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‘The Bloody and Cruell Turke’: the Background of a Renaissance Commonplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

C. A. Patrides
C. A. Patrides*
Affiliation:
University of California at Berkeley
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Extract

'there is no publique calamitie inflicted on man, or other creatures, of which wee may not say as the Prophet of the Assyrian tyrant, that it is the rod of Gods anger.'

James Rowlandson (1623)

The purpose of God, it has been said, ‘is the meaning of history. History is the arena wherein that Divine purpose is being fulfilled and the Divine judgments are made manifest.’ This statement by William Temple is an adequate summary of the Jewish view of history, subsequently adopted by Christianity and developed further by St. Paul, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Augustine, Paulus Orosius, and numerous others throughout the millennium until the Renaissance. The first significant links in the chain of tradition were the Hebrew prophets, whose ideas, destined to become commonplaces, were forged by their strict and often militant monotheism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 10 , 1963 , pp. 126 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1963

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References

1 Gods Blessing in Blasting (London, 1623), pp. 11-12. The Biblical reference is given in note 6 below.

2 Christianity as an Interpretation of History (London, 1945), p. 13. Cf. J. S. Whale, Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, 1952), p. 56: history is ‘the arena wherein his will expresses itself as action'.

3 Of the numerous studies available, see particularly Christopher R. North, The Old Testament Interpretation cf History (London, 1946); R. C. Dentan, ed., The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East (New Haven, 1955); Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, tr. F. V. Filson (Philadelphia, 1950); John Marsh, The Fulness of Time (London, 1952); R . L. P. Milburn, Early Christian Interpretations of History (London, 1954); Charles N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford, 1940), ch. xn; James T. Shotwell, The History of History (New York, 1939), vol. 1; Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949); Christopher Dawson, The Dynamics of World History, ed. J. J. Mulloy (New York, 1957); M. C. D'Arcy, s.j., The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred (London, 1959; American edition, The Meaning and Matter of History, New York, 1959); and Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (London, 1954).

4 Amos ix.7.

5 Isaiah xix.25.

6 Isaiah x.5.

7 Jeremiah li.7.

8 Isaiah xlv.i.

9 Daniel iv. 17. Another convenient summary is Proverbs viii. 15 ('By me kings reign’).

10 Polimanteia (London, 1595), sig. E2.

11 Commentary upon … Mark (London, 1661), 11, 1077. Just as summarily, Thomas Ireland wrote, ‘Good kings are Gods images, and euil Princes, are his executioners: Ashur was his rod, Nabuchodonosor his seruant, Cyrus his anoynted: Attila called himselfe his scourge, and Tamberlan his wrath’ (The Oath of Allegeance, London, 1610, sig. B4V). For similar surveys of history, see George Whetstone, The English Myrror (London, 1586), pp. 54-55; Martin Fotherby, Atheomastix (London, 1622), pp. 260-278; Thomas Barnes, Vox Belli (London, 1626), pp. 9-19; etc. Cf. Calvin's commentary on Isaiah x.5, in Calvin: Commentaries, tr. Joseph Haroutunian (London, 1958, Library of Christian Classics xxm), 270-272.

12 ‘Milton and his Contemporaries on the Chains of Satan', Modern Language Notes LXXIII (1958), 257-260.

13 Nicolaus Hanapus, The Ensamples of Vertue and Vice, tr. Thomas Paynell (London, 1564), sig. NVT.

14 John Done, Polydoron (London, 1631), p. 188. Cf. John Donne, Sermons, ed. E. M. Simpson and G. R. Potter (Berkeley, 1953-1962), x, 135: ‘The Devill himselfe is but a slave of God.'

15 Romans ix.19.

16 A Boohc of Christian Questions and Answers, tr. Arthur Golding (London, 1574), fols. 65-65'. For similar arguments, see Calvin, Commentaries … vpon the Prophet Daniell, tr. Arthur Golding (London, 1570), fols. 65-65'; Jacobus Kimedoncius, Of the Redemption of Mankind, tr. Hugh Ince (London, 1598), pp. 315-316; William Hampton, A Proclamation of Wane from the Lord of Hosts (London, 1627), pp. 5-6.

