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Cardinal Pole in Recent Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
Each century since Cardinal Pole’s death in 1558 has produced itsown tribute of biographies; the recent development is a series of more detailed studies of the various aspects of Pole’s thought and career. A convenient point of departure is provided by the most recent life of Pole, the work of Dr Wilhelm Schenk. This was published in 1950, but the author had died in the previous June, and the work must have been done some years previously, so that it is in effect about twenty-five years old. During this quarter-century the early days of the Catholic Reform in Italy have been greatly studied, and among the works produced are biographies of quite a number of people who were among Pole’s friends or contacts in his earlier years. As this larger background comes into greater focus Pole himself is seen in new aspects; some old questions are answered, but new ones arise. Is he a mediaeval figure, or among the first of the new men? Was he the saintly character depicted by Beccadelli, or the carnifex et flagellum Ecclesiae Anglicanae as his successor at Canterbury, Archbishop Parker, thought? Are we to see him as a failure or a man who achieved much in an unpromising situation?
A number of Pole’s works became available in reprints in the early sixties, and this has facilitated recent studies. Of these the best known, and most considered, is undoubtedly the De Unitate? It has been the subject of two translations, and two dissertations which happily are complementary and together provide a deep and comprehensive analysis into its theology, political thought and significance. As the translations are published and available, attention here is directed to the two unpublished studies. The first of these, by Breifre V. Walker, was presented to University College, Dublin in 1972 for the degree of M.A., and is entitled ‘Cardinal Reginald Pole, Papal Primacy and Church Unity, 1529-1536’. When Pole went abroad in 1532 he was in effect escaping from the situation created by the King’s ‘Divorce’. Three years later Thomas Starkey, who had for a while been a member of Pole’s household in Italy, wrote at the King’s express command to ask for Pole’s opinion about the royal marriage, and the authority of the Pope. Starkey also suggested some answers and referred Pole to the works of Marsilius of Padua. The unexpected result was the De Untiate.
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References
1 W. Schenk, Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England (1950).
2 A few works may be mentioned; Douglas, R.M., Jacopo Sadoleto (Camb., Mass., 1959)Google Scholar; C. Maddison, Marcantonio Flaminio: Poet, Humanist and Reformer (1965); P. Matheson, Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg (1972); J. K. McConica, English Humanists and Reformation Politics (1965); O’Donohue, J., Tridentine Seminary Legislation, its Sources and its Formation (Louvain, 1957)Google Scholar; O’Malley, J.W., Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform (Leiden Brill, 1968)Google Scholar; Prosperi, A. Tra, Evangelismo e Controriforma: G. M. Giberti (Rome, 1969)Google Scholar; Surtz, E., The Works and Days of John Fisher (Camb., Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Idigoras, J.I.Tellechea (who has produced a large series of studies of Archbishop Carranza), Bartolome Carranza y la Restauracion Catolica Inglesa (1554-1558) (Rome, 1964)Google Scholar.
3 De Summo Pontifice, De Concilio, Reformatio Angliae, A Treatise of Justification, (found among Pole’s papers) and Quirini’s five volumes, Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli. These were all reprinted by the Gregg Press about 1962. Also available is his ‘Apologia’ edited by Idigoras, J.I.Tellechea; ‘Pole y Paulo IV : Una celebre Apologia inedita del Cardenal Ingles (1557)’ in Archivium Historiae Pontificiae, 4 (1966), pp. 105-54Google Scholar.
4 The full title is Ad Henricum Octavum Britanniae Regem pro Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione; this too is available in a GreggPress reprint.
5 Dwyer, J.G., Pole’s Defense of the Unity of the Church (Westminster, Maryland, 1965)Google Scholar; Egretier, N-M., Reginald Pole ; Defense de l’Unité de l’; Église (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar; Walker, Breifne V., ‘Cardinal Reginald Pole, Papal Primacy and Church Unity, 1529-1535’, M.A. thesis,University College, Dublin, 1972 Google Scholar; Macaluso, Peter F., ‘The Kingship and the Papacy in the Thought of Reginald Pole, 1500-1558’, Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1973 Google Scholar.
6 J. Fischer, ‘Essai Historique sur les Idées Reformatrices des Cardinaux Jean Pierre Carafa (1476-1559) et Reginald Pole (1500-1558)’, a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Paris, 1957.
7 D, Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter- Reformation (1972).
8 Also to be noted is the article of Professor Delio Cantimori, ‘Italy and the Papacy’, which is chapter 8 in The Reformation 1520-59 (vol. 2 of The New Cambridge Modern History, edited by Elton, G.R., Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar.
9 RexPogson, H., ‘Cardinal Pole — Papal Legate to England in Mary Tudor’s Reign’, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge 1972 Google Scholar. A little ofthis work is to be seen in his article ‘Revival and Reform in Mary Tudor’s Church: a Question of Money’ in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25, 3 (July 1974), pp. 249-66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Marmion, John P., ‘The London synod of Reginald, Cardinal Pole, 1555-56’, an M.A. thesis presented to Keele University, 1974 Google Scholar.
11 Crehan, J., ‘St Ignatius and Cardinal Pole’, Archivium Historicum Societatis Iesu, 35 (1956), pp. 72–98 Google Scholar; Crehan, J., ‘The Return to Obedience’, The Month, N.S. 14 (1955) pp. 221-9Google Scholar.
12 Parks, G.B., ‘The Parma Letters and Dangers to Cardinal Pole’ The Catholic Historical Review 46 (October 1960)Google Scholar.
13 Parks, G.B., ‘The Reformation and the Hospice, 1514-1559’ in The English Hospice in Rome being the Venerabile Sexcentenary Issue, 21 (May 1962), pp. 193–217 Google Scholar (printed at the Catholic Records Press, Exeter).
13 Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli; A Dissection (1969), p. 278: ‘the first critic to argue the inutility of Machiavelli’s advice was Reginald Pole about 1539’.