Notes and References

Notes and References 1 Confession and Memory in the Age of Reformations 1. On the various meanings of metanoia, see Richter 11–12. For a detailed discussion of Erasmus’s translation as well as Luther’s reaction to Erasmus’s use of metanoia, see Jarrott 125–8. 2. Historical studies on confession in the English Reformation include Carter; Rowell; Marshall, Catholic Priesthood 5–34; Parker, “Greenham’s”; and Carlson “Auricular Confession,” “Good Pastors,” and “Confession and Absolution.” 3. Recent studies that consider the influence of confession in post-Reforma- tion England include Low; Cummings 328–64; Pilarz; Simpson 68–105; Beauregard 24–39; Shuger, “Reformation of Penance”; King’oo 63–94; Parker, “Faustus, Confession”; Beckwith; and Hirschfeld. Despite the expansion of the field of memory studies, very few scholars have examined the relationship between memory and penitence. Notable exceptions include Margalit, Sullivan 65–87, and Sherman. 4. On the knowledge of forgiveness as fundamental to confession, see Tentler, Sin and Confession 14. 5. The persistence of traditional beliefs and ritual practices has been the subject of several important studies, including Scarisbrick, Reformation and the English People; Haigh, “Continuity of Catholicism”; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars; and Haigh, English Reformations. 6. On this general feature in Marlowe, see Levin 120. 7. On the Lenten confessional rush in pre-Reformation England, see Marshall, Catholic Priesthood 12–13. Joseph Goering cites an anonymous 13th-century sermon in Oxford, New College MS 94, fol. 12v-13r: “Priests were sometimes warned about what to expect from their parishioners: ‘The sinners of your parish will come to confession, I tell you, [only] during Lent, and not in the first or the second or the third week, but in the sixth week, or on Good Friday or Saturday or on Easter Sunday, drawn by the necessity of keep- ing a custom rather than by the compunction of true penance’” (227). By contrast, George Cavendish reports that Cardinal Wolsey, a few days before his death, “was in confession the space of an hour” (182). Southwell uses himself as an example of the importance of frequent confession, explaining, “Every year twice at the least must I make a general confession of my sins past and so from time to time seek to renew myself” (Two Letters 46). On the practice of “General Confession of an Entire Life,” see Myers 168–71. 8. Important interpretations that concentrate on the relationship between confession and power include Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning 85–6, 117– 19, and 245–7; Mullaney, Place of the Stage 88–115; Tambling; Schoenfeldt, Prayer and Power 47–53; Sinfield 143–80; Hendricks; Shuger, Political Theologies 102–40; Coleman, Drama and the Sacraments; and Taylor, Culture of Confession. This critical trend emerged from Reformation historiography; see Bossy, “Social History of Confession”; Tentler, “Summa for Confessors”; 181 182 Notes and References Ozment 49–56; Tentler, Sin and Confession 35–56; Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic”; Myers; Haliczer; and De Boer. 9. See Persons, An epistle of the persecvtion 25. 10. Martin Bucer, for instance, writes, “people have been corrupted by the pop- ish minister of the church for such a long time, and in this way given up all discipline and obedience” (144). 11. On the medieval concern about effective confessors, see Murray, “Counselling in Medieval Confession.” 12. On the exceptional nature of Luther’s anxieties in confession, see Tentler, “Summa for Confessors” 124. On the subject of penitential anxiety in post- Reformation literature, see Mullaney, Place of the Stage 100 and Coleman, Drama and the Sacraments 125. 13. In Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, Luther similarly writes, “For this reason I have a high regard for private confession, for here God’s word and absolution are spoken privately and individually to each believer for the forgiveness of sins, and as often as he desires it he may have recourse to it for this forgiveness, and also for comfort, counsel, and guidance” (Luther’s Works 37: 368). 14. Luther describes these three forms of confession in his sermon on Riminiscere Sunday, 16 March 1522, which is included in Eight Sermons at Wittenberg (1522). Luther reiterates the three types of confession in The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics (1526) (Luther’s Works 36: 354-61). In the Small Catechism (1529), Luther identifies two forms of confession: to God and private confession to a pastor (see Kolb and Wengert, eds. 360–2); and in the Large Catechism he identifies these two as well as private confession to another Christian layperson (see Kolb and Wengert, eds. 476–80). On confession in Luther’s catechism, see Steinmetz 136–8. In the section On Private Confession, Melanchthon reiterates Luther’s three forms of confession; see Loci Communes 256–7. 