proe,z~zce, ed. Foley, vii,, pt ii, 1109-10. 15' Christopher Haigh, 'The Continuity of Catholic~sm in the English Reformation',

in Haigh (ed.), English Refortnario~z Re~ised, 203-5, 207; and his 'From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England', Trans. Ro~j. His:. Soc., 5th ser., xxxi (1981), esp. 138.

154 See, for example, Questier, Co~zeersio~z,Polirics and Religion, ch. 7 ; Peter Lake and Michael Questier, 'Agency, Appropriation and Rhetoric under the Gallows: Puritans, Romanists and the State in Early Modern England', Past and Present, no. 153 (Nov. 1996), and their 'Prisons, Priests and People in Post-Reformation England', in Nicholas Tyacke (ed.), Engla~zd's Long R<fornzatio~z, 1500-1800 (London, 1998).


much harder to uphold. Like the early reformers, priests made adroit use of hybrid media to communicate with the semi-literate. As forthcoming work by Alison Shell will show, they proved 'exceptionally willing' to exploit oral forms as 'a supple and evasive means of popularizing dissident ideas'."' They dissemin- ated anti-Protestant prophecies and rhymes and composed devotional and polemical songs set to popular tunes designed to counter godly psalms and ditties such as 'Greensleeves Moralized'. As John Rhodes and Samuel Hieron lamented in 1602, 'petty bayts' and 'toys' like the 'proper new ballad' scattered abroad 'Libell-like' in various parts of the country that year were all too effective in ensnaring the souls of the simple and withdrawing them 'unto the doctrine of Antichrist'.lS6 Between 1577 and 1584, the martyred priest Richard White devised a set of Welsh carols on such subjects as the sinfulness of attending heretical services, the assassination of Prince William of Orange and the 'black assize' at Oxford when the judge and jury who convicted a Catholic bookseller suddenly perished of gaol fever. lS7

This imaginative attempt to commandeer the indigenous culture of the Celtic bards bears comparison with the way Calvinist ministers assimilated traditional 'oral literate' modes of transmission to convey the Reformed Gospel in the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands and island^.^'^ To succeed as a missionary religion, Catholicism, no less than Protestantism, had to adapt itself to a society only gradually and unevenly being infiltrated by print.

The possibility that post-Reformation English Catholicism may have contained within it greater incentives to literacy than Protestantism also deserves further attention.lS9 In a context in which persecution enhanced the importance of the written and

I am grateful to Alison Shell for fruitful discussions on this subject and for allowing me to read material from her forthcoming monograph in typescript.

156 Rhodes, A~zszcere to a Rotnish Ritne, sig. A2'; Samuel Hieron, AIIA~lsicere ro 0

Popish R j t n e , Lare l j Scarrered Abroad in the I n s t Purrs, a11d m r c h Re l j ed npo~z by soit~e Siwtply-Sedlrced (London, 1605, STC 13388), sig. A2'-'. For prophecies, see Caletldar o/ Stare Papers, Dotnesric, 1591-3, 183; Calendar o/ Srare Papers, Dotnestic: Addenda , 1580-1625, 106, 108; for Protestant ballads, see Watt, Cheap Prz~lr arld Popular Piet j ' , chs. 2-3.

15' Cnp~rblislzed Docntne~lts Relating to rlze English .\Iartjrs, i, ed. Pollen, 90-9. 158 See Jane Dawson, 'Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland', in Pettegree,

Duke and Lewis (eds.), Calui~llsnz i n Europe, 1540-1620. '59 Cf. R. A. Houston, L i r e r a q In Ear ly .Cloder~l Europe: Clrlrnre a11d Edlrcatlon,

1500-1800 (London, 1988), 137-50.


printed word, priests recognized the need to combine catechesis with rudimentary instruction in reading. In 1611, for example, Catholic prisoners in York Castle were discovered to be con-ducting a-dame school for local children under the very noses of their warders. It is also worth recalling the chronic worries of the government about the influence of 'popish' schoolmasters upon impressionable youth. 160 Nor is it insignificant that Margaret Clitherow learned to read while imprisoned for sheltering priests. For this butcher's wife, books became a means of solace and retreat, and devotional literacy a replacement for a life of active lay evangelism. 161

