sign in sign up
<<
Home , Early modern philosophy, Everard Digby, Kenelm Digby, Letter to His Father, Lucas Holstenius, Walter Montagu

A TURN OF THE

Frameworks for Religious Conversion in Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Discourse

by

Andrew Vincent Sanchez

A thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors

Harvard University

Cambridge Massachusetts

10 March 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1 Epistolary Sources ...... 6 Chapter Overviews...... 8 A Broader View of Early Modern Controversy ...... 11 1. : A Syncretic Antidote ...... 14 The Origins of Neoplatonic Thought ...... 19 Towards a Christian ...... 24 Platonism in the Italian Renaissance...... 29 Lucas Holstenius and Seventeenth-Century Neoplatonism ...... 30 Conclusion ...... 36 2. The English Converts: Historicity and the True Church ...... 37 The Problem of English Catholicism ...... 38 : A Story of Reconversion ...... 40 1635: The Year of “Society” Conversions...... 45 The Historicity Argument ...... 53 A Philosophical Turn in English Controversy ...... 58 Conclusion ...... 60 3. From Convert to Broker: Conversion Agents and Women’s Empowerment ...... 61 An Act Best Done Abroad ...... 62 Jesuit Agents as Conversion Brokers ...... 67 Brokers of the New ...... 71 Women and Conversion ...... 77 Conclusion ...... 79 Epilogue ...... 81 Appendix I ...... 86 Bibliography ...... 95 Primary Sources ...... 95 Secondary Sources ...... 97

INTRODUCTION

The seventeenth century was a period of religious disintegration. Under the banner of reformed confessions, Arminians, , Anabaptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and

Episcopalians all offered accounts of the one true church on earth. And the Church of

Rome, the once unquestioned seat of western Christendom, began to reform as it confronted the shifting tides of Protestant ideologies. Across Europe, the splintering of

Christianity manifested itself in violent unrest as sacred and secular leaders each vied for spiritual and temporal . Given the abundance of conflict in the seventeenth century, the historiography on this period has largely emphasized the political and governmental implications of religious disputes. The emphasis on and politics, however, has overlooked the fundamental building block of early modern religion: personal faith. In this study, I shift our focus to the individual of to better understand how , controversy, and geography informed early modern religious identity. If religion is fundamentally rooted in individual belief, what does it mean to turn away from one's faith? What does it mean for the early modern intellectual to convert?

Throughout this work, I will argue that conversion was an outgrowth of scholarly endeavor. To understand this form of conversion, I will examine the of three early modern men of letters, Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661), Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), and (1603-1677). For all three, conversion was a rational process grounded in the authority of biblical and patristic texts. But each had unique experiences and drew from different philosophical traditions. Philosophy too was in disarray. Through

- 1 -

the recovery and diffusion of ancient texts, Renaissance scholars had challenged the long dominant position of in Christian . By the seventeenth century, a broad spectrum of classical , from Plato to the Stoics, Epicureans, and even the Pre-Socratics permeated academic discourse. Along with religious options, early modern scholars had philosophical ones.

For Holstenius, the study of Neoplatonism motivated his change of confession.

Digby and Montagu, on the other hand, relied on Aristotelian and historical frameworks to validate their conversions. Although all three converted to the Church of , the philosophical and historical claims behind their conversions differed significantly. This calls attention to the complexity of seventeenth-century controversy, and in this study, I will examine how scholars drew from divergent philosophical schools to justify

Catholic conversion.

In a period of religious and philosophical disintegration, the conversions of

Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu represented an attempt to unify different controversial frameworks. In their writings, they carried forward the Renaissance impulse to unite ostensibly opposing philosophical schools as they built on the works of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. By the seventeenth century, the effects of lent a new dimension to controversial disputes leading Christia Mercer to describe the period as one of “intellectual fecundity and confusion.”1

When Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu began to explore religious controversy, they entered a world where Aristotelian and Platonic notions came into conversation with

1 Christia Mercer, “Platonism and Philosophical on the Continent,” in A Companion to Early , ed. Steven Nadler (Cornwall: Blackwell, 2002), 42. - 2 -

contemporary Protestant claims.2 As they participated in this discussion, all three attempted to transcend confessional infighting by appealing to ancient . The use of classical sources not only reveals their indebtedness to Renaissance scholarship, but also exposes a tendency to portray conversion in intellectual rather than spiritual terms.

Since their conversions developed through intellectual endeavor, each figure became embedded in a scholarly network that ranged from Italy to England. Thus, our study of these converts offers a wide view onto religious discourse across early modern

Europe. Although all three travelled extensively in Europe, they all converted in . This fact suggests that each figure required geographical separation from home in order to convert. Further, it reveals that Paris’ intellectual climate was congenial to Catholic conversion. In this environment, all three came under the instruction of proselytizing

Jesuits who guided them in spiritual and scholarly inquiry. On this point, I will argue that religious brokers played a crucial role in the conversion process as they mediated the change of faith through discussion and spiritual counsel. Thus, conversion required both intellectual conviction and a location conducive to religious transformation.

In the past twenty years, early modern religion has received extensive scholarly attention. In the 1990s, historians emphasized the political dimensions of religious change and concentrated on the implications of high-profile conversions.3 This focus called attention to the intimate connection between religion and politics, but did not explore the

2 For an overview of seventeenth-century philosophy, see Stephen Menn, “The Intellectual Setting,” in The Cambridge History of seventeenth-century philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers, Roger Ariew, and Alan Gabbey, Cambridge Histories Online 1998. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/007520374/catalog. 3 Michael Wolfe, The Conversion of Henri IV. Politics, Power, and Religious Belief in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993); Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996); Keith P. Luria, Sacred boundaries: religious coexistence and conflict in early-modern France (Washington: Catholic Univ. Press, 2005). - 3 -

intellectual or emotional foundations for belief. For some historians, the study of conversion as a religio-political phenomenon neglected the personal experience of belief, piety, and religiosity in the .4 To address this, the recent works of Jean-

Louis Quantin, Peter Mazur, and Abigail Shinn have highlighted the importance of religious controversy in the sculpting of church doctrine.5 These studies have uncovered the myriad influences which informed church policies throughout early modern Europe.

The multifaceted nature of religious conversion has even invited literary analysis to understand how conversion was represented in drama and verse.6

Although recent developments in the historiography have shed light on the interplay of religious controversy and church doctrine, the individual experience of conversion has received insufficient treatment. Many studies stop short of analyzing individual conversions and fail to grasp how controversy and philosophy informed the . To remedy this oversight, this study seeks to address the effects of philosophy, intellectual milieus, and social contexts on the personal experience of belief. In his work on English religion, Quantin recognizes the limitations of his focus: “Their role [the early ] in shaping personal spiritualties, which for the truly religious mind, would be the most important, has not been considered.”7 I hope to fill the lacuna to which Quantin has

4 Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2007); For an overview of the historiography on early modern conversion, see Kim Siebenhühner, “Glaubenswechsel in der Frühen Neuzeit: Chancen und Tendenzen Einer Historischen Konversionsforschung,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 34.2 (2007): 243–72. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/43570599.251 5 Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); Peter Mazur and Abigail Shinn, “Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World,” Journal of Early Modern History 17 (2013): 427-436 6 Lieke Stelling, “'Thy Very Essence Is Mutability': Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama, 1558-1642,” The Turn of the : Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature vol. 23 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012), 59-83. 7 Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity, 21. - 4 -

called attention. To that end, this study will explore the interior world of early modern scholars as they justified their conversions through study and spiritual counsel.

Because early modern intellectuals did not discuss emotion and feelings in psychological terms, it can be difficult to parse the psychic motivations that lay behind conversion. Nonetheless, historians have recently drawn on twentieth-century psychosocial frameworks to understand the conversion process. Most commonly employed is the

Lofland-Stark model which proposes a seven-step process, starting with “acutely felt tensions” and culminating in a spiritual transformation.8 This model sparked a contentious debate about conversion in the 1960s and 70s, much of which turned on the importance of

“anxieties” or “tensions.” Citations of the Lofland-Stark model highlight an impulse to apply psychoanalytic frameworks to the study of the early modern world.9 Although it is possible to infer anxiety from early modern sources, we can only understand interior experience through the constellation of exterior statements and documents left for our study. In the absence of sources conveying inner experience, we are severely limited in our ability to make claims about the psychological experiences of early modern people.

Nonetheless, the historian can piece together the intellectual, if not the psychological mindset of early modern figures by studying their epistolary correspondence.

8 John Lofland and Rodney Stark, “ a World-saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective,” American Sociological Review 30.6 (1965): 862–875. See also Religiöse Konversion: Systematische und Fallorientierte Studien in Soziologischer Perspektive, ed. Hubert Knoblauch, Volkhard Krech, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Konstanz: Universitaets Verlag Konstanz, 1998). 9 Detlef Pollack, “Überlegungen zum Begriff und Phänomen der Konversion aus religionssoziologischer Perspektive,” Konversion und Konfession in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Ute Lotz-Heumann, Jan-Friedrich Missfelder, and Matthias Pohlig (Göttingen: Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, 2007). - 5 -

Epistolary Sources

Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu were highly literate individuals, and there exists a wide array of sources with which to trace the intellectual and personal developments of these scholars. Although I will draw from other sources, including their own controversial treatises, their letters will be the primary anchor of my study. In the early modern period, letters were the predominant form of long-distance communication, and the importance of letter writing is extensively treated in the historiography.10 In his book, The Culture of

Epistolarity, Gary Schneider explores the meaning of letters in the social, political, and cultural spheres of early modern England. For Schneider, the letter was a multivalent material object, a “sociotext,” that could at once be a vehicle for intimate correspondence, intellectual discourse, as well as noteworthy news or gossip.11 Schneider rightly locates letters at the heart of early modern discourse, but his study does not engage conversion through the medium of letter writing.

Letters, I suggest, offer a unique view into the mind of the early modern convert.

Because letters conveyed both intimate details as well as intellectual discourse, they are ideal for the study of conversion. At its foundation, religious conversion is a highly personal decision. But in the early modern period, religious identity was inextricably linked to one’s public image. Religious identification dictated whom one would marry, where one

10 See Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1982); Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976); James How, Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson’s “Clarissa” (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Gary Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 (Newark: Univ. of Delaware, 2005); Susan Wright, “Private Language Made Public: The Language of Letters as Literature,” Poetics 18 (1989): 549-78. 11 Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity, 15. - 6 -

could live, and where one might work. So, the highly personal decision to convert could never be undertaken without public consequences.

I posit that religious conversion straddled the divide between the public and private spheres, just as letters were public and private documents. Up until this point, epistolarity and conversion have received separate scholarly attention. In this study, I seek to unite these fields and offer a view of early modern conversion fundamentally rooted in epistolary discourse. Through letters, we can trace the dialogic nature of religious conversions as the correspondents rebutted, affirmed, and challenged each other’s opinions. The letter took many forms as an act of personal expression, and early modern scholars were aware of letters’ many uses. On this point, Toon van Houdt and Jan Papy argue that “humanists and other intellectuals wrote letters to define themselves as literators, scholars, or scientists.”12

I will build on van Houdt and Papy’s thesis to suggest that Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu consciously defined themselves as converts through their letters.

For my study of Walter Montagu and Kenelm Digby’s correspondence, I visited archives throughout Britain and the United States, including the British Library, Lambeth

Palace Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian, the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, the Houghton Library at Harvard, and the Beinecke at Yale. At the British

Library, I consulted letters and miscellaneous manuscripts of Kenelm Digby (Add MS

41846 and Add MS 38175), and at the Lambeth Palace Library, I viewed a letter of Walter

Montagu in the Papers of and Others, MS 943. At the Bodleian, I consulted

12 Toon Van Houdt and Jan Papy, “Introduction” in Self Presentation and Social Identification: The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times, ed. Toon Van Houdt, Jan Papy, Gilbert Tournoy, Constant Matheeussen (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2002), 3. - 7 -

the Rawlinson Manuscripts, an extensive collection of early modern controversial works, and in Appendix I, I present a previously unpublished letter of Walter Montagu from this collection. At the Houghton, I studied Digby’s first reply to Walter Montagu in MS Eng.

986, and at the Beinecke, I consulted the Osborn Files 4407 and 4408.13

My study of Holstenius required less archival work because many of his letters have been reproduced in edited editions. These include Jean-Francois Boissonade’s Lucae

Holstenii Epistolae ad diversos, Aflredo Serrai’s La Biblioteca di Lucas Holstenius, and

Alfonso Mirto’s Lucas Holstenius e La Corte Medicea.14 Further, a significant portion of

Holstenius’ library and manuscripts are found in the Barberini Manuscripts at the Vatican

Library and the Staats und Universtäts Bibliothek .

Chapter Overviews

In chapter one, I will offer a survey of Neoplatonic thought as it developed in Late

Antiquity before addressing the resurgence of Platonism through the works of Marsilio

Ficino and Pico Della Mirandola. Ficino and Pico championed a “conciliatory eclecticism” which sought to unify wide-ranging philosophical schools within a Christian framework.15

I will suggest that Holstenius and his Leiden colleagues revisited the project of concordism in response to philosophical and religious fragmentation in the seventeenth century.

Finally, I will argue that this scholarly project grew into one of spiritual discovery as

13 My study of Kenelm Digby and Walter Montagu was inspired by Dr. Joe Moshenska of Trinity College, Cambridge. For further information on Digby’s correspondence, consult Dr. Moshenska’s forthcoming edition of Digby’s collected letters under contract with Oxford University Press. 14 Lucae Holstenii Epistolae ad diversos, ed. Jean-Francois Boissonade (Paris: Bibliopolio graeco-latino- germanico, 1817); La Biblioteca di Lucas Holstenius, ed. Alfredo Serrai (Udine: Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2000); Lucas Holstenius e La Corte Medicea, ed. Alfonso Mirto (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999). 15 Mercer, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, 29. - 8 -

Neoplatonism afforded Holstenius a new framework with which to read Augustine and other patristic works.

In the second chapter, I will turn to my English cases and examine the 1635 conversions of Walter Montagu and Kenelm Digby.16 Montagu’s conversion received significant public attention after he dramatically announced it in a semi-public letter to his father. Unlike Holstenius, Montagu at first justified his conversion through historical instead of philosophical argumentation. Although Augustine figures prominently in both conversion narratives, Montagu’s explanation reveals that English controversial debates turned on questions of historicity rather than Renaissance philosophy. Montagu’s letter and his father’s response were widely disseminated in the late 1630s and ultimately published in 1641. But the 1641 volume omitted Montagu’s second letter to his father thereby delegitimizing Montagu’s conversion in the public eye. The second letter forms a crucial element of this dialogue, but to my , it has received no treatment in the historiography. By examining his second letter and presenting a transcription in Appendix

I, I argue that Montagu’s religious faith evolved after his initial conversion. The second letter assimilates recommendations from Kenelm Digby and reveals a distinctly philosophical bent in comparison to his initial letter.

The remainder of the second chapter will address Kenelm Digby’s conversion to

Protestantism and his reconversion to the Church of Rome in 1635. I will argue that the

16 For biographies of Walter Montagu and Kenelm Digby, see the following: Michael Foster, “Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) As Man of Religion and Thinker,” The Downside Review (April 1988); E.W. Bligh, Sir Kenelm Digby and his Venetia (: S. Low, Marston, 1932); Robert Torsten Petersson, Kenelm Digby, The Ornament of England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956); Montagu: Thompson Cooper, “Montagu, Walter (1604/5–1677),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, rev. Edward Charles Metzger, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004); Michael Foster, “Walter Montagu, courtier, diplomat and abbot, 1603-77,” Downside Review 69 (April 1978): 85-102. - 9 -

opportunistic understanding of Digby’s 1630 conversion neglects his distinctly philosophical outlook. As Englishmen, both Digby and Montagu were forced to confront their Episcopalian home country where a fractured Church of England and a growing

Puritan minority strongly condemned Catholicism. In an effort to legitimize English

Catholicism, Digby and his mentor , developed an Aristotelian for English Catholics. Like Holstenius, Digby responded to religious fracture with a new philosophy that promised to harmonize different schools of thought.

If the first two chapters focus on three individual conversions, the third chapter gestures towards broader trends in seventeenth-century controversy. In the concluding chapter, I examine the influence of Jesuit religious brokers on Holstenius, Digby, and

Montagu. The role of Jesuits evidences a network of conversion organizations that propagated across the continent in the seventeenth century. I will suggest that Jesuits could prove remarkably flexible in assimilating different philosophical frameworks. Since the

Middle Ages, Aristotelianism held pride of place in , and in the seventeenth century, Jesuits remained officially committed to Aristotle.17 But in practice,

Jesuits read widely and accommodated a philosophical program beyond Aristotelian .

In the final section, I explore how Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu brokered the conversions of three prominent early modern women. These conversions reveal how women used religious transformation as an expression of personal . I further suggest that women played an important role in religious change through their own writings and

17 Roger Ariew, “Descartes and scholasticism: the intellectual background to Descartes’ thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 64. - 10 -

familial influence. The historiography on women in early modern Europe is vast, and the study of the relative merits of Catholicism and for women has not produced a consensus.18 Although some have argued that the Counterreformation restricted women’s liberties, I suggest that women of high social rank were less encumbered by official

Catholic regulations. My point, however, is not to view one confession or the other as more favorable for women. Instead, I posit that the act of conversion was empowering as it allowed women to transcend the confines of a male-dominated society.

A Broader View of Early Modern Controversy

Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu lend themselves to study because their religious trajectories share important commonalities, just as their differences highlight important nuances in early modern religious life. All three converted to the Church of Rome, all three did so in Paris, and they all became conversion brokers. But Digby and Montagu were

English noblemen, whereas Holstenius was the son of a German dyer. These differences in nationality and class highlight the role of social and familial influence in religious conversion. For Montagu, his high social rank had significant consequences when his conversion became a source of embarrassment for his father. Conversion, therefore, carried greater risks for those of noble birth because it threatened to undermine the family’s reputation.

18 See Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008); Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995); Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended : How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2012). - 11 -

By studying these three figures, we see how the works of Augustine, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists were highly malleable sources prone to subjective interpretation. This fact supports Arnoud Visser’s claim that Protestants and Catholics employed a remarkably similar body of patristic sources to arrive at different conclusions.19 Through analyzing their interpretations, I will complicate notions of religious authority and suggest that personal biases, external philosophical frameworks, and partisan editing practices sculpted how early modern intellectuals read and portrayed patristic works.

Although I have restricted the first two chapters to the stories of three men, I do not mean to suggest that their stories are representative of all early modern conversions.

Indeed, they could only represent that class of literate people with the means to acquire, read, and discuss written works. This study does not attempt to understand conversion among illiterate people, and it does not explore the controversial landscape outside of

Protestant-Catholic debates. But by examining the intellectual underpinnings of early modern conversion, we can observe commonalities, namely the interplay of philosophy and social context, in the conversion experience.

The dialogue between philosophy and religion may suggest that religious faith became subordinate to philosophical consistency for early modern intellectuals. In an article on French ecclesiastical scholarship, Jean-Louis Quantin argues that seventeenth- century French scholars set out to “purify” Catholic philosophy from illogical or superstitious beliefs.20 For these scholars, the Catholic faith became a model on which to practice intellectual disputation in order to solidify its philosophical foundations. There is

19 Arnoud Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 97. 20 Jean-Louis Quantin, “ and Reasonableness,” Huntington Library Quarterly 74.3 (2011): 401. - 12 -

a parallel between this effort and the stories of our three converts. All three converted on philosophical grounds, but their academic interests took them further. They sought to develop new philosophical programs not only to justify their belief, but also to improve the consistency of Catholic theology. In this way, religion became more than a path to eternal salvation. It became a philosophical exercise that decentered faith and replaced it with philosophical inquiry.

By focusing on individual conversions, this study seeks to elucidate the highly personal yet inherently public nature of religious transformation. In so doing, this work will examine the academic experiences of early modern intellectuals to understand how scholarly pursuit informed religious identity.

- 13 -

CHAPTER 1

NEOPLATONISM: A SYNCRETIC ANTIDOTE

In a moment of spiritual desperation or perhaps a moment of insight, Lucas

Holstenius scrawled the following words in the margins of a Greek manuscript: "The machinations of the individual soul are often disappointed."1 The text on which Holstenius made his marginal note was a classic of late antique Neoplatonism: Proclus' In Platonis

Cratylum Commentaria. In these few words, we gain a brief but intimate glimpse into the mind of an early modern convert, a convert whose careful study of controversy brought him from Lutheranism to the Church of Rome in the .

