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Recognising the archpriest: seeking clarification or fomenting schism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2015

Thomas M. McCoog S.J.*
Affiliation:
Spellman Hall, Fordham University, 441, East Fordham Road, New York, NY 10458, USA. Email: tmmccoog@gmail.com

Abstract

Rome’s decision to name an archpriest and to erect a highly irregular administrative structure, the archpresbyterate, surprised secular clergy and Jesuits who had advocated the establishment of bishops. Recent tension between Jesuits and secular clergy highlighted the need and importance of an hierarchical, ecclesiological office. But the appointment was made in such a way that some secular clergy questioned its legitimacy and authenticity. Until they ascertained that the decision had in fact been made by the pope, they withheld recognition of the archpriest. As they awaited a reply to their appeal, two Appellants, John Colleton and William Clarke, debated the matter with two Jesuit supporters of the archpriest, Henry Garnet and Edward Oldcorne who apparently failed to see the canonical issue involved, as they perceived anti-Jesuitism as the motivating factor.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Michael Questier and James Kelly for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

References

1 Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England (London: Burns Oates, 1942), 275.

2 ‘Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England’, The Month, 178 (1942): 307–21, at 316. I thank Dr. Martin John Broadley, currently researching Philip Hughes, for this information. His completed article ‘Phillip Hughes’ will appear in his edition Scholar Priests of the Twentieth Century to be published by Gracewing in 2015.

3 Michael C. Questier, with customary bluntness, describes the arguments as ‘often characterised by the heights of supreme bitchiness of the kind to which only middle-aged clerics can generally aspire’, Questier, Michael, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 251 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The most recent detailed, albeit short, analysis is Pritchard, Arnold, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (London: Scolar Press, 1979)Google Scholar; still the best account is Pollen, John Hungerford, S.J., The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916)Google Scholar.

5 Persons had made his solemn profession on 7 May 1587 (Ital. 4, fols. 98r, 99r, Rome, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu [henceforth ARSI]). In so doing he had vowed never to seek ecclesiastical honours and, if possible, to refuse them: ‘all the professed should promise to God our Lord never to seek one [prelacy or dignity] and to expose anyone whom they observe trying to obtain one . . .’ Ignatius Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, ed. and trans. George E. Ganss, S.J (St Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1970), 334: no [817]. Despite the vow, Jesuits were named bishops for different missionary lands and in 1593 Francisco de Toledo became the first Jesuit cardinal.

6 McCoog, Thomas M., S.J., The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597: Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Farnham/Rome: Ashgate/Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2012), 250 Google Scholar.

7 Copies of the rules are in Anglia II, 32, London, Archivum Britannicum Societatis Iesu [henceforth ABSI] London, Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster [henceforth AAW], VI, 77. A note on translations: at ABSI, there is a large collection of transcripts and translations built up over the decades. Many were made by Miss Penelope Renold. I have used these translations but have always compared them with the original document and occasionally made some adjustments.

8 Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 45 Google Scholar.

9 It has been suggested that Mush had once considered the Society of Jesus but I have found no evidence of this. On Mush and Garnet, see Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England, eds. Ginevra Crosignani, Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., and Michael Questier, with the assistance of Peter Holmes (Rome/Toronto: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu/ Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), 157–58; Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow (London: Continuum, 2011)Google Scholar, passim.

10 Garnet to Persons, 28 May 1597, ABSI, Coll P II 548.

11 Persons’s observations can be found as annotations on the copies of the rules, ABSI, Anglia II, 32 and AAW, VI, 77.

12 Mush to Bagshaw, Christopher, 8 June 1597, in The Archpriest Controversy, ed. Thomas Graves Law, 2 vols (London: Camden Society, 1896–1898), 1: 2 Google Scholar. It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when and why Mush broke with the Jesuits. Their opposition to the association surely played a role as did Garnet’s reaction to Mush’s attempt to present a more balanced portrait of secular and Jesuit clergy in his correspondence with the recusant layman—and Jesuit supporter—William Wiseman. See McCoog, Thomas M., S.J., “And touching our society”: Fashioning Jesuit Identity in Elizabethan England (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013), 387388 Google Scholar.

