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Bernardino Ochino’s Books and English Religious Opinion, 1547–80

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

M.A. Overell
M.A. Overell*
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Extract

Bernardino Ochino was one of the less famous and more unpredictable of the Protestant refugees whom Thomas Cranmer invited to England in 1547. He remained in the limelight throughout Edward VI’s reign, largely because of his writing. A study of the English publication of his works throws some light on the complex interaction between English books and European Protestantism. Collinson’s comment that ‘English theologians were as likely to lean on Bullinger of Zurich, Musculus of Berne or Peter Martyr as on Calvin or Beza’ is important here. In Edward VI’s reign they leant quite confidently on more unsteady props, of whom Ochino was one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 38: The Church and the Book , 2004 , pp. 201 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Collinson, Patrick, ‘England and international Calvinism, 1558–1640’, in Prestwich, Menna, ed., International Calvinism: 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985), 214 Google Scholar.

2 Fenlon, Derniot, Heresy and Disobedience in Tridentine Italy (Cambridge, 1972), 50, 97, 220–2 Google Scholar. For general information on the Italian Reformation, see Caponetto, Salvatore, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Kirksville, MO, 1999 Google Scholar).

3 Ochino, Bernardino, Seven Dialogues, tr. Belladonna, Rita (Toronto, 1988), xxv Google Scholar; Overell, M.A., ‘Vergerio’s anti-Nicodemite propaganda and England: 1547–1558’, JEH, 51 (2000), 296–7 Google Scholar.

4 Cranmer to Henry VIII, 18 Nov. 1536, Cranmer to Hardenberg, 28 July 1548: Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. J.E. Cox, PS (Cambridge, 1846), 330–2, 423; Overell, M.A., ‘Edwardian court humanism and Il beneficio di Cristo, 1547–1553’, in Woolfson, Jonathan, ed., Reassessing Tudor Humanism (2002), 151–73 Google Scholar.

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6 Dryander to Bullinger, 3 Dee. 1549: Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1847), 1:353.

7 Sermons [five] of Bamardine Ochine of Sena (1548), STC 18764; Sermons [six] of the Right Famous and Excellente Clerke Master B Ochine (Ipswich, 1548), STC 18765.

8 A Tragoedie or Dialoge of the Uniuste Primacie of the Bishop of Rome, tr. John Ponet (1549), STC 18770–1; Fouretene Sermons … Concerning the Predestinacion and Eleccion of God ([1551?]), STC 18767; Certayne Sermons of the Ryght Famous and Excellent Clerk ([1551?]), STC 18766.

9 McNair, Philip, ‘Ochino on sedition’, Italian Studies, 15 (1959-60), 46–9 Google Scholar. For Ochino’s unpublished ‘Dialogo de Peccato’ (1549], in BL, MS Add. 28,568, see McNair, ‘Ochino’s Apology: three Gods or three wives’, History, 60 (1975), 353–73 (369); Bertrand-Barraud, Daniel, Les Idées philosophiques de Bernardin Ochin (Paris, 1924), 123–9 Google Scholar.

10 Hudson, Winthrop, The Cambridge Connection (Durham, NC, 1980 Google Scholar).

11 Cranmer to Bonner, 27 Jan. 1547/8: London, Guildhall Library, MS 9531/12 pt 1, fol. 117r, cited by MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (1999), 79 Google Scholar; Van der Delft to the Emperor, 23 Feb. 1548, Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1547–9, 253.

12 ‘Mémoires de la vie de François de Scepeaux, sire de Vieilleville’, in Collection complète de mémoires relatif à l’histoire de France, ed. C-B Pctitot, 52 vols (Paris, 1822), 26:339-41, cited in Jennifer Loach, Edward VI, ed. George Bernard and Penry Williams (New Haven, CT, and London, 1999), 13; Jonathan Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors (Cambridge, 1998), 246–7, 258, 276; Maria Dowling, ‘Cranmer as humanist reformer’, in Paul Ayris and David Selwyn, eds, Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar (Woodbridge, 1993), 89–114.

13 Curionc, Caclio Secundo, Selectarum Epistolarum, 2 vols (Basle, 1553), 1:287 Google Scholar; John P. McDiarmid, John Chcke’s Preface to De Superstitione’, JEH, 48 (1997), 100–19.

14 Sermons [six] (STC 18765), title page and prefaces, sigs aiii-v.

15 Bernardino Ochino, Fouretene Sermons, tr. by Anne C[ooke, Lady Bacon], ed. G.B. (1551), sigs Aii-v; see also Certayne Sermons, where Anne Cooke’s Fouretene Sermons on predestination appear as Sermons 12–25.

16 Sermon XX in Sermons of Bernardine Ochyne to the Number of .25 Concerning the Predestination and Election of God, tr. A. C[ooke, Lady Bacon and R. Argentine] (1570), STC 18768, sig. Lviii (all subsequent references are to this composite edition). Bertrand-Barraud, Les Idées philosophiques, 96.

17 Sermon XXII in Sermons to the Ntimber of .23, sigs Ni-ii; Tragoedie, STC 18770–1.

18 For Ochino’s possible use of Kirchmayer’s Pammachius, see Bainton, Roland H., Bernardino Ochino: esule e riformatore senese (Florence, 1940), 96 Google Scholar; McNair, P., ‘Bernardino Ochino in Inghilterra’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 103 (1991), 237–9 Google Scholar; Tragoedie, STC 18770, Ochino’s preface, sig. ?Ai.