As a leading librarian and scholar of antiquity, Holstenius commanded an impressive knowledge of the Greek world. His personal collection comprehended the works of Plotinus, Proclus, Damascius, among others, and his letters attest to the influence of Neoplatonism from his earliest days in Leiden.2 While under the tutelage of Daniel

Heinsius and , Holstenius first gained exposure to Neoplatonism, and later, Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc would gift him the complete works of Proclus.3 By

1 Proclus, Procli Diadochi in Platonis Cratylum commentaria, ca. fifth century. Copy at the Vatican, Barb.gr.67.1r. Annotated by Lucas Holstenius: "Operatio animae particularis saepe frustratur." http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.gr.67. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2 Georges Folliet, "Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661): Un émule de Saint Augustin dans sa conversion au platonisme et au catholicisme," in Sophies Maietores: Hommage a Jean Pepin, ed. Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Goulven Madec, Denis O'Brien (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustinienne, 1992), 631. 3 Proclus, Procli Diadochi in Platonis Cratylum commentaria, Barb.gr.67.1r. An annotation in another hand states that Holstenius received the manuscript from the French Jesuit, Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, an important geographer and antiquarian in seventeenth-century France. Peiresc’s correspondences put him in - 14 -

tracing Holstenius' spiritual development from the 1620s onward, we see recurrent engagement with Neoplatonic works. Although Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity and the

Renaissance have received separate scholarly attention, no work has addressed the impact of Neoplatonism on individual religious conversion.

Holstenius viewed Neoplatonism as a way to transcend confessional disputes by appealing to an exterior philosophical framework. Because Neoplatonism offered a self- contained philosophy with application to Christian thought, converts could justify conversion without directly engaging the claims of competing confessions. In the early modern period, claims to be the true church often turned on interpretations of the early church fathers. As such, religious authorities sought textual warrant in patristic texts to legitimate church practice and doctrine.

Neoplatonism offered an alternative route. Since Augustine drew from Neoplatonic thought in his Confesssions, early modern scholars studied Neoplatonism with an eye to the philosophical influences behind Augustine’s thinking. Thus, Neoplatonism furnished the convert with two justifications for religious conversion: one, it provided a philosophical and mystical foundation for Christian faith; and two, it enriched the works Augustine, himself, a Christian convert. The utility of Neoplatonism to at once engage patristic sources and transcend normal controversial debates was not lost on Holstenius. As Ralph Häfner notes, "Holstenius cast himself in the model of Augustine's conversion, in which the motivation of the ‘books of the Platonists’ - not the scholastic disputes of the theologians -

contact with the period’s greatest scientific , and he is remembered as an important figure in early modern scientific writing. See Peter Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2000). - 15 -

convinced him of the Platonic theology, which, in turn, opened up the true way to an understanding of ."4 Neoplatonism provided Holstenius a trump card, whereby he could access deep about Augustine, while rising above the petty infighting of confessional disputes.

Scholarship on Neoplatonism in the early modern period has been lacking on several fronts. First, almost all scholarship on early modern Neoplatonism has addressed itself to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The focus on these centuries has drawn attention to the philological advances of the Renaissance which enabled Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola to produce scholarly editions of Neoplatonic texts. The work of

James Hankins and Christopher Celenza has revealed how Ficino's translations and commentaries facilitated the reemergence of Platonic thought in the Renaissance. In addition, their insights have shown that Ficino and Pico reinvigorated the connection between Christianity and Neoplatonism before the Reformation.5

But the emphasis on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has neglected the influence of Neoplatonism well into the seventeenth century. The very fact that Ficino's

Greek edition of Plotinus with his accompanying commentary was not published until 1580 points to a significant lag in the reception of Neoplatonic thought.6 Until now, intellectual historians have focused on the pioneering few who worked with manuscripts and produced the first translations. With Holstenius, however, we can witness a broader diffusion of

4 Ralph Häfner, Götter im Exil: Frühneuzeitliches Dichtunsverständnis im Spannungsfeld christlicher Apologetik und philologischer Kritik (ca. 1590-1736) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003), 86. 5 James Hankins and Ada Palmer, “Neoplatonism,” in The Recovery of : A Brief Guide (Castello: Leo S. Olschki, 2008); Christopher S. Celenza, "The Revival of Platonic Philosophy," in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 72-96. 6 Hankins and Palmer, The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy, 52. - 16 -

Neoplatonist works after the Renaissance. Therefore, I want to focus attention on

Neoplatonism in the seventeenth century, a period in which scholars enjoyed greater access to both Neoplatonist and Augustinian works. My focus will exclude the Cambridge

Platonists, a group of English philosophers, who later developed a distinct notion of

Neoplatonism. Although the Cambridge Platonists represent an interesting chapter in the history of Neoplatonism, their and later chronology should exclude them from our inquiry. Further, their contributions have been well studied in the works of C.A.

Patrides and Stefan Weyer.7

In this chapter, I will argue that Neoplatonism was linked to Christian conversion from its earliest days. One of the greatest expositors of Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity,

Pseudo-Dionysius, fashioned himself as the biblical gentile whom Paul converted in the

Book of Acts.8 In addition to Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine's engagement with

Neoplatonism played a significant role in his conversion to Christianity. When Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius imported Neoplatonism into the Christian realm, they established a notional connection between conversion and Neoplatonism which early modern controversialists would later revisit.

In addition, this chapter will argue that Neoplatonism's intrinsic syncretism appealed to early modern intellectuals embroiled in religious controversy. The

Neoplatonists of Late Antiquity attempted to apply Aristotelian to Plato's works. In so doing, they developed an eclectic philosophy that drew on Platonic, Aristotelian, and

7 C.A. Patrides, ed. The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1980); Stefan Weyer, Die Cambridge Platonists: Religion und Freiheit in England im 17. Jahrhundert (New York: P. Lang, 1993). 8 Pseudo-Dionysius’ dates are not known, but he is believed to have lived in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. - 17 -

Stoic traditions.9 This complex admixture of philosophical schools became a defining characteristic of early Neoplatonic thought, leading some to call it, "Aristotelian

Platonism."10

Neoplatonism’s eclecticism proves particularly interesting in light of the bifurcation of Aristotelian and Platonic thought in the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, Pico della Mirandola attempted to undo the schism between Platonic and

Aristotelian thought through his inclusive philosophical methodology. In the seventeenth century, Holstenius carried this project forward as he confronted Europe’s fractured religious landscape. For Holstenius, Aristotelian Platonism or conciliatory eclecticism equipped him with a wide range of tools to address seventeenth-century controversy. In addition, Neoplatonism offered a way to unpack Augustine, and a superior understanding of Augustine was an unassailable position for the early modern controversialist. In a period of ideological fracture in which confessional disputes had riven Europe along political and religious lines, Neoplatonism afforded Holstenius the perfect syncretic antidote.

This chapter will begin with a survey of Neoplatonic thought in Late Antiquity before examining how Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine transcribed Neoplatonism into

Christian theology. I will then address how Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola reintroduced and interpreted Neoplatonism in the fifteenth century. The final section will explore how Holstenius employed Neoplatonic thought as a framework for his conversion.

9 Celenza, "The Revival of Platonic Philosophy," 74. 10 R. Baine Harris, “Preface,” in The Structure of (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), vii. - 18 -

I

The Origins of Neoplatonic Thought

What we now term Neoplatonism refers to a pioneered by

Plotinus in third-century Rome. Plotinus taught in Rome’s Platonic academy, an institution of scholars who viewed themselves as expositors of Plato. As interpreters, they did not consider their work a novel contribution to philosophical thought.11 Nonetheless, the

Neoplatonists developed a unique philosophy, which synthesized strains of Platonic,

Aristotelian, Stoic, and later Christian thought.

For Plotinus, philosophy constituted a continuous process which lent order and understanding to human . In this way, the study of philosophy shared characteristics with religious practice, in which an individual could attain salvation through the observance of religious precepts. In the Enneads, a voluminous work of six books,

Plotinus grounds his philosophy in the notion of the One or the Good. Throughout his work,

Plotinus describes the One as the force from which all creation derives. The purpose of philosophical endeavor, therefore, is to return to the One and uncover the essence from which everything has arisen. Pursuit of the One defines the Intellect as the set of tools whereby an individual can engage in the philosophical process. By employing the Intellect, individuals can gain understanding and draw nearer to the One. Plotinus also acknowledges a Soul, which serves to structure lived experience and give rise to the individual being.12

11 Gerson Lloyd, "Plotinus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, last modified Summer 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/. 12 Sarah Klitenic Wear, "Neoplatonism," In Oxford Bibliographies in Classics, last modified 26 Aug. 2013. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo- 9780195389661-0201.xml. - 19 -

According to Plotinus, the interaction of these species – the One, the Intellect, and the Soul

– characterizes all experience, and the struggle to understand their interaction constitutes philosophy.

Throughout the Enneads, Plotinus defines the One in both privative and positive terms. In the former case, Plotinus develops a negative theology and views the One as an incomprehensible entity that defies categorization: "The First [the One] must be without form, and, if without form, then it is not Being; Being must have some definition and therefore be limited; but the First [the One] cannot be thought of as having definition and limit."13 In other places, Plotinus describes the One in positive terms, in which the One possesses corporeal characteristics and constitutes the highest form of being. Plato, however, considered the One a conceptual construct that, by definition, could not possess a physical form. To ascribe substance to the Good in a strictly Platonic framework would be nonsensical, because the Good only exists in the realm of Ideas.14

Thus, Plotinus' positive description of the One marks a significant departure from the traditional Platonic notion of the Good. This conceptual development would prove crucial in linking Neoplatonism with Christian thought. Plotinus’ negative and positive of the One apply to Christian dogma in which Christ serves as the embodiment of an incorporeal God. In this way, Plotinus' view of the One explains how the Christian

God could be at once infinite and corporeal.

13 Eugene F. Bales, "Plotinus' Theory of The One," in The Structure of Being: A Neoplatonic Approach, ed. R. Baine Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 41. 14 John Protevi, "Neoplatonism in Augustine's Confessions.” http://www.protevi.com/john/SH/PDF/Neoplatonism.pdf - 20 -

The application of Aristotelian logic to Platonic thought marks a second contribution from Neoplatonism that would resonate in later Christian theologies.

Although Plotinus was indebted to developments in Aristotelian logic, did the most to systematize Plato along Aristotelian lines. As R. Baine Harris notes in The

Structure of Being: A Neoplatonic Approach, Plotinus and Porphyry carved out unique schools of Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity.15 Several centuries separated the Neoplatonists from Plato, and during that period, developments in Greek philosophy and the advent of

Christianity, had evolved a new philosophical standpoint. Through developing

Neoplatonism, Porphyry, Plotinus, and others, demonstrated an eagerness to draw upon the philosophical achievements of the intervening centuries.

The fact that Neoplatonism comprehended a variety of philosophical schools will prove important for our study of later Neoplatonism. As religious scholarship developed from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages, Platonic thought ceded primacy to that of

Aristotle. However, Platonism remained an important influence in the Middle Ages, as

Dominic O'Meara notes: "Although it may appear that Aristotelianism displaced Platonism in the late Middle Ages as a privileged philosophy in Christian thought, it did so as a philosophy enriched with fundamental Neoplatonic insights."16 Thus, Platonic thought endured in the Middle Ages, but only through its tacit influence on Christian

Aristotelianism. During this period, Christian scholars had extremely limited access to

15 Harris, “Preface,” in The Structure of Being, viii. 16 Dominic J. O'Meara, introduction to Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, ed. Dominic J. O’ Meara (Albany: State University of New York, 1982), X. - 21 -

Neoplatonic works, and Neoplatonism, in its own right, only reemerged in the

Renaissance.17

After the Reformation, the capacity of Neoplatonism to synthesize competing philosophies proved particularly useful in controversial disputes. Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies had long been set in opposition, as seen in the conflict between George of

Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion.18 By the end of the sixteenth century, different confessions were variously appropriating Aristotelian and Platonic thought to bolster claims of legitimacy. But for Holstenius, Neoplatonism afforded the early modern controversialist a third path. Working with ancient sources in the seventeenth century,

Holstenius emphasized Neoplatonism’s eclectic dimensions, and he used this eclecticism to bypass partisan confessional conflicts.

As a piece of intellectual history, this study seeks to unpack the relationship between philosophical inquiry and personal religious faith. But as historians, we are limited by our sources, and it is notoriously difficult to prove direct influences. In his 1968 essay,

Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, Quentin Skinner posits that all attempts to infer historical influence are futile. 19 For Skinner, the constellation of factors that inform philosophical debate or religious faith cannot be fully attributed unless sources contain explicit citations. Skinner articulates a deep challenge for the intellectual historian,

17 Hankins and Palmer, Recovery, 52. 18 Throughout the fifteenth century, George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion engaged in an extensive debate on the application Platonic and Aristotelian thought to . Trebizond came to view Platonism as heretical, and he believed Platonism to be a sign of the rapture. Bessarion, however, viewed Plato as the most Christian of the ancient philosophers, and he initiated the Renaissance project to revive Platonic studies. See further James Hankins, Humanism and Platonism in the Renaissance vol. 2, (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004). 19 Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969).

- 22 -

but this study will assume that the challenge is surmountable. When we turn to Augustine, it will be difficult to parse where his own thought begins and where he is simply rehearsing

Neoplatonic doctrine. But it is clear from explicit reference in the Confessions that

Augustine had read "Books of the Platonists" and that Platonic ideas lay behind his conversion to Christianity. In the early modern period, a significant number of letters, annotated manuscripts, and publications should allay Skinner's anxiety of influence. In particular, we can point to several letters and a list of Greek manuscripts in which

Holstenius explicitly acknowledges the importance of Neoplatonic thought.20

As we investigate how late antique and early modern philosophers grafted

Neoplatonism onto a Christian framework, we will observe the natural tensions that arise when philosophy and faith are combined. Given the abstract conceptions of the One, the

Intellect, and the Soul, Christian thinkers have emphasized Neoplatonism’s mystical aspects. Nonetheless, Neoplatonic thinkers aspired to be logically rigorous according to the standards of late antique and early modern philosophy. Significant tensions crop up when notions of the One are applied to the Christian framework, and we may be inclined to dismiss Christian Neoplatonism as a failed philosophical exercise. But for Augustine,

Pseudo-Dionysius, and early modern Platonists, Neoplatonic thought had both philosophical and spiritual merit.

20 Jean-Francois Boissonade ed, Lucae Holstenii Epistolae ad diversos (Paris: Bibliopolio graeco-latino- germanico, 1817), 120-132. - 23 -

II

Towards a Christian Platonism

The first connection between Christian thought and Neoplatonism is found in the works of Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine. Because both figures converted to Christianity, their works established a conceptual connection between Neoplatonism and conversion.

This notional linkage resurfaced in the seventeenth century when Neoplatonism again provided the philosophical impetus for conversion.

Sometime in the fifth century, an anonymous student of Proclus adopted the name of Dionysius the Areopagite and set out to synthesize Neoplatonism with Christian thought.

Dionysius the Areopagite was a biblical figure whom St. Paul converted to Christianity:

"But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them."21 Alas, the fifth-century student of

Proclus was not the biblical figure from the Book of Acts. Rather, Pseudo-Dionysius, as he would later be called, composed his works under a biblical pseudonym, a common practice among early Christian exegetes.22 Like Plotinus and Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius believed his work to be an extension of Neoplatonic doctrine. But as Kevin Corrigan and Michael

Harrington note, Pseudo-Dionysius synthesized Neoplatonism and Christian thought in a thoroughly novel way.23

21 Acts 17:34 NRSV 22 Hankins and Palmer, Recovery 58. 23 Kevin Corrigan and Michael L. Harrington, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta ed., last modified Spring 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/.

- 24 -

The theological quandary to which Pseudo-Dionysius applies Platonism is the ability of an unknowable and transcendent God to become manifest in creation. For

Plotinus, the One is both unknowable and unattainable, and in Christianity, the unattainable and omnipotent creator is manifest through Christ. Thus, God assumes a transient material existence, creating the so-called unmanifest-manifest . To address the dialectic,

Pseudo-Dionysius draws upon Proclus’ notion that all created seek a return to their original state.24 In Plotinian Neoplatonism, all creation emanated from the One, and Proclus amended this notion by positing that all beings desire reconversion to their original state.

Through combining the ideas of Proclus and Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius attempts to fuse

God and Christ using a Neoplatonic framework. With this understanding, Pseudo-

Dionysius equated the Platonic notion of the One with the Christian God and established a conceptual parallel between Neoplatonism and Christian theology.

Interestingly, the notion of return or reconversion appears in many conversion narratives throughout the early modern period. Although conversion often represents a break from one's past, converts throughout history have portrayed their conversions as a rediscovery of one's true self. In this way, conversion acts as an interior development in which exterior influences, such as philosophy, facilitate the discovery of an innate spiritual inclination.

During the Reformation, Protestant divines frequently attacked the growing

Catholic interest in Neoplatonism. Most notably, suggested that classical philosophy threatened to undermine the Christian mission: "[Dionysius] platonizes more

24 A.H. Armstrong ed., "The Pseudo-Dionysius" in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), 458.

- 25 -

than he christianizes."25 The aversion to Neoplatonism within the reformed tradition largely relegated Neoplatonic study to Catholic scholars. Nonetheless, important Protestant scholars, like , studied Neoplatonism as an integral part of Late Antique philosophy. Interestingly, Holstenius was exposed to Neoplatonism by Catholic sources in

Paris as well as Protestant sources in Leiden. Luther's denunciation of Pseudo-Dionysius raises interesting questions about the influence of philosophy on religion. For instance, how should an exterior philosophical framework inform personal religious faith, and to what extent must religion be subordinate to philosophy in matters of belief?

In a way, Augustine had already addressed these questions in his Confessions. The extent to which Augustine knew the works of Plotinus is unclear, but throughout the

Confessions, Augustine adopts several Neoplatonic stances. In books seven, eight, and nine, Augustine makes explicit reference to Platonic works, and in Book VIII, he writes:

When I mentioned that I had read some of the books of the Platonists translated into Latin by Victorinus, who had once been professor of rhetoric at Rome and, so I had been told, had died a Christian, Simplicianus said that he was glad that I had not stumbled upon the writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and misrepresentations drawn from worldly principles. In the Platonists, he said, God and his Word are constantly implied.26

This quotation reflects Augustine’s favorable opinion of Platonic thought during his conversion and suggests that Platonic thought could facilitate belief in God. Thus, it appears that Augustine was amenable to incorporating philosophy into his belief system just as early modern figures would assimilate Neoplatonic thought.

25 Martin Luther, “Weimarer Ausgabe,” as quoted in Corrigan and Harrington, "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.” 26 St. , “Book VIII,” in The Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Bungay, UK: Penguin, 1961), 159. - 26 -

For Augustine, Neoplatonism provided a philosophical solution to several theological quandaries. First, the conception of incorporeal truth allowed Augustine to reconcile an infinite creator with a finite creation:

By reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to look for truth as something incorporeal, and I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures. Though I was thwarted of my wish to know more, I was conscious of what it was that my mind was too clouded to see. I was certain both that you are infinite, though without extent in terms of space either limited or unlimited. I was sure that it is you who truly are, since you are always the same, varying in neither part nor motion. I knew too that all other things derive their being from you, and the one indisputable proof of this is the fact that they exist at all.27

The reference to incorporeal truth recalls Plotinus' negative theology of the One, wherein the One is infinite and unconfined by physical limitations. As John Protevi notes, Augustine realized that human imagination cannot conceive of the relationship between an infinite God and a finite creation.28 Protevi explains that Augustine had previously employed the metaphor of a finite sponge and an infinite sea to describe the relationship between God and creation. But in light of Plotinus’ negative theology, this explanation proved wholly inadequate. Ultimately, Augustine concludes that the human imagination is fundamentally incapable of conceptualizing an infinite God. As a result, Augustine posits that God functions as the light by which humans can understand all creation.

A second reference to Neoplatonism in the Confessions reveals how Platonic thought elucidated the hypostasis of Christ in the Gospel of John:

In them [the books of the Platonists] I read – not, of course, word for word, though the sense was the same and it was supported by all kinds of different arguments – that at the beginning of time the World already was; and God had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was God. It was through him

27 Ibid., “Book VII,” 154. 28 Protevi, "Neoplatonism in Augustine's Confessions," 5. - 27 -

that all things came into being, and without him came nothing that has come to be. In him there was life and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, and darkness which was not able to master it.29

In this passage, we can discern the outlines of Plotinus' positive descriptions of the One.

