Theatre of Truth: Performing Public Religious Disputation in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Home , Academy of Sedan, Charles Drelincourt, Daniel Featley, Dual loyalty, Festus Hommius, Geert Groote

David Lorne Robinson

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree History University of Toronto

Theatre of Truth: Performing Public Religious Disputation in Seventeenth-Century Europe

David Lorne Robinson

Doctor of Philosophy

History University of Toronto

2020 Abstract

This dissertation examines the practice of public religious disputation in early seventeenth- century Europe. It takes a transnational approach, examining disputations in France, England, and the Low Countries between 1598 and 1625. This approach highlights the ways in which common social and political circumstances created a climate for frequent disputations, but also how religious controversy was communicated across political boundaries. It argues that these debates were part of a wider culture of performance and became especially prevalent in religiously-divided communities where performances of religious unity like Corpus Christi processions had become contested. These disputations took the practice of academic disputation, still well regarded by both Catholics and Protestants as an effective method of inquiry, and relocated it in the homes of lay hosts. The lay audience thereby became active participants in the performance, debating clergy and performing their own religious identity. Disputations then became the subject of a more public debate as rumours about them spread and clerics exploited oral and manuscript communications networks and printing presses to vaunt their victories and denigrate their opponents, making use of negative stereotypes to solidify religious divisions.

State actors, seeing the utility of disputation in shaping public opinion, also sought to organize disputations in an effort to legitimize their religious policies. An examination of these ii disputations therefore contributes to our understanding of how religious divisions were framed and communicated in the early modern public sphere.

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Acknowledgments

A dissertation is not a solo project, and I could not have completed it without the contributions and support of many people and institutions. I would like to first thank my supervisor, Paul Cohen, for his advice, encouragement, and support throughout the project and through challenges and changes in both our personal lives. Nick Terpstra has provided insightful commentary at critical points during this project and has provided me with many opportunities for growth as a scholar over the years. Grégoire Holtz has also made many contributions to this project over the years and introduced me to a wealth of French scholarship that has enriched this work. Similarly, I must also thank examiners Nhung Tuyet Tran and Mirjam van Veen for their insights in reviewing the full dissertation.

This project could not have been accomplished without the generous financial support from the The Avie Bennett Award, the René Efrain Scholarship in French History, the Pre-Dissertation Research Award, the Doctoral Completion Award, and various research and conference travel awards from the Department of History, the School of Graduate Studies, and the Graduate Student’s Union.

I would like to thank the staff and librarians at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and the Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam who helped find and retrieve many of the sources consulted in this dissertation. The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies offered not only a space for research but also an intellectual community of early modern scholars from whom I have learned much. In particular, I would like to mention Natalie Oeltjen for her kindness and tireless work at the Centre and in organizing the Global Reformations conference where part of this dissertation was first presented.

I am grateful for the many scholars who have offered me support along this intellectual journey. Edwin Bezzina inspired my interest in early modern France during my undergrad and has continued to offer helpful advice over the course of my academic career. I owe my knowledge of Dutch history to Gary Waite who introduced me to the rich material of Dutch pamphlets and the historiography of religious tolerance in Europe, out of which my interest in disputations grew. Like so many early modernists who have studied at the University of Toronto, I owe a debt of gratitude to Natalie Zemon Davis for her interest and research advice in the early stages of this iv

project. I am also grateful for the comments of Emily Michelson that brought to my attention the similarities between disputations and sermons. This connection was further brought out through my work on the Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons Project, and I am grateful to Jeanne Shami, Anne James, and Jennifer Farooq for the opportunity to be part of that project.

I am especially thankful for the many friends and colleagues in Toronto whose camaraderie during the PhD program, during the 2015 strike, and in formal and informal conversations about our work, have enriched me not just as a scholar, but as a person. In particular, I want to thank Benji Lukas, Allison Graham, Alex Logue, Julia Rombough, Bethan Fisk, Lindsay Sidders, Kari North, Hana Suckstorff, Sarah Keeshan, and Robert Porter. I also want to thank Adrian and Suanne Miedema for offering my wife and me a community when we first moved to Toronto from the east coast, and for their support in trying times.

My parents, Cathy and Lorne Robinson, have been unwavering in their support. I owe my love of history in part to my mother, who fostered my interest in it during the years I was homeschooled. They have always been there to lend a helping hand, even when living far away in Newfoundland. This is no small thing given the frequent relocations that so often come with academic study. Since they moved to Ontario, their willingness to help out with their new little grandchildren has also been a great boon during the final stages of this project.

Finally, I must thank my wife, Amanda Robinson, whose support during this project has been essential. A PhD is a grueling and sometimes emotionally draining endeavour, but it was made significantly more bearable by her encouragement and companionship. She has always been ready with an encouraging word or insightful critique when needed. She accompanied me on, and helped plan, my research trip to France and the Netherlands in 2015. Moreover, her support has been unwavering even while she pursued her own career aspirations, obtaining a Masters in Library and Information Science and starting work at CEGEP Heritage College, as we balanced caring for two young children. She is truly an extraordinary person and I am fortunate that she has been at my side.

I dedicate this dissertation to our two children, Ernest and Eleanor. Eleanor will not remember me working on this project, but Ernest has already grown up while I have been writing it, and has been patient, as much as you can expect of a three-year old, while Daddy has been busy “making letters.” v

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments...... iv

Table of Contents ...... vi

1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Defining Disputation ...... 10

1.2 The Performance of Disputation ...... 12

1.3 Disputation and the Public Sphere ...... 17

1.4 Sources and Overview ...... 24

2 Staging and Performing Religious Debate ...... 27

2.1 Disputation as Path to Truth ...... 30

2.2 Disputation as Theatre ...... 37

2.3 Seventeenth-century “Private Conferences” ...... 43

2.3.1 Comparison: Pierre du Moulin vs. Pierre Victor Palma-Cayet, Paris 1602...... 52

2.4 Lay Women and Disputation ...... 58

2.5 Conclusion ...... 64

3 Private Conferences into Public Controversy ...... 65

3.1 The Issue of Conversion and the early modern Public Sphere ...... 66

3.2 Nancy, 1599: A case study in conversion, private conference, and its public aftermath ..74

3.3 John Fisher and Public Religious Controversy in England ...... 83

3.3.1 Baiting the Hook. Lady Buckingham and the True Church ...... 87

3.3.2 The Catch: Buckingham’s private conferences...... 89

3.3.3 The Fisher’s Net(work): the aftermath ...... 94

3.4 Jean Gontery, François Véron, and the Art of Making Private Conferences Public Controversies ...... 101

3.5 Conclusion ...... 113 vi

4 Clerical Duels ...... 115

4.1 Of Mice and Shit: The Gouda-Lansbergen Controversy ...... 124

4.2 “By their fruits ye shall know them”: uncovering false prophets in disputation ...... 138

5 The Promise and Peril of Public Disputation: The State and Debate ...... 157

5.1 The Role of Conference in England: James I and the Hampton Court Conference, 1604...... 162

5.2 “The most resonant and radiant theatre in the world:” Henry IV and the Fontainebleau Conference, 1600 ...... 176

5.3 The Perils of Public Disputation: The Conferences of the Arminian Controversy ...... 188

5.4 Conclusion ...... 201

6 Conclusion ...... 202

6.1 The Utility of Disputation ...... 202

6.2 Communicating Disputation ...... 204

6.3 Disputation and the Public Sphere ...... 207

6.4 National Comparisons ...... 209

Bibliography ...... 218

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1 Introduction

On 29 June 1580 a ship from Calais arrived in Dover carrying the Jesuit Edmund

Campion.1 This arrival, along with that of Robert Persons a week earlier, marked the beginning of the Society of Jesus’ English mission. The mission got off to a rocky start as the authorities in

Dover immediately arrested Campion. Fortunately for him, Dover’s mayor let him go and he proceeded on to London. Yet, despite his brush with the law, Campion did not keep his head down long. By early July, he had penned a letter to the Queen’s Privy Council. This letter addressed the lords of the council in nine articles. After briefly introducing himself and explaining his charge to preach the Gospel, minister the Sacraments and “instructe the simple,” he challenges “the Doctors, Maisters and chosen men of both Universities” to a disputation in which he will defend the Catholic faith with “proofes invincible.” Indeed, he claims, that “none of the protestantes, nor all of the protestantes living” could maintain their doctrine in such a disputation. Furthermore, if the Queen and her council were to attend this disputation, they would see “upon what substantial ground our catholicke fayth is builded, and how feble that syde is which by sway of the time prevayleth” and renounce their error.2 Campion entrusted this letter to an aristocratic lay brother, Thomas Pounde. But instead of simply delivering it to the council,

Pounde had it copied and it soon was distributed throughout the country.

1 The following paragraphs are largely based on Michael A.R. Graves’ entry for Edmund Campion in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Michael A. R. Graves,"Campion, Edmund [St Edmund Campion] (1540–1581), Jesuit and martyr," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last modified 3 January 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/4539. 2Edmund Champion; Meredith Hammer, The great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a Jesuite(London, 1581), 19-24. Recently republished in A Reformation Sourcebook: Documents from and Age of Debate, ed. Michael Bruening (North York: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 178-180.

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Not surprisingly, the spread of Campion’s so-called “Brag” did not go over well with the

English government. Converting English subjects to Catholicism became a treasonable offense and the proclamation of 10 January 1581 ordered the arrest of all Jesuits in the country. Campion avoided capture for several months, but on 17 July 1581, a Catholic informer directed authorities to the household of Edward Yates in Berkshire where Campion and several priests and laymen were arrested. Campion was taken to the Tower of London where he was tortured and interrogated. Nonetheless, he eventually was granted his request for a disputation, albeit in the most disadvantageous circumstances. Throughout the month of September, he debated a series of

Protestant divines on topics of their choice in the Tower. These debates were open to the public and, although Campion was permitted the use of only a Bible, witnesses claimed he defended his cause well. As word began to spread about his admirable defence of his beliefs and popular ballads began to circulate mocking the established church’s performance, further debates were cancelled. He was tried in November and convicted of treason. He was executed on 1 December,

1581.

In the context of a strongly anti-Catholic regime, in which open identification as a Jesuit was a sure path to imprisonment and execution, this story raises some important questions. Why would Campion inaugurate the Jesuit mission with an open challenge of disputation, thereby immediately provoking the regime to intensify its efforts to apprehend him? Moreover, why would his lay brother Pounde attract further attention by circulating and publishing Campion’s

Brag? Finally, with Campion apprehended and safely locked in the Tower of London, why would the Elizabethan regime essentially grant his request by organizing a series of disputations before his execution?

The answers to these questions take on a more general significance when one considers this controversy in its wider context. While the Campion affair generated perhaps an exceptional level of controversy for Elizabethan England, it was far from the only disputation that excited a public controversy in this period. In fact, disputations with imprisoned Jesuits were a frequent occurrence in both Elizabethan and Jacobean England, so much so that in 1615, arrested Jesuits being transported by boat to Wisbech Castle flung challenges of disputation over the walls of

Magdalene College as they sailed by.3 Across the Channel in France and the Netherlands, public disputations were even more common. The greater toleration offered to religious minorities in the wake of religious violence seems to have created an atmosphere that was ripe for public disputations to flourish. Émile Kappler has noted over 160 such disputations conducted in French between 1598 and 1685 (most of which occurred before 1630), and admits there must have been many more.4 Understanding the appeal of disputation is thus critical to understanding how

Europeans confronted the post-reformation context of religious pluralism.

This dissertation will examine public disputations in England, France, and the Low

Countries between roughly 1598 and 1625. Disputations were common throughout post-

Reformation Europe – indeed the spark that set off the Lutheran reform movement was Luther’s request for a disputation over indulgences – but this period in Western Europe appears to have been a particularly fertile moment for public disputation. This was in large part a result of a period of relative peace throughout the region. The French Wars of Religion came to a close (if only a temporary one) in 1598 with the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes offering a legal

3 Deborah Shuger, “St. Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere,” Huntington Library Quarterly 72:3 (September 2009), 318. 4 Émile Kappler, Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle : Avant- propos d’Olivier Christin (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2011).

4 framework for the toleration of France’s Reformed Protestant minority. In the Netherlands, years of religious war between the Protestant United Provinces of the northern Netherlands and the

Habsburg-ruled southern Netherlands wound down into a stalemate which led to the signing of a twelve-year truce in 1609. The English context was again slightly different. England had largely managed to avoid religious civil war, at least on the scale of its continental neighbours, and since

Elizabeth Tudor’s ascension to the English throne in November 1558, had weathered Europe’s religious turmoil. When James Stuart succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, he inherited a country that was (officially at least) firmly Protestant. However, James’ reign also helped establish a political context fit for disputation which resembled England’s continental neighbours. His efforts at rapprochement with Catholic Spain, particularly in the context of marriage negotiations between his son Charles and the Spanish Infanta in the 1620s, resulted in a period of relative toleration of

Catholic activities in the kingdom. Thus, unlike the inevitable executions that followed disputations between Protestants and Catholics in Elizabethan England, throughout Western

Europe in the early seventeenth, a political context was established which allowed for relatively free debate of religious controversy.

Scholars have studied disputations in these jurisdictions before, but have done so with a narrow national focus.5 These disputations were a regional phenomenon, a response to the shared context of religious pluralism, and the study of them benefits from a regional approach. This is highlighted by the circulation of news about disputations across linguistic boundaries and the

5 For England, see Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014). The definitive work on the subject for France remains Émile Kappler’s 1981 dissertation, recently republished as Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011). For the Dutch Republic see Marianne Roobol, Disputation by Decree: The Public Disputations between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious Policy during the Dutch Revolt (1557-1583) (Leiden & Boston, Brill: 2010).

5 transnational connections of disputants themselves. For example, French accounts of the

Fontainebleau conference between Philippe de Mornay and Jacques Davy Du Perron were translated and printed in both Dutch and English not long after the disputation in May 1600. The

English translation was published by Robert Persons and received a reply from Matthew

Sutcliffe, the dean of Exeter. News of the conference fell on fertile polemical ground in the

English context and it was integrated into an ongoing controversy between English Jesuits and defenders of the Church of England – a controversy not unlike the various debates between

Jesuits, Protestants, and Gallican Catholics in France.6

That a French disputation would enflame a printed controversy in England should not be surprising given the close connections of religious and political developments in the region.

There was of course the common religio-political conflict against Habsburg Spain in which both

France and England came to support the Dutch Revolt, but connections ran deeper than that.

Northern France and the Southern Netherlands became a hotbed for English Catholicism and the

Jesuit English mission in particular. Simultaneously, the region supported Dutch Jesuits working on recatholicizing Flanders and Brabant and establishing a mission in the Dutch Republic. As a result, people and ideas travelled fluidly across these borders. Historians have increasingly

6 T’samen-sprekinge gehovden te Nancy, tusschen eenen Docteur der Jesuiten ende eenen Capuchiner Monica en d’eene, ende twee Dienarent des Goddelijcken Woorts aen d’ander sijde. Inde tegenwoordicheyt van de Suster des Conincx van Vrancrijck...Hier is noch by-gevoecht Een waerachtich verhael vande T’samenspre-kinghe ghehouden te Fountainebleau den vierden dach in Mey Anno 1600. Tusschen Philips de Mornay Heere van Plessis, ende Jacques Bisschop van Eureux, in de tegenwoordicheyt des Conicx van Vrankrijck. Deventer: Jan Eversz. Cloppenborch, 1600; A trew discourse of the order observed in the assemble & meeting made by the leave of the king at Fontainebleau: for the effectuating of the dispute agreed upon, betwixt the Lord Bishoppe of Eureux, and the Sr. of Plessis Mornay, upon Thursday being the 4. of May Anno Domini 1600... / Translated out of French.. [English secret press, 1601?]. English Jesuit Robert Parsons published an English account in 1600, now lost, “A relation of the triall made before the King of France, upon the yeare 1600 betweene the Bishop of Evreux, and the L. Plessis Mornay, republished as part of his A Treatise of three conversions of England from paganisme to Christian religion (1603). The first edition incited a reply from Matthew Sutcliffe, Brief Refutation of a ceraine calumnious relation of the conference passed betwixt the Lord of Plessis Marli, and I. Peron (London: Arn. Hatfield, 1600). On the place of the Fontainebleau conference in English polemics, see Peter Milward, S.J., Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), 138-140.

6 reinterpreted the religious turmoil the era with eye for this mobility.7 Liesbeth Corens’ concept of “confessional mobility” can be helpfully applied to our regional study of disputations.

Studying English Catholic activities especially in the Southern Netherlands between roughly

1660 and 1720, Corens argues that the commonly-used term “exile” mischaracterizes expatriate

English Catholics, unduly focusing on their “victimhood, passivity, and separation.”

Confessional mobility, by contrast, is a “term for the practice, not a label for the people” and therefore can offer a more comprehensive account of English Catholics on the continent: exiles and fugitives, but also pilgrims, scholars, and short-term visitors. Crucially, it includes “the circular mobility of leaving and returning” which allows her to demonstrate that English

Catholics “fostered a community without borders which bridged the Channel.”8 This dynamic mobility was at play in the flourishing of disputations throughout the region in the early seventeenth century. The Jesuit controversialists John Fisher and Joannes de Gouda both began their careers simultaneously in Tournai in the 1590s before returning to London and Antwerp respectively where they would each gain notoriety for their disputations.9

This sort of mobility was of course not limited to Catholics. The famous French

Protestant clergyman and controversialist Pierre du Moulin, for instance, began his studies at the

Reformed college of Sedan in the early 1580s, before seeking refuge in England, beginning his

7 E.g. Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 8 Liesbeth Corens, Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-Reformation Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 2-3. 9 Joannes de Gouda entered the Jesuit order in Tournai in 1588 and became rector of the Latin school there. Fisher first studied at English colleges in Rheims and Rome before beginning his Jesuit noviciate at Tournai in 1594. “Johannes de Gouda,” Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden. Deel 7, ed. A.J. van der Aa (1862), 312-313, last modified 2008, http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/aa__001biog08_01/aa__001biog08_01_0595.php; Timothy Wadkins, "Percy [alias Fisher], John (1569–1641), Jesuit," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Last modified 3 January 2008, https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/9499.

7 preaching career at the French Reformed Church in London. He continued his studies at

Cambridge, where he practiced academic disputation under the tutelage of the combative

Calvinist William Whitaker. He then returned to the continent, but this time to the Dutch

Republic where he would spend the next several years as a professor at the University of Leiden before returning to France in 1598 to become pastor of the Reformed Church at Charenton.10 Du

Moulin had an exceptional career to be sure, but he was far from alone in cultivating such transnational connections. Daniel Featley, like his opponent John Fisher in their 1623 disputation in London, spent his early career in France as chaplain to the English ambassador in Paris. It was here that he was first acquainted with and engaged in the public disputations or “conferences” that he would later practice in England.11 It is clear then that the religious connections between the three countries ran deep. Examining these disputations with regional approach using the concept of confession mobility offers a more complete picture of the transnational appeal of disputation and how its participants, forms, and reports about them moved throughout the region and beyond. At the same time, it allows a better understanding of how a common cultural form was adapted for more local circumstances.

A transnational approach is also helpful in highlighting the role played by disputations in not just regional, but global confessional conflict.12 In 1622 Pope Gregory XV established the

10 Brian G. Armstrong and Vivienne Larminie. "Du Moulin, Pierre (1568–1658), Reformed minister and religious controversialist," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Last modified 4 October 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/19430. 11 Rodda, Public Disputations, 156-157. 12 One of the historiographical trends in scholarship on religious reform and Reformation in the past twenty years has been an emphasis on interreligious encounters across Europe and around the world. See Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Global Reformations: Transforming Early Modern Religions, Societies, and Cultures (London: Routledge, 2019); Gary K. Waite, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse: From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends (London: Routledge, 2018). This approach has offered new avenues to explore the relationship between European religious reform and colonization. For England, see Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the

Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or the Propaganda Fide to facilitate the

Catholic Church’s global missions. The connectedness of mission in Europe and abroad is demonstrated by the fact that the jurisdiction of this organization included England and the

Netherlands alongside America and Asia.

At the same time, the three countries involved in this study were involved in a (renewed) colonization effort. In the 1620s, all three states established new companies to colonize the

Americas – The Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621, the English Dorchester and

Massachusetts Bay Companies in 1623 and 1628, and the French Compagnie de la Nouvelle

France (more commonly known as the Compagnie des Cent-Associés) in 1627. While these were commercial enterprises, their activities were profoundly informed by confessional conflict.

Cardinal Richelieu established the Compagnie to expand the colony of New France and the company’s charter makes clear the religious vision he had for the colony. First, it stipulated that all settlers were to be Catholic to establish a new society based on Tridentine Catholicism.

Second, Provision XVII of the Company’s Charter stated that any indigenous converts to

Catholicism would become “French naturals” and be accorded the same rights as natural-born

French subjects.13 The expansion of Catholicism thus went hand in hand with the expansion of the French Empire. Although the Charter of the Dutch West India Company was not as explicit

Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Jorge Cañizares- Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006); for the Dutch Republic see, Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); for France, see Dominique Deslandres, Croire et faire croire. Les missions françaises au 17e siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2003).

13 Dominique Deslandres, “New France,” in A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, ed., Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 139.

9 in its confessional aims, its backers also saw it as a weapon in an ongoing confessional conflict.

For instance, one of the Company’s founders, Willem Usselincx, believed the Company would facilitate the settlement of thousands of Protestants in America where they would find natural allies amongst the natives who, like the Dutch, were oppressed by the tyranny of Catholic

Spain.14

It is noteworthy that some of the participants in the disputations in this study were also involved in these overseas ventures. Petrus Plancius, who appears in this dissertation as a defender of Calvinist orthodoxy, was one of the founding members of the Dutch East India

Company (and one of its cartographers) in 1602. As member of the Company, he advocated for the inclusion of Reformed ministers on Company voyages, to serve as chaplains to the

Europeans and missionaries to the native population.15 Robert Rich, Second Earl of Warwick, who played a prominent role in the disputation between Daniel Featley and John Fisher in 1623, was also a proponent of a more confrontational approach to Catholic Spain. He took a keen interest in colonial affairs, especially the Caribbean and South America, believing that the establishment of English colonies there would more effectively disrupt Spanish interests than they would further north in New England.16 These examples demonstrate that contemporaries saw disputations as part of a wider global confessional conflict. While this context is not always

14 Schmidt, Innocence Abroad, 175-176. 15 J. Keuning, Petrus Plancius: Theoloog en Geograaf, 1552-1622 (Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen & Zoon N.V. 1946), 52-54. 16 In fact, he sought to convince the famous Pilgrim settlers to land at the Orinoco River in South America instead of Massachusetts. Sean Kelsey, "Rich, Robert, second earl of Warwick (1587–1658), colonial promoter and naval officer," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online 23 Sep. 2004, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/23494.

10 immediately apparent in the disputation accounts examined in this project, I will draw attention to it when relevant.

1.1 Defining Disputation

At this point it would be useful to define exactly what is meant by the term disputation.

Disputation refers to the formal academic debate practiced in medieval and early modern universities. Disputation had its origins in the medieval practice of lectio and quaestio, in which reading and commentary of a text would be followed by questioning in an effort to resolve discrepancies between authorities. Eventually this questioning developed into a pro and contra inquiry of these authorities.17 With the establishment of new universities in the thirteenth century, this practice became formalized and developed into academic disputation. The basic practice of the ordinary disputation involved a magister (master) providing a student a thesis to defend. This student took the role of respondens, presenting the thesis and briefly outlining some supporting arguments before another student, taking the role of opponens, presented his opposing arguments to the proposition. After these opening statements, the students debated each other for a set amount of time, after which the master either called on another student to assume the role of opponens or ended the debate. As a conclusion of the debate, the master would provide his determinatio, summarizing the arguments and pointing out fallacies before resolving the

17 Ulrich G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, Trans., Michael J. Miller (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 38-41.

11 disputation by giving his own answer to the proposition.18 This practice continued essentially unchanged into the Reformation era.

By the seventeenth century, the term was employed more broadly. For example, Robert

Bellarmine’s Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei adversus hujus temporis

Haereticos (the first volume published in 1581 with numerous reprints) did not feature any actual disputations, but rather the author’s own arguments on the points of contention between

Catholics and Protestants. Moreover, many of the disputation accounts consulted for this dissertation use the term “conference” rather than disputation to describe their debates. Although the terms seem at times to be interchangeable (e.g. the title of Alexander Nowell’s 1583 A true report of the disputation or rather private conference had in the Tower of London), conference seems to have referred to religious debates which often made use of the disputation form, but took place outside the academy and were not bound by its academic rules. Indeed, in French disputation accounts, the term “disputation” appears only rarely, if at all. Authors opted instead to use the term “conférence.” However, given that the term “conference” has an even broader meaning, this dissertation opts to use the term disputation to generally refer to these debate events, highlighting their origin in scholastic disputation, but encompassing its modified form in conferences.

This dissertation argues that over the course of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- centuries, disputation moved from the closed halls of the university to spaces more accessible to laypeople, particularly the homes of aristocrats and notables. This occurred because both clergy

18 Leinsle, Scholastic Theology, 120-123; Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 141, 225-227; Shuger, “St. Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere,” 316-317.

12 and laypeople were interested in staging and attending disputations between the competing confessions. This alteration of the form and space of disputation caused it to become less about definitively resolving points of theological controversy and more about performing religious controversy. Disputations dramatized doctrinal difference by pitting representatives of each confession against each other. Disputants sought to demonstrate the truth of their confession by discrediting their opponent before a lay audience. These disputations generally did not resolve with a determinatio (in a religiously-divided community, who could play the role of the impartial magister?). Instead, it was left up to the lay audience to decide for themselves who was the victor in the debate, discuss the event with others, and thereby shape a wider debate in a religiously pluralistic public, unsure of who to trust following the social destabilization of the Reformation.

These debates, then, acted as a theatre of truth.

1.2 The Performance of Disputation

The appeal of public religious disputation in the seventeenth century cannot be understood without reference to the wider culture of performance of which it was a part.

Traditionally, scholars have focused on the medium of print as the dominant means in which religious ideas were communicated in Reformation and post-Reformation Europe.19 This interpretation has been challenged by others, who, as Andrew Pettegree has put it, situate “the book as part of a broader range of modes of persuasion that used every medium of discourse and

19 The seminal work on the importance of print communication in early modern European society is Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Other scholars since then have continued to highlight the role of print in the Reformation specifically, see Mark Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Peter Matheson, The Rhetoric of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998).

13 communication familiar to pre-industrial society.”20 Instead, these scholars have stressed the degree to which early modern European societies were oral, or “deeply hybrid oral/written.”21

This approach to early modern modes of communication has allowed scholars to broaden the study early modern religious controversy from a purely intellectual arena and connect it to its wider cultural context. This has led to a new focus on the role of preaching and performance in communicating religious ideas. Peter Lake has called the pamphlet press, the popular theatre, and the pulpit the “incipient mass media” of the early modern era, and warns that the “binary oppositions” of theatre and pulpit put forward by contemporary anti-theatre polemicists and often accepted by modern scholars disguises the fact that they were “in competition for essentially the same audiences” and much of the same “ideological and cultural terrain.”22 Massimo Rospocher has highlighted this point, arguing that from the thirteenth well into the eighteenth century, vernacular street preachers (first the Franciscans and later the Jesuits) adopted the rhetorical styles, improvisational techniques, and mnemonic tools of street performers to compete with them for audiences in the piazzas of Italian cities. The reception of a preacher’s message was therefore “determined not only by what they actually said, but also by the staging of their performances.”23

20 Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 8. While historians have increasingly emphasized non-print communication in the Reformation, the challenge to the dominance of print in Reformation historiography is not new. Already in 1981 Robert Scribner highlighted the role of visual propaganda in the Reformation in his For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 21 Stefano Dall’Aglio; Massimo Rospocher, “Introduction,” in Voices and Texts in Early Modern Italian Society (London & New York: Routledge, 2017), 2. 22 Peter Lake; Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002), xxvii, 483. 23 Massimo Rospocher, “The battle for the piazza: Creative antagonism between itinerant preachers and street singers in late medieval and early modern Italy,” in Voices and Texts, 213-214.

As the case of sermons shows, performance was a central component of communication in early modern societies. Carol Symes, in her study of vernacular plays in thirteenth-century

Arras, argues that plays were one expression of a “common stage” shared by the promulgation of laws, the celebration of the Mass, the punishment of criminals, the recitation of epic poetry, and numerous other public performances. Together these public performances constituted a “culture of performance.”24 Arjan van Dixhoorn makes a very similar argument for sixteenth-century

Amsterdam, opting instead for the term “theatre society.” Building upon Clifford Geertz’ concept of a “theatre state,” a state based on the performance of shared ceremonies, Dixhoorn argues that the early modern Low Countries were a “theatre society” because performance was its “dominant communication system.” He cites the example of 1530s Amsterdam, in which an

“interplay of theatrical, visual, oral, manuscript and printed media” created a public debate around the Reformation. Plays conveyed reform messages sympathetic to the Anabaptists.25

Civic authorities responded not just with censorship, but with Corpus Christi processions to perform and display the community’s orthodoxy. These were in turn contested by Anabaptist rumours about attacks on the procession, and ultimately in the famous incident of the “naked runners” on the night of 10 February 1535, which dramatically conveyed the runners’ commitment to the “naked truth” and pacifism.26 Whether or not we accept the notion that early modern Europe was a full-blown “theatre society,” the central importance of performance in

24 Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 2, 278. 25 Gary Waite covers the reform messages of these and similar plays in his Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515-1556 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 26 Arjan van Dixhoorn, “Theatre Society in the early modern Low Countries: Theatricality, controversy, and publicity in Amsterdam in the 1530s,” in Drama, Performance and Debate: Theatre and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Period, eds. Jan Bloemendal, Peter Eversmann, Elsa Streitman (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012), 80- 110.

15 medieval and early modern forms of communication in Europe has been well established by scholars.

Disputation was not only part of this culture of performance; it took on an even more prominent position in this culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scholars of medieval disputation have noted its performative dimensions. Jody Enders has suggested that a bi-annual disputation at the University of Paris beginning in the thirteenth century known as the quodlibet can be seen as a sort of “protodrama,” a mingling of “academic ritual and dramatic representation” that set the stage for symbolic dialogues and interrogations of mystery and morality plays.27 Alexander Novikoff has produced an even more expansive study of the cultural influence of medieval disputation. He argues that the prominence of disputation in medieval universities resulted in it evolving into “a cultural practice within the larger public sphere” by the thirteenth century. He follows the development of disputation and its place in iconography, liturgical drama, musical counterpoint, and other literary genres. Following Enders, Novikoff also underscores the importance of the quodlibet and its opening of disputation to a wider audience (albeit one that was still restricted to those conversant in Latin). However, he traces the expansion outside the university even further, to the disputations of thirteenth-century

Dominicans in southern France. These vernacular disputations were open to all, and, at least according to surviving Dominican chronicles, had the friars spreading Christian truth by displaying their “profound knowledge of Christian authorities” and publically defeating their heretical opponents in debate. This staging of a triumph of Christian truth was also employed against Jews in the Paris Talmud Trial in 1240 and the Barcelona disputation in 1263. These

27 Jody Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama 27:3 (Fall 1993), 342, 357.

16 events marked “disputation’s passage from exegesis into performance art amid a growing class of professional debaters and invited onlookers.”28

The thirteenth-century Dominican debates with Albigensian heretics and the staged disputations between Christians and Jews were forerunners of the kind of public disputations that became commonplace in the seventeenth century. Like these earlier examples, these debates were held in the vernacular before lay audiences. In both cases the exegetical element of disputation was made secondary to the performance. Seventeenth-century conferences differed from these earlier disputations in two important respects. First, they were far more frequent.

Whereas the public debates of the Dominicans with the Albigensians were short-lived, and those between Christians and Jews exceptional state-sponsored events, the conferences of the seventeenth century were frequent and often took place at the instigation of the laypeople who would make up the audience.29 In addition to their frequency, the performance of these disputations was integrated into the new manuscript and print culture of the early modern period.

While these conferences usually took place in the privacy of the homes of the aristocratic lay people who requested them, the disputants and audience members discussed and disseminated news about these events more broadly. After the disputations gained some public notoriety, participants often printed accounts of the proceedings to reach an even wider audience. As such, these disputations had a much greater public impact than their medieval predecessors.

These conferences were likely popular because they dramatized the religious division in communities throughout Europe when many traditional performances of unity had instead

28 Novikoff, Medieval Culture of Disputation, 157-158; 219-222. 29 In this respect, they do share some semblance to the quodlibet of the University of Paris, where the subject of the disputation was chosen from audience questions. Enders, “Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” 345.

17 become contentious. Public executions for heresy, performances designed to display the purgation of a disturber of order from a united community, instead put the religious divisions in those communities in sharp relief as the justice of such events was disputed.30 Corpus Christi

Processions and similar communal performances like holiday celebrations or funerals meanwhile became “flashpoints” for religious riots. Benjamin Kaplan insightfully explains that this was because “when a religious group enacted its beliefs in a public space, it was claiming possession not just of that space but of the entire community.” As a result, individuals from other religious groups in a community often felt compelled to contest those performances in some way, often with violence.31 Conferences were a response to this context. First, they were held in private or semi-private settings where the audience could be limited in some way. It was the aftermath of the conference which took on a more public character. Additionally, the performance itself acknowledged religious difference while also appealing to shared ideas on the value of dialogue.

In this context, disputations offered an alternative performance, one which both sides of the religious divide could recognize. Disputations acknowledged religious difference even if the ultimate aim of its participants was to erase it.

1.3 Disputation and the Public Sphere

The question of the audience and “public” brings us to the debate over the nature of the public sphere in early modern Europe. Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the

Public Sphere describes the development of a “bourgeois public sphere” in seventeenth- and

30 David Nicholls, “The Theatre of Martyrdom in the French Reformation,” Past and Present 121 (Nov., 1988), 71- 73. 31 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 97. Here Kaplan is building on the work of Oliver Christin, La paix de religion: L’autonomisation de la raison politique au XIV siècle (Paris: 1997), 111.

18 particularly eighteenth-century Europe. Habermas argues that capitalism played a central role in the development of this public sphere. Continuous long-distance trade necessitated the growth of states and their public authority, replacing the representative publicness of local powerbrokers.

Capitalism also placed a new bourgeois class of merchants and bureaucrats at the centre of this public, necessitating the creation of news journals to follow events affecting government and commerce, and spaces to discuss them such as London coffee houses and Paris salons. The public sphere was created when individuals from this bourgeois class came “together as a public,” soon claiming “the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate” over the governing of “commodity exchange and social labor.” Especially unique in the debates of this public sphere was “people’s public use of their reason,” resulting in a bourgeois consensus, or “public opinion.”32

Since the translation of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere into English in 1989, Habermas’s theory has excited much debate among early modern scholars. Some have contested Habermas’s timeline, but basically agree with his teleology. Scholars such as Andrew

Pettegree and David Zaret, for example, have argued that the growth of print and a resulting news community created the conditions for a public sphere in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.33 In a 2000 article, Peter Lake and Michael Questier employ the term “rudimentary

32 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Trans.Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991), 15-28. This description also draws on the summaries of Habermas’s thought in Jan Bloemendal and Arjan van Dixhoorn, “Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Low Countries” in Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650, eds. Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van Dixhoorn, and Elsa Streitman (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011), 11-12; Peter Smith, “Jurgen Habermas and the ‘Public Sphere,’” published 5 August 2013, https://youtu.be/QEAWc6FuRsI. 33 David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3-6; Andrew Pettegree, “A Provincial News Community in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, eds. Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicers (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 33-34. Others have made similar arguments in different contexts. Cf. Sara Beam, “Apparitions and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century

19 public sphere” to describe the public debate over Elizabeth’s policy of executing Catholics for treason and the legitimacy of her reign itself following the execution of Edmund Campion.

While this event incited some public debate, they admit that this was not a public sphere of “the

Habermasian ideal” – there could hardly be an equal discussion of ideas when opposition to the regime could result in execution for treason.34 Lake has continued to theorize on the public sphere. In a later article with Steve Pincus, he suggests that the rudimentary Elizabethan public sphere was part of a wider development of a “post-Reformation public sphere” that set the stage for the later transformations described by the likes of David Zaret and Habermas. Rather than simple suppression, the Elizabethan and Jacobean regimes responded to their critics with appeals to public opinion in pamphlets, manuscripts, and sermons. Catholics responded in turn, and later

Puritans, empowered by their employment as writers defending the regime, turned their pen to criticize the regime’s ecclesiastical policies. While public debates on religious policy were seen as exceptional measures, and were better discussed in “closely controlled arenas of public discussion closed off from the gaze of the multitude,” the demand for news and a space for political discussion made it progressively more difficult for regimes to “put the genie back in the bottle” after opening public debates on specific issues. The result was increasing permanence of

France,” Canadian Journal of History, XXXIX (April 1994), 1-22; Jeffrey K Sawyer, Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Torrance Kirby locates the public sphere’s origins even earlier, as a consequence of the Reformation’s “culture of persuasion.” Torrance Kirby, Persuasion and Conversion: Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013). 34 Peter Lake, Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” The Journal of Modern History 72:3 (September 2000), 625-626.

20 public debate as the seventeenth century wore on.35 Lake thus accepts the teleological narrative of Habermas, but delineates a new phase of its development in the post-reformation period.

More recently, early modernists have challenged Habermas’s formulation more extensively. Alasdair Raffe, in his The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland,

1660-1714, argues that Habermas’s characterization of the bourgeois public sphere is “overly simplistic” and its teleology does not reflect historical reality. His approach is to move away from “looking for practices that prefigure modern democratic politics” to discover

“characteristics of controversy that were distinctly early modern.” The “culture of controversy” that he uncovers differs considerably from the Habermasian ideal: it was widespread but unequal

– it did not efface distinctions between status, gender and education; rational argument was just

“one of several forms of verbal argument;” and because religious controversy “was about transcendental truths,” there was little room for compromise and opponents did not view debate with each other as something positive.36

Raffe’s study is focused on debates between presbyterians and episcopalians in late seventeenth-century Scotland, but he believes this “culture of controversy” is applicable elsewhere. Indeed, Raffe’s approach aligns more closely with the approach of Low Countries

35 Peter Lake, Steven Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45:2 (April, 2006), 270-292. 36 Alasdair Raffe, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660-1714 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012), 12-19. Historians of the eighteenth century have also demonstrated that Habermas’s vision of the bourgeois public sphere does not neatly align with historical reality. See, for example, Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Harold Mah argues that the reason historians contest or modify Habermas’s theory of the bourgeois public sphere is that they have spacialized it. By contrast, Habermas’s original conception refers to a “political fiction” in which individual identities and group memberships were effaced allowing their consensus to be presented as universal. The bourgeois public sphere is thus less about space than it is about subjects. Harold Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians,” The Journal of Modern History 72:1 (March 2000), 153-182.

21 scholars to the question of the early modern public sphere. Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicer argue that the acceptance of Habermas’s timeline was linked to the confessionalization thesis.

Once scholars found confessionalization to have been more an ideal than a reality, it became easier to accept that “even those who most deplored divisions and debate, and who sought to silence dissenting voices, from the late sixteenth century onwards found themselves virtually forced to make their case in what had become a highly public arena of opinion and debate.”37

However, like the English mentioned above, Low Countries scholarship also recognizes that this was a very different public sphere than the one articulated by Habermas. In their conceptualization of the public sphere in the Low Countries’ context, Bloemendal and Dixhoorn, identify some pitfalls in Habermas’s theory. First, they take issue with his definition of public opinion – the consensus reached through rational discussion and manifested in the press.

Bloemendal’s and Dixhoorn’s definition of public opinion draws on postmodern scholarship, particularly political scientists such as James Fishkin and Susan Herbst. They define it as a

“dynamic process of opinion-formation that involves politicians, the media and a wide variety of interest groups,” a phenomenon which can be found “in one form or another in all societies.”

Bloemendal and Dixhoorn admit that the formation of public opinion in early modern Europe was different than the process defined by Habermas. Here they identify another pitfall with

Habermas’s theory: its focus on print material, particularly news journals of the eighteenth century. Bloemendal and Dixhoorn take their cue from the performative turn and argue that the early modern Low Countries did in fact have “a permanent supra-local public sphere as a result of the interaction of handwritten and printed works with the oral, performative and visual media

37 Pollman and Spicer, Public Opinion and Changing Identities, 1-9.

22 of face-to-face society.” Their sources are instead “literary works” such as plays, songs and poems published “for a general public” with the aim of “informing, persuading or convincing that public.” Thus, while only a few well-connected members of society continually collected news, the media of “the oral world” reached a broad audience and could influence public opinion.38

Together, these scholars make a compelling case that a space for public debate existed in pre-modern Europe – different from Habermas’ conception, but lively nonetheless. However, while they all make some reference to debate, they offer very little analysis of the role played by religious disputations in this “post-reformation” public sphere or “culture of controversy.”39 I argue that the numerous public religious disputations in early modern Western Europe were a critical component of this early modern public sphere. Understanding their appeal can therefore help us understand how public debate functioned in the religiously pluralistic context of the early seventeenth century. Debora Shuger has suggested that sixteenth-century academic disputations at Oxford constituted a “larval public sphere” in that they offered a protected site of “rational critical free speech.”40 The vernacular disputations studied in this dissertation can be similarly interpreted. These disputations should not be idealized: they usually did not offer new points of

38 Bloemendal and Dixhoorn, “Literary Cultures and Public Opinion,” 1-20, 26-27. Other scholars of the early modern world have also drawn on oral and performance culture to offer an alternative to the Habermasian model of the public sphere; cf. Babak Rahimi, Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641CE (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012); Massimo Rospocher, Rosa Salzberg, “An Evanescent Public Sphere: Voices, Spaces, and Publics in Venice during the Italian Wars,” in Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe, ed. Massimo Rospocher (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 2012), 95-113. 39 Bloemendal and Dixhoorn do not appear to mention disputations at all, but do reference the broader genre of dialogue in which disputations may be included. Lake and Questier mention the disputations of Jesuit John Fisher in a footnote, “Puritans, Papists, and the Public Sphere,” 626. Raffe includes various forms of religious disputes in his monograph, but does not analyze disputations as a genre. 40 Shuger, “St Mary the Virgin and the Birth of the Public Sphere,” 325-334.

23 debate, the disputants often resorted to ad hominem attacks, and audiences were often unruly.

But the same criticism can be said of public debate in any era. Instead, the frequent use of the disputation form speaks to the multifaceted nature of public debate in early modern Europe.

Disputations were carefully staged and thus communicated arguments via theatre. They reached a wider audience orally as they were discussed in sermons and rumours. They were then communicated through manuscript and print, allowing the debate to continue and spread to an even wider audience, sometimes internationally. Finally, disputation required at least a temporary toleration of opposing views and a certain degree of equality between confessional opponents. It was for this reason that frequent religious disputations could only take place after a form of religious peace had been established. While they did not live up the ideal rational debate of Habermas, disputations provided a stage upon which religious controversy could be acted out and debated, crucially before a wide audience of lay people.

To appreciate the role played by disputation in seventeenth-century public debate, Mario

Turchetti’s distinction between the concepts of “concord” and “tolerance” is useful. Concord, in its simplest form, is the maintenance of unity, but in Christian Europe religious unity came to be equated with political and national unity – the “construction of the monolithic Respublica

Christiana.” The restoration of religious unity – concord – was almost invariably the goal of anyone interested in finding solutions for the religious tensions in early modern Europe. In this context, toleration was an attitude of forbearance towards those who had strayed. Proponents of toleration expected it to be a temporary measure to encourage these wayward souls to return to the straight and narrow, without recourse to violence.41 Religious disputations were a tangible

41 Mario Turchetti, “Religious Concord and Political Tolerance in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22:1 (Spring 1991), 15-25.

24 expression of this tension. Disputation offered tolerance of opposing views, as it required both parties have freedom to offer arguments in favour of their position. Nonetheless, its ultimate aim was to expose the falsehood of an opponent’s position before a public audience and thereby expunge heresy from society.

1.4 Sources and Overview

The sources around which this study is based are the printed accounts of these disputations that often followed the event. Where possible, I have sought to use accounts from both sides of a disputation. The goal in using of disputation accounts from both sides is not to understand what “really” happened, but rather to draw attention to the ways in which participants sought to shape a wider public’s perception of their performance in disputation. These written accounts, therefore, were also a critical part of the performance of disputation. Focusing on these sources admittedly offers only a partial picture of the practice of disputation in this period, since there were many other disputations that only resulted in local controversies. However, this study could not possibly cover all the disputations that took place in this period and the focus on printed accounts allows us to track how disputation participants (whether clerics or audience members) were able to create wider public debates in some of the more prominent disputations.

Moreover, these accounts offer details about the location and the social makeup and participation of the audience, allowing us to get a glimpse about how, where, and why these disputations were staged. Combined with references to these disputations in memoirs and correspondence, we can use these accounts to get at the role these disputations played in public controversy in the religiously pluralistic context of early seventeenth-century Western Europe.