17 Common Places of Christian Religion, tr. John Stockwood (London, 1572), fol. 59v

18 Nicholas Byfield, The Paterne of Wholsome Words (London, 1618), p. 121, and John Dod and Robert Cleaver, Exposition of the Ten Commandements (19th ed., London, 1635), p. 264. Thus also Donne, Sermons, IX, 381: ‘God punishes sin by sin.'

19 William Whately, Sinne No More (3d ed., London, 1630), pp. 22-23.

20 Silua de Varia Lection (Valladolid, 1551), pt. I, ch. xxxv; tr. Thomas Fortescue, The Foreste (London, 1571), pt. I, ch. XV.

21 John Abbot, Iesus Praefigured ([Antwerp,] 1623), pp. 12-13; John Colleton, The Theatre ofCatholique and Protestant Religion ([St. Omer,] 1620), bk. 1, ch. vi.

22 Downame, George, The Christians Sacrifice (London, 1604), p. 75.Google Scholar For Calvin's view, see Sermons … vpon the Booke of lob, p. 617.

23 Regales Aphorismi (London, 1650), p. 89.

24 While we must accept the verdict that Marlowe's hero claims to be the scourge of God ‘not reverentially but arrogantly and blasphemously for his own aggrandizement' (Paul H. Kocher, ‘Christopher Marlowe, Individualist', Univ. of Toronto Quarterly xvn, 1948, 114), nevertheless such a claim loomed large in nearly all Renaissance accounts of Tamburlaine. For discussions of works which Marlowe might have consulted, see Leslie Spence, ‘The Influence of Marlowe's Sources on Tamburlaine T, Modern Philology XXIV (1929), 181-199; Ethel Seaton, ‘Fresh Sources for Marlowe', Review of English Studies v (1929) 385-401; U. M. Ellis-Fermor, ed., Tamburlaine the Great (London, 1930), pp. 17-61; Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose (New York, 1937), pp. 469 ff.; Roy W. Battenhouse, ‘Tamburlaine, the “Scourge of God” ‘, PMLA, LVI (1941), 337-348, and Marlowe's ‘Tamburlaine': a Study in Renaissance Moral Philosophy (Nashville, 1941), pp. 129-149; John Bakeless, The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), 1, 204 ff., 214 ff.; Thomas C. Izard, ‘The Principal Source for Marlowe's Tamburlaine', Modem Language Notes LVIII (1943), 411-417; Hallett Smith, ‘Tamburlaine and the Renaissance', in Elizabethan Studies and Other Essays in Honor of George F. Reynolds (Boulder, Colo., 1945), pp. 126-131; PaulH. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe (Chapel Hill, 1946), pp. 180-183; Hugh G. Dick, ‘Tamburlaine Once More', Studies in Philology XLVI (1949), 154-166; and Irving Ribner, ‘Marlowe and Machiavelli', Comparative Literature VI (1954), 349-3 56. For the remarkable change in the attitude toward Timur that set in by the nineteenth century, see Dorothee Metlitsky Finkelstein, Melville's Orienda (New “*” Haven and London, 1961), pp. 175 ff.

25 Leonard Wright, A Summons for Sleepers ([London?], 1589), p. 12.

26 The Beginning, Continuance, and Decay of Estates, tr. John Finet (London, 1606), sig. bv. On the contemporary situation, see Sir Charles Oman, The Sixteenth Century (London, 1936), ch. m, and Myron P. Gilmore, The World of Humanism (New York, 1952), pp. 6 ff, 273 ff.On the attitude of'extreme prejudice’ against the Turks, as inherited from the middle ages, see Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: the Making of an Image (Edinburgh, 1958), esp. ch. x, and R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). On the reflection of that prejudice in Renaissance literature, see Franklin L. Baumer, ‘England, the Turk, and the Common Corps of Christendom', American Historical Rep. L (1944), 26-48, and particularly the admirable survey by Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose (New York, 1937), ch. Ill, ‘ “The Present Terror of the World” ‘. I have been careful not to reproduce material already used by Mr. Chew.

27 For a summary of the usual arguments ‘proving’ this, see Griffith Williams, ‘O 'AI'TIXP'TOS (London, 1660), pp. 9-12. In general, however, Protestants preferred to assign the role of the Antichrist to the pope, while Catholics settled on Luther.