Through the Word, the otherwise incorporeal and incomprehensible God was manifest in the world, in the same way Plotinus employs a positive theology of the One. Thus, the notion of the One in classical Neoplatonism is recapitulated in the Christian Gospel. Further,

Augustine’s reference to the light seems to recast Plato’s analogy of the sun in terms of the

Christian “Logos.”

Neoplatonic thought is also found in Augustine’s privative definition of evil. For

Augustine, evil did not exist as a substance in and of itself, because evil cannot exist if God is good and infinite. To explain why evil appears to exist, Augustine contends that evil is the perceived privation of good. Again, this notion recalls Plotinus' dual understanding of

God vis-à-vis positive and privative theology. The use of the theologia negativa is one of

Augustine’s most enduring conceptual legacies, and it is clear that Platonic thought contributed to Augustine's understanding of an infinite God.30 From our analysis of

Augustine, we can conclude that Neoplatonic thought left a lasting mark on Augustine's philosophy. And this influence helped bring Augustine to the Christian faith: “In the

Platonists, he said, God and his word are constantly implied.”31

29 Augustine, “Book VII,” 144. 30 John J. O'Meara," The Neoplatonism of St. Augustine," in Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, 40. 31 Augustine, “Book VIII,” 159. - 28 -

III

Platonism in the Italian Renaissance

At the height of the Italian Renaissance, the humanist scholar, Marsilio Ficino

(1433-1499), began the first largescale project to reinvigorate Neoplatonic thought since

Late Antiquity. Although Platonic ideas had implicitly informed medieval philosophers from Aquinas to , the rigorous study of Neoplatonic works did not arise until the late fifteenth century.32

Ficino’s Compendium in Timaeum constitutes the first major work in the

Renaissance Neoplatonist tradition. The Timaeus was a work of Aristotelian concordism, which attempted to unite Aristotelian and Platonic frameworks in the service of Christianity.

Nonetheless, Ficino frequently undermined Aristotelian physics in a significant break with the medieval scholastic tradition.33 Ficino considered Plato’s account of creation more harmonious with the Christian narrative than the Aristotelian version. In addition, Ficino sought to develop a rational basis for the immortality of the soul, and for Ficino, Plato’s theory of substance justified immortality more directly than the Aristotelian framework.

Although nominally a work of concordism, Ficino’s Timaeaus evidences a significant break from Aristotelian scholasticism, and the Platonic character of this work permanently embedded Platonism in early modern philosophical discourse.

Alongside Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) uniquely expanded

Platonic thought during the Renaissance. Pico borrowed extensively from Ficino’s

32 Christia Mercer, “Neoplatonism,” in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Steven Nadler ed. (Cornwall: Blackwell, 2002), 27. 33 James Hankins, “Galileo, Ficino, and Renaissance Platonism,” in Humanism and Platonism in the Renaissance vol. 2 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), 163. - 29 -

pioneering work on the Neoplatonists, but Pico’s own approach developed an even more eclectic philosophy. As James Hankins notes, Pico’s education had exposed him to myriad philosophical schools, including humanism, , , Florentine

Neoplatonism, and even Jewish Kabbalah.34 Pico’s philosophical works evidence a strong impulse to unify various wisdom traditions within a new theological system. His widely eclectic theology failed to take hold in the , and like Ficino, Pico ultimately turned to the unification of Aristotelian and Platonic thought in his work, On Being and the

One.35

Through the works of Ficino and Pico, Platonic thought reemerged as an attempt to unify ostensibly divergent philosophical schools. Interestingly, Ficino and Pico developed their Platonisms before the Protestant Reformation, an which would divide

Christendom along confessional lines. For Pico and Ficino, the project of concordism represented a philosophical and theological endeavor. But by the seventeenth century, eclectic philosophies offered a powerful response to a splintered Christian church.

IV

Lucas Holstenius and Seventeenth-Century Neoplatonism

In the seventeenth century, Lucas Holstenius turned to Neoplatonism as a way to transcend confessional disputes. In a period of philosophical and religious disintegration,

Neoplatonism appealed to Holstenius because of its conciliatory eclecticism. By attempting to unify rather than divide, Neoplatonism offered Holstenius a framework with

34 James Hankins, “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” in Humanism and Platonism in the Renaissance vol. 2 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), 472. 35 Ibid., 479. - 30 -

which to justify his conversion to Catholicism. Because the reformed traditions opposed the assimilation of pagan theologies into the Christian framework, Holstenius’ affinity for

Neoplatonism led him to the Church of Rome.

Born in Hamburg in 1596, Lukas Holste, latinized as Lucas Holstenius, was raised in the Lutheran Confession. The son of a dyer, Holstenius excelled at the Hamburg gymnasium and ultimately matriculated at Leiden University in 1616. In Leiden,

Holstenius came under the tutelage of two eminent antiquarians, Johannes Meursius and

Daniel Heinsius, who together sparked Holstenius' lifelong interest in Greek geographers.

The study of the Greek world took young Holstenius to the Mediterranean and later to England, where he spent two years in the archives of London and Oxford.36 While in

England, Holstenius maintained contact with several Catholics and continued to lay the intellectual foundations for his conversion through bookish study. Ultimately, Holstenius reconciled his intellectual stance with his spiritual identity when he converted to the Church of Rome in Paris on the fifteenth of December 1624.37 Holstenius did so in the presence of the French Jesuits, Jacques Sirmond and Denys Petau, whose signatures testified to

Holstenius' conversion. In the latter half of the 1620s, Holstenius' learning and connections would land him positions of increasing importance in some of Paris' finest libraries. Upon the recommendation of Peiresc, Holstenius was admitted to the house of Cardinal

Barberini, where he served as librarian to one of Europe’s most important collections. And

36 Alfonso Mirto ed., Lucas Holstenius e La Corte Medicea (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999), 8. 37 Georges Folliet, "Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661): Un émule de Saint Augustin dans sa conversion au platonisme et au catholicisme," 630. - 31 -

under Innocent X, he was installed as librarian of the Vatican, a position he would hold until his death in 1661.

Holstenius' own scholarly career attests to the intellectual nature of his religious conversion. From his collected letters, it appears that Holstenius first learned of the

Neoplatonists while studying under Phillip Clüver, a scholar of Platonism and the Hellenic world.38 Upon Clüver's recommendation, Holstenius proceeded to England, where he studied Greek sources in the Bodleian and London. While in Oxford, Holstenius consulted several canonical sources of late antique Neoplatonism, including Proclus' commentaries on Alcibiades and the Phaedros dialogue.39 From a letter to Peiresc, Holstenius reflected on Neoplatonism’s impact on his intellectual and spiritual life:

I committed myself fully to the Latin and Greek works [Bessarion, Steuco, and Platonic works] in order to investigate the contemplative and mystical theologies, through which I might be directed to the spirit of God [...] And so it happened that I began to marvel with my whole spirit at the divinity and reason of the Church Fathers' way of thinking, which had previously eluded me. And I knew that I should be set up in the fold of the Catholic Church: which was also experienced by St. Augustine, as attested in the Confessions.40

In this quotation, Holstenius casts himself in the mold of Christianity's greatest convert,

Augustine. Further, the philosophical inspiration of Holstenius’ conversion remained a central academic interest throughout his life. After 1624, Holstenius set out to anthologize

38 Ibid. 39 Walter Friedensburg "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Lukas Holstenius," Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hambürgische Geschichte 12 (Hamburg: Lütcke und Wulff, 1908), 393. 40Häfner, Götter im Exil, 85, note 14: “Cum enim a Besarione, Steucho alliesque Platonis doctrinam SS. Patrum scriptis confirmari viderem, totum me Latinis Graecisque operibus legendis dedi, quibus illi contemplativam et mysticam quoque theologiam pertractant, qua in Deum animus excitatur. Atque ita factum est, ut SS. Patrum divinam ac solidam philospohandi rationem toto animo admirarer, et mox inscius ferme in catholicae ecclesiae gremio me constitutum cernerem: quod sibi quoque usu venisse D. Augustinus in Confessionibus testatur.” - 32 -

the collected works of Plato, just as Justus Lipsius had done with the Stoics. Although uncompleted in his lifetime, one of Holstenius' largest academic endeavors was an edition of the Life of Pythagoras by Proclus.41

For Holstenius, the Catholic Church was better able to accommodate his commitment to Neoplatonism. Holstenius’ instruction in Leiden brought him into contact with one of the century’s greatest Neoplatonic scholars, Daniel Heinsius. Heinsius, a former study of Joseph Scaliger, had produced important editions of Greek philosophy as a professor in the Dutch Republic. In particular, Heinsius had prepared editions of Pico’s

Theologia Platonis, thereby importing Pico’s eclecticism into the seventeenth century.42

Although himself a Protestant, Heinsius had curated works that ultimately led Holstenius to the Church of Rome. As noted in section two, Luther opposed Pseudo-Dionysius out of the fear that pagan philosophies would overshadow the Christian message. Catholicism, however, had a tradition of accommodating classical philosophies. Therefore, conversion to Catholicism allowed Holstenius to unite his Neoplatonic leanings with his religious identity. Nonetheless, his conversion took place over the course of several years.

In a letter from the 1640s, Holstenius describes the protracted nature of his conversion process in great detail. It seems that Holstenius' deep appreciation of the

Catholic faith emerged sometime in 1620, and in a later letter to his nephew, Peter

Lambeck, Holstenius implies that he had made the intellectual conversion to Catholicism long before going to England in 1622.43 In this letter, Holstenius defends himself against

41 Georges Folliet, “Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661): Un émule de Saint Augustin dans sa conversion au platonisme et au catholicisme," 631. 42 Häfner, Götter im Exil, 82. 43 Walter Friedensburg, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Lukas Holstenius," 103. - 33 -

accusations that his conversion was merely opportunistic, a defense that almost all converts were obliged to make. Based on his Album Amicorum, it appears that Holstenius was in regular contact with Catholics in England. In particular, we see that Holstenius was acquainted with Arminian theologians, Catholic clergy, as well as a German Catholic convert, Bernardus Sutholt.44

The fact that Holstenius studied Neoplatonism and patristics over the course of several years suggests there is a distinction between mental and spiritual conversion.

Holstenius did not convert in England, even though he was rationally at peace with the

Catholic Church. Instead, he required the cultural ambience of Paris, the presence of

Jesuits, and the Catholic intelligentsia to bring him over the edge. What is more, many of the French Jesuits with whom Holstenius was in contact had studied Neoplatonism in tandem with the works of Augustine.

Additionally, the presence of platonically-influenced works in early modern libraries suggests that Neoplatonic thought widely permeated early modern discourse. In his work on Augustine in the Reformation, Arnoud Visser cites two studies which catalogue the frequency of texts in early modern libraries. Among the patristic authors, the writings of Augustine appear with the highest frequency in English libraries. In fact, the number of books of Augustine was double that of the second most-read author,

Chrysostom.45 Although Visser rightly acknowledges the primacy of Augustine in early modern libraries, several other church fathers appear with reasonable frequency, including

44 F.J. M. Blom, "Lucas Holstenius (15696-1661) and England," in Studies in Seventeenth Century English Literature, History, and Bibliography, ed. G.A.M. Janssens, and F.G.A.M. Aarts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 37-38. 45 Arnoud Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 97. - 34 -

Origen, Gregory the Great, Jerome, and Ambrose. Augustine, as well as Origen, were both influenced by Neoplatonic thought, and the presence of their works in libraries suggests that Neoplatonism indirectly informed early modern discourse through its late antique expositors.

If we compare Visser's statistics with works from Holstenius' own library, several points of overlap become apparent. First, it is clear that Holstenius read Augustine and

Origen during the early 1620s i.e. the years of his spiritual transformation.46 Second,

Holstenius owned the Torrensis edition of Augustine's Confessions. As Visser details in

Reading Augustine in the Reformation, Torrensis’ publication was a deeply partisan

Catholic edition of the Confessions.47 Additionally, Holstenius possessed a volume of sermons by Jacques Sirmond, a French Jesuit conversant in Neoplatonic thought.

Holstenius’ personal collection evinces the central importance of Augustine and

Neoplatonism in his academic life. And most interesting is the observation that sources of

Neoplatonic thought appear both in Holstenius’ collection and in libraries across Europe.

The interaction between Holstenius' study of the Greek world and his conversion to the Church of Rome attests to the fluid border between academic and spiritual life.

Holstenius' exposure to the Neoplatonists came from scholars in Leiden, the majority of whom were reformed. But as Holstenius nurtured his interest in the Greek world, deepened his study in England, and ultimately turned to Parisian Jesuits, scholarly pursuit manifested itself in religious identity.

46 F.J.M. Blom, "Lucas Holstenius (15696-1661) and England,” and Georges Folliet, “Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661): Un émule de Saint Augustin dans sa conversion au platonisme et au catholicisme." 47 Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation, 43. - 35 -

V

Conclusion

From its very beginnings, Neoplatonism sought to develop a syncretic philosophy that drew on varied philosophical traditions. The syncretism that characterized early

Neoplatonism allowed for its application to Christian doctrine in the works of Pseudo-

Dionysius and Augustine. Through this transposition, a Christian Platonism emerged that was intimately linked with the process of conversion. The application of Neoplatonism to

Christianity persisted into the early modern period when Neoplatonism encompassed an eclectic Christian theology. The philological advances of the Renaissance facilitated the return of Neoplatonic discourse, and in the seventeenth century, Neoplatonism served as a powerful tool to justify religious conversion.

- 36 -

CHAPTER 2

THE ENGLISH CONVERTS: HISTORICITY AND THE TRUE CHURCH

In a letter dated 22 October 1635, James Howell reported some disturbing news from the continent: “Sir Kenelm Digby is gone over, and Mr. Wat. Montague hath taken the Portion his Father intended him, and gone over an hot Roman to return no more.”1 The conversions of Walter Montagu and Sir Kenlem Digby shocked the English religious establishment and ignited a series of debates which shed light on religious controversy in

1630s England. Both men had extensive experience on the continent, and the influence of

European philosophy permeated their conversion narratives in unique ways. Digby and

Montagu brought the philosophical frameworks of Catholic Europe into dialogue with

Episcopalian doctrine, and the ensuing exchange - played out in letters, debates, and theological treatises – reveals the unique character of English Catholicism in the 1630s.

This dialogue highlights the importance of historical claims in justifying religious conversion for English Catholics. Whereas Holstenius’ conversion was deeply rooted in the study of Neoplatonic philosophy, Digby and Montagu initially eschewed philosophical disputation. Instead, they validated their changes of faith by assessing factual claims about

1 James Howell, “Letter to Lord Wentworth,” in The Earl of Strafforde's Letters and Dispatches: with an essay towards his life, ed. William Knowler (London, 1739), 474. - 37 -

the history of the Roman and English Churches. For Digby and Montagu, the historicity of the “True Church” was a necessary precondition for conversion.

The Protestant reaction to these historical arguments was strong and condemnatory.

In response to these rebuttals, Digby and Montagu changed their tack and ultimately turned to philosophy. As a student of Thomas White, Digby joined the Blackloists, a secret group of English Catholic philosophers. In his later philosophical works, Digby developed a new theological framework for English Catholics, which borrowed heavily from

Aristotelianism. The resulting philosophical program was thoroughly ecumenical as Digby and his fellow Blackloists sought to attract English Protestants. For Montagu and Digby, the exchange between European philosophy and England’s Episcopalian tradition promoted a new form of English Catholicism grounded in historical claims and Aristotelian thought.

In this chapter, I will first provide an overview of Catholicism in post-Reformation

England before turning to the religious trajectories of Digby and Montagu. Finally, I will explore how Digby attempted to develop an English Catholic theology in his later philosophical works.

I

The Problem of English Catholicism

By the 1630s, the story of English Catholicism was long, complicated, and bloody.

Catholics had long been a minority by the time Montagu and Digby converted in 1635, but as Mark Kishlansky notes in A Monarchy Transformed, the population of English Catholics

- 38 -

had grown an estimated fifty percent since the beginning of the seventeenth century.2 The growth of English recusants in the seventeenth century is particularly shocking given the attempt to assassinate James I and VI in the infamous of 1605.

Nonetheless, prominent Catholic families, such as the Howards, wielded enormous influence in the kingdom, and although the Catholic threat would never disappear entirely,

English recusants continued to play a significant role throughout the kingdom.

From the perspective of the Church of England and the monarchy, the central problem with English Catholics was that of allegiance. According to the Erastian tradition, the king of England served as both head of state and church, and this dual leadership intimately linked governmental and religious matters in the kingdom. But for English

Catholics, governmental and religious authority were twain. The English Catholic could submit to the temporal authority of the king, but spiritual and religious authority derived solely from the See of Rome. Those suspicious of Catholics would raise the question of allegiance and ask, could an Englishman be subject to the law of Rome, while obeying the law of England and observing royal authority? Aside from the failed Gunpowder Plot of

1605, however, the conflict of allegiance rarely presented a practical concern for the

English government. Significant Catholic resistance had almost entirely disappeared by the

1590s, and although a recusant fine existed into the seventeenth century, Catholics were an acknowledged and influential minority during the reigns of James and Charles.3 More alarming, for sure, was the rise of extremist Puritans who actively undermined the Church

2 Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed (New York: Penguin, 1996), 126. 3 Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 7. - 39 -

of England. But the legacy of the Gunpowder Plot and the questionable allegiance of

English Catholics consistently troubled the Tudor monarchs and their church.

By the 1630s, English Catholics had a significant representative in the highest echelons of government: Queen . After the failed Spanish Match of 1623, the English feared Spanish influence on the continent and sought an alliance with France to restore the balance of power. France and England began to negotiate a contract that would result in Henrietta Maria’s marriage to Charles in 1625. To achieve the deal, the

English made two secret concessions, which significantly strengthened the position of

Catholics in England. First, Henrietta Maria would be allowed to practice Catholicism, the religion of her birth and maintain a French Catholic court in England. Second, she would raise any offspring of the marriage in the Catholic tradition. During the first rocky years of their union, Charles expelled Henrietta Maria’s Catholic court, but by 1630, their marriage had stabilized, and the Queen restocked her court with English Catholics. Although Charles would remain a committed Episcopalian until his death, his Catholic Queen proved an important ally for English Catholics throughout the 1630s.

II

Kenelm Digby: A Story of Reconversion

In 1606, the noted English Catholic, Sir was hanged, drawn, and quartered for his involvement in the Gunpowder plot of 5 November 1605. In addition to his wife, Sir Everard left behind a toddler son, Kenelm Digby, who was quietly raised a

Catholic at the Digby home in Gotehurst. After beginning at Oxford in 1618, Digby left for Europe where he was involved in the failed Spanish Match. While in Spain, Digby first

- 40 -

met Walter Montagu and the Catholic convert, Tobie Matthew.4 Matthew, whose father was the Archbishop of York, became a prominent advocate for the Catholic cause in

England and would remain in contact with Digby for decades. In 1623, Digby was knighted for his diplomatic service in Spain, and after marrying the Catholic in

1625, he served as a in the Mediterranean. Upon return from his successful

Mediterranean voyage in 1630, Digby was in the prime of his career and a man of considerable repute.

From 1630 onward, religion and philosophy played an increasingly large role in

Digby’s life. After lengthy consultation with the then Bishop of London, William Laud,

Digby converted to the Church of England in 1630. The motivations behind the 1630 conversion have received little attention due to the consensus among Digby’s biographers who were content to view his conversion as an act of opportunistic careerism.5 Digby certainly had much to gain from conversion to the Church of England in 1630. His impressive exploits in the Mediterranean and his courtly sophistication, described by Henry

Peacham as “That noble and absolutely complete gentleman,” had positioned him well for advancement in the English government.6 But his Catholic heritage and his father’s unseemly involvement in the Gunpowder plot were potential stumbling blocks to Digby’s career ambitions. Given these circumstances, Digby’s biographers have assumed that his careerist focus overtook his spiritual conscience and led to his conversion.

4 Michael Foster, “Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) As Man of Religion and Thinker,” Downside Review 96 (April 1988): 36. 5 See Introduction, note 15. 6 Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1634), 108, as referenced in Foster, “Kenelm Digby,” 1. - 41 -

This understanding of Digby’s first conversion, however, ignores his penchant for philosophical discourse and the he accorded spiritual matters. In his work on seventeenth-century diplomacy, Charles I and the Court of Rome, Gordon Albion opposes the consensus view of Digby’s conversion and argues that Digby appreciated the philosophical freedom afforded by Protestantism.7 Without the authority of the pope,

Digby could enjoy philosophical inquiry freed from the restrictions of papal decree, and as

Albion notes, “for a time he [Digby] succumbed to the perennial fear that Rome fetters

Reason.”8 This argument not only contradicts the opportunistic interpretation of Digby’s conversion, it posits that Digby’s philosophical impulses were far stronger than his professional ambition.