Engaging with these sources, the following chapters will uncover disputation’s appeal and utility in this era. Chapter One goes into more detail about its dual appeal as dialectic and

25 drama. It acknowledges the continued confidence its disputation’s ability to articulate religious truth, but argues that as disputation was used outside the academy, its performative dimensions became more pronounced. This chapter pays particular attention to the effect that relocation of the performance of disputation outside of academic had on its character. The common practice of holding disputation in the homes of prominent lay persons encouraged the lay audience to become more engaged in the disputation itself, offering new avenues for both lay men and women to engage in and shape religious controversy.

Chapter Two picks up on the role of the audience, or rather audiences, as it focuses on the aftermath of these “private conferences.” Disputations were spectacles to be shared and both

Protestants and Catholics were adept at using the various media of sermons, manuscript networks, and print to incite a broader public debate on the event of the disputation. However, some disputants were more skillful or, at least, had an advantage in disseminating news about their disputations. This chapter examines the career of professional debater François Véron and his skills at exploiting his disputations to win converts, disgrace Protestant ministers, and most importantly, spread word of his victories far and wide. His and other French Catholic missionaries’ exploitation of the spectacle of disputation marks a highpoint of departure from the dialectic of disputation in favour of its drama.

Chapter Three is concerned with the message conveyed in the drama of disputation.

Disputations sought to convince their audience of religious truth less through subtle theological argumentation than by displays of honour and dishonour. This chapter considers disputations as

“clerical duels” – an association with aristocratic duels that disputants themselves made.

Reputation was the battleground of disputations and attacks on an opponent’s scholarly ability,

26 manhood, and honour were as prevalent as questions of theology in these disputations and the subsequent public discussion of them.

With the appeal of disputation, its ability to incite and influence public debate, and its role as a contest of honour between clerics, and by extension confessions, Chapter Four turns to the political uses of disputation. It examines three disputations in each of the jurisdictions covered in this dissertation to examine how state actors could use disputation as a tool to advance their religious policies. It allowed rulers to legitimize their confessional choices by giving the appearance that both sides had received a fair hearing. The reward of legitimacy was balanced by the risk of opening the state’s religious policies to public debate, as the case of the Arminian controversy in the Dutch Republic demonstrates. This chapter considers how disputation enflamed controversy in the Dutch Republic to the brink of civil war.

Together these chapters offer a comprehensive interpretation of the practice of public disputation in early seventeenth-century Western Europe. I argue that its practice profoundly shaped the culture of this region. While the analysis is concerned with a particular form of disputation unique to political and social circumstances of Western Europe, its conclusions can also help understand the practice of disputation elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

2 Staging and Performing Religious Debate

In June 1623 a gentleman named Edward Buggs lay sick and near death in his home on

Drury Lane in London. At 70 years of age, he had lived his entire adult life in a Protestant kingdom, but as he faced his mortality, he expressed doubts about his Protestant faith. He was encouraged by some Catholic friends to speak to the Jesuit John Percy (alias Fisher), who warned him that salvation was only possible in the Roman Catholic Church. It was the only true church because it existed from the time of the Apostles. Where had the Protestant Church been before Luther? This question troubled Buggs so that he “became now more sicke in minde then body” and, as a Protestant account put it, if he had not recovered from his illness he would have fallen “both from his Mother Church and his former faith.”42 Yet, while his faith was shaken, he remained unconvinced by Fisher and invited his younger cousin, Sir Humfrey Lynde to visit.

Lynde found Fisher there, who challenged him to debate the visibility (i.e. existence) of the

Protestant church before Luther. Lynde refused, but later extended an invitation to Fisher to come to his residence the following Friday “with foure or six at the most.” That evening he would be hosting a dinner with Protestant divines Francis White and Daniel Featley and after dinner they could debate “whether the Protestant Church was in all ages visible” and who such

“visible Protestants” might be.

42 This description and the following disputation account come from the accounts of Daniel Featley and John Fisher. [Daniel Featley], The Fisher catched in his owne net (London: 1623); “A.C.,” An answer to a pamphlet, intituled: The Fisher catched in his owne net ([London : Peter Smith, and Saint-Omer at the English College Press], 1623); Daniel Featley, The Romish Fisher caught and held in hiw owne net (London: H[umphrey] L[ownes and William Stansby], 1624).

27 28

On Friday, 27 June 1623 Fisher, accompanied by fellow Jesuit John Sweet to assist him, and four others arrived at Lynde’s house. They were welcomed into a “little dining roome” where they found Edward Buggs with his family and Lynde with some “friends that had then dined with him.” In the meantime, others arrived who Lynde “did not expect, so he could not with civilitie put them forth his house.” The room became so filled, that Fisher complained to

Lynde of the inequality of the audience. According to Fisher’s account, Lynde’s reply was that

“He could not help it” while Featley wrote that Lynde ordered the doors to be shut, yet still others arrived after the conference began.43

The debate got underway when Fisher and Sweet presented the aforementioned question about the visible Protestant church to White and Featley. Featley insisted that this question be debated using the “Logick form” (i.e. a formal academic disputation). Fisher refused this condition on the grounds that the lay audience would be unfamiliar with it. This issue apparently remained unresolved as Featley then proceeded to turn the question around on his opponents: they should show him first that the points of the Council of Trent can be found in ancient authors. Fisher promised to do this, but only after Featley had demonstrated visible Protestants in all ages.44 Eventually Featley, following through on his desire for a formal disputation, offered a thesis to defend for the rest of the debate, namely, “That Church whose faith is eternall and perpetual, was ever visible in the professors thereof. But the faith of the Protestant Church is eternall and perpetuall. Ergo.” Featley’s answer to Fisher’s question was thus that the Protestant

Church had always been the true church. While the clerics debated whether or not Featley’s syllogism was a form of circular reasoning, Catholic audience members pressed Featley to name

43 Fisher Catched, 4. 44 Fisher Catched, 5-10.

29 specific Protestants from all ages. This eventually culminated in “divers of Fisher’s companie” chanting “names, names, names!” Featley eventually conceded to their demands and gave the names of Christ and the apostles. He then asked Fisher to dispute these but Fisher replied that he would only answer once Featley had named the rest. At that point, according to Fisher’s account,

Featley turned away from him to the audience and called out “He grants Christ and his Apostles to be Protestants.” The audience erupted into shouts, as if the Protestants “had gotten a victorie” and many got up to leave.45 On the exact end of the conference, the accounts differ, but agree that the proceedings ended shortly thereafter.46

The debate at Lynde’s house aptly illustrates how public disputations came to be performed over the first decades of the seventeenth century. This chapter will consider this disputation alongside others in France and the Netherlands to explore disputation’s appeal as both dialectic and drama. Despite criticism of disputation, both clergy and laypeople continued to see it as an effective means of getting at truth. However, as we see in the events at Lynde’s house, the drama of disputation could elicit enthusiastic responses from lay audiences. Debate was not only a path to truth, but a spectacle of its triumph over falsehood. Thus, while early modern clergy and laypeople continued to have faith in disputation as an instrument to uncover truth, its dramatic elements became more pronounced. This chapter also examines how disputation came to be held outside of universities in the first place. While clergy could use disputations to communicate their arguments to lay audiences, this chapter argues for the

45 “A.C.,” Answer, 36; Fisher Catched, 11-25. 46 Featley’s original account says that at Fisher’s refusal to dispute Christ and the apostles, several audience members pressed him to cease the debate and then the conference broke up. Fisher’s reply contests this interpretation, asserting that he reached out and grabbed Featley by the arm and said he would dispute Christ and the apostles if he stayed. The attestation in Featley’s second account claims that this was impossible since Featley and Fisher were sitting at opposite ends of the table. Instead, it was Featley who wished to continue the debate while Fisher remained silent. Fisher Catched, 25; “A.C.,” Answer, 37; “Attestation,” in Featley, Romish Fisher, 45.

30 instrumental role played by lay men and women in instigating and hosting private disputations.

In this way, hosting disputations was part of a wider culture of hospitality and religious sociability. This relocation of religious disputation in the homes of prominent lay people changed the dynamics of religious controversy, allowing laypeople to direct the action and shape the debate. In particular, it allowed women to take part in religious disputation from which they were otherwise excluded.

2.1 Disputation as Path to Truth The dual appeal of disputation as dialectic and spectacle dates back to its inception. By the twelfth century, a “new culture of disputation” was emerging. One of its early proponents was the French scholar Peter Abelard. He wrote in his Dialectica that disputation was the discipline “to which all judgement of truth and falsehood is subject.”47 Abelard clearly had great confidence in disputation as an instrument to elucidate the truth. It is no surprise then that he repeatedly challenged his intellectual adversary, Bernard of Clairvaux, to a public disputation.

Clairvaux consistently refused on the grounds that he was not a skilled debater like Abelard. This reason for refusal draws attention to the performative element of disputation. In addition to challenging Clairvaux, Abelard circulated letters to his followers encouraging them to attend such a debate. He evidently anticipated an active audience and wanted to ensure his supporters were among them.48

After disputation became formalized in the thirteenth century, its utility was increasingly questioned. In the fourteenth century, Geert Groote founded the Devotia Moderna as a consciously anti-scholastic movement. He specifically detested disputation, writing in his

47 Alexander Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 85-86. 48 Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, 85-86.

Conclusa et proposita non vota that his followers should “avoid and abhor all public disputation which is quarrelsome for the sake of triumphing or excelling, as all disputations of theologians and artists in Paris are; indeed, do not even go to them for the sake of learning, because they are obviously contrary to silence [i.e., recollection]... so that the teaching is often harmful and always useless.”49 For Groote, disputation in fact led people away from the truth and promoted vain and aggressive behaviour that was the antithesis of the humility and simplicity that was the hallmark of Groote’s spirituality and that of the community he founded, the Brethren of the

Common Life.50

Christian humanists took up the criticisms of disputation leveled by Groote, perhaps none more so than Erasmus – himself influenced by the Brethren of the Common Life –who argued disputation distracted from pure Christianity. In his Paraclesis (1516), he wrote that the “pure and unadulterated philosophy of Christ” can only be found in reading the Gospels, and only by someone “who is philosophizing piously by praying rather than by arguing, more intent on changing his life than on arming himself.”51 As such, humanists sought to replace the disputation-oriented scholastic model of education with one which emphasized language studies, particularly Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, with the aim of doing away with medieval glosses and returning to the church fathers, classical authors like Plato and the “authentic” Aristotle, and scripture itself. In place of the circulus et orbis doctrinae which gave students a summa of

49 Leinsle, Scholastic Theology , 207-208. 50 Similar criticism of disputation as spiritually dangerous was expressed by Robert of Sorbon. See Tanya Stabler Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul: Scholastics, Beguines and Gendered Spirituality in Medieval Paris,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010). 51 Leinsle, Scholastic Theology, 248.

32 theology, Erasmus suggested a circulus et orbis Christi as he called it, which presented students with a summa of the doctrines of Christ instead.52

The humanist program found support among both Protestant and Catholic educational reformers, but the Reformation context discouraged it from being adopted wholesale. Early humanist-influenced reformers did refocus education on reading scripture in its original Greek and Hebrew, rather than relying on Latin glosses. However, as Erika Rummel has pointed out, humanist reforms became part a “public relations battle” between Protestants and Catholics who adopted some humanist reforms that suited their confessional agenda, but rejected others. The humanist notion of the ars dubitandi, a Christianized version of classical scepticism, was rejected by both sides of the religious divide as something that impeded their goal of clarifying doctrines and defining heresy.53

As it became clear that neither the old idolatry nor the new heresy would easily be swept away, the study of scripture alone was deemed insufficient to train pastors as “controversialists as well as shepherds.”54 Thus, both Protestant and Catholic universities continued to emphasize the importance of disputation in training clergy. The puritan leadership of Elizabethan England recommended disputation as secondary only to Biblical study as a means to develop “skill in defending truth and confuting error.”55 Their Catholic countrymen across the channel shared their views on the importance of disputation. When the first English Catholic seminary on the

52 Leinsle, Scholastic Theology, 249-250. 53 Erika Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 8, 53. 54 Laurence Brockliss, “Curricula,” in A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 2: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800), ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 596-597. 55 Shuger, “St. Mary the Virgin,” 327.

33 continent was founded at Douai in 1568, its curriculum focused on training priests in controversy and disputation in particular. Their studies centred on controversial scriptural passages and students sharpened their arguments in weekly disputations. It is not surprising then that the Jesuit mission in England began with a challenge to disputation in 1580.56 The Reformation and subsequent confessional competition created a context of uncertainty and a fear of deception.57

Disputation emerged from this context as a heuristic tool that could offer a degree of resolution to the religious division faced by early modern Europeans.

This confidence in disputation to reveal truth and confute error is demonstrated in the disputations of Dutch Reformed minister Godfridus Udemans with the Mennonites in Zeeland in

1609. The political context of the Dutch Republic created the conditions for frequent disputations between Reformed and Mennonite clergy. By the time the Reformed began to seize political power in the northern Netherlands in the 1570s, Mennonite communities had already established deep roots. While the Reformed church was privileged by the Republic’s magistrates, other religious groups were tolerated, so long as they did not practice their religion publicly. The result was that Mennonites became the chief confessional rivals of the Reformed in many parts of the country. The Reformed employed a variety of tactics in their competition with Mennonites for adherents, including pushing local governments to limit Mennonite activities. Eventually,

Reformed synods recommended direct action against Mennonites in the form of disputations.

The debates described by Udemans are therefore part of a wider strategy to win converts from

56 Thomas McCoog, S.J, “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896-1996), ed. Thomas McCoog (Rochester, NY, 1996), 121-122. 57 Susan Elizabeth Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?: The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), viii.

34 the Mennonites and strengthen confessional loyalty by demonstrating the truth of Reformed religion over the falsehoods of the Mennonites.58

In was in this context that Udemans published his Noodige Verbeteringe in 1620. Its contents make a specific case for Reformed disputations with Mennonite preachers and for the necessity (as the author saw it) of disputation more generally. Udemans’ defence of disputation arose out of the refusal of Mennonite preachers to debate the Reformed ministers who challenged them in their meeting houses. Udemans’ debate with the Mennonites began on Friday, 4

September 1609 when he and another Reformed minister named Brand attended a local gathering of Mennonites in their town of Zierikzee. The Mennonites had gathered to celebrate several baptisms during which the community’s confession of faith was read aloud. The two

Reformed ministers waited for the baptism to be completed. Then the minister Brand requested that the local vermaender, Frans de Knuyt, and the two Mennonite “bishops” present, Jan van

Voorden from Utrecht and Cornelis de Kuyper from Haarlem, enter into a “Christelijcke conferentie.” The Mennonites were reluctant, citing a placard forbidding “public disputes,” and added that there was “little profit” in disputing but much “strife and complication.” They eventually agreed to a debate after Brand told them that he had been a minister there for 30 years

58 Initially, Reformed synods recommended non-engagement with Mennonites, but in the 1586 national synod in The Hague, they encouraged “friendly” disputations with them. The Reformed sought to encourage a general disputation with the country’s Mennonites along the lines of the colloquies of Emden and Frankenthal and eventually managed to organize a debate between Emden Mennonite leader Pieter van Keulen and Reformed divine Ruardus Acronius which lasted between August and November 1597. However, in general, Mennonites were reluctant to debate Reformed ministers. The visit of Udemans and Brand to the local Mennonite gathering was a common practice by Reformed ministers. The diary of Reformed minister Abdias Windmarius details his repeated intrusions and disputations in the local Mennonite meeting house in Uitgeest in 1627 and 1628. F.S. Knipscheer, “Abdias Windmarius’ Twistgesprekken met de Mennisten in 1627/8 gehouden te Uitgeest; Benevens eenige bijzonderheden uit de geschiedenis der Doopsgezinde gemeente aldaar.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 47 (1907), 36-76. For a general overview of Reformed-Mennonite relations in the Dutch Republic, including their disputations, see Samme Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531- 1675 (Hilversum & Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren & Fryske Akademy, 2000), 343-371. On the career of Godefridus Udemans (1582-1649), see, A.J. van der Aa, Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden. Deel 18 (1874). url: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/aa__001biog22_01/aa__001biog22_01_0588.php

35 and was unaware of any such placard. He continued that “God’s word” was something that

“sometimes serves for improvement, sometimes for convincing.” Once the Mennonites agreed to a debate, Brand began the proceedings with a prayer before presenting a thesis that Mennonite religious practices and confession “align poorly with Scripture.” Brand cited numerous examples from baptism to Mennonite women having their hair uncovered, but the actual debate only focused on what their confession said about the incarnation and nature of Christ.59 For Brand, disputation using the rule of scripture was an opportunity to confront and demonstrate the falsehood of his church’s confessional rivals.

Two days later, after the Mennonites’ Sunday gathering, Udemans made a similar case for disputation when he again challenged the preacher Frans de Knuyt to a debate. Knuyt was opposed to the first debate and this time refused outright on the grounds that “not much good comes out of disputing.” Instead, it brings “much evil, such as lies and slander.” Moreover, in this specific case, his colleagues, who had done most of the talking in the last debate, had already left. Knuyt thus echoed Geert Groote in arguing that disputation leads away rather than towards truth. To this Udemans replied that since Knuyt claimed to be a pastor he must, following Titus

1, be able to “exhort and to convince the gainsayers.” Knuyt retorted that scripture admonishes against needless disputes, and that since knowledge of scripture had “spread all over our land,” it was not necessary to dispute and firmly declared his refusal to debate Udemans. Udemans, undeterred, responded that because the Mennonites are divided into so many sects that “one can hardly get a hold of what you profess,” it remained necessary to get a “verbal account” of their beliefs. He then restated that while Scripture compels Knuyt as a pastor to defend his doctrine, he

59 All translations are my own unless otherwise specified. Brand was apparently the senior minister of the Reformed church in Zierikzee, having served there for thirty years. Udemans was appointed there in 1602 when he was about 20 years old. Godfridus Udemans, Korte Notulen van seker gespreck, gehouden over den artijckel van de Mensch- werdinge onses Heeren Jesu Christi (Dordrecht: François Boels, 1646), 1-3.

36 cannot “force” him to debate but declared “before God and this assembly, that we stand ready to show from the Scriptures the truth of our doctrine and the falsehood of yours.”60 In sum,

Udemans and his colleagues remained convinced not only of the utility of disputation in revealing truth and defeating falsehood, but also that it was an imperative of their role as true ministers of God.

This confidence in disputation to illustrate truth helps explain the publication of

Udemans’ extensive Noodige Verbeteringe. The second edition of the book, published in 1646, is some 423 pages in total, with only 89 of them recounting Udemans’ face-to-face debates with

Knuyt and other Mennonites. The first 331 pages are a response to an earlier and much shorter book by Knuyt called Onder Verbeteringe.61 Furthermore, even the first edition of Udemans’ book was not published until 1620, eleven years after his debate with Knuyt in Zierikzee.

Udemans himself admited that this was a little strange in his foreword addressed to the Reformed congregation of Middelburg. Briefly, he writes that he knew of many eenvoudige herten, “simple hearts,” who “through the cunning of the Mennonites” had been deceived by their errors.

Consequently, he set himself to work on researching the errors of the Mennonites to arm the

Reformed Church against them. This book was the result of that research and was intended as a sort of reference guide to show how the doctrine expounded by Knuyt is “unscriptural,”

“ambiguous,” and “without order.”62 This purpose is reflected in detailed “registers,” or appendices, which provide an overview of the principal points of doctrinal debate and citations

60 Udemans, Korte Notulen, 17-20 61 Frans de Knuyt, Onder verbeteringhe, een kort bekentenisse onzes gheloofs van Vader, Sone ende Heylighen Gheest, den Heylighen Doop, het ampt der Overheydt, ende het eed-zweeren; met eenighe Christelyke ghebeden (Amsterdam: 1623). 62 Udemans, Noodige Verbeteringe: Dat is, Schriftmatige Aenmerckingen op seker Boecken van François de Knuyt, bisschop der Mennisten tot Ziericzee, genaemt / Onder verbeteringe (Dordrecht: François Boels, 1646).

37 of scripture contrasted with the words of Mennonite authors. One of these registers provides a list of sources Udemans consulted for the benefit of the “prudent reader.” These sources include multiple translations of the Bible in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and modern languages, several books by Heinrich Bullinger against the Anabaptists, and the minutes (protocolen) of three of the most extensive disputations between the Reformed and Mennonites: Frankenthal (1571), Emden

(1577), and Leeuwarden (1596).63 Udemans perceived disputation as an essential tool in teaching and strengthening laypeople against the errors of the Mennonites.

2.2 Disputation as Theatre With these registers, Udemans admitted that Mennonite doctrine had already been tested in disputation many times before. The Reformed authors of the aforementioned Protocolen had already outlined the truth of the Reformed position over that of the Mennonites.64 Consequently, the recourse to disputation of the Reformed pastors of Zierikzee cannot be understood without reference to its role as a performance. Indeed, Udemans noted in his epistle to the “Christian and impartial reader,” which precedes the account of his debates with Knuyt, that this disputation was occasioned by the local Mennonites having “disquieted some of our members.” Thus,

“following our office” the Reformed pastors were “forced” to seek out these “poor lost sheep” who had been led stray with the “fine words” of the Mennonites. It is for this reason that the

Reformed pastors chose to challenge the Mennonite preachers in their own meeting house – “a place where we thought those wavering souls would be present” – in the hopes that “by this means the eyes of some eenvoudighe herten would be open to discern lies from the truth.”65 For

63 Udemans, Noodige Verbeteringe, 331-333. 64 Knuyt makes this point in refusing to debate Udemans. Udemans, Korte Notulen, 18. 65 Udemans, “Aen den Christelicken ende onpartijdigen leser,” in Korte Notulen.

Udemans, disputation was not just a means of discovering truth through debate, but also a spectacle of that truth. The appeal of disputation was both its dialectic and its drama.

While Udemans’ account makes little mention of the gestures and dramatic orations that often appear in other disputation accounts, the reader does get some sense of the disputation as a spectacle for the audience. Both Udemans and Brand repeatedly stated that in instigating this disputation they were “performing our office” (“wy ons ampt deden”) as pastors. While we can read this as simply fulfilling the duties of a pastor, it is also important to consider the occasion and space in which this role was performed.66 The Reformed Church had exclusive domain of public religious practice in the Dutch Republic, whereas Mennonites and other minorities were granted toleration to practice their religion privately, in homes or schuilkerken – clandestine churches. What’s more, Reformed ministers frequently pressured local, provincial, and national governments to further restrict Mennonite worship, or even ban it outright.67 It was one thing for a Reformed minister to condemn Mennonite beliefs from his own pulpit. It was quite another for him to arrive unannounced at a Mennonite baptism, quietly observe the entire ceremony, before challenging clergy to a debate on whether or not their practices were scriptural before the whole congregation. The very presence of the Reformed ministers was a spectacle that displayed their legitimacy as the true ministers of God, entrusted to that role by the Republic’s leadership.68 The

66 Peter Burke argues that “occasion” is central to the variety of approaches taken by historians in the performative turn. He suggests “occasionalism” as a unifying concept: “the basic point is that on different occasions (moments, locales) or in different situations (in the presence of different people) the same person behaves in different ways.” Peter Burke, “Performing History: The Importance of Occasions,” Rethinking History 9:1 (March 2005), 36. 67 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 174-176; Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente, 344-346. 68 In a society that valued religious unity and considered part of the secular government’s role to promote that unity, the claim of government support could be quite persuasive. See the case of Arnoldus Buchelius. Judith Pollmann,

Mennonites evidently received this message, since Knuyt’s immediate response to their challenge was to ask if they had “permission from the Magistrate” for such a disputation.69

Knuyt recognized the precarity of his community’s legal status and feared the repercussions a disputation with ministers of the public church might have. Even if the audience does not figure prominently in Udemans’ account of events, his account makes it clear that they were central to the performance of Reformed truth and legitimacy in such disputations.

Disputations in which disputants made theatrical appeals to audiences were long criticized. The Spanish humanist scholar Juan Luis Vives, in his De causis corruptarum artium of 1534, condemned the performances of students in public quodlibet disputations, writing: “To appeal to the popular audience and even sometimes, forsooth, to the arbiter of the disputation, they make up ludicrous things as if in a play, and with the same lofty and empty style, so that the common crowd would admire what they could not understand, and they themselves would gain a reputation among the people.”70 The pursuit of truth was thus secondary to winning over the audience and gaining reputation. The Huguenot controversialist Pierre du Moulin, himself a veteran of disputation, leveled a similar criticism against his Catholic adversaries. In his 1602

Refutation des Calomnies et Blasphemes du Sr. Cayer, Du Moulin lamented the way his Catholic opponents bragged about their invented victories in disputations with Protestants, writing that

“since the [Roman] religion has become a traffic, and a merchandise of the time (une marchandise du temps), those that maintain it appear to have some reason to practice packaging

Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565-1641(New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 87-91. 69 Udemans, Korte Notulen, 1.

70Quoted in Jody Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama 27:3 (Fall 1993), 351.

40 it with artifice: yet, we knew that it is impossible to maintain the lie other than by sparing the truth.”71 For Vives and Du Moulin, far from discovering the truth, the theatrics of disputation risked concealing it in order to impress the audience.

Yet, the drama of disputation was a central part of its lasting appeal. Disputation dramatized the quest for truth and offered a spectacle of its triumph over falsehood. For this reason, it was a useful instrument to strengthen orthodoxy in contexts of religious diversity. Such was the case in Southern France and Spain in the thirteenth century. There Dominican friars orchestrated disputations to display the truth of orthodox Catholicism winning out over

Albigensian heresy and Judaism. Mendicant friars, like the Dominicans, were no strangers to dramatic performances and fiery orations. Their sermons often made use of dramatic gestures, such as standing arms outstretched in the shape of a cross during the sermon, or props such as the emblem used by Bernardino da Siena emblazoned with IHS. Bernardino encouraged veneration of the emblem, and used it to induce emotional reactions from his audience such as weeping and embracing the emblem.72 While Franciscans like Bernardino employed such dramatic tactics in their sermons, Dominicans likewise did so in disputation. In Jordan of Saxony’s retelling of a disputation between St. Dominic and several heretics in Montréal, both sides presented books to a local jury to judge who had the stronger case. The jury was unable to come to a decision and decided to subject the books to a trial by fire, which showed Dominic’s case to be strongest as

71 Pierre du Moulin, Refutation des Calomnies et Blasphemes du Sr. Cayer (1602), 3-4. Du Moulin makes a very similar statement in his Response du sieur Du Moulin aux lettres du Sieur Gontier (1609), 21: “depuis que la religion Romaine est devenuë vne merchandise, ceux qui l’enseignent se sont estudiez à emballer.” 72 Beverly Mayne Kienzle, “Medieval Sermons and Their Performance: Theory and Record,” in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn A. Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 104-115; Massimo Rospocher, “The battle for the piazza: Creative antagonism between itinerant preachers and street singers in late medieval and early modern Italy,” in Voices and Texts in Early Modern Italian Society, Stefano Dall’Aglio and Massimo Rospocher, eds. (London: Routlegde, 2016), 214-218.

41 his book repeatedly leapt out of the flames.73 Fanciful though this account may be, it points to the real drama that animated disputation.

Books need not leap from the fire for disputation to offer a spectacle of the triumph of truth. Disputations are like sermons in that they are chiefly a medium to convey religious truth.

But, while disputation mirrored many of the dramatic performances of contemporary preaching, its dialogical form provided the additional advantage of discrediting opposing arguments or beliefs. The Barcelona Disputation of 1263 pitted the Dominican Paul Christiani against the

Rabbi Nahmanides in a week of disputations before a diverse audience, ranging from the

Aragonese king James I in his palace in the first session to a much broader audience of Jewish and Christian townsfolk in one of the city’s cloisters in the second. The subject of debate was

Talmudic evidence for Jesus Christ as the Messiah and it was ostensibly an effort on the part of

James I to convert the Jews of his kingdom. However, as Alexander Novikoff has pointed out, the written accounts of both sides emphasize the “special debating skills of their protagonist” in front of a broad audience. Both Christiani and Nahmanides conceived of the disputation as a

“public performance of their faith and identity” allowing both sides to present arguments against their opponent and bolster their respective religious communities with a demonstration of the truth of their faith.74

73 Novikoff, Culture of Disputation, 158. 74 Novikoff, Culture of Disputation, 210-212; Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: the Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley; Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), 50-51.

The Reformation offered a similarly religiously divided context and early reformers in particular were keen to exploit the drama of disputation to legitimize their reform agenda.75

Luther not only instigated his reform movement with a call to disputation: his Ninety-five Theses, or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences. Moreover, early attempts to respond to Luther’s criticisms were either formal disputations, such as Johannes Eck’s disputation with Martin

Luther and Andreas Karlstadt in Leipzig in 1519, or at least took on the form of disputation, as when Luther and Eck met again at the Diet of Worms in 1521. The German historian Thomas

Fuchs has argued that these and other sixteenth-century religious colloquies consistently failed since the disputational form discouraged compromise in favour of resolving debate by proclaiming a single victor. Disputation gave Protestants and Catholics the opportunity to outline the doctrinal authority of Scripture or tradition respectively, allowing them to differentiate themselves before a public audience, but at the expense of compromise.76

Thus, disputation as a tool to articulate and display reform ideas was useful in bringing about reformation. In Zurich, as controversy over Ulrich Zwingli’s sermons critical of clerical corruption and greed mounted, the city’s Large Council authorized a public disputation in

January 1523. Pitting Zwingli against a representative of the Bishop of Constance in the city’s town hall, the debate was witnessed by 600 citizens. Unsurprisingly, the city council judges sided with Zwingli’s argument that the church in Zurich should break with Rome and follow

Scripture alone. Zwingli considered this disputation and judgement a legitimate gathering of the

75 Again a parallel development in preaching is notable. Medieval traditions of preaching performance took on added significance in the context of religious conflict and greater access to print. Rospocher, “The battle for the piazza,” 218-223; Emily Michelson, “Dramatics in (and out of) the Pulpit in Post-Tridentine Italy,” The Italianist 34:3, 449-462; John M. Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 76 Thomas Fuchs, Konfession und Gespräch: Typologie und Funktion der Religionsgepräche in der Reformationzeit (Cologne, 1995), 500-501, 507.

Church since the disputation submitted to Scripture, whereas his Catholic adversaries viewed the secular members of the city council as insufficiently qualified to make such judgements.77 The

Zurich disputation highlights how governments could use public disputation to display and legitimize their confessional policies, but it also underlines how elusive impartiality became in such public events.78

2.3 Seventeenth-century “Private Conferences” While the public disputation model would continue to hold its appeal, the early seventeenth century saw the rise of a new form a disputation.79 English controversialist Daniel

Featley remarked on this change in a letter to Sir Humfrey Lynde published in 1624 in his

Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net. The letter is a defence of disputation against the criticism that the practice yields nothing but endless dissension. In it, he makes a distinction between public disputations and private conferences: “I speake not of publick disputations

(within a State settled and resolved many yeeres in point of Religion, as ours hath been, and is,

God be thanked), but of private occasionall conferences, for the satisfaction especially of persons of quality.”80 Here Featley observed that public disputations like the one at Zurich had given away to a new kind of smaller private disputation, a trend recognizable both in England and

77 Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester & New York, 2002), 57-58, 68-71; Leinsle, Scholastic Theology, 253. 78 The role disputation played in government confessional politics is examined in more detail in chapter 4.

79 William Laud in his debate with John Fisher in 1622, made a lengthy case for the notion that a “general council” could still resolve the controversy between Protestants and Catholics. This may have been a rhetorical move to display his moderation, but he was not alone in making this argument. Bodo Nischan has noted the role that irenicism played in the career of Johannes Bergius, a Reformed theologian who sought a colloquy with Lutherans as a means to resolve their differences. He had some success with this goal in Leipzig in 1631. Bodo Nischan, “Reformed Irenicism and the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631,” Central European History 9:1 (March, 1976), 3-26; R.B. [William Laud], An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation of a Third Conference betweene a certaine B. (as he stiles him) and himself (London: Adam Islip, 1624), 43-65. 80“ A Remonstrance sent in a letter, by Doctor Featly, to his worthy Friend Sir Humfrey Lynde, touching the former Conference at his house, June 27, 1623,”in Daniel Featley, The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net. (1624).

44 across the Channel by the 1620s. These “private occasional conferences” saw the academic practice of disputation moved into the private space of the homes of gentry and nobles. The relocation of disputation in private homes for the satisfaction of lay audiences may have relieved some of the tension surrounding the issue of impartiality (by simply giving up on an impartial audience), but it also empowered those audiences to make judgements on religious questions. In a similar fashion as the disputation de quolibet, the lay audience took an active role in these private conferences and, consequently, encouraged a greater theatrics in disputation.

This relocation was partly due to legal imperative. We recall Knuyt’s concern about disobeying a placard of the magistrate forbidding “public disputes.” The Reformed ministers

Brand and Udemans claimed no such placard existed, but laws forbidding public religious disputes were commonplace across the region. In a July 1609 edict, the Governor General of the

Habsburg Netherlands, Albrecht VII, prohibited “any disputation or conversation on whatever religious topic, or on what has happened during the Rebellion.”81 Even in France, where the

Edict of Nantes provided the Protestant minority with legal toleration after 1598, the Edict, in very similar language, forbade all subjects “of whatever status and quality” to “provoke each other by reproach of what has passed...in disputing, contesting, [or] quarreling...on pain of being punished as...disturbers of public peace.”82 It was therefore legally necessary for disputation to take place in ostensibly private spaces. Even when disputation did take place in private homes, it

81 Werner Thomas, “The Treaty of London, the Twelve Years Truce and Religious Toleration in Spain and the Netherlands,” in The Twelve Years’ Truce (1609): Peace, Truce, War and Law in the Low Countries at the Turn of the 17th Century, ed. Randall Lesaffer, (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 291. Even before this edict the Reformed minister Franciscus Lansbergen expressed his concern to his Jesuit opponent Joannes de Gouda that their disputation might upset the Archduke. Gouda, Andwoorde, 2. 82 Article II, L’Édit de Nantes (le texte intégral), ed. Pierre Cohen Bacrie (Centre d’Edition de Textes Electroniques, Faculté des Lettres & Sciences Humaines, Université de Nantes : 2000), 4. I It is worth noting that this particular provision was part of a wider policy and cultural movement in France to forget the grievances of the Wars of Religion. See Andrea Frisch, Forgetting Differences. Tragedy, Historiography and the French Wars of Religion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).

45 could still cause political authorities to intervene to terminate the proceedings. King James himself, upon hearing reports of the disputation at Lynde’s house, forbade further sessions of debate.83

The legal restrictions and policing of disputation beg the question why such private conferences continued to take place. The answer to this question must take into account the fact that these disputations generally did not take place at the instigation of clergy (at least not directly), but were rather organized by lay hosts. Hosting and attending private disputations then should be seen as a part of the religious practice of lay people, particularly of lay nobles and gentry.

Private disputations partly reflect a wider trend towards increasingly personal and private religious practice. Once again, this trend can partly be explained by the post-reformation legal context. Religious minorities facing persecution for the public practice of their faith in the Dutch

Republic, turned to “non-institutional” forms of piety such as devotions and prayers, or established secret churches inside houses.84 English Catholics adopted similar practices, many conforming outwardly to the Church of England while practicing their old faith in private. This trend is evidenced in the increasing construction of private chapels on noble estates.85 However,

83 Featley claims that the King “distast” the conference on the initial “mis-report” of it but was later convinced by the Archbishop of Canterbury of its utility, which allowed Featley to publish his account. Fisher, by contrast, claims that Protestants reported this debate to the King on purpose, knowing he would forbid it and thereby save them further embarrassment. Featley, “Epistle Dedicatory to the Most Reverend Father in God, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, his grace, primate of all England etc, my very good Lord” in Romish Fisher; “A.C.,” An answer, 42-43. 84 Pollman, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic, 6-7, 50; Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 172-197. 85 Sarah L. Bastow, “The Catholic Gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the Age of Reformation?” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 207-210; Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1993), 80.

46 religious persecution alone does not explain the trend towards private religious practice.

Inventories of personal libraries of both Catholics and Protestants reveal the overwhelming popularity of devotional books.86 Clergy on both sides of the confessional divide encouraged such activities.87 Hosting disputations then can be seen as another expression of aristocratic private religious practices.

At this point it is useful to pause and reflect on the meaning of “private.” Lena Cowen

Orlin, building upon the scholarship of Philippe Ariès and Donald R. Kelley on the concept of privacy in England, identifies privacy with the household. The household was “the primary social and economic unit” in early modern English society, a separate “world-in-little” which maintained a patriarchal social order.88 This definition of privacy aligns with Featley’s when he speaks of “private occasional conferences.” These conferences would be held in the private homes of lay aristocrats. Orlin’s definition is specifically English, but the private disputation

Featley speaks of was even more popular in contemporary France where nobles frequently hosted disputations in their homes.

86 Paul Nelles, “Three audiences for religious books in sixteenth-century France,” in The Sixteenth-Century French Religious Book, ed. Andrew Pettegree, Paul Nelles, Philip Conner (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2001), 262-267; Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women 1475-1640 (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1982). 87 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 509-525. Benedict notes in particular that English Puritans were more prone to introspective devotional practices than their French co-religionists. Philip Benedict, “Deux Calvinismes,” Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français 151:1 (2005), 37-63. Evidence on the Catholic side can be found in the popularity of authors such as Thomas à Kempis, Ignatius Loyola, and François de Sales whose works are targeted at lay spirituality. Robert S. Miola, Early Modern Catholicism : An Anthology of Primary Sources (Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press, 2007), 269-271, 285-296. 88 Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1-4, 9.

Yet Orlin’s equation of privacy with the household does not fully encapsulate the entire definition of privacy. Some of the disputations which otherwise fit the model of “private conference” were not held in houses. A January 1625 conference between François Véron and

Jean Faucher was held in the “maison de ville” of Nîmes, a site of public authority.89 This example speaks to another important aspect of the definition of privacy: the ability to control access. Controlling access to the household was central to the practice of hospitality in early modern Europe. Felicity Heal has noted that householders sought to balance a desire to

“maintain internal power” with a “wish/obligation” to display this power “though extroverted gestures of generosity.” This tension operated most clearly at the “transitional structure” of the gate or door that marked the line between “the general territory of the stranger and the particular environment of the household.” Privacy then was the ability to separate from the wider world and public eye, but it was an elusive state, frequently contested in a culture which valued hospitality as an obligation and mistrusted the desire for privacy.90

It is in the context of the early modern aristocratic practice of hospitality that the appeal of disputation can be understood. The culture of aristocratic hospitality explains the “occasional” part of Featley’s definition of conference. While the importance of hospitality for aristocratic sociability had been articulated since at least the fifteenth century, a particular religious dimension was highlighted with the Reformation. Hospitality was still an opportunity for a noble householder to display his magnificence, but it was also an occasion to show his piety, religious allegiance, and strengthen the communal bonds of his confession. For example, the puritan

89 François Véron, La Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des Sevenes (Paris : François Targa. 1625), 4. 90 Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 7-9; Lena Cowen Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10.

48 gentleman John Bruen invited various ministers and godly associates into his home on the main road from London to Wales, as “a way of strengthening bonds between brethren who were widely separated.”91

A closer analysis of the disputation at Lynde’s house as a practice of aristocratic hospitality reveals why disputation was appealing to laypeople and how this context altered disputation. Indeed the original account of the conference, The Fisher catched in his owne net notes that the conference began in a “little dining roome” after dinner and those present included

Lynde, Buggs, his wife and children, some of Lynde’s friends, and the parties of clergy.92 The identity of Lynde’s friends is never mentioned, but Featley’s expanded account of the disputation notes that Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln were among the attendees.93 These two earls were prominent within the puritan community, also known as the “godly,” and are known to have been friends of Lynde’s.94 The disputation was certainly an event to resolve the doubts of Buggs, but it also appears to have functioned as a social gathering

91 Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, 169-178. Antoine Lilti likewise notes that the famous salons of Enlightenment France were not the institutions they often been portrayed as, but rather “based primarily on the practice of hospitality,” differentiated from other forms of hospitality by their regularity. He does not note that this practice built on the hospitality already practiced in aristocratic maisons in seventeenth-century France. Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19-20. 92 Fisher Catched, 4-5. There is some contradiction in this account as to when White and Featley arrived. When Lynde first offered a disputation to Fisher he said that White and Featley were already scheduled to dine with him. But later in the account they arrive after Fisher and Sweet and are told that there Jesuits “in the next room ready to conferre with them..” Fisher criticises this portrayal of events in his account, saying that it gives the false impression that the Protestant clerics were unaware that there would be a disputation. A.C., An Answer, 13. 93 “An Attestation concerning some Particulars, set downe in a Relation entituled, The Fisher catched in his own Net,” in Daniel Featley, The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net (London: Printed by H[umphrey] L[ownes and William Stansby], 1624), 44-45. 94 Elizabeth Allen, "Lynde, Sir Humphrey (bap. 1579, d. 1636), religious controversialist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , last modified 3 January 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/17263

49 of puritan-minded nobles and gentry. Indeed, showcasing this community may have been an added deterrent for Buggs from abandoning Protestantism.

The two earls were far from the only guests present. Fisher complained in his account of the conference that he took “great care” to keep this meeting “secret” but “so much speech was made of it, by some of the Protestant side, that (beside the number appointed to bee Auditors) many Protestant Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, and some Noblemen, and many Ministers, did repaire to Sir Humfrey his house.”95 Moreover, as noted in the introduction to this chapter, Fisher made this complaint to Lynde at the conference itself, to which he excused himself by saying that “he could not with civilitie put them forth his house” but, the Protestant account records, he did “instantly cause his doores to be locked up.”96 Here Lynde specifically cites his duty as host to entertain guests, even those that were unexpected. Indeed, Felicity Heal has argued that

“openness” was an essential quality of hospitality and that openness was symbolized by the “free passage allowed through a gateway or door.” On the other hand, it was also common practice to lock up doors during mealtimes, such as the one this disputation immediately followed.97 Lynde might have restricted the number of guests more stringently, but apart from his desire to appear as a good host, he was also a true believer in the power of religious controversy to edify believers and promote true religion. Apart from keeping the company of godly nobles, and religious controversialists like Daniel Featley, Lynde himself would pen his own anti-Catholic polemic in 1624.98

95 “A.C.,” Answer, 12. 96 Fisher Catched, 4. 97 Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, 8-9. 98 Allen, "Lynde, Sir Humphrey,” ODNB.

Nevertheless, the blame for a “private” disputation with an audience of mostly

Protestants filling the whole room cannot be laid entirely on the host. The number of the audience appears to have surprised Lynde, but there was clearly an interest in hearing a disputation with two Jesuits. In fact, Fisher’s reputation may have been one of the draws for such a large audience. He was engaged in English religious controversy already in 1605 with his publication of The Treatise of Faith, which resulted in several Protestant replies. At the time of the disputation at Lynde’s house, Fisher was technically under arrest, a condition he had been in since 1615 after being accused of association with the Gunpowder Plot. The terms of his imprisonment were lenient, and he was granted daily furlough from New Prison to minister to

Catholics in the city. This allowed him to become the confessor to the Countess of Buckingham, mother to the king’s favourite, George Villiers. Her desire to convert to Catholicism caused a number of high profile disputations to be held between Fisher on one side and Francis White,

William Laud, and even the king on the other.99 While the king forbade publication of accounts of these disputations, rumours about Fisher’s activities spread all over London, including one report that he “would have killed Dr. White” during a visit to his home.100 It is little surprise that when word spread that this notorious Jesuit would be taking part in a disputation in the home of a gentleman, it excited the curiosity of London’s notables who evidently flocked to see for themselves how events would unfold.

Such private occasional conferences, then, were not simply solemn debates on religious truth. They were also social events with an element of entertainment. This context undoubtedly

99 Timothy Wadkins, "Percy [alias Fisher], John (1569–1641), Jesuit," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, lasted modified 3 January 2008, https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/9499. 100 “A.C.,” An Answer, 4.

51 altered the proceedings of disputation. While the disputation followed some formal practices – the accounts often stress the importance of recording the proceedings for example – the event was also another form of aristocratic sociability and as a result the lay audience were not content to sit idly by as the clergy debated. John Sweet sought to prevent such audience interventions at the outset of the debate when he proposed two conditions under which the debate should operate: first, that no “bitter speeches” be made, and second, that “none speake but the disputants.” Yet almost immediately, as Featley and Fisher wrangled over whether the debate should take the

“logick form,” Lynde disregarded Sweet’s request and interrupted the proceedings to ask Sweet to “prove me but this one point out of Saint Augustine, namely, Transubstantiation.” He promised that if he is able to do so, he would go to mass. Sweet simply replied that “this is not now to the question” and pressed Featley to continue.101 This would be the first of several audience interventions recorded in the accounts.