13 Garnet to Persons, 10 September 1597, ABSI, Coll P II 596.

14 Persons to Francisco de Peña, an official of the Rota, Rome, n.d. [August 1597], Lat, 6227, fols. 186r-v, Vatican City, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana; same to Pietro, Cardinal Aldobrandini, n.d. [August 1597], Borghese, serie III.124.g.2, fols. 25r–v, Vatican City, Archivio segretto vaticano [henceforth ASV]. See also Edwards, Francis, S.J., Robert Persons: The Biography of an Elizabethan Jesuit, 1546–1610 (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), 208210 Google Scholar.

15 Persons’s proposal, ‘Rationes pro Episcopis duobus Anglicanis’, can be found in Mark Tierney, Dodd’s Church History of England, 5 vols (London: Charles Dolman, 1839–1843), 3: cxvii–cxix. Tierney contends that Persons revived an old scheme simply to impede the associations proposed by the secular clergy without advancing any evidence 3:47 n. 1.

16 Holt’s observations can be found in The First and Second Diaries of the English College, ed. Thomas Francis Knox (London: David Nutt, 1878), 376–84 with an English translation in Foley, Henry, S.J., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols. in 8 parts (Roehampton/London: Manresa/Burns and Oates, 1877–1884), 7/2: 12381245 Google Scholar. For Garnet’s and Weston’s arguments, see Garnet to Persons, 8 October 1597, ABSI, Coll P II 548–49.

17 Bossy points out that this office ‘was without precedent in the English Church; he did not exercise his functions within a framework of canon law, whose applicability, in some sense to England was a consequence of the Appellant claim to continuity; he has a kind of propulsive power, but no real jurisdiction over the seminary clergy, and none whatever over regulars or the laity’, The English Catholic Community, 46. This appointment was ‘a grave affront’ to anyone who believed that the post-Reformation Catholic community was a continuation of the medieval English Church. Appellants were scathing in their characterization of Blackwell. Christopher Bagshaw described him as ‘a puppy to dance after the Jesuit’s pipe’ and ‘a chief parasite of the Jesuits, and would be sure . . . never to do anything, that might in any way displease them’, cited in Morey, Adrian, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978), 203 Google Scholar; Scully, Robert E., S.J., Into the Lion’s Den. The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603 (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2011), 409 Google Scholar. On Blackwell’s appreciation of the Society of Jesus, see his letter to Caetani, Cardinal, London January 10, 1596/7, published in A Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Thomas Graves Law (London: David Nutt, 1889), 137139 Google Scholar.

18 Tom McInally claims that all Scottish secular clergy submitted to the archpriest without any difficulty and remained under his jurisdiction until the appointment of Bishop William Bishop in 1623. According to McInally, the archpriest’s influence in Scotland was negligible. See McInally, Tom, The Sixth Scottish University. The Scots Colleges Abroad: 1575–1799 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 163, 178 Google Scholar. I recall no mention of the archpriest in any document concerning Scottish Jesuits; moreover the archpriest’s authority only extended over English clergy in Scotland, and not over Scottish clergy.

19 The letter can be found in Tierney/Dodd, Church History, 3: cxix-cxxiii. A contemporary English translation can be found in Colleton, John, A iust defence of the slandered priestes (n.p. [London], 1602), 59 Google Scholar; The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640, eds. Antony F. Allison and David M. Rogers, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989–1994) [henceforth ARCR], 2: no. 147; A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, eds. A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, 2nd. edn. Revised and enlarged W.A. Jackson, F.S. Ferguson and Katherine F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1986–1991) [Henceforth STC]: 5557.

20 ‘Instructiones pro officio archipresbyteri in Anglia melius exsequendo’, Rome 7 March 1598, London, Inner Temple [henceforth IT], Petyt MSS 538, vol. 38, fols. 389r–390v. For the citation, I have used the Victorian Jesuit John Gerard’s translation as quoted in Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest, 27. See also Meyer, Arnold Oskar, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., 1916), 413414 Google Scholar.

