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English Catholics and the Papal Deposing Power 1570–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Extract

In historical narratives of the Tudor Period, disquisitions on the papal deposing power usually occur as comments on the events of the year 1570, when Pius V issued the Bull Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Queen Elizabeth to be a usurper. Catholic opinion on the deposing power, however, underwent many fluctuations and changes of emphasis in the years that followed. It may be profitable, therefore, to trace the history of the ideas of the English Catholics about the temporal power of the Pope during the seventy years which followed Regnans in Excelsis. In the present article we shall follow the changes as they are reflected in the printed books of those years, and documentary evidence will only be adduced to explain and comment on published statements.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1961

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References

Notes

1. On the doubts of the Northern Earls on this question see Percy's answers in Sharp, C.: Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569 (London, 1840) p.421.Google Scholar

2. Strype: Annals I, ii, 313 f. gives two of the Earls' proclamations. Sharp (op. cit. p. 42n) gives a slightly different version of one of them.

3. The Bull is dated 25 Feb. 1569/70. The original latin is in Bullarium Romanum (Turin ed., 1862) VII, 810 f. English translations have been printed many times, e.g. in Tudor Constitutional Documents, ed. Tanner; Phillip Hughes: The Reformation in England, vol. 3. The best authority on the Bull is Pollen, J. H.: The English Catholics in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, pp. 142 Google Scholar et. seq.

4. See Pollen, op. cit. p. 159. A printed government proclamation of 1 July 1570 (STC 8032) speaks of “bulls from Rome” in very general terms. Thomas Norton's two pamphlets (STC 18678a & 18679) against Regnans in Excelsis amount to less than 30 pp. and give only the vaguest notion of the contents of the Bull.

5. Letter of 28 August 1571 in Grindal's Remains (Parker Society) p. 328.

6. Bullae Papisticae … Refutatio, 1571 (STC 4043) A Confutation of the popes bull … 1572 (STC 4044). The negotiations to get Bullinger to write this answer can be followed in Zurich Letters (Parker Society) vol. 1.

7. De Visibili Monorchia Ecclesiae libri Octo (Louvain, 1572). On the efforts to answer Sanders's book see Mathew Parker: Letters (Parker Society) pp. 409 et seq. For evidence as to Sanders's unpublished book see Allen: Defence of Catholics (reprinted London, 1914) I, p. 83. There is also a reference to it in Sir Francis Hastings's Watch-word, 1598 (STC 12927), though this is probably derived from Allen.

8. See the list of faculties granted to Persons and Campion in Meyer, A. O.: England and the Catholic Church … pp. 486 Google Scholar et seq., especially No. 11.

9. See Pollen: op. cit. p. 294. Besides, Papal Bulls had for centuries been regarded not less as political than as religious documents.

10. Southern, A. C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, p. 154.Google Scholar

11. An answere to a Seditious Pamphlet, 1581 (STC 5005) sig. Clr & v.

12. Fulke: A brief confutation, 1581 (STC 11421) p. 57; Percival Wilburn: A Checke or Reproofe, 1581 (STC 25586) p. 35 et seq.; John Field: A Caveat for Parsons, 1581 (STC 10844) at sig A4; Southern, op. cit. p. 151 et seq. lists the various works of this controvers.y On the official inspiration of this literary campaign see a whole chapter in Rosenberg, E.: Leicester as a Patron of Letters, (New York, 1955) pp. 230277.Google Scholar

13. These passages are listed immediately after the preface to A Particular Declaration … of the traiterous affection borne against her maiestie by Edmond Campion …, 1582 (STC 4536). See also Tierney—Dodd III, appendix 3.

14. The Execution of Justice in England, 1583 (STC 4902). Reprinted in Somers' Tracts (1809 ed.) I, 189-208.

15. These are to be found in British Museum, Additional MS. 48063, ff. 65r to 74v. See the note on fol. 65r in the hand of Robert Beale, secretary to the Privy Council.

16. A play on the etymology of the word “seminarium.”

17. Somers’ Tracts I, pp. 197 et. seq.

18. Modern interpreters of the Bull are much subtler in finding contradictions in the Catholic position than were Cecil and his contemporaries. See Meyer: op. cit., pp. 139 et seq.