The arrangement of the room also likely contributed to the atmosphere of open discussion. An “attestation” by several prominent audience members in Featley’s second expanded account of the debate, The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net notes that the opponents were seated at opposite ends of the table, and were separated by “many that sate, or stood close crowding about the Table.” Those sitting included the Buggs family, Lynde, and the two earls of Warwick and Lincoln.102 The Romish Fisher also notes that from this table

Warwick played a much more active role in the disputation than the previous account portrayed.

Featley writes that since the manuscript of the first account was written while Warwick was not in London, his “interlocutory speeches” were omitted. In this second account he writes that

101 Fisher Catched, 5-10. 102 “An Attestation concerning some Particulars, set downe in a Relation entituled, The Fisher catched in his own Net,” in Daniel Featley, The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net (London: Printed by H[umphrey] L[ownes and William Stansby], 1624), 44-45.

Warwick “divers times seasonably interposed” to “distemper” both sides when things began to get heated. Featley later notes that Warwick, perhaps less seasonably, intervened on several occasions to tell Fisher to get to the point in his tedious and winding arguments.103 Such interventions by members of the large Protestant audience may have been the impetus for the few Catholics present to engage in arguably the most dramatic audience intervention of the proceedings by chanting “names names names,” forcing Featley to finally name Christ and the

Apostles as Protestants. After Featley declared that Fisher had granted Christ and the apostles to be Protestants and Fisher refused to debate this, it was again the audience who decided that the disputation was over as some told Featley to end the debate while others got up to leave.104

The printed accounts of the conference at Lynde’s house therefore offer ample evidence for how private conferences fit into an aristocratic culture of religious hospitality and sociability.

This context altered disputation, bringing its theatrical elements to the foreground as lay audiences directed and actively participated in the drama of religious controversy.

2.3.1 Comparison: Pierre du Moulin vs. Pierre Victor Palma-Cayet, Paris 1602 Private conferences like the one at Lynde’s house were not common occurrences in

England before the 1620s. It was only in the political context of marriage negotiations between

Charles Stuart and the Spanish Infanta with the associated relaxation of Catholic persecution that

103 Featley, Romish Fisher, *3, 30. 104 Fisher’s account of the ending of the debate is slightly different but also highlights the role of the audience. He agrees that some of Featley’s companions called on him to leave, but notes that after Featley’s departure Warwick approached him and expressed his wish to continue to the disputation at a later time. Fisher agreed to this and another session only failed to materialize after the king forbade it. “A.C.,” An Answer, 37-38.

53 they could occur.105 By this time, France had already experienced two decades in which these sorts of disputations had been commonplace. It is quite conceivable that private conferences in

England, instead of an expression of a unique English preoccupation with privacy, were in fact a phenomenon borrowed from France. This dissertation’s introduction has already noted the interest of English theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, in the events of the Fontainebleau conference. While that particular conference was exceptional because of its political undertones,

English travellers also encountered the smaller scale private variety. While Daniel Featley was chaplain to the English ambassador in Paris between 1610 and 1613, he took part in two such disputations, one with Richard Smith, later titular Bishop of Chalcedon, on 4 September 1612 and another with Christopher Bagshaw attended by Lord Clifford, Sir Edward Somerset and

“divers other persons of great quality both English and French” later published in 1638 and colourfully entitled Transubstantiation Exploded.106 These two conferences reveal that English travellers in Paris were quick to adopt the French practice of conférence.107

It is therefore useful to consider an earlier French conference by way of comparison. In a conference between Pierre du Moulin and Pierre Victor Palma Cayet in Spring 1602, we see a

105 Timothy Wadkins, “The Percy-‘Fisher’ Controversies and the Ecclesiastical Politics of Jacobean Anti- Catholicism, 1622-1625,” Church History 57:2 (June 1988), 159-160. 106 Arnold Hunt, "Featley [Fairclough], Daniel (1582–1645), Church of England clergyman and religious controversialist," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last modified 3 January 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/9242; Daniel Featley, Transubstantiation exploded: or An encounter with Richard the titularie Bishop of Chalcedon concerning Christ his presence at his holy table Faithfully related in a letter sent to D. Smith the Sorbonist, stiled by the Pope Ordinarie of England and Scotland. By Daniel Featley D.D. Whereunto is annexed a publique and solemne disputation held at Paris with Christopher Bagshaw D. in Theologie, and rector of Ave Marie Colledge (London: G. M[iller], 1638). 107 It should be noted further that the enthusiasm for private conferences was not exclusive to France. Joshua Rodda notes that in a 1610 letter, an English Jesuit student in Rome, Thomas More, remarked on the interest of Jesuits in disputing before educated laity. Given that Fisher studied at Jesuit colleges in Rome, as well as France and the Low Countries, he too may have been shaped by his experience of continental conferences. Rodda, Public Religious Disputation, 157.

54 similar interplay between aristocratic sociability and the performance of religious controversy.

The origin of the conference was a challenge by Cayet that Du Moulin debate him in the presence of the king’s sister, Catherine du Bourbon. This challenge did not materialize into a disputation until several months later when a certain Monsieur Millet requested a disputation on behalf of his wife who, according to the Protestant relator of the conference, was “floating between religions.” They acted as the initial hosts of the conference, and it seems likely that

Madame Millet had some connection to Catherine as the conference was held in a “room next to” her residence starting on 28 May.108

Moreover, this disputation again highlights the tension between the private and public duality of these sorts of conferences. The residences of aristocrats functioned as both private dwellings, but also spaces of entertainment and hospitality. It was this latter understanding which seems to have informed the Protestant author and audience member Archibald Adair when he described the conference as having taken place “in a public theatre.” Indeed, he notes that the audience grew “so numerous that the room could not contain the crowd.” As a result, one Sieur

Getault (or Guerault), a valet de chambre de roi and member of the local Reformed consistory, offered his larger residence for the debate. The conference continued for eight days, but growing concerns about its public impact caused it to be shut down. Certain doctors of the Sorbonne

(evidently not friends of Cayet) began telling various avocats du roi and parlementaires that this conference was “pernicious and tending towards sedition” which was enough to make Getault worried about the consequences of hosting the debate in his home. On 8 June, citing possible

108 Archibald Adair, Narré de la conférence verbale et par escrit, tenue entre M. Pierre du Moulin et M. Cayer. Genève : Pierre Aubert (1625), 7; Pierre Victor Palma Cayet, Antoine de Mauconvent, Le Sommaire veritable des Questions proposees en la conference advenuë entre le Docteur Cayet, et un Ministre dit du Moulin (Paris : Jean Richer, 1602), 11. The reference to Catherine de Bourbon connects this conference with an earlier one in Nancy in 1599, described in chapter 2.

55 repercussions to his career, he refused entry to the crowd that gathered outside of his home.109

Hosting a religious disputation have carried some prestige, but it also carried some risk to the host’s reputation if it led to a public disturbance – something which Getault was evidently keen to avoid.

Given that this conference lasted eight days, the debate was much more substantial than the one in Lynde’s house in London. The debate covered a variety of subjects, but centred on the

Catholic notion of the Mass as Christ’s sacrifice, not merely a commemoration of it. The discussion as related in the conference accounts was quite complex at times, with the two theologians wrangling over the arguments of church fathers and translations of Hebrew words.

Nevertheless, they also sought to appeal to their audience who would shape the perception of their performance after the debate. Du Moulin in particular seems to have made an effort to curry favour with the audience, often through humour. Each day of the conference was opened by a prayer by each disputant. Cayet gave his in Latin, while du Moulin in French. On the first day of the conference du Moulin joked that he did this “for the women” since they could not speak

Latin. The Catholic relater, Antoine de Mauconvent remarked that this was “ridiculed by most of the company” but the Protestant Adair portrays his jokes as having a more favourable reception.110 When Cayet argued that the Mass was truly the “death of the Lord” because it was the “annunciation” of it, Du Moulin asked sardonically if the announcement of a victory in battle

109 Adair, Narré de la conférence, 4, 7-8, 155-156; Mauconvent, Sommaire, 56-57. In fact, Getault’s refusal to open his doors did not end the conference outright as the crowd then gathered in the galleries of the courtyard as Du Moulin and Cayet debated how to proceed with the debate and set the rules to continue the debate in print. 110 “Ledit sieur du Moulin prioit aussi en son françois, et dist le premier iour que c’estoit pour les femmes, ce qui fust pris en risée par la plus part de la compagnie,” Mauconvent, Sommaire, 29.

56 was the same thing as the battle itself. When Cayet replied yes, “the whole company began to laugh so that they could not be quieted.”111

Mocking the opponent and inducing audience laughter or derision was just one sort of spectacle that disputants used to shape the audience’s perception of the debate. Both accounts repeatedly note the use of books by the disputants, especially Du Moulin. Mauconvent recounts the “great quantity of books” that du Moulin brought on the third day of the conference, which he immediately used to attack Catholic veneration of the Pope, citing “with a great vehemence”

Pope Honorius I who was later condemned of supporting the Monothelite heresy.112 These books seem to have been used as props to not only accentuate one’s own reputation as a well-read scholar, but also to put pressure on an opponent to either agree to a doctrinal position that might alienate some of the audience, or highlight the opponent’s divergence from accepted belief. On the first day the conference, Du Moulin read from a Psalter that declared that Mary was the “first cause of our salvation” and asked if Cayet agreed. Later he cited Robert Bellarmine to argue that

Cayet’s argument that the Mass existed since before the Flood was condemned as ridiculous by the pre-eminent Catholic apologist.113

However, there were some spectacles over which the disputants had no control. Adair recounts that hanging on the wall of Millet’s room were two paintings: one of John Calvin, the other a still life of some meat and eating utensils. On the first day of the disputation, when Cayet began to respond to Du Moulin’s arguments against the Mass, the painting of the kitchen fell.

111 Adair, Narré de la conférence, 23. 112 Mauconvent, Sommaire, 29. 113 Adair, Narré de la conférence, 20-21, 64-65; Mauconvent, Sommaire, 3.

The audience members promptly began to “make glosses,” or read into this event, “according to their humour.” Some of those present “spread the rumour throughout the city” that a “miracle” had occurred and that “at the sound of the word of Cayer, Beza and Calvin were felled, even though nothing fell except some cooking pots.”114 If disputations were a theatre of truth, it was not simply the words of disputants which displayed this truth. Their actions and even perceived divine interventions were also part of the spectacle.

This instance underscores the important role played by the audience of these conferences.

Just as the conference at Lynde’s house, the audience were active participants. Indeed, it was

Adair as an audience member who published the Protestant account of the debate, and subsequently was involved in his own printed dispute with Cayet.115 Even during the debate itself the audience did more than the laughing and jeering often remarked upon in the accounts.

Adair also included an intervention by an “English gentleman” named Henry Constable.

Constable had been a diplomat during the reign of Elizabeth, having served in Paris, Heidelberg, and Poland, defending Protestant causes. He returned to England in 1588, during which time he actually hosted Du Moulin in his home while he was living in England. However, in 1591 he converted to Catholicism and from his base in Paris sought to use his influence to advocate for

114 “Ceste cuisine tomba bas, & là dessus chascun en soi-mesmes fit des gloses selon son humeur. Mais quelques personnes presterent leurs langues à Cayer, et semerent le bruit par la ville qu’vn miracle estoit aduenu, & qu’au son de la parole de Cayer, Beze & Calvin estoyent tombez, combien que rien ne fust tombé que des marmites.”Adair, Narré de la conférence, 17. 115 Not all the audience were laypeople. Adair was a Scotsman who studied at St Andrew’s in the 1590s and was apparently a vicar in Galloway in the 1580s. It is not clear when or why he was in France, but he published Responce a l’outrecuidance de l’Apostat Cayer, se disant Docteur en la Faculté de Theologie, à Paris in 1603 which attacked Cayet as a vain and blasphemous apostate. Cayet responded that same year with Defense et Arrest de la verité contre Archibault Adair, Escossois (Faux-bourgs S. Germain lez Paris: Fleury Bourriquant, 1603). Adair’s activities apparently came to the attention of Andrew Knox, Bishop of the Isles and Raphoe, who appointed him dean of Raphoe to engage in controversy with Catholics in the diocese. He continued the rest of his clerical career in Ireland. John McCafferty, “Adair, Archibald (d. 1647), Church of Ireland bishop of Waterford and Lismore,” Oxford Dicionary of National Biography, last modified 3 January 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/67209.

58 toleration of English Catholics and convert King James to Catholicism.116 Consequently, in this disputation Constable intervened against his former guest. He cited Gregory of Nyssa’s argument that the death of Christ began at the Last Supper and ended at the crucifixion in support of Cayet and further claimed that Du Moulin was ignorant for not knowing this. Du Moulin replied that this argument is different from that of Cayet and indeed the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which holds that Christ’s death in the Mass is different from the one on the cross. Thus, the

Catholic Church does not follow Gregory of Nyssa, and it is in fact Constable who is ignorant of

“what his Church believes.” Constable then challenged Du Moulin to a “written conference

(conference par escrit)” but Du Moulin refused.117 Thus, we see the close connection between the practice of private conferences in France and England. In both contexts, it was the largely lay audience that requested, directed, and concluded these disputations.

2.4 Lay Women and Disputation Thus far we have mostly considered the role of men in disputation. We have discussed how male clerics viewed disputation as a tool to understand truth. Indeed, the universities where they learned the art of disputation were strictly male spaces and disputation was seen as a particular masculine activity, in contrast to more affective and experiential forms of piety which

116 Henry’s Constable’s career again underscores the connections between disputations in France and England. In addition to his connection with du Moulin mentioned above, after James’ accession to the English throne, Constable was granted permission to return to England in 1604. While there he maintained contact with the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignor Innocenzo del Bufalo, communicating his efforts to encourage James to convene an international conference between Protestants and Catholics (see chapter 4). His activities eventually caused him to be imprisoned and disinherited. He was given permission to return to Paris in 1610 where he continued to be involved in the community of Catholic exiles there. His interest in controversy remained unabated as he was among the audience of the 4 September 1612 disputation between Daniel Featley and Richard Smith. Ceri Sullivan, “Constable, Henry (1562–1613), polemicist and poet,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last modified 3 October 2013, https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/6103. 117 Adair, Narré de verbale et par escrit, 152-154.

59 were attributed to women.118 We have also examined how male householders might host disputations as part of culture of hospitality to display their magnificence and their religious commitment. Yet, we have also noted presence of women in all three debates considered here: the recently baptized Mennonite women in Zierikzee in the Udemans vs. Knuyt debate, the wife of Edward Buggs and other Protestant gentlewomen in London at the Featley vs. Fisher debate, and of course Madame Millet in Paris at the Cayet vs. Du Moulin debate. In fact, in this final case, it may have been Madame Millet, not her husband, that requested the debate.119 Academic disputations had largely excluded women, but the relocation of disputation into the private homes of lay people offered women an opportunity to engage in religious controversy. The active participation of lay women in these conferences thus requires some discussion here.

As Amanda Flather has noted, already in the sixteenth century patriarchal ideals that sought to confine women to the domestic sphere had “enormous structural force,” but their impact on “everyday organisation of space, and consequently gender relations, was very uneven.”120 Indeed, we have already established that domestic space was far from exclusively private space, and public business was often conducted in ostensibly private homes.121

Consequently, even though women’s activities were ideally confined to a private sphere, they could often be influential beyond the confines of the household. For example, aristocratic women in England often acted as patrons of preachers who aligned with their views, such Lady Isabelle

Bowes who supported puritan preachers like Richard Rothwell and John Davenport. This

118 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 67; Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul,” 240-241. 119 Adair, Narré de verbale et par escrit, 7.

120 Amanda Flather, Gender and Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007), 15. 121 Flather, Gender and Space, 177; Orlin, Locating Privacy, 151.

60 patronage was mirrored by Catholic women who sheltered priests and used their households as centres of recusant Catholic activities while their husbands appeased the regime through public conformity.122 Similarly, Catholic noblewomen in Paris were patrons and members of new religious houses for women that promoted new forms of penitential piety.123 Women were at the centre of both Catholic and Protestant reform movements. It should therefore be little surprise that they would be interested in and actively participate in religious controversy when the opportunity arose. Private conferences offered such an opportunity and as one final example will demonstrate, laywomen appear to have been just as well informed about religious controversy as laymen and did not shy away from active participation in debate.

This final conference occurred in Paris in April 1609 and once again involved Pierre du

Moulin. The details of this conference are disputed, but comparing both the Protestant and

Catholic published accounts, a general picture of the proceedings emerges. Du Moulin’s account begins on 9 April 1609 with an encounter with of one of his parishioners, the Sieur de

Liembrune, outside his residence on Rue des Marets. Liembrune invited him to come inside, but upon entering his chambre he encountered a “room full of ladies” who promptly questioned him on Article 31 of the Reformed Confession of Faith concerning the legitimate vocation of

Reformed ministers. He initially refused, arguing that they would only spread partial accounts of his answers. Then, as if by chance, the Jesuit priest Jean Gontery entered the room with another

122 Francis J. Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 37; Sarah Bastow, “The Catholic Gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the Age of Reformation?” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, eds. P. H. Cullum, Katherine J. Lewis. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 206-221; Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1993), 80. 123 Barbara Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 17-19.

61 priest carrying several books.124 Gontery’s account begins a little earlier and gives some more context of how this conference came to be. He describes a certain Madame de Mazencourt who

“having professed the Reformed religion her entire life” was “moved by a desire to know the truth” and had gone to hear several of Gontery’s sermons and talked with him. Her sister,

Madame de Liembrune, sought to “divert her from the path she was taking” and arranged to have her confer with Du Moulin. Mazencourt requested the attendance of Gontery, telling him that her doubts would be resolved if he could get the Protestant to “renounce holy Scripture.”125 It would appear then that both clergymen had been invited to the debate by two different women.

The clerics began their debate about true vocations, but after a while the audience apparently grew tired of hearing the same old arguments over and over and requested a topic change. According to Du Moulin, one of the women requested that they discuss the meaning of

Christ’s words at the Last Supper, “This is my Body,” thereby touching on the controversy over

Transubstantiation. The discussion of this topic became increasingly heated prompting Gontery to take a moment to write down what had happened so far. When Gontery moved to the periphery of the room to do this, one Madame de Salignac stepped in to continue the earlier discussion about which church can claim to have the true ministers of Christ. Du Moulin was apparently acquainted with Salignac, or else learned more about her before he published his account, for he explains in the account that Salignac was raised a Protestant, but converted to

Catholicism. In the debate, she cited various church fathers including John Chrysostom,

Tertullian, and Cyprian and argued that they support the view that Catholic clergy are the only

124 Pierre du Moulin, Veritable narré de la conference entre les Sieurs Du Moulin & Gontier, secondé par Madame la Baronne de Salignac (Geneva : Pierre Aubert, 1625), 3. 125 Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, par le R.P. Gonthery de la Campagnie de Jesus, sur la conversion d’une Dame de la Religion pretenduë reformee à la foy Catholique (Paris : Claude Chappelet, 1609), 4- 5.

62 and true ministers of the Gospel. After some debate over this point, the company agreed to leave things as they were and departed amicably.126

It appears that this Madame de Salignac was Marguerite de L’Hôpital, wife of Jean de

Gontaut-Biron, Baron de Salignac and French ambassador in Turkey between 1605 and 1610.

Her surname is familiar to French historians as she was the granddaughter of Catherine de

Medici’s chancellor Michel de L’Hôpital.127 The conference accounts give some background on her life. She appears to have shared her grandfather’s scholarly inclinations because although, like most noblewomen, she was not taught Latin or Greek, she arranged to read the Church fathers through a translator. She devoted several years to this study before converting to

Catholicism, encouraging her husband and Madame de Mazencourt to convert as well.128

Salignac’s activities appear in stark contrast to the negative stereotypes of women’s grasp of doctrinal disputes of contemporaries. In his account of the disputation, Du Moulin writes that the female audience intervened to change the topic because they felt it was “too high” for them.129 Catholics and Protestants alike portrayed women who adopted their opponent’s faith as having weak wills and intellects, or else given to frenzy.130 Religious literature directed at

126 Du Moulin, Veritable narré, 15-17; Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, 7-8. 127 Jean de Gontaut Biron; Théodore de Gontaut Biron, Ambassade en Turquie de Jean de Gontaut Biron, Baron de Salignac, 1605-1610. Voyage à Constantinople – séjour en Turquie (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1888), lii-liii. 128 Du Moulin, Veritable Narré, 15; Gontaut Biron, Ambassade en Turquie, lii; Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, 7-9; Louis de Montgomery, Réfutation du faux discours de la conférence entre le R. P. Gonthery, de la Compagnie de Jésus, et le sieur Du Moulin, ministre de la religion prétendue réformée (Paris : C. Chappelet, 1609), 28. 129 Du Moulin, Veritable Narré, 12. 130 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 65.

63 women therefore encouraged them to be “chaste, silent, and obedient.”131 Salignac and the women who participated in this debate demonstrate the degree to which women actually took part in the religious controversies of the day. Indeed, likely as a response to these sorts of stereotypes, a Catholic relator of the conference, Louis de Montgomery, Sieur de Courbouzon, stressed that Salignac became Catholic only after years of study and with “full knowledge of the facts.”132

While the extent of Salignac’s knowledge of religious controversy may have been exceptional, the conference accounts reveal that the laywomen in the audience were relatively well informed about the points of controversy. While it is true that the libraries of noblewomen in both France and England were dominated by devotional literature, these books were by no means their only access to religious knowledge.133 Just like the conference at Lynde’s house, the conference at the Liembrunne residence arose out of an invitation to a single minister to discuss some religious questions. Again, hosting disputations was just one form of religiously-motivated hospitality which also included hosting individual clerics. Gontery’s account notes that the conference on 9 April only came about after multiple meetings with Madame de Mazencourt to discuss her doubts. This context helps explain the question on Article 31 which opened the debate. A year later Jean Gontery would publish a guide to defeat Protestant ministers in debate using only the words of their own confession. It cited Article 31 specifically as an example of

131 Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient, 103. 132 “La verité est que Monsieur de Salignac et Madame sa femme, ont employé deux ans de temps à se faire instruire, sans rien espargner pour recouvrir livres et se les faire traduire et interpreter, et se sont faicts Catholiques avec grand cognoissance de cause.” Montgomery, Réfutation du faux discours, 28. 133 The libraries studied by Hull are comparable to those described in Ernest Quentin Bauchart, Les Femmes bibliophiles de France (XVIe, XVIIe & XVIIIe siècles), Vol. 1 (Paris: Damascène Morgand, 1886).

64 how the Reformed confession has no basis in scripture.134 There is little doubt that he would have raised this point with Madame de Mazencourt in one their conversations before the actual conference. These cases reveal that laywomen as much as laymen were informed about the points of religious controversy which these disputations were about. Armed with this knowledge, laypeople of both sexes were enthusiastic participants of these discussions.

2.5 Conclusion In conclusion, disputation appealed to both clergy and laypeople as dialectic and theatre.

Clerics remained confident that disputation was an effective means of attaining truth, as the lengthy theological discussions in the printed accounts demonstrate. But they were keenly aware of the performative function of disputation. Truth was not only revealed, but its triumph was also acted out. This made disputation an appealing tool to address the questions of laypeople, particularly “persons of quality” who had some knowledge of theological controversy and were interested in hosting disputations. Disputation was thus relocated in the private spaces of the homes of nobles and gentry and dealt with the religious questions of particular persons. This relocation into their own space empowered laypeople to direct and take part in religious disputation, including women who were traditionally excluded from theological controversy. The audience became crucial actors in disputation and, despite being ostensibly private, these debates had a public focus. As we have seen above, the boundary between private and public in early modern Europe was porous. Clerics hoped to exploit this situation to turn these private conferences into public controversy, as we shall see in the next chapter.

134 Jean Gontery, Declaration de l’erreur de nostre temps, et du moyen qu’il a tenu pour s’insinuer. Avec la replique contre le Sieur du Moulin Ministre, respondant à une lettre escritte au Roy (Paris : Pierre Ramier, 1610), 1- 2.

3 Private Conferences into Public Controversy

Around a week after the conference between Daniel Featley and John Fisher on 27 June

1623, Richard Rich, Earl of Warwick travelled across the Channel to St. Omer. While staying at an inn there, he met Edward Weston, a priest and canon of the Church of Our Lady in Bruges.

Weston informed Warwick of recent news that he heard from England that the Jesuits Fisher and

Sweet had prevailed so magnificently in the recent conference that “that two Earles, and an hundred other of the Auditory were gayned to the Church of Rome.” One of those earls was supposedly Warwick himself, which, as Warwick later related to his friend Featley, caused him to smile at this “pretty comick Scene, where the Spectator is made an Actor, and a false person put upon him to his face; a renowned and constant Protestant, borne downe to be a Romish

Proselyte.”135

Featley, in his Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net, interprets these events as just another example of the many lies the Catholic clergy tell, since “They who teach pious frauds, and write of holy hypocrisy, and doctrinally deliver the lawfulnesse of equivocation, may securely report, whatsoever maketh the Catholique Cause.” Weston, understandably, took offence to this characterization and responded with his own Repaire of Honour, Falsely impreached by Featlye a minister in 1624. He defended himself by saying that if he did make such comments to Warwick about the conference (which he claims to not remember doing), that was no grounds for Featley to treat him so uncivilly. Weston admits that if he had made such a claim in London he would have been “in some shew blamable,” but he was in Bruges during the

135 “The Preface to the Protestants Relation of the Conference, June 27. 1623” in Daniel Featley, The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net (London: H.L., 1624).

66 conference and merely related “what I heard from passengers out of England” while “speaking familiarly” with Warwick.136

Regardless of how true Featley’s relation of this exchange between Warwick and Weston is, this encounter and its printed aftermath demonstrate that the performance of disputation did not end when the participants separated. Instead it continued and spread through word of mouth, manuscripts, and in print. Moreover, as Warwick recognized, just as during the disputation, the audience were not merely passive, but actors in the ongoing drama of religious controversy. This chapter focuses on the aftermath of disputation, analyzing how private conferences were turned into public controversies. I argue that these private conferences were performances that were intended to incite further controversy and exploit public interest in news of religious controversy.

Lay people played a prominent role in shaping the public perception of these conferences, with many of the rumours and accounts focusing on the real or imagined conversions of “persons of quality.” This chapter also explores how disputants exploited the religio-political climate and social networks to share their version of events. Finally, the chapter considers how this context drew these public disputations further away from their academic roots towards a more performative exercise designed to win lay converts.

3.1 The Issue of Conversion and the early modern Public Sphere

To understand the aftermath of disputations, it is first necessary to understand how news circulated in early modern Europe and how the early modern public sphere functioned. The 1605 volume of Le Mercure françois declared that in the peace following the Wars of Religion, the

136 Edward Weston, The Repaire of Honour Falsely impeached by Featlye a Minister (Bruges: 1624), 4-5.

French “only made war on paper…and beautiful was the liberty to write in France during that time: the curious reveled in it.”137 Indeed, curious collectors of pamphlets and libels had no trouble in finding printed material relaying the latest news of religious controversies near and abroad. The French librarian and historian Louis Desgraves compiled a list of 7000 titles of religious controversy in France between 1598 and 1685.138 However, the market for printed news and religious controversy was not born overnight. It was in fact the religious wars of the sixteenth century that helped create a market for cheap print. Andrew Pettegree has noted that in

Rouen already in the 1540s, the wars between France, England, and the Habsburgs created an expanding market for cheap pamphlets detailing the latest developments. This market exploded during the Wars of Religion with local presses opening across the kingdom offering readers the opportunity to follow events and judge the competing claims of Protestants and Catholics,

Royalists and Leaguers.139 Pamphlets on the religious struggles in France also found audiences in a broader news network in England, the Netherlands, and Italy where news was translated and reinterpreted, and could often be used to form wider Reformed or Catholic identities.140 It was this market for cheap and ephemeral works of religious controversy that disputants sought to tap into with their accounts.

137 Quoted in Émile Kappler, Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2011), 14. 138 Louis Desgraves, Répertoire des ouvrages de controverse entre Catholiques et Protestants en France (1598- 1685) 2 Vols. (Genève : Libraire Droz S.A., 1984). 139 Andrew Pettegree, The French Book and the European Book World (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 17-42. 140 Andrew Pettegree, “France and the Netherlands: The Interlocking of Two Religious Cultures in Print during the Era of the Religious Wars,” Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History84 (2004): 318-37; Nina Lamal, "Promoting the Catholic Cause on the Italian Peninsula: Printed Avvisi on the Dutch Revolt and the French Wars of Religion, 1562–1600," in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, eds. Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), 675-94.

However, as argued in this dissertation’s introduction, print was just one medium of communication in which early modern people could engage in public discussion. Most information was still shared by word of mouth. As Henk van Nierop demonstrates in his study of chronicles and diaries during the early years of the Dutch Revolt, the main sources for these written sources were rumours, mostly spread orally. Such rumours could have a powerful effect on public opinion. The Dutch Revolt itself was a consequence of persistent (yet false) rumours that Philip II was going to introduce the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. For this reason, early modern followers of news often took great pains to verify rumours in some way.141 In this context, the reputation of the messenger was a prime factor in the reliability of information.142

According to Weston’s account, he recognized the reports of the conversion of two earls and 100 others to have been a rumour. His conversation with Warwick may have been an effort to verify this news he heard from English travelers. The printed debate accounts consulted for this dissertation were generally only published after rumours had spread far and wide, ensuring they would find some audience. Moreover, their publication was justified as way of setting the record straight by a participant in the debate.

In this context, as in the disputation itself, the role of the audience was critical. Indeed, the crux of the news Weston heard was not the arguments of the clerics, but the response of the audience, especially the alleged conversion of two earls. In France and England in particular, the

141 Henk van Nierop, “’And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars’. Rumour and the Revolt of the Netherlands,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, eds. Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicer (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 69-86. 142 Andrew Pettegree, The Invention of the News: How the World came to know Itself (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 2-3. Diplomats in particular relied on their ability to exchange news from their own country for valuable information at their post to keep their rulers abreast of international developments. Their diplomatic activities were hindered when they did not have new information to share. Tracey A. Sowerby, “Elizabethan Diplomatic Networks and the Spread of News,” in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, 305-327.

69 conversion, or lack thereof, of prominent audience members became central to the public debate after the conference itself. This owed in part to the social status that was ascribed to nobility in early modern Europe. In France especially, nobility was associated with an innate sense of virtue and honour.143 Consequently, in the confessionally partisan atmosphere of post-Reformation

Europe, the virtuous judgement of a noble might go some way to serving as the determinatio of the disputation, replacing the role of the impartial magister. In so doing, this prominent person might lead others by example. This view appears in François Véron’s Conversion de plusieurs

Noblesses de Normandie. It includes a letter from one Monsieur Beulenger, Dean of Magny, dated 17 April, 1628. Beulenger described how Monsieur de Haseville was recently received into the Catholic Church. He attributed the conversion to a conference between Véron and Isaac

Chorin and claimed that this public conversion “greatly edified the people who were present at this action, seeing the great humility of this gentleman.” He further claimed that, as a result, many doubting Catholics were confirmed in their faith and many “errants” converted.144

The religious allegiance of nobles also had other more concrete effects on religious communities which also made their conversion particularly important in the confessional conflict between Protestants and Catholics. In France, the Edict of Nantes tied much of the fortunes of the Reformed Church to its noble support. Articles VII and VIII permitted High Justices and fief- holders to maintain the Reformed faith in their charges, while other nobles could maintain a

143 Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 21-25; Kristen B. Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), 93, 100-101. 144 François Véron, La Conversion de plusieurs Noblesses de Normandie…Presenté à la Royne mere (Troyes, 1628), 6-7.

70 chaplain on their estate for their family’s use.145 By converting Protestant nobles, Catholic missionaries could ensure the closure of Protestant temples on their lands (a strategy also employed by their Reformed counterparts half a century earlier). Keith Luria has noted how

Capuchin missionaries employed this strategy in Poitou, and Véron makes the same claim in his

1631 address to the Reformed national synod of Charenton.146 In his address, he complains how

Protestants have “usurped” the right to preach in the houses of nobles throughout the country

“against the Edicts” but his efforts have deprived them of that right in Asseville as a result of the recent conversion of the Seigneur there. They would be deprived of many more such privileges if city magistrates were more vigilant in their charges.147 In England, the Catholic community was sustained by the support of Catholic noble families like the Viscounts Montague, and Catholic clergy were keen to sustain their faith.148 The conversion of a noble family could therefore have profound implications on religious communities on both sides of the channel. It is little surprise then that conferences for their religious edification would provide ample material to fill the rumour mill and travel across the news networks in the region.

145 Articles VII and VIII, L’Édit de Nantes, 5-6. The existence of this provision was itself a consequence of the focus Reformed missionaries placed on converting nobles in the sixteenth century. Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 38. 146 Keith Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 56-60. 147 François Véron. Voye d’Accord et de reunion en Religion, par diverses Theses, et Conference sur icelles, avec tout le choix de toutes les conditions, Proposee au Synode National de tous les Ministres de France assemblez à Charenton (Paris, 1631), 8. Given the phonetic similarity of “Asseville” and “Haseville,” it seems that this account refers to the same Seigneur as in La Conversion de plusieurs Noblesses de Normandie. 148 There is some historiographical debate over the extent aristocratic influence in English Catholicism centring around the degree to which their religious practice was insular or benefited a wider Catholic community. For an overview, see Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, C.1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20-25.

With so much riding on the religious allegiance of these aristocrats, their conversions were accompanied with public performances justifying their decision. Indeed, Louis Desgraves categorizes conversion accounts as one of the three major genres of printed religious controversy in seventeenth-century France alongside doctrinal works and conferences.149 However participation in disputations was also often a part of the performance of a noble conversion. It demonstrated that the convert had given a fair hearing to both sides and justified their decision to convert (or in some cases reaffirm their faith) as a natural response to the more compelling argument. For instance, as described in the previous chapter, Madame de Mazencourt had been hearing sermons and discussing theology with Jean Gontery sometime before organizing a conference between him and Pierre du Moulin in April 1609 in which she promised to convert if

Gontery could get the Protestant to “renounce holy Scripture.”150 However, as Du Moulin was quick to point out in a published response to Gontery’s account, Mazencourt had not practiced the Reformed faith since her marriage to a Catholic in 1596.151 Regardless of the actual date of her abjuration from the Reformed church, Mazencourt’s participation in the conference and alleged conversion after it acted as a public performance of her new Catholic identity, an identity which she embraced not simply because of her marriage, but after consideration of the doctrinal issues that divided the two confessions.

Before considering in more detail how this worked in practice, it is worth considering why conferences centred around the conversion of prominent laypeople were not as prevalent in

149 Desgraves, Répertoire, Vol. I, II.

150 Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, par le R.P. Gonthery de la Campagnie de Jesus, sur la conversion d’une Dame de la Religion pretenduë reformee à la foy Catholique (Paris : Claude Chappelet, 1609), 4- 5. 151 Pierre du Moulin, Response du sieur Du Moulin aux lettres du Sieur Gontier, escrites au Roy sur le suiet de leur conference (Geneva : Pierre Aubert, 1625), 21-22.

72 the Netherlands. Like the French and English, Dutch clergy and laypeople alike were interested in holding disputations. We see a similar pattern of disputations being occasioned by laypeople, either through their request, or by clerics hoping to win converts. Indeed, Reformed synods at times encouraged pastors to engage in disputation with local Catholics and Mennonites.152

Disputations certainly took place, but it appears that Reformed-Mennonite debates were more common than disputations with Catholics, and that the audience of these disputations were of a lower social standing. This may partly be because the Reformed competed more directly with

Mennonites whose theology and community life was more similar than that of Catholics.153

However, another factor may have been a lack of interest on the part of Catholic clergy in the

Dutch Republic. In a sharp contrast to the leadership of the English Jesuit mission, the apostolic vicar of the Dutch Jesuit mission, Sasbout Vosmeer, discouraged his missionaries from engaging with their opponents, and specifically charged them to avoid disputation. If they were somehow drawn into debate, they were to avoid any invective and simply reiterate Catholic doctrine.154

Dutch Catholic priests therefore may have been not just reluctant to engage in disputation with the Reformed opponents, but also to engage in the kind of controversy which would lead to a high profile public debate in print. It is telling that arguably the most high profile Catholic-

Reformed disputation, between the Jesuit Joannes de Gouda and Rotterdam Reformed minister

Franciscus Lansbergen, took place in Antwerp. There the Catholic party had government

152 Christine Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland's Golden Age: Heretics and Idolaters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 85-88. Kooi notes that there is little surviving record of Catholic-Reformed disputations in Holland, but does provide a few examples, which conform to the lay-directed pattern outlined in this dissertation. 153 Samme Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675 (Hilversum & Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren & Fryske Akademy, 2000), 343-344. 154 Sabout Vosmeer, “Insinuatio,” 175-177, quoted in Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics, 85.

73 protection and ready access to printers favourable to their cause, which allowed a print controversy to continue years after the disputation.

In his printed account of his disputation with Lansbergen, Gouda gives the names and occupations of the Rotterdammers who attended their debate: Guiliam Schaelkens, judge; Claes

Rooclaes, former schoolmaster; Jan Dircesen Versijden, Secretary of Schielandt; Egbert

Jacobsen, his clerk; and Daniel Verleck, a pilgrim originally from Mechelen (“Magelaens

Pelgrim”).155 It is notable that while a number of these auditors had some political power, they were all of a middling social class. This instance points to another reason for the lack of conversion-based conferences: the nobility in the Dutch Republic were given a lesser social and political role given than elsewhere in Western Europe. As Henk van Nierop has noted of the sixteenth-century nobility of Holland, they were not as numerous as elsewhere in Europe (less than 0.5% of the population), and the revolt prevented new ennoblements. They continued to be powerbrokers in rural areas of the Republic, but had a limited social and political role in the urban seats of power – they became largely “status” elites rather than “political” elites.156

Consequently, they do not appear to have been targets for conversion in the same way as their

French and English counterparts. Moreover, their conversion would have been less controversial than in England and France, where nobles had real sway in religious politics. Instead, Dutch followers of religious controversy could turn to accounts of conferences with prominent nobles

155 Gouda, Andwoorde, 2, 93. 156 Most of their legal privileges were chipped away over time, but an important exception to their general lack of political power was that they were represented in provincial ridderschappen, councils of nobles. Henk van Nierop, The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to Regents, 1500-1650, trans. Maarten Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 222-226.

74 beyond their borders, as they did following a conference aimed at converting Catherine de

Bourbon in Nancy in November 1599.

3.2 Nancy, 1599: A case study in conversion, private conference, and its public aftermath

While the conference at Nancy in November 1599 was not the first conference in the year following the Edict of Nantes, judging from its aftermath, it appears to have been the most controversial. Naturally it would be since the aim of the conference was to convert the most politically powerful Protestant woman in France, the king’s sister Catherine de Bourbon. This conference set off an exceptional amount of controversy, but the political prominence of the actors involved ensured a significant paper trail with which to examine how these sorts of conferences generated further controversy and how participants used this controversy to reach and shape the opinions of a wider audience.

By 1599, Catherine’s Protestant faith had been a public issue for sometime. On the one hand, her commitment to the Reformed Church could help ensure the loyalty of the Huguenots to

Henry IV, who had abjured in 1593, as they clearly still had a highly-placed advocate of their concerns. On the other hand, allowing her to remain Protestant cast doubt on Henry’s own commitment to advancing Catholicism in his realm. This situation came to a head at the end of

1598. For decades Catherine had rebuffed attempts to marry her to a Catholic prince, but in

1598 she finally gave in and agreed to marry Henry, Duc de Bar. Henry was a member of the prominently Catholic house of Lorraine and the marriage served to reconcile the rival houses of

Bourbon and Lorraine. However, marriage between a Protestant and Catholic would require papal dispensation. The king actively campaigned for such a dispensation, but also organized a disputation shortly before the wedding at the end of January 1599 with the goal of instructing

Catherine in the Catholic faith. According to Pierre Victor Palma Cayet (himself a recent convert to Catholicism and former chaplain to Catherine) in his Chronologie Septenaire, the disputation was quite a private affair, apparently held in Catherine’s bedchamber as Cayet wrote that she listened “retired in her bed.” The dispute was “without any profit for her salvation” because the

Sorbonne theologian disputed only in “scholastic” terms which the Protestants mocked, saying to

Catherine that there is nothing in theology “but subtleties, which men cannot understand if they are not nourished on it, and consequently still less women.” This disputation was also not enough to convince the Pope to give a dispensation, so the king decided to defer her instruction to a later date and ordered the Archbishop of Rouen (his illegitimate half-brother) to go ahead and marry the Princess and the Duc without papal dispensation.157

The Duc de Bar was, consequently, excommunicated and was therefore keen to continue efforts to convert his new wife. In early November of that same year, Jacques Couet du Vivier, minister of the French Reformed Church in Basle arrived at Nancy at the request Duchess

Catherine to fill in for her own chaplain, Dominique de la Touche, who had returned to Paris due to illness. By the time Couet had arrived in Nancy, La Touche had recovered, but the Duchess insisted Couet not return to Basle right way because her husband had informed her that there were “excellent doctors of the Roman Church here, who promised him to prove by the word of

God that her belief was false.” The ministers agreed that this was an “affair of no small importance” and that they must proceed carefully.158 Judging by how events proceeded, it

157 Pierre Victor Palma Cayet, Chronologie Septenaire de l'histoire de la paix entre les Roys de France et d'Espagne, Vol. II, (Paris : Jean Richer, 1609), 64. 158 Jacques Couet, La Conference faicte à Nancy entre un Docteur Jesuite accompagné d’un Capuchin, et deux Ministres de la parole de Dieu (1600), 4-5.

76 appears that the Protestant party saw an opportunity to use the interest in Catherine’s conversion to turn a private conference into a public spectacle of Protestant triumph.

The main source of information about the conference comes from Couet’s La

Conference faicte à Nancy entre un Docteur Jesuite accompagné d’un Capuchin, et deux

Ministres de la parole de Dieu. This source is obviously partisan, but, in contrast to the conferences that followed, the Catholic party at the conference does not appear to have published their own account. This may be an indication that they did not fully anticipate how their

Protestant opponents would publicly exploit this conference. Indeed, in Couet’s account of the negotiations that went into setting up the disputation, it appears that the Duc de Bar wanted to keep the proceedings discreet, in line with the debate held in January. He appears to have been genuinely (or as Couet put it, “superstitiously”) concerned for his wife’s salvation. To that end, he suggested that the conference be held in the Duchess’s study (cabinet) with her, the Duc, and the Cardinal of Lorraine as the sole witnesses. The ministers firmly refused this arrangement, insisting that the conference “be in public, and that people of both religions be permitted to attend.” They explained that they needed “witnesses, to exempt us from all calumny.”159 Again,

Couet indicates his concern with how events would be perceived after the fact, knowing full well that the witnesses would spread news of it. These rumours had to be handled with care or else they would be damaging to the Protestant cause. Having witnesses from both religions would not only allow false rumours to be checked, but also give the proceedings an air of impartiality, which would lend the Protestants additional prestige if they clearly came out the better in the

159 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 6-7.

77 debate. Couet was adamant that if the public controversy surrounding the Duchess’s beliefs was to be reignited, it would be on terms that would put his faith in a positive light.

The Duchess conveyed these demands to the Duc and Cardinal who agreed to hold the conference in a more public location, and to allow more witnesses, provided that they be of “the same religion” as the Duchess. Couet interpreted this stipulation as an effort to “prevent those of said Roman church, in hearing this conference, from getting a taste of what they hear us say.”160

Indeed, it is quite possible that they wanted to avoid heretical ideas spreading in their lands.

However, allowing only Protestant witnesses seems to have been a miscalculation on their part.

The Cardinal and the Duc appear to be less savvy than Couet about how reports of these kind of

“private conferences” would spread. Allowing only Protestant witnesses ensured that the

Protestant interpretation became the dominant narrative after the event, as we shall soon see.

The conference itself took place the day after these negotiations on 13 November in a

“large room” in the Château de Nancy in the presence of “a good number of persons of diverse qualities, all professing the reformed Religion.” The two ministers faced off against a Jesuit doctor named Commelet from the Jesuit college at nearby Pont à Mousson and another Capuchin doctor called Friar Esprit. Once everyone was seated, opening statements were made first by the

Duchess, then by Commelet, and finally by Couet who proposed that the subject of the conference be the scriptural basis of each point of the Duchess’s faith. To this, Commelet is recorded as asking what status will the church fathers be accorded, since Scripture is notorious as

“the book and the sword of heretics” where they find sentences to base their heresies and “with this sword inflict an infinity of wounds on the Church.” Couet replied that Commelet had

160 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 6-7.