Digby’s later career as a natural philosopher, his studies in Gresham College, and his manifold scientific interests support Albion’s more nuanced portrait of Digby’s philosophical disposition. But Digby’s later life is insufficient to prove that he undertook his 1630 conversion in good faith. Indeed, almost all of Digby’s significant philosophical works, including Two Treatises, were written after his reconversion to Catholicism in 1635.

In light of the reconversion, Albion’s interpretation loses much of its purchase. But Digby’s correspondence with Laud evidences the earnestness with which Digby undertook the conversion to Protestantism and undermines the opportunistic argument. When Digby reconverted to the Church of Rome in 1635, news quickly spread to England, and William

Laud, by then the Archbishop of Canterbury, was quick to pen Digby a letter. Under Laud’s guidance, Digby had reconciled himself to the Church of England a mere five years earlier,

7 Gordon Albion, Charles I and the Court of Rome (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1935), 200. 8 Ibid. - 42 -

and Laud’s letter expresses shock and genuine bemusement at Digby’s reconversion.

Unfortunately, Digby’s letter to Laud, in which he justifies his reconversion, has been lost.9

But through Laud’s response, we can reconstruct some of Digby’s arguments and gain insight into the way Digby adjudicated his religious transformation.

From the opening paragraph of his letter, Laud appears both concerned and hurt by

Digby’s reconversion:

I Am sorry for all the Contents of your Letter, save that which expresses your Love to me. And I was not a little troubled at the very first words of it. For you begin, that my Lord Ambassador told you, I was not pleased to hear you had made a Defection from the Church of England. In the next place I thank you, and take it for a great Testimony of your Love to me; that you have been pleased to give me so open and clear Account of your proceedings with your self [sic] in this matter of Religion.10

These opening lines suggest a shared intimacy between Digby and Laud, and it appears that Digby had explicitly referred to Laud as a friend: “I [Laud] (whom you are pleased to

Style one of your best Friends).”11 Throughout the entire letter, Laud repeatedly asks Digby why he didn’t consult a friend, presumably Laud, before returning to the Church of Rome:

“is it not many times as useful, when Thoughts are distracted, to make use of the Freedom and Openness of a Friend not altogether Ignorant, as of those which are thought more

Learned.” Laud’s letter is rife with reference to their emotional connection, and it is difficult to imagine that Digby had contrived a false intimacy for the sake of an

9 There exist no known references to the letter in the historiography, and nineteenth-century catalogues of Digby’s papers make no mention of the original letter. Aside from Laud’s reply, reproduced in Laud’s collected works, the letter goes without mention in the primary and secondary literature. 10 William Laud, “Archbishop Laud’s Letter to Sir Kenelm Digby,” in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury vol. 7 (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1847- 1860), 611. 11 Ibid. - 43 -

opportunistic conversion. Thus, we should read the close relationship between Digby and

Laud as evidence of an authentic 1630 conversion.

The letter goes beyond their friendship and makes continued reference to the deep intellectual inquiry that characterized Digby’s first conversion. From Laud’s letter, it appears that Digby had been troubled by certain unnamed precepts of the Catholic Church:

And did not your former Dislike arise from some things determined in and by that Church [Church of Rome]? And if so, what Freedom see you now, that you saw not then? And you cannot well say, that your Dislike arose from any thing not determined […] Why, but I cannot but be confident you could distinguish these long since, and long before you joined your self to the Church of England. And that therefore your greatest Difficulties (if these were they) were as fully and fairly solved then, as now they are, or can be.12

This section evidences Digby’s inquiring nature, and according to Laud, Digby had sufficiently considered the Church of England to have “solved” the obstacles to his belief.

From 1633 onward, Digby cloistered himself in the confines of Gresham College, where he retreated from the public eye and undertook wide-ranging academic studies. From

Laud’s letter, it appears that Digby began to reassess his religious identity during his years in Gresham: “you were nigh two Years in the diligent Discussion of this matter.”13 The fact that Digby spent two years considering his return to Rome implies the strength of his

Episcopalian faith. But personal circumstance also intervened and sculpted Digby’s emotional and religious outlook.

The sudden death of Digby’s beloved Venetia in 1633 had prompted his retirement from public life, and in the wake of her death, Digby commissioned Van Dyck to paint

12 Ibid. 612 13 Laud, “Letter to Sir Kenelm Digby,” 611. - 44 -

Venetia’s deathbed portrait.14 Soon after, Digby began to apotheosize his late wife as he wrote to his aunt in 1633: “I am confident she is a Saint in heaven. She lived so like one upon earth.”15 Blaming himself, Digby believed her death a punishment for his unfaithfulness, and he repeatedly sought a divine explanation for his woes. Thus, Venetia’s death marked a spiritual turning point in Digby’s life and precipitated his return to the

Church of Rome. Based on Laud’s letter and Digby’s reaction to Venetia’s death, it appears that he converted to the Church of England in good faith with the intention of remaining

Episcopalian. But Venetia’s unforeseeable death fundamentally changed Digby’s worldview and prompted him to revisit his spiritual identity.

III

1635: The Year of “Society” Conversions

Kenelm Digby was not the only notable convert of 1635. Another young diplomat,

Walter Montagu, also reconciled himself to the Church of Rome while abroad in Paris.

Walter Montagu had been a favorite of Queen Henrietta Maria since 1625 when he first escorted the fifteen-year-old princess to England. Montagu remained a devoted servant to the Queen for the rest of his life, and in 1633, he was sent to Rome on a mission to improve

English-Papal relations. Cardinal Barberini, the Pope’s newphew, had eagerly received

English attempts at rapprochement, and George Con, the Vatican ambassador, tirelessly advocated for the Catholic cause in England. What started as a diplomatic mission quickly became a spiritual one as Montagu began his conversion to the Church of Rome.

14 A. Sumner, “Art in context: Venetia Digby on her Deathbed,” History Today 45 (1995): 20. 15 Kenelm Digby, “Letter to Magdalen Digby,” 17 July 1633, Morgan Library, Morgan MS A., ff.120-3. - 45 -

Although it is clear that Montagu converted sometime in the first half of 1635, there is some debate about the inspiration behind his conversion. Michael Foster, drawing from the Panzani memoirs, offers a mystical account and suggests that Montagu was converted upon seeing the face of Pope Urban VIII.16 Thompson Cooper, however, attributes

Montagu’s conversion to his experiences in Loudun.17 The infamous nuns at Loudun were the cause of many spiritual revelations in the 1630s, and there is evidence from a December

1635 letter that Montagu had visited Loudun with Tom Killigrew. Drawing from the letter,

Felice Harcourt reports that the name “Joseph” appeared on the hand of a possessed nun after Father Surin had performed the exorcism.18According to the letter, Killigrew was unconvinced by the experience, whereas Montagu was deeply moved: “the devils succeeded with the convert, but not with Killigrew.”19 In the letter, which dates the excursion to 28 November 1635, Montagu is named “the convert.”20 This confirms that

Montagu had already converted by late 1635, and we must conclude that Montagu’s conversion could not have been inspired by Loudun. Rather, it seems that Loudun strengthened the resolve of the recent convert, and to us, it reveals a mystical capacity in

Montagu’s personality. Based on other letters from Digby, as well as Gordon Albion’s

16 Michael Foster, “Walter Montagu, courtier, diplomat and abbot, 1603-77” Downside Review 69 (April 1978). See further Gregorio Panzani, The memoirs of Gregorio Panzani: giving an account of his agency in England, in the years 1634, 1635, 1636 (Birmingham: Printed by Swinney & Walker for G. G. J. & J. Robinson, and R. Faulder, London, 1793). 17 Thompson Cooper, “Montagu, Walter (1604/5–1677),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, rev. Edward Charles Metzger, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004), online ed., Lawrence Goldman ed., September 2011. 18 Felice Harcourt, introduction to The Devils of Loudun, by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper, 1953). 19 Tom Killigrew, “Letter on Loudun,” European Magazine 1 (London: Philological Society of London, 1803). The holograph letter is located in Magdalen College Library, Cambridge, Pepys Collection, no. 8383. 20 Ibid. - 46 -

study of Panzani, it is most likely that Montagu was first received into the Church at Easter of 1635.21

Montagu initially kept his conversion secret out of fear that Charles would rescind his diplomatic appointment, but rumors of Montagu’s breach eventually reached England.

Shortly before the trip to Loudun, Montagu penned a letter to his father, the Earl of

Manchester, in which he publicly announced his conversion. The letter was immediately copied and distributed among English noblemen, and to Manchester’s great distress, news of his son’s conversion spread rapidly. Montagu’s announcement ignited an epistolary exchange between father and son, which invited commentary from both sides of the

English-Roman divide. The Montagu-Manchester exchange and the commentaries written thereon cast light onto English controversial debates by showcasing the dialogue between a recently converted Catholic and a devout Episcopalian. Moreover, the exchange also evidences the importance of letters in shaping one’s public image.

There are essentially seven letters in this debate, and I begin with a timeline of the correspondence. After his conversion in spring 1635, Montagu waited until 21 November

1635 before writing to his father. Manchester first responded on 20 May 1636, and Lord

Falkland, an associate of Manchester, also replied on the earl’s behalf. All of these letters were copied and distributed throughout England, and in the collection at Lambeth Palace, there is a copy of Montagu’s letter with Laud’s personal annotations.22 In addition to the many transcribed copies, Montagu’s letter with responses from Manchester and Falkland,

21 Albion, Charles I and the Court of Rome, 205. 22 I know of four extant copies of Montagu’s letter, which are scattered throughout English archives. The letter at Lambeth has black “X’s” in the margin, which, according to Professor Anthony Milton, are characteristic of Laud’s marginalia. - 47 -

was anonymously published in 1641. The volume, entitled The coppy of a letter sent from

France by Mr. Walter Mountagu to his father the Lord Privie Seale, with his answere thereunto: also a second answere to the same letter by the Faukland [sic], contains no information about its publisher or place of publication.23 The 1641 publication conspicuously omits Montagu’s second letter to his father from late 1636. Because this letter was absent from the 1641 publication, Montagu’s second letter has received no treatment in the historiography, and to my knowledge, the only reference to it is found in a footnote in Anthony Milton’s Catholic and Reformed.24

The “Second Letter of Mr Walter Montagu in Reply to His Father’s Answere”, found in the Bodleian’s Rawlinson Manuscripts, completes the Manchester-Montagu dialogue and shapes our understanding of this exchange. Not only does the second letter further the argumentation of the first, it also merited commentary from Kenelm Digby. In

1636, Digby wrote two letters to Walter Montagu, in which he addresses the Manchester-

Montagu exchange. The first discusses Montagu’s November 1635 letter, and the other addresses the unpublished second letter. Digby’s commentaries on both letters reveal that the second letter contributed to the public dialogue. So, to fully understand this exchange, we must consider the second letter with Digby’s commentary.

The omission of Montagu’s second letter from the 1641 publication is puzzling and deserves some speculation. It is possible that the letter never reached Manchester or

23 Most bibliographic references list London as the place of publication. This is presumably based on the assumption that the volume was printed by one of England’s officially licensed printers, all of which were in London. There is, however, no direct evidence for this assumption. It is possible that it was covertly printed elsewhere in England or on the continent for later distribution in England. 24 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 294, note 127. - 48 -

Falkland, which could explain the absence of a reply. Alternatively, the letter may have reached Manchester, but was never transferred to the anonymous publisher of the 1641 volume. Although possible, both explanations seem highly unlikely. From Digby’s response, we know that he received a copy of the second letter from the Lord Chalcedone while in Paris.25 Upon receipt of the copy, Digby and Chalcedone read the letter together, discussed it, and prepared separate responses to Montagu. According to Digby’s letter, and there is no reason to disbelieve it, Montagu’s second letter had been copied at least once.

The fact that the letter was circulating in late 1636 makes its omission from the 1641 volume suspicious. Although there is no direct evidence of a conspiracy, its wide circulation in England and France suggests that the second letter was intentionally omitted from the 1641 publication.

Even without the intentional omission of Montagu’s response, the 1641 publication is already a partisan document. In the volume, Montagu’s letter is a mere eight pages, whereas Manchester and Falkland’s responses take up a combined twenty-eight. Based on comparative length alone, the publication clearly falls on the Protestant side of the spectrum. In addition, the absence of a reply may have implicitly undermined Montagu’s case in the minds of the readers. According to Michael Questier, Episcopalians believed that “defections from their own side would occur if opponents’ major works went without reply.”26 In addition, even a delay in copying a manuscript could imply that “the for the truth of the Roman Catholic religion ‘could not be answered.’” 27 Perhaps this

25 Kenelm Digby, “Letter to Walter Montagu,” 15 October 1636, Smith College, Misc MS 820. 26 Questier, Conversion Politics and Religion, 17 27 Richard Woodcock, A Godly and Learned Answer (1608) as quoted in Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion, 18. - 49 -

paranoia about the unanswered Catholic treatise resonated with the publisher of the 1641 volume, for Montagu’s letter was not only answered, it was doubly answered. The absence of Montagu’s reply could suggest to the contemporary reader that the definitive double answer had silenced the convert. In the context of English controversial debates, in which silence was tantamount to concession, the omission of Montagu’s reply becomes especially significant. These factors all suggest that the publisher of the 1641 volume sought to transform a high-profile conversion into a piece of Protestant propaganda.

The controversy surrounding the Manchester-Montagu exchange highlights the public dimension of high-profile religious conversions. Given Montagu’s family standing and his position in English government, his conversion had consequences in both the public and private spheres. Although religious conversion is primarily a personal experience in which the individual reconciles conscience with belief, Montagu’s conversion necessarily influenced his familial and professional relations. Unlike Holstenius, whose modest upbringing shielded him from familial backlash, Montagu risked losing the favor of the king and his father by converting to Rome. He even seemed to know the potential consequences of conversion, and from the opening lines of his first letter, Montagu addresses his many obligations and allegiances:

After much debate concerning the fittest expression of my duty to your Lordship, whether I ought by silence seeke to suspend the beliefe of the declaration of my self, I have made here, or by a cleere profession of it assure you of what I may onely feare to present you with, as apprehensive of a mis-interpreted affection, I concluded what was most satisfactory to my first, and immediate duty to God, was most justifiable to my second, and derivative to Nature, therefore I resolved so soone to give you this ingenuous account of my selfe […]28

28 Walter Montagu, “Letter to the Earl of Manchester,” in The Coppy of a Letter Sent from France, 1641, British Library, MS Harley 6866 fols. 210r – 225v, 1. There are at least two other editions of The Coppy of a - 50 -

Montagu’s conversion brought about a conflict of duties, which he addresses in this opening paragraph. He is bound by familial duty – “duty to your Lordship” – but he is also bound by the “immediate duty to God.” Interestingly, Montagu establishes a hierarchy in which divine duty supersedes natural duty. In order to satisfy his duty to God, Montagu offers an in-depth account of his conversion and the rational basis for his Catholic faith.

But to satisfy his filial duties, he chooses to write his father, rather than remain silent on the issue.

Although addressed to his father, Montagu’s letter quickly entered public circulation, and his writing suggests that he intended it to be a public statement of conversion. In introducing an edition of the Journal of Early Modern History, Eric Mazur and Abigail Shinn write, “In the early modern world the process of describing a conversion experience was often as important, and problematic, as the conversion itself.”29 Montagu’s letter and the ensuing dialogue certainly support Mazur and Shinn’s contention, but they largely approach conversion from a literary perspective. Although Mazur and Shinn compellingly assert that conversion narratives permeated early modern culture through a variety of media, they address themselves to the crafting of conversion narratives rather than the philosophical content of the debates. According to Mazur and Shinn, the rhetorical

Letter dating from 1651 and 1660 respectively, housed in the British Library under the shelf marks, MS Add. 22591 and MS Add. 29586. Another copy can be found in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. For further references, see Richard Serjeantson, “Elizabeth Cary and the ,” in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, ed. Heather Wolfe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), note 41. Dr. Serjeantson has been an invaluable resource in my study of Montagu, and I am very grateful for his guidance on this topic. 29 Peter Mazur and Abigail Shinn, “Introduction: Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World,” Journal of Early Modern History 17 (2013), 427. - 51 -

and stylized nature of early modern conversion narratives makes them aesthetic objects worthy of literary scrutiny.

By subjecting Montagu’s letter to this kind of analysis, we can decode several rhetorical structures that reveal the self-consciously public nature of the letter. In the opening sentence, Montagu writes that he weighed “the fittest expression” of his duty to his father, thereby casting himself as a devoted and loving son.30 But by the end of the paragraph, he has already supplanted his filial duty with his newfound religious obligation.

From this, it seems that Montagu is rhetorically softening the shock of his conversion by framing it in terms of filial piety. But Montagu couches his conversion in respectful language only to levy criticism against his father and his Protestant upbringing: “therefore it had been strange if naturall curiositie without any spirituall provocation had not invited mee to the desire of looking with mine own eyes upon the foundation I stood upon [sic], rather there holding fast blindfold by my education to agree to be carried away alwayes after it insensible of all shocks I met to unfasten me.”31 This powerful line indicts the parochial education system in which Manchester had raised Montagu and implies that such a system renders one “insensible” to all shocks that might destabilize belief. Throughout,

Montagu cloaks his criticism in endearing language to lessen the shock of his conversion.

However helpful the literary approach may be, any rhetorical devices at work are secondary to the philosophical content of these letters. The articles which Mazur and Shinn introduce mostly address elaborately wrought conversion narratives, which often verge on

30 Montagu, “Letter to the Earl of Manchester,” 1. 31 Ibid. - 52 -

the fantastical.32 But the Manchester-Montagu exchange is not an example of such a narrative. Rather this dialogue is fundamentally academic, in which father, son, and other commentators carefully develop, critique, and substantiate philosophical and historical claims about religious belief. Although Montagu believed that he witnessed a miraculous occurrence in Loudun, it goes without mention in both of his letters. This omission, as well as the frequent citation of patristic writings, suggest that these letters are categorically different from more stylized conversion narratives.

IV

The Historicity Argument

At the heart of early modern controversy lay the question of the true church. For early modern Christians, the true church offered the best, and perhaps, only path to eternal salvation. Through my study of controversy, I have found that controversial treatises basically aim to do three things: to define, to prove, and to persuade. First, the tract would define the characteristics of the true church; second, it would prove which confession best displayed those characteristics; and third, it would persuade the reader that all other confessions did not possess the qualities of the true church.

By the 1630s, English Protestantism was deeply fractured. In England,

Protestantism comprised all manner of Puritans, Arminians, and Laudians who all differed on matters of liturgy, ecclesiology, and soteriology. But almost all learned English

Protestants had significant misgivings about the Church of Rome and thought it their duty to actively oppose the Catholic faith. Given the divisive nature of English Protestantism,

32 Mazur and Shinn, “Introduction: Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World,” 430. - 53 -

Peter Lake has suggested that the single unifying principle among English Protestants was their mutual opposition to the Church of Rome.33 It was in this context that the Manchester-

Montagu exchange arose.

For Montagu, the true church must meet two criteria: visibility and continuity.

Throughout both of his letters, Montagu argues that the true Church must exist and be visible to Christians in all of history. To substantiate this claim, he makes repeated reference to scripture and patristic works: “this Text most litterall of the fourth of the Ephesians: […] they inferre this necessary visible succession of the Church, seem'd to me to be a most rationall and convincing one, which is to this effect.”34 But Montagu does not simply accept the visibility condition because of scriptural warrant. Rather, he finds it

“most rationall and convincing,” and he goes on to explain, “Naturall reason not being able to proportion to a man a course that might certainly bring him to a state of supernaturall happinesse […] there remayned no other way, but that it must be proposed unto us by one whose authoritie wee could not doubt of.”35 For Montagu, the limitations of human intellect require that a visible church exist in order to direct believers. This visible church will be endowed with unquestioned authority, so that its believers may attain a “a state of supernaturall happinesse.”

Montagu’s visibility argument is a clever one. At base, he argues that salvation relies on the existence of a visible church to lead its followers. But by extending the logic,

Montagu implicitly justifies papal authority while criticizing the Protestant commitment to

33 Peter Lake, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (New York: Longman, 1989), 74. 34 Montagu, “Letter to Earl of Manchester,” 4. 35 Ibid. - 54 -

scripture. Through highlighting the limitations of “Naturall reason,” Montagu undermines the notion of sola scriptura by suggesting that humans are incapable of true scriptural understanding. Therefore, the believer will require a church to guide spiritual inquiry according to centuries of tradition. But a visible church, according to Montagu, is only meaningful if it possesses an “authoritie wee could not doubt of.”36 For the Catholic, such authority is only found in the pope, whose unbroken mandate from Peter forms between heaven and earth. Montagu’s description of church visibility embodies all the characteristics of a controversial polemic; it defines a necessary criterion for the true church

(definition), substantiates the claim through textual reference (proof), and rebuts opposing viewpoints (persuasion).

