Penitence and the English Reformation

Penitence and the English Reformation Thesis is submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Eric Bramhall December 2013 ABBREVIATIONS BL British Library CCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CUL Cambridge University Library DCA Denbighshire County Archives ECL Emmanuel College Library, Cambridge EDC Ely Diocesan Records GDR Gloucester Diocesan Records JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography PRO Public Record Office PS Parker Society RLM Rylands Library, Manchester RSTC Revised Short-Title Catalogue TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Penitence and the English Reformation Introduction page 1 1 Penitential Practice on the Eve of the Reformation 13 2 Humanists, Penitence and Reformation in Early Sixteenth Century England 27 3 Penitence, Politics and Preachers 1533-1547 61 4 Repentance and Protestants in the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary I 93 5 Penance and the Restoration of the Marian Church 141 6 Penitence and the Elizabethan Church 179 Conclusion 251 Epilogue 257 Bibliography 263 Penitence and the English Reformation INTRODUCTION Penitence was of considerable importance in sixteenth-century England whether it was thought of as auricular confession and the sacrament of penance, or personal repentance and the penitent seeking “suche ghostly counsaill, advyse, and comfort, that his conscience maye be releved.”1 Prior to the Edwardian reforms of the mid-sixteenth century, the sacrament provided an opportunity, with the help of a confessor, for self examination using the seven deadly sins or the Ten Commandments, instruction in the basics of the faith, and the challenge to be reconciled with God and neighbours by performing penitential good works. These, and the priest’s absolution, were seen as necessary for salvation. But confession and the performance of penance as good works, priestly absolution, prayers for the dead and purgatory came to be seen by evangelical reformers as contrary to scripture and out of harmony with their key hermeneutic of justification by faith. Nevertheless penitence, expressed in prayers of repentance, mattered deeply to evangelicals too. Some even regarded auricular confession as helpful “if properly used”, and although they condemned the thought of obtaining God’s forgiveness by works of satisfaction as blasphemous, reformers such as Latimer valued restitution as a means of satisfaction to neighbours who had been defrauded or offended. Penitence mattered to everyone in sixteenth-century England whether they were concerned for the souls of deceased relatives thought to be in purgatory (or the future of their own souls), or were anxious that afflictions they were suffering were due to God’s providential judgement on their failure to repent. Grasping how and why attitudes to penitence changed over the course of the century, therefore, is important for a wider understanding of the Reformation in England. Such issues had pastoral, social, political and cultural implications throughout the sixteenth century. Historians have paid considerable attention to these questions. Writing his three volume history of confession at the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Charles Lea was not, however, concerned about the implications of penitential practice.2 His work remains a useful reference book only, for although he was factually thorough Lea was strongly anti-clerical. 1 The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings, (Oxford 2011), p. 25. 2 Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, (New York 1896). 1 He was fascinated by the operation of the church’s penitential system from the early church to his own day but never tried to see how it served people’s social and spiritual needs. In the second half of the twentieth century John Bossy and Thomas N Tentler produced important studies on penitence. Bossy saw changes in penitential practice from the late middle ages to the Counter-Reformation as a shift from social relationships to concern with personal guilt.3 In the middle ages, Bossy argues, penitents achieved reconciliation with God by being reconciled with the church. Whereas medieval confessions took place in public or semi- public in church, auricular confession in post-Tridentine Milan was in the privacy of the confessional box.4 He attributes this to a change of emphasis from the seven deadly sins to the Ten Commandments, seeing the seven as a system of “community ethics”, while the ten are primarily concerned with the individual’s relationship with God.5 The outcome, he argues, was a decline in what he calls “the moral tradition” or loving your neighbour.6 Tentler considered the psychological functions of the penitential system as “discipline (or social control) and consolation (or cure of anxiety).”7 He uses the phrase “sacramental confession” rather than “the sacrament of penance”, since he is more concerned with the structure and practice of the penitential system than with its theological