George Herbert

Chapter 16 George Herbert

Liam Peter Temple

“The fourteenth century has been rightly seen as the great age of English mysticism, but in some respects the seventeenth century does not lag far behind.”1 These concluding remarks in Bernard McGinn’s latest volume, Mysticism in the Reformation (1500–1650), hint at the rich vein of mysticism that emerged across a range of religious groups in seventeenth-century England, both from those happily thriving within the ecclesia anglicana and those who sought further reform. This chapter focuses on the “priest-poet-mystic” George Herbert as an example of a figure whose burgeoning spirituality was shaped by the doctrines of the Church of England and the Book of Common Prayer.2 This is not to say that Herbert was a lone figure, however; many other early seventeenth-century divines fell into this category and the conclusion of this essay will highlight others who need further investigation. To some Herbert is considered an uncanonized saint, to others he is an unacknowledged mystic.3 As a result, scholars have passionately disagreed over the nature of Herbert’s spirituality and his place within the broad spectrum of beliefs that formed English Protestantism. A particularly fierce debate concerns whether Herbert should be under- stood as an exemplar of a distinct emerging “Anglican” spirituality or as part of a wider Calvinist consensus that existed in the English Church before the rise of Laudianism. This debate has been driven by a much larger discussion concerning the nature and character of English Protestantism at the start of the seventeenth century. Critique of the concept of an insular and distinctly “Anglican” English Church has resulted in scholars coalescing around an understanding of a broad “Calvinist consensus” within the early Stuart church that featured a range of different interpretations of the doctrine of predestina- tion.4 The “icecap of Anglican insularity” has been melted and replaced with a more dynamic understanding of English Protestantism and its relation to

1 McGinn, mitr, 275. 2 Cummings, Eucharist and Ecumenism, 80. 3 Sheldrake, Heaven in the Ordinary, 2. 4 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists; Collinson, The Religion of Protestants.

George Herbert 329

continental religious developments.5 Despite this rejection of a binary opposi- tion between “Anglican” and “Puritan,” Herbert scholars have devoted consid- erable time arguing for his place in either category.6 Others, such as Daniel W. Doerksen, have suggested that Herbert formed part of a “conformist” core within the Church of England that contained a range of views, a fact reflected by the “generous ambiguity” toward controversial doctrines in Herbert’s poetry.7 As we will see below, Herbert was influenced by the same sources as many of the Puritans addressed by Randall J. Pederson and Tom Schwanda in the chapters that follow this one. After exploring some of these influences on Herbert, we will move on to discuss Herbert’s mysticism as found in his major works, The Temple and The Country Parson.8 We will conclude by exploring his impact on subsequent generations and offer some suggestions for future research.

I Herbert and Mysticism in England

Born in 1593, Herbert was a member of the powerful and aristocratic Pembroke family. His education at Cambridge was followed by a period as an Orator at the university in 1620 and then as a Member of Parliament in 1624. In Septem- ber 1630 he was ordained as a priest, living with his wife and three adopted children (from a deceased sister) as rector of the villages of Fugglestone and Bemerton, near Salisbury. He died less than three years later in March 1633. Herbert’s life was punctuated by bouts of ill health and frailty, reflected in poems such as “Affliction” and the lines “Sicknesses cleave my bones; consuming agues dwell in ev’ry vein.”9 Herbert likely wrote the poetry and prose eventual- ly published in The Temple and The Country Parson throughout his life, before

5 Collinson, “The Fog in the Channel Clears,” xxix. For continued arguments for the Church of England as a via media in reaction to this revisionist critique, see White, “The Via Media in the Early Stuart Church”; Bernard, “The Church of England, c. 1579–c. 1642”; Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles i. 6 For Herbert as “Anglican,” see Summers and Pebworth, “The Politics of The Temple”; Stew- art, George Herbert; Davidson, “George Herbert and the Architecture of Anglican Worship.” For Herbert’s Calvinism, see Lewalski, Protestant Poetics; Strier, Love Known; Hunter, “George Herbert and Puritan Piety”; Adrian, “George Herbert, Parish ‘Dexterity,’”; Clarke, “The Charac- ter of a Non-Laudian Country Parson.” 7 Doerksen, “‘Generous Ambiguity’ Revisited”; Doerksen, “George Herbert, Calvinism.” 8 Modern editions of Herbert’s main works include Wall Jr., George Herbert; Wilcox, English Poems of George Herbert. 9 Herbert, The Temple, 39, “Affliction.” All references to Herbert’s poetry that follow will give both the page number and the title of the poem where suitable.