The argument for Church continuity follows logically from the visibility argument.

According to the visibility argument, the Church must have supreme authority, and for

Montagu, such authority is only found through Christ. Therefore, the true church must demonstrate continuity with Christ’s disciples: “I confesse truly that our Religion is false, if a continuall descent of it cannot be demonstrated by these monuments downe from

Christs time.”37 Since Protestantism only arose in the sixteenth century, Montagu concludes that the reformed Church cannot prove a “continuall descent.” Some Protestants had argued that medieval heretics, such as the Waldensians and the Hussites, were proto- protestants who tacitly preserved continuity with Christ. Montagu appears to concede that these heretics were Protestant, but he finds them insufficiently ancient to prove continuity.

Digby, however, is unmoved by the reference to proto-protestants. In his response to

36 Ibid. 37 Montagu, “Letter to Earl of Manchester,” 6. - 55 -

Montagu’s first letter, Digby asserts, “Our Church hath ever bin conspicuous and uncorrupted; and that theirs was borne but then when Luther made the first outcrye for it

(if that may be called one Church, wherein scarce any two men professe in all pointes the same doctrine).”38 For Digby, Luther’s founding of the reformed tradition precludes the possibility of continuity and thereby delegitimizes Protestant authority.

By the time Montagu wrote his second letter to Manchester, his opinion about

Luther and the proto-protestants had evolved significantly. Perhaps Digby’s response moved Montagu to look anew at the founding of Protestantism, because his second letter clearly regards Luther in a new light:

[Luther] affirm hims. indefinitely the First, not only yt had preachd ptestancy but the first, to who G. had revealed it wch disclaims either Continuance, or Resumption, & implies a direct Instauration of his Doctrine. And I find this Attributio to himself granted him by the Apology of the Ch. Of England.39

Early in the letter, Montagu names Luther “the 1st Inventor” of the Protestant faith, and for

Montagu, the invention of faith undercuts Protestant legitimacy.40 Without the second letter, the 1641 publication neglects a significant shift in Montagu’s reasoning in which he indicts Luther as the heretical founder of Protestantism. By examining this letter in addition to Digby’s response, Montagu’s spiritual stance appears more nuanced and flexible than the eight pages of the 1641 volume allow.

In both letters, Montagu attempts to justify his conversion through historical, rather than theological or philosophical terms. From the outset, Montagu and Digby frame the

38 Kenelm Digby, “Letter to Walter Montagu,” 18 July 1636, Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 986. 39 Walter Montagu, “A 2nd Letter of Mr Walter Montagu, in Reply to his Father's Answer,” undated, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D. 853 fols. 166v-169r. Professor Anthony Milton has suggested the letter was written in the hand of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1677-1690. See Appendix I. 40 Ibid. - 56 -

debate in a distinctly factual manner: “I began with this consideration, that there were two sorts of questions betweene the Catholikes and Protestants, the one of right or doctrine, the other of fact or story.”41 Here, Montagu delineates two methods of controversial argumentation: doctrinal and factual argumentation. A significant portion of controversial treatises address themselves to questions of doctrine, such as the internal liturgical disputes between Laudians and Puritans. Although prevalent, these often abstruse doctrinal controversies struck Montagu as intractable and inconclusive. In order to definitively settle matters of controversy, Montagu contends that only factual arguments, that is, provable arguments about visibility and continuity, are sufficient: “I considered that there was no one part of controverted Doctrine, whereon all the rest depended, but that this one question of fact was such as the decision of it determined all the rest.”42 On the validity of historical arguments, Digby wholeheartedly agrees and suggests that even Montagu may have overemphasized detail: “either to maintaine every particular question by authorities and allegations; or to establish the whole maine bodie (that inuolueth and comprehendeth all the rest) by solide reason and sound discourse. The first, is the taske of a much read man; the latter, is the worke of a prudent and iudicious man.”43 The prudent and judicious man, according to Digby, can establish the “whole maine bodie” and thereby bypass smaller doctrinal disputes.

41 Montagu, “Letter to Earl of Manchester,” 2. 42 Ibid. 43 Kenelm Digby, “Letter to Walter Montagu,” 15 October 1636, Smith College, Misc MS 820. - 57 -

V

A Philosophical Turn in English Controversy

Although philosophical reasoning is secondary in Montagu’s argument, the emphasis on historical justification may have originated in a philosophical treatise. In 1633,

Christopher Davenport published an influential tract, entitled Deus, Natura, Gratia, while at the English College in Douai.44 In his work, Davenport a new form of ecumenism by positing that “no fundamental dogmas” separated the Churches of England and Rome.45 During this period, Laud had risen in power and his Arminian leanings and commitment to “the beauty of holiness” smacked of Catholicism to his many adversaries.46

Thus, we must read Davenport’s work in light of Laud’s ascendency, a time in which

English Protestants – not just Puritans – feared the influence of a Catholic queen and a papist-leaning Archbishop. Laud, as is clear from his 1635 letter to Digby, was no Catholic, but Davenport’s writing surely spoke to the growing unease among those who feared a papist conspiracy. Davenport was a colleague of Thomas White, who became an important collaborator with Digby. It is therefore likely that Digby was acquainted with Davenport’s writings, and Montagu’s frequent visits to Paris also suggest familiarity with Davenport’s work. Like Davenport, Montagu and Digby initially avoid questions of religious dogma, favoring an historical approach that transcends the polemical.

Montagu’s method of argumentation contrasts distinctly with Holstenius’ deeply philosophical conversion narrative. Like Montagu and Digby, Holstenius thoroughly

44 John Henry, “ and Eschatology: Catholicism and in the Interregnum,” The British Journal for the History of 15 (Nov. 1982), 216. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4026219. 45 Ibid. 46 Peter Lake, “The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity, and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s,” in The Early Stuart Church: 1603-1642 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993). - 58 -

investigated the Church of Rome before converting, and all three exemplify a decidedly intellectual approach to conversion. But Holstenius grounded his conversion in philosophical terms by drawing on the works of the Neoplatonists. Although Holstenius did not engage in the minor doctrinal disputes which Digby censures – “light arguments and cavillous advantage and strained authorities and wrested interpretations […] not descending to the roote of the maine question” – Holstenius believed that philosophical inquiry could lead to a conversion. Although Digby and Montagu were indebted to

European philosophy, their lines of reasoning delineate a series of factual arguments, which turn on the historicity of their claims. For them, conversion was not fundamentally a philosophical question; it was a question of historical fact and consistency.

After his conversion, however, Digby’s reasoning evolved as he began to incorporate philosophical thinking into a new Catholic theology. In the 1630s, the English priest, Thomas White, organized the Blackloists, a group of philosophers who sought to develop a new ecumenical Catholic theology. As a student of White, Digby built on the

Blackloist project in his work, Two Treatises. Initially, White and Digby developed the historical arguments already seen in the context of Montagu’s conversion. But Protestants, like Lord Falkland and William Chillingworth, successfully undercut the assumption that the Catholic Church exhibited continuity with the early church fathers. Therefore, Digby and White turned away from historical justifications of faith and sought instead to develop a novel Catholic theology in order to attract English Protestants. In the Two Treatises,

Digby seeks to prove the immortality of the soul through philosophical reasoning. Like

Descartes, Digby developed a , and he addresses the entire first

- 59 -

treatise to the nature of body.47 But in the second treatise, Digby develops a physiology of the soul, and throughout the latter work, Digby borrows heavily from Aristotelian thought as he attempts to prove the immortality of the soul.48

VI

Conclusion

The philosophical program of the Blackloists, championed by Digby and White, evidences a strong ecumenical impulse among English Catholic controversialists. Digby’s response to the Protestant attack on historical justification resulted in a new Aristotelian philosophy. Like Hosltenius, Digby ultimately saw philosophy as a way to bridge confessional division and reunite Christianity under a common philosophical framework.

Although Montagu, Digby, and Holstenius each drew on unique intellectual frameworks to justify conversion, all three attempted to step beyond confessional disputes through philosophical and historical reasoning.

47 Kenelm Digby, Two Treatises: in the one of which, the nature of bodies, in the other, the nature of mans soule is looked into: in way of discovery of the immortality of reasonable soules (London: John Williams, 1665). 48 For a study of Digby’s , see above John Henry, “Atomism and Eschatology.” For a survey of early modern Aristotelianism, see Paul Richard Blum ed., Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism (Leiden: Brill, 2012). - 60 -

CHAPTER THREE

FROM CONVERT TO BROKER: CONVERSION AGENTS AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

Conversion brokers stood at the interface of Catholic-Protestant controversy in seventeenth-century Europe. Like almost all early modern converts, Montagu, Digby, and

Holstenius each came under the instruction of a spiritual authority, who shepherded their religious transformations. Their respective conversions share some telling characteristics: they occurred in continental Europe and were overseen by Jesuits. In addition, their post- conversion lives highlight another important similarity as all three went on to broker the conversions of high-profile women.

These women all occupied important social and political positions in their respective countries, and their conversions significantly influenced their familial and political relationships. Since their families opposed their conversions, the change of faith represented an act of personal autonomy for these women. Our study of women’s conversion offers a new perspective on gender roles in the early modern period, and it elucidates a realm – the realm of religious identity – in which women exercised personal agency.

Conversion brokers formed an integral part of the “network of agents”, which

Marika Keblusek explores in Double Agents: Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early

Modern Europe. The essays in Double Agents examine “the early modern system of brokerage as a widespread practice of transmission and dissemination of political,

- 61 -

intellectual, and cultural ideas.”1 For Keblusek, the term “early modern agent” refers to the function of individuals who sculpted political, religious, or social discourse by manipulating personal networks. The brokering activities of Montagu, Digby, and

Holstenius cast them in Keblusek’s mold of the early modern agent, and their experiences reveal how agents lay behind prominent early modern conversions.

In this chapter, I will first address the importance of geographical separation during conversion to argue that converts required physical distance from home in order to convert.

Second, I will explore the role of Jesuit proselytizing throughout Europe and posit that the

Jesuit approach was particularly well-suited to converting intellectuals. I will then examine how Montagu, Digby, and Holstenius each transformed from convert into conversion broker. Their role as conversion brokers, I argue, forms a final step in the conversion process whereby they affirmed commitment to the new faith through converting others.

Finally, I will explore how women participated in early modern controversy through conversion. Ultimately, I will suggest that the act of religious conversion was empowering to women and accorded them control in the familial sphere.

I

An Act Best Done Abroad

The secret nature of many early modern conversions makes the study of brokers particularly challenging. As we have seen with Walter Montagu, conversion could imperil familial relations and fraternization with known members of another church was a risky

1 Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus, Double Agents: Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 3. - 62 -

move for the potential convert. In addition, the methods through which brokers converted their charges could also come under scrutiny. Just as Manchester attacked the intellectual grounds of his son’s conversion, so too could an aggrieved family member critique the broker’s methods. By examining the letters and controversial treatises which directly address conversion, we are afforded a clear window into the process of conversion brokering.

For Montagu, Digby, and Holstenius, the act of conversion occurred away from home and family. Their position abroad suggests that conversion took place where familial encumbrances would not hinder spiritual transformation. As we have seen in Chapter Two,

Montagu’s Episcopalian upbringing made conversion in England effectively impossible, and it is easy to understand why he converted in France. But Holstenius did not descend from a prominent family like that of Montagu, so he risked less in abandoning his native religion. Nonetheless, Holstenius only began to reconsider his spiritual identity after departing his native Hamburg. Ultimately in Paris, under the close supervision of French

Jesuits, Holstenius converted from Lutheranism to the Church of Rome. During his period of mourning and study in London’s Gresham College, Digby revisited questions of religious controversy as he contemplated conversion in the mid-1630s. But like Holstenius and Montagu, he too converted abroad.

The geographic distancing between home and the place of conversion deserves consideration. Put simply, why did these converts, who would later hold prominent religious positions, require separation from home in order to convert? It seems that

Holstenius did not require geographic distance in the same way Montagu did. Leaving home afforded Holstenius an improvised ecumenical education as he travelled from

- 63 -

Reformed Leiden to Episcopalian England to Catholic France. But Holstenius was not of noble lineage, so his conversion did not imperil his family’s social standing. Thus, familial pressure and the social consequences of converting are insufficient to explain why

Holstenius converted abroad.

In her article, “Conversion in the Early Modern Period,” Kim Siebenhühner suggests that geographical peregrinations or frequent border crossings increased the likelihood of conversion. Religious difference frequently dictated political borders throughout Europe, but especially within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1555, the Peace of

Augsburg established the precedent of cuius regio, eius religio in order to stem religio- political conflict. The implementation of this principle led to confessionalization throughout the H.R.E., and after 1555, political and religious divisions were inextricably linked. The interplay of religious and political borders would emerge dramatically in the

1618, when controversy surrounding the emperor’s election sparked the Thirty Years’ War.

Building on the linkage between confessional and religious boundaries, Siebenhühner proposes that religious conversion was a form of grenzüberschreitung or frontier crossing.2

Siebenhühner’s thesis expands on Susan Stanford Friedman’s conception of borders as contact zones. For Stanford Friedman, borders were exclusionary, but they were also loci of social, cultural, and political interchange.3 Siebenhühner transposes this argument into the realm of faith by suggesting that religious conversion somehow recapitulates the act of political border crossing.

2 Kim Siebenhühner, “Glaubenswechsel in der Frühen Neuzeit: Chancen und Tendenzen Einer Historischen Konversionsforschung,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 34.2 (2007): 243–72. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/43570599.251 3 Susan Stanford Friedman, “Das Sprechen über Grenzen, Hybridität und Performativität. Kulturtheorie und Identität in den Zwischenräumen der Differenz,” Mittelweg 36 (2003): 34-52. - 64 -

Given Holstenius’ travel itinerary during the 1620s, his conversion is a strong test case for Siebenhühner’s hypothesis. At first, it appears that Holstenius’ experience supports the correlation between border-crossing and conversion. But upon closer examination, it is not clear that mere frontier crossing motivated his change of faith. Rather, it seems that departing the parochial confines of Hamburg, in which Lutheranism predominated, expanded his ideological horizon. Holstenius had travelled throughout the H.R.E., the

Netherlands, and England before his conversion in Paris, suggesting that the mere act of border crossing cannot fully explain his religious evolution. Therefore, it appears that Paris was a uniquely influential moment in Holstenius’ spiritual trajectory. This case supports

Friedman’s notion of border-crossing as a source of ideological exchange, but does not suggest that border-crossing is itself motivation for conversion.

Thus, we should view Holstenius’ border-crossings and his geographic distance from home as preconditions, rather than proximate causes for his conversion. The same case can be made for Montagu and Digby. Both men travelled extensively on the continent, and their experiences in France certainly brought them into contact with differing religious ideologies. But again, mere travel cannot fully explain their conversions. Montagu had traveled to France and Spain in the early 1620s, and yet he did not convert until 1635.

Digby had spent years in the Mediterranean, going as far east as Turkey, and he too waited until 1635 before converting.4

In Montagu’s case, it is likely that separation from his Episcopalian family afforded him the liberty to reassess his religious identity and ultimately convert to

4 Joe Moshenska, “Sir Kenelm Digby's Interruptions: Piracy and Lived Romance in the 1620s,” Studies in Philology 113 (2016), 424. - 65 -

Catholicism. Although Montagu’s conversion had significant familial repercussions, we should not view his conversion as a deliberate act of filial disobedience. Montagu’s letters to his father maintain a consistent tone of respect and make continued reference to his filial duties. Even after Manchester’s reply, in which he strongly condemns his son’s motivations, Montagu closes his second letter by reaffirming his familial bond:

And I shall pray G. that He would so bless me in it, [that] it may at least deliver me fro yor Displeasure, & give you [that] peace, & Acquiescience, wch nothg but my confs. shd. ever have hazarded the Interruptio of; So I may most inocently, & do most x humbly beg your Blessg, as […] Yor Lops [lordship’s] most obedient Sonne5

The valediction, “your Lops most obedient Sonne,” strikes an ironic note given that

Montagu has clearly disobeyed his father’s wishes. Nonetheless, Montagu’s letter presents his conversion as a sincere spiritual gesture, rather than an act of betrayal. The of

Montagu’s conversion did not impress his father, however. And as Gordon Albion notes in a section entitled, “Montagu’s conversion irritates his father,” Manchester was willing to use his position as Privy Councilor to arrest Montagu upon return to England.6 Given the social and familial consequences of his conversion, it becomes clear why Montagu required distance from his father in order to convert.

Although the exact circumstances of their conversions varied, Montagu, Digby, and

Holstenius all converted in cultural and religious contexts alien to their native lands, and all three came under the influence of Jesuit religious brokers. Jesuit proselytizing played

5 Walter Montagu, “A 2nd Letter of Mr Walter Montagu, in Reply to his Father's Answer,” undated, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D. 853 fols. 166v-169r, p. 6. See Appendix I. 6 Gordon Albion, Charles I and the Court of Rome (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1935), 206. - 66 -

an important role in Counterreformation Europe, and the experience of these converts attests to the importance of what one historian has called, “the politics of soul winning.”7

II

Jesuit Agents as Conversion Brokers

The , founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534, became one of the most significant movements of the Catholic Counterreformation. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius offered a clear program of religious devotion, and the Jesuits zealously promoted their message across continental Europe.8 Known for their scholarly acumen, they established educational institutions, which, by the seventeenth century, formed a network of Catholic conversion organizations throughout Europe. In addition, Jesuits extended their proselytizing outside of Europe, as they expanded their missionary calling to the New World and the Far East.9 Although concentrated on the continent, Jesuit influence reached the British Isles, where notably, Tobias Matthew and Kenelm Digby received Jesuit instruction. Matthew, like our other converts, did not convert until he reached the continent, but the Jesuit approach, which emphasized spiritual regeneration over polemical disputation, ultimately brought Matthew to the Church of Rome.10

As a Catholic by birth, Digby came under Jesuit influence while still in England.

John Gerard, the leader of the Jesuit Mission to England, was a close friend of Digby’s

7 Siebenhühner, “Glaubenswechsel in der Frühen Neuzeit,” 254. 8 Ignatius, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and ed. George E. Ganss (Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1992). 9 Allan Greer, “Conversion and Identity: Iroquois Christianity in Seventeenth- Century New France,” in Old Worlds and New, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2003). 10 Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 180. - 67 -

family and instructed the young Kenelm before he went to Oxford at age fifteen.11 The

Jesuit strain of thought, therefore, had taken early root in Digby’s mind, and some have speculated that he never abandoned his Catholic faith. Although it is unlikely that Digby’s

1630 conversion was disingenuous, we can still recognize that Jesuit teaching played a significant role in Digby’s youth.

Because of his Episcopalian upbringing, Montagu only encountered Jesuits once he began earnest study of Catholicism. Montagu’s first significant contact with a proselytizing

Jesuit came at Loudun. The Jesuit priest, Jean-Joseph Surin, had come to Loudun in 1634 to assist in the exorcism of the possessed nuns.12 In 1635, Montagu was accompanied by

Tom Killigrew to Loudun, and some accounts of this trip suggest that Montagu desired baptism by Surin after watching a particularly exhilarating exorcism.13 Other accounts of his conversion in the works of Thompson Cooper and Gordon Albion suggest that Father

Robert Philip brokered Montagu’s conversion.14 Father Philip, whom Montagu knew through Henrietta Maria, served as the Queen’s personal chaplain from 1628 onward.

Given his position in the Queen’s service, it is improbable that Father Philip brokered

Montagu’s conversion in 1635; however, it is very likely that Father Philip was a strong advocate for Montagu upon his return to England. Montagu maintained a close relationship with the Queen and served in her chambers alongside father Philip until 1641. Thus, the

11 Michael Martin, Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 105 12 Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1990), 5 13 Tom Killigrew, “Letter on Loudun,” European Magazine vol. 1 (London: Philological Society of London, 1803) 13 Albion, Charles I and the Court of Rome, 205. 14 Thompson Cooper, “Montagu, Walter (1604/5–1677),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, rev. Edward Charles Metzger, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). - 68 -

confusion over Montagu’s conversion probably arises from his close association with

Father Philip and the Queen after 1635.