In assessing the role of printed artefacts in the lives of the 'common sort' of Catholics, we need to be particularly sensitive to the continuing centrality of the visual. The recusant priest Lewis Bennett echoed Gregory the Great's famous dictum that pictures were 'laymen's books' when he declared at Barkham, Sussex, in April 1603 that images were 'more availeable for . . . ignorant unlerned men' than sermons which 'went in att one eare and out att another', since they were 'better kept in mynde' in the long run.162 Although only a handful survive, single sheet woodcuts and engravings were evidently produced in large quant- ities, along with tiny catechisms and meditations dominated by illustrations to which an ability to understand the accompanying text was by no means essential. One fascinating example is Godljl Co?zte?rzplatio?~sfor the U ~ l l e a r ~ ~ e d a little sextodecimo(1575), bound with copies of the Jesus Psalter and Vaux's Catechisvze, which consisted of sixty-one miniature scenes of events in Christ's life with only the biblical reference by way of a caption (Plates ",8).'63 Devotional works like A rllethode, to Meditate up071 the Psalter, or Great Rosarze of oztr Blessed Ladie (1598) cultivated 'habits of visualisation', modes of mental apprehension involving the ability to 'imprint' images of Christ's passion on one's con-sciousness, images Calvinists abhorred a; 'idols of the mind'

lh0 Aveling, Catholic Rec~rzaiicj i~rthe (: i t j oJ h r k , 82. For examples of concern about 'popish' schoolmasters, see Calenddr o i S t a r z Paper., Doriiestic, 1537-1580, 158, 258, 262; Cal?ndar oj' Sta te l'apers, D o i r l ~ ~ r i c ,1591-4, 283.

l h l Troztbles o/ our Catholtc Fore/ntlzers, ed. Morris, iii, 375, 390-4. I owe this example to Anne Dillon.

I62 c,ii

j endiir OJ Assize Records: S~r.csex In~iicrmenrs, Jniiies I , ed. J . S. Cockburn :London, 1 9 3 \ , 1.

163 C;odlj' Conrei i iplat t~~~rs the Cillearried ([Antwerp, 15751, STC 13563.3;. I am/or grateful to the librarian of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, for permitting me to inspect the unique copy in the college's collection.

G O D L Y C O I U T ~ M P L A T I O N SY F O R

the vnleamtd.

matt)tffmfc trphtardw mpottcs towr mtnbe:

mhe lantr'tI)cliimtptehn8 Dott)Qew in \tkehulPt.

7. and 8. Godly Contemplatiuns for the Unlearned ([Antwerp, 15751, STC 14563.3), title-page and sig. HIr.

The title-page is reproduced from the facsimile edition published in the English Recusant Literature series, cxxxviii (Menston, 1973): British Library shelfmark 16541138. Sig. Hlr is from the original copy in the

library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford: shelfmark A. 14.10 (By permission of the Scolar Press and the British Library, and the President

and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

118 PAST AND PRESEST NUMBER 168

(Plate 9). 164 The 'painted tables' in the original French edition of Louis Richeome's Holy Pictures of the Mysticall Fzgures of the Most Holy Sacrifice and Sacranlent of the Eucharist (1619) were intended as 'a peece of Tapestry' and 'an ornament', 'in beholding wherof', the viewer might 'take a heavenly repast'.'65 Seeing, therefore, was a specialized form of reading.

Moreover, as Margaret Aston and Eamon Duffy have taught us, although many of those who owned late medieval Latin primers can have had only an imperfect grasp of the words on their pages, this by no means precluded their use as mnemonic devices.166 Augustine Baker's elderly father utilized his as an aid to the vocal recitation of prayers in which he engaged in spare moments during the day. 16' Some woodcut Images of Pity expli- citly acknowledged that plenary indulgence could be earned whether or not the suppliant was able to decipher the spiritual pardon they a d v e r t i ~ e d . ' ~ ~ This was a religious culture in which texts themselves could be a kind of intercession. A young recusant scholar who owned an ancient book of hours hoped it might prompt any person into whose hands it casually fell to pray for mercy to his soul and his constancy in the Catholic religion: 'that he swerve not from the true faith, nor renounce Holy Church, that he may eftsoons avoid the horror of schism and dissimula- t i ~ n ' . ' ~ ~For Dorothy Lawson, it was a ritual prelude to receiving the Eucharist: the evening before mass she would peruse a chapter of the lnzitatzon of Chrlst 'so leasurely' and 'with so much attention and diligence, that shee rather seem'd to make a meditation than

16'A .Cletizodt, to ,\'lrditati ztpo?z the Psal ter , o r Grrar Rosaric oJ' oitr R l c ~ s c d L a d i i (Antwerp [English secret press], 1598, STC 1-538); Taylor, 'Into his Secret Chamber', 43-6, quotation at 35. On 'idols of the mind', see Margaret Aston, 1:'~iglatid's Icotioclasts, i, Lazcs agaili.t I?~iagrs(Oxford, 1988), 152-66.