19. Treatise of Treasons, 1572 (A & R 454) fol. 133v; Sanders De schismate, Rome, 1586, p. 492. This statement occurs among the passages added by Persons to the Rome edition of Sanders.

20. Cf. STC 4904-4907.

21. [Rouen, 1584] (A & R 13). All references here are to the two-volume London reprint of 1914.

22. Defence of Catholics I, pp. 91 et seq. The famous hypothesis of the heretical Pope was often discussed in the Middle Ages. See Otto, Gierke: Political Theories of the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1938, pp. 154 Google Scholar et seq. It was brought up again in the French controversies and Persons discussed it often in his works, e.g. Philopater §221 (i.e. Elizabethae Angliae reginae … edictum … cum responsione … Per D. Andream Philopatrum, 1592, usually referred to for brevity as Philopater. References to it are made by paragraph numbers, since there were at least six editions of this work in 1592-3).; A Treatise tending to Mitigation, 1607 (A & R 641) p. 180. The hypothesis was not, of course, that a Pope might teach heresy as the head of the Church but only that he might hold heretical opinions as a private person.

23. Defence of Catholics I, p. 106.

24. Ibid. II, p. 8.

25. Ibid. II, p. 10.

26. Ibid. II, pp. 11 et seq.

27. [Antwerp], 1588 (A & R 770). Reprinted in Tierney-Dodd III, appendix 12, pp. xliv-xlviii.

28. [Antwerp], 1588 (A & R 5).

29. Many paragraphs in the Admonition pp. xxxii et seq. are lifted bodily from the Defence of Catholics II, pp. 3 et seq.

30. The original edition of his Disputationes de Controversiis adversus hujus temporis haereticos was printed at Ingolstadt, 1586-1593. See Brodrick, J.: Blessed Robert Bellarmine (London, 1928) I, pp. 120–2,Google Scholar 132 et seq.

31. See Rheims Annual Report in CRS. 11, p. 564. These might well have been the summaries Persons made in Rome. See his memoirs in CRS. 2, p. 25.

32. A Discoverie of I. Nicols, 1581 (A & R 627) at Sig. F5. There are various MS copies of Persons's summaries still extant, e.g., Balliol College MS. 314, Bodleian MS. Rawlinson C 338 and MS. e Mus. 97, Westminster Abbey Muniments, MS. 33.

33. Two of the best are Henri de Lubac, ”Le Pouvoir de l'Eglise en matière temporelle,“Revue des Sciences Religieuses XII (1932), pp. 329 et seq.; J. Courtney Murray: “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power, “Theological Studies IX (1948) pp. 491-535.

34. See the passage of John Major cited by Victor Martin: Le Gallicanisme politique et le clergé de France, (Paris, 1929) p. 36n.

35. Op. cit. II, p. 10.

36. The full text of the De Potestate Regia et Papali of Jean Quidort, also known as John of Paris, is given in Jean Leclercq: Jean de Paris et l'ecclésiologie du xiiie siècle (Paris, 1942), where the Latin original of the passage here quoted is on p. 219.

37. V. Martin, op. cit., chap. 2.

38. See the memorandum on this subject submitted by a curial official in 1588 to Sixtus V, discovered by V. Martin and quoted by him op. cit., p. 25n. At the time of his death Sixtus was ready to put Bellarmine's Controversies on the Index because the learned Jesuit denied him direct power in temporals. In the lobbying that went on to prevent this condemnation, Cardinal Allen (as he then was) was asked to say a good word for his old friend Bellarmine. Broderick op. cit. I, pp. 270 et seq. There were also those who thought that Allen did not sufficiently respect the papal prerogative. See CRS. 5, p. 114.

39. Defence of Catholics II, p. 38. The same idea is expressed in the gloss on II Kings 8 in the Douay edition of the Old Testament.

40. Defence of Catholics II, pp. 39 et seq.

41. See Pollen in CRS. 21, pp. 168 et seq. and 270 et seq. where the pertinent documents are given in full.

42. Oxford, 1959. Joseph Lecler is also attentive to the mutual influences in his Histoire de la tolérance au siècle de la reforme, bks. 6 & 8, vol. II (Paris, 1955). English translation Toleration and the Reformation (London, 1960).