Surin’s potential role in Montagu’s conversion raises questions about the validity of his belief. After an investigation by the Catholic Church, Urbain Grandier, the priest behind the possessions, was convicted of conjuring evil spirits and ultimately burned at the stake. Modern theories suggest the entire spectacle at Loudun was a hoax aimed at converting onlookers.15 If Montagu converted under Father Surin at Loudun or was even encouraged to convert by the mystical experiences at Loudun, what does this suggest about the validity of his conversion? If the actual possessions were an elaborate hoax, does this somehow delegitimize the conversion and suggest that a Jesuit priest took advantage of

Montagu’s momentary enchantment?

Although Manchester never raised these questions, Montagu’s experience in

Loudun complicates our understanding of the conversion. If Loudun informed the decision to convert, it appears that the act was undertaken on non-rational grounds. However,

Montagu never discussed Loudun in the letters to his father, and he publicly portrayed his conversion in exclusively intellectual terms. In contrast to Montagu, Digby was unmoved by the events at Loudun, and he later opined “they were strange enough to make me suspend judgement, though not so strange as to make me feel certain that they could not be produced by nature.”16 Digby’s language is especially interesting in light of Montagu’s conversion. Perhaps Montagu had “suspended judgment” as well, but the entreaties of a conversion broker, like Surin, were sufficient to prompt his conversion.

15 De Certeau, The Possession at Loudun, 7-9. 16 Kenelm Digby, “Letter concerning Loudun,” (1636), Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 108, ff.151-2. - 69 -

Another French Jesuit, the antiquarian Jacques Sirmond, lay behind Holstenius’

1624 conversion. Sirmond officially became a Jesuit in 1576 and subsequently served as professor of classical languages in Paris from 1581 onward.17 Thus, Sirmond’s combination of classical learning and Jesuit training made him the ideal broker for an intellectual like Holstenius. As noted in Chapter One, Holstenius discovered the Church of

Rome through classical studies, and by 1624, Holstenius had engaged a wide-body of classical sources about which Sirmond was expert.

But Holstenius had already come under Jesuit influence in Leiden when he encountered André Schott.18 According to Peter Fuchs, Schott had initiated Holstenius’

“acta sanctorum” or conversion, during his studies under Meursius and Heinsius. Schott’s early influence on Holstenius – sometime in the late 1610’s – emphasizes the developmental nature of his conversion. Thus, Holstenius had received Jesuit instruction some ten years before his 1624 conversion. Upon arrival in Paris, he quickly fell in with

Sirmond, who would complete the “acta sanctorum” by officially receiving him into the

Church of Rome.

The religious trajectories of Holstenius, Montagu, and Digby attest to a pervasive

Jesuit influence within early modern intellectual circles. Jesuit proselytizing in the early modern period has received significant attention, because their work played a major role in the Counterreformation effort to recatholicize northern Europe. Conversion institutes

17 N.A. Weber, “Jacques Sirmond” in Catholic Encyclopedia 14 (1913). Reproduced online at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jacques_Sirmond. 18 Peter Fuchs, “Lukas Holste,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie 9 (Berlin: Hess-Hütig, 1972), 548. http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00016326/image_562. André Schott (1552-1629) was a Dutch Jesuit who traveled extensively and edited several volumes of classical Greek texts. He taught throughout continental Europe and ultimately returned to the Netherlands where he became professor of Greek. - 70 -

proliferated on the continent as Jesuits sought to educate Protestants, and even Jews, in the ways of the Roman Church.19 The widespread influence of Jesuit missions, both in Europe and abroad, has focused attention on Jesuit conversions of non-Christians. But the stories of Montagu, Digby, and Holstenius evidence another facet of Jesuit conversion brokerage.

In these cases, Jesuits acted as spiritual guides to an intellectual elite that was well-versed in religious controversy. In fact, the Jesuits’ academic training and classical learning made them ideal conversion brokers for early modern intellectuals.

III

Brokers of the New Faith

By acting as conversion brokers, our three converts affirmed their new religious identities through the zealous promulgation of the Catholic faith. In a way, the transformation from convert to broker constitutes the final stage of conversion. Through guiding the spiritual transformation of others, these converts affirmed their identities as true Catholics, as they shed their past and embraced a future of Catholic piety and proselytization.

Montagu’s mystical work from 1648, Miscellanea Spiritualia; or Devout Essaies, offers a self-conscious reflection on life as a religious convert. Montagu’s conversion had infuriated his father and the Episcopalian elite, so when he returned to England in 1643, he did so in disguise. The ruse was short-lived, however, and Montagu was quickly detained and held as a close prisoner in the for four years. During his imprisonment,

Montagu composed his spiritual memoirs, Devout Essaies, in which he crafted his

19 Old Worlds and New, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2003). - 71 -

conversion narrative. To some degree, the exercise was successful in clarifying his religiosity, as Montagu would become the Abbot of Nanteuil after his release from the

Tower.

Of particular interest is Montagu’s conception of the convert’s life. In the opening pages of his memoirs, Montagu articulates a specific mandate for the religious convert: “in point of the Duties of all notorious Converts: By this they are advertised, That they are more specially then [sic] others, designed as Examples of singular gratitude and fidelity.”20

By characterizing converts as “examples of singular gratitude and fidelity,” Montagu develops an archetype of the religious convert. The convert must use his position as a changed man to embody a virtuous life of piety, but Montagu’s archetype goes even further. He suggests that the convert has an especial duty to propagate the faith and use his personal history as a false-believer to convert others:

By this exhibiting the obligations of a true Convert, […] I may hope, that God by his infinite liberality will be pleased to inable the rest of my life for some competent discharge of this great ingagement: For me thinks I hear the voice of our Savior, to him he had dispossessed of a legion of evil spirits, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things God hath done for thee.21

Montagu’s conception of the convert as an ambassador was hardly novel. The canonical example of Augustine’s conversion and later life as the Bishop of Hippo established a clear precedent for a convert’s life trajectory. Montagu took this message to heart, as he mirrored

Augustine’s path by retiring from public life and committing himself to the Church.

20 Walter Montagu, Miscellanea spiritualia; or Devout Essaies composed by the Honorable Walter Montagu, Esq. (London: Printed for W. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, 1647), Cambridge University Library, 8.39.4. Also available at Early English Books Online: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A89235.0001.001 21 Ibid. - 72 -

In the late 1630s, Montagu involved himself in the religious lives of two important

English women: Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639) and Lady Newport (1610-1669). The former was a scholar of some repute, who had converted to Catholicism in 1626. After her conversion, Cary set out to convert her children by planting Catholic proselytizers in the children’s household. This conversion attempt sparked a conflict between Cary and her eldest son, Viscount Falkland, the same Protestant apologist who responded to Montagu’s letter. In an article on Elizabeth Cary, Richard Serjeantson suggests that she knew Montagu and fully supported his conversion.22 In fact, Cary herself partook in the controversy surrounding Montagu’s conversion when she roundly critiqued her son’s response to

Montagu.

The relationship between Montagu and Elizabeth Cary calls attention to a shadow

Catholic group that developed in response to the Great Tew Circle. The Great Tew Circle was a set of Protestant intellectuals, which met informally throughout the 1630s and are sometimes termed, the Falkland Group, in honor of the Viscount Falkland. But within

Falkland’s own family, religious division cropped up as he and his mother engaged in a public controversial dispute. Thus, Montagu’s conversion and his subsequent involvement with Elizabeth Cary complicates our portrait of the Great Tew Circle. As Montagu and

Cary attempted to act as religious brokers for Catholicism, they subversively opposed the efforts of Elizabeth’s own son. This conflict demonstrates how Montagu’s conversion and his later activities had ramifications throughout English controversial circles.

22 Richard Serjeantson, “Elizabeth Cary and the Great Tew Circle,” in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, ed. Heather Wolfe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 175.

- 73 -

In 1637, another acquaintance of Montagu, Lady Newport, added her name to the list of prominent Catholic converts. The papal agent, George Con, had given Lady Newport

Catholic instruction before she was converted by a French Priest in the Queen’s court. This conversion deeply troubled the religious establishment, and Laud criticized both Montagu and Tobie Matthew for their involvement. Charles too grew angry as recorded in Laud’s

Diary, “the King did use such words of Wat Montague and Sir Tobie Matthew that the fright made Wat keep his chamber longer than his sickness would have detained him

[…].”23 The case of Lady Newport offers another example of Montagu’s brokering activities, while highlighting the risks he incurred after 1635. After the public dispute with his father, Montagu could no longer rely on familial or royal protection. It seems that

Henrietta Maria, to whom Montagu would dedicate Devout Essaies, protected his interests as he continued to embroil himself in public controversy. Through Montagu and her various Catholic agents, Henrietta’s court played a silent but crucial role in 1630s English controversy. Montagu’s exploits in the late 1630s see him become an important conversion broker as he served the Queen and Church’s interests.

Like Montagu, Digby embraced his role as a Catholic apologist in the late 1630s when he brokered the conversion of Francis Coke. Lady Purbeck, as she was known after her marriage to John Villiers, became the topic of court controversy when she was cited for adultery in 1627. She was subsequently imprisoned, but escaped to Paris where, in

1636, she began to study with a recently converted Digby. Through his instruction, Digby

23 William Laud, “Diary,” in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury 2 (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1847-1860), 125. - 74 -

prevailed upon Lady Purbeck and ultimately converted her to the Church of Rome.24 But unlike Montagu, Digby left a record of his conversion brokerage in the apologetic work, A

Conference with a Lady about Choice of Religion published in Paris in 1638.

A Conference chronicles Digby’s discussions with Purbeck while developing a manual for fellow Catholic conversion brokers. The work is divided into sixteen segments and proceeds from general reflections on beatitude to more complicated explications about the nature of the true church. The text seeks to build a foundation for faith by working stepwise from basic assumptions about religious impulse to specific claims about church doctrine. The almost formulaic organization of A Conference evokes the form of Jesuit conversion manuals with which Digby was certainly acquainted.

Interestingly, Digby only addresses the Church of Rome in the sixteenth and final portion of A Conference. Digby states that the validity of the Catholic Church follows logically from the arguments laid out in sections one through fifteen: “The truth of this conclusion will without bringing any new proofes apeare euidetly by reflecting vpon what we haue sayed."25 This approach suggests that Digby attempted to construct a logical proof for the legitimacy of the Catholic Church. As a conversion broker and apologist, Digby brought to bear his philosophical acumen and Jesuit training in guiding Lady Purbeck’s conversion.

In his later career, Holstenius counted several major rulers among his converts, none more notable than Queen Christina of Sweden. Christina’s conversion to Catholicism

24 Thomas Longueville, The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck; a Scandal of the XVIIth Century (London: Longmans, Green, and co., 1909), 126. 25 Kenelm Digby, A Conference with a Lady about Choice of Religion (Paris: [Widow of J. Blagaert], 1638), 99. Reproduced at Early English Books Online: http://gateway.proquest.com.ezp- prod1.hul.harvard.edu/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99851850. - 75 -

in 1655 came after a significant period of scholarly study in which Catholic agents were recruited to educate the Queen in private. Even before Christina met Holstenius in

Innsbruck, she had received instruction from Jesuit priests, with whom she had secret audiences. Her first encounter with a Jesuit arose through subterfuge, when the assistant to the Portuguese ambassador, Antonio Macedo, turned out to be a proselytizing Jesuit.

Macedo initiated the Queen’s instruction in Catholic doctrine, and through him, she began to seek counsel from other Catholic authorities.26 The Catholic Church sensed an opportunity to win over a European monarch, and they dispatched agent’s north to further the Queen’s education. At this time, Descartes was in the Queen’s service as her private tutor. Following Descartes’ death, rumors abounded that a priest had poisoned him with a tainted communion wafer out of fear that Descartes would prevent the Queen from converting. Although most certainly false, this rumor attests to the deep political and religious implications of the Queen’s conversion.

Christina’s transformation of faith, which involved study and consultation with various religious authorities, attests to the earnestness of her conversion. In addition, her investigation of the Church, which lasted from 1651 until 1655, underscores the developmental aspect of religious conversion. Christina’s intellectual investigation of

Catholicism led her to the Neoplatonists, the same thinkers which formed the bedrock of

Holstenius’ conversion framework. Like Holstenius, Christina developed a keen interest in the classical world and would later bemoan her lack of access to Platonic texts: “Platonic works are as rare here as the unicorn.”27 Holstenius’ intimate knowledge of the classical

26 Veronica Buckley, Christina Queen of Sweden (London: Fourth Estate, 2004), 190. 27 Ibid., 314. - 76 -

world and his close relationship with the pope made him the ideal broker for Christina’s conversion, and according to Jörg-Peter Findeisen, Christina was deeply moved by

Holstenius’ arrival in .28 There, Holstenius and his companion Francesco

Malines, discussed the particulars of her faith and officially accepted her into the Catholic fold.

In many ways, Christina’s conversion typifies the intellectual form of conversion, which this thesis has explored. Her conversion was scholarly, she was instructed by a formidable cast of Jesuits, and a prominent intellectual, Lucas Holstenius, served as her broker.

IV

Women and Conversion

The conversions of Lady Purbeck, Lady Newport, Elizabeth Cary, and Queen

Christina of Sweden reveal that women actively participated in early modern controversy and exercised considerable intellectual freedom in matters of faith. The same intellectual process, which characterized the conversions of Holstenius, Montagu, and Digby, is evident in the conversions of their female counterparts. Elizabeth Cary was a noted translator of controversial texts, and as Serjeantson observes, her familiarity with foreign controversial treatises armed her for debates with her son, Falkland.29 As a translator of

French, Cary exercised an even greater influence over controversial debates, as her translations facilitated ideological exchange between French and English scholars.

28 Jörg-Peter Findeisen, Christina von Schweden: Legende durch Jahrhunderte (Frankfurt: Societäts-Verlag: 1992), 186. 29 Serjeantson, “Elizabeth Cary and the Great Tew Circle,” 170. - 77 -

The choice of religious identity served as an instrument of power for early modern women. In a time when law and society were arrayed against women’s empowerment, the ability to convert offered women an important avenue for personal expression. Just like men, women concerned themselves with eternal salvation, and the potential to convert offered them a path with which to establish personal identity. The church into which a woman converted would not necessarily afford her greater freedom, but the ability to choose religious affiliation represented an important mechanism through which women asserted themselves in a male-dominated society. Many historians contend that the

Counterreformation significantly restricted women’s role in the public sphere. According to Merry E. Wiesner Hanks, Catholic reformers attempted to limit women’s influence in response to their involvment in the Protestant Reformation.30 In the sixteenth century, for instance, women played a crucial role in the spread of French Protestantism, and for women across Europe, Protestantism seemed to promise a higher degree of freedom.31

Historians have extensively debated the relative merits of Protestantism versus

Catholicism for early modern women, but our study suggests that Catholic conversion appealed to women of high birth. As women of significant social standing, the female converts in our study possessed a greater degree of freedom than women of lower social class. Queen Christina, for instance, wielded enormous political power and was therefore less subject to any Counterreformation restrictions on women. Although the English converts were not royal, they enjoyed great social power, which, in Protestant England,

30 Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008), 230. 31 See Mark Greengrass, The French Reformation (New York: Blackwell, 1987). - 78 -

would be untouched by Catholic reforms. Thus, restrictive Catholic policies had less purchase for women of high birth, allowing them to convert on intellectual, rather than practical grounds.

The importance of women’s religion became a foremost concern when considering the offspring of a marriage. The most important example is found in the marriage between

Charles and Henrietta Maria. The marriage contract between Henrietta Maria and Charles stipulated that their children be raised in the Catholic tradition. This provision was so controversial that it was withheld from the public in fear of a popular revolt. Henrietta

Maria, therefore, oversaw the spiritual rearing of her children – a fact which would have memorable consequences later in the century. Because women in early modern Europe had a diminished public profile, they practiced religion in the domestic sphere through daily rituals and the raising of children.32 Therefore, the spiritual care of children provided women another method to exert influence within the family domain.

V

Conclusion

Brokers played a crucial role in the conversion of early modern intellectuals. Jesuit conversion brokers formed an important web of conversion activity throughout Europe, and their methodical approach to conversion appealed to early modern intellectuals.

Through their brokers, Holstenius, Digby, and Montagu extended their intellectual curiosity into the spiritual realm and applied the same methods of academic research to religious inquiry. The post-conversion lives of these figures reveals a profound

32 For case studies on women and religion in the early modern period, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995). - 79 -

commitment to spreading the Catholic word. All three transformed themselves from converts into brokers, as they promoted their newfound faith among other inquirers. As brokers, their efforts succeeded with three prominent women, whose conversions had political, familial, and social consequences. Women’s conversion highlights a space in early modern society, where women could act independently of their male companions.

Through converting, women exercised considerable autonomy, because society can no better police a women’s conscience than a man’s.

- 80 -

EPILOGUE

The study of religious conversion draws us into the mind of the early modern convert. In this work, I have attempted to provide a roadmap for the philosophical and spiritual landscapes which the early modern controversialist traversed. Throughout, I have emphasized the intellectual and rational aspects of conversion to understand how philosophy informed religious belief and practice. Early modern scholars enjoyed unprecedented access to classical and patristic works, allowing them to draw from a far wider range of sources than their medieval forebears.1 By the seventeenth century, the availability of printed editions further facilitated the diffusion of ancient texts. Through our study of conversion, we have seen how ancient philosophical traditions took on new life in the minds of early modern intellectuals.

Studies in the field of book history have revealed that early modern scholars experienced a form of information overload, as they read, catalogued, and distributed a staggering array of written works.2 In addition, the fecundity of seventeenth-century philosophical thought carved out new schools in the fields of natural philosophy, physics, and theology.3 Therefore, when the early modern convert publicly defended his conversion,

1 See Stephen Nadler ed., A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (Cornwall: Blackwell, 2002), and James Hankins and Ada Palmer eds., The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy: A Brief Guide (Castello: Leo S. Olschki, 2008). 2 Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 2010). 3 See Stephen Menn, “The Intellectual Setting,” in The Cambridge History of seventeenth-century philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers, with the assistance of Roger Ariew and Alan Gabbey, Cambridge Histories Online 1998. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/007520374/catalog.

- 81 -

he stepped into a rich and daunting world of discourse. Unlike purely academic discourse, however, arguments about conversion could upend familial, social, and professional relations. When it comes to converting, intellectual and philosophical disputes became matters of public concern.

Our study of Neoplatonism revealed how the scholarly works of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola reinvigorated Platonic dialogue in the fifteenth century. Their application of Platonism to Christianity represented a significant ideological leap because it threatened to undermine the primacy of Aristotle in Christian teaching. Through

Holstenius, I have argued that Ficino and Pico’s works assumed a new relevance in the context of seventeenth-century confessional disputes. In a period of religious division,

Holstenius was attracted to Neoplatonism’s eclecticism as a way to transcend the normal modes of controversial argument. Thus, Holstenius' trajectory complicates the neat division between Platonism and Aristotelianism in seventeenth-century discourse.

The story of our English converts, Kenelm Digby and Walter Montagu, developed in a quite different religious and social context. As Englishmen, Digby and Montagu's

Catholic affiliation alienated them from the majority religion of their home country. And although Montagu and Digby had a major ally in Henrietta Maria, English Catholics remained a marginalized minority without a distinctive philosophical tradition. Digby's time in Europe and his Jesuit education had left an Aristotelian imprint on his philosophy, and after his conversion in 1635, Digby set out to import Aristotelian thought into English

Catholic circles. This philosophical work attempted to bridge confessional divides through an ecumenical lens. Although Digby and Holstenius emphasized different philosophical frameworks, they both viewed philosophy as a way to unite differing Christian ideologies.

- 82 -

In the seventeenth-century, religion was the primary thread in Europe's social fabric, and religious identity was a salient, even defining, element of one's public image.

As a member of a prominent family, Montagu's conversion invited public condemnation, and his experience highlights how conversion could rarely be kept secret. Thus, Montagu’s story reveals how early modern intellectuals of high social rank publicly portrayed their religious transformations. In Montagu’s correspondence with Manchester, we see a dialogic epistolary exchange in which father and son created a body of controversy through letters. In this case, intellectual disagreements over the true church had practical consequences when Manchester attempted to block Montagu’s return to England.

Although conversion is fundamentally a personal gesture, individuals of noble birth risked rebuke from family and crown alike when their conversions became public.