15. Susan Karant-Nunn notes, “Luther’s idea of the lay confessor did not meet the needs of those in authority at the time, and it did not take hold” (93). Tentler observes that in 1523, Luther, “to ensure devout reception of the sacrament [of the Eucharist], instituted the Verhör the pastor’s examination and instruction in faith of individual communicants, and linked the Verhör with the individual confession of sins. Fifty Lutheran church ordinances between 1525 and 1591 decreed individual confession with the Verhör as a precondi- tion of admission to the Lord’s Supper: no Lutheran polities failed to adopt it, and many forbade general absolution by the clergy” (“Confession” 403). 16. On Luther’s personal use of private confession, see Oberman 321. 17. On private confession as a marker of difference between Lutherans and other Protestants, see Rittgers, “Private Confession.” 18. On the legacy of Luther’s reformation of private confession, see Tentler, Sin and Confession 350; Rittgers, Reformation 216–17; and Bagchi 123. 19. See Luther, A right notable sermon br-biiiiv and bvir. 20. On the influence of Lutheranism in sixteenth-century England, see Hall. On late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English attitudes toward Lutheranism, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed 384–95. 21. On Zwingli’s position on confession, see Stephens, Theology of Huldych Zwingli 23, 46. Notes and References 183 22. On the differences between Lutheran and Calvinist confessional practices, see Karant-Nunn 98. 23. For a discussion of Calvin’s developing attitude towards general and private confession, see Lea 1: 515 and Tentler, Sin and Confession 362–5. 24. See the Bishops’ Book F5r-F7v. The Bishops’ Book was never declared the official statement of the Henrician Church; nevertheless, it promulgated the Henrician Church’s official doctrine of penance as laid out in the Ten Articles. 25. On the Six Articles reflecting a shift in attitudes toward auricular confession, see Redworth 61–2. 26. By the time that Cranmer reached Henry’s deathbed, however, the king was unconscious and was never able to make his final confession and receive Viaticum; see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII 496. 27. The Elizabethan Prayer Book (1559), published as The booke of common praier, and administration of the Sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies in the Churche of Englande, in “The order for the administration of the Lordes Supper, or holy Communion,” includes an optional exhortation, by the priest, to any individual who “by means aforesaid cannot quiet his own conscience, but requireth further comfort of counsel”: “[T]hen let him come to me, or some other discrete and learned Minister of Gods woorde, and open his griefe, that he may receiue suche ghostly counsaile, aduice, and comfort, as his conscience may be relieued: and that by the ministrie of Gods woorde he may receyue comfort, and the benefit of absolucion, to the quieting of his conscience, and aduoyding of al scruple and doubtfulness” (Mvir). 28. See, for instance, Reginald Pole’s 1556 Legatine Constitutions (Bray, ed. 87–8). Marian visitations emphasize the requirement of receiving sacramen- tal confession before receiving Communion; see Bonner’s 1554 letter to the curates of London and Articles for London and his 1555 Injunction for London (Foxe [1563 ed.] 923 and Frere and Kennedy, eds. 2: 350, 366) as well as James Brooks’s 1556 Injunctions for Gloucester (Frere and Kennedy, eds. 2: 405). 29. The sermon “Of confession and penaunce” and “Of auricular confession” are respectively translations of the medieval pseudo-Augustinian sermons “De confessione peccatorum” (see PL 39, col. 215–16) and “De confessione peccatorum” (see PL 40, cols 1288–90). The sermon “Of penaunce” is a translation of Caesarius of Arles’ sermon 65, “Unde supra” (see PL 39, cols 2221–3). See Machielsen, ed., 1039, 1157, and 1043. I am indebted to Mark Vessey’s entry in the Interscripta Archive for these references. 30. On the publication history of Book 6 of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, see Hooker 3: xiii–lxxiii. The manuscripts were definitely read by George Cranmer and Edwin Sandys, who provided notes to Book 6. Andrewes also knew of the Hooker’s manuscripts, as his extant letter to Henry Parry on 7 November 1600 indicates; see Hooker 3: xiii for an excerpt of the letter. For an overview of Hooker’s doctrine of repentance, see also Gibbs, “Richard Hooker’s Via Media” and “Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes.” 31. In Bale’s A Comedy Concerning Three Laws (1538), Lex Natura charges that friars have thoroughly debased the sacrament of confession, “In confession some full beastly occupied be; / Among the close nuns reigneth this enor- mity; / Such children slay they as they chance for to have” (27). By the same 184 Notes and References token, Hypocrisy boasts of the prowess of friars in using the confessional for solicitation: “ye would marvel, in confession, / What our fathers do to assoil [women] of transgression.

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