43. Knox, T. F. (ed.) First and Second Douay Diaries (London, 1878) p. 178.Google Scholar

44. See Bossy, J. A.: Elizabethan Catholicism: The Link with France (Cambridge D. Phil. Thesis, 1961), Part Two.Google Scholar

45. Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, art. “Hotman” Note I (II, p. 522 n in 1715 Amsterdam ed). But see Allen, J. W.: Political Thought in the 16th Century, p. 345 Google Scholar and Salmon: French Religious Wars, p. 10, on the difference between the democratic theories of Ligue and Huguenot writers.

46. There is a useful list of pamphlets and books written on both sides of this quarrel in Maurice Wilkinson: A History of the League (Glasgow, 1929), appendix. See also Georges, Weill: Les théories sur le pouvoir royal en France pendant les guerres de religion. Paris, 1892 Google Scholar.

47. George, Ascoli: Le Grande Bretagne devant l'opinion française (Paris, 1927) p. 151 Google Scholar et seq.

48. “Guil. Rossaeus peregrinus Romanus “was a pseudonym used by St. Thomas More in 1523 in a book against Luther (STC. 18089). The identification of Rossaeus the author of De justa reipublicae … authoritate with William Rainolds is made by Pits (De illustribus Angliae scriptoribus, p. 791) who quotes the evidence of Rainolds's epitaph. Dr. William Gifford, who according to a spy's report (P.R.O. S.P. 12/200/65) in 1587 was “in hand with his book which he purposeth to present to Guise about Whitsuntide” may have had some share in the production of the book. Gifford, who enjoyed the special patronage of the Guises, and was the friend and later the literary executor of Rainolds, was the chief source of Pits's information about Rainolds.

49. Philopater No. 236 & 221 et seq.

50. Paris, 1589. On this pamphlet see William F. Church: Constitutional Thought in 16th century France. Cambridge (Mass.) 1941.

51. On the travel books and the natural right theory see Bertrand de Jouvenel: Sovereignty (Cambridge, 1957) p. 291. Some of this ground has been covered more summarily in my article in the Month, May 1960.

52. Rainolds refers to two works of de Beiloy viz. “ Apo. Cath.” and “Apolo. pro rege.” Presumably these are Latin translations of the titles of de Belloy's L'Apologie Catholique (1585) and De l'authorite du Roi (1587).

53. Pits: op. cit., p. 791.

54. Tyrannicide was the subject of chapter 10 of the 1590 edition. A rapid comparison reveals no other changes in the 1592 edition.

55. A & R 271. It bears the date 1594 on the title page which also gives ‘N. Doleman’ as the author. This is a pseudonym. The fundamental article on the authorship and publication of this book is that of Hicks, L. in Recusant History vol. 4 (no. 3) pp. 104137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56. Letter to Thomas Throgmorton 5/15 June 1595, P.R.O. S.P. 12/252/66 I.

57. In his thought on heresy he takes as his guide Lucifer of Cagliari, a 4th-century bishop who was so severe against the Arians that he led his flock into schism. Lucifer's works were first published in 1568 in France. See Rainolds (1592 ed.) pp. 471-479 passim.

58. Chapter 8, paragraph 8, p. 535 of 1592 ed.

59. E.g. Wilson, E. K.: England's Eliza, Cambridge (Mass.) 1939.Google Scholar See chapters 1 & 2 on Elizabeth as Judith and as Deborah.

60. A Watchword to all Religious and true-hearted Englishmen, 1598 (STC 12927) especially pp. 7 et seq., 19-23.

61. A Temperate Wardword, 1599 (A & R 639) pp. 29 et seq., 8 et seq.

62. Ibid. p. 34

63. Dedication to A brief discours … why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church, 1580, (A & R 616) and A defence of the Censure, 1582 (A & R 626) pp. 88 et seq.

64. CRS vol. 39 p. 162. Italian original at p. 153.

65. J. Courtney Murray, art. ext. p. 526.

66. In his Treatise of three conversions of England (A & R 640) Persons tries to link up the famous rebels described in the English chronicles with the various heretical movements of their times.

