Abstract
When the second and largest wave of Humanism swept over England, the religious and ecclesiastical conditions had changed considerably since Colet founded his St. Paul’s School and Thomas More wrote his Utopia. The reformation of the Church had begun with Henry’s second marriage, and reformation ideas were openly proclaimed, these being admitted into the Church under Edward VI and triumphing completely under Elizabeth. Thus, the great writers of the Elizabethan age came into being in a country in which orthodox Catholicism had to withdraw to private gatherings and clandestine propaganda. They were educated at schools and universities where every attention was given to the universally honoured Greek and Roman pre-christian writers.
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References
H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958): chap. II.
C. W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers (1958): 92.
The articles of Archbishop Grindal (1571) require that there should be in every church: The Book of Common Prayer, a Psalter, the English Bible, the two tomes of the Homilies and the Paraphrases of Erasmus in English translation. (Shakespeare’s England, an Account of the Life and Manners of his Age, I (1932): 63), — Porter, op. cit.: 69; — Dugmore, op. cit.: 92.
Padberg, Erasmus als Katechet: 1 (28 editions are known): — Porter, op. cit.: 25.
Loc. cit.: 47, here many translations of Erasmus’ works are mentioned.
The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, ed. by J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (1921): 427.
Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, I: The King’s Proceedings (1951): passim.
From a letter of John Butler and others to Conrad Pellican and other friends of Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer, dated 8 March 1539 in Hughes, op. cit.: II, 45.
Loc. cit., II: 41.
Loc. cit., II: 33, 92.
Loc. cit., I: 351, II: 37-41; 124.
Op. cit., III: 86-88.
Dugmore, op. cit.: 108, 119; see p. 248 supra.
Hughes, op. cit.: II: 36, 49.
Loc. cit.: II: 36.
Loc. cit.: II: 49.
Quotation from Cranmer’s homily of Salvation, 1546, in: Porter, op. cit.: 62.
Hughes, op. cit.: II: 48.
Loc. cit., III: 32.
Hughes, op. cit., II: 136, 101; — Dugmore, op. cit.: 143.
ed. 1910, s.v. Church and Confessions (III: 646, 852).
Hughes, op. cit.: III: 31.
Compare: John Smith Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries (1903); Paul Meissner, England im Zeitalter von Humanismus, Renaissance und Reformation (1952); V. De Sola Pinto, The English Renaissance, 1510–1688 (1938); Walter F. Schirmer, Antike, Renaissance und Puritanismus (1924), and all Histories of English Literature.
Hughes, op. cit.: III: 6; — J. B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558–1603 (1949): 3; — Paul N. Siegel, “English Humanism and the new Tudor Aristocracy”: Journal of the History of Ideas, XIII (1952): 450 ff.
Meissner, op. cit.: 50.
Schirmer, op. cit.: 86-100; — Porter, op. cit.: 67, 68 ff.
Meissner, op. cit.: 99.
Quoted in: De Sola Pinto, op. cit.: 120.
Schirmer, op. cit.: 86.
Loc. cit.: 87; — Pico is also quoted in favourable terms in Romer, Courtier’s Academy (1546): E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (1943): 54.
Hughes, op. cit., III: 60, 58; — Friedr. Brie, “Deismus und Atheismus in der englischen Renaissance”: Anglia, Zeitschr. für englische Philologie, XLVIII (1924): 80; a similar statement by Cooper in 1584: loc. cit.: 91.
Quoted from Hutchinson, The image of God (1550) in: Brie, op. cit.: 89; cf. an analogous opinion expressed in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 50 years later, cf. p. 385.
Fredrick S. Boas, Sir Philip Sidney, representative Elizabethan (1955): 75 and 109 (“quotations in modern form”).
Arn. Williams, “The two matters: Classical and Christian in the Renaissance”: Studies in Philosophy, Univ. of N. Carolina, XXXVIII (1941): 158 ff.
Boas, op. cit.: chap. XXIII.
C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, excluding Drama (1954): 385 (Lewis calls Spenser a Calvinist); — James Jackson Higginson, Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar in relation to Contemporary Affairs (1912): 154-157 (referring to different authors who call Spenser a Puritan).
B. E. C. Davis, Edmund Spenser, a critical study (1933): 23.
Shepheardes Calendar, February: — Lewis, op. cit.: 378, refers to the fact that Spenser certainly calls “popery” “not the pure springe of lyfe,” but does not doubt “the salvation of many papists.” Later he points to the devotion of the catholic mission-priests (illegally active) as an example to the indolent Anglican clergy. (Davis, op, cit.: 34).
An hymne in honour of Love (published in 1591, but “made in greener times of my youth”: The Poetical Works of E. Spenser, 586-89).