rationale. The aim of the system, as he understood it, was to make the confessant aware of sin and forgiveness: to make him/her feel guilt and understand how it can be cured. He sees it as “a coherent system of religious belief and practice performing vital social functions.”8 In the process, however, he finds an unequal power relationship in which the clergy hold the keys and the laity submit. He argues that categories of consolation and discipline continued to be basic to penitential systems in the Reformation and although salvation through faith was liberating there was an increasing emphasis on ecclesiastical discipline.9 The seminal works of these two historians have been influential on much subsequent thinking on the subject of penitence. Bossy reminds us that penitential practice always has social (and cultural) implications and challenges us to attempt to see its impact on the average lay person. Tentler’s focus on the judicial side of the sacrament of penance raises the question of how church discipline was to 3 John Bossy, “The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation”, TRHS., (5th series 1975), p. 21-2. 4 John Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe”, Past and Present 47, (1970), p. 63. 5 John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, (Oxford 1985), pp. 35-38. 6 John Bossy, Peace in the Post-Reformation, (Cambridge 1998), p. 2ff. 7 Thomas N Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation, (Princeton 1977), p. xvi. 8 Ibid. 9 Thomas N Tentler, “Postscript”, Penitence in the Age of Reformations, eds. Katharine Lualdi and Anne T Thayer, (Aldershot 2000), pp. 240-259. 2 be exercised without the sacrament. The following study has attempted to deal with these issues. There has been considerable interest in the topic recently as exemplified by two collections of essays on penitence in the European Reformation. Penitence in the Age of Reformations10 provides a summary of more recent work on confession, which suggests interesting avenues for research into the subject in England. The essays consider the development of new forms of penitential practice on both sides of the confessional divide. Jesuits introduced general confession, not as a substitute for the sacrament but as a means of reviewing sins that had already been absolved with a view to breaking sinful habits and patterns.11 They also used penance in their missionary activities, by holding penitential processions and using theatrical methods to “shock penitents into a recognition of the continual threat which sin and evil pose in their daily lives.”12 Calvinists in France and the Netherlands introduced consistories which demanded explicit and often public expressions of contrition and remorse and applied a range of punishments from private admonition to complete public excommunication.13 Lutherans struggled to impose private confession before communion. This was eventually introduced in Nuremberg by order of the city council to give the impression of the sacrament following the city’s acceptance of the Interim. A further collection of essays, edited by Abigail Firey, is critical of the historiography of penitence, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.14 Protestants had focused on the “mythic importance” of the text of the Lateran Council decree of 1215 “Omnis utriusque sexus” but this, it is argued, enjoyed no special historical value for the manuals or how penitents experienced the sacrament. Most of the essays caution the handling of official decrees and documents as normative or definitive and ask about the interests and experiences of penitents themselves. These works (including Bossy and Tentler) focus on a longer time-scan and demonstrate the advantage of doing so – allowing us to trace major themes over time and compare and contrast Catholic and Protestant practices. For these reasons this study will take a similar approach. 10 Penitence in the Age of Reformations, eds. Katharine J Lualdi and Anne T Thayer, (Aldershot 2000). 11 Michael Maher, “Confession and Consolation: the Society of Jesus and its promotion of the general confession”, Penitence in the Age of Reformations, p. 185. 12 Jennifer D Selwyn, “’Schools of Mortification’: theatricality and the role of penitential practice in Jesuits’ popular missions”, Penitence in the Age of Reformations, p. 211. 13 Raymond A Mentzer, “Sin and Penitence in the French Reformed Community”, Penitence in the Age of Reformations, pp. 84f. 14 A New History of Penance, ed. Abigail Firey, (Leiden 2008), p. 2. 3 The above works give little consideration to penitential practice in England, with nearly all the evidence being drawn from the continent. Yet they raise important questions as to whether attitudes to penitence in the English Reformation promoted change from the social to the individual; whether ministry to penitents focused on pastoral care or church discipline; and whether there were new penitential ministries developed in England over the sixteenth century.

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