78 insulted God and his word with such a statement and insisted that Scripture remain the only rule of faith.161

Couet’s relation of the conference continues for another 20 pages but the debate does not proceed much further. However, he used the opportunity of the conference and the publication of its proceedings to expound upon the truth of Protestantism. During the conference itself, he insisted that the Protestant faith is based solely on Scripture, which led to his rejection of

Commelet’s demand to include the Church Fathers as authorities. After the conference, he turned more specifically to the controversy over the real presence in the Eucharist – a topic that generated significant interest among lay people. Almost invariably when laypeople took part in debates between Protestants and Catholics they turned the discussion to differences over the

Eucharist. This tendency corresponds with the argument of Thierry Wanegffelen in his Ni Rome ni Genève that what divided Protestants and Catholics in sixteenth-century Europe was not specific doctrines, but rather differing sensibilités religieuses, of which beliefs about the

Eucharist were one of the principal points of division. Wanegffelen suggests that the reason the

Eucharist was so controversial was because it concerned the basic question: “What is, in fact, important to nurture the faith of a Christian?” For Catholics, it was receiving the Eucharist, while for Protestants that activity was merely symbolic and secondary to the preaching of the word of

161 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 10-13.

God.162 It might also simply be that the Lord’s Supper was so central to pre-Reformation

Christianity and it remained the most tangible point of difference.163

Couet’s account therefore includes two instances of discussions with laypeople over the issue of the Eucharist. The first one is relatively brief, but is with the “grave and devout Prince,”

Charles, Duc de Lorraine. Immediately after the rupture of the conference, Lorraine asked Couet if he believed that those who take the bread of the Eucharist actually take the body of Christ, since it says in Scripture, Hoc est corpus meum (this is my body). Couet briefly replied that they did “firmly believe that Jesus Christ is in his Holy Supper, and is present there” but that he might not be received by someone without faith or repentance, but only by those “who the Holy Spirit has given those spiritual instruments.”164 This response, while conciliatory to the Duc, apparently did not provide enough detail on the Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist, since Couet

– at the the request of his “friends” he claims – included a “particular and familiar discourse” held with a “honourable man, professing the Roman religion” who visited him in his quarters one evening “for some business that he had” with him. The vagueness of this description (the honourable man is never identified) suggests that this encounter may have been fictional.

Nevertheless, it allowed for a 50 page debate on the Scriptural and patristic foundations of the

162 Thierry Wanegffelen, Ni Rome ni Genève : Des fidèles entre deux chaires en France au XVIe siècle (Paris : 1997), 30-31. 163 Corpus Christi processions, for instance, were very often the sites of confrontation between Protestants and Catholics. See, for example, Benjamin Kaplain, Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (London and Cambridge, Mass.: 2007), 82-86. 164 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 31-32.

Reformed understanding of the Eucharist.165 Perhaps this was Couet’s way of including a more detailed dialogue on the doctrinal points he was unable to give at the actual conference.

However, Couet’s account of the conference was printed only after the public controversy around the conference was well underway. Couet’s text notes that rumours began spreading in Nancy and Metz, further north along the Moeselle river, almost immediately following the end of the conference. The day after the conference, Sunday, 14 November, the two Catholic doctors heard that “according to the report made by individuals from the Roman

Church, who had attended said conference, several of them were poorly edified.” This may very well have been a rumour spread by the Protestant witnesses to the conference, since, as per the agreement with the Duc de Lorraine, members of the Lorraine family were supposedly the only

Catholics present. Similarly, la chronique de Morey records some libellous verse against the

Catholic clergy that circulated in Metz that read, “The fathers say that Madame / Searched salvation for her soul / Asking them instruction / [But] Madame says that the Fathers / meddle too much in her affairs / and that she has her religion.”166 Couet states that in response to these sorts of rumours, the two doctors spread rumours of their own in both Nancy and Metz “in order to recover their honour.” These rumours instead suggested that their Protestant opponents’ refusal to allow Church Fathers to be used as authorities to judge their differences showed that they “fled the list,” likening their conference to a jousting field. This kind of rumour was widespread enough that a “reformed gentleman” who visited the city for “private matters”

165 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 72-120. 166 In the original French it reads: “Les pères disent que Madame / A cherché salut à son âme / Leur demandant instruction / [Mais] Madame dit que les Pères / Se mêlent trop des ses affaires, / Et qu’elle a sa religion.” Émile Kappler, Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011), 317.

81 learned of the conference and the reason for its rupture. He promptly met with Couet and then the Duchess’s chancellor, the Sieur de Selves, to restart the conference. He suggested to Couet that he could admit the church fathers as judges since, in his opinion, they accord with Protestant doctrine.167 Couet again refused.

News of the conference soon spread further afield. By this time, a coherent Protestant narrative of the event had developed: one of a pious princess, well satisfied in her faith, who was compelled by her husband to take part in a debate with inept Catholic theologians. This narrative appeared in the verse that circulated in Metz mentioned above, but Couet’s entire account can be read as an expanded discourse on this narrative. He included Catherine’s opening statement at the conference in which she declared that she was “not the cause of this assembly” and that she neither requested it nor has had any doubts in her faith. In fact, she had “always felt well instructed and firmly resolved in it.” But, directing her words at the Duc de Lorraine, “you have told me so much that you have some doctors who promised you to prove by the word of God that my belief has been false, I finally agreed to hear them.”168 Her husband, meanwhile, is contrasted as being consumed with “superstitious dread” about his wife’s salvation.

Couet’s account was printed in Basel in 1600, shortly after he returned there from Nancy.

However, his efforts may have been directed by Catherine who evidently took an interest in spreading word of her refusal to convert. She wrote to Théodore de Bèze on 2 December 1599, that “the artifices of our adversaries could not shake a single point of my belief” and that she

167 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 46-47. 168 Couet, Conference faicte à Nancy, 8-9.

82 wished this to be known throughout France.169 To that end, early the following year, she had her short Declaration de Madame La Princesse de Navarre...Touchant l’issue de la dispute tenue à

Nancy printed in The Hague by Aelbrecht Heyndriksz. who simultaneously printed a Dutch translation. In it she declared that she was “greatly consoled and fortified in the right belief and our salvation.” Furthermore, she wrote that it was the Jesuit Commelet’s fault that the conference ended abruptly and that Couet was willing to defend the scriptural basis of Reformed belief before anyone.170 The Protestant party therefore sought to exploit the interest this conference generated to bolster commitment to the Reformed faith in France and the Netherlands by proclaiming a triumph of truth, vindicated by Catherine’s continued adherence to the

Protestant faith.171

Naturally, the Catholic party did not sit idly by and let their adversaries have the last say.

In this way these conferences generated further controversy and, particularly in France, created an ongoing public debate on religion, expressed not just in print, but in further conferences where the cycle of local rumours spreading far and wide, culminating in further printed controversy continued. In this case, Catherine’s former chaplain-turned-Catholic-theologian

Pierre Victor Palma Cayet responded in 1601 with his Remonstrance et supplication très humble

169 “Letter from Catherine de Bourbon to Théodore de Bèze, 2 December 1599,” quoted in Kappler, conférences théologiques, 316. 170 Catherine de Bourbon, Declaration de Madame la Princesse de Navarre sœur unique du Roy de France, Duchesse de Bar, &c. Touchant l’issue de la dispute tenue à Nancy en Lorraine entre Monsieur Coüet Ministre et le Pere Commelet Jesuite, Et de la Resolution de son Altesse de vivre et mourir en la profession de la Religion reformee (La Haye : Albert Henry, 1600). 171 Couet’s account was also translated into Dutch around the same time. Jacques Couet Du Vivier, T’saemen- sprekinge gehouden te Nancy, tusschen eenen Docteur der Jesuiten ende eenen Capuchiner Monic aen d

à Madame souer unique du roy…pour voulour notre mère, Saincte Eglise catholique in which he refuted Couet’s arguments and urged Catherine to embrace Catholicism.172 He continued to work towards this end, challenging her chaplains to a disputation in her presence.173 While such a conference did not materialize, it did lead to the conference between Cayet and one of her chaplains Pierre du Moulin in Paris in 1602 described in chapter 1. Moreover, Catherine’s very public proclamations of her rejection of Catholicism may have induced Henry to convene the conference at Fontainebleau in May 1600 in which one of his Protestant councillors, Philippe

Duplessis-Mornay was disgraced in order to display his commitment to combating Protestant heresy in his kingdom. Thus, Catherine’s reputation and her publicization of the conference aimed at her conversion set off a series of controversies in France which endured for years, sustaining a broad appetite for religious controversy – an appetite that extended beyond France’s borders. In this context the word of lay witnesses was crucial so that the debate was less about theological discussion, and more about making a favourable impression on the audience.

3.3 John Fisher and Public Religious Controversy in England

English controversialists followed the disputations and printed controversies in France with interest, reflected in numerous translations of French works and references to them in original English polemics.174 However, conferences along the lines of those practiced in France

172 Pierre Victor Palma Cayet, Remontrance et supplication très-humble à Madame, Madame, soeur unique du roi, princesse de Navarre et de Lorraine... pour vouloir recognoistre nostre mère saincte Eglise catholique, apostolique et romaine ; adressée à... monseigneur le duc de Lorraine. Avec la refutation de Jacques Couet, soy disant ministre (prétendu), sur la conférence (prétendue) qu'il a mise en avant, tenue à Nancy en Lorraine, comme il dit. (Paris : Guillaume Binet, 1601). 173 These activities are recounted in his La Conférence des Ministres accordee, et puis refusee par eux (Paris : Jean Richer, 1602). 174 The interest in the Fontainebleau conference, as noted in this dissertation’s introduction, was particularly acute. King James VI and I carried on a printed debate with Jacques Davy du Perron. See King James I, Declaration du

84 were few and far between before the 1620s. In France, the legal toleration of Protestants allowed both Catholics and Protestants to engage in verbal and printed controversy with relative freedom.

The harsh punishments meted out to Catholic clergy by the Elizabethan and Jacobean state as well as censorship of Catholic works largely discouraged such an atmosphere in England.

By the 1620s the situation had changed and a confluence of political factors created the conditions for public religious controversy similar to those in France. First, there were King

James’ efforts at rapprochement with Spain, the great Catholic bogeyman of the Elizabethan era.

This began with the Treaty of London in 1604 that established peace with Spain, but was interrupted with the 1605 Gunpowder plot. Discontent with James’ policy really grew when negotiations began in 1613 for a marriage between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta Maria

Anna and a concurrent leniency towards Catholic activities in England. Protestant fears were initially allayed by the marriage of James’ daughter Elizabeth to the Reformed Elector Palatine,

Frederick V, in February 1613. However, in the long run, this marriage increased anti-Catholic paranoia in England when Elector Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia in 1619, thus siding with the Bohemian rebels against the new Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand. Puritans pushed

James to become more involved on behalf of his son-in-law, but instead he doubled down on marriage negotiations with Habsburg Spain, believing that this would put England in a unique

serenissime Roy Iaques I. Roy de la Grand' Bretaigne France et Irlande, defenseur de la foy Pour le droit des rois et independance de leurs couronnes, contre la harangue de l’illustrissime Cardinal de Perron prononcée en la chambre du tiers Estat le XV. De Janvier 1615 (London: Jehan Bill, 1615). The works of the Cambridge educated Pierre du Moulin were also frequently translated, including his account of his disputation with Jean Gontery. Pierre du Moulin, A conference held at Paris betweene Father Gontier a Iesuite, and Doctor Du Moulin seconded by the Lady of Salignac. Together with Doctor Du Moulin his answere to Gontier his letter to the King concerning the subiect of this conference. By Peter Du Moulin Doctor of Diuinitie, and minister of the Word of God in the church of Paris. Translated according to the French copie printed in Paris (London: at Eliot’s Court Press for John Barnes, 1615).

85 position to broker peace in Europe. Rumours spread that James was being pushed towards these unpopular policies by his favourite at court, George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham. By 1622 then, London was abuzz with talk of confessional conflict, evil councillors, and Catholic conspiracies.175 This was an ideal climate for religious controversialists to incite public debate.

They got their opportunity when the Duke of Buckingham’s mother, Mary Villiers, Countess of

Buckingham announced that she intended to convert to Catholicism. Her chaplain was none other than John Fisher.

The reader will remember John Fisher from his role in the conference at Lynde’s house in

1623. That conference took place at the height of a wider controversy generated by Fisher’s and other Jesuits’ activities, which involved at least four other disputations.176 As George Walker, minister of St John the Evangelist in London, described it, throughout 1623 “the Priests and

Jesuites those hot lovers of that proud whore, and puffed up with hope of prevailing in this Land, were busie as wasps and hornets about our bee hives, and as wolves about our foldes seducing

175 Lake & Pincus, Rethinking the Public Sphere, 279; Timothy Wadkins, “The Percy-‘Fisher’ Controversies and the Ecclesiastical Politicis of Jacobean Anti-Catholicism, 1622-1625,” Church History 57:2 (June 1988), 159-160. 176 The series of disputations appear to have begun on 21 April 1621 when Daniel Featley and Thomas Goad debated the priest George Musket (whose real surname was actually Fisher) and John Fisher in New Prison. Musket does not seem to have been involved in any print controversy, but Featley described this debate in his An Appendix to the Fishers Net: together with a Description of the Romish Wheele or Circle (London: 1624). The private disputations before the Countess of Buckingham between Fisher, Francis White, the king, and William Laud, followed in May 1622. As Catholic-Protestant controversy in London heated up, further disputations followed. Featley and George Walker faced a Dr. Egleston on 18 April 1623, recounted in Daniel Featley, A True Relation of that which Passed in a Conference, at the End of Pater-noster-Rowe, called Amen: Touching Transubstantiation (London: Robert Milbourne, 1624). Walker debated a priest named Sylvester Norris in May, recounted in George Walker, The Summe of a Disputation, between Mr. Walker pastor of St. John Evanfelists in Watling-street London; and a popish priest, calling himselfe Mr. Smith, but indeed Norrice, assisted by other priests and papists Held in the presence of some worthy knights; with other gentlemen of both religions ([London]: 1624) and by Norris, A True Report of the Private Colloquy between M. Smith, aliâs Norrice, and M. Walker held in the presence of two worthy knights, and of a few other gentlemen, some Catholikes, some Protestants ([St. Omer: English College Press]: 1624). In June, Fisher not only debated Featley and Francis assisted by John Sweet , but also Walker and Henry Burton, described by Walker in his Fishers folly unfolded: or The vaunting Iesuites vanity discovered in a challenge of his (by him proudly made, but on his part poorely performed.) Undertaken and answered by George Walker pastor of S. Iohn Euangelist in Watlingstreet London ( London: 1624).

86 our flocks, and sending generall challenges of disputation to our Shepherds every where.”177

That such activities were carried out by a Jesuit who was technically imprisoned in a country with strict censorship of Catholic books is worth considering. Fisher’s activities are a useful example by which to analyze how clergy could use their participation in private conferences to create public controversy and convey their message to a wide audience.

As the quotation from Walker indicates, Anglican clergy in the 1620s were alarmed by the seemingly wide reach of their Catholic, and particularly Jesuit, opponents. Walker’s sentiments were echoed by William Laud in his 1639 A relation of the conference, betweene

William Lawd, then, Lrd. Bishop of St. Davids; now, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury: and Mr.

Fisher the Jesuite (a reprint of his original account of the conference). In it he uses a fishing analogy to describe Jesuit activities. He warns King Charles to be wary of granting too much tolerance to the Jesuits, beseeching him that “they be not suffer’d to lay either their Weeles, or baite their Hookes, or cast their Nets in every streme, lest that Tentation grow both too generall, and too strong.”178 Fisher’s career indicates that their fears were not unfounded. He seems to have been particularly adept at building a network of prominent connections to advance the

Jesuits’ particular vision of Catholicism in England. After beginning his noviciate in Tournai in

1594, Fisher was ordered to England, ostensibly to recover from illness as a result of overwork.

He was not idle for long, and soon became connected to some of England’s prominent Catholic families, serving first as chaplain at the Vaux household in Harrowden, and later playing an

177 George Walker, Fishers folly unfolded, A2r-A2v. 178 William Laud, A Relation of the conference, betweene William Lawd, then, Lrd. Bishop of St. Davids; now, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury: and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (London: Richard Badger, 1639), §2r-§2v. In the context of growing puritan dissent to Charles’ policies in 1639, he offers a similar warning about separatists, another sort of Anglers in a Shallower Water.” These “factious people” are divided into numerous sects but have “ill Nets too” and “if they may spread them, when, and where they will, God knowes what may become of it.”

87 instrumental role in the conversions of members of the Digby family. His networking skills soon got him into trouble though as both the Vaux and Digby families were implicated in the

Gunpowder Plot. As a result, Percy was arrested and exiled in 1612. He spent some time as a professor at the Jesuit College in Louvain, but returned to England in 1615 where he was again arrested and imprisoned. However, the lenient terms of his imprisonment allowed him to continue his activities in London during daily furloughs from New Prison, which is how he came to be the Countess of Buckingham’s confessor.179

Let us therefore examine Fisher’s role in the Buckingham controversy in more detail as it highlights how clerics could make use of their networks to spread news about disputation and influence public opinion more broadly. Fisher’s opponents often mocked him for his assumed name (e.g. A Fisher Catched in His Owne Net), but the fishing analogy is helpful in understanding how his activities, and those of his Protestant opponents, were conceived.

3.3.1 Baiting the Hook. Lady Buckingham and the True Church

The groundwork for Fisher’s conferences was laid in his activities circulating manuscript and printed theological tracts to aristocrats with religious questions. The printed accounts of

Fisher’s conferences involving Lady Buckingham and Edward Buggs note that Fisher circulated papers intended to answer some of their doubts. In the case of Buggs, his Catholic friends raised the argument that the Protestant church did not exist before Luther and therefore could not be a true church. During his visit to Buggs’ residence, Fisher brought with him “a little printed booke” listing professors of Roman Catholicism in all ages which he presented to Sir Humfrey

179 Timothy Wadkins, “Percy [alias Fisher], John (1569–1641), Jesuit." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. January 2008. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/9499.

Lynde as a challenge to disputation.180 Similarly, his account of the Buckingham disputation notes that Fisher delivered “certaine written paper” to Lady Buckingham to prove Roman

Catholic faith “to be the only right.” This paper argued that there is only one true infallible faith, completely grounded on the work of God that can only be known through a “continued success of Visible Pastors, Doctours, and lawfully-sent Preachers.” It further argued that the Catholic

Church is the only church that can make this claim. This paper passed “from one to another” and eventually was given to Francis White “to answer, and to prepare himselfe to oppugne it in a conference with M. Fisher.”181

These papers appear to have been versions of Fisher’s works. His 1605 Treatise of Faith already raised the question of where was Protestantism before Luther. In 1612, he responded to the Protestant critique of the Treatise with A Reply to Mr. Anthony Wotton and Mr. John White.

In this second work, he included an appendix listing the names of “professors” of the Catholic faith dating back to Jesus Christ.182 Timothy Wadkins has noted that Fisher condensed the complicated theological arguments of Robert Bellarmine and Thomas Stapleton into short tracts targeting lay audiences. The “papers” and “little book” circulated by Fisher were therefore likely condensed versions of his own longer works of theology. The circulation of these tracts became a critical tool in Jesuit proselytizing.183

180 “A.C.,” An Answer to a pamphlet, 2-3, 6-8; The Fisher catched in his owne net, 1-2. 181 “A.C.,” True Relations of sundry conferences had between certaine Protestant doctours and a Iesuite called M. Fisher ([St. Omer]: 1626), 1-10, 13. 182 “A.D.” [John Fisher], A Reply made unto Mr. Anthony Wotton and Mr. John White ministers VVherin it is shewed, that they haue not sufficiently answered the Treatise of Faith ([Saint-Omer: English College Press], 1612). The catalogue begins on p.253. 183 Wadkins, “The Percy-‘Fisher’ Controversies,” 156.

The audience for these tracts was still limited to a small number of literate people connected to the network of Catholic underground polemicists, but the doubts of prominent lay people had the potential to generate a much wider controversy. In his printed accounts of both debates, Fisher claims that he did not intend to cause controversy by his activities. After learning of White’s desire to hold a conference, he wrote that he was surprised, and did not think when he wrote the paper to Lady Buckingham “that any such great matter should have bene made of it.”184 Given the political climate, Fisher’s claim that he intended no controversy is hard to believe. Instead, the circulation of these papers was likely a deliberate effort to convert not only an individual noblewoman, but create public controversy surrounding the issues of her conversion. In Buckingham’s case in particular, it can be seen as bait to incite a conference.

Rumours quickly spread that Lady Buckingham, her son and daughter-in-law – arguably the most influential family at court – were all wavering in their Protestant faith. James was forced to respond to squash these rumours and take control of the public discourse. Publicly, the Marquis of Buckingham had the female members of his family confirmed in a public ceremony, while

James organized three private conferences with Fisher before the Countess and her family between 24 and 26 May. He ordered one of his chaplains, Francis White, who had previously published a book against Fisher’s Treatise, to begin the proceedings.185

3.3.2 The Catch: Buckingham’s private conferences.

Fisher’s efforts to convert nobles thus provoked conferences with Protestant ministers. In his accounts of both the 1622 and 1623 conferences, Fisher made clear what he intended these conferences to achieve. First, he believed the conferences demonstrated the strength of Catholic

184 “A.C.,” Answer, 1; “A.C.,” True Relations, 13. 185 Wadkins, “The Percy-‘Fisher’ Controversies,” 155-156.

90 doctrine. He wrote in the preface of True Relations that the doubting reader will “gaine no small help towards ad setling of thy mynd” while the faithful Catholic reader will receive confirmation in their faith “in considering how plainly it is proved, that there is no other Church” that can claim to be truly Christian and Catholic.186 Yet, Fisher sought to achieve this much by simply circulating short treatises to potential converts. The second advantage of holding a conference, then, was not just to prove the righteousness of his cause, but to expose the weakness of the

Protestant position. As Fisher wrote in his Answer, “al that be wise and judicious” who consider his conference with White and Featley will “easily discerne (even by that false Relation, which is set out in print by a Protestant)” that the Protestant cause “hath not gained anything” in this conference and, in fact, it highlighted “the weakeness of the Protestant cause,” which apparently cannot be supported except by “setting out such lying Relations.”187 Fisher, having excited public controversy surrounding the possible conversion of an influential noble family, sought to use this controversy to not just win a single convert, but to contrast the validity of Catholicism with the frailty of Protestantism by defeating prominent ministers in a conference. Indeed, in contrast to his fellow Jesuit Commelet at Nancy in 1599, he had every hope of success given that

The Lady Buckingham had already made known her intention to convert to Catholicism.

Why then would Protestant clerics agree to such a conference? This was evidently a question on the minds of contemporaries since both White and Featley addressed it in their accounts. White offered a justification for taking part that is remarkably similar to Fisher’s. In his Replie to Jesuit Fishers Answere, he wrote that he rests assured that “each intelligent person will observe reading this Worke, that the Adversarie...is deficient of Divine proofe in every

186 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, *2. 187 “A.C..” An Answer to a pamphlet, A2.

Article, and farre more specious in eluding our Arguments, than happie in confirming his owne.”188 Nevertheless, despite claims that reading about this conference would reveal the obvious truth of Protestantism, Fisher’s opponents were aware that making this demonstration was not necessarily easy, and that the spread of numerous partisan rumours, manuscripts, and printed materials would inevitably follow. Featley admited that this is a common criticism of these kinds of conferences, but argued the alternative is far worse. Paraphrasing Titus 1:11, he asked does not silence permit “the mouth of those who subvert whole houses, by leading astray captive simple women loaden with iniquity?”189 In sum, Fisher’s Protestant opponents were motivated by the same optimism that a conference would allow the truth of their position to triumph, but also by a concern to respond to a Catholic challenge in front of a public deeply engaged with issues of confessional conflict and allegiance.

The topics of both conferences were quite similar. Since the 1623 Buggs conference has already been described, here we will focus on the 1622 Buckingham conferences. The location is not described in any of the printed accounts, but it was apparently an intimate affair, with only the Countess, her son and daughter-in-law, Katherine Manners (who also had a weak commitment to Protestantism, converting only in 1620 to marry the duke), and the king present.

In contrast to most other conferences, the proceedings of these first two sessions were not written down.190Fisher’s account does give a summary of the proceedings as he remembers them though. It appears he took the role of respondens as White asked him to defend the arguments he

188 Francis White, A Replie to Jesuit Fishers answere to certain questions propou[n]ded by his most gratious Matie: King Iames By Francis White D: of Div. deane of Carlile, chaplaine to his Matie. Hereunto is annexed, a conference of the right: R:B: of St Davids wth the same Jesuit (London: Adam Islip, 1624), xviii. 189 Featley, “Remonstrance.” 190 White, Replie, xv-xvi.

92 made in the paper he had given Lady Buckingham. According to Fisher, the most extensive portion of the debate concerned, once again, the issue of a visible succession of pastors and doctors. Fisher claimed that White was unable to name such a succession of Protestants and therefore Fisher was triumphant.191 The second conference is not described in detail in any of the accounts. Fisher claimed that this is because he debated the king himself who expressly forbade him from making their debate public.192

It was therefore the third session that proved to be the most controversial. This session also appears to have been the one in which the Countess was most involved. In fact, according to

Fisher, it was she who desired this third session in the first place, since in the second conference

“all the speach was about particuler matters, and little or nothing about a Continuall, Infallible,

Visible Church, which was the chief and onely point” which she wanted resolved. She wished for another conference “having formerly settled in her mind, that it was not for her, or other unlearned persons to take upon them to adjudge of particulers, without depending upon the judgement of the true Church.”193 James appointed William Laud, then Bishop of St. David’s, to debate Fisher this time. To Fisher’s claim that the Countess did not think it her place to make judgements about religion, Laud contended that “neither Scripture nor any good Authoritie” denies “the people” at least a “moderate use of their owne understanding and judgement” without

191 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 14-31. 192 “A.C.,” “The Preface of the Publisher of These Relations,” in Sundry conferences, [iv]. Fisher did not publish his debate with the King, but it appears that he did circulate a manuscript account of it. Timothy Wadkins, “King James I Meets John Percy, S.J. (25 May, 1622.): An unpublished manuscript from the religious controversies surrounding the Countess of Buckingham's conversion,” Recusant History, 19:2 (October 1988), 146-154. 193 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 41.

93 relying on clerical authorities.194 Laud’s response was another recognition of the important role played by the interpretations of lay people in these disputations.195

Laud would take a similar conciliatory path for the rest of the debate. He opened by contesting Fisher’s claim that the Roman Catholic Church was the only church that could claim a visible succession of pastors, citing the Greek Church. Fisher responded that the Greeks had fundamentally erred and were therefore heretics.196 They moved on to discuss the reasons behind the Protestant schism with the Catholic Church which eventually prompted Laud to begin a lengthy debate about “general councils” and how such a council would allow an end to controversy and a reunion of Western Christianity.197 After this discussion, everyone rose to leave, but, as a conclusion, Lady Buckingham asked Laud “whether she might be saved in the

Roman Fayth?” Laud, continuing his conciliatory approach, said that “shee might” so long as she did not adopt Catholicism against her conscience. Fisher took this be a concession that the

Roman Catholic Church is the only true church and told the Countess “mark that” before answering that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.198

In the end, Lady Buckingham converted to Catholicism, but, as Fisher wrote, “upon frailty and feare to offend the King” continued to publicly attend the Church of England.199 Both

194 “R.B.,” An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation of a Third Conference betweene a certaine B. (as he stiles him) and himselfe (London: Adam Islip, 1624), 2. 195 See chapter 1. 196 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 43-45. 197 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 49-59; “R.B.,” Answere to Mr Fishers Relation, 39-65. 198 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 63-64; “R.B.,” Answere to Mr Fishers Relation, 66-67. 199 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 72. Duchess Katherine also returned to Catholicism around this time, but her actions do not figure prominently in these accounts.

94 sides were thus able to fulfill their aims in the conference to some extent. Fisher was able to elaborate upon the argument that he based his mission activities around, namely, that the

Protestant church was false because it did not have a continual succession from the time of the

Apostles. He also could point to the conversion of The Lady Buckingham as evidence of the cogency of his argument. On the other hand, she continued to publicly practice the Protestant faith, which allowed Laud to claim that he “knows not” how the Lady’s conscience is settled, but it is at least clear that Fisher’s poor performance could not have convinced her of anything.200

Fisher’s opponents were thus at least able to mitigate the public damage. Furthermore, as

Timothy Wadkins has argued, James appointed Laud precisely for his moderate and conciliatory opinions. In the aftermath, his arguments could be used to demonstrate James’ continued commitment to a via media in the confessional conflicts which were engulfing not just continental Europe, but England as well.201 The conference having finished, the stage was now set for a battle to influence how the public perceived it.

3.3.3 The Fisher’s Net(work): the aftermath

The same network that allowed Fisher to distribute papers to encourage persons of quality to reconsider their attachment to Protestantism, now allowed him to spread reports of his performance in the disputation against Laud and the conversion of the Countess of Buckingham.

Laud’s sentiments in his 1639 Relation about Jesuits casting their nets in every stream reflects a widespread fear about Jesuit influence in England. John Gee complained in 1624 that his

Catholic adversaries “have vented more of their pamphlets within this Twelve-month, then they did in forty yeeres before. They have Printing-presses and Book-sellers almost in every corner.”

200 “R.B.,” Answere to Mr Fishers Relation, 73. 201 Wadkins, “The Percy-‘Fisher’ Controversies,” 162-163.

Hyperbole to be sure, but his The Foot out of the Snare does include an extensive catalogue of

English Catholic books.202 Indeed, every Protestant account mentions the widespread reach of the “papers” which Fisher circulates. Laud writes in his 1624 Answer to Mr Fisher that, unbeknownst to him, the Jesuit “spread abroad Papers of the Conference, which were full of partialitie to his Cause, and more full of Calumnie” against Laud.203 White records that the King himself had experience with the “unfaithful dealings of Pontificians, when they make Relation of such things as passe by word of mouth onely, in private Disputations” and disperse “hundreds of papers” to their own praise.204

Fisher defended himself against this accusation, claiming that he did not make these conferences public verbally or orally until “he was forced unto it, by false Reports given about them, to his private disgrace, and to the prejudice of the Catholique Cause.” Even then he did not

“spread papers abroad, but only delivered a very few Copies to speciall friends.”205 While that may be true, letters were a significant means by which news was transmitted in early modern

Europe. Van Nierop notes that letters from a known associate were one of the chief tools by which to verify rumours during the Dutch Revolt, and historians of early modern news culture point to the creation of reliable postal services as an important precursor to widespread

202 John Gee, The Foot out of the snare with a detection of sundry late practices and impostures of the priests and Iesuites in England (London: H. L[ownes], 1624), 21. Wadkins also claims that Gee specifically calls out Fisher in this book on p. 24, but I have been unable to find any reference to him in the text apart from a brief mention in the catalogue. Gee was a minister in the Church of England, but was repeatedly disciplined for his association with Catholics, which is how he gained his knowledge of Catholic activities in London. His association with Catholics came to a head in 1623 when he was found at a Catholic gathering after the ceiling collapsed in the building they were in. The collapse was widely interpreted as divine judgement against Gee, and The Foot of the Snare recounted his return from apostasy. 203 “R.B.,” Answere to Mr Fishers Relation. 204 White, Replie, xiv-xv. 205 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences, 37-38.

96 consumption of news.206 Moreover, such private correspondence was by no means expected to remain private. Publication of private correspondence or papers, either by further circulation, distribution in a public location, or by print was common practice.207 This was especially the case when the subject of the news was a prominent person at court such as the Duke of

Buckingham whose his involvement in marriage negotiations with Catholic powers – first with

Spain, and then with France in 1624 – in particular caused him to be subject of an extensive public debate. The conversion of his wife and mother to Catholicism therefore added fuel to an already raging public discussion about King’s favourite.208 In this context, it is little surprise that a manuscript by Fisher had circulated widely enough that White and Laud felt compelled to respond to it point by point in print.

Despite Protestant apprehension over Fisher’s ability to circulate hundreds of papers around the country, his Protestant opponents were just as adept at making use of such communication networks to make private conferences public issues. In The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net, Featley recounts how his conference with Fisher first came to be published. The original account of the conference taken by scribes at the debate was sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury (likely by Featley himself, the archbishop’s chaplain) who

206 Van Nierop, “’And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars,’” 75-76; Pettegree, The Invention of the News, 12-13; Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, “News Networks in Early Modern Europe,” in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, 10-12. 207 Van Nierop, “’And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars,’” 79-80. The activities of Fisher and Featley resemble those of the Earl of Essex who became an expert in spreading private documents for public political purposes. See Paul Hammer, “’The Smiling Crocodile’: the Earl of Essex and Late-Elizabethan ‘Popularity,’” in eds. Peter Lake and Stephen Pincus, The Politics of the Public Sphere in early modern England (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012). 208 Cf. Alastair Bellany, “‘Raylinge Rymes and Vaunting Verse’: Libellous Politics in Early Stuart England,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1994), 285-310.

97 delivered it to the King. At this point it was copied “for the satisfaction of a Person of quality.”

From this person it passed “from one to another” until it “fell into the hands of some Stationers; who, without licence or knowledge of those whom it most concerned, committed it to the

Presse.”209 Featley gave the impression that he did not intend it to be published in this way, but he seems to have been fairly knowledgeable about how widely his manuscript circulated.

Regardless of his feelings on its printing, it is clear that he wished to spread widely news of his victory over the infamous Jesuit.

In fact, Fisher’s Protestant opponents had a significant advantage in their ability to share their version of events. Fisher made such extensive recourse to spreading manuscripts out of necessity. His printed account of the conference was not published until four years after the conference, in 1626. He explains his tardiness by referencing the “ordinary difficulties” which

Catholic publishers face in England, but also the King’s command that he not publish anything of the conference “until he gave Licence.”210 This gave an advantage to White and Laud, who published their account of the conference two years earlier – with, it is worth adding, a dedication to the king, suggesting his support. As White explains, because of the “Hundreds of

Papers” that Fisher had circulated, it was necessary to publish some “publique Worke” to outline his arguments with response to them so that “the weight of the matter on each part, might testifie for it selfe.”211 A printed account appears then to have functioned as a definitive answer to oral and manuscript rumours that were circulating. Authors often claimed to present an impartial account so that the reader could just for themselves the truth of the proceedings. Take, for

209 Featley, Fisher caught and held. 210 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences. 211 White, Replie, xv.

98 example, the preface of John Fisher’s Answer to A Fisher catched in his own net. Fisher writes that all “that be wise and judicious” who consider the conference will “easily discerne (even by that false Relation, which is set out in print by a Protestant) that the Protestant Cause hath not gained anything.” He writes this “true relation” because “those who be partially affected” may

“speake amisse of this matter.” It will be presented in such a way that the “divers falsehoods of the Protestant Relator, may be easily perceived, and the weakeness of the Protestants Cause may be evidently discovered.”212 For Fisher, a printed account of the disputation was an opportunity to further demonstrate the obvious superiority of Catholicism over Protestantism, something which any impartial listener would comprehend. In fact, it appears that printed accounts might have also been intended to be circulate along the same communication networks as manuscripts.

Fisher opens his Sundry Conferences by expressing his hope that this publication will enable the reader to “do a work of Charity, in freeing others from ignorance and errour, and contradicting” the false Protestant rumours that are commonly heard.213

What was the content of these manuscript “papers” that generated controversy after conferences? Some of them were apparently quite extensive. If The Fisher catched in his own net was the publication of a private paper as Featley claims, then the paper was a complete account of the debate that took place in Lynde’s house. The manuscript which Fisher circulated about his debate with Laud was also apparently quite long since Laud’s 1624 Answere to Mr Fishers

212 “A.C.,” An Answer to a pamphlet, [i-ii]. 213 “A.C.,” Sundry Conferences. If polemical books were used in the same way as manuscripts, this might explain why contemporary catalogues of personal libraries so rarely list works of theological controversy. Judging from the debate accounts examined here, lay audiences were well versed in the issues of theological controversy, but they may have come to this knowledge through circulating manuscripts or borrowed books. On personal libraries and book ownership, see Paul Nelles, “Three audiences for religious books in sixteenth-century France,” in The Sixteenth-Century French Religious Book, Andrew Pettegree, Paul Nelles, Philip Conner, eds., (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 256-285.

Relation responds to its contents in detail. The same material is the basis for Fisher’s complete account in 1626. Yet, what seems to have excited the most controversy were the attacks on the reputation of disputants and the responses of the lay audience. Fisher’s account, for instance, claims that White conceded that there were no Protestants before Luther, thereby admitting the truth of Catholicism. By 1623, this rumour had spread widely enough that during the conference in Lynde’s house, Fisher was apparently accused of slandering White’s name, stealing the acts of the conference to misrepresent them, and even plotting to murder White in his house.214 The issue of reputation will be covered more extensively in the following chapter, so let us turn to the second major point of contention, the response of the lay audience.

The reception of a disputant’s performance by the lay spectators was at the centre of most printed accounts and rumours. Since the final act of the disputation drama, the determinatio, became a point of contention in the partisan post-Reformation atmosphere, the assessment of a person of quality who attended the conference could go a long way to lending authority to a cleric’s performance. We have already seen how Fisher sought to use the conversion of the

Countess of Buckingham to buttress his claims that he bested White and Laud in his conferences with them. The conversion, or lack thereof, of audience members in Fisher’s debate with Featley likewise stimulated much discussion. The Fisher Catched concludes that despite much

“tergiversation” by the Jesuits, Buggs informed Lynde that he “was well resolved now of his

Religion” and realized that doubts inspired by the Jesuits were mere brags.215 Fisher responds in his Answer that this is very unlikely since it makes Buggs out to be “of a weake capacity, or of a very mutable nature” since nothing was said in the conference that could sway someone.

214 “A.C.,” An Answer to a pamphlet, 3, 34-36. 215 Fisher Catched in his owne net, 25-26.

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Furthermore, since this conference had a larger audience, rumours spread that multiple

Catholics, including “a great Lady,” had become Protestants as a result of the conference. Fisher refutes these rumours as well, claiming that if any Catholic were converted by this conference, it could only be “some Weaklings” not present at the conference who were swayed by the “lying lyps of some Protestants” who reported that Fisher had conceded that Christ and the Apostles were Protestants. Once these people, and even Protestants, hear the truth of matter they will be

“confirmed in the Catholike truth.”216

In a printed account, the reader might be thrust into the role of discerning audience, with the author claiming to offer them an impartial account of the actual debate. Recall, for example, the words of Fisher in his preface Answer to A Fisher catched in his own net that Recall Fisher’s all “that be wise and judicious” who consider the conference would “easily discerne” that the

Protestants had been bested in the conference. He continued that he wrote this “true relation” because “those who be partially affected” may “speake amisse of this matter.”217 For Fisher, disputation was an opportunity to demonstrate the obvious superiority of Catholic doctrine over

Protestant, something which any impartial listener would comprehend. Rumours about the debate that followed it could then create fertile ground for a print account to proclaim this message to an even wider audience.

The Buckingham controversy demonstrates how news of a private conference could circulate widely in a short period of time in early modern news networks. Clerics with a wide network of contacts could circulate news of their debate across the city, country, or abroad.

216 “A.C.,” An Answer to a pamphlet, 43-45. 217 “A.C.,” An Answer to a pamphlet, [i-ii].

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When the audience of that conference was a particularly influential individual, the interest generated by rumours could ensure that the clerics’ accounts fell on fertile ground for further public debate. This context of news networks and public discussion was a far cry from the closed debate of academic disputation. Consequently, the form of disputation was radically altered to fit into this new public context. This was especially the case in France, where the sheer number of conferences allowed for more evolution of the form than in England. It was therefore French

Catholic polemicists that became particularly adept at turning private conferences into public controversies.

3.4 Jean Gontery, François Véron, and the Art of Making Private Conferences Public Controversies

In early 1619, one of the Reformed ministers in Rouen, Jean Maximilian de l’Angle decried the deterioration of debate between Catholics and Protestants in France. In his relation of the conference he had with François Véron the previous November, he noted how formerly his

Catholic opponents would send their “most able” theologians to debate Protestant ministers.

Now, they send only “the most stubborn, and least capable.” They have evidently given up on attacking the Protestants with “those who reason well” and instead send “those who shout the loudest, who by their violence deafen the truth.”218 Although L’Angle’s observation is presented in partisan language, it does, in fact, illustrate the evolution of disputation in early seventeenth- century France. The frequency of Catholic-Protestant debates allowed the disputants to develop new tactics for ensuring the greatest effect on public opinion. In the 1610s and 1620s we see most clearly the adaptation of the academic disputation to the new context of the public sphere.

218 Jean Maximilian de l’Angle, Recit de la conference tenue entre Jean Maximilian de l’Angle, ministre de la parole de Dieu en l’Eglise reformée de Rouen, et François Véron Jesuite (Quevilly: Abraham Velquin, n.d.), 5-6.

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Debates took on an increasingly performative character, with only cursory treatment of theological issues. Two Jesuits in particular, Jean Gontery and François Véron, were instrumental in developing a systematic method to exploit debates with Protestant ministers to win conversions and generate public controversy.

Both Gontery and Véron took part in numerous debates, and helpfully published short debating guides that explained their method, and the assumptions and goals behind it. Let us look first at Gontery, who, by Véron’s own admission, actually developed the debating method which came to be known as the “véronique.”219 Little is known about Gontery’s career. A brief biography in Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus states that he was born in Turin in 1562 and began his noviciate in the Society of Jesus at Rome in 1584. He served as rector of several colleges in France; Agen in 1592, Toulouse in 1598, and Béziers in 1603. But, it was his reputation as a skilled preacher and controversialist that was the driving force behind his career.220 His first debate was apparently in Castres, Languedoc in 1599 with the pastor Jean

Gigord, but Gontery left no record of this encounter. His career as a controversialist does not seem to have begun in earnest until 1606, while he was serving as missionary in Normandy. His preaching, visitations and private meetings in Caen gained him notoriety. His activities prompted the Protestant wife of the Catholic seigneur of Ste-Mère-Église, Jeanne Convert, to question her

Protestant faith which resulted in a conference between Gontery and the minister of Ste-Mère-

Église, Benjamin Basnage. The minister was asked by the lady to visit her in her home. Shortly

219 François Véron, « Preface : le fin et les qualitez de ce moyen; de nouveau inventé, et comment » in Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de France; et reduire les dévoyez à la religion catholique OU Bref et Facile Moyen par lequel tout Catholique, peut faire paroistre evidement, que tous les ministres sont des trompeurs en l’exercise de leurs charges, et tous les Religionnaires sont abusez en tous et un chacun des poincts de leur pretenduë Reformation (Rouen : 1619). 220 Carlos Somervogel, S.J. Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, Vol. III (Brussels: Imprimerie Polleunis et Ceuterick, 1892), 1567; Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 907.

103 after he arrived, Gontery entered unexpectedly. They debated each other with the end result being the conversion of this lady to Catholicism.221 Gontery’s activities in Caen seem to have earned him a reputation as a skilled controversialist, since he was sent by the King to the

Protestant stronghold of Dieppe in 1608, where he held several other debates.222

Gontery’s experience as a controversialist caused him to reflect on the nature of religious controversy in France. He published his thoughts in two books: Declaration de l’erreur de nostre temps, et du moyen qu’il a tenu pour s’insinuer (1610) and La Pierre de Touche ou La Vraye methode pour desabuser les esprits trompez soubs couleur de Reformation (1614). In his

Declaration, Gontery explains that Catholic doctors have thus far been unsuccessful in combating Protestantism because they debate the ministers with “the testimony of our predecessors,” that is to say the church fathers and councils. He argues that these theologians have been going about it in the wrong way. The Protestants do not repel Catholic attacks with strong theological arguments but rather an “admirable finesse,” making “simple people” believe that the Catholic Church is built on nothing but “vain tradition,” abandoning the Bible so as not to recognize their abuses. However, what Gontery observed in his conferences in Caen, Dieppe, and Paris was that, in fact, there was not one Protestant minister “who can find in Scripture”

221 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 377-381. Gontery also published some of his sermons from this time in his vraye procédure pour terminer le différent en matière de Religion. Extraict des sermons faicts à Caen par le R.P. J. Gontery, de la Compagnie de Jesus (Caen: Charles Macé, 1607). 222 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 907; Eric Nelson, The Jesuits and the monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590-1615) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 115.