21 Caetani to Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, Rome 8 March 1598, published in Knox, Douay Diaries, 399–400; Caetani to Barret, Rome 7 March 1598, published in Tierney/Dodd, Church History, 3: cxxiii-iv.

22 Garnet to Caetani, suburbs of London, 8 May 1598, ABSI, Anglia II, 35.

23 Garnet to Persons, 10 June 1598, ABSI, Anglia II, 37.

24 Blackwell to Garnet, 12 May [1598], ABSI, Anglia II, 52. See also Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest, 34 .

25 ABSI, Anglia II, 47.

26 See his letters, under the alias John Ratcliffe, to Christopher Bagshaw and Thomas Bluet, 28 May 1598 and 13 July 1598, IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 38, fols. 380r-v, 383r-v, published in Law, Archpriest Controversy, 1:63–65.

27 Pollen, , Institution of the Archpriest, 3435 Google Scholar. See also Charnock’s letters to Bagshaw and Bluet (the first dated 9 August and the other two without dates), IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 298r-v, 301r-v, 302r-v, published in Law, Archpriest Controversy, 1:66–72.

28 Colleton, , Iust defence, 270272 Google Scholar.

29 Pritchard, , Catholic Loyalism, 123 Google Scholar.

30 See McCoog, , The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597, 284 Google Scholar.

31 Two copies of the petition can be found in SP 12/268/37, 38, Kew, The National Archives [henceforth TNA]; ABSI, Anglia II, 47.

32 On 1 August 1598, Blackwell and his assistants thanked the pope for their appointments and for his concern for the mission (ASV, Borghese, serie II.448a-b, fols 358r-v).

33 Columb, a Devon native, entered the Society in Louvain in 1573, apparently having already been ordained. See Monumenta Angliae, ed. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (and László Lukács, S.J., for the third volume), 3 vols. (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1992, 2000), 2: 267.

34 Anstruther, Godfrey, O.P., The Seminary Priests, 4 vols. (Ware/Durham/Great Wakering: St Edmund’s College/Ushaw College/Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1968–1977), 1: 8284 Google Scholar; Colleton, Iust defence, 299–300.

35 Colleton to Garnet, 5 November 1598, published in Colleton, Iust defence, 243–44. See also Colleton’s letter to an unnamed lay person suspected of slandering him, 28 January [1599], 244.

36 Garnet to Colleton, 11 November 1598, ABSI, Anglia II, 43. Law published a copy of this letter in Archpriest Controversy, 1:79–82, but erroneously claimed that William Clarke was the recipient. Colleton also published Garnet’s reply in Iust defence, 245–48.

37 On Fisher and his campaign, see McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597, passim.

38 Colleton’s undated reply can be found in his Iust defence, 248–69.

39 Blackwell to [John Colleton], n.d. [March 1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 115r-v, published in Law, Archpriest Controversy, 1:85–87.

40 Anstruther, , Seminary Priests, 1: 77, 261 Google Scholar.

41 Clarke to [Blackwell], [late 1598/early 1599]; same to [Garnet?], 17 January [1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 286r-v.

42 Clarke to Oldcorne, [c. February 1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fol. 287r.

43 De schismate can be found in Commentariorum theologicorum, 4 vols (Venice, 1608), 3: cols. 749–62. Gregory of Valencia does indeed cite numerous authorities that schism is a willful disruption of the unity of the Church, and especially the repudiation of papal authority.

44 episcopus in ecclesia esse et ecclesia in episcopo et si qui cum episcopo non sit in ecclesia non esse’, Cyprian, epistula 69, 8 ad Florentinum, Patrologia Latina, IV, 406A-B. I thank Joseph Lienhard, S.J., for his assistance with the identification of this citation.