67. Persons: A treatise tending to mitigation (A & R 641) pp. 26, 118; Warnword (A & R 642), 2nd encounter, p. 20. The same doctrine in Douay Bible, note on Judges iii, 20.

68. Persons: Wardword, p. 37; Allen: Defence of Catholics I, p. 80.

69. Allen: Defence of Catholics I, p. 65. Sanders: Anglican Schism (English translation, London, 1877) p. 296; Persons: Philopater No. 40.

70. Attributed by some to Bishop Leslie (A & R 454) See fol. 32b.

71. Allen: Apologie (A & R 6) fol. 94b; Defence of Catholics I, pp. 36 & 80.

72. See the handy chronological index A & R p. 176.

73. Published at Antwerp in 1589 under the initials I.B. (A & R 60). Verstegan was in Antwerp at this time and he may have had something to do with this book. There is a Latin poem in his Theatrum Crudelitatis (Antwerp, 1589) signed LB. but Mr. A. G. R. Petti tells me that this poem was written by Jean Boch (Ioannes Bochius).

74. STC 8207-8. The Catholic answers were those of Joannes Pernius [=Joseph Creswelll Exemplar litterarum missarum e Germania [Rome] 1592 (STC 19767; A & R p. 114); Persons Philopater (see note 22 above); Robert Southwell An Humble Supplication, 1595 (A & R 784); Thomas Stapleton Apologia pro rege Phillippo, 1592; Richard Verstegan An Advertisement written to a secretary, 1592 (A & R 264 under Joseph Creswell) and his A Declaration of the True Causes, 1592 (A & R 844).

75. LB. Copy of a Letter, p. 4; Persons: Philopater No. 146.

76. Persons: Philopater No. 157. The translation is that of Henry Foulis included in his History of Romish Treasons (London, 1681) p. 77.Google Scholar Thomas Preston also cited this passage in his Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini, 1611 (A & R 661) p. 98 et seq.

77. This section runs from No. 153 to 162.

78. Persons's comment in his MS. Life of Campion is cited by Phillip, Hughes: Reformation in England Vol. III (London, 1954) p. 356n.Google Scholar

79. Allen: Apologie ff. 94b, 100 a & b; Defence of Catholics I, 36.

80. Defence of Catholics II, p. 45.

81. Part II, p. 209.

82. John Gerard. The autobiography of an Elizabethan, tr. Caraman, P.. (London, 1951) p. 178.Google Scholar

83. The only extant copy of the contemporary broadsheet publishing this decision (A & R 298) is in the British Museum. I have used the account in Pacata Hibernia (ed. Standish O'Grady, London, 1896) Vol. II, pp. 142–7.Google Scholar See a contemporary reference to this event in John, Hull: The Unmasking of the Politique Atheist, London, 1602. (STC 13934) sig. A4.Google Scholar

84. Conroy to Philip III, 22 May, 1602. Archives of the Irish College of San Patricio, Salamanca (now on deposit at Maynooth) leg. 40/6, quoted by A. J. Loomie in his London University thesis, Spain and the English Catholic Exiles (1957) chapter 2. Conroy was later very influential at Port-Royal.

85. A & R 593.

86. See Hicks, L., Recusant History iv, pp. 120 Google Scholar et seq.

87. Ibid. pp. 124 et seq. If we take the figures in Newdigate's, C. A. Our Martyrs (3rd ed., Catholic Truth Society, 1940)Google Scholar we find that between 1581 and the summer of 1595 when the Conference was published, fifty-eight Catholics suffered the extreme penalty in the London area. But for the five years following, only one Catholic was put to death in London.

88. Hicks, L.: “Sir Robert Cecil, Father Persons, and the Succession,Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu xxiv (1955) pp. 20 Google Scholar et seq.

89. The story of the two factions can be followed in Hicks's article and in Stafford, H. G.: James VI of Scotland and the throne of England (New York, 1940).Google Scholar

90. There were three briefs, all dated 12 July 1600. These are printed in Tierney-Dodd III, pp. Ixx et seq.; Correspondence de Frangipani (ed. Louant, A.) Vol. III (Brussels, 1942) pp. 782–6.Google Scholar

91. Persons to King James, 18 August, 1602. Stonyhurst MSS, Anglia III, No. 20, p. 36.