104 support for their position in any point of controversy, at least not in the way “they preach and claim.” The goal in his debates was to expose this “ruse” to all of France.223

Gontery’s two books do not simply identify the cause of the heresy, but also how conferences can be used to remedy it. He argues that conferences, “in the presence of persons of honour” are a “manifest demonstration of the errors which [the ministers] have led poor ignorant people” and that the greatest doubt can be “visibly resolved in half an hour.” The rest of the

Declaration is divided into six “discourses” in which Gontery takes the common claims of

Protestant ministers, such as that they base their faith on scripture alone, and uses the “simple reading of the Bible” and the writings of the ministers to show that they cannot come to their doctrinal positions through reading scripture alone, but must resort to “consequences,” that is to say logic.224

Gontery explains this method in more detail in La Pierre de Touche. In this book he outlines his debating method, hoping that it will serve as “a touchstone to disabuse spirits, and make them see the bad alloy of their dreams.” Here Gontery makes a comparison between testing for debased coins and the testing the belief that the Reformed faith is founded on the pure word of God. To do this, he will not use citations of the fathers, nor theological reasoning, but rather

“solely their confession of faith.” They have presented it to the king, calling it “the cry of all their party” and that that they would die in this confession since they “prefer the commandments of God understood in Scripture to the commandments of men.” This book focuses on articles 4,

223 Jean Gontery, « Preface », in Declaration de l’erreur de nostre temps, et du moyen qu’il a tenu pour s’insinuer. Avec la replique contre le Sieur du Moulin Ministre, respondant à une lettre escritte au Roy (Paris : Pierre Ramier, 1610). 224 Gontery, Declaration de l’erreur, « Preface »; 1.

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5, 31, and 28 to reveal the “extreme abuse” on the part of Reformed ministers. These ministers attack the Catholic Church as if the word of God “condemned us in clear and formal terms.” In reality, the Bible contains “not a single formal sentence that favours their pure human inventions.”225 With Gontery, the focus of disputation shifts noticeably from presenting the best theological arguments to adapting the debate to suit the lay audience. For Gontery, disputation is a mission tool. He is keenly aware that what ordinary lay people find attractive about

Protestantism is not any specific doctrine, but the perception that it is a faith based purely on

Scripture. Disputation offers a spectacle in which Gontery intends to reveal that the Protestant claim is false.

Gontery’s debate tactics described in these texts are on full display in a well publicized debate he had with the Huguenot minister Pierre du Moulin on 10 April, 1609. The conference has already been recounted in detail in Chapter 1, so the analysis here will focus on how Gontery employed his method, or more accurately, how he recounted the conference in a letter written to the king about the events, published as Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, par le R.P. Gonthery de la Campagnie de Jesus, sur la conversion d’une Dame de la Religion pretenduë reformee à la foy Catholique. In Gontery’s letter, the doubting Protestant Madame de Mazencourt told

Gontery that she requested Gontery debate Du Moulin after her sister, Madame de Liembrune that her doubts would be resolved if he could get Pierre du Moulin to “renounce holy Scripture” in a conference organized by her sister.226

225 Jean Gontery, « A Monseigneur l’illustrissime et Reverendissime Cardinal de Sourdis, Archevesque de Bourdeaus, et Primat d’Aquitaine », in La Pierre de Touche ou La Vraye methode pour desabuser les esprits trompez soubs couleur de Reformation (Bordeaux : S. Millanges, 1614). 226 Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, par le R.P. Gonthery de la Campagnie de Jesus, sur la conversion d’une Dame de la Religion pretenduë reformee à la foy Catholique (Paris : Claude Chappelet, 1609), 4- 5.

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Despite Gontery’s claim to have had little role in orchestrating this conference, it appears to have all the marks of Gontery’s mission tactics and method of exposing the falsehood of

Protestant ministers. Du Moulin’s assertion that he was ambushed by Gontery in the Liembrune residence is remarkably similar to the account given by the pastor Benjamin Basagne of his conference with him in Caen in 1606 in which Gontery unexpectedly entered from a back door.227 Moreover, from both Gontery’s and Du Moulin’s accounts, it appears that the ladies present were familiar with Gontery’s method. Mazencourt most obviously so, but the other ladies questioned Du Moulin on Article 31 of the Reformed confession, one of the articles that Gontery claimed could easily show that Protestant beliefs are based on their own opinions rather than

Scripture alone. In his brief summary of the proceedings in a letter to the King, Gontery explains that Du Moulin conceded that if Jesus really poured out his blood in the Eucharist, then the

Catholic position that the Eucharist is Christ’s sacrifice would indeed be true. Gontery cites

Matthew 26:28 in the Geneva Bible (“For this is my blood of the new Testament that is shed for many, for the remission of sins”) to argue that the Bible says it is the effusion of Christ’s blood, to which Du Moulin replies that “is” should be taken to mean “will be.” From this response,

Gontery concludes that Du Moulin does not follow scripture alone and resorts to his own interpretation. Mazencourt, seeing this apparent defeat of Du Moulin, converted a few days later.228

Gontery’s letter to the king apparently circulated quite rapidly, since the very same year

Du Moulin published a brief but biting response to it. In his response, Du Moulin contested the claim that the conference led to the conversion of Madame de Mazencourt. He cited two pieces

227 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 379. 228 Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre, 6-7.

107 of evidence. First, Mazencourt had married a Catholic nobleman in 1596 and it was at that time she abjured the Reformed faith, or, at the very least, no longer practiced it. Second, Mazencourt wrote in a letter to her sister, Madame de Liembrune, that she had not been “edified in any way at all because the points proposed by Mister Du Moulin were so high that I could not understand anything.”229 Du Moulin, an experienced controversialist himself, knew quite well how swiftly news of these conferences spread and was quick to get his version of events into the public.

Pierre de l’Estoile records that he received a copy of Du Moulin’s Veritable Narré from

Charenton on 18 April, eight days after the conference had taken place.230 Yet, Gontery had the advantage in shaping the public perception of the conference, and he knew it. Just as White and

Laud used King James’ patronage to legitimize their version of their debate with Fisher, so too did Gontery use his letter to King Henry to strengthen his version. Perhaps having already read

Du Moulin’s manuscript that was circulating, Gontery concluded his letter to the king by referencing the conference at Fontainebleau over which Henry had presided nine years earlier.

Gontery notes that just as Protestants sought to “obscure the truth” of the Catholic victory at that conference, even when the king personally witnessed the conference and approved of the

Catholic account, so too did they seek to hide their rout in this conference by “publishing pretend victories.”231 In fact, the king intervened on Gontery’s behalf and forbade the sale of Du

Moulin’s Response by royal order.232 Gontery put into practice a method of disputation which did away with complex theological arguments and citations in favour of a simple line of attack

229 Du Moulin, Response du sieur Du Moulin, 21-24. 230 Pierre de l’Estoile, Journal inédit du regne de Henry IV 1598-1602 par Pierre de l’Estoile publie d’après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque impériale par E. Halphen, Vol. 9, edited by Auguste Aubrey (Paris : 1862), 248. 231 Gontery, Copie d’une lettre, 10-11. 232 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 416.

108 on Protestants that could make use of the Catholic advantage in publicizing their version of events.

While Gontery may have been the creator of this method of disputation, it was his fellow

Jesuit, François Véron, who used it to a much greater effect. Although not “ignorant” as L’Angle claimed in his Recit de la conference, Véron was not a particularly subtle theologian. He did not add much to the debating method developed by Gontery. That being said, he was a skilled publicist and therein lay his success.

Part of Véron’s success was simply the result of his zeal as a controversialist. Véron’s first conference appears to have occurred in January 1615 in Amiens against the Protestant pastor there, Adrian Hucher. Between then and 1638 when he became curate of Charenton, he took part in more than 17 other disputations throughout Normandy, Languedoc, and Charenton.233 In fact, in 1620 he was released from the Society of Jesuit in order devote his full attention to controversy. In the meantime, he published numerous accounts of his debates, challenges to

Protestant ministers, and several debating guides. These texts were not only copious, but also circulated widely, being translated into English, Dutch, and German. His method was also translated into Latin as Methodus Veroniana and taught alongside Gontery’s in religious schools in France and abroad.234

233 This is the number arrived at by Kappler based on printed accounts of debates. It is conceivable that he took part in more debates that went unpublished. Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 928. 234 Kapper, Conférences théologiques, 231. Véron himself makes the claim that his account of his debate with Adrian Hucher was translated into English, Dutch and German. I have only been able to locate the English translation: M. le Hucher minister of Amyens in France compelled to fly from the pure word of holy write; strucke dumme; and made to runne away Vppon the subiect of the B. Sacrament of the altar [Douai: Widow of L. Kellam, 1616].

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Like his predecessor Gontery, Véron was keen to adapt disputation as a mission tool and make it more palatable for lay audiences. Véron outlines his method in several different books, but one of the most extensive guides is his Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de France; et reduire les dévoyez à la religion catholique published in 1619. Like

Gontery, he identifies the “cause of the malady” of heresy in France as an “imaginary enumeration” of biblical passages supporting the Reformed confession of faith. The cure to this heresy is to show that scripture does not support “a single one of the articles contested between us and them.” Furthermore, these articles cannot be supported “by consequence, or by good interpretation” drawn from the word of God.235 In the rest of the text, he walks the reader through the process of revealing the “imaginations and fantasies” of the ministers. Like Gontery again, he states that the disputant must ask the minister to find specific passages that support the articles of their confession. This they will be unable to do without making use of “consequences” or logical syllogisms to interpret a text. His method goes a little further than Gontery’s and posits that ministers will be unable to support these syllogisms using consequences from scripture.

They will be forced to turn to Aristotelian logic, thereby demonstrating that their claim to be a religion based on the “pure word of God” is false.236

Véron states that the chief advantage of this method is its universality and simplicity. It can be applied to every point of controversy. It is “brief” in making use of just scripture and their confession. As such, it not only “conforms to the humour of our adversaries” but is “quite easy to use” so that “anyone who can read French can practice it.” It is also designed specifically to convince ordinary Protestants that they are abused by deceitful ministers. This is because in

235 Véron, « A Messieurs de Rouen », in Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle. 236 Véron, Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle, 31-46.

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Véron’s view, “the majority of Religionnaires” follow their party because they are persuaded that while the church fathers, tradition, and the councils may favour the Catholic cause, they have “scripture for them.” By proving this to be false, Protestants will easily return to

Catholicism.237 Thus, Véron makes explicit that this method is designed for the participation of laypeople and to appeal to their interests. As he explains elsewhere, this method is more effective than that normally taken by Catholic theologians in combating heresy. They use “learned and profound interpretations” of obscure biblical passages in their original Greek and Hebrew and produce Latin books “far removed from common knowledge.” He explains that “the errant people are no longer commonly susceptible to these strong proofs” and will not recognize their error by them. By contrast, his method, making use of common scriptural passages opens disputation up to everyone.238

Yet, despite Véron’s claims that this method was “invincible” and would “gag”

Protestant ministers, he did not meet with universal success in his conferences with them.

L’Angle wrote in his Recit of the conference he had with Véron in Rouen 1618 that by the sixth session of their debate he had caused Véron to sit in his chair for “close to half an hour…without saying a single word.” L’Angle was delighted to see “this great muzzler of ministers, half-witted and mouth gaping at the end of a table.”239 In this conference before several Rouen nobles, city councillors, and clergy, L’Angle refused to play Véron’s game. The debate turned to Véron’s method itself with L’Angle charging Véron to defend it against his accusation that Roman

237 Véron, « Preface » in Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle. 238 François Véron, La Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des Sevenes (Paris : François Targa, 1625), 2-4. 239 L’Angle, Recit d’une conference, 119-120.

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Catholics could also not defend their beliefs against a heretic who used this method.240 Even

Véron’s much vaunted conference with Adrian Hucher in 1615, which began his debating career, does not appear to have resulted in any conversions.

Nevertheless, the published responses to Véron reveal that his Protestant adversaries did see his activities as threatening. What appeared to bother them was less his actual performance as a debater, as much as his ability to rapidly spread news of his supposed victories. Indeed,

L’Angle’s vivid description of Véron’s silence can be seen as a response to Véron’s repeated claims to bâillonner (gag or muzzle) ministers. This was the chief goal of his method, as evident from the titles of his works: Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de

France (Summary of the art and new method to gag the ministers of France) and, similarly, Le

Ministre d’Amyens, contraint de renoncer a la pure parole de l’escriture Saincte, rendu muet et mis en fuitte (The Minister of Amiens constrained to renounce the pure word of holy scripture, rendered mute and put to flight). Another theme frequently used in his writing and titles, was ministers abandoning the Bible. His account of his debates in Langeudoc in 1625 is entitled La

Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des Sevenes. Around the same time, he also published La Saincte Bible abondonee par les Ministres de Charenton. This second pamphlet elicited a response from those ministers in which they called him a “father of lies” and described how he barged into the residence of Pastor Charles Drelincourt and debated him.

Drelincourt tasked Véron with finding a scriptural passage in which Jesus ordained “sacrificers” to offer daily sacrifices for the remission of sins of living and dead, but he was unable to do so.

Véron, contrary to his ordinary behaviour, was embarrassed by this conference. Nevertheless, he,

240 L’Angle, Recit d’une conference, 7.

112 or someone “as truthful as him” spread “totally ridiculous” news of the conference which

Drelincourt only heard about from “shouts of the peddlers of Paris.”241

Because of the restrictions on Protestant printing in France, Véron was consistently able to out-publish his adversaries, printing numerous books and pamphlets boasting of his victories after almost every conference. Yet, print was only part of his publicity campaign following a conference. L’Angle notes that the day after their conference ended, Véron distributed placards detailing his victory and calling people to come hear about it in a sermon in which he recounted his victory. The exact details of the sermon are unclear, but according to L’Angle, it included

“unbecoming buffoonery” which made the people laugh, rather than convict them by the word of

God.242 Véron’s sermons were apparently crowd pleasers. The account of Véron’s conference with Adrian Hucher, co-authored by Véron and a Sieur de la Tour offers a similar story. La Tour writes of how the day after the conference, a Sunday, Véron gave a sermon narrating his victory in the conference “to more than eight thousand people” who assembled to hear him in the Rouen

Cathedral.243 Elsewhere, Véron writes that this sermon was received with “extraordinary contentment and applause” and that religionnaires came to hear it in such great numbers that their temple at Quevilly was “half deserted.” Upon hearing his sermon, several of them even returned to the Catholic faith.244 Véron thus used a combination of conversations with individual nobles who were wavering in their faith, numerous publications, and sermons to spread widely

241 Recit veritable des conferences que les pasteurs de l’Eglise de Paris ont eu avec le Sieur Veron (1624), 22-23. 242 L’Angle, Recit de la conference, 25. 243 Sieur de la Tour and François Véron, Le Ministre d’Amyens, contraint de renoncer a la pure parole de l’escriture Saincte, rendu muet : et mmis en fuitte…Par le P. François Veron…addressé par le sieur de la Tour Gentil-homme ordinaire de Mondit Seigneur le Duc au Sieur de Rotois, Gentil-homme de la Venerie du Roy (La Flèche: Jacques Rezé, 1615), 4. 244 Véron, « A Messieurs de Rouen », in Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle.

113 news of conferences. He was able to adapt his activities to a variety of audiences ensuring that he gained a reputation as a champion of Catholicism and a router of ministers. The ministers, by contrast, were faced with two difficult choices: to ignore him and allow him to continue his activities unmolested, or engage him in a conference and at least put up some resistance. Either way, both Véron and his adversaries had come to accept that these conferences were not simply theological debates, but performances that could be used to influence the religious attitudes of a wider public.

3.5 Conclusion

Véron’s achievement, then, was not the creation a new invincible debating method, but his propagation of controversy. He stood out as particularly skilled in the new form of disputation which had become the norm in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. These disputations became detached from their academic roots as they moved into the private homes of nobles who had questions about the points of controversy between Protestants and Catholics.

These questions were not accidental, but cultivated by clerics hoping to win their support, and often resulted in a “private conference” where both sides could present their positions. Although these “conferences” were ostensibly private, both lay and clerical participants were turned outwards to the public sphere. They exploited the unique nature of the post-reformation public sphere, spreading news of the debate through a variety of media: word-of-mouth rumours, manuscripts, sermons, and, ultimately, print in an effort to generate a wider public discussion and the spread of more rumours, and possibly more questions by lay people. It is likely no coincidence that Edmund Buggs’ doubts came just a few months after the controversy over the conversion of Lady Buckingham, and that his questions concerned the same topic. Conversions could act as a determination, providing evidence of victory that could be publicized. However, in

114 focusing efforts on conversion, laypeople were given more authority to take part in theological disputation. Clerics now focused on finding ways to appeal to the audience rather than outline detailed theological arguments.

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4 Clerical Duels

The previous chapter noted that the success of François Véron as a controversialist lay in his skill in publicizing his disputations with Protestant ministers. However, his success in this regard points to another crucial aspect of seventeenth-century disputations: their function as contests of honour between clerics. Although these disputations made use of the language of theology, the immediate issue at stake in each of them was, in fact, the reputation of the clerics involved. Véron’s method was effective because it simplified disputation to focus chiefly on the issue of honour. This is evident from some of the titles of his work such as Le Ministre d’Amyens, contraint de renoncer a la pure parole de l’escriture Saincte, rendu muet : et mis en fuitte (The Minister of Amiens, forced to renounce the pure word of Holy scripture, made mute, and put to flight). The focus of this text is not on refuting particular points of Protestant doctrine, but on showing the Protestant’s failure to defend his faith and ultimately his flight before his victorious Catholic opponent. Véron’s Protestant adversaries also recognized his work as principally an attack on their reputation. In 1624, Véron published a pamphlet detailing a recent disputation in Paris entitled Le hibou des jésuites opposé à la corneille de Charenton (The owl of the jesuits opposed to the crow of Charenton). The Protestant ministers of Paris soon published a reply, the bulk of which had little to do with the theological differences with Véron. Instead, they accuse him of being a “father of falsehood” who “shouted victory after having been beaten back and belly” in his account of the disputation.245 Although the disputations of Véron particularly highlight the role of honour in disputation, he was not exceptional in conceiving of them as a form of clerical duels.

245 Recit veritable des conferences que les pasteurs de l’Eglise de Paris ont eu avec le Sieur Veron (1624), 3.

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It is the contention of this chapter that the appeal of disputation cannot be understood apart from its role as a contest of honour between clerics.246 We begin by analyzing how the clerics themselves likened their disputations to aristocratic duels. However, they did not view them as mere contests of honour between individual clerics, but rather a tool by which to expose the dishonourable conduct of their opponents, thereby revealing them to be false prophets. Using the April 1609 disputation between Joannes de Gouda and Franciscus Lansbergen as a starting point, this chapter will analyze how disputants conceived of the role of disputation as part of a wider confessional conflict. It examines the rhetorical strategies employed in disputation to portray opponents as immoral and self-serving, poor scholars, and ultimately unworthy men before lay audiences. Clerics believed that if lay people could only see the immoral character of their rivals, Christian unity could be restored.

Analogies of disputation with noble duels are frequent occurrences in debate accounts.

Véron repeatedly used jousting terminology to describe disputations with Protestant ministers. In his debating guide Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de France

(1619), Véron wrote that victory using his simple debating method is “glorious since very great advantages are given to the [protestant] adversary,” which removes from them “every occasion and pretext to flee the field and the list.”247 To Véron, when a minister accepted the cartel de défi, or formal challenge to disputation (the same term used in aristocratic duels), it was akin to

246 Honour shaped not just religious disputation, but is integral to understanding early modern polemic more broadly. See Paul Cohen, “Death of a Polemicist: Honour and Calumny in Early Modern European Religious Debate,” English Historical Review 133:562 (2018), 533-566. 247 François Véron, “Preface : le fin et les qualitez de ce moyen; de nouveau inventé, et comment,” in Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de France; et reduire les dévoyez à la religion catholique OU Bref et Facile Moyen par lequel tout Catholique, peut faire paroistre evidement, que tous les ministres sont des trompeurs en l’exercise de leurs charges, et tous les Religionnaires sont abusez en tous et un chacun des poincts de leur pretenduë Reformation (Rouen: 1619).

117 entering the jousting list. Later in the Abregé he wrote that once a minister “enters the list,” the reader must ask him to show where in Scripture it says that Christ is only symbolically present in the Eucharist. Elsewhere, he continued to describe ministers accepting his challenge to disputation as “engaging in the lists.”248 Across the channel, Daniel Featley made similar analogies to physical combat. In the dedicatory epistle of his Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net he wrote that “though their redoubted wrastlers, in grappling with our Divines, are put to the worst, yet (like Pericles in the Theatre) bee they indeed never so much soyled, they will go about by their eloquence, to perswade the Specators, that they received not, but gave the foyle.”249 Here Featley mixed several martial metaphors to conceive of his disputations with the

Jesuits as a classical wrestling match, specifically referencing a hypothetical match in which the

Athenian statesman Pericles was defeated but proclaimed his victory so loudly that even the audience believed him. He then ended his analogy by using a fencing metaphor (received not, but gave the foyle).

These analogies should not be seen simply as a rhetorical tool to appeal to aristocratic audiences. Indeed, the physical violence and even death common in noble duels might appear a far cry from the purely verbal violence of clerical disputations, but they, in fact, share some crucial characteristics. Stuart Carroll’s Blood and Violence in Early Modern France situates the vindicatory violence of the French nobility in a culture of honour. Carroll argues that honour was not merely a “code of conduct” but a “world view.” Quoting William Miller, he argues that

248 Véron, Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle, 10; Véron, La Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des Sevenes (Paris : 1625), 9. 249 Daniel Featley, “Epistle Dedicatory to the Most Reverend Father in God, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, his grace, primate of all England etc, my very good Lord,” in The Romish Fisher caught and held in his owne net (London: H.L., 1624).

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“Honour permeated every level of consciousness: how you thought about yourself and others, how you held your body, the expectations you could reasonably have and the demands you could make on others … It was your very being.”250 In this way, honour was public by nature. It was

“public opinion” that was “the ultimate arbiter of a man’s worth, his honour.” It was no surprise then that when a duel was used to redress an affront to honour, it was often a very public affair, conducted in a public place and subject to intervention by an audience, not unlike the disputations which have been described here.251 Furthermore, because of the public character of honour, what was written about a person could have an enormous impact on their reputation and thus noble feuds were “concerned as much with lawsuits and arbitration as with bloodletting.”252

Donald Weinstein has examined the phenomenon of “verbal duelling” in sixteenth- century Italy which, despite the different geographic context, provides an even clearer parallel to clerical disputations north of the Alps. Weinstein takes the case of two gentlemen of Pistoia,

Captain Lanferdino Cellesi and his cousin Piero Gatteschi to argue that duels are misunderstood if only the violence is considered substance. The verbal build-up to violence was more than mere formality. The dispute began in 1559 when Cellesi accused Gatteschi and his brother of owing him money that he had loaned them. Cellesi took Gatteschi to court, but the ruling only compensated Cellesi with a lesser sum so he challenged Gatteschi to a duel in the middle of

Mass. Gatteschi refused on the grounds that he was unprepared for duel at church, but later sent a cartel of challenge to Cellesi. Cellesi replied that Gatteschi was a coward without honour since he was unable to properly write a challenge to a duel. This set off a chain of written responses,

250 Stuart Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 49. 251 Carroll, Blood and Violence, 51-52, 166. 252 Carroll, Blood and Violence, 83-89.

119 but no duel, which lasted nearly two years and was eventually published in 1561. From this instance, Weinstein concludes “The duel imagined (and avoided) was as real and as serious as the duel fought; conversely, the exchange of blows was as much theatre and play as the exchange of arguments and insults. Both were virtuoso performances acted before 'the world' of gentlemen and cavaliers, the world that counted most.”253 The contest of honour could, therefore, be fought in many ways; not only with physical violence, but also the written word. Whether fought with the sword or the pen, aristocratic feuding was a tool in a competition for social and political power.254

As a social class, clergy did not generally have access to the forms of vindicatory violence common among nobles, but they nonetheless competed with one another for honour and reputation. Indeed, as Yves Castan has noted in eighteenth-century Languedoc, honour was not a concept unique to the nobility, but all social classes had some concept of honour.255 Scholars of medieval culture, such as Ruth Mazo Karras, have made a similar observation, connecting clerical concepts of honour with gender. They argue that there existed a particular form of

“clerical masculinity” which, although it borrowed from aristocratic ideals of honour and manhood, was nevertheless distinct. This form of masculinity emphasized rationality and self- restraint, but was not devoid of the competitiveness that characterized aristocratic conceptions of

253 Donald Weinstein, “Fighting or flyting? Verbal duelling in mid-sixteenth-century Italy,” in Crime, society, and the law in Renaissance Italy, Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 204-211, 217. 254 Carroll, Blood and Violence, 7. 255 Yves Castan, Honnêteté et relations socials en Languedoc – 1715-1780 (Paris: Plon, 1974), 13-15.

120 manhood. 256 Academic disputation had an important role in this regard. Karras argues that in the male-only space of the university, men demonstrated their masculinity not by impressing women, but by dominating other men by displaying their superior rationality in disputation.

Academic culture “adopted the notion of masculinity as violent domination of other men, but the violence was metaphorical, using words as weapons.” As the twelfth-century theologian Peter

Abelard wrote of his decision to become a scholar, “I exchanged all other arms for these, and to the trophies of war I preferred the combat of disputation.”257 Thus, even from its infancy, disputation was perceived as a contest of honour analogous to the aristocratic duel.

In the context of the religious conflict and competition in Post-Reformation Europe, disputation as a contest of honour took on a wider role. Whereas medieval disputations pitted the reputations of two individual clerics against one another, in Post-Reformation disputations disputants acted as representatives of their whole confessional community. Thus, while aristocratic feuding can be understood as a tool in a competition for social and political power,

Post-Reformation clerical duels competed for social and political power as part of a wider confessional conflict. In 1620, one anonymous French Catholic author explained the utility of disputation with Protestants this way, “If it pleased the king to allow duels between individuals with order and knowledge of cause in order to avoid greater evils for the general [population], private conferences with ministers are no less useful to weaken a party by the reduction of those

256 Thibodeaux, Jennifer D., ed. Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Ruth Mazo Karras, “Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt: Clerical Masculinity in Medieval Europe,” in Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz, eds. Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 52-67. 257 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 89-91; Tanya Stabler Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul: Scholastics, Beguines and Gendered Spirituality in Medieval Paris,” in Thibodeaux, Negotiating Clerical Identities, 238-239.

121 who desire it and who make their profit from it.”258 For this author – seemingly in contrast to the prevailing view of contemporary Catholic clerics and the Bourbon monarchy – aristocratic duels prevented large scale conflicts from developing by limiting the vindicatory violence to individuals.259 In a similar way, private conferences or disputations allowed Catholic clergy to continue the reduction of Protestantism in France without the violence of the Wars of Religion by targeting individual ministers.

The sentiments of this anonymous author were shared by both Catholic and Protestant clergy who viewed their confessional opponents as false prophets who needed to be exposed.

Their duels were thus justified in the language of scripture. This is evident in the biblical passages which often adorn the title pages of their work. The title page of Godfridus Udemans’ account of his debates with the Mennonite Frans de Knuyt includes the words of Matthew 10:16,

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” The text encircles an image of a dove and a serpent making clear that it is the Reformed pastors who play this role while their Mennonite opponents are the wolves.260

Similarly, Daniel Featley paraphrased John 10:12 –“An hireling seeing the Wolf leaveth the

258 Quoted in Bernard Dompnier, Le Venin de l’hérésie : Image du protestantisme et combat catholique au XViie siècle (Paris: Le Centurion, 1985), 176. 259 This view also contrasts with Carroll’s interpretation of the role of vindicatory violence in the Wars of Religion. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 284-290; 315. 260 Udemans, Korte Notulen van seker gespreck, gehouden over den artijckel van de Mensch-werdinge onses Heeren Jesu Christi, tusschen de Predicanten van Ziericzee ter eener, ende Cornelis de Cuyper, Weder-doopschen bisschop tot Haerlem, Ian van Voorden, Bisschop tot Utrecht, ende Frans de Knuyt Vermaender, ter anderer zijde (Dordrecht: Francois Boels, 1646). All biblical quotations come from the King James Version.

122 sheep, and fleeth, and the Wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep” – to describe those who refuse to oppose Jesuits in disputation.261

These verses are more allegorical, but other authors choose passages which are more explicit in naming opponents as false prophets. Hendrik Boxhorn in his 1611 Anti-Pater Gouda addresses his “Roman-minded” readers directly, pointing them towards the first half of 2 Peter

2:1, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you,” referring to his Jesuit opponent Joannes de Gouda.262 John Fisher in the title page of his An answer to a pamphlet, intituled: The Fisher catched in his owne net points the reader to two different books: Matthew 28:19-20(“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost...”) and Ephesians 4:11, 14

(“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers... That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive”).263 The first three of these verses are clearly meant to describe the Jesuit mission broadly and to England specifically, but Ephesians 4:14 indicates how the Jesuit author viewed his Protestant adversaries: clever yes, but deceivers of simple believers.

With this assumption in mind, clergy conceived of disputation as a sort of clerical duel to expose the poor moral character of their opponent. This was the explicit goal outlined in the

261 Featley, “A Remonstrance sent in a letter, by Doctor Featly, to his worthy Friend Sir Humfrey Lynde, touching the former Conference at his house, June 27, 1623,” in Romish Fisher. 262 Hendrik Boxhorn, Anti-pater Govda, dat is Patris Joannis de Gauda, priesters van jesu-wijt nederslach, over syn predicatie opden Paeps-alder-heylighen dach ghedaen (Rotterdam : F. van Sambix, 1611). 263 “A.C.” [John Fisher], An Answer to a pamphlet, intituled: The Fisher catched in his owne net ([London: Printed by Peter Smith, and at Saint-Omer at the English College Press], 1623).

123 debating guides of Jesuits Jean Gontery and François Véron. Gontery’s Declaration de l’erreur de nostre temps, et du moyen qu’il a tenu pour s’insinuer argues that the success of Protestant ministers in France is based solely on “admirable finesse,” making “simple people” believe that the Catholic Church is built on nothing but “vain tradition,” while the Protestant faith on the pure word of God. Face-to-face disputations with Protestant ministers can “visibly resolve” even the greatest doubt in the truth of Catholicism by providing “a manifest demonstration” that the ministers are lying and cannot find obvious scriptural justification for their doctrines.264 In

Gontery’s view, Protestant heresy can be eradicated in France by simply demonstrating that the ministers are liars. The source of Protestantism’s strength is the high esteem which Protestants hold their ministers. Discrediting them in a disputation was therefore seen as an effective means to win wayward souls back to Catholicism.

This perception is evident in Véron’s 1625 summary of his debates with ministers in

Languedoc and Cévennes, La Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des

Sevenes. Using the same method as Gontery of demanding Protestant ministers provide explicit scriptural justification for the points of their confession, Véron repeatedly describes his victories over various ministers leading to conversions (or promised conversions) of local Protestants. He described in particular his debate with the one of the most prominent ministers in Languedoc, the minister of Nîmes, Adrian Fucher, which caused the minister to lose “all reputation” after he was unable to produce scriptural passages which explicitly supported the Reformed confession of faith. The end result, according to Véron’s retelling at least, was that when Fucher refused to debate Véron a second time on the order of the provincial synod, he was ignominiously deprived

264 Jean Gontery, Declaration de l’erreur de nostre temps, et du moyen qu’il a tenu pour s’insinuer. Avec la replique contre le Sieur du Moulin Ministre, respondant à une lettre escritte au Roy (Paris : Pierre Ramier, 1610).

124 of his post in Nîmes. With the most prominent minister in the region disgraced, Véron concluded his account by claiming that forty families have promised to convert and he hopes for “general conversion” in the whole province.265 Thus, just as a duel between two individuals could repair the honour of an entire aristocratic family, a disputation served as a contest of honour between two individual clerics, but one which had consequences for their respective religious communities. A victory in a private conference was thus a victory for the whole faith.

4.1 Of Mice and Shit: The Gouda-Lansbergen Controversy

The debates of Antwerp Jesuit Joannes de Gouda (or van Gouda) provide an excellent illustration of how disputations functioned as clerical contests of honour. Gouda was born in

Utrecht, but made his career in the Southern Netherlands where he was professor of philosophy at Douai and of moral theology in Antwerp. While in Antwerp, he became renowned for his so- called controverseconferenties, or “controversy conferences.” These were not like the English and French conferences that have been described thus far in this dissertation. Rather, they were more accurately a genre of sermon in which the preacher was not bound by common preaching conventions such as following a particular scriptural passage. These sermons would not be preached alongside the Mass so the preacher and the audience were free from the solemnity expected in that context. These sermons fit into a genre of controversial sermons which were in vogue across Catholic Europe, modifying traditional mendicant preaching practices to respond to

265 François Véron, La Saincte Bible abandonnee par les Ministres du Langeudoc, et des Sevenes (Paris : François Targa, 1625), 4-7, 14-16, 19.

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Protestant heresy.266 Gouda proved adept as a preacher of this genre of sermon, becoming famous for his humorous sermons ridiculing Protestant doctrine.267

These sermons were part of a recatholicization program in the city of Antwerp, but apparently did not excite much controversy until 1609. On 9 April of that year the Dutch

Republic and Spain signed a twelve-year truce which offered a reprieve from the ongoing conflict in the region. Like the Edict of Nantes in 1598 and King James’ easing of Catholic persecution, the Twelve Year Truce allowed for a flourishing of religious controversy. The Truce allowed for freer travel between the territories controlled by the Dutch and the Spanish and it was not long before Protestant visitors from the Northern Netherlands became acquainted with

Gouda’s controverseconferenties, which had become a popular spectacle in Antwerp. The response from northern Reformed ministers was almost immediate. Gouda found himself embroiled in two religious controversies which would last for several years. One was with the

Breda pastor Hendrik Boxhorn who received a copy of a sermon on Transubstantiation preached by Gouda on 1 November 1609. In early 1610 Boxhorn published this sermon along with his challenge for a face-to-face disputation with Gouda on this subject. Gouda responded in print, but no disputation came from this exchange.268

266 Cf. Emily Michelson, The Pulpit and Press in Reformation Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 140-144. 267 Joep van Gennip, Controverse in Context: Een comparatief onderzoek naar de Nederlandstalige controversepublicaties van de jezuïeten in de zeventiende-eeuwse Republiek (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), 98, 104- 109; “Johannes de Gouda,” Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden. Deel 7. Ed. A.J. van der Aa (1862), 312- 313. url: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/aa__001biog08_01/aa__001biog08_01_0595.php 268 Hendrik Boxhorn, Joannes de Gouda, Predicatie van pr. Ioannes de Govda Iesvvvyt, t'Antwerpen op alderheylighen dach ghedaen, ende over-ghezonden aen Henricvm Boxhornivm (Rotterdam : Felix van Sambix, 1610), ff. 1b-2b. Boxhorn followed Predicatie up with an expanded refutation of Gouda’s sermon, Anti-pater Govda, dat is Patris Joannis de Gauda, priesters van jesu-wijt nederslach, over syn predicatie opden Paeps-alderheylighen dach ghedaen (Rotterdam: F. van Sambix, 1611). This prompted two replies by Gouda: Ander-half- hondert levghens Henrici Boxhornii woorden-dienaers tot Breda, in sijn venijnich Teghen-ghift ghemenght, ontdeckt

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It is quite likely that Gouda’s reluctance to debate Boxhorn was due to the fact that he was already embroiled in another controversy which had begun shortly after the Truce. Gouda recounts that he was approached by “some Rotterdammers” who were visiting Antwerp in June

1609. One of these Rotterdammers told him that their pastor, Franciscus Lansbergen, often said that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was baseless and that “no Jesuit or Pope” could satisfactorily defend it. They were evidently impressed by Gouda’s sermons, or at least knew of his reputation, since they asked if he would be willing to debate Lansbergen, who was currently visiting Antwerp, on this point. Gouda claimed that he initially refused their offer on the grounds that the timing was inconvenient and that that there was “little profit” in such “conferentien,” chiefly because “they must take place in the common tongue with unlearned [audience] members.” He would return to the issue of ignorant audiences later in his account, but records at the beginning of his account that he eventually accepted the Rotterdammer’s request for a conference because of his persistence.269 Interestingly, the author of the Protestant account of the debate, Franciscus Lansbergen’s son, Samuel, also insisted that his father took part in the

ende wederleyt (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611) and Den Katholiicken heyligen-dienst Ioannis de Govda, priester der Societeyt Iesv, teghens Henricvm Boxhornivm : Ioannem Bogaert, Wilhelmvm Perkinsvm, Vincentivm Mevsevoet sijnen vertaelder, ketters, leughenaers, in Brabant, Enghelant Hollant (Antwerp: Hieronyms Verdussen, 1612). While this controversy did not lead to a disputation between Boxhorn and Gouda, it did plant the seeds for a 1613 disputation in Breda between Boxhorn and Pieter van Dornik, a priest in The Hague. Boxhorn, Vaerachtich verhael vande disputatie ende het ghespreck gehouden den vierden Januarij anno M. D. C. XIII. tusschen ... Henricvm Boxhornivm licentiaet ende bediender des h. euangelij tot Breda, ende ... Peeter van Dornick licentiaet ende paeps-pastoor in de Haghe by Breda (Delft: Adraen Cornelisz, 1613). 269 Joannes de Gouda, Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda priester der societeyt Iesv op de medesprake aengaende de transsubstantiatie met Francisco ende Samvele Lansbergen ministers tot Rotterdam (Antwerp: Joachim Trognesius, 1609), 1-2.

127 disputation because of the “earnest desires of some persons and not by his own request.”270 Both parties were evidently keen to fashion an image of themselves as defenders of truth, but also not overeager to incite public controversy (even if that is exactly what they did).

Gouda then visited Lansbergen who expressed his fears that a public debate would violate the “peace and commandments” of the governors of the Southern Netherlands, Archduke

Albrecht VII and Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia. Indeed, in the month following the disputation they would promulgate an edict banning all religious disputations, perhaps in response to the controversy that this disputation added to the already religiously tense atmosphere of post-truce Antwerp.271 Nevertheless, at the time, Gouda allayed Lansbergen’s concerns by promising him “all freedom” to “speak whatever displeased him in the Catholic

Church.” Lansbergen and Gouda then shook hands, but Lansbergen further insisted that since this disputation was not being held “except for the consolation of some weak consciences,” the proceedings should “remain among us” lest they be “spread among the community.”272 They both agreed to this and to meet the following morning before an audience of eighteen witnesses.

The disputation proceeded in a familiar fashion. The next morning, Franciscus

Lansbergen and his son, Samuel (also a minister), met Gouda and his assistant, Cornelio

Cornelii, and the aforementioned eighteen witnesses at an undisclosed location. They proceeded

270 Samuel van Lansbergen, Ghespreck, over de leere, vande transvbstantiatie, tusschen Franciscvm Lansbergivm [...] ende Ioannem de Govda [...] Wt-gegeven ende verrijckt/met Nadere verclaringhen Samuelis Lansbergii F.F (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz., 1610), 2. 271 Werner Thomas, “The Treaty of London, the Twelve Years Truce and Religious Toleration in Spain and the Netherlands,” in The Twelve Years’ Truce (1609): Peace, Truce, War and Law in the Low Countries at the Turn of the 17th Century, Randall Lesaffer, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 290-292. 272 Joannes de Gouda, Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda priester der societeyt Iesv op de medesprake aengaende de transsubstantiatie met Francisco ende Samvele Lansbergen ministers tot Rotterdam (Antwerp: Joachim Trognesius, 1609), 2.

128 to sit around a table, with the Lansbergens seated at one end and their Catholic opponents at the other, with the witnesses presumably seated between them.273 The conference took the disputation form with Lansbergen acting as the opponens, offering up arguments against

Gouda’s thesis that the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ as articulated in the Council of Trent is based on Holy Scripture and “orthodox Fathers.”

The first couple of hours saw familiar arguments about the interpretation of Christ’s words “This is my body” and passages about the Eucharist from a number of theologians and popes from early church history into the fifteenth century. Around high noon, Gouda and

Cornelii asked to end the debate and continue it in print since they had to perform Mass.

Lansbergen insisted that they continue the conference later in the afternoon on the grounds that he could “spend his time better than with many unnecessary writings and responses,” which often result in “name-calling and slandering.” Moreover, he believed that differences in religion are better judged “in a verbal conference, in the presence of parties” of different religious perspectives than in writing. They therefore agree to reconvene at 2 o’clock.274Although

Lansbergen would subsequently become involved in the extensive writing of responses he wished to avoid, like many of the authors studied in this dissertation, he viewed face-to-face disputation as the superior method to arrive at religious truth. The presence of an audience and the ability to immediately respond to an opponent’s arguments or mischaracterizations could prevent the misinformation that could come out in printed polemic.

273 Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 1; Gouda, Andwoorde, 2. 274 Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 76-77.

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Much of the material in both accounts is dedicated to explaining the differing interpretations of various church fathers and scriptures, but after they reconvened the debate turned to an issue which would afterwards be a flash point in the public discussion of the event.

Lansbergen raised an argument that if a consecrated host really becomes Christ’s substance, then even unworthy persons like Judas would have eaten Christ’s substance. Gouda agreed with this statement at which point Lansbergen took out a book, Decisiones aureas by the fifteenth-century

German humanist and printer Johann Heynlin (Jean à Lapide), and threw it on the table. Out of the book, Lansbergen proceeded to read several hypothetical scenarios related to the Eucharist such as what is to be done if a mouse eats it (burn it and preserve the ashes), or if someone vomits it (collect the vomit and burn it). Gouda responded that these statements appear doctrinally sound and point to the reverence which Catholics hold the Eucharist. It is at this point that the accounts differ. The Lansbergen account records that Gouda responded to the vomit scenario by saying that this doctrine is so well known that it is taught to Catholic school children, to which Lansbergen replied sardonically “It is truly a fine doctrine which you implant in your students: a poor God must it be who you eat, who you spit up, and eject from behind through your bowels.” The author records Gouda’s response as “Jae, wy eten hem (seyde Pater Gouda in formele woorden) wy spouwen hem uyt, wy kacken, ende schijten hem uyt” - Yes, we eat him

(said Father Gouda in formal words) we throw him up, we crap and shit him out.”275

An important goal of Gouda’s published Andwoorde was to refute Lansbergen’s characterization of his response to this particular issue. Gouda entitled his thirteenth chapter: Van de Muys; ende oft Gouda die formeele woorden ghesproken heeft, die hem Samuel opleght (On

275 Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 87-91.

130 the Mouse; and if Gouda spoke the formal words that Samuel attributes to him). Moreover, he sign posted his response again in the middle of the chapter by asking in large letters “If it is true that Gouda said in formal words: Wy spouwen, wy kacken, wy schijten hem uyt.” He denied this, and instead recounted that it was Lansbergen who replied to Gouda “O armen Godt/o arm

Sacrament/dat men eet/uytspout/schijt ende kackt!” (O poor God, O poor Sacrament which men eat, spit out, shit and crap!). Instead of the scatological escalation recounted by Samuel

Lansbergen, Gouda recorded that he asked Franciscus Lansbergen if he had any actual arguments to put forward and that while such blasphemous statements might go over with “foolish folk,” they have no place amongst “scholars, who understand reason.” Lansbergen seems to have taken offence to this and mocked Gouda, claiming that he only said this “because you are a great preacher, and I but a little preacher (Predicantken).” Gouda replied that “it has nothing to do with great or small preachers. Rather, I say that this is blasphemy with which you lead astray ignorant people, and no argument to put forth in a disputation (T’samensprekinghe) of honest listeners.” At this point those honest listeners “rose up” and beseeched the disputants to move on and asked Gouda to respond to the issue of the Eucharist-eating mouse.276

It is impossible to know for certain who said what during the debate between the

Lansbergens and Gouda, but it is clear from the printed accounts that Franciscus Lansbergen’s scatological reductio ad absurdum argument was an instrument to attack his opponent’s reputation. In her examination of insults cited in defamation cases before the Cambridge ecclesiastical court, Alexandra Shepard notes that the most debasing insults involved human excrement. She argues that such insults were “utterly debasing” because, by breaking taboos

276 Gouda, Andwoorde, 88-94.

131 about human excrement, they inverted “rituals of neighbourly exchange” and disregarded accepted hierarchies between men.277 In the more immediate context of religious polemic,

Luther is famous for his use of scatological rhetoric to denigrate his opponents and their beliefs.

As Lyndal Roper argues, his vicious attacks against the Pope and the Jews were not just angry tirades, but intentional rhetorical moves to destroy the “papal aura of holiness” and discredit and push aside the Jews to make way for the new Israel of Lutheran evangelicals.278 In a similar fashion, Lansbergen sought to prove the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation as false on the grounds that it was base, and by writing that Gouda defended it by saying that Christ’s body can be found in excrement, he also shows the defender of that doctrine to be disreputable man.

Likewise, Gouda’s defense has Lansbergen say the vulgar words shijten en kacken and explicitly declares Lansbergen to have no propriety in a scholarly disputation by bringing up this issue in the first place. Consequently, the aftermath of the debate tied the contest of theological truth to a battle over the reputations of clerics on opposite sides of the religious divide.