16' Louis Richeome, Ho!)' P ~ c t z t ~ c . Ficurcs (11 tizr ,\.lost ~J'tizi A l f ~ . s t ~ c a l l H o l j Sacrgfice clnd Sacrattirlir i ~ fth r Elrcizarir (Antwerp [English secret press], 1619, STC 21022), sig. Al'. The pictures were excluded from the English edition because the plates were too 'over worn' to use (sig. A2'-').

166 Margaret hston, 'Devotional Literacy', in her Lo1lar~j.s and Refortrier.: I lnagi . a t ~ d L i t i r a c ~ in L a t e J f e d i e z a l Rcligioli (London, 1984), esp. 115-19; Duffy, Srrippi?z,g oJ'thc A l tar s , 217-32. On texts as mnenomics, see also Katt, C h e a p Pritit and Pt~ppLilar Pier),, 329-30; and hlary J. Carruthers, T h e Book i f ,lleirior).: A S tud) , o j .Cfe?iior~ iri .Cfediei,al Czllture (Cambridge, 1990), esp. ch. 7.

16- ,Cfei~ii~rialso.f Father A~r fus t i i l e B a k e r , ed. hlcCann and Connolly, 18, 53. I6"or images with this formula, see Roger Chartier, T h e Cult l lral Cses o/Pri?zr ?ti

Earl) , J foder t i Fraiice, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, 1987), 159-60. Similar English examples can be found in Duffy, Srripprtir i f the A l t a r s , 214 and plate 85.

16' Recorii.r o j the Etiglish Proei~zce, ed. Foley, iv, 702.


a spiritual lesson'.170 For such individuals, poring over a book was an act of worship, the printed item becoming as much of an icon and object of pious reverence as an alabaster image, agnzls dei, crucifix or string of rosary beads. Broadsheet pictures of English Catholic martyrs may likewise have functioned not merely as didactic narratives and polemical manifestos but also as two- dimensional relics.

Elaborately bound and embellished with expensive fabric, gilt and silver clasps, stored in special cupboards and cabinets and passed on to one's posterity as treasured possessions, primers, psalters and other pious texts might well be regarded as a special class of ~acramenta1. l~~ Like amulets, medals and fragments of the host they were sometimes perceived as sources of intrinsic holiness, of a numinous power ordinary lay men and women could tap. No less than wax tapers hallowed at Candlemas or wooden crosses blessed on Palm Sunday, books and printed images could be employed as talismans and charms to ward off evil spirits or storms, ease the pains of childbirth or effect miraculous cures.172 Woodcuts of the suffering Christ or St Christopher were placed in little bags hung around the necks of late fifteenth- century parishioners to protect them from harm, and copies of the legend of St Margherita were widely supposed to help heal gynaecological ~omp1a in t s . l~~ Such magical techniques persisted long after the official Reformation, even in fervently Protestant circles. The Essex vicar George Gifford told of a villager 'haunted with a Fairy' who wore the text of St John's Gospel close to her breast, and David Cressy has collected cases of patients' faces being fanned with leaves of the Bible, of volumes being set by the bedside of women in labour, and of committed members of the Church of England who ate pages of the New Testament as a sovereign remedy for fits.174 In Lutheran Germany, hymnals

"O Palmes, Lft . of 'Llrs Dorot/<\' lam so?^, 37-8. IT' For a description of some such books, see Brit. Lib., Lansdowne MS 33, fa. 149'. "* On sacramentals, see R. IVY:.Scribner, 'Cosmic Order and Daily Life: Sacred and

Secular in Pre-Industrial German Society', and 'Ritual and Popular Religion in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation', both repr. in his Popular Culture und Popular 1210z,ements, 5-15, 39-30. See also, Duffy, Str1ppt71~o/ the Altars, 231, 281-2. lT3Scribner, For the Sakt. of Sittplt. Folk, 5; Richmond, 'Religion and the Fifteenth

Century Gentleman', 201-2; Aston, 'Devotional Literacy', 112-13. "'George Gifford, A Dtalozzte C o ~ ~ c e r ~ ~ i n ~ W~tches aud Wztchcra/tes (London, 1593,

STC 11850), sig. Bl"; David Cressy, 'Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England', JI Lib. Hist., xxi (1986).


and prayer books were believed to be incombustible, like the remains of medieval saints and portraits of the Wittenberg reformer h i m ~ e 1 f . l ~ ~ There is every reason to believe that such customs also continued within the Elizabethan and early Stuart Catholic community, and not merely among unlearned country folk out of the reach of missionary priests. It would be wrong to present print as an effective deterrent against 'superstition': in some respects the press provided fresh stimulus to strands of belief and practice disdained by puritan and Tridentine ministers alike. 176