Kerby Neill (“The degradation of the Red Cross Knight” in: That Souveraine Light, Essays in honour of E.S. (1952): 99) refers in this connection to the high degree of dependence of Spenser on Orlando furioso, a poem of typically “humanistic structure.”
In the 16th century edition of The Shepheardes Calendar some friend (?) of Spenser added to each “month” numerous “glosses,” explanatory notes.
That is quite a different line of thought from that of John Harrington (Apologie of Poetry): really “Poetry and all other studies of Philosophy” are “vaine and superfluous,” but because we live amongst men, “we do first read some other authors … and then, after we have gathered more strength, we enter into profounder studies of higher mysteries” and he thinks of Holy Scriptures “in which those high mysteries of our salvation are contained” (Schirmer, op. cit.: 126).
Virgil K. Whitaker who is out to demonstrate “the Theological Structure of Faerie Queene Book I,” says: “Nowhere … does he [Spenser] present doctrines peculiar to Calvinism” (That souveraine Light: 73).
W. L. Renwick, Edmund Spenser, an Essay on Renaissance Poetry (1925): 152.
Davis, op. cit.: 214.
Of Book VII of Faerie Queene Spenser only made a draft and some initial strophes.
Davis, op. cit.: 66.
The Faerie Queene, Book V, canto VII.
In Mutability.
Davis, op. cit.: 112; — Kerby Neill, op. cit. 108, places Spenser’s struggle with the devil on a par with the views of Calvin and the Catholic church, but forgets that these latter considered man immune from the diabolical powers as a result of God’s grace, and Spenser as a result of inspiration, the power given to man by God, together with his own practice and experience.
Ruth Kelso, “The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the 16th Century”: Univ. of Illinois, Studies in Language and Literature, XIV (1929): 72 f.
Loc. cit.: 74, from a translation of the work of Valerius by John Charlton.
Loc. cit.: 106.
He does not say: “soul” or “spirit.”
The Faerie Queene, I,x.
Harrison, op. cit.: 167; — Schirmer, op. cit.: 148.
Lewis, op. cit.: 53, 54; — Cassirer, Die platonische Renaissance: 78; — The Faerie Queene, II,ix.
Davis, op. cit.: 108; — Works of E. Spenser, Introduction: XLIII.
Davis, op. cit.: 66; — Renwick, op. cit.: 152.
The Faerie Queene, I,VIII; — Harrison, op. cit.: 2.
The Faerie Queene, I,L.
Harrison, op. cit.: 61, considers that in Spenser “the doctrine of grace plays no more than a formal part in his exposition of the soul’s growth,” that for him sometimes “grace is an intrusion upon the moral order, it makes the soul untrue to itself.” Undoubtedly, but that is one of the inconsistencies caused by the unconscious identification of christian religion and ancient philosophy.
George Seibel, The Religion of Shakespeare (1924): 25, 26.
Cf. Virgil K. Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning, An Inquiry into the Growth of his Mind and Art, (1953).
H. J. C. Grierson, Cross Currents in English Literature of the 16th Century (1929): 82, 96.
The sentences are quoted: R. W. Zandvoort, King Lear, the Scholars and the Critics: Mededelingen Kon. Ned. Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, N.R. 19, no. 7 (1956): 9.
Shakespeare’s England, 1: 76 (Ronald Bayne is a clergyman). John Harry De Groot, The Shakespeares and “the Old Faith” (1947): III, who tries to show that Shakespeare’s parents remained very close to Catholicism and brought up their William in it, admits that at school and in the church he also underwent Anglican and Puritan influences; he would nevertheless have remained rather sympathetic to Rome. I think his book is not very convincing.
Macbeth, IV, 3: 235-8 (I quote from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by W. J. Craig, Oxford University Press, 1947).
Seibel, Religion of Shakespeare, entitles chapter VIII as “No needs for Providence”; — Alex. Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexikon, a complete Dictionary of all English Words, Phrases and Constructions in the Works of the Poet, 3d edition revised by Gregor Sarrazin (1902), 2 vols, mentions only four passages where “providence” has the meaning of “the care of God,” “divine dispensation”: The Tempest I, 2: 159 and V: 189, Jul. Caesar, V, 1: 107, and Hamlet, V, 2: 231; it gives as the second meaning: “foresight, timely care,” to be understood as said of men, not of God, mentioning many instances of this meaning.
Paul Reyher, Essai sur les idées dans l’œuvre de Shakespeare: Bibliothèque des Langues modernes I (1947): 242–245.
Reyher, op. cit.: 252; — Theodore Spenser, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (1945), chapt. I, II, III.