Samuel Lansbergen claimed that the conference ended “with courtesy and in friendship.”279 However, the aftermath was anything but friendly. Despite promises on both sides not to speak openly about the conference, by August, it appears that Samuel Lansbergen

277 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 181-182. 278 Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: The Bodley Head, 2016), 382-383, 394-396. While there is some similarity in the rhetorical purpose of scatological attacks of Luther and Lansbergen, Luther’s position on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist would put him at odds with Lansbergen, who had a Sacramentarian understanding of the Eucharist – it was merely a symbolic remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. Lutherans were in fact mocked by Sacramentarian opponents as being “cannibals” who worshipped a “baked” god. Roper, Martin Luther, 354-356. Lansbergen was thus not unique in making this type of argument against the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. In fact, Du Moulin raised the issue of what is to be done with the Host if it is vomited up in his 1602 conference with Cayet. While he does not appear to have put the argument as crudely as Lansbergen, it did cause “some murmuring of the audience, thinking that this was a calumny.” Adair, Narré de la conference, 112. 279 Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 142.

132 had published a full account of the proceedings, and by December, Gouda had published his own version of the events. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the published accounts of private conferences usually came after rumours had already circulated widely by word of mouth and in manuscript. This debate appears to have been no different. Samuel Lansbergen wrote in a preface to his Ghespreck addressed to Gouda and Cornelii, dated August 15, 1609, that from his departure from Antwerp with his father, he began receiving “multitudes of letters” and reports from “honourable persons” that in Brussels, Mechelen, s’ Hertogenbosch, and Antwerp, hardly anything is preached except “the great victory” of Gouda over Lansbergen. Similarly, “there is hardly a dinner” in Antwerp attended by a priest or a monk where one does not “have to hear how stupid you honourable gentlemen made my honourable Father [look].” The purpose of the publication of Ghespreck is thus to “defend the honour of my honourable Father” and to

“vindicate” the truth “with the publication of the Conference before the whole world.”280

Samuel’s subsequent account emphasizes his father’s humility in his reluctance to attend this debate, but also shows his skill as true Christian minister by overcoming the poor arguments of the Jesuits in favour of the false doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Gouda similarly justified the publication of his Andwoorde on the basis of the “falsehood and lies” that had been spread by Franciscus and Samuel Lansbergen about their debate with him.281 He responded to Samuel Lansbergen’s accusation that Gouda, “with preaching and letters, first put his father with great shame in the mouth of everyone.” On the contrary, according to Gouda, it was the Lansbergens who began spreading word of the conference even

280 Samuel Lansbergen, “Aen de E.E. Heeren, ende R. Patres, D. Goudam, ende D. Cornelium Cornelii, Priesters der ghenaemder Societeyt Jesu,” in Ghespreck. 281 Gouda, “Edele ende Moghende Heeren Staten der vereenigher Nederlanden” in Andwoorde.

133 before he left Antwerp, “since as soon as the conference took place, it was immediately scattered amongst everyone that Father Gouda was forced silent fourteen times and left the arguments of

Lansbergen unanswered.” As a result, Gouda expressed a desire to respond to these rumours in print in a sermon after the conference.282 Gouda claimed that once the Lansbergens returned to

Holland they further spread word of the conference through conversation and letters so that “the mouths of everyone were filled with this parley (onderhandeling), and that to the disparagement of the Apostolic Catholic and Roman Religion.” As evidence, Gouda attached a letter dated 11

July written by Franciscus Lansbergen to some “Brothers” (fellow Jesuits presumably) who apparently sought to verify rumours that were circulating by requesting an account from him of his recent conference with Gouda. In it, Lansbergen admitted that he had written and shared the

“order of the conference” but had not “willingly shared a copy with everyone” in contrast to

Gouda who, as he understood, allowed anyone to “hear about the conference” in his sermons. He further wrote that the twelve Rotterdammers that were at the disputation, “together abhor the

Papacy (to which they were attached one time before the conference), except for one of them who is partial, and knows that Father Gouda got the worst of it, but he does not want to let it all come down to Gouda.”283 Gouda concluded that this letter shows to the “goodwilling reader” that Franciscus Lansbergen was the first to break his word and spread news of the conference, that Samuel Lansbergen sought to deceive “the people” into believing that his father had kept his word, and that the eleven Rotterdammers “did not act wisely in leaving the Papacy so hastily,

282 Gouda, Andwoorde, 3. “Gouda in sijn Sermoon heeft begheert/ dat soo iemant iet sulcks verhoorde/ soude believen te eyschen by schrifte eenighe van die puncten.” 283 Gouda, Andwoorde, 4-5. “’T is waer dat ick de conferentie in orden hebbe geschreven/ soo-setusschen ons gehschiedt is: maer ick en soude door als-noch niet gheerne allen man de copije mede deylen/ tot dat ick naeder verstae hoe dat hem P. Gouda over de conferentie laet hooren. Hier zijn by ons wel 12 Rotterdams die in de disputatie gheweest zijn/ ende t’samen het Pausdom (‘t welck sy voor de conferentie t’eenemael toegedaen waren) verfoeyen: uytghenomen eenen die t’eenemael partiael is/ ende wel bekent dat Pater Gouda t’ondergheleghen heeft/ maer dat hy ‘t op Gouda niet alleen en wilt laten aencomen...”

134 especially in such things of which they had little understanding and knowledge.” He then praised the twelfth Rotterdammer for not basing his faith on the words of a single priest.284 Both Gouda and the Lansbergens agree that news of their conference spread immediately after it had taken place. They disagree on who first shared news of it, but both feel that they need to defend their reputation in the face of false reports.

As indicated by Franciscus Lansbergen’s letter cited above, the opinion of the twelve witnesses from Rotterdam became an important arena in which this contest of honour took place.

Samuel Lansbergen’s Ghespreck includes an attestation from the bailiff, mayors, and judges of

Rotterdam which vouches for the accuracy of the testimony of the citizens of their city who attended the conference. The attestation states that while the witnesses did not “comprehend” all

“the questions and answers” in the conference, the “substance of the aforesaid conference” was accurately related in Samuel Lansbergen’s account. In particular, “the words of the forenamed

Father Gouda, concerning the meal of the body of Christ and the mouse etc.” were indeed said by him “in effect.”285 Samuel Lansbergen thus lent credibility to his account by using the testimony of witnesses with the signatures and the reputation of the city’s government officials.

He used this testimony to strengthen his attack on the reputation of Gouda, as it confirmed the particularly controversial account of the discussion of the mouse eating the Eucharist as accurate

“in effect.”

Gouda reprinted the attestation in full in his Andwoorde and defended himself against his mischaracterization by the witnesses. First, he argues that there is a difference between saying

284 Gouda, Andwoorde, 6. 285 Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 151-152.

135 something “in effect” and saying it “with formal words.” He invites the sage reader to assess whether or not he said Wy spouwen, wy kacken, wy schijten hem uyt in formal words, but admits that he basically assented to the sentiment. It was Samuel Lansbergen’s mischaracterization of him as vulgar that he contests. Second, he argues, the witnesses were too ignorant to follow a disputation of religion. He names the witnesses and their occupations: Guiliam Schaelkens, judge; Claes Rooclaes, former schoolmaster; Jan Dircesen Versijden, Secretary of Schielandt;

Egbert Jacobsen, his clerk; and Daniel Verleck, a pilgrim originally from Mechelen (“Magelaens

Pelgrim”).286 His purpose in doing this appears to have been to highlight their middling social standing, since he then argues that, even by the admission of the regents of Rotterdam, the witnesses of the conference were men who had “little understanding of the Holy fathers, or

Scripture, or transubstantiation” but “well understood the mouse and bowel movements.” The witnesses who Franciscus Lansbergen brought with him were therefore both insufficiently knowledgeable to follow a discussion on Transubstantiation and because of their low social status, were not particularly trustworthy.

However, he did not blame the witnesses for their ignorance. It was Franciscus

Lansbergen who brought them along, knowing that they could easily be swayed by his arguments. Moreover, it was through these ignorant men that “the lords of Rotterdam” were led to believe that Lansbergen had won the debate.287 Gouda thus defended his performance in the debate on the grounds that his arguments were too complex for an audience who had little theological knowledge. He suggested instead that Lansbergen cunningly used the ignorance of these Rotterdammers of low-social standing to then persuade those of higher social standing that

286 Gouda, Andwoorde, 2, 93. 287 Gouda, Andwoorde, 91-94.

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Lansbergen had won the debate through false reports. The issue here is again the reputation of both ministers. Gouda defended himself against accusations that he was vulgar and unable to respond to the arguments put forward by Lansbergen by pointing to the baseness and ignorance of the witnesses. Their ignorance is also used as a weapon to attack Lansbergen as a second-rate theologian who knew his arguments were so weak that he could only prevail over ignorant people.

Before broadening the discussion to examine further examples of the rhetorical moves and counter-moves in private disputations, it is worth noting that the printed debate between

Gouda and the Lansbergens continued for another two years with increasing bitterness. In

August 1610, Franciscus Lansbergen published his Weder-antwoorde Francisci Lansbergii alongside his son’s second edition of Ghespreck. The title-page alone of Weder-antwoorde suggests an escalation of the dispute as it displays a woodcut of a man chopping down a tree surrounded by the words of Matthew 7:19, “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Franciscus Lansbergen immediately clarified who those bad fruit- producing trees are in his dedication to the nobles and lords of the Estates of Holland. He identified Catholic priests, and Jesuits in particular, as “false prophets” and “servants of the great

Prince of darkness” as they blind the “common man” to the light of true Christianity with their doctrine of Transubstantiation, a “novelty” created by Thomas Aquinas.288 He then addressed

Gouda directly, explaining that he wrote this book to respond to his accusation that he was unable to respond to a citation from Augustine in their debate and prays that Gouda will think of

288 Franciscus Lansbergen, “Aen de Edele, erent-feste, moghende, wyse, ende seer Voor-sienighe Heeren, de Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt” in Weder-antwoorde Francisci Lansbergii ... teghens de antwoorde Joann. de Gouda ... op sekere bedenckinghen Lansbergii voorseyt, aengaende de transsubstantiatie (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz., 1610).

137 his immortal soul and realize the error of his ways before it is too late. Gouda responded in kind in 1611with his De victorievse transsubstantiatie Ioannis de Govda priester der Societeyt Iesv over Franciscvm ende Samvelem Lansberghens, woordendienaers tot Rotterdam and De godtloosheyt der Rotterdamscher inquisitie in de welcke Franciscus ende Samuel Lansbergen inquisiteurs arbeyden met lasteren, leugenen, quade citatien in 1612. The title of the latter – the godlessness of the Rotterdam inquisition in which Franciscus and Samuel Lansbergen work as inquisitors with slander, lies, [and] poor citations – aptly summarizes the contents of these two works which uncover errors in the minutiae of the Lansbergen works to show that Franciscus

Lansbergen is both “a liar and impious.”289 These books stray from the contents of the original conference, but remain consistent in conflating the doctrinal conflict between Catholicism and

Protestantism with the reputation of the individual defenders of those positions. Each side published three separate books each (although Samuel Lansbergen’s second edition of

Ghespreck is greatly expanded). The written controversy may have even continued if not for the growing controversy in the Dutch Republic between the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants, which eventually resulted in the exile of the Remonstrant Lansbergens, ironically enough to

Antwerp.

289 Joannes de Gouda, “C.Leser,” in De victorievse transsubstantiatie Ioannis de Govda priester der Societeyt Iesv over Franciscvm ende Samvelem Lansberghens, woordendienaers tot Rotterdam. Antwerpen: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611.

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4.2 “By their fruits ye shall know them”: uncovering false prophets in disputation

The back-and-forth attacks on each other’s reputation which characterized the conference and subsequent printed polemic between Gouda and the Lansbergens are, in fact, quite typical of the Dutch, English, and French disputation accounts covered in this dissertation.

An underlying assumption of the clergy taking part in these disputes was that intellectual and religious authority was tied to the reputation of the proponent of a particular position. In other words, a person’s credibility was closely entwined with their reputation as an honourable person.

Clare Haru Crowston has highlighted how the French word credit often signified a “nonmaterial capital” deployed in the “informal workings of influence and reputation” in politics, social life, and religion among other areas. It was at once “intangible” and a “highly efficacious form of power.” With regards to religion, she notes that French missionaries in China conceived of their acculturation to Chinese practices such as wearing silk garments as a means to generate credit to use to earn the protection of Chinese elites.290

This conceptualization of credit equating an honourable reputation with social capital can be helpful in understanding the role played by disputation in confessional conflict. As noted above, Gontery argued that the best way to win back Protestants was to attack the esteem that the community held for them. In fact, debate accounts make frequent use of the language of credit.

Véron described his defeat of Fucher in Languedoc as having completely discredited

(“descredité”) the minister, causing him to lose all honour and reputation.291 The term was also

290 Clare Haru Crowston, Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 1, 21, 37-38. 291 Véron, La Saincte Bible abandonee, 4-7.

139 used in English. John Fisher records that in his debate with Daniel Featley, Featley called on the audience to give “no credit” to his opponent on account that he allegedly spread slanderous reports about an earlier debate with Francis White.292

Disputations then, were contests of honour that could be used to discredit an opponent while simultaneously displaying one’s own credibility. The audience could be won over by displaying who was the more honourable clergyman. A survey of the tropes used in disputation accounts reveals how clergymen sought to discredit their opponent’s reputation. The most obvious verbal assaults were on the opponent’s scholarly ability. However, the attacks went much further afield. With a cleric’s identity so tied to his reason and self-control, debate accounts often portray the opponent as making weak arguments and losing their composure. The guiding assumption of disputants was that their opponents were false prophets. As the verse following Matthew 7:19 adorning Lansbergen’s Weder-andwoorde reads, “by their fruits” shall false prophets be known. The weak arguments and lack of bodily control were just outward signs of the inward corruption.

As Karras and other scholars have established, a competitive display of rationality and scholarship was inherent to the academic disputation.293 Consequently, the printed accounts of seventeenth- century conferences reflect this performance of rationality and frequently contrast the author’s skills as a scholar with his opponent’s ineptitude. For our authors, rationality appears to be closely connected to proper adherence to the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Franciscus Lansbergen put it succinctly in his Wtvaert vande Roomsche Transubstantie written

292 “A.C.,” Answer, 35-36. 293 Karras, From Boys to Men, 90.

140 to respond to the “poor Gramatica, bad Dialectica, ridiculous Philosophie, consideration of

Scripture and the Church Fathers, slander and swearing of Joannes de Gouda.”294 Similarly,

Gouda’s entire Godtloosheyt der Rotterdamscher inquisitie is essentially an exposition of the poor scholarship of the Lansbergens. The Gouda-Lansbergen exchange was not unique in this regard. The scholarly reputation of Pierre Victor Palma Cayet became the focal point of the printed accounts of his conference with Pierre du Moulin in Paris in May and June 1602. By

1602, Cayet had had quite a successful scholarly career. After studying with Pierre Ramus, he embraced Calvinism and studied theology in Geneva. Eventually he became the chaplain to

Catherine de Bourbon before renouncing Protestantism in 1595. Although he gained the ire of his former colleagues for his abjuration, his adoption of Catholicism allowed him to be appointed as Royal Professor of Hebrew at the Collège des lecteurs royaux (the ancestor of the Collège de

France) in 1599.

The most extensive Protestant account of Cayet’s conference with Du Moulin is Narré de la conférence verbale et par escrit, tenue entre M. Pierre du Moulin et M. Cayer by Archibald

Adair (discussed in some detail in chapter 2). Throughout Adair’s account, Cayet and his two

(unnamed) Carmelite assistants are portrayed as comically arrogant and incompetent scholars, so much so that they repeatedly induce uncontrollable laughter among the audience. The crux of the debate concerns the Mass with Du Moulin arguing that the Eucharist is merely symbolic while

Cayet and the Carmelites contend that each celebration of the Mass is truly Christ’s sacrifice and is therefore effective for the forgiveness of sins. Adair records that on the first day of the conference, in response to Du Moulin’s challenge that he show that Christ instituted the Mass,

294 “[...] arme Grammatica, quade Dialectica, belachelijcke Philosophie, overlieginghe van Schriftuere ende Oudt- Vaderen/ lasteren e nde schelden Johannis de Gouda [...],” Franciscus Lansbergen, Wtvaert van de roomsche transubstantiatie ... nu ten tweeden male beweert ende verdedicht (Rotterdam: J. Ianszoon, 1612), 4.

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Cayet gave a long and contradictory speech which claimed that the Mass was celebrated across time and place, first by Abel and, drawing on the interest in French efforts to colonize Brazil, even by the Tupinamba before contact with Europeans.295 He ultimately concluded that Christ instituted the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice in that it is an “announcement of his death.” Du

Moulin waited patiently for Cayet to finish before mocking his final statement by asking if the announcement of a battle was the same thing as the battle itself. Cayet assented to that statement which caused “the whole company” to laugh so much that “they could not be quieted.”296 Adair later explained that while the Carmelites devoted themselves to “finding some absurdity in the words of du Moulin” to attack, Cayet constantly diverted the discussion to matters which neither side contested or sometimes “reading a chapter entirely in Hebrew” so that Du Moulin had to constantly demand him to return the topic.297 Du Moulin’s skillful argumentation is thus contrasted with the erratic and confusing defence of his opponents. The response of the audience is used to validate this interpretation.

295 The audience would likely have been familiar with the Tupinamba after a century of French interest in Brazil. French sailors and traders were regularly visiting the coast of Brazil in the early sixteenth century. The French sought alliances and trading partnerships with the Tupinamba to compete with Portuguese influence in the region and to trade. As a symbol of that alliance, Tupinamba travelled to France and participated in two famous “performances” before a royal audience in 1550 and 1612. These events, along with colonization attempts at Rio de Janeiro in 1555 and Maranhão in 1612, inspired much discussion in France, including a first-hand account of the 1555 colonization effort by the Reforned minister Jean de Lèry, Histoire d’un voyage fait en terre de Brésil, autrement dite Amerique (1578). Both colonization attempts ultimately failed, at least in part due to religious tensions in France. Silvia Castro Shannon, “Religious Struggle in France and Colonial Failure in Brazil, 1555- 1615,” French Colonial History (Vol. 1 2002), 51-62. On Tupinamba performances in France, see Beatriz Perrone- Moisés, “Peformed Alliances and Performative Identities: Tupinamba in the Kingdom of France,” in Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences, Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny, eds (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 110-135. 296 Archibald Adair, Narré de la conférence verbale et par escrit, tenue entre M. Pierre du Moulin et M. Cayer¸ second edition (Geneva: Pierre Aubert, 1625), 20-23. Adair recounts a similar instance later in the conference, in which a Carmelite remarks that Christ dies each time the Mass is celebrated, 108. 297 Adair, Narré, 47-48.

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The Catholic response similarly takes aim at Du Moulin’s scholarly reputation. Like

Cayet, Du Moulin had a well-established scholarly reputation by 1602. He was educated at the

Protestant academy of Sedan, before fleeing to England in 1588 and continuing his studies at

Cambridge. In 1592, he became a professor at the University of Leiden where he joined the circle of Joseph Scaliger. He was therefore well known when he returned to France, and was one of the Protestant ministers to replace Cayet as Catherine de Bourbon’s chaplain. Yet, in the

Catholic version of the disputation by Cayet and Antoine de Maucouvent, Le sommaire veritable des questions proposes en la Conférence advenuë entre le docteur Cayer, et un ministre dit du

Moulin, he is portrayed, even in the title, as a virtual unknown. The dedication to Prince-Elector

Ernest, Archbishop of Cologne, contrasts Cayet, the “doctor of the holy faculty of Theology of

Paris and lecturer ordinary of the king en the holy language of Hebrew” with “a certain so-called minister of the sect and opinion of Calvin, who calls himself Du Moulin.” Moreover, whereas

Cayet behaved with “singular meekness and modesty,” Du Moulin “could hardly speak except in trembling, so much that he sometimes cried out in a sharp and sour voice.”298 The reader is immediately led to view the subsequent account as the triumph of a reputable scholar over one that impertinently seeks to engage someone above his status. Thus, both the Catholic account by

Cayet and the Protestant one by Adair make an attack on their opponent’s scholarly reputation a central focus of their argument. Cayet outright rejected Du Moulin’s status as a scholar. Adair takes a different tack and portrayed Cayet as one who flaunts a scholarly status that is unearned.

298 Antoine de Mauvovent; Pierre Victor Palma Cayet, “A Tres-hault tres-puissant et tres-religieux prince Ernest, par la grace de Dieu Archevesqye de la saincte Eglise de Cologne, Prince Electeur du Sainct Empire, Evesque et Prince du Liege, Duch de la haulte et baste Bavyere, Marquis de Franchemont, Administrateur de Stanelot, etc.,” in Le Sommaire veritable des Questions proposees en la conference advenuë entre le Docteur Cayet, et un Ministre dit du Moulin (Paris : Jean Richer, 1602).

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Competing assertions of scholarly status in disputation were also contests of manhood.

299 As Karras has argued, entry into the university and participation in disputation formed boys into men and provided a constant example that the ideal man was rational. By simply entering the exclusively male space of the university, a boy became a man and proved himself not a woman.300 Consequently, disputants in conferences sometimes not only rejected their opponent’s scholarly status, but also sought to further debase their opponent through infantilizing them or feminizing them. Francis White justified the publication Replie to Iesuit Fishers answere to certain questions propou[n]ded by his most gratious Matie in 1624 on the grounds that his opponent in a 1622 debate, John Fisher, had dispersed “Hundreds of Papers” which, according to

White, could not have portrayed him and his fellow disputant William Laud as “more childish and unskilfull” had they “been School-Boyes of thirteen yeeres old.”301 For White, being portrayed as incompetent in several private disputations with Fisher, was a slanderous attack on his manhood which he had proven in academic disputations during his BA and MA at

Cambridge. Fisher’s portrayal of him as a poor debater ignored this training and therefore made it appear he was still a child. Publication of the conferences with Fisher would allow him to defend his honour by letting “the World” see the arguments set down so that “they might have meanes to judge rightly of our Cause, and of our proceedings.”302 Performance in disputation then was directly connected with a disputant’s masculinity. Adair records a similar attack on

299 The competition of status in disputation resembles that in lawsuits described by Alexandra Shepard. In both cases “Male preoccupations in slanderous exchanges were often a direct product of contests over rank and status.” Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 157. 300 Karras, From Boys to Men, 67, 89. 301 Francis White, “To the Reader,” in Replie to Iesuit Fishers answere to certain questions propou[n]ded by his most gratious Matie (London : Printed by Adam Islip, 1624). 302 White, “To the Reader,” in Replie.

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Cayet’s manhood near the end of his conference with Du Moulin. Cayet repeatedly refused to provide validation to the written account of proceedings by not signing the Acts of the conference. After one such refusal, one of the Protestant audience members joked that Cayet would not sign the acts because “he was not yet of age to sign” (il n’estoit encores en age pour signer).303 Given that Cayet would have been around 77 at the time of this conference (Du

Moulin would have been 34), the joke can be read as ridiculing Cayet’s acumen as both childish and senile.304 It is impossible to know whether or not this joke was actually made during the conference, but in Adair’s narrative it serves to underscore his portrayal of Cayet as an unworthy scholar whose arguments are so poor that audience members think they are childish.

In addition to the portrayal of opponents as childish, disputants attacked their opponent’s manhood by making rhetorical use of the female audience. In contrast to the exclusively male environment of the university disputation, as already noted in this dissertation, women played an active role in private disputations. In fact, Daniel Featley justified engaging in conferences with

“adversaries of the faith” (i.e. Jesuits) by paraphrasing Titus 1:11. He asks rhetorically if leaving

Jesuits unanswered is to “stop the mouth of those who subvert whole houses, by leading away captive simple women loaden with iniquity and by our Eve-tempting Adams to eat the forbidden fruit?”305 Despite the italics up to loaden with iniquity, the actual quotation of Titus 1:11 ends with the first clause; it is Featley who emphasizes the targeting of women by Jesuits. He then

303 Adair, Narré, 158. 304 Perceptions of old age varied in early modern Europe. While old age could bring respect, it could also be interpreted as a “second childishness” as Jaques declared in Shakepeare’s As You Like It, 2.7. The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. John Jowett et al., 163-165. On the predicament of old age in Shakespeare’s work more broadly, Jim Casey, “Shaken Manhood: Age, Power, and Masculinity in Shakespeare,” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 20:2 (Fall, 2014), 11-31. 305 Featley, “A Remonstrance sent in a letter, by Doctor Featly, to his worthy Friend Sir Humfrey Lynde, touching the former Conference at his house, June 27, 1623,” in Romish Fisher.

145 inverts the traditional narrative of the Fall, having been brought about by Eve tempting Adam, by describing the male Jesuits as “Eve-tempting Adams” who, like Satan in the Genesis story, manipulate simple women to eat the forbidden fruit of Catholic idolatry. By referencing houses, he also draws attention to the biblical and cultural prescription that men be masters of their households and protectors of those within it. By not debating Jesuits, Protestant clergymen not only fail as shepherds of their faithful flock, but also as men for being unwilling to stand up to interlopers targeting vulnerable women in their metaphorical household.306

William Laud also portrayed his Jesuit adversaries as preying on women in his account of his conference with John Fisher before the Countess of Buckingham in 1622. At the end of the conference, Buckingham asks Laud if she might be saved in Roman Catholic Church. Laud replies that a person ignorant of the errors of Roman Catholicism “might” be saved in it. To this,

Fisher bids Buckingham to “mark that” and reiterates the Catholic position that there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church. In his account of the conference, Laud accuses

Fisher and his fellow Jesuits of taking advantage of Protestant “charitie” in granting the possibility of salvation in the Roman Catholic Church, despite its errors. Jesuits “abuse the weake” by arguing that it is therefore safer for their eternal salvation to remain within the Roman

Church. Laud writes that “this Argument is verie prevaylinng with men that cannot weight it; and with women especially, that are put in feare by violent (though causelesse) denying Heaven unto them.”307 Thus, Laud contrasts Protestant charity towards the ignorant and weak-minded with

306 On the masculine ideal of the householder, see Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, chapter 3; Steven Ozmet, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), chapter 2, esp. 50-54. On the issue of masculinity and household trespass, see Alexandra Logue, “‘Outragiouslye Thrust and Forst Open the Doore’: Masculinity and Trespass in Early Modern London,” [Forthcoming]. 307 “R.B.”[William Laud], An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation of a Third Conference betweene a certaine B. (as he stiles him) and himself (London : Printed by Adam Islip, 1624), 67-68.

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Jesuit manipulation of them. It is not necessarily the poor scholarship of the Jesuits that Laud criticizes, but rather their poor moral character displayed in using their rhetorical skills to lead the ignorant – uneducated women in particular – astray.

The rhetorical use of the female audience to attack an opponent’s reputation as a man of learning and honour is a frequent occurrence in disputation accounts, but none moreso than in accounts of the 1609 debate between Pierre du Moulin and Jean Gontery, assisted by the

Baronne de Salignac. In his lettre escritte au Roy, Gontery prefaces his description of Salignac’s patristic citations and arguments against Du Moulin by stating that her performance proves that

“not only the Catholic doctors of your realm, but also Ladies can convict (convaincre) the ministers of the so-called reformed religion.”308 While Gontery mentions that it was “on the credit of memory” that Salignac cited Saint Cyprian to force Du Moulin to admit that the holy fathers of the first century supported the Catholic practice of using altars in churches, it was less to praise the learning of Salignac, and more to demonstrate the obvious falsehood of Protestant doctrine. As Gontery concludes, “there it is, the simple factual truth...that in every other of the controversies raised by our reformers and adversaries among the Ministers, they have not a single passage in holy Scripture for them.”309

Du Moulin did not let this attack on his reputation as a man of learning to go unanswered.

He penned two responses which. not only refuted Gontery’s accusation that a woman could best a Protestant scholar, but used the female audience to, in turn, cast doubt on Gontery’s manhood.

Throughout his account of the debate, Du Moulin portrays the female audience as unable to

308 Jean Gontery, Copie d’une lettre escritte au Roy, par le R.P. Gonthery de la Campagnie de Jesus, sur la conversion d’une Dame de la Religion pretenduë reformee à la foy Catholique (Paris: Claude Chappelet, 1609), 9. 309 Gontery, letter escitte au Roy, 9.

147 grasp the debate, causing them to intervene to ask for a change of topic because the discussion was “too high for them.”310 Despite agreeing to satisfy the ladies in the audience and discuss the

Eucharist instead, Gontery was unable to sustain a defence against Du Moulin’s arguments. He was rendered silent several times and eventually “quit the combat” to retire to “a corner of the room ashamed and at a loss,” where he proceded to write on a separate piece of paper, before laying it on the table. When the host, Madame de Liembrunne, took it to look at, he ripped it from her hands and tore it up.311 In Du Moulin’s account, Gontery’s mounted an embarrassingly inadequate and erratic defence of his position, even as they sought to simplify their arguments for an audience of laywomen.

With Gontery unable to continue the debate, it was left to one of the female audience,

Salignac, to defend the Catholic cause. Du Moulin recognized the fact that Salignac is exceptionally well read in theology for a woman, but she was no match for him, as she herself admitted in Du Moulin’s account, saying that her reading has been limited because, “being mother of a family,” she cannot devote herself entirely to theology. That being the case, Du

Moulin points out that she mixes up the Greek and Latin fathers, says Tertullian was one of apostles’ disciples, and that Cyprian (210-258) was a disciple of Christ in 150.312 Du Moulin’s description of the debate underscores the double dishonour of Gontery: he was not only bested by Du Moulin, but had to be relieved by a woman with a limited grasp of theology. Du Moulin hammered this point home in his Response du sieur Du Moulin aux lettres du Sieur Gontier,

310 Pierre du Moulin, Veritable narré de la conference entre les Sieurs Du Moulin & Gontier, secondé par Madame la Baronne de Salignac, second edition (Geneva: Pierre Aubert, 1625), 8-12. 311 Thanks to Paul Cohen for input on this translation. Du Moulin, Veritable narré, 15. 312 Du Moulin, Veritable narré, 17.

148 escrites au Roy sur le suiet de leur conference. In the Response, Du Moulin writes that the subject of the conference boiled down to two main questions: whether or not bishops had the authority to establish “sacrificers for Christ” (i.e. ministers), and if Christ offered his blood to

God as a sacrifice. Du Moulin notes that Gontery’s letter mentions neither of these points. He then asks “does he not recognize by this that everything he said is not worth stopping upon, but things that a Lady said deserve to be weighed?” Finally, and most damningly, he concludes that in this debate Madame de Salignac showed herself to be “ten times” more sufficient a theologian than Gontery.313 In the end, Du Moulin and Gontery urge the readers to reject their opponent’s position on the same grounds: their arguments are so poor that even a woman with limited knowledge of theology can best them. The opponent is portrayed as lacking sufficient virility to have the credit due to a true theologian.

Both authors portrayed their opponent as being unable to maintain their falsehood when faced with the truth. Gontery’s account has an untrained noblewoman “forcing” Du Moulin to admit that early churches maintained altars. In Du Moulin’s account, his repeated requests that

Gontery find a passage in Scripture to support the Mass, reduces him to repeatedly scribbling on pieces of paper and then tearing them up until eventually retiring from the debate. The strain of debate causes the advocate of falsehood to become unable to control himself and present his arguments with confidence. Thus, truth is portrayed coming out involuntarily through debate rather than a consequence of the author’s rhetorical skill. In this way, disputation accounts resemble the procedure of judicial torture described by Lisa Silverman. Silverman has explained the appeal of judicial torture to early modern jurists as a product of a sacramental understanding

313 Pierre du Moulin, Response du sieur Du Moulin aux lettres du Sieur Gontier, escrites au Roy sur le suiet de leur conference, second edition (Geneva: Pierre Aubert, 1625), 24-25.

149 of the value of pain. The doctrine of original sin suggests the will is always tainted. Therefore, torture could arrive at the truth by bypassing the will and “eliciting a testimony that is not willed, that is not the product of human intent.”314 Proponents of disputation ascribed it with a similar meaning. Daniel Featley wrote in his letter to Sir Humphrey Lynde that it was because of this strain that face-to-face conferences are superior to printed polemics. Whereas books of controversy result in “an arguments without an answer,” conferences allow “the force of every

Argument, and sufficiency of every Answer” to be “brought to the Test.” When truth and error are brought into direct conflict, it is like “smiting the Flint with the Steele” in that it creates a fire, so that “the cleare light of Truth breaketh out.”315 Summing up the opinions of a wide array of sixteenth and seventeenth-century English controversialists, Joshua Rodda writes that both

Catholics and Protestants believed the formal process of disputation (followed correctly) would allow the truth to be drawn out and made plain, “the truth each side already knew.”316

This belief that the strain of debate would cause an opponent to involuntarily admit the falsehood of his opinion appears repeatedly in disputation literature. One of the most dramatic examples comes from Jacques Davy Du Perron’s account of the conference held with Philippe

Duplessis-Mornay at Fontainebleau in May 1600. This conference was especially transparent in its focus on honour over theology. The issue of the conference was squarely the reputation of

Mornay. It centred around the allegation that Mornay had falsified citations in his 1598 book criticizing the Mass, De l’Institution, Usage, et Doctrine du Sainct Sacrement de L’Euchariste en

314 Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 9. 315 Featley, “A Remonstrance sent in a letter, by Doctor Featly, to his worthy Friend Sir Humfrey Lynde, touching the former Conference at his house, June 27, 1623,” in Romish Fisher. 316 Joshua Rodda Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 203.

150 l’Église ancienne. Mornay was goaded into challenging Du Perron to a private disputation after hearing that Du Perron had claimed to have uncovered over 500 errors in Mornay’s text. Du

Perron writes that Mornay, “instead of thinking according to his conscience, and mildly recognizing his error…very imprudently committed himself” to a formal challenge of Du

Perron.317 Mornay subsequently tried and failed to find a “means to escape” the debate to which he had committed himself by insisting on accomodations. Through a mix of coercion and compromise on the part of the king and Du Perron, the debate went ahead on the afternoon of

May 4. From the outset, Mornay could mount only a feeble defence. Whereas Du Perron’s opening remarks were spoken with confidence, praising the king for his good judgement in organizing this conference, Mornay spoke in a voice “so weak that those who were far away could hardly hear it.”318 Moreover, Du Perron records another instance during the course of the debate when Mornay requested a book to verify one of his arguments, but, upon receiving the book merely sat “a long time” silently searching in vain for the passage. This “ridiculous” sight induced “everyone to have pity on him.”319 He was thus completely incapable of defending his book and was condemned by the appointed commissaries for falsifying all nine passages covered in the debate. His inability to mount a defence of his book was mirrored in his inability to control his own body. By the end of the debate, he had become “so filled with ennui and anger that he could not stand” and had to be helped backed to his lodging by his son. In fact, Mornay became so ill that the King’s physician, after visiting his quarters, spread word that Mornay was near death. Further debate was suspended due to Mornay’s illness and Du Perron concluded his

317 Jacques Davy Du Perron [attributed], Discours veritable de l’ordre et forme qui a esté gardée en l’assemblée faicte à Fontaine-bleau (Antwerp: Herosme Verdussen, 1600), 8-10. 318 Du Perron, Discours veritable, 40. 319 Du Perron, Discours veritable, 59.

151 account by stating that Mornay’s illness was likely from God, since “those who by their sin and own fault receive dishonour” often come to repentance.320 Thus, a face-to-face disputation could provide the requisite strain to induce a dishonest theologian to lose control of not only his mental faculties, but even his own body. This allowed the truth suppressed within to come out, but also exposed him as an unworthy and sinful man, whose mental and bodily collapse Du Perron portrayed as a display of God’s displeasure with his dishonest promotion of heresy.

Mornay’s disgrace at Fontainebleau was just one example of the trope of the bodies of dishonest disputants forcing them to admit the falsehood they knew they were maintaining. Keith

Luria has noted similar descriptions of Protestants’ “loss of physical control” such as stammering and teeth chattering in disputation accounts by the Capuchins in Poitou.321 Véron repeatedly made reference to his ability to “render mute” Protestant ministers in debate by posing simple questions to them. Indeed, the very title of his debating guide advertises his method as a tool to

“gag” Protestant ministers: Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle de bailloner les ministres de

France. In this guide, he gives an account of his debate with Adrian Hucher in Amiens on 15

January 1615. He chose this example because it showed how “easily and visibly truth secures a glorious triumph from falsehood.” He thus does not attribute the victory to his own skill, but rather the ministers’ inability to confront the simple truth. Indeed, as Véron describes it, he simply asked Hucher to find a direct scriptural reference for Article 31 of the Reformed

Confession of Faith. He was unable to do so, and was thus made “completely mute for the space of a whole half an hour (tout muet l’espace d’une grosse demy-heure), head lowered, forehead

320 Du Perron, Discours veritable, 59-61, 65-67. 321 Keith Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 78.

152 laden with shame.”322 The description of Hucher’s shame is even more vivid in Véron’s Le

Ministre d’Amyens, contraint de renoncer a la pure parole de l’escriture Saincte, rendu muet. As

Hucher was unable to defend his cause, his face became so red with shame that an audience remarked that he appeared to have needed a surgeon to open a vein.323 Again the dishonest minister’s body forces him to reveal his shame when his lies are met with the truth.

Protestant ministers were evidently quite annoyed with Véron’s accounts which made them appear stupid and vividly described their apparent shame. It was therefore with obvious glee that the minister of Rouen, Jean-Maximilian Baux de L’Angle described his defeat of Véron in a debate there in November 1618. His Recit de la conference tenue entre Jean Maximilian de l’Angle, ministre de la parole de Dieu en l’Eglise reformée de Rouen, et François Véron Jesuite begins with a lengthy preface to the reader which describes how, having accepted Véron challenge to a disputation, he set himself to reading Véron’s debating guide. His conclusion:

Véron’s method equally denied Catholics the ability to support their own doctrine. In the debate, he thus used Véron’s method against him, posing the syllogism that if Véron’s method is legitimate, then Roman Catholics have no means by which to prove the truth of the Christian religion against heresy.324 He pressed Véron to provide an explicit scriptural passage for the

Mass as articulated by the Council of Trent. L’Angle’s persistence increasingly aggravated

Véron, which caused the audience to remark on his legs which began to tremble and that “he

322 Véron, Abregé de l’art et méthode nouvelle, 21-22. 323 François Véron, Le Ministre d’Amyens, contraint de renoncer a la pure parole de l’escriture Saincte, rendu muet : et mmis en fuitte…Par le P. François Veron…addressé par le sieur de la Tour Gentil-homme ordinaire de Mondit Seigneur le Duc au Sieur de Rotois, Gentil-homme de la Venerie du Roy (La Fleche : Jacques Rezé, imprimeur du Roy, 1615), 7. 324 Jean Maximilian de L’Angle, Recit de la conference tenue entre Jean Maximilian de l’Angle, ministre de la parole de Dieu en l’Eglise reformée de Rouen, et François Véron Jesuite (Queuilly: Abraham Velquin), “Preface au Lecteur,” 14-19, “Recit de la Conference,” 7.

153 cried victory, when his weapons fell from his hands, and that I was gagged, when the truth held him by the throat.” However, it was not long before Véron was seized by “a certain spiritual apoplexy” which “so surprised all the faculties of his soul, that he remained immobile,” and ultimately had to be relieved by his assistant, fellow Jesuit Odet.325 In a similar way to Du

Perron’s characterization of Mornay’s defeat at Fontainebleau, L’Angle portrays Véron’s loss of control as divinely inspired, or at the very least a natural consequence of his spiritual corruption.

To add further insult, L’Angle twice describes Véron’s defeat using the same turns of phrase that he employed against Hucher four years earlier. In his conclusion, L’Angle admits that it was a pleasure to see “this great gagger of Ministers, thus stopping mouth open at the head of a table” for nearly half an hour. In the preface he likewise writes that Véron was made “mute as a fish” for “the space of more than half an hour” (l’espace de plus de demie heure).326 L’Angle was clearly quite familiar with Véron’s work and took pleasure in mocking him by using his own method against him. As we have previously noted, the ministers often referred to Véron as the

“father of lies,” so it is no surprise that when a minister did manage to put strain on him, the suppressed truth would have an extreme effect on his body and his downfall would be spectacular.

The question arises, if our authors’ adversaries knew that their doctrine was false in these debate accounts, why would they maintain it? The answer of our authors is that it is because they are quite simply immoral people who benefit materially from the manipulation of simple

Christians. Take for example L’Angle’s description of Véron in his preface to the reader. He

325 L’Angle, “Recit de la Conference,” 96. 326 L’Angle, “Preface au Lecteur,” 24; L’Angle, “Recit de la Conference,” 119-120.

154 writes that as soon as he arrived in Normandy, he set himself to “acquiring reputation” and bragged of his courage and his desire to debate Protestant ministers. He is nothing but a man with a “vain humour” who “does not seek to glorify God, but to reveal his own mind; not to manifest truth, but to sophistically palliate falsehood.”327 L’Angle characterizes Véron as manifesting vices which were associated with scholarship and disputation dating back to the twelfth century. Instead of using disputation to seek truth, he used it to promote his own reputation and advance his career.328

This trope also appears frequently in the polemical battles between Anglicans and

English Jesuits. Robert Persons writing about Edmund Campion, stated that his colleague challenged English clergy to a disputation because he believed “heresy was desperate and that few or no men of judgement” actually believed “in their conscience” the doctrine espoused in the

Church of England, but “some, of policy, some for present government, others for ease, others for gain, honour, and preferment, and all commonly for some temporal interest or other did stretch out a hand to hold it up for a time by force and violence.”329 While Persons portrays

Anglican clergymen as simply self-serving, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, writing of his 1622 debate with John Fisher, accused the Jesuits of being “instruments of the

Popes boundlesse ambition.”330 The preface to his second edition likens the Church of England

327 L’Angle, “Preface au Lecteur,” 4. 328 Jody Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama 27:3 (Fall 1993), 351; Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul,” 238-239. 329 Robert Persons, “Life of Campian,” quoted in Thomas M. McCoog, “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1996),137- 138. 330 “R.B.,” An Answere to Mr Fishers Relation, 73.

155 to a beehive which is in danger because “men that care neither for the Hive, nor the Bees, have yet a great minde to the Honey.” Laud implored the king to protect the Church from those who wish to disturb it for their own ends, particularly the Jesuits who complain of persecution yet advocate for “blowing up States to settle Quod Volumnus, what which faine they would have in the Church.”331 This is presumably a reference to the Gunpowder Plot which Laud employed to remind the king that not only do the Jesuits seek to subvert the ecclesiastical order, they are not above destroying the state to do so.

The end result of the perfidy of the confessional rivals of our authors is that their doctrine can only be maintained by underhanded tactics. As Featley writes to in his dedicatory epistle to

Archbishop Abbot in his Romish Fisher, “Poperie (as I have oft learned from your Grace) is a doctrine of lyes...so it can be be maintained by not better support, then of lyes.”332 His opponent,

Fisher, describes the Protestant cause in the same manner, writing in his Answer that their cause is so weak “it seemeth it cannot be supported but by setting out such lying Relations.”333

Consequently, the assumption that their confessional adversaries were dishonest resulted in clerics interpreting their opponents’ actions in the worst possible light. This is why both Gouda and the Lansbergens saw their opponent as breaking their word and spreading partisan news of their private debate. They were not alone. Virtually every account studied in this dissertation opens by justifying its publication on the grounds that their opponent had been maliciously spreading false reports.

331 William Laud, A relation of the conference, betweene William Lawd, then, Lrd. Bishop of St. Davids; now, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury: and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite. (London : Richard Badger, 1639). 332 Featley, “Epistle Dedicatory to the Most Reverend Father in God, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, his grace, primate of all England etc, my very good Lord,” in Romish Fisher. 333 “A.C.,” “Preface,” in Answer.

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In conclusion, a survey of the rhetoric used in disputation accounts reveals why private conferences occurred over and over again in the seventeenth century. While they were almost always about a contentious doctrinal point, theology was merely the field on which a contest of honour was fought between clergymen. This is not to say that the theological content of disputations was unimportant. Rather, proponents of disputation believed that the stress of face- to-face disputation could allow lay audiences to better assess claims of theological truth through the humiliation of an opponent as a dishonest theologian and an unworthy man. Many early modern Europeans could still not imagine that multiple interpretations of religious texts and traditions could be sincerely held by different individuals. There was only one confession that believed and practiced true Christianity; clergy sought to convince lay audiences that the source of division was the manipulation of the general population by cunning and self-serving clergymen of the opposing confession. Disputation was a performance of that belief. It was a public contest of the credibility of the clergy taking part. The attacks on the opponent’s poor arguments, lack of virility, and inability to maintain composure were not a mere sideshow, but rather the material by which audiences could judge the credibility of the clerics, and thereby assess the truth claims of their entire confession. Disputation then was seen by its practitioners as a tool that could expose the lies of the opposing confession before a lay audience and reveal to them true religion and its true ministers.