The contention that English Catholic book culture militated against some aspects of the Counter-Reformation agenda might well be extended. The foregoing discussion has implied that the piety of recusant households was primarily inward-looking and devotional in tone, a religion perhaps rooted more in prayers and self-regulated programmes of spiritual exercise than in sacra-mental observances that relied on a resident chaplaincy which relatively few could afford or dared to maintain. This was probably less true of the rich nobility and gentry than of committed Catholics of humbler rank who had only intermittent access to the ministry, but it still warrants careful consideration. Without an episcopal hierarchy it was extremely difficult to carry through the policies of the Council of Trent, to reorientate the religious experience of the laity towards the Mass and private confession, and to shift the focus of religion from family and confraternity to the well-ordered parish. It was well-nigh impossible for an itinerant clergy to effect the revolution in pastoral care and discipline highlighted by the work of John Bossy and Philip Hoffman, and it has been argued above that in this regard print was an imperfect proxy and deputy.177 SO I would cautiously endorse the claim that, in some respects, English and Continental Catholicism

I7'Robert IVY:.Scribner, 'The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the "Disenchantment of the World" ', JI I~ztt'rdisczpli~zar.~~ Hzst., xxiii (1993), 484.

"6 See the points made by Peter Burke in 'The Uses of Literacy in Early Modern Italy', in his The Historical Antizropolo~y o/ Earl.\' iModt'r~z Italy (Cambridge, 1987), 121-2.

"'John Bossy, 'The Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe', Past und Prt'st'nt, no. 57 (May, 1970); and his 'The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation', Trans. Roy. Hzst. Soc., 5th ser., xxv (1975); Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Cotnmzinity in the Dzocese O/ Lyon, 1500-1789 (New Haven, 1985); but cf. the qualifications of Marc R. Forster, The Coirnter-Refor~~zutzo~z zn tht' Villa~t's: Kt'lzgion and Kt'fortn in the Bishopric o/ Spqt'r, 1560-1720 (Ithaca, 1992), introduction and conclusion.


in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were moving in oppos- ite direction^.'^^ It might be suggested that the former continued to travel along a road leading to greater lay independence and relative freedom from clerical mediation, while the latter was diverted, with varying degrees of success, onto a track which tended towards tighter control by the priesthood and regular participation in the sacraments. '79 Whereas in Tridentine Europe household religion was regarded as 'a seed bed of subversion', in England it came to be the very cornerstone of a Catholic community striving to avoid its own annihilation. lsO

In each of these processes print played a pivotal role: books became both a partial substitute for rite in circumstances where public worship was a rare and risky occurrence, and a bulwark of loyalty to the besieged Church of Rome. They were a lifeline linking English Catholics with those parts of Christendom ranged against the forces of heresy and a powerful weapon in the propaganda war against Erastian Protestantism. In the production of polemical and devotional works, Jesuits, seminary priests and enterprising laymen like Richard Verstegan proved themselves no less artful and ingenious as publicists and evangelists than their Protestant adversaries. So effective were some of their methods and texts that Calvinist and conformist writers paid them the ultimate compliment of pinching them. Stimulated by conditions of persecution and exile which also acted as a catalyst to its 'literary imagination',ls' English Catholicism engendered its own extensive, cosmopolitan and astonishingly rich culture of print. It too can lay claim to be described as a religion of the book.

We may end on a note of irony, with the image of one Elizabethan Catholic appropriating and subverting the purposes of a book surpassed only by the Bible as a Protestant symbol. John Foxe would surely have been perturbed to learn that his Acts and Monunzents was a source of inspiration to the Northamptonshire recusant gentleman, Sir Thomas Tresham. His rousing stories of the courage of Protestants burned at the stake seem to have armed Tresham with evidence that his stubborn recusancy was not 'a fault but a singular commendation', and

Haigh, 'Continuity of Catholicism', 203-4. lT9See Kamen, Phoenix and th2 Flatrie, 32; A. D. Wright, The C o u ~ ~ t t . r - K e f i r ~ ~ t a t ~ o ~ ~ :

Catholic Ellrope and the .Ton-Cizr~stza~r World (London, 1982), 7-8. '" Bossy, 'Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe', 68. I R 1 Shell, Cathol~cis~n, L~t t . rar j Ima~ination, esp. pt 2.Contro~ersy and the E~~g l i sh


consoled and fortified him during the long periods of imprison- ment he suffered stoically for his outlawed faith.''* Printing, then, at length foiled Master Foxe himself.

Universitjl of Exeter Alexandra Walslzanz

l X 2 L7arious C l ~ l l t ' c t z o ~ ~ s ,iii (Hist. MSS Comm., London, 1903), 30; Tresham's copy of Foxe is listed in the catalogue of his library in Brit. Lib., Add. MS 39830, fo. 156r.

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