As conversion brokers, Montagu, Digby, and Holstenius sought to promote the

Catholic word throughout Europe. Their roles in the conversion of early modern women remind us that women also wrestled with religious decisions and in some cases, even in philosophical terms. Elizabeth Cary, Christina of Sweden, Lady Purbeck, and Lady

Newport were highly literate scholars, who stood on an intellectual par with male controversialists. Both in public and private disputes, conversion became an act of personal empowerment for early modern women. In the private sphere, these women threatened to upset the family religion when they began to educate their children according to the Church of Rome. For early modern women, conversion offered a way to express their intellectualism, while also expanding their authority in the domestic sphere. Although historians disagree about the impact of the Reformation on women, I suggest that the act of conversion itself afforded women spiritual autonomy. No Christian theologian had ever

- 83 -

denied that women have a spirit, and through converting, women asserted their spiritual being.

As with all rich and complex topics, one study cannot do to the many facets of early modern religious conversion. This work has restricted itself geographically, temporally, and socially, as we have analyzed the experiences of a literate few as they traversed Europe in the seventeenth century. These limitations exclude the fascinating conversion stories among the Jews and Muslims of Europe, who drew on rich and varied philosophical frameworks of their own.4 A study similar to this one, which examines

Christian conversion to Islam, would deepen and widen our understanding of early modern religion in a novel way. Such a study could explore how Muslim converts engaged

Christian claims or how early modern Muslims assimilated the newly converted into

Islamic society.

This study has largely overlooked the relationship between religious controversy and the New Science. Many early modern controversialists, including Digby, contributed to and learned from developments in natural philosophy. The rational and left an indelible impact on the way intellectuals understood their faith. A study that examines how the New Science influenced conversion would improve our understanding of early modern religious belief. Further, such an investigation could explore the intellectual antecedents of and which emerged in the Enlightenment.5

4 For a study of Jewish conversion to Catholicism, see Kaspar von Greyerz, “Portuguese Conversos on the Upper Rhine and the Converso Community of Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Social History 14 (1989): 59-82. 5 See Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2012).

- 84 -

By observing the effects of the New Science on the convert, we would gain important insight into the boundaries of faith during the conversion process.

I view the seventeenth century as a working-out of sixteenth-century trends and developments. By the 1630s, the Reformation, the Counterreformation, and the English

Reformation were decades in the past, but many of the problems posed by these movements remained unsolved. In the seventeenth century, war became a common response to these problems as England and the Holy Roman Empire engaged in protracted religious struggles. But the conflict between competing confessions was not always fought on a grand scale. Often it took the form of individual religious conversion, in which women and men alike reconfigured their spiritual identities. For early modern intellectuals, this transformation of faith was steeped in a rich philosophical landscape. Although emotion, social position, and professional opportunities all influenced the decision to convert, the wealth of classical, late antique, and contemporary religious sources elevated conversion to an intellectual level. For the early modern scholar, a turn of the soul could only follow a turn of the mind.

- 85 -

APPENDIX I

The following is a transcription of Walter Montagu’s second letter to his father, written sometime between July and November 1636. The letter is housed in the Bodleian’s

Rawlinson Manuscripts under the shelf mark, Rawlinson MS. D. 853 fols. 166v-169r. To my knowledge, the letter has never been published, and I know of only one reference to the letter in the historiography.1 According to Professor Milton, the manuscript was written in the hand of William Sancroft (1617-1693), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1677-1690.

The writing is neat, but somewhat cramped on long sheets of paper (~12 x ~6 inches), which were subsequently bound into a folio. There is some splattered staining on the second page and each page is watermarked.

I present a full transcription of the letter with minimal editorial alterations. The letter is largely legible, and in cases where I could not decipher a word, I have made bracketed inline notes. I have consistently rendered the letter thorn as “y” to convey the letter’s abbreviated style. In other instances, however, I have eliminated abbreviations to facilitate reading.2

1 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 294, note 127. 2 For a study of letter-writing practices in the early modern England, see James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

- 86 -

A 2nd Letter of Mr Walter Montagu, in Reply to his Father's Answer.

My Ld. I have recd yr Lr dated May 20th 1636 in Answer to mine, dated Nov. 21. 1635 for which I give yr Lp most humble Thanks; as for the Comfort it hath brought me in the Testimony of yor Charitie's Mastery of yor dis=pleasure wch I may iustly hope may gain thus much farther upon it, your Acceptance of my interpeton [interpretation] of my Concealment of my dissatisfaction of the religio I had recd fro you, wch is the pt of my Duty, you seem most to misconstrue, when I oppos'd it, as a Qualifon of yor Displeasure by the avoidance of a Disobed yt [that] might aggravate my imputed Offence. For having pus'd most of wt hath been sd by yor most dextrous Divines, or latest historians in the pticulars, I applied my Energy to; & havg often heard yorself alledge yr Reasons, as Satisfcon [satisfaction] to you, which seem'd to me deficient: My Duty psuaded me, yt it was better peserv'd in my Dissentg fro yor Opinion without Conteston yn in adding to it the Transgressg of yor Authority; so as, I did not acccompt it an Act of Omissio, but of Reverence & Respect to yor Lp. wch if ^you shall please to understd so, I shall not need to endeavor to clear my mind of yt Stain of interessed [undecipherable] Seducement, you brand it wth: For i conceive, you Lay yt upo it, as a punishmt of yor, not a Crime of mine. and so take it as a Sentence of yor displeasure, not a note of yor judgment. And since I need not fear the Malignity of your Rest of the World for my Judge in ys Case; I must not apprehend the Benignity of a Father for my Acqttance.

2. Therf. I will pceed to the Defence of my Judgment: Wch since yor Lord hath indicted publickly, I may appeal fro yor sentence to all those, you have desir'd to make hearers of the Cause; & and I need not fear, yt those, who have pus'd [perused] my 1st Lett, have found any such offensive Exprobron of the Doctr. of the Ch. of Engld, as may partialize y agst me. And that will witness for me, I undertook only the Delivery of the motives that pevailed wth me for my change; not a ptic. Accompt of the Tenets of of the Cath. ch. wch Motives I wonder much to find yor, Lp censure as the Weakness of all other; & to affirm yt these 2 points (viz. Luther's being the 1st Inventor of ptestant Doctr. & the ptestant Churche's invisibility for many Ages) have receiv'd the clearest Satisfcon of all controverted points.

3. In all Energy I could never [abbreviation of never] hear of an Answer made to a Book of Dr Smith, intituled [entitled] De Authore prof. Ecchie, put out about 20 years; Wherein are proofs by the direct Confession of all kind of ptestants, Luth. Calv. & English That Luther was the Author of yr Religio; and that yr ch. was not visible before hims. And since yor Lp renounceth Luther for the Founder of yor Religion; you must eith. give him Satisfcon for givg him the Lie, or he must be condemn'd of Vanity & Falshood for havg sd of hims. primus fui, cui Deus Ea, qua nobis predicata sunt, revelare dignatus est. In wch Words his pesumptio is such, as he doth not Limit his Initiation to any Time; or place; but affirm hims. [scribbled out word] indefinitely the First, not only yt had preachd ptestancy but the first, to who G. had revealed it wch disclaims either Continuance, or Resumption, & implies a direct Instauration of his Doctrine. And I find this Attributio to himself granted him by the Apology of the Ch. of England (apud Illud p. 16.) Veritas tunc ignota & inaudita fuit, cuius Lutherg & Zwinglig accessessent [undecipherable] ad Evangelium. The

- 87 -

Testimonies of all prof. Writers in ys ptic. are so Obvious, as the Citation of more were supfluous: Especially when we may qtt all these Advantages of yr own Witnesses, & put the Cause to a Trial upo the Evidence, wch we may demand of it; to produce any One, yt had taught or believ'd before Luther Justifon by espec. Faith [scribbled out word] only; wch Tenet is confessed to be the Soul of ptestancy. If they can pduce any precedent for the Doctr. we will grant it a farther Antiquity than Luther: But certainly in the Records, yor Lp said are extant, to deliver the Succession of all yor Tenets in all Rigor, you will not find this particular.

4. But yor Lp doth so much disclaim Novelty, as you will derive your Tenets ^no Lower, yn the primitive ch. if yor Divines would have join'd Issue upo these Evidences, the Case had long ago been judg'd beween us. But most of y [them] avoid this Trial: as Dr Whitaker (Contr.2.9.6.c.3.p.498) Etsi papistre ex patribg forte, & Conciliis nos nulla afferant, ex qbg [scribbled out word] probant, si tenero quad, qua illis loculis tenebantur; nos tamen efficiunt, qd cupiunt; qa nos ad tempa Xi & Aplos [unclear superscript]. pvocang & qcqd post hos proferunt etsi

[page 2] etsi in polycarpo, ignatio, Irenao Justino m. (wch first Two were in the 1st Age, the other in the 2nd & similibg pferant; nos tn Antiqua ei negabimg, nisi possunt önder, Xu, &Aplos idem docuisso. And Dr. Humphrey (in vit. Juelli) repehends him for appealing to your Ch. of the 1st 600 yy. Saying, Nimi largitus est, & [indecipherable] & Ecclia quodamodo spoliavit. But if the pt. Divines are now grown so much better affected to Antiqty, as to yield to the Decisio of the prim. Times; yo Trial will be readily accepted by the Catholiques. And Since yor Lp saies, that there is not any one point of yor Faith, but you are able to shew, had Maintainers, few, or many, in all Ages since the Aples [apostles] you may safely agree to , And since this is to be done, I would beseech yor Lp to shew me this Article of Justifon by special Faith alone maintain'd in the prim. ch. And if the supstructures of popy, as yor Lp calls y, have had Counter-batteries rais'd agst y by some, or other in all Ages; I would fain see some Breach made upo these main pillars of the Rom. Ch. in the 1st 4 Ages aft X. the Sacrif. of the Mass, wch Invocatio of Sth [indecipherable], the praier for the Dead. The Existence of those Foundations hath been often demonstrated the Cath. Church.

5. But altho this could be pform'd (wch was never, nor needs ever be apprehended) the Citon of some One, or other in all Ages, whose Oppon is peetended to make the Introductio of the Innovon [], you attribute to the Rom. Ch: this would not vindicate protestancy fro being the Child of Luther. For all are compos'd of Funda=mentals, the essentials of it y; so ptestancy implies all the Fundamentall points of the Doctrine. Theref. to prove Luther was not the Author of the Religio, some other must be pduced, yt held all the fundamental points of it before him; Therf. till this be pform'd & not some one holdg some one in one Age, & Another some other aft him. Therf. till this be pforme'd I can find no Ground to retract my Opinion of Luther's being the In=ventor of the Substance, & fundamental points of ptestancy.

- 88 -

6. Yor Lp pposes to me a stronger Argt to convince me of Error yn ever I mett wth; alledging, yt yor Writers carry the List of pfessed ptestants thro all those Spaces of those many Ages, where in my Engy, I could find only Vacancy; & most of yor Tenets maintain'd even by the Suffrage of the ancientest & Learnedest of the Rom. pty. If yor Lp had addres'd me to any ptic. Writer, where I might have found the Legitimate Discount of yor Opinions; I shd have applied mys. to your Satis=factio above all other; & shall allw. expect this your Directio, wth so little Obsti=nacy, as wn ever yor Lp shall show me an authentick List of psons, pfessg entire ptestancy, (I mean, all the fundamental points thereof) in all Ages successively X down fro the Aples, or Later; I will ingenuously retract my pesent Opinions, as Errors & submitt to what you sumon me. Therf. if pt. Writers will deal substan=tially in this point; let y lay down the fundamental points of ptestancy & shew, yt they have had pfessors in all Ages. This will convert many of more con=siderable judgments, than mine.

7. As for Waldo, Wickliff, & Hus, it cannot pass for an Exprobron of ptestancy, to say, They had scarce any Relation to it; considerg the enormous Errors, they are convinced of. But yor Lp challenges y as yor pedecessors, in Opposition to the papacy. This Virtue we allow y. How they agree wth you in the main points of Doctr. I can o conceive; wn it appears plainly by Calvin's Confessio, yt the Waldenses went to Mass, & believ'd the real pesence in the Sacrt; for wch Calvin himself renounceth y. And to avoid Tediousness in the ptic. if you shall please to puse [peruse] a short Chapter in Dr Smith's Book, De Auetore ptestanticae Ecclia; you will find y all 3 by the confessions of yor own pty disclaim'd. So as yor Lp may be pleas'd to consider, yt an Oppon to the papacy doth not prove an Iden=tity of Religio: And yor Lp will excuse me, if I can not find, how my first Suppositio fails; wch was not, That Luther was the first Invader of the papacy but the first Inventor of essential ptestancy.

8. The 2d point, (touchg the necessity of continual visibility in the true Cath. Ch.) I conceive, was sufficiently prov'd out of the place cited of S. Austin. Be=sides, the Confessio of yor own Divines settles yt Foundon; so as you are oblig'd my Ld, to yt pformance, you have undertaken, To demonstrate in all Times both a visible Number of pfessors of yor Doctrine, & an apparent Successio of pastors. This was never yet done; nor have the Catholiques been wantg in their Solicitatio of this Task. So as the Questio, yt asks, Where that pt. Ch. was before Luther, can in no sense seem vain; unless it be in the reqring an Impossibility; wch unless

[page 3] unless yor Lp had undertaken, I shd have believed over: Now I will rest in that Expectation.

9 The interpeton yor Lp makes of those yor Writers, I cited, tends to this purpose, to distinguish betw. an Obscurity, & Invisibility, so as they allow the Ch. a Latency, but under so thin a Veil, as the Lineaments may be still perceivable, tho the Color be shadowed. These Lineamts of accountable visi=bility are those, we demand of y: But they have the React to seek y himself for in the same place they delineate none. We admitt of Degrees of Clarity in the Ch.'s Light, so as the Questio is o [not] about the comparative Obscuratio,

- 89 -

but the abs. Extinctio of it. The Light of Grace (wch is the Ch.) is of a farr different Nre [nature] fro the Light of Nre, the Sun; Who's Effects may be manifest, while his Body is invisible: whereas the Body of the Ch. while it is inconspicuous, can dispense no Rais of Illuminatio. Therf. much less must we allow the Ch. to have the Similitude of settg wth the sun; wch is yt we maintain it incapable of, not of a comparatives Accessio, or Remission of Splendor. And of the direct going-down we challenge the pt. Ch. But certainly the Variatio of the Ch.'s Object are these Degrees of Brightn. can never deceive anybody in the Knowl. of here: For in this she may fittly be compar'd wth the Sun, (In soli posuit Tabernacula sunt) Who's Alteron in the Degrees of Brightn. can never make it mis=takable for any other Object. Wn yor Lp shall pesent to me the palpable Object of yor Ch's Successio, you shall find no Defect in the visible Organs: & wn you have laid the Ground in philosophy & made yor Ch. visible then the Rest will be forcible. You must shew these Strictures of Visibility discernable in yt obscure Condon, is objected to yor Ch. & those Lights, wch appear'd in yt Intervall of Darkness, I accus'd it of.

10 This a Questio, my Ld, wch I do not see, how any Bodie's Disaffectio can avoid, the Decisio of. For it being a Matter of Fact; once agreeing upo what is to be demonstrated, that Controversy must end upo the Demonstron. And this Specifon of the fundamental points of ptestancy is that, wch hath been so earnestly desir'd by the Catholiques; & the Want of it is yt, wch hath kept this point so long undecidable. For the ptestants reckon all those, they can assemble in all Ages, that have oppos'd the papacy in any of these points, for yr pedecessors. Wn we do not deny, yt there may be ptic. Heresies in all Ages produced; but yt doth not constitute ptestancy. But if the Fundamentals be once specified, & the proof of yr pfessio in all Ages pduced; no pversness in Catholiqs can defeat the Determinatio. We do not reqre of yor Rectors, my Ld, to pduce continual marks of the comon Splendor of the Ch. as temporal peace, Local succession of pastors [punctuation is caught in the binding - most likely a period or colon] We confess, these may be interrupted by psecutio; but an universal extirpon of y cannot happen. And since they confess but such a Latency, as the true Ch. was reduced to in the times of Arianism; let y bring out the refugiale Brethren for so many Ages out of the Receptacles, we will be content wth less yn a S. Athanasius or a S. Hilary; who in yt time verified S. Austin's Mark of the true Ch. Semper in suis firmissimis eminit. So as, if no such can be specified; All agreeing, that the purity of Doctr. (wch yor Lp calls the prop Splendor of a Ch.) can never be extin=guished; since it must be inherent allw. in some subject, it can be plac'd in none but the Rom Ch. wch hath allw. been an eminent one.

11. Of the 3 thgs, yor Lp pposes to me to consider, the First is, That the great Master hath ordain'd a Vicissitude of sufferg, & pspity for his Ch. militant. This is confest: But we know, yt X hath vindicated it fro such a sufferg, as his own; fro being put to death, & buried, & after yt to rise again: this is yt passion, we exempt it fro. We maintain the Ch. more glorious in her psecutio, yn her Triumph: bec. in yt she is allw. visible, & virtually most eminent. We receive wt Tertullian sth, as prop for her; Duritia extollitur, distruitur Mollitii. The Churche's prop Divisa is a compass, wth Dum primor, amphior: But we must not allow her such an Attribute, as Tacitus gives the Images of Brutus, & Cassius, Eo magis, pefulgebant, q'd non visibant[ur]: For a total Invisibility anihilates her essence. And this is yt, we condemn the protestt Ch. upon by her own Confession. The

- 90 -

[page 4]

12. The second is, That Visibility represented by a numerous Multitude, Local Suc=cession &c was not considerd in the first times, while the Ch. stood sound. I know not how soon yr Writ's will date the Ch.'s sickness: But S. Austin useth those, as the m. [main] convincg Argts agst the Donatists. & S. Jerom in divers ["divers" is abbreviated] places glories in the of the Ch. pred by her contin. Visibility. Yor Lp would inferr, yt Visibility may not be the probate of the true Ch. by the Isräelites Ch. in the time of Elias. If you mean the Ch. in the tribes under the KK. of Samaria, yt was but a ptic. Ch. wch as it may pish [perish], so much more be invisible: But if the Ch. und [abbreviation of under] the KK. of Judah, the Scrip. wittnesses not only her Visi=bility, but her Flourishg, & so confirms oE [abbreviation is unclear] Doctr. And the Aples were themselves Mark enough in the Ch. aft they were made a formal one. In the time of Arianism, probates of Faith were extant in S. Athanasig, S. Hilary, so Ensebig, Livinensis, & many other. And the Script. testifies, that even in the time of AntiX the ch. shall be visible: & it is confest even by ptestants, as may be seen in the prot. Apologii. trac.2.c.3 Buling. in Apocal. serm. 62: Declarate peclara quad Visioni, quon Xg vult Ecclia suo nihi=lo meng continua esse sub AntiX: imo etia celebrem. If AntiX be already come, it must have been in the invis. Ch. for certainly he hath not been conspicuous.

13. The third is, That the Succesio, Rome brags of, is a deceitf [undecipherable] whereby to measure the Truth of a Ch. bec. a true Ch. may be without it. This is easily answer'd by distinguishg betw. the true universal Ch. & a ptic. one. The Successsio of the universal Ch. is a cert. [undecipherable] to prove the Truth of it; bec. as the true universal Ch. can o err, so the psonal successio of her pastors can want the successio of true Doctrine. Likew. the succesion of a ptic. Ch. is a cert. [undecipherable], wn it hath had a long, & quiet possessio, & can o be judicially convinced of any Variatio fro ^the true Doctrine. And such is the successio of [word scribbled out] the ptic. Ch. of the City of Rome. For the true Universal Ch. would never suffer a false one to continue in an unquestion'd petence of Truth, wn it can judicially convince it of error: And the Ch. of Rome was in qet [quiet] consented pos=essio of the Truth for many Ages, & remains still in yt Right; For she was never judicially convinc'd by the ptestants; who agst all Form of Judgemt plaid the Accusers, Witnesses, & Judges. But the Gr. Ch. can o plead her successio as a mark of the Truth: bec. she hath been judicially convinc'd of Errors, & acknowledg'd y in general Councils at Lyons, & Florence.