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5 The Promise and Peril of Public Disputation: The State and Debate

Confidence in the capacity of disputation or conference to help resolve religious controversy persisted into the seventeenth century. Since the religious and the political were intrinsically linked, state actors sought to use disputation to achieve their confessional policy goals. A well publicized debate could legitimize a state’s religious policy by giving the appearance that the state had listened to its critics, while also displaying the triumph of the state’s chosen position. However, the public appetite for religious controversy created an environment in which governments had to tread carefully, lest conferences inflame the very religious tensions they were supposed to dampen. This chapter looks at three well-known debates in England, France, and the Dutch Republic as examples of how state actors sought to use disputations to advance their confessional goals.

Public disputation appealed to the ruling class throughout Europe for a variety of reasons.

As Joshua Rodda points out in his study of public disputation in England, the frequent recourse to the terms “disputation” and “conference” reflect the “period’s discursive climate, which was enhanced in contemporary minds by new forms of social and political engagement, by the revival of classical traditions and by the ideals of Renaissance thought and literature.” He notes disputation’s similarities with the consultation of collective wisdom called “counsel” and the mock trials or “moots” of the Inns of Court to suggest a common lexicon of debate across

English society.334 Moreover, disputation can be seen as a subgenre of the literary dialogue

334 Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 9.

158 which was in vogue amongst writers and intellectuals across Europe. As a type of literature,

Peter Burke has classified disputation was one of four forms of dialogue, a form that focused particularly on using a dialogue between two characters to express different viewpoints with one ultimately winning out. He cites King James VI and I’s own Daemonologie (1597) as a prime example of this form of dialogue, in which Epistemon discusses the dangers of witches with

Philomathes.335 In this context, it is not surprising that rulers would make use of a form of dialogue to legitimize their religious policy.

This prevalence of dialogue was also specifically expressed within a religious context in irenicism, a movement that sought to restore Christian unity through dialogue and compromise.

Irenicism could take many forms, including efforts to write new creeds that could be more widely accepted (as suggested by Emperor Maximilian II’s court physician Johannes Crato for example), or reform within the established church to attract wayward Protestants (as suggested by some Gallican humanists such as François Baudin).336 One of the most frequent manifestations of this irenicism was repeated calls for church councils and the organizing of various colloquies between rival confessional groups. The belief that religious division could be resolved in gatherings of opposing clergy animated numerous colloquies across Europe in the sixteenth century.337 Even the apparent failure of high-profile colloquies like that of Poissy in

335 Peter Burke, “The Renaissance Dialogue,” Renaissance Studies 3:1 (March 1989), 3-4. 336 Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Mario Turchetti, “Concorde ou Tolérance? Les Moyenneurs à la veille des guerres de religion en France,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, Troisième série 118: 3 (1986), 255-267. This irenic trend may not have been confined to Christendom, as it shares some similarities with syncretism in Islam in the contemporary Ottoman Empire. Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 51-73. 337 Thomas Fuchs, Konfession und Gespräch: Typologie und Funktion der Religionsgepräche in der Reformationzeit. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995); Donald Nugent, Ecumenism in the Age of the Reformation: The Colloquy of Poissy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); István Keul, Early Modern Religious Communities in East-Central Europe: Ethnic Diversity, Denominational Plurality, and Corporative Politics in the Principality of Transylvania (1526-1691) (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009), 103-115.

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1561, apparently did not put much of a dampener on faith in large-scale religious debates as a tool for peace, particularly among Protestants. The renewed religious conflict in France and the

Netherlands in the 1570s and 80s gave rise to numerous pamphlets offering a “free council” as the way of peace between Protestants and Catholics. Philippe de Mornay, in his 1576

Remonstance aux estats pour la Paix, recommended that the Estates convening at Blois

“embrace peace” between Catholics and Protestants and call a “free council” to resolve the doctrinal points of conflict. 338 A decade later in 1587, the Huguenot soldier François de la Noue would publish his Discours politiques et militaires which argued that to prevent the kingdom from being destroyed by “discord,” Catholics and Protestants must tolerate each other until “a national open and free council” be called. He further specified that such a council must take place without the interference of the Pope.339 Such arguments were also repeated in the

Netherlands such as in Een Vriendlijcke vermaninghe tot allen Liefhbbers der vryheyt ende des

Religions-vreden from 1579. The anonymous author of the Vriendlijcke vermaninghe wrote that in order to avoid further violence, “as rational people we must win over others through reason, through gentle and loving manner and action, through a free Council and assembly.”340 In the context of ongoing religious violence in both France and the Netherlands, the belief that the conflict could be resolved through rational dialogue was clearly appealing.

These were far from voices crying in the wilderness and such views attracted powerful supporters. Mornay, for example, was a councillor to William of Orange and Henry of Navarre and advised them to hold councils. In 1579, Henry sought advice from Mornay on how to handle the request of his wife Marguerite de Valois to re-establish Catholic worship in the territory of

338 Philippe de Mornay, Remonstrance aux estats pour la Paix (1576), 12. 339 François de la Noue, Discours politiques militaires. Publiés avec une introduction et des notes par F.E. Sutcliff (Genèva, 1967), 121-125. 340 Een Vriendlijcke vermaninghe tot allen Liefhbbers der vryheyt ende des Religions-vreden (1579), Aii.

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Béarn. Mornay wrote that Henry should organize a “council” in his territory in which Catholic and Protestant theologians would debate each other. This procedure would result in an inevitable

Protestant triumph since they hold the truth.341 Moreover, both William and Henry appear to have been receptive to these views. William wrote to King Frederick II of Denmark advocating for a disputation between Calvinists and Lutherans as a means to bring about Protestant unity.342

Similarly, Henry supported a colloquy between Calvinists and Lutherans in Montbéliard in 1586, a county ruled by the Lutheran Duke of Württemberg, in the hopes that it would show German princes that the religious differences between them were minor and encourage them to support him in the religious wars which had recently resumed.343 Several years later, Henry began his reign as King of France with a declaration on 4 August 1589 in which he promised to be instructed in Catholicism by “a good, legitimate and free general or national council,” to take place within six months.344 In the context of the escalating conflict, the council never took place, but these examples highlight the continued hope, however faint, that a rational debate could end religious division in Europe.

While many early modern Europeans continued to believe that a properly conducted conference could resolve religious tensions, it is clear from the above examples that they were often also viewed as an effective political tool. Even if ultimately unsuccessful in resolving doctrinal differences, conferences could act as an olive branch, showing that a ruler was open to hearing opposing views. Henry’s declaration that he would hold a council between Protestants

341 Hughes Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi : le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1572-1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 186-187. 342 Marianne Roobol, Disputation by Decree: The Public Disputations between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious Policy during the Dutch Revolt (1557-1583) (Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2010), 282. 343 Jill Raitt, The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 8-11, 43-72. 344 Janine Garrisson, Henri IV (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1984), 149.

161 and Catholics may or may not have been a genuine intention, but regardless it was certainly useful in assuaging the fears of some moderate Catholics about the new Protestant king. Rulers recognized the potential of disputation to offer a spectacle which vindicated their own religious policies. Bodo Nischan has recounted the example of a conference between Calvinists and

Lutherans convened in 1614 by the newly-Calvinist Elector Johann Sigismund in Brandenburg.

The Elector wished to bring about a Calvinist Reformation in his predominantly Lutheran territory. Believing that his subjects would follow his lead and embrace Calvinism if they studied its doctrines impartially, in May 1614, he published his own confession of faith, Confessio Fidei

Joannis, and invited the Electorate’s Calvinist and Lutheran clergy to a debate in German so that the “common people” could attend and understand it. The Lutheran clergy resisted, but ultimately sent a delegation led by Johann Fleck to the colloquy in October. In the gathering,

Fleck made one final call for the debate to be postponed. To the apparent surprise of the assembly, Johann Sigismund agreed, stating that “His Electoral Highness is the prince and ruler of His subjects, but not of their consciences.” He did not wish to impose his views by force and hoped that more Brandenburgers would accept them over time. While the conference did not materialize in the end, by organizing it and eventually postponing it indefinitely, Johann

Sigismund managed to simultaneously show his commitment to a Calvinist Reformation while countering the criticism that he was a tyrant who wished to impose his personal beliefs on his unwilling subjects.345 Thus, a tightly controlled public disputation could serve to advance a ruler’s confessional agenda in a way that imposition by force could not. This was how the French

Jesuit and poet Jean Bertaut interpreted the Fontainebleau conference organized by Henry IV

(discussed below). Whereas the three previous French kings sought to subdue Protestant heresy

345 Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 116-121.

162 by “bloody combat,” Henry, in organizing a conference, had more success purging heresy with a

“gentler remedy,” namely the purgative of the “the holy word” expounded by “champions of

Christ.”346

5.1 The Role of Conference in England: James I and the Hampton Court Conference, 1604. Conference played an important role in informing the religious policy of James VI and I.

While King of Scotland, he sought to act as a peacemaker both at home and abroad. Despite his own fervent Protestantism, James dealt leniently with rebellious Catholic earls Huntly, Angus, and Errol, who became fixtures at court in the 1590s after repenting of their former disobedience.

Meanwhile, James used his marriage to Anne of Denmark in 1589 to begin a project with Danish statesmen to bring about peace in Europe, particularly between England, France, and Spain.

Although the project came to naught, he did maintain friendly relations with both Protestant and

Catholic states of northern Europe.347 Upon his accession to the throne of England, he continued this policy, reflected abroad in his attempts to end conflict in Europe through an ecumenical council between Catholics and Protestants and domestically in his efforts to respond to puritan criticism of the Church of England by organizing the Hampton Court Conference. While his policies met with some success, the reality of public interest in religious disputation ensured that the Hampton Court Conference in particular was not without risk for galvanizing opposition.

As W.B. Patterson has argued, a significant pillar of the foreign policy of the early reign of James I was working towards an ecumenical council between Europe’s Catholics and

Protestants. James’ views on this matter are revealed in a frank conversation he had with the

346 Jean Bertaut, Discours au Roy sur la conférence tenue à Fontainebleau (Paris: 1600), 2-4. 347 W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 16-21, 29.

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French ambassador, Christophe de Harlay, comte de Beaumont after a hunt on 23 July, 1603.

James told the ambassador that he was “not at all a heretic, that is to say one refusing to recognize the truth, that he was no Puritan nor even less separated from the Church.” In fact, he considered hierarchy “essential” to the church, even the pope as “the first Bishop in it, President and Moderator in Council, but not head or superior.” While there were certain ceremonies and

“other things indifferent” over which Christians disagreed, these issues could be resolved by “the decree of a general Council well and legitimately assembled in a neutral place and with free access and made up of persons of honor, of virtue and of learning.” Without such a council,

James saw “no way to hope for peace in the Church without which he held it as impossible consequently that that of Christendom would ever be firm and assured.”348 We thus see in James some of the familiar sentiments of Protestant advocates of a council. Religious division persisted because the attempts to resolve had either been too violent, or previous councils/colloquies had been improperly executed. A council comprised of honourable persons from a variety of perspectives (specifically Protestant perspectives, the lack of which made the Council of Trent illegitimate) was the only solution to religious division in Europe.349 Without religious unity, there could be no lasting peace.

This conversation survives because James wished to convey his desire for a council to

“all his friends” and ask them to “commit their word and authority with his.” Beaumont therefore relayed this conversation to King Henry in a letter. While Henry did not aspire to be a theologian-king in the way that James did, his reply does reveal that he also remained open to the

348 Quoted in Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, 38-39. 349 Patterson notes that James’ views on a council were also atypical for a Protestant. For instance, in addition to the Protestant representation mentioned above, he further insisted that a valid council must be called by the Pope. Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, 69.

164 possibility of a council, writing to his ambassador from Rouen on August 15 that he would “be happy to support and assist the good desire that he has told you he has to procure and advance the peace of the Church…believing like him that that [sp?] of Christendom will never be firm and assured so long as the discord in religion is such as we see at present.”350 James not only sought French support for a council, but since at least 1602 had been corresponding with Pope

Clement VIII about the possibility of re-establishing religious unity in Europe. This correspondence was aimed at ensuring James’ accession to the English throne was not opposed by the Papacy and English Catholics, but it also raised Catholic hopes for James’ conversion. In the summer of 1602, Clement conveyed a verbal message to James through the Scottish Catholic

Sir James Lindsay that he would support the King’s claim to the English throne, but expected, in return, that James’ heir Henry be instructed in the Catholic faith. James’ reply was slow-coming, but was delivered to the Papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignor Innocenzo del Bufalo, in November

1603 (after James’ accession to the English throne). Not surprisingly, James refused Clement’s request that Henry be brought up in the Catholic faith. However, he wished for his Catholic subjects to be able to dwell in justice, peace, and tranquility, provided they accepted his rule.

Moreover, he suggested that “care be taken, by means of a General Council, justly and legitimately declared and assembled, by which all contentions and controversies could be settled and composed” and the true doctrine of the early church be uncovered. Clement’s reply, delivered to the English ambassador in Paris in February 1604, rebuffed James’ proposal for a conference, arguing that if the king were open to the truth, “ways would not be lacking to be able to make contact with him” without the need of a “great Council.” Councils had already

350 Quoted in Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, 39.

165 confirmed the truth of Roman Catholic doctrine, and James would be better served by following the example of French King Henry IV, who had also previously sought a council.351

Nevertheless, James remained committed to the notion that a general council could resolve religious discord and bring peace to Europe. He discussed the idea with the Spanish ambassador Don Juan de Tassis during treaty negotiations and de Tassis expressed his support of the idea to King Philip III. Indeed, as Patterson notes, based on the reports of the English ambassador in Spain, the proposal was met with some support there as well. It was not until the

Gunpowder Plot and subsequent controversy over the Oath of Allegiance in 1606 that James’ plan for a general council definitively died.352

While James’ diplomacy was not enough to organize a Europe-wide ecumenical council, the notion that religious division could be solved through dialogue informed his domestic as well as foreign policy. He had more success organizing a conference to resolve religious division in his own territory. Scholars have traditionally interpreted the Hampton Court conference held in

January 1604 as an event with limited consequences beyond establishing a commission to create the Authorized (or King James) Bible. Indeed, this interpretation can be traced back to William

Barlow, dean of Chester’s publication of his account of the conference in August 1604, The summe and substance of the conference which it pleased his Excellent Majestie to have with the

Lords, Bishops, and others of his clergie (at which the most of the lordes of the Councell were present) in his Maiesties Privie-Chamber at at Hampton Court which portrays the conference as an outright victory for the status quo and conservative bishops. However, this interpretation has received much revision since Mark H. Curtis’ 1961 article, “Hampton Court and its Aftermath.”

351 Quoted in Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, 40-42. 352 Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, 53-54, 70-74.

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In the article, Curtis argues that scholars have relied too heavily on Barlow’s version of events, and have thus ignored the fact that many puritans had a favourable impression of the conference.

Instead, it was the aftermath of conference, specifically the resistance on the part of bishops in implementing its decisions that led to its apparent “failure.”353 It is therefore worth re-evaluating the conference here in the context of the culture of disputation this dissertation has described.

In calling a conference between puritan ministers and bishops at Hampton Court early in his reign, James acted at once typically and unusually. Like the three Tudor monarchs before him

(including Catholic Mary Tudor), he used his authority as supreme head/governor of the Church to set out the religious policy of his reign in an act of state. However, he was unique in using a religious conference to do this.354 Often historians have seen the conference as a response to the so-called Millenary Petition, a document claiming to represent the views of more than a thousand puritan ministers calling for further Reformation of the Church of England. This petition is often alleged to have been presented to the King as he journeyed south from Scotland to take up the

English throne.355 However, as William Craig has pointed out, contemporary evidence that this petition called for a disputation or even that it was presented to James as he travelled south in

1603 is scant. It seems more likely that the idea of a conference with puritan ministers was

James’ own invention.356 Indeed, James’ previous publication of Daemonologie, his calls for an ecumenical council, and his future participation in a private disputation with John Fisher

(covered in chapter 2), all offer evidence of James’ confidence in disputation as a tool to bring about political and religious unity.

353 Mark H. Curtis, “Hampton Court and its Aftermath,” History 46:156 (1961), 11-16. 354 Curtis, “Hampton Court,” 4. 355 Curtis, “Hampton Court,” 4; Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life of James VI and I (London: Chatto and Windus, 2003), 187. 356 William Craig, “Hampton Court Again: The Millenary Petition and the Calling of the Conference,” Anglican and Episcopal History 77:1 (March, 2008), 46-55, 64.

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Yet, as Joshua Rodda has noted, while the Hampton Court Conference did make occasional use of disputation, it did not follow the disputation model as closely as other contemporary “conferences” did. Indeed, the meanings of both “disputation” and “conference” were not precise and James exploited this fluidity of meaning to allow Puritans to air their concerns in a strictly-controlled setting.357 His declarations before the bishops and puritan representatives recorded by Barlow give some indication of what he had in mind. On the first day of the conference, 14 January 1604, James declared to the bishops that the conference was

“no novell devise, but according to the example of all Christian Princes, who in the commencement of their regime, usually take the first course for the establishing of the Church, both for doctrine and policie.”358 James thus made it clear that this conference was to be no open- ended debate, and that he would control the discussion. In fact, if we look beyond Barlow’s account, which tends to portray James’ and the bishops’ interests as overlapping, to a Puritan portrayal of events, James repeatedly overrules the bishops’ requests that nothing be changed at all in the church. An anonymous manuscript, later published by American historian Roland

Usher in 1910, is the most extensive Puritan account of the conference.359 The author writes that when James requested the bishops present a list of things they thought were in need of reform, the bishops of Canterbury, London, and Winchester fell on their knees and “beseeched his

Majesty if there might not be any alteration of any thing before prescribed and used in the governement of the Church.” James replied that all states “either Ecclesiasticall or Civill” suffer

357 Rodda, Public Disputation, 135, 139-140. 358 William Barlow, The summe and substance of the conference which it pleased his Excellent Majestie to have with the Lords, Bishops, and others of his clergie (at which the most of the lordes of the Councell were present) in his Maiesties Privie-Chamber at at Hampton Court, January 14, 1603. Contracted by William Barlow, Doctor of Divinitie, and Deane of Chester. Whereunto are added some Copies (scattered abroad) unsavory, and untrue, (London: V.S. [Valentine Simmes], 1605), 3. 359 Roland Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, Vol II (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1910), 341-353. The account has neither title nor author, but is cited as “Harleian MSS. 828, f. 32.” The collection is now part of the British Library.

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“some corruptions” over time which must be addressed.360 He then listed three points that he wished to cover in the conference: revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, the use of excommunication in ecclesiastical courts, and the provision of “fit and able Ministers” for

Ireland.361

That being said, the conference was not simply an occasion for the king to make pronouncements on religious policy. On the second day of the conference, Monday 16 January, the four Puritan representatives were invited into the King’s Privy Chamber. The king gave them a similar speech as he did to the bishops on the first day, adding that “because many grevious complaints had been made to him, since his first entrance into the land, hee thought it best to send for some, whom his Majestie understoode to bee the most grave, learned and modest of the agreeved sort, whome being there present he was now readie to heare at large, what they could object or say.”362 The Puritans were thus offered an opportunity to air their concerns. Moreover,

Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester and William Bancroft, Bishop of London, were also present to defend the current church establishment, offering and opportunity for debate.

Bancroft in particular was quite vocal in his opposition to the Puritan spokesman, John

Rainolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. When the King invited Rainolds to offer his criticisms of the current church establishment, Rainolds had only just begun to discuss his first concern with the Book of Articles when Bancroft interrupted him. Both Barlow and the

Puritan author note that Bancroft declared Rainolds and his colleagues to be “schismatickes” and implored the king to remember “the ancient canon” that “Schismatici contra Episcopos, non sunt

360 Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, 341-342. Similar protests by bishops, 343, 344.

361 Barlow, Summe and substance, 6-8. 362 Barlow, Summe and substance, 21-23.

169 audiendi” (schismatics against bishops are not to be heard). The Puritan author further records that Bancroft then mocked the puritans’ academic gowns, saying “they greatly abused his

Majestys patience in coming before him in their Turky gounes, more likely to conforme themselves to Turks, then to others of our Church.”363 These words are not recorded by Barlow, and may have been an addition of the Puritan author to discredit Bancroft, a vehement opponent of Puritans. On the other hand, we have seen how such an attack on an opponent’s reputation was commonplace in disputations. Here it appears that Bancroft draws upon Puritan criticism of clerical vestements and religious iconography to accuse them of conforming to Islamic practices, or “turning Turk.” Indeed, Bancroft was not alone in portraying Reformed Protestantism as a slippery slope to Islam.364 Such an attack on the reputation of the Puritan delegates suggests that

Bancroft viewed the gathering as a disputation, and not simply a solemn act of state.

James’ response to Bancroft supports this interpretation. He was not pleased with

Bancroft’s interruption and implored him to allow Rainolds to speak freely, concluding that there can be no “effectual issue of disputation, if each partie might not be suffered, without chopping, to speake at large what he would.” If Bancroft wished to speak, he must “frame his answer to these motions alreadie made.”365 The king himself then called the conference a “disputation,” and ordered the participants to follow a proper disputation procedure, allowing each party to air

363 Barlow, Summe and substance, 26-29; Usher, the English Church, Vol II, 344. 364 On English anxiety surrounding Islam in the context of increased interest in Mediterranean trade, see Daniel J. Viktus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570-1630 (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave/St Martin’s Press, 2003); Jonathan Burton, “English Anxiety and the Muslim Power of Conversion: Five Perspectives on ‘Turning Turk’ in Early Modern Texts,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 2:1 (Spring/Summer 2002), 35-67. Christians often portrayed conversion to Islam as something done out of weakness or coercion. Naturally, this oversimplified the complicated nature of conversion. In fact, Christian reform ideas might indeed be one path that led to Islam. The case of Murad b. Abdullah is instructive. See Tijana Krstić, “Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Self-Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization,” Comparative Studies in Soceity and History 51:1 (Jan. 2009), 35-63. 365 Barlow, Summe and substance, 29.

170 their views before responding. Bancroft followed the King’s instructions and proceeded to debate Rainolds on his readings of the Book of Articles. Over the course of the day they also debated what was to be included in the Book of Common Prayer (Reynolds objecting to certain readings from apocryphal books), the use of the cross in baptism, and the wearing of the surplice.366 While this was certainly not as free an environment as a private disputation, I would disagree with Patrick Collinson’s assessment of the Hampton Court Conference as having more the character of a “round-table conference” than a true disputation.367

The Hampton Court Conference was indeed a disputation of sorts, but one that was tightly-controlled. The goal of finding a moderate solution to the religious division in England remained clear throughout. Even the king’s Royal Proclamation of 24 October, 1603 which called for the “meeting” to take place, specified that “our purpose and resolution ever was, and now is to preserve the estate aswell Ecclesiasticall as Politike, in such forme as we have found it established by the Lawes here, reforming onely the abuses which we shall apparantly finde prooved, And that also to doe by such mature advise and deliberation, as we have above mentioned.”368 Thus, there never was any chance of significant alterations coming out of this conference. The selection of the four Puritan delegates ensured this would be the case. None of them could be considered particularly radical. The main spokesmen, Dr. John Rainolds of

Oxford and with Dr. Thomas Sparke, were early admirers of James, and canvassed for his claim to the English throne. Indeed, Collinson suggests that they were so moderate that they could

366 Barlow, Summe and substance, 29-33, 58-63, 74. 367 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 460; cf. Rodda, Public Disputation, 139-140. 368 James Stuart, James I and VII King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, “By the King. A Proclamation concerning such as seditiously seek reformation in Church matters. [Wilton 24 October 1603] (1603)” in James F. Larkin & Paul L. Hughes (eds), Stuart Royal Proclamations, Vol. 1: Royal Proclamations of King James I 1603–1625, (Oxford: Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, 2013), doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198223726.book.1

171 scarcely “merit the name of puritan.” The other two delegates, John Knewstub, and Laurence

Chaderton, were certainly “presbyterian by conviction,” but also conscious of “the need for realistic moderation.”369 As a result, their criticisms of the current ecclesiastical establishment were hardly severe. After prolonged discussion of faulty translations, James reportedly said that

“If these be the greatest matters you be grieved with, I need not have been troubled with such importunities and complaints as have been made unto me.”370 In a similar vein, Barlow records that Rainolds’ objection that Article 37 of the Book of Articles does not sufficiently state that the

Pope has no authority in England actually caused the king to “heartily” laugh and dismiss it as

“idle and frivolous.” In fact, this was just one of the several occasions when puritan criticisms were dismissed outright.371

While James dismissed many Puritan concerns, the resolutions of the conference did address some important criticisms of moderates. The aftermath reveals that James had some success in appeasing moderate puritans. In his speech on the third and final day of the conference, James ordered changes to the Book of Common Prayer to clarify ambiguous language, changes to the rubric on baptism to abolish baptisms performed by laypeople, and removal of some apocryphal readings. He also conceded some points regarding ecclesiastical courts, ordering that bishops must act with “grave ministers” or deans when ordaining, suspending, degrading, or depriving ministers. He assented to Rainolds’ requests that parish livings be improved to encourage more learned ministers, that more ministers be sent to Ireland, and that there would be greater censorship of Catholic books from the continent.372 These were

369 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 448, 455-456. 370 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 158. 371 Barlow, Summe and substance, 37, 38, 92-93. 372 Curtis, “Hampton Court,” 12.

172 relatively minor concessions compared to some proposals from radical Puritans, such as abolishing episcopal government altogether. In fact, James already expressed his desire to see some of these policies implemented even before hearing Rainolds request them – further evidence that the conference was intended to give the appearance of open debate rather than an opportunity for Puritans to seriously argue for reform.

Nevertheless, these concessions were apparently enough to win the favour of the more moderate Puritans. One anonymous Puritan report out of Oxford declared that Rainolds

“obtained and prevailed in everie thing he did desire” and that these concessions were “but the beginning of reformation.”373 One of the other Puritan delegates, Thomas Sparke would pen a call to conformity in 1607 entitled Brotherly persuasion to unitie and uniformitie. Meanwhile,

Rainolds and Chaderton would be appointed to translation committees for the new Bible.

Collinson sees the conference as the end of the Elizabethan Puritan movement. The conference created an “open fissure” between moderates who viewed Prayer Book ceremonies and episcopacy as indifferent, and the radicals who saw these things as “inherently evil.” As a result, when Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury and commenced a campaign for subscription to the Book of Articles, he faced a weakened and divided resistance.374 The conference was apparently enough to induce a fissure between moderate and radical Puritans, effectively neutralizing their criticism for the remainder of James’ reign.

However, as successful as the conference was at weakening Puritan resistance to conformity, in the context of the widespread interest in religious controversy, it comes as no surprise that the conference excited much reaction. In fact, we might view the anonymous

373 “Some of the speeches that are bruted upon Master Doctor Reynolds returne to Oxon. concerning the late conference, before his Maiestie,” in Barlow, Summe and substance; Usher, the English Church, Vol II, 340. 374 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 463.

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Puritan account cited by Usher as an attempt by a moderate Puritan (perhaps even one of the conference participants) to rally support behind the conference as a true disputation by exaggerating its fractiousness. Included in the Puritan account is James’ reaction to an argument by the Bishop of Peterborough in favour of permitting lay baptisms. The bishop alleges that ancient authors write that fathers baptized their newborn children with sand when water was not available. James is recorded as caustically replying, “A turd for the Argument. He might as well have pissed on them, for that had been liker to water than sand.”375 James is thus portrayed as quite strongly favouring the Puritan position in this case. His censure of the Bishop of London later in the account is another example of James siding with the Puritans in a heated argument. In reality, the bishops and Puritan representatives were not completely at odds. Some bishops like

Tobie Matthew of Durham were ardent Calvinists whose views were closer to the Puritans’ than to a hardliner like Bancroft or Bilson. However, even there, divergent views did not necessarily mean animosity. Chaderton and Bancroft were friends from their days at Christ’s College,

Cambridge in the 1560s.376 Careful selection of delegates ensured that the most radical criticism would not be discussed and the atmosphere would not become too heated.

While some of the moderate intellectuals amongst the Puritan movement may have accepted the resolutions of the Hampton Court Conference, many others saw the conference as nothing more than a performance. Humphrey Fenn, a Puritan minister (and one-time candidate for a Puritan representative to the conference), reflecting on the conference some 30 years later astutely observed that it was but “a show of a dispute.” The Puritan representatives were

“purposely chosen” and served merely as “stage-players.” Apart for “one reverend father,” they

375 Usher, the English Church, Vol II, 342-343. 376 Nicholas W. S. Cranfield, "Bancroft, Richard (bap. 1544, d. 1610), archbishop of Canterbury," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008), https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/1272.

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“never took the question about ceremonies to heart.”377 The orchestration of this debate was not lost on other Puritan critics. Puritan agitator Henry Jacob went further than Fenn and observed that the “whole managing” of the conference suggested that it “was underhand plotted and procured by the Prelats themselves.” Puritan concerns were not “thoroughly debated, but nakedly propounded, and some not at all touched.”378 For these Puritans, this conference was no true disputation, but a mere performance of one. Their criticisms remained unanswered.

Jacob’s criticism of the conference mirrored James’ disqualification of the Council of

Trent. They both took issue with those gatherings on the grounds that they failed to offer an adequate arena for debate. Both Henry Jacob and James continued to have faith that a free disputation was the solution to religious division. James’ vision aligned more closely with the colloquies of the sixteenth century – gatherings of learned theologians convocated by popes or kings. Jacob’s vision was more in line with the conferences that had become commonplace in the seventeenth century – he envisioned a much more public, even democratic affair. In response to the Hampton Court Conference, Jacob published A Christian and modest offer of a most indifferent conference, or disputation, about the maine and principall controversies betwixt the prelats, and the late silenced and deprived ministers in England in 1606. In it he aired the criticisms of Hampton Court mentioned above, but he also outlined a proposal for an “indifferent conference.” He explains that a conference was necessary because the published exchange between Puritans and Anglicans only served to increase division and would do so until “the

377 Quoted in Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 463. 378 Henry Jacob, A Christian and modest offer of a most indifferent conference, or disputation, about the maine and principall controversies betwixt the prelats, and the late silenced and deprived ministers in England ([London: William Jones' secret press], 1606), 28-30.

175 matter may once come to some such direct, and just Triall.”379 He proceeds to outline the conditions of such a “just trial.”

In contrast to the Hampton Court Conference where the King appointed the delegates, both the ministers and prelates would have “a free choise” to send 6 or 8 representatives to debate each other. The debate would have to follow the disputation form, with one side presenting a syllogism and the other side answering it, either by denying or distinguishing it.

Once the debate had run its course, four members of each party would publish a book of the proceedings.380 This was to be done to avoid the situation which followed Hampton Court in which only those present knew its proceedings resulting in reports of this conference that “are also so diverse, that one spoyles the credit of another.” In answering the criticism that this conference would only lead each side to claim truth for their own side, he further explained the importance of making the debate public. While royally appointed judges could help weigh the arguments, Jacob insisted that it was crucial for the proceedings to be published “to make all the world to be Judges thereof; even the Prelates and the Papists themselves, and all that shalle read the same.”381 Jacob thus stated explicitly what the disputants in this dissertation practiced: disputation made public was a tool to bring about religious unity, as a Christian public would choose the righteous position if they were presented with accurate information. The problem lay not in disputation, but in disputation improperly conducted. However, Jacob’s preferred form of disputation was also open to exploitation by state actors as the Fontainebleau Conference six years before demonstrates.

379 Jacob, “To the High and Mightie Prince, James, by the Grace of God; King of great Britaine…,” in A Christian and modest offer. 380 Jacob, A Christian and modest offer, 3-7. 381 Jacob, A Christian and modest offer, 40-41.

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5.2 “The most resonant and radiant theatre in the world:” Henry IV and the Fontainebleau Conference, 1600382

While James sought to display his religious policy in a tightly controlled pseudo- disputation, his counterpart across the channel embraced the potential of pamphlets and rumours to maximize the impact of a conference. James used disputation to display his moderation and give the appearance that he had heard and responded fairly to Puritan criticisms. Henry IV and his Catholic councillor, Jacques Davy Du Perron, Bishop of Évreux, used the May 1600

Fontainebleau Conference to discredit a champion of France’s Protestant minority and display

Henry’s commitment to Catholicism.

While the conference’s subject was a book of theology, De l’Institution, Usage, et

Doctrine du Sainct Sacrement de L’Euchariste en l’Église ancienne by Philippe Duplessis-

Mornay, it was a response to the immediate political context. The publication of Mornay’s De l’Institution in 1598 came at an inconvenient time for Henry. The Edict of Nantes granting tolerance for France’s Protestant minority had just been signed, but not without significant resistance. Henry spent substantial political capital convincing Catholic hardliners to accept it.

Meanwhile, he was in the midst of a campaign to convince Pope Clement VIII to annul his childless marriage with Marguerite de Valois and allow him to remarry.383 In this context, the widespread controversy incited by the publication of a treatise against the Mass by a prominent

Protestant courtier was the last thing Henry needed. Clement had even asked Robert Bellarmine, arguably the most prominent Catholic theologian and polemicist of the day, to pen a refutation of

382 Much of this section of this chapter has been published in the CRRS essay collection, Reframing the Reformation: Early Modern Religions, Societies, and Cultures in Comparative Context, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020). 383 Daussy, Les huguenots et le roi, 588, 592-594.

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Mornay’s work.384 Allowing Mornay to continue at court without consequence might make

Henry appear soft on his former co-religionists at a time when he needed to signal his commitment to advancing the Catholic faith in the kingdom.

However, Mornay’s polemical treatise was also an opportunity for the king to show his commitment to Catholicism. After Bellarmine refused to write a response to Mornay’s book, the pope turned to Henry to find someone to refute the treatise. Many Catholic polemicists had taken up the pen against Mornay’s book; among them Jacques Davy Du Perron, bishop of Évreux and a close confidant of Henry. Du Perron had been instrumental in convincing the pope to absolve

Henry after his conversion in 1593 (which led to Du Perron’s advancement to the diocese of

Évreux).385 Du Perron arranged to have a Protestant gentleman, Robert Aux-Épaules, seigneur de

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, present Du Perron’s challenge to Mornay. During a dinner at the Paris residence of Louise de Coligny, the Princess of Orange, du Mont informed Mornay of the many accusations circulating of numerous errors in his book. Specifically, he stated that Du Perron had claimed to have found 500 such errors. He requested Mornay write to Du Perron and challenge him to prove these accusations. According to Du Perron’s account, Mornay, “instead of thinking according to his conscience, and mildly recognizing his error […] very imprudently committed himself” to a formal challenge of Du Perron, writing to him not long after this dinner on 17

March 1600.386 This cartel de défi requested Du Perron to join Mornay in presenting a request to

384 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 328-329. 385 Garrison, Henri IV, 271–272; Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 329. 386 “De ceste façon ledit Sieur du Plessis, au lieu de penser à sa conscience, et de recognoistre doucement son erreur [...] s’engagea fort imprudemment en ce deffy.” [Jacques Davy Du Perron], Discours veritable de l’ordre et forme qui a esté gardée en l’assemblée faicte à Fontaine-bleau (Anvers : Herosme Verdussen, 1600),10; Kappler. Conférences théologiques, 329–330. Kappler notes that Du Mont made a formal conversion to Catholicism on 31 March, before the conference had even begun. It seems quite likely then that Du Mont was sent by Du Perron to goad Mornay into this conference.

178 the king to appoint several commissaries “of the requisite doctrine and probity” to “verify page by page and line by line” all the alleged passages containing errors.387 Although the content of the cartel is scholarly in nature, the challenge is a deliberate parallel to the cartels de défi that were used by aristocrats to challenge a rival to a formal duel.388 What is evident even in the prelude to this conference is that the issue was not theology, but Mornay’s reputation.389 In fact,

Du Perron records that in response to the concerns of the papal nuncio that the appointment of commissaries “to judge matters of religion” is under the purview of “ecclesiastical authority,”

Henry replied that the commissaries were not “judges of any difference in religion” but rather simply learned “witnesses” of the conference that was concerned only with determining whether or not Mornay had falsified certain citations in his book, and not any point of theology.390

Nevertheless, as we have seen, these sorts of conferences were not simply contests of honour between two individuals. Fontainebleau was not different, as is made immediately evident reading Du Perron’s response to the cartel. He accepted Mornay’s challenge, but refused to examine the book line by line because that would be too odious a task, and instead would debate an apparently smaller list comprising his alleged 500 errors. More importantly, his reply

387 “ordonner Commissaires tels qu’il plaira à sa Majesté, personnes de doctrine et probité requise, pardeuant lesquels ledict Sieur ayt à verifier de page en page, et de ligne en ligne, tous les passages par luy alleguez en ses liures.” Philippe Duplessis-Mornay; Jacques Davy Du Perron, Sommation du sieur Duplessis, a mr. L’evesque d’Evreux, avec la Reponse dudit Sieur Euesque (Paris: jouxte la copie imprimée à Évreux par Antoine le Marié, 1600), 3–4. 388 Carroll, Blood and Violence, 88–89; Weinstein, “Fighting or Flyting,” 204–217. 389 Natacha Salliot has similarly pointed to the centrality of Mornay’s reputation in the rhetoric of the polemics against his work and the conference itself. Natacha Salliot, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay: La rhétorique dans la théologie (Paris : Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2009), 36-37, 632. 390 “les Commissaires [...] ne seroient point juges d’aucun different de Religion, mais seroient seulement hommes doctes qu’il choisiroit pour estre spectateurs, témoins et garants de la verité de ceste conference [...] [il] seulement s’examineroit le fait particulier du Sieur du Plessis, pour sçauoir s’il auroit commis quelques faussetez litterales en ses allegations.” Jacques Davy Du Perron, Actes de la conférence tenue entre le Sieur Evesque d’Evreux et le Sieur du Plessis (Évreux : Antoine le Marié, 1602), fols. 7v-8r.

179 was not directed solely at Mornay. Instead, instead published Mornay’s challenge and his response to it on the grounds that their quarrel was not between two individuals but “from one party to one party” and that “the interest and cause of the Church” did not permit him to leave the challenge without reply or merely a secret response.391 While the debate would be between two individuals, they were cast as representatives of France’s Catholic and Protestant communities.

This is not an unreasonable association. While there were many prominent Catholics at court, Du Perron was a cleric who was particularly close to the king and whose star was continuing to rise in the Catholic hierarchy (he would receive a cardinal’s hat in 1604). Mornay, meanwhile, had made a name for himself as a champion of France’s Protestant minority, earning himself the nickname “the pope of the Huguenots” for his advocacy of their political rights, especially during negotiations on the Edict of Nantes, and for his engagement in theological controversy with their Catholic adversaries. Mornay’s disgrace at court, especially by being proven to be a dishonest theologian, could serve to discredit the Protestant faith more broadly by demonstrating that its champions were dishonourable.

For the conference to have the intended effect, it had to at least appear to be impartial. As we have noted, many learned people – Mornay among them – still had some confidence in disputation as a method to arrive at truth (or at the very least lead to religious reconciliation).

Thus, it was a useful mechanism with which to verify Du Perron’s claims of Mornay’s false citations. Five commissaries with honourable reputations were appointed. Three of them were

391 “voyant que ce n’est point vne sermonce d’vn particulier à vn particulier, mais d’vn party à vn party, I’ay pensé que l’interest de la cause de l’Eglise ne me permettoit, ny de la laisser courir sans response, ny de luy respondre secrettement.” Mornay/Du Perron, Sommation, 5.

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Catholics: Jacques Auguste de Thou, president of the parlement of Paris, François Pithou, jurist and parlementaire, and Jean Martin, a doctor of medicine at the University of Paris and royal physician. The other two were Protestants: Philippe de Fresnes-Canaye, president of the edict chamber of Languedoc, and the renowned humanist scholar Isaac Casaubon. In addition to the commissaries, four secretaries of both religions were appointed to witness and record the conference.392

The arrangement of the room on the day of the conference on 4 May also served to illustrate the impartiality and solemnity of the proceedings. At the centre of the king’s council room was a table. At the head of the table sat the king with Du Perron seated at his right hand and Mornay at his left, a “sinister foreshadowing” according to Mornay’s recent biographer,

Hughes Daussy.393 The king’s presence served only to signal the importance of the conference and the authority of its outcome because, apart from his opening remarks, he played little part in the action. Instead, it was his chancellor, Pomponne de Bellièvre, who directed the proceedings and ultimately decided the dispute as president of the conference. Bellièvre was seated next to

Du Perron and further down the table sat the five commissaries. On the opposite side, seated next to Mornay, were the king’s secretaries of state, and at the end of the table were seated the secretaries recording the proceedings. The space around the table was far from empty. Behind

Henry sat some of the leading prelates of the kingdom, the Archbishop of Lyons, and the

Bishops of Nemours, Beauvais, and Castres – a further indication of the king’s confessional allegiance. Additionally, to the left and right of the table sat many of the kingdom’s leading nobles, both Catholic and Protestant, and that is to say nothing of the many priests, ministers,

392 Du Perron, Discours veritable, 21, 36. 393 Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 591.

181 scholars, and lesser nobles that stood observing the proceedings. Altogether, Du Perron and others estimated the room to be filled with some 200 people.394 All served to give the conference an air of impartiality and the solemnity of an “ecumenical council” as Louis Richeome noted.

The number and quality of the audience is repeatedly stressed in Catholic accounts of the conference as evidence of the impartiality and justice of the proceedings. When Mornay published his own account of the proceedings detailing his mistreatment, Du Perron refuted

Mornay’s accusations by declaring that he was appalled that Mornay would seek to “persuade those present that everything was contrary” to what they had seen and was attested to even with the king’s pen.395 Mornay’s claims that he was mistreated at the conference are made to look ridiculous by refering to the king’s support of the conference and the eyewitness accounts of some of the most honourable persons in the kingdom.

Nevertheless, this impartiality was illusory. Mornay’s disgrace was assured from the beginning. Chancellor Bellièvre, although a respected statesman, could hardly be expected to make informed decisions about patristic citations in a work of theology. This is why five learned commissaries were appointed to help him render his decisions. While none could doubt the scholarly reputation of each commissary, none of them, neither Catholic nor Protestant, were experts in theology or church history.396 Even the most renowned scholar among them, Isaac

Casaubon, was famed as a classicist, not a theologian, despite his commitment to Protestantism.

394 Several published accounts give the layout of the room and identify the participants and audience members. Pierre Victor Palma Cayet, Chronologie Septenaire de l’histoire d e la paix entre les roys de France et d’Espagne (Paris: Jean Richer, 1609), 133–135; Du Perron, Discours veritable, 35–38. 395 “ il veut persuader aux presents tout le contraire de ce qu’ils ont veu.” Du Perron, Actes de la conférence, fol. aiiv 396 J.A. Lalot, Essai Historique sur la conférence tenue à Fontainebleau entre Duplessis-Mornay et Duperron, le 4 mai 1600 (Paris: Libraire Fischbacher, Librairie Grassart, 1889), 108–109; Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 331– 332.

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Mornay’s wife, Charlotte Arbaleste, wrote – perhaps a little harshly – in her memoirs that

Casaubon was “no theologian and not of the quality to bear the splendour of the court nor the word of the King who would immediately dazzle and astonish him.”397 At first, Casaubon was the only Protestant commissary, but Philippe de Fresnes-Canaye happened to arrive at

Fontainebleau around the time of the conference and was appointed to fill in for one of the

Catholic commissaries unable to attend. Mornay was evidently not happy about this appointment as he noted in his account that Fresnes-Canaye was appointed without his consent.398 Evidently,

Mornay felt Fresnes-Canaye’s confessional loyalty was questionable and not without reason, since he would renounce Protestantism the following April.399 Thus, before the conference had even begun, the jury was stacked against Mornay.

Moreover, Mornay’s preparation for the debate was hindered by a lack of co-operation on the part of the king and Du Perron. His request that his book be examined line by line was outright rejected, but so was his request that the passages not alleged by Du Perron to contain errors be considered verified. Finally, and most importantly, his request to receive a list of the

500 errors beforehand to prepare his defence was rejected by Du Perron on the grounds that this was a “specious pretext to use and consume the time that His Majesty could employ to this

397 “nullement théologien et non de qualité pour porter ny la splendour de la cour ni la parole d’un Roy qui aussy tost l’esbloüyrent et l’estonnèrent.” Charlotte Arbaleste, Mémoires de Madame de Mornay, edited by H. de Witt (Paris: Renouard, 1868), 371. 398 Mornay, Discours veritable, 10. 399 In a 1604 letter to Jacques Auguste de Thou (another of the commissaries), Canaye-Fresnes would in fact cite the “poor faith” of the ministers following the Fontainebleau conference as one of the reasons for his embrace of Catholicism. Thierry Wanegffelen, Ni Rome ni Genève : Des fidèles entre deux chaires en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997), 446–450; Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 598.