45 Oldcorne quoted the original Decretum Gratiani, dist. 19, c. 5, which can be found in http://geschichte.digitale-sammlungen.de/decretum-gratiani/kapitel/dc_chapter_0_168, accessed 26 February 2015. The English translation is ‘It is wrong that anyone try to transgress or be able to transgress the precepts of the Apostolic See or the ministry that we have arranged for Your Charity to perform. Part 2. Therefore, let anyone who would contradict apostolic decrees be cast down to his sorrow and ruin, and let him no longer have a place among the priests. Rather, let him be banished from the holy ministry. And let henceforth have no pastoral care under his authority, since no one can doubt that he has already been condemned by the authority of the holy and apostolic Church for his disobedience and presumption. He is to be cast out through the imposition of major excommunication because the one entrusted with the discipline of the holy Church is not only to appear obedient to the holy Church’s commands but also to inculcate them in others lest they perish. Let him who refuses to submit to apostolic precepts also be cut off from every divine and pontifical office’ Gratian, , Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, vol. 2: Treatise on Laws [Decretum DD.102 with Ordinary Gloss] (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012)Google Scholar ProQuest ebrary.Web. accessed 26 February 2015).

46 Oldcorne to Clarke, 8 March [1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 288r–289v.

47 Clarke accurately cited passages from Cajetan, Summula Peccatorum (Antwerp, 1575), 505. I could not find Oldcorne’s citation. I identified a similar but not identical passage on 503. Perhaps Oldcorne was citing an earlier edition. Or Clarke’s claim has validity.

48 Clarke specified many remarks made by Jesuits regarding Owen Lewis, Charles Paget, William Bishop, and others, including the Jesuit Cardinal Toledo, commonly believed to be anti-Jesuit.

49 Clarke to Oldcorne, 27 March [1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 279r–281v.

50 Oldcorne to Clarke, 3 April [1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 282r-v.

51 Clarke to Oldcorne, [April 1599], IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 283r-v.

52 The concluding section was published in Law, Historical Sketch of the Conflicts, 143–45. On the work itself, see the note on 85–86. A manuscript copy can be found in IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 86r–90v. The treatise itself was first published in [Christopher Bagshaw], Relatio compendiosa turbarum (Reims [vere London], n.d. [1601]), ARCR, vol. 1, num. 37.1, STC 3106, 37–49.

53 Colleton, Iust defence, 265.

54 A copy of the brief can be found in IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fol 146v.

55 T.G. to Garnet, 1 June 1599, ABSI, Anglia II, 56, published in Tierney/Dodd, Church History, 3:cxxix-cxxx.

56 On 2 February 1599, Cardinal Caetani granted faculties to all secular priests in England who accepted Blackwell’s authority. See IT, Petyt MSS 538, vol. 47, fols. 137r-v, published in Law, Archpriest Controversy, 1:151–53.

57 Blackwell to Persons, 3/13 June 1599, ARSI, Angl. 37, fol. 63r.

58 Garnet to Persons, [c. June 1599], ABSI, Coll P II 542–544. According to Garnet, Blackwell was tremendously consoled by the conformity of the ‘Sodalitians’ (Garnet to Marco Tusinga [vere Persons], 30 June 1599, TNA, SP 12/271/32).

59 London 12 June 1599, ASV, Borghese III.111.a-b, fols. 136r-v.

60 For reasons not unrelated to his portrait of Persons, Michael L. Carrafiello ignores this albeit temporary interlude of reconciliation, and asserts that the papal clarification ‘did nothing to quell Appellant resentment of Parsons and the Jesuits’, Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580–1610 (Selinsgrove, Pa: Susquehanna University Press, 1998), 91.

61 Garnet to Persons, [c. June 1599], ABSI, Coll P II 542–544.

62 As Colleton, believing that the Society was instrumental in the establishment of the archpresbyterate and the nomination of the archpriest and his assistants, argued: ‘I praye shew the difference that disproveth, and the reasons why you may elect our Superior, and we not yours’, Iust defence, 253.

63 I shall examine both more fully in a forthcoming monograph. Meanwhile, see Bossy, John, ‘Henri IV, the Appellants and the Jesuits’, Recusant History 8 (1965–1966): 80122 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, ed. Michael C. Questier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–15.