In Tempest I, 2: 178, “bountiful Fortune” stands for “divine Providence,” as ibidem, I, 2: 159, and Hamlet, V, 2: 48, says in this strain: “in that was heaven ordinant”; — Harrison, Platonism: 167, speaks in this regard of “a body of intellectual principles which were identified with the persons of the Christian Trinity”; “Platonism trained the mind of the poets in conceiving God rather as the object of the mind’s speculative quest than as the dreaded judge of the sinful soul.” Whitaker (op. cit.: 57-59, 195) states: “For Providence, Fortune, and human character, the forces determining events in his early plays, (Shakespeare) seemed to be substituting a notion of laws of nature which organized God, natural phenomena, and man himself into a related whole” (this for the period of the great plays).
Quite different is the resignation of Lear in the “mystery of things” in which one must accept God’s baffling decree (V, 3: 16), so that the (Catholic) G. Wilson Knight remarks: without feeling for “divine action there is no celestial avatar, to right misguided humanity” (The Wheel of Fire 3 (1949): 192).
Bruno Siburg, “Schicksal und Willensfreiheit bei Shakespeare, dargelegt am “Macbeth”: Studien zur englischen Philologie, herausgegeben von L. Morsbach, Heft XXVII (1906): 31.
Macduff: Macbeth, IV, 3: 230; Gloucester: K. Lear IV, 6: 230; Posthumus: Cymbeline, I, 1: 115; Cordelia K. Lear, IV, 7: 14, “the kind Gods” may cure my father.
In his last works, in which the didactic element is much stronger, this christian tendency becomes more marked, strangely enough in a pre-christian subject in Cymbeline (inter alia: V, 1: 7, cf. G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life (1947): 180 f.
Ernst Theodor Sehrt, Vergebung und Gnade (1952): 208, cannot decide whether the loving granting of grace to man by the gods in the Jupiter scene of Cymbeline, V, 4, is borrowed from the Old and New Testament or whether it goes back to an ancient stoic thought.
Sehrt, op. cit.: 109.
Reyher, op. cit.: 431.
Schmidt-Sarazin, op. cit., gives II meanings of “grace,” inter alia: “beneficent influence of heaven,” “divine favour” including “salvation,” but none of the passages quoted proves that Shakespeare should here have thought of the orthodox view of “salvation.”
Hamlet I, 3: 78; — Max Deutschbein, “Individuum und Kosmos in Shakespeares Werken”: Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 69 (1933): 10.
Spenser, op. cit.: 146; — Sehrt, op. cit.: 9, 225.
Sehrt, op. cit.: 208, cf. also: 78-82.
In contrast to so many dramatists of his time: Seibel, op. cit.: 19.
Grierson, op. cit.: 99.
Loc. cit.: 106
The “Redeemer” is only two times mentioned in Shakespeare, and that only in Richard III: II, 1: 4 and 123. (Schmidt-Sarrazin, op. cit., s.v.).
Hamlet, V, 1: 241; K. John, III, 1: 166.
According to John H. De Groot, who would like to prove the Catholicism of Shakespeare, the eucharist and the Lord’s Supper are never mentioned, and the mass but once; baptism occurs but rarely, the sermon on a few occasions and then in a jeering manner (The Shakespeares and “the Old Faith” 175-177).
Hamlet, I, 5: 77.
The only occasion that he mentions the “saving” effect of prayers recited by another is through the words of Isabella the nun in Measure for Measure (II, 2). It seems to me too ‘Roman’ an interpretation to consider with G. Wilson Knight that in the prayer scene in Hamlet (III, 3) one has to answer in favour of Claudius the question: “Which then at this moment in the play, is nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven? Whose words would be more acceptable to Jesus’ God”: Claudius when he has said “a lovely prayer, the fine flower of a human soul in anguish,” or Hamlet who is eager for revenge? (The Wheel of Fire: 36).
Shakespeare’s England: 75; — Seibel, The Religion of Shakespeare: 16-19.
Cf. De Groot, op. cit.: 169; Seibel, op. cit.: 27.
Grierson, op. cit.: 31.
Cymbeline, IV, 2: 263.
Macbeth, IV, 1: 99.
Cymbeline, IV, 2: 261.
Othello, II, 3: 108.
Thus in the Quarto edition of 1604, in the First Quarto (1603) he had said: “Heaven receive my soul” (Seibel, op. cit.: 24); — Knight, Crown of Life: 170; Macbeth, III, 2: 22; Julius Caesar, III, 1: 101.
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© 1961 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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van Gelder, H.A.E. (1961). Christian Humanism in England. In: The Two Reformations in the 16th Century. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9562-1_11
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