183 action” and thereby avoid his inevitable condemnation.400 All his requests having been rejected, on 3 May Mornay made plans to depart Fontainebleau. To ensure that the conference went ahead, Du Perron finally offered to send Mornay 60 alleged false citations with the books necessary to verify them if he would agree to debate them the following day. Mornay accepted these unfavourable conditions, believing that the truth would be less obscured if he was able to present at least some defence of his book.401 Mornay did not receive the list of passages until after midnight, and the books necessary to verify them not for another two hours. He passed the entire night studying the texts and reported to the king at 8 o’clock the next morning that he was able to verify only nineteen of the 60 passages. Du Perron promptly accused Mornay of selecting passages to his advantage, but nevertheless agreed to debate these nineteen in order to “prevent any pretext” to rupture the conference.402

The actual conference began at one o’clock in the afternoon and, unsurprisingly,

Mornay’s defeat was spectacular. After opening remarks by the king and his chancellor, Du

Perron spoke, praising the king for his good judgement in organizing this conference and reiterating that the subject of debate was not doctrine, but only “points of fact” – whether or not

Mornay had falsified citations. Then Mornay spoke that though he is a fallible man, he did not consciously falsify anything in his book and that if a falsification be found, he would not want his book burned, but rather his own hand. In Mornay’s own account of the proceedings, he adds that he ended his discourse by declaring, with leave of His Majesty, that “this act was individual, and could not do prejudice to the truth of the doctrine of the reformed Churches of this

400 “c’estoit vn specieux pretexte pour vser et consommer le temps que sa Majesté pouuoit employer à ceste action.” Du Perron, Actes de la conférence, fol. 16r. 401 Du Perron, Actes de la conférence, fols. 22v–26r; Mornay, Discours veritable, 12–13. 402 Du Perron, Actes de la conférence, fol. 27r; Mornay, Discours veritable, 13–14.

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Kingdom.”403 Mornay thus appears to have been well aware that his disgrace could have negative consequences for his co-religionists, but nevertheless remained hopeful that the truth would triumph, even in such unfavourable circumstances. Yet, Du Perron records that Mornay made this speech in a voice “so weak that those who were far away could hardly hear it.”404 This could simply be rhetorical posturing on the part of Du Perron. However, as noted in the previous chapter, describing an opponent as speaking in a low or shaking voice is something of a trope in the printed conference accounts used to denote an opponent lacking confidence in their own arguments, knowing them to be false. In this case it may be an accurate description since

Mornay’s fatigue from his night of research undoubtedly affected his performance.

The conference covered nine alleged false citations over five hours. The first citation of

John Duns Scotus’ critique of transubstantiation was debated for an hour with the king ultimately deciding to allow this question to be resolved at a later time. This was the best result for Mornay.

The other eight passages were condemned as having “omitted that which should have been included,” meaning that the citations left out important details that changed their meaning.405 As the inevitably of his disgrace sunk in, Mornay’s health deteriorated. Du Perron records that during the discussion of Scotus, Mornay requested a book, believing it contained a passage that he could use to support his defence. Upon receiving the book, he sat there “a long time,” silently searching in vain for the passage. This “ridiculous” sight induced “everyone to have pity on

403 “cest acte esoit particulier, ne pouuoit consequemment faire preiudice à la verité de la doctrine des Eglises reformées de ce Royaume.” Du Perron, Discours veritable, 38–42; Mornay, Discours veritable, 14. 404 “si foible que ceux qui estoient loin ne le pouuoient bien entendre.” Du Perron, Discours veritable, 40. 405 “Le sieur du Plessis avoit obmis en ce passage, ce qui y devoit estre mis.” These words appear repeatedly as the ruling of the commissaries in Du Perron’s Actes de la conférence. For the sake of brevity, I have omitted the discussion of each of the citation. Kappler provides a brief overview of the points in Conférences théologiques, 334– 335, while Lalot offers an extensive analysis, and refutation of the commissaries rulings in his Essai Historique sur la conférence tenue à Fontainebleau.

185 him.”406 However, it only became worse for Mornay, so that by the end of the conference he was

“so filled with ennui and anger that he could not stand” and had to be helped back to his lodging by his son. In fact, Mornay became so ill that the king’s physician, after visiting his quarters, spread word that Mornay was near death. Further debate was suspended due to Mornay’s illness and Du Perron concludes his account by stating that Mornay’s illness was likely from God, since

“those who by their sin and own fault receive dishonour” often come to repentance.407 Du Perron had achieved his goal of disgracing one of Protestantism’s greatest champions in France.

This was not the end of Mornay’s nightmare. The Fontainebleau conference was a spectacle that was designed to be shared and discussed. Du Perron writes that even as the conference proceedings were ongoing, some of the Protestant audience, “annoyed to see this progress to the prejudice of their champion,” left the room, and went out into the garden, where

“at least five hundred people” had gathered “curiously waiting for the issue of this conflict.” The disgruntled Protestant auditors acted as “harbingers” of the conference, showing by their confused and uneasy countenance that things were not going well for Mornay.408 However, their complaints merely fueled the controversy by inciting further discussion of the event.

406 Du Perron, Discours veritable, 59. 407 “ tellement comblé d’ennuy et facherie, qu’il ne se pouuoit tenir debout;” “ ceux qui ont par leur peché et propre faute reçeu du deshonneur, venans à resispiscence.” Du Perron, Discours veritable, 59, 66. Du Perron’s interpretation of Mornay’s suffering aligns with the sacramental understanding of pain suggested by Lisa Silverman in her study of torture in early modern France. Truth suppressed by sinful individuals could be extracted through suffering. The humiliation of an opponent in a public disputation may have functioned in the same way. Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 60-63; 111-112. 408 “aucuns huguenots assistans [...] ennuyez de veoir ce progrez au prejudice de leur champion, sortirent de l’assemblée, et se mirent à promener dans le susdit iardin, auquel il y auoit lors du moins cinq cens personnes pourmenans, attendans curieusement l’yssuë de ce conflict, aux gestes dequels et à leurs contenances, on recogneut visiblement vne tache de confusion et desconfiture [...] et par ce moyen comme auant-coureurs, ils annoncerent à ceux qui estoient hors ladite salle que tout alloit mal pour ledit sieur du Plessis.” Du Perron, Discours veritable, 57– 58.

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Protestant circulation of news about the conference was at a disadvantage when compared to the state-supported Catholic version of the event.409 Mornay concludes his account of the conference by remarking that “the people imagine something else completely” as a result of a “certain copy of a letter” by the king that was printed and read from the pulpits of churches throughout the kingdom. When Mornay returned to his home in Saumur in the Huguenot heartland of Poitou later in May, he found “more than a hundred” copies of this letter and the townsfolk were already debating rumours about the conference.410 This letter was one written by

Henry to Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d’Epernon, on 5 May. In it, Henry writes that the “diocese of Évreux has won that of Saumur” and that this event was “one of the greatest blows made by the Church of God in a long time.” He expects that “we will bring back more of those separated from the Church in one year than in fifty by another way.”411 In this letter Henry recognizes the victory of Du Perron, bishop of Évreux, over Mornay, pope of the Huguenots. He also signals that he understood the potential of the conference as a tool for winning converts, and in allowing this letter to be published, did his part to ensure that news of the Protestant champion’s defeat spread far and wide.

409 While there was a version of the events that Du Perron and Henry wished to communicate, variation in Catholic responses to the conference reflect the divisions within the Catholic party in the kingdom. These divisions were played down in the conference itself with Catholic commissaries like De Thou, whose orthodoxy was questioned, and Martin, who Madame de Mornay called “passionately Catholic,” presenting a united condemnation of Mornay’s work. The conference could be a seen a victory for Gallicans, but also those who wished to align France more closely with international Counter-Reform Catholicism. Louis Richeome, for instance, implored the king to continue the progress he has made and readmit the Company of Jesuit into France, from where they had been exiled in 1594. Daussy, Les huguenots et le roi, 591; Louis Richeome, “Au Roy,” in Victoire de la verite Catholique contre la faulse verification de Philippes de Mornay Sr. Du Plessis (Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1601). 410 “les peuples s’en imaginoyent toute autre chose, sous ombre de certaine coppie de lettre.” Mornay, Discours veritable, 54. 411 “Mon amy, le diocese d’Eureux a gagné celuy de Saumur…Certes c’est un des grands coups pour l’Eglise de Dieu qui se soit faict il y a longtemps. Suivant ces erres, nous ramènerons plus de separez de l’Eglise en un an que par une aultre voye en cinquante.” Henri IV to the duc d’Epernon, 5 May 1600. Quoted in Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 338.

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The publication of this short letter and its reading from pulpits throughout France and beyond allowed a broader audience to engage with the controversy. Whereas the audience of the actual conference included the most prominent persons in the kingdom, and the readership for

Du Perron’s and Mornay’s accounts would be a literate minority, everyone could hear news of the conference in sermons. Thus, even commoners became involved in the controversy. This helped news of the conference spread through other media as well. For instance, Pierre L’Estoile records a few different libellous verses that circulated in Paris in the immediate aftermath of the conference. One of these poems makes reference to an incident that occurred in 1597, when an angry nobleman, the Sieur de St. Phal, accosted Mornay in the street and surprised him by pulling out a club and knocking him unconscious. The poem reads as follows:

St. Phal and Du Perron have cut down the glory

Of this Mornay, at once doctor and soldier

St. Phal with the baton, Perron with his virtue

Under which his valour and science tremble

Demonstrating from this double combat

As bad a doctor as brave he is a soldier.412

The poem makes a parallel between Mornay’s disgrace as an aristocratic warrior, having been knocked unconcious before even drawing his sword, and his dishonour as a theologian by the virtuous arguments of Du Perron. The content of these verses again makes it clear that the

412 “St. Phal et du Perron ont la gloire abattu / De ce Mornay docteur et soldat tout ensemble; / St. Phal par le baston, Perron par sa vertu / Sous lesquels sa vaillance et sa science tremble, / Se monstrant aux effects de ce double combat / Aussi mauvais docteur qu’il est brave soldat.” Pierre L’Estoile, Journal inédit du regne de Henry IV 1598- 1602 par Pierre de l’Estoile publie d’après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque impériale par E. Halphen (Paris: Auguste Aubry, 1862), 144. The incident is described in The incident is described in Joachim Ambert, Duplessis Mornay: 1549-1623 (Paris: Comptoir des imprimeurs-unis, 1847), 349.

188 issue of the conference was not theology but rather Mornay’s reputation. However, as a champion of Protestantism, his dishonour was publicized as a way of discrediting Protestant leadership in the belief that this would win converts to Catholicism.

The Fontainebleau Conference offered an example of state actors exploiting public interest in religious controversy to promote their religious agenda. The conference allowed

Henry to display his commitment to Catholicism, winning praise among Catholics in the kingdom and beyond.413 Meanwhile, he managed to discredit the leading Protestant spokesman in the kingdom, weakening Huguenot political influence to some degree, and empowering

Catholic efforts to convert the kingdom’s Protestants. However, this strategy was successful because the Catholic party had such an advantage in publishing news about the event, an advantage bolstered by state-backed propaganda. Henry could reasonably expect that the conference would be well received in print, manuscript and rumours by the majority of his subjects. However, while public disputation offered much promise for rulers looking to promote their religious agenda, it also presented peril if not carefully managed. A religiously engaged public was a volatile thing as the rulers of the Dutch Republic were to discover as they navigated a schism in the Reformed Church between 1609 and 1618, one exasperated by state-backed attempts to resolve the crisis through disputation.

5.3 The Perils of Public Disputation: The Conferences of the Arminian Controversy No controversy illustrates more clearly how much the audience of religious disputation had moved from the closed halls of the university to the wider public than the Arminian

413 Henry was keen to proclaim his triumph at Fontainebleau as evidenced by his 30 June letter to Pope Clement VIII, in which he wrote, “Louant Dieu, très saynct père, d’avoyr feit chose dygne d’estre agréée de Vostre sayncteté en la conference qu’a eue l’ebesque d’Évreus avec le Plessys Mornay.” Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi, 592-594.

189 controversy that engulfed the Dutch Republic between 1609 and 1618. The entire controversy was the result of the publication of disputations between two theologians at Leiden University,

Jacobus Arminius and Franciscus Gomarus. Indeed, as Freya Sierhuis writes in her study of the literature of the Arminian controversy, the Dutch Republic was unique in that “religious controversy alone” brought the country to the brink of civil war.414

Arminius was a popular preacher in Amsterdam, but in 1602 was called to take up the position of professor of divinity at Leiden to replace two other faculty who had died of plague.

His Amsterdam congregation was reluctant to see him go, partly because he was beloved, but also because they feared that he would spread his unorthodox views. However, ultimately pressure from the States of Holland (at the recommendation of the influential Hague preacher,

Johannes Uytenbogaert) compelled them to release him. He was granted his title of doctor in July

1603 after a disputation with the remaining professor in the divinity faculty, Franciscus

Gomarus. They continued to hold regular disputations, but one organized by Gomarus in 1604 on predestination elicited particular controversy. Arminius penned a lengthy response that was later printed. In 1605, not long after this disputation, the Synod of North Holland approached

Arminius requesting that he respond to their concerns about ministry candidates who were citing him in novel answers during their examinations. He refused to answer them on the grounds that he needed the permission of the university curators to submit to the authority of a synod.

Controversy continued to surround him, so that he eventually requested the States of Holland to hold a legal inquiry into the situation. In May 1608, he and Gomarus were summoned to a hearing before the High Court in The Hague. They reported to the States who decided that the differences between the two theologians did not touch on the fundamentals of faith and called

414 Freya Sierhuis, The Literature of the Arminian Controversy: Religion, Politics, and the Stage in the Dutch Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1.

190 them to live in peace and teach nothing contrary to scripture, and the catechism and confession of the Dutch Reformed Church. The following year, the States invited both men to a “friendly conference” to try to resolve their differences outside of a synod, but Arminius died 19 October

1609 before the conference could take place.415

The controversy did not die with him. Rather, it broadened to encompass wider segments of society. In 1609, Arminius’ disputation with Gomarus on predestination was published with his Examination of Gomarus’ Theses on Predestination. It evidently proved popular since it was republished the following year. The controversy took on an even more public profile after 14

January 1610 when Arminian-minded ministers led by Johannes Uytenbogaert sent a remonstrance to the Land’s Advocate of the States of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. This remonstrance responded to the calumny “high and low” that the Remonstrants (as the signatories hereafter were known) sought “change in religion” and “are the cause of great disputes and trouble in this land and church.” They proceeded to outline their beliefs in five articles and called upon the States to convene a synod whereby they could demonstrate the scriptural basis of their views and revise the confession and catechism accordingly.416 The Remonstrance was eventually discussed by the States representatives at the end of the June, when they resolved that in all the classes of the Reformed Church, the “high mysterious points currently disputed” not be covered

415 R.B. Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam: De kerk der hervorming in de gouden eeuw, Vol. 1. (Amsterdam: W. Ten Have N.V., 1965), 196-200; Sierhuis, Arminian Controversy, 36-42. Sierhuis also provides a concise overview of the theological issues at the heart of the controversy, 42-48. 416 Johannes Uytenbogaert; Carolus Ryckewaert, De Kerckelicke Historie, vervattende verscheyden gedenckwaerdige saecken, inde Christenheyt voorgevallen, van het jaer vierhondert af, tot in het jaer sesthienhondert ende negenthien: voornamentlick in dese geunieerde provintien (1646), 525-529. Together the five articles challenge the then orthodox Calvinist positions on justification and predestination. Article 1 argues that an individual’s salvation is conditional upon faith in God, rather than upon God’s election. Article 2 challenges the Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement by arguing that Christ died for all people, not just the elect. Article 3 affirms the Calvinist position that sin prevents humans from accepting salvation without God’s grace, but Article 4 notes that that grace can be resisted. Finally, Article 5 tentatively suggests that it may be possible for a person, after accepting this salvation, to once again become lost through “negligence.”

191 in examinations for ministry or preached from the pulpit.417 The States sought to stifle the controversy by forbidding both sides to publicly discuss issues that were not crucial to salvation, and therefore both sides could be tolerated in a single church.418

However, the States resolution actually inflamed tensions further by highlighting unresolved tensions in the Dutch Republic’s religious establishment. As Uytenbogaert himself recognized in his (posthumous) 1646 Kerkelijcke Historie, the remonstrance was “taken very badly” by other ministers since it was sent to secular government without any communication their fellow ministers or church councils.419 The Reformed Church was an ardent supporter of the Dutch Revolt and was rewarded with a privileged position as the “public” (but not exclusive) church in the new republic, but magistrates often clashed with Calvinist-minded ministers over church policy. The magistrates often favoured a broadly defined confession uniting more of the population in a single church while the ministers preferred a more rigidly orthodox body of the godly (i.e. those who accepted Calvinist orthodoxy). The views of the Remonstrants on toleration and the authority of secular governments over the church aligned more closely with those of the

States which helped win their support, despite reservations by Oldenbarnevelt and others about their views on predestination and election.420

417 Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 219. 418 Some scholars such as Evenhuis have argued that it was at this point that the States definitively sided with the Remonstrants and sought to supplant Calvinist leadership of the Church. However, given the diversity of religious opinions amongst the States representatives, and even Oldenbarnevelt himself, Sierhuis convincingly argues that the States sought to establish a broadly tolerant church establishment more in line with the contemporary Church of England. Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 219; cf. Sierhuis, Arminian Controversy, 39-40. 419 Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 529. 420 For a brief overview of the role of the Reformed Church in the Dutch Revolt, see Andrew Pettegree, “Religion and the revolt,” in The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt, Graham Darby, ed. (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), 67-83. On the seventeenth-century conflict between magistrates and ministers, J.L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), esp. 183-204. For an analysis of this relationship on a local level, Benjamin Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht 1578-1620 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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This conflict between Calvinist ministers and the States came to a head during the

Arminian controversy over the convocation of a national synod. By the time of the controversy, a national synod had not been held for twenty years. After the national synod of 1590, the States refused to convene another one on the grounds that it was not appropriate in the current state of the war, but by 1607 they changed their tune. Now they insisted that any provincial or national synod have a revision of the confession and catechism on the agenda, and that the dispute between Arminius and Gomarus be discussed with equal representation on both sides. These conditions were unacceptable for the church leadership.421 As the controversy escalated, in response to the resolution tolerating the Remonstrants, Amsterdam minister Petrus Plancius met with Oldenbarnevelt on 10 December 1610 to again request a provincial synod. He argued that the five articles of the Remonstrants could not be tolerated because they clearly contradicted scripture, as he and his colleagues would plainly prove if the States would allow a synod. After considering Plancius’ request, Oldenbarnevelt instructed the States to reply on 23 December that they would not hold a synod, but rather a “friendly conference” in The Hague on 10 March 1611 under their supervision. Each side would send six delegates to debate the five articles of the

Remonstrance.422 Oldenbarnevelt’s solution to the religious turmoil was a state-run disputation which could allow equal opportunity for both sides to raise their arguments and ultimately come to a resolution without recourse to a synod, which was likely to resist the direction of the secular government.

421 Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, trans. R.B. Powell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 453; Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 215-216. Article 13 of the Union of Utrecht, the de facto constitution of the Dutch Republic, permitted the States of Holland and Zeeland to “ act according to their own pleasure” in matters of religion, offering them much latitude in governing the public Reformed Church. Article XIII, The Union of Utrecht, trans. Herbert H. Rowen, The Constitution Society, https://www.constitution.org/cons/dutch/Union_Utrecht_1579.html 422 Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 461; Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 219; J. Keunig, Petrus Plancius: Theoloog en Geograaf, 1552-1622 (Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen & Zoon N.V. 1946), 40-41.

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Plancius, as spokesperson for the synod committee agreed to these terms. While the conditions were essentially those demanded by the States in a synod, it allowed orthodox

Calvinist ministers an opportunity to refute the Remonstrants in a formal and open debate without granting the States’ authority over doctrinal decisions in a synod. They did agree to parity between the Arminian and Calvinist representatives, but they made it clear that they did not accept equality between the two positions. Whereas Uytenbogaert, Oldenbarnevelt’s appointed leader of the Arminian delegation, personally chose his fellow delegates, Plancius,

Oldenbarnevelt’s choice for leader of the Calvinists, deferred his selection to the various classes of North and South Holland. The result was that the six Calvinists came as representatives from six different classes, whereas the Arminians came as individuals, two from classis Rotterdam, two from classis Leiden, and none from North Holland.423 The Calvinist representatives underlined their self-perception as representatives of the Reformed Church hierarchy when they requested that they be considered “not individuals, but as representatives of the Church” on the first day of debate. The States officials presiding over the conference, not surprisingly, refused this request and specified that “no one from either party shall be heard as a representative from anyone, but only as particular persons.”424

When the conference proceedings got underway, the Calvinists promptly used it as a platform to present their so called Contra-Remonstrance. The Contra-Remonstrance criticized the Remonstants’ refusal to allow their views to be examined by a clerical assembly, and then

423 Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 461-462; Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, 219. The representatives for the Calvinist side were Ruardus Acronius (minister of Schiedam), Petrus Plancius (Amsterdam), Johannes Becius (Dordrecht), Libertus Fraxinus, (Briel), Johannes Bogardus (Haarlem), and Festus Hommius (Leiden); for the Arminians, Johannes Uytenbogaert (The Hague), Adrianus Borius (Leiden), Johannes Arnoldus Corvinus (Leiden), Eduardus Poppius (Gouda), Nicholaus Grevinchovius (Rotterdam), and Simon Episcopius (Bleiswijk, near Rotterdam) 424 Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 534.

194 offered seven articles of their own which stated Calvinist orthodoxy.425 The presentation of this

Contra-Remonstrance appears to have taken the Remonstrants by surprise as they requested a written copy of it before they responded. The rest of the conference focused on the five articles of Remonstrance. Unlike, say, the Fontainebleau Conference, which was designed to avoid any real discussion of doctrinal difference, The Hague Conference was a serious theological debate that lasted (with intermissions) for more than two months. The basic procedure was that the

Contra-Remonstrants would write a response to each of the five Remonstrant articles. This response would be read before the gathering, at which point the Remonstrants could respond verbally, and then present their own written argument in the next session, at which point their opponents had an opportunity to respond.426 However, the States terminated the debate just before Pentecost, on 20 May by basically reasserting the status quo. Oldenbarnevelt, absent for much of the conference due to illness, pronounced the final declaration of the conference. He called on the ministers on both sides to preach according to the current catechism and confession until a national synod examined the question of revision. In the meantime, ministers should work together towards “building up the Christian Reformed Church in love, peace, and unity.”427

425 Schriftelicke conferentie, gehovden in s'Gravenhaghe inden iare 1611, tusschen sommighe Kercken-dienaren: Aengaende de Godlicke Praedestinatie metten aencleven van den. Ter Ordonnantie vande Ed. Mog. Heeren Staten va Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt (S’Gravenhage: Hilldebrandt Jacobsz., 1612), 13-29. The Contra-Remonstrance begins by responding to the Remonstrant claim that they have been “slandered” by being accused of trying to change the religion of the Republic. The Contra-Remonstrants reply by criticizing the way in which the Remonstrants sent their five articles to the secular government, rather than allow a clerical assembly to judge them. Moreover, the Remonstrants admit that they wish to revise the catechism and confession of the church. The Contra- Remonstrants grant that these are “writings of men made in our time,” and thus do not have the same authority that holy scripture does, but they defend them as statements based on scripture. They accuse the Remonstrants of misrepresenting the church’s position which they proceed to clarify in seven points. The seven points essentially restate the Calvinist position that the sin of Adam has rendered humanity completely unable to turn itself to God, and that God through his grace alone has elected from the condemned some who, through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, are enabled to believe in Christ and attain salvation. 426 Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 535-536. 427 Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 465; Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 537-538.

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The conference thus ended with both parties within the church having more clearly delineated their theological positions, and the States having confirmed their commitment to toleration within the Church with no timeline for a national synod. As a result, far from assuaging tensions, the conference marked a further heightening in the controversy. This began with the publication of the conference proceedings. The States originally published just enough of them to be sent to members of the States and the vroedschappen (city councils), but it was not long before copies spread widely – “examples were publicly sold all over and came into the hands of every man,” in the words of Uytenbogaert.428 What’s more, the Remonstrants discovered that the Counter Remonstrance had been inserted into the publication, even though it was not debated during the conference. As a result, Uytenbogaert and his colleagues published

Cort berecht which accused the Contra-Remonstrants of maliciously inserting their remonstrance into the papers to be printed, and Naerder-Bericht Ende Openinge Vande Proceduren By Den

Kercken-Dienaren Remonstranten ghehouden inde teghenwoordighe Verschillen to present their arguments against the Counter Remonstrance, thereby setting off a pamphlet war.429

The theological conflict over predestination would not have driven the Dutch Republic into turmoil if it had not been for tensions caused by other contemporary events. It is no coincidence that the Arminian controversy erupted just as the truce with Spain was signed on 9

April 1609. The truce was the project of Oldenbarnevelt and the States of Holland and was opposed by the Stadtholder Prince Maurits and many ministers in the Reformed Church who saw

428 Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 466; Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 539. 429 Johannes Uytenbogaert, Cort berecht. Nopende seeckere copije van een remonstrantie, die (soo men voor- gheeft) in den druck van de conferentie in den Haghe ghehouden, naghelaten oft vergheten is (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaenssz., 1612); Naerder-Bericht Ende Openinge Vande Proceduren By Den Kercken-Dienaren Remonstranten ghehouden inde teghenwoordighe Verschillen : Dienende tot nodighe Verantwoordinge op de Beschuldigingen vervat inde Remonstrantie tegens hun over ghegeven, Ghedruckt int 13. ende eenige volgende bladeren vande schriftelicke Conferentie, ... ; Aende ed. Mog. Heeren Staten van Hollandt ende West-vrieslandt (s'Graven-Hage: Hillebrandt Jacobsz., 1612).

196 the war against Spain as a divinely sanctioned struggle against Catholicism. Many Dutch cities and merchants would suffer economically from the lifting of the blockade of Antwerp. It is no wonder then that immediately after the truce rumours began spreading that a papist conspiracy to return the Republic to Spain was afoot. Oldenbarnevelt was at the centre of such rumours, with one rumour claiming that a sleigh full of Spanish gold was left outside his door after the truce was signed.430 As a result, when the States, at the recommendation of Uytenbogaert, appointed the heterodox Erfurt theologian Conrad Vorstius to replace Arminius at Leiden in 1610, fears that the country’s political leadership were crypto-Catholics or treasonous resurfaced. Vorstius shared many of the views of the Arminians on predestination and freedom of conscience, but his appointment became controversial when his unorthodox views on the Trinity expressed in his

Tractatus theologicus de Deo (originally 1602, republished 1610) caused him to be accused of

Socinianism (basically, denial of the Trinity). The States dug their heels in against Calvinist criticism, arguing that they had the right to appoint whoever they wanted and that Vorstitus should be given an opportunity to defend himself. They ultimately cancelled his appointment in

1612, but not before alienating King James, who intervened urging his dismissal, and confirming the fears of many in the Republic that the States were opponents of true religion.431 It is in this context that the debate over predestination must be understood.

Nevertheless, despite the evident failure of the Hague Conference, the idea that a properly conducted disputation could resolve religious disunity was not discredited, as a second disputation was held at Delft in February 1613. The conference was suggested by Willem

Lodewijk, Stadtholder of Friesland who was visiting The Hague in February. He asked to meet

430 Sierhuis, Arminian Controversy, 40-41. 431 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 428-430; Sierhuis, Arminian Controversy, 66-67.

197 with Uytenbogaert and Festus Hommius, the Contra-Remonstrant minister of Leiden, and suggested a new “meeting” with three ministers on each side to see if they could “find a way to mutual tolerance” on the subject of the five articles, and thereby take a step towards “peace in the church.” With Oldenbarnevelt’s encouragement both sides agreed, but, in contrast to the Hague conference, the Contra-Remonstrants did so only on the condition that they speak as “particular persons.” They also insisted that the debate be held in Delft. The Remonstrants agreed and

Uytenbogaert, Adrian van den Borre (minister of Leiden), and Nicholaus Grevinchoven

(Rotterdam) began their debate 26 February with Hommius, Joannes Bogardus (Haarlem), and

Joannes Becius (Dordrecht).432

The proceedings of the Delft conference and its aftermath reflect how the public controversy had developed over the two years since the Hague Conference; the shadow of the

Vorstius affair was ever present. The intention was that the conference would continue where the

Hague Conference left off and offer further debate of the five articles, but the Contra-

Remonstrants refused this as soon as the conference got underway on the grounds that this was a subject that would be covered in the promised national synod, and that as particular persons (the term they had insisted upon), they could not have any meaningful debate on that subject. Instead, they argued that no steps towards peace could be made until the Remonstrants “will first and before all the church in this Land” confirm that there is “no one among them” that believes anything contrary to the church’s confession and catechism. They proceeded to outline five basic doctrinal points based on a 2 December 1611 States Resolution which provided guidelines for what may be taught in schools and churches, among them that Christ has fully forgiven our sins.

432 Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 601-602.

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They insisted that the Remonstrants confirm that they assented to these points.433 In response, the

Remonstrants complained that the debate should be about the intended subject of the conference, and not “differences which are not in dispute and are based on mere suspicions.”434 They perceived that the Contra-Remonstrants were acting on the rumours that had gained traction after the Vorstius affair that Remonstrants denied basic Christian doctrines and were Socinians.

The Contra-Remonstrants deliberately used the conference to underscore the heretical inclinations of their opponents and appeal to a public which largely sided with the church establishment.435 This is made abundantly clear in the aftermath of the conference. The conference ended with the Remonstrant side agreeing to send the Contra-Remonstrant doctrinal declaration to their fellows, to see if they would all assent to it. Yet, Uytenbogaert recounts that

“ere the Remonstrants set foot out of Delft,” they found copies of the conference proceedings “in the hands of the common folk.” Not long after, the Delft printer Jan Andriesz. printed the proceedings with “great prejudice” against Remonstrants.436 The content of Schriftelicke conferentie, ghehovden tot Delff confirms that Uytenbogaert’s complaint is not without merit.

The publication is a mere 37 pages, with the Remonstrant arguments receiving only two pages of coverage. The entire conference proceedings are covered in twenty pages, suggesting that, in contrast to the 440-page account of The Hague Conference, it was designed for mass consumption. The remaining pages are a note from the printer in which he compares

433 Schriftelicke conferentie, ghehovden tot Delff, den 26en en 27en februarij 1613. tusschen ses Kercken-dienaren (Delft: Jan Andriesz., 1613), 2-4. Uytenbogaert provides an overview of the conference in Kerckelicke Historie, 601-604. His account draws upon the more extensive Schriftelicke conferentie. 434 Schriftelicke conferentie, ghehovden tot Delff, 15. 435 While the Remonstrants counted many supporters of all backgrounds, the Contra-Remonstrants had a much wider basis of support, particularly among artisans and throughout all seven provinces, including Holland where the Remonstrants had their strongest support. Israel, The Dutch Republic, 424-425, 434-436. 436 The conference’s conclusion is recounted by Uytebogaert, but not the Schriftelicke conferentie. Uytenbogaert, Kerckelicke Historie, 604.

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Remonstrant doctrinal statements with sentences from the work of Vorstius. His purpose in doing this is so that the reader can “see that it was not without good reason and cause” that the

Contra-Remonstrants demanded that their opponents assent to the doctrinal statement that they presented to them.437 Furthermore, if the reader still had any doubts that the Remonstrants were heretics by the end of the pamphlet, the publisher attached a 1 March 1613 letter from

Heidelberg theologian David Pareus to “N.N.” in which he declared that “the Socinians in

Poland have recently named your Arminius as one of their own.”438 By 1613, it is clear that the theological controversy over predestination was no longer an arcane conflict confined to universities and the halls of government. It was a contest of public opinion fought in market squares and in the press.439

Oldenbarnevelt and his allies sought to use disputation to ease tensions within the

Reformed church. It was a severe miscalculation. That Oldenbarnevelt failed to achieve his aims where James and Henry were apparently more successful in using disputation to showcase their religious policies underscores the promise and peril of state-sponsored religious disputations.

The failure of The Hague and subsequent Delft conferences can be explained by the unique context in the Dutch Republic.

First of all, political power was much more decentralized in the Dutch Republic than in

England and France. While the Remonstrants could count on the support of the most powerful politician in the republic, Oldenbarnevelt, the Landsadvocaat of the States of Holland, the

437 Schriftelicke conferentie, ghehovden tot Delff, 34 [misprint of 20]. 438 Schriftelicke conferentie, ghehovden tot Delff, 37. 439 Around the time of the Delft conference, one layman, Adam Hartewech from Rotterdam had travelled to Utrecht to dispute with the Remonstrant minister there, Petrus Cupus. Cupus remarked that he was impressed with Hartewech’s knowledge of Scripture. Such debates were just the tip of the iceberg. As Sierhuis argues, the Arminian controversy affected Dutch literature and theatre for decades. Sierhuis, Arminian Controversy, 58.

200 representatives which made up those States were drawn from the cities in that province, which were in many cases Contra-Remonstrant in their sympathies. Moreover, in affixing their flag to the mast of Oldenbarnevelt, the Remonstrants made an enemy of his rival, the Stadtholder

Maurits of Nassau who would ultimately bring about their downfall.440 It was therefore difficult for the Remonstrants to use their political influence to push through their religious agenda.

Secondly, the Remonstrants remained a minority within the Dutch Reformed Church and the republic at large. Consequently, even if they were able to perform well in a disputation, as they did at The Hague in 1611, they had difficulty in spreading their version of events. Thus, unlike the Fontainebleau and Hampton Court conferences, the government’s religious position was at a disadvantage in the battle for public opinion that followed. Moreover, whereas the printing centres of England and France were in those kingdoms’ respective capitals, making it relatively easy for the English and French crowns to censor opposition material, Dutch printing was spread throughout the country, allowing Contra-Remonstrants to find a printer favourable to their views, as they did in the aftermath of the Delft conference.

A final fatal flaw may have simply been that The Hague and Delft conferences followed the disputation model too purely. James and Henry employed disputation in carefully staged conferences in which there was never any doubt that they would achieve their desired outcome.

The Hague and Delft disputations, on the other hand, were open-ended affairs with equal parties, seemingly based on the ideal disputation form. The fact that they failed shows how far disputation had come from its academic roots. Disputation had a wide lay audience and one that

440 Maurits was slow to get involved in the controversy, but as Oldenbarnevelt grew bolder in trying to enforce toleration of the Remonstrants, he eventually staged a coup, overthrowing the Landsadvocaat and executing him for treason. He granted the long-awaited national synod, held in Dordrecht in 1618, where Arminianism was condemned and its ministers sent into exile. Israel, The Dutch Republic, 430-449.

201 was confident in engaging themselves in religious controversy which had formerly been the sole purview of theologians.

5.4 Conclusion Taken together, the examples of state-sponsored disputations presented in this chapter show how governments across Western Europe’s political boundaries sought to use disputation to advance their religious policies. They did so partly as a consequence of the cultural value placed on dialogue and confidence, or at least hope, that disputation could bring about religious reconciliation. The Dutch case discussed above, and the Hampton Court Conference to a lesser extent, show that, especially in disputations between Protestants, there remained some hope that an understanding could be reached through debate. However, state actors, like the clergy involved in private conferences, also recognized the potential of disputation to influence public opinion. A well choreographed disputation offered an opportunity to display a vindication in debate of the government’s confessional alignment and policies, while also appearing to give fair consideration opposing views. Governments could then exploit the same network of rumours, manuscript circulation, and print to spread this message far and wide. If the state maintained tight control of presses, it also allowed them to further the public debate on the topic. There were certainly risks involved in allowing the public some latitude to engage in debate with the state’s religious policies, but the reward of responding to critics and broadening public support seems to have been deemed worth the risk.

202

6 Conclusion

This dissertation began by recounting Edmund Campion’s inauguration of the Society of

Jesus’ English mission with a challenge to disputation. The introduction raised three questions about this challenge: Why would Campion immediately provoke the already hostile English government with a challenge to disputation; why would his allies draw further attention to their clandestine activities by circulating and publishing the challenge; and finally, why would the

English government, upon imprisoning Campion, grant his request for a disputation? Having now described the nature and location of disputation, its role in inciting public debate, its function as a clerical contest of honour, and the state’s employment of the form to advance its religious policies, let us reconsider these questions as a way of drawing out the findings of this dissertation.

6.1 The Utility of Disputation

To answer the first question, it appears that Campion shared the same confidence as many clergy that disputation was an effective means to reveal truth and expose falsehood.

Disputation was after all the centrepiece of clerical education throughout early modern Europe.

However, what this study has made clear is that disputations practiced outside the universities for a wider public were quite a different thing than their academic counterparts. Academic disputation was designed to discover truth by testing arguments to determine which one was strongest. An impartial magister could end the debate by declaring one side the victor, or by

203 ruling that because both sides made strong cases, the truth rested in the middle.441 This contrasted with the apparent assumption behind the public disputations of the seventeenth century that the debate would display a truth that everyone supposedly already knew, and expose adversaries as immoral, or, at the very least, ignorant. Campion’s challenge makes this case succinctly, introducing himself as a preacher of the Gospel and minister of the sacraments who would “trye all armour spiritual agaynst foule vice and proude ignorance, wherwith many of my deare Countreimen are abused.” Disputation would be the most efficient way to accomplish these goals, since his “impugnable” evidence would quickly defeat all the Protestants who “fray men down in their Pulpits and overrule them in their kingdom of Gramarians and unlearned eares.”442

That one’s confessional opponents had to be ignorant and immoral was a logical assumption for those who continued to have faith in the dialectic of disputation. If the method of inquiry was being practiced correctly, then it was simply the obstinance of the ignorant that prevented them from accepting the evidence for the truth.443

Consequently, seventeenth-century disputations became increasingly focused on the reputations of the disputants. As argued in Chapter 3, they essentially became contests of honour between clerics in which the goal was to expose the opponent as immoral and a poor scholar.

Issues of honour were also an important part of printed polemics, but disputation had the advantage of allowing disputants to immediately respond, putting greater strain on the

441 Alexander Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 141; Jody Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama 27:3 (Fall 1993). 345. 442 Campion’s opponents viewed him and his fellow Jesuits in the same way. Meredith Hammer’s reply to Campion’s accusation that Protestant clergy only maintain their position by frightening the ignorant is simply to turn the accusation against the Pope and his clergy. Edmund Campion; Meredith Hammer, The great bragge and challenge of M. Champion a Jesuite (London, 1581), 13, 20, 22. 443 Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 203-204.

204 controversialists. A disputant who was unable to cope with this strain either by spending too much time searching for a reference to support their position, or by showing this strain through perspiration, interrupted speech, or even illness was taken as evidence that their religious views were false. Thus, Jacques Davy Du Perron declared that Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’s illness following their disputation was “probably a punishment for his sin.”444 In such a contest, it was not always the best argument that won out, but the disputant who was quick on their feet and could maintain composure. The theological arguments in these debates were often well-worn, but could induce an audience response if presented with enough wit and flair. We can recall, for example, how Daniel Featley effectively ended his disputation with John Fisher by announcing to the audience that the Jesuit had conceded Jesus Christ and the Apostles to be Protestants.

Disputations thus served to dramatize religious controversy in a way that printed polemics and sermons could not.

6.2 Communicating Disputation

Disputations, then, acted as a theatre of truth, dramatizing the triumph of virtuous truth over immoral falsehood. In this context, the perception of the audience was critical. This dissertation distinguishes itself from many other studies of disputation by highlighting the centrality of the audience to these events. I have situated disputation in the context of early modern systems of communication. When approached this way, we are better able to understand why the Jesuit lay brother Thomas Pounde had Campion’s challenge copied and circulated throughout England. One of the chief reasons for the renewed appeal for disputation in the early seventeenth century was that it could take full advantage of the multifarious means of

444 [Jacques Davy Du Perron], Discours veritable de l’ordre et forme qui a esté gardée en l’assemblée faicte à Fontaine-bleau (Anvers: Hierosme Verdussen, 1600), 65.

205 communication in early modern Europe.445 Peter Lake has called the popular theatre, the pamphlet press, and the pulpit the “three incipient mass media” of Post-Reformation England.446

Likewise, Henk van Nierop has pointed to the centrality of oral rumours in the circulation of information during the Dutch Revolt.447 In this context, disputation was effectively used as a multimedia event to communicate religious controversy to diverse audiences. The disputation itself was a kind of theatre, with disputants dramatically acting out the religious divisions in society following the choreography of the disputation form: its argumentative form, its tropes, and prescribed roles for disputants, scribes, and audience members. The audience not only actively took part in the disputation by posing questions, jeering, and even debating themselves, they also carried on the controversy following the event, setting the stage for the next act of the performance. Virtually all of the accounts here remark on the speed in which rumours spread after a disputation. The accounts often portray the disputations they describe as being the talk of the town, whether that town be London, Paris, or Antwerp. We might read this as a rhetorical inflation of the importance of the event, but clergy also clearly stoked the fires of controversy by using their privileged position in the pulpit to recount their exploits. Jesuits like Joannes de

Gouda and François Véron, who were less bound by preaching conventions of regular clergy, seem to have been particularly adept at spreading news about their disputations this way. Their

English colleague John Fisher made up for the lack of access to a public pulpit with a large

445 I use “renewed” here following the argument made in chapter 1. After humanist criticism of disputation as a core part of the scholastic educational system in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the practice seems to have become more applicable in the context of a religiously-divided Europe. 446 Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lew Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post- Reformation England (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 200), xxvii. 447 Henk van Nierop, “‘And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars’. Rumour and the Revolt of the Netherlands,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, eds. Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicer, (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 70-71.

206 epistolary network, which, according to his opponents at least, allowed him to disperse

“Hundreds of Papers, to his owne prayse, and our disgrace.”448

Somewhere along the way, the participating clergy often decided that there was an audience for a printed account. These accounts often seem to be intended as a means to set the record straight. Johannes Uytenbogeart for instance justified his 1612 Cort Berecht in response to a rumour that his Contra-Remonstrant opponents had inserted additional material into the printed account of the Hague conference by saying that he was compelled to reply in print for

“the love of the truth” and cited the Dutch proverb, “Al is de Leugen snel, de waerheyt achter haeltse wel (Though the Lie is fast, the truth soon catches up).”449 Ironically, when reading the partisan printed accounts of disputation 400 years on, the truth of the events remains elusive.

Regardless, disputation was an easily malleable and translatable event that could reach a multitude of audiences: expensive printed works for the literate minority who could follow intricate theological arguments (often embellished in the retelling), manuscripts and correspondence that travelled along news networks, and sermons and oral rumours which could recount the drama of the disputation for even popular audiences. When Pounde copied and circulated Campion’s challenge, he was doing so to engage a wider public in the debate over true religion and the state’s religious policy.

448 Francis White, A replie to Iesuit Fishers answere to certain questions propou[n]ded by his most gratious Matie: King Iames By Francis White D: of Div· deane of Carlile, chaplaine to his Matie (London: Adam Islip, 1624), xv. 449 Johannes Uytenbogaert, “Tot den Leser” and “Den vrede Christi,” in Cort berecht. Nopende seeckere copije van een remonstrantie, die (soo men voor-gheeft) in den druck van de conferentie in den Haghe ghehouden, naghelaten oft vergheten is (Rotterdam: Matthij Bastiaensz., 1612).

207

6.3 Disputation and the Public Sphere

A study of seventeenth-century disputations therefore contributes to our understanding of the distinctive early modern public sphere. When the Elizabethan regime responded to

Campion’s challenge in 1581 by organizing and printing disputations with him in the Tower of

London, they did so in recognition of the existence of public opinion. They felt the need to not simply repress dissent, but respond and influence public opinion in favour of the regime.450 This impulse appears to have been even stronger by the seventeenth century. While the clergy may have been convinced that their opponents followed their heresy or idolatry because they were immoral, there was much more diversity of opinion “between the two pulpits” to borrow the phrase of Thierry Wanegffelen.451 Disputations were a tool to convince these people to commit more forcefully to one side or the other, and to view their confessional rivals with suspicion.452

To do this, disputations provided a space where both sides were given an opportunity to make their case, more or less equally and allow the audience to weigh the opposing arguments. While the disputations themselves normally restricted their audience in some way (although they apparently could still be quite large), because religion and politics were so closely intertwined in the seventeenth century, those who did not attend the debate itself were interested in hearing and discussing news about it. The conversion of a prominent aristocrat, for example, could have significant consequences for religious practice both locally or nationally. As a result, these

450 Peter Lake, Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” The Journal of Modern History 72:3 (September 2000), 587-627. 451 Thiery Wanegffelen, Ni Rome ni Genève : Des fidèles entre deux chaires en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997). 452 Keith Luria makes this argument about not just disputations, but as part of a wider strategy on the part of Catholic missionaries to disrupt “the easy social interchange between Catholics and Protestants.” Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 47-83.

208 disputations often resulted in significant public controversies; in the case of Remonstrant-Contra-

Remonstrant disputations, a public controversy that brought the Dutch Republic to the brink of civil war and would ultimately contribute to the downfall of the powerful Holland Land’s

Advocate Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.

It is important to note that while these disputations reveal a functioning public sphere in early seventeenth-century Europe, it was one that was quite