14. And thus the seemg Difference betw. Bellarmin, & Stapleto is easily reconciled. For Stapleton means, ^That the Succesio in the universal Ch. or such a ptic. One, as hath been fro many Ages in a qet [quiet] possessio of the Opinio of havg allw. taught true Doctr. & can o be judicially convinc'd of the contrary, is a cert. sign of the true Ch. And Bellarmin saies rightly also, That every successio is not a certain sign thereof; as in a ptic. Ch. wch was never in an unquestion'd possessio of the true Doctr. or can be judicially convinc'd of Error. Yor Lp saies, That a false ch. may have Successio. Some it may have; but not so ancient, as one of Doctr. & pfessrrs fro X & the Aples; & the true Ch. must derive, & prove those Genealogies from them. There is this Difference, my Ld, betw. the Succesio of the

- 91 -

true universal ch. & a true ptic. The first can o suffer a mont's discontinuance of her pastors: The last must needs have those intermissions by Nre [nature], if not by Malice, & Accidt. But the Conexion of the Links is still wrought upo, & at least the Concatinatio carried on by the divine pvidence. Such is the contin. successio of the ptic. ch of the Citie of Rome. If the pt. Ch. can shew any such Chain of Successio, we will allow it 2 or 3 feminine Links into the Accompt; tho no such can be prov'd in the Roman. And me thinks, yt shd not be so scandalous to the pt. yt allow yt sex the being Head of the Church.

15. We deny not, my Ld, but there may be a ptic. Ch. that may be a true One wthout even any successio at all: as all the Churches, yt have been or shall be establish'd amongst , or Heathens in the true Cath. Faith; Bec. true Churches by yt Incor=poration into the universal: And of such Tertrullian sth, They become Aplicall in the first embracg the Doctr. of the Aples. But the Questio betw. the Cath. & prot. is wch of y is the true universal ch. of X. wch we both agree is but one by [undecipherable] Creed; & yt must have a visible successio uninterrupted in pastors & pfessors fro the Aples. And to ys purpose I cited the place out of Eps. IV wch yor Lp confesses it proves I never meant to inferr a Necessity of a Local [scribbled-out word] uninterrupted succession of y, wch I know many Accidents may

[page 5] may discontinue: Therf. I hope, yor Lp, may recall yor Censure of my Weakn. in my Informon of mys. in this ptic. I hope I have given yor Lp, if o [not] a satisfactory Reaso, yet a dutif. excuse for my not joing you in the Disqsitio of my Doubt. Yor Example doth justify my Examinon of the ground I was to found my Faith upon & I may truly say, Quotiies palpitavit mihi cor tremulo [undecipherable] before I settled. But aft some Fluctuatio in Controversy, I found the Ground to anchor on; That the True was yt, wch had constantly & continually fro X held the true Faith, wch is conteen'd in the Script. wthout Sepon [separation] in Coion [condition]: fro a Xn ch. preexistent. For true Faith alone will o conclude the true Ch: For schismatiqus hold true Faith, as ptestats teach else they could o be distinguishd fro Hereticks; & yet are not the Ch. Coetus visibilis Fideliu [ending of "Fideli-" is abbreviated] is as reqseti to the true ch. as Faith: So as a Discontinuance of her, & Separon fro a Xn Church peexistent, was yt, wch did clearly convince her to me of not being the true ch. of X.

16. By this yor Lp may be pleas'd to consider, That pesent [present] true Faith alone is not the infallible mark of the true universal Ch: wch is the m. received, & m. dangerous Error of ptestants. If yor Lp will be pleas'd to consider the Cath. Assertio, & yt the Script. singly left unrestrain'd to every ["every" is abbreviated] Bodie's Interpeton is not a competent Rule of Faith; you you can o be scandalized at it: & taken wth the explicon of the anc. Ff & Drs of the Ch. we admitt it so. Doth o [not] S. Austin say as much, affirmg, That if the Authority of the Ch. were taken away, he would o believe the scriptt? And yor own Divines teach the same.; as you may see in the prof. Apol. tract.2.cap.[***3***].C.11º. sub decisimi prima. But yor Lp gives much less credit to the Ch. yn the Script. warrants, in saying, she can o secure you of yor Salvon: Wn the Script. saies, this is the pillar, &

- 92 -

Strength of Faith Truth; - agst wch the Gates of Hell shall o prevail; - who the [undecipherable] Gh. teacheth who heareth, heareth X. No other place of Script. can certainly give me a greater Assurance of my Salvon, yn these are of Auctority for my Relying on the Church.

17. And Whereas yor Lp insists most upo ys, yt, wch is the true Ch. must be tried only by the Script. It is cert. yt it could o allwaies; as in the Law of Nre [nature], & of Moses; the Ch. being cöeval wth the first, & pecedent to the Last. But now We All (as She) may be tried by the Script. tho we do o deprive her of her other infall. Marks of traditio. Bec. the Script. expresses plainly the lively, & insep. Qualities of the true Ch: altho ^it she do o unquestionably specify all her Doctr. if you [undecipherable] the Ch. to prove hers. [herself] by any way but Script. you leave her nothg to say for hers. to infidels, & such as deny, or can o undstd Script. How the Ch. may be prov'd by the Script: S. Austin hath shew'd agst the Donatists yt denied all other Trial: agst whoever he brought these Qualities of the true Ch. as beginng at Jesus., & being fro thence spred thro the whole World; wch pptycan be found in no false Xn Ch. I have inform'd mys. of the Words, yor Lp cited out of S. Crysost. that referr so totally to the Scriptt. for all controversies; & find, they are none of his; but the Authors of the Impf. [imperfect] work upo Matth. who was an Arian Heretick; so as yt impugn's his Auctority.

18. But I will cite to yor Lp a place of S. Austin, liable to no Recusations; yt directs us for the true Sense of the Script. to repair to the Ch. S. Aust.l.istra Crisco C.33º: Qnon. Sensu scriptn fallere o p: qsqs falli metuit huig Obscruitate Quaesti=onis, eadem ecclia, de illa consulat, q sine ulla Ambiguitate Scripta. demonstrat. And we will submitt ourselves willgly to St. Austin's Directio, to oE Father's will, & Test. for the Faith he hath bequeath'd us; so it may be prov'd in yt Court, he hath erected for the Judgemt of it, wch the H. Gh. teacheth all truth; & who heareth not, heareth not X: so as no Appeals can be made to a higher Court for Explicon of ys Testament: And in ys we will plead our cause. So, as, the ppties [properties] of the true Ch. are so explicitly recorded in the Script. as she may be judg'd by y the fitt decider of all controversy; & therf. of all the points of Doctr. not necessary to be literally - specified, where this is, That she can o erre. So as this answers the comon Demand of the ptestants, A single Authority out of the Script. for only ptic. we hold; Wn havg prov'd by the Script. yt this Cath. Ch. hath the only Marks that demonstrate the true Ch. of X. We have an implicit Warrant for her infallibility in those points, she can not literally shew in the Scripture. Thus

[page 6]

Walt. Montagu, & his father's Letters, with a Treat. by Dr. Holdsworths

19. Thus, my Ld, I hope I have defended my Resignatio of mys. the the Ch. of Rome fro the insconsiderateness, you chare me wth. M'y psistance can o be calld des'pate [desperate] since it rests upo such Reasons, as you have but yet pmis'd the Removal of. And if your Lp will enter into the same Condon (wch were but reasonable justice, sinceyou allow, the true Ch. must have a demonstrable successio) We shall infallibly meet again in one comunio of Faith. What I sd of my fortune, my Ld, was not to minister any thg to

- 93 -

it's [undecipherable] but to shew, that the Infirmity, or Loss of it shall never be imputed to the Charge of the Kg's Bounty, or Benignity upo ys Occon. As destitute of all pefermt [preferment] I may justly disclaim all petence to his Rewards; not by the For=fiture of any Claim, or petentio [pretention]; for Fidelity both to the Kg, & Country i so reqsite a Duty, as it can o be brought as Meritorious by a good Catholique. We allow of no Works of Superogon [supererogation] in the Kind: And I shall allw. so much im=prove in ys Opinio, as I shall believe mys. indebted to y both so much by my Religio, as all the Scruples, I shall have of my Endeavors, shall be, yt they can hardly be completory [complimentary] wth the Injunctions of my Faith. When I consider, my Ld, you derive your greatest Afflictio fro yor Tenderness of my Soul; I may desire your Lp to ease yours. [yourself] of yt Care, by the Opinio of most of yor Divines; & in yt Acqitatio [acquittance] of yours. you shall give me a greatest Blessg. my Life is capable of.

20. Thus, my Ld, I have made you an answer, both satisfactory to my Consc. & agreable to the duty, & Humility of my Nre: And I shall pray G. that He would so bless me in it, yt it may at least deliver me fro yor Displeasure, & give you yt peace, & Acquiescience, wch nothg but my confs. shd. ever have hazarded the Interruptio of; So I may most inocently, & do most x humbly beg your Blessg, as

Yor Lops most obedient Sonne,

A Rescinder to the Reply foregoing. Exoriari aliquis! ----- The Task is not hard: [*]κὶ γὰρ [*]πανλαχᾶ τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ λάμβανει1

1 I thank Christopher Howarth for help in preparing the Greek postscript.

- 94 -

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

I. Manuscript sources Cambridge, Magdalen College Pepys Collection, no. 8383: Tom Killigrew, “Letter on Loudun”

Cambridge, University Library 8.39.4: Walter Montagu, Miscellania Spiritualia; or Devout Essaies (1647)

Harvard, Houghton Library MS Eng 986: Kenelm Digby to Walter Montagu (18 July 1636)

London, British Library MS Add. 22591: The Coppy of a Letter Sent from France (1641) MS Add. 29586: ____ MS Harley 6866: ____ MS Add. 41846: Kenelm Digby, Miscellaneous MS Add. 38175: _____

London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 943: Walter Montagu to Manchester in the Papers of William Laud and Others

New York, Morgan Library Morgan MS A., ff.120-3: Kenelm Digby to Magdalen Digby (17 July 1633)

Oxford, Bodleian Library Rawlinson MS D. 853: Walter Montagu to Manchester (undated) MS Selden Supra 108, ff.151-2: Digby, “Letter regarding Loudun” (1636)

Rome, Barb.gr.67: Procli Diadochi in Platonis Cratylum commentaria with annotations by Lucas Holstenius

Smith College Misc. MS 820: Kenelm Digby to Walter Montagu (15 October 1636)

Yale, Beinecke Library Osborn Files 4407: ALS to Hugh Peters (ca. 1641) ______4408: Digby to Unnamed Recipient (22 Nov. 1633)

- 95 -

II. Printed sources Augustine, The Confessions. Translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin. Bungay, UK: Penguin, 1961.

Boissonade, Jean-Francois, ed. Lucae Holstenii Epistolae ad diversos. Paris: Bibliopolio graeco-latino-germanico, 1817.

Digby, Kenelm. A Conference with a Lady about Choice of Religion. Paris: [Widow of J. Blagaert], 1638.

Digby, Kenelm. Two Treatises: in the one of which, the nature of bodies, in the other, the nature of mans soule is looked into: in way of discovery of the immortality of reasonable soules. London: Printed for John Williams, 1665.

Howell, James. “Letter to Lord Wentworth.” In The Earl of Strafforde's Letters and Dispatches: with an essay towards his life, edited by William Knowler. London, 1739.

Killigrew, Tom. “Letter on Loudun.” European Magazine 1. London: Philological Society of London, 1803.

Laud, William. The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1847-1860.

Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luther's Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe). Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883.

Mirto, Alfonso, ed. Lucas Holstenius e La Corte Medicea. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999.

Montagu, Walter. Miscellanea spiritualia; or Devout Essaies composed by the Honorable Walter Montagu, Esq. London: Printed for W. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, 1647.

Panzani, Gregorio. The memoirs of Gregorio Panzani: giving an account of his agency in England, in the years 1634, 1635, 1636. Birmingham: Swinney & Walker for G. G. J. & J. Robinson, and R. Faulder, London, 1793.

Peacham, Henry The Compleat Gentleman. London, 1634.

Coogan, Michael D. ed. The New Oxford Annotated NRSV. Netherlands: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007.

Woodcock, Richard. A Godly and Learned Answer (1608)

- 96 -

Secondary Sources

Ariew, Roger. “Descartes and scholasticism: the intellectual background to Descartes’ thought.” In The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by John Cottingham. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.

Armstrong. A.H. ed., "The Psuedo-Dionysius." In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, 457-472. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967. Albion, Gordon. Charles I and the Court of Rome. London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1935.

Altman, Janet Gurkin. Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1982.

Bakhtin, M.M. “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1990.

Bales, Eugene F. "Plotinus' Theory of The One." In The Structure of Being: A Neoplatonic Approach, edited by R. Baine Harris. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.

Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010.

Bligh, E.W., Sir Kenelm Digby and his Venetia. London: S. Low, Marston, 1992.

Blom, F.J.M. "Lucas Holstenius (15696-1661) and England." In Studies in Seventeenth Century English Literature, History, and Bibliography, edited by G.A.M. Janssens and F.G.A.M. Aarts, 25-41. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984.

Blum, Paul Richard ed., Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Buckley, Veronica. Christina Queen of Sweden. London: Fourth Estate, 2004.

Celenza, Christopher S. "The Revival of Platonic Philosophy." In The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, edited by James Hankins, 72-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Constable, Giles. Letters and Letter-Collections. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976.

- 97 -

Cooper, Thompson. “Montagu, Walter (1604/5–1677).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, revised by Edward Charles Metzger, edited by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004.

Corrigan, Kevin and Harrington, Michael L. "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited Edward N. Zalta. Last modified Spring 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/. Davies, Julian. The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of , 1625-1641. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.

Daybell, James. The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635. London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

De Certeau, Michel. The Possession at Loudun. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990.

Findeisen, Jörg-Peter. Christina von Schweden: Legende durch Jahrhunderte. Frankfurt: Societäts-Verlag: 1992.

Folliet, Georges. "Lucas Holstenius (1596-1661): Un émule de Saint Augustin dans sa conversion au platonisme et au catholicisme." In Sophies Maietores: Hommage a Jean Pepin, edited by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Goulven Madec, Denis O'Brien. Paris: Institut d'Études Augustinienne, 1992.

Foster, Michael. “Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) As Man of Religion and Thinker.” Downside Review 96 (April 1989): 35-58 and 101-125.

______“Walter Montagu, courtier, diplomat and abbot, 1603-77.” Downside Review 69 (April 1978): 85-102.

Friedensburg, Walter. "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Lukas Holstenius." In Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hambürgische Geschichte 12. Hamburg: Lütcke und Wulff, 1908

Fuchs, Peter. “Lukas Holste,” Neue Deutsche Biographie 9, 548-550. Berlin: Hess-Hütig, 1972. http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00016326/image_562.

Gilroy, Amanda and Verhoeven, W.M. eds. Epistolary Histories. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2000.

Grafton, Anthony and Mills, Kenneth eds. Old Worlds and New. Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2003.

Greengrass, Mark. The French Reformation. New York: Blackwell, 1987.

Gregory, Brad S. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2012.

- 98 -

Harcourt, Felice. Introduction to The Devils of Loudun, by Aldous Huxley. New York: Harper, 1953.

Häfner, Ralph. Götter im Exil: Frühneuzeitliches Dichtungsverständnis im Spannungsfeld christlicher Apologetik und philologischer Kritik (ca. 1590-1736). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003.

Hankins, James. Humanism and Platonism in the Renaissance. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004.

Hankins, James and Palmer, Ada, eds. The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy: A Brief Guide. Castello: Leo S. Olschki, 2008.

Harris, Baine R. The Structure of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.

Henry, John “Atomism and Eschatology: Catholicism and Natural Philosophy in the Interregnum.” The British Journal for the History of Science 15 (Nov. 1982): 211- 239. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4026219.

Hibbard, Caroline. Charles I and the Popish Plot. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983.

Huxley, Aldous. The Devils of Loudun. New York: Harper, 1953.

How, James. Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson’s “Clarissa”. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

Ignatius. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola: A Translation and Commentary, translated and edited by George E. Ganss. Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1992.

Kaplan, Benjamin J. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ., 2007.

Keblusek, Marika and Vera Noldus, Badeloch. Double Agents: Cultural and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Knoblauch, Hubert, et al. eds. Religiöse Konversion: Systematische und Fallorientierte Studien in Soziologischer Perspektive. Konstanz: Universitäts Verlag Konstanz, 1998.

Lake, Peter. “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice.” In Conflict in Early Stuart England, edited by Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, 72-106. New York: Longman, 1989.

- 99 -

____ “The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity, and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s.” In The Early Stuart Church: 1603-1642. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993.

Lloyd, Gerson. "Plotinus." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Last modified Summer 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/.

Lofland, John and Stark, Rodney. “Becoming a World-saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective.” American Sociological Review 30.6 (1965): 862–875.

Longueville, Thomas. The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck; a Scandal of the XVIIth Century. London: Longmans, Green, and co., 1909. Luria, Keith P. Sacred boundaries: religious coexistence and conflict in early-modern France. Washington: Catholic Univ. Press, 2005.

Martin, Michael. Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.

Mazur, Peter, and Shinn, Abigail. “Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World.” Journal of Early Modern History 17 (2013): 427-436.

Menn, Stephen. “The Intellectual Setting.” In The Cambridge History of seventeenth- century philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber, Michael Ayers, with the assistance of Roger Ariew and Alan Gabbey. Cambridge Histories Online 1998. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/007520374/catalog.

Mercer, Christia. “Platonism and Philosophical Humanism on the Continent.” In A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Steven Nadler. Cornwall: Blackwell, 2002.

Miller, Peter. Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2000.

Milton, Anthony. Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994.

Moshenska, Joe. “Sir Kenelm Digby's Interruptions: Piracy and Lived Romance in the 1620s.” Studies in Philology 113 (2016): 424-484.

Patrides, C.A. ed. The Cambridge Platonists. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980.

Pollack, Detlef. “Überlegungen zum Begriff und Phänomen der Konversion aus religionssoziologischer Perspektive.” In Konversion und Konfession in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Ute Lotz-Heumann, Jan-Friedrich Missfelder, and Matthias Pohlig, 33-59. Göttingen: Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, 2007.

- 100 -

Protevi, John. "Neoplatonism in Augustine's Confessions.” http://www.protevi.com/john/SH/PDF/Neoplatonism.pdf

Schneider, Gary. The Culture of Epistolarity: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 1500-1700. Newark: Univ. of Delaware, 2005.

Serjeantson, Richard. “Elizabeth Cary and the Great Tew Circle.” In The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, edited by Heather Wolfe, 165-182. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Serrai, Alfredo, ed. La Biblioteca di Lucas Holstenius. Udine: Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2000.

Siebenhühner, Kim. “Glaubenswechsel in der Fruehen Neuzeit: Chancen Und Tendenzen Einer Historischen Konversionsforschung.” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 34 (2007): 243–72. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/43570599.251.

Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992.

Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory 8 (1969): 3-53.

Stanford Friedman, Susan. “Das Sprechen über Grenzen, Hybridität und Performativität. Kulturtheorie und Identität in den Zwischenräumen der Differenz.” Mittelweg 36 (2003): 34-52.

Stelling, Lieke. “'Thy Very Essence Is Mutability': Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama, 1558-1642.” In The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature vol. 23, 59-83. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Sumner, A. “Art in context: Venetia Digby on her Deathbed,” History Today 45.10 (Oct. 1995): 20.

Torsten Petersson, Robert. Kenelm Digby, The Ornament of England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956.

Quantin, Jean-Louis. “Reason and Reasonableness.” Huntington Library Quarterly 74 (2011): 401-463.

Quantin, Jean-Louis. The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009.

Questier, Michael. Conversion, Politics, and Religion in England, 1580-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.

- 101 -

Visser, Arnoud. Reading Augustine in the Reformation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Von Greyerz, Kaspar. “Portuguese Conversos on the Upper Rhine and the Converso Community of Sixteenth-Century Europe.” Social History 14 (1989): 59-82.

Van Houdt, Toon and Papy, Jan. Introduction to Self-Presentation and Social Identification: The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times, edited by Toon Van Houdt, Jan Papy, Gilbert Tournoy, Constant Matheeussen. Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2002.

Wear, Sarah Klitenic. "Neoplatonism." In Oxford Bibliographies in Classics. Last modified 26 Aug. 2013. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com.ezp- prod1.hul.harvard.edu/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661- 0201.xml.

Weber, N.A. “Jacques Sirmond.” In Catholic Encyclopedia 14 (1913). Reproduced online at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jacques_Sirmond.

Weyer, Stefan. Die Cambridge Platonists: Religion und Freiheit in England im 17. Jahrhundert. New York: P. Lang, 1993.

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008.

Wolfe, Michael. The Conversion of Henri IV. Politics, Power, and Religious Belief in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993.

Wright, Susan. “Private Language Made Public: The Language of Letters as Literature.” Poetics 18 (1989): 549-78.

Zemon Davis, Natalie. Women on the Margins. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.

- 102 -

Department of History

Harvard University

Spring 2016

In submitting this thesis to the Department of History, I affirm my awareness of the standards of the Harvard College Honor

Code.

Name ______

Signature ______

Harvard College Honor Code

Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.