19 MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 26–7.

20 Literary Remains of Edward VI, ed. J.G. Nichols, 2 vols, Roxburghe Club (1857), 1 :cccxxv-cccxxxiii; Bodley, MS Add.C.94, fol. 13r, cited by MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 53, 230.

21 McNair, ‘Ochino on sedition’, 37, 47; MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 44–5, 121–2; Shagan, Ethan, ‘Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions’, EHR, 114 (1999), 34–63 Google Scholar.

22 STC 18767, 18766: see n.15 above.

23 King, J.N., ‘John Day: master printer of the English Reformation’, in Marshall, P. and Ryrie, E., eds, The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), 195 Google Scholar.

24 STC 18768, Preface, sig. Av; Sermon III, sigs Cii-iii; Sermon VII, sig. Eiiii; and Sermon XIV, sig. Ki.

25 Ibid., Sermon IX, sig. Gi; Sermon XI, sig. Gviii.

26 Calvin to M. de Falais, March 1546, in Opera Calvini in Corpus Reformatorium, ed. William Baimi, Edward Cunitz, and Edward Reus, 58 vols in 25 (Brunswick, 1863–1900), 12, no. 784 (319-23), cited by Bcrtrand-Barraud, Les Idées philosophiques, 19; J. Calvin, ‘Pracfatio in Libcllum De Francisco Spiera’, tr. into English in A Notable and Marvailous Epistle, by A[glionby], E[dward] (Worcester, 1550), STC 12365 Google Scholar.

27 Bodley, MS Bodl. 6; Nichols, Literary Remains, i:ccxxx.

28 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1550–2 (1914), 349–52; Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1547–1553 (1861), 216.

29 Vermigli’s influential eucharistie work was printed in Latin, Tractatio de sacramento eucharistiae, habita in universitate Oxoniensi (1549), STC 24673, and translated the following year as A Discourse or Traictise of Peter Martyr Vermill (15 50), STC 24665; MacCulloch, Thomas Cratimer (New Haven, CT, and London, 1996), 467–9, 501, 511–12; Beesley, Alan, ‘An unpublished source of the Book of Common Prayer; Peter Martyr Vermigli’s “Adhortatio ad Coenam Domini Mysticam”‘, JEH, 19 (1968), 83–8 Google Scholar; Spalding, James, “The Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum” and the furthering of discipline in England’, Church History, 39 (1970), 162–71 Google Scholar; M. Anne Overell, ‘Peter Martyr in England 1547–1553: an alternative view’, Sixteenth Centttry Journal, 15 (1984), 87–104.

30 CUL, MS Nn.4.43; MA. Overell, The exploitation of Francesco Spiera’, Sixteenth Century journal, 26 (1995), 633; eadem, ‘The Reformation of death in Italy and England: circa 1550’, Renaissance and Reformation, 23 (1999), 5–21; Adair, E.R., ‘William Thomas; a forgotten Clerk to the Privy Council’, in Seton-Watson, R.W., ed., Tudor Studies Presented to A.F. Pollard (1924), 133–60 Google Scholar.

31 MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, 174. [See also n.41 below.]

32 Penny, D. Andrew, Freewill or Predestination (Woodbridge, 1990), 158 Google Scholar; Pococke, N. ‘The condition of morals and religious belief in the reign of Edward VI’, EHR, 10 (1895), 433 Google Scholar.

33 Clement’s ‘Confession’, in J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3 vols in 6 (Oxford, 1822), 3/ii, no. 61 (446-67, esp. 463).

34 Bradford certainly knew Ochino and was familiar with the Spiera story, John Bradford, Writings, 2 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1848–53), 1:433, 2:80, 352–3. I am grateful to Dr Tom Freeman for his scholarly insights about the background to Clement’s confession.

35 Hudson, Winthrop, John Ponet (Chicago, 1942 Google Scholar).

36 Pettegrce, Andrew, Foreign Prolestant Communities in Sixteenth Century London (Oxford, 1986 Google Scholar); Collinson, Patrick, Archbishop Grindal (1979), 125–52 Google Scholar; Overell, ‘Peter Martyr’, 103–4; Labyrinthi, hoe est de libero aut servo arbitrio (Basle, [1561]).

37 For Ochino’s plagiarism of the Dialogas Neobuli (1541), probably by Johannes Lening, see Taplin, Mark, ‘Bernardino Ochino and the Zurich polygamy controversy of 1563’ (University of St Andrews, M.Litt. thesis, 1995), 26–46 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Bruce Gordon for alerting me to this valuable study. [See also 11.41 below.]

38 McNair, ‘Ochino’s Apology’, 364. For a list of Ochino’s publications after he left England, see Benrath, Karl, Bernardino Ochino von Siena, 3rd edn (Nieuwkoop, 1968), 320–3 Google Scholar. The late date sometimes given to the Italian version of the Labyrinths (i.e., 1569) appears to be a mistake: ibid., no. 42 (322).

39 STC 18768, reprinted from 18766.

40 Certaine Godly and Very Profitable Sermons, of Faith, Hope and Charitie, tr. William Phiston (1580), 1–2, 59–60, STC 18769.

41 Addendum to n.31: See also Guggisberg, Hans R., Sebastian Castellio: Humanist and Defender of Religious Toleration in a Confessional Age, ed. and tr. Gordon, Bruce (Aldershot, 2003), 56–61, 172–3 Google Scholar.

Adendum to n.37: See also Mark Taplin, The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church (Aldershot, forthcoming).