28 Obseruations vpon Historic (London, 1641), p. 107.

29 Ibid., pp. 109-110.

30 The English Myrror (London, 1586), p. 69.

31 The Bruising of the Serpents Head (London, 1622), p. 8.

32 The Historie of the Holy Wane (Cambridge, 1639), p. 10. Thus also Meredith Hanmer, The Baptizing of a Turke [London, 1586?], sig. B7r; SirStradling, John, Beati Pacifici (London, 1623), p. 34 Google Scholar; Byfield, Richard, The Power of the Christ (London, 1641), pp. 21, 44Google Scholar; and Trapp, John, A Commentary … upon all the Epistles (London, 1647), p. 615.Google Scholar Stradling, it might be noted, was one of the few remaining advocates of a united crusade against the Turks, ‘Christs greatest Foe’ ﹛op. at., pp. 23 ff.). The similar view of Camoes (Os Lusladas, VII, 7 ff.) did not reach England until his epic was translated by Sir Richard Fanshawein 1655.

33 A Revelation of Revelation (London, 1615), p. 332.

34 Specifically, Protestants were accused of being ‘verelye the sect of Mahumette, preparing a waye for the Turke to ouerrunne all Christendome'. According to the report of a Catholic prelate, ‘wryters at thys daye, call thys heresye … which Luther first began and most manteyned, by this name Secta Mahumeticd (Thomas Watson, Twoo Notable Sermons, made … before the Queues Highnes, London, 1554, sigs. B5v, B6r.

35 S. C. Chew, op. cit. [note 26], pp. 101-102; Roger L. Shinn, Christianity and the Problem of History (New York, 1953), pp. 80-81; but particularly G. Simon, ‘Luther's Attitude Toward Islam', Moslem World XXI (1931), 257-262; Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk (Liverpool, 1954), pp. 135 ff.; and Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther's World of Thought, tr. M. H. Bertram (St. Louis, 1958), pp. 195-217.

36 A Godly consultation vnto the brethren and companyons of the Christen religyon. By what meanes the cruell power of the Turkes both may and ought for to be repelled of the Christen people (London, 1542), fol. 6V.

37 Ibid., fol. 117.

38 Ibid., fol. 76. Underlying such pleas was the traditional persuasion that a sincere reformation of ‘ower lyuynge’ would automatically result in the withdrawal of God's scourges. Cf. Arthur Lake, Ten Sermons (London, 1640), p. 2: ‘If man sinne, God striketh; if man repent of his sinne, God relenteth from his wrath.’ For two typical applications of this belief, see John Udall, The True Remedie against Famine and Warres (London, 1587?), and Lancelot Andrewes, A Sermon of the Pestilence. Preached at Chiswick, 160j (London, 1636).

39 Possibly the most abused part of the book is its reference to the ‘little horn’ (vii. 8, viii. 9). During the interregnum, for example, “William Aspinwall identified it with Charles 1, while John More of Barnelms claimed it stood for Cromwell, ‘the Lord Pro tector so called'. See, respectively: An Explication and Application of the Seuenth Chapter of Daniel (London, 1654), and A Trumpet Sounded: or, The Great Mystery of the Two Little Horns Unfolded (London, 1654).

40 The reference is to Daniel's vision (viii. 3-8) of the two-horned goat and the onehorned he-ram. But despite his interpretation, Sleidanus was aware that in actual fact 'the Ramme with two homes signifieth the kings of the Medes & Perses, but the Goate the Greke empyre’ (below, fol. 102v).

41 Dc quatuor sumtnis imperiis … libri tres (Strassburg, 1556); tr. Stephen Wythers, A Jiricfe Chronicle oj the Foure Principall Empyres (London, 1563), fol. 104. For a parallel argument originating in England, see Sir Henry Finch, The Worlds Great Restauration (London, 1621), pp. 54 ff.

42 Paradise Lost, I, 348.

43 Cf. Urbanus Rhegius, An Homely or Sermon of Good and Euill Angels, tr. Richard Robinson (London, 1590), fols. 6 ff.: ‘A man may see a certaine image of sathan in the Turkes, which are the moste deerest and moste diligentest vessells and instruments of sathan… .’ Thus also Meredith Hanmer, in the sermon cited above, note 32. But the reference most directly pertinent to Milton's is Richard Clerke's description of sin as 'the great Sultan of Sathan’ (Sermons, London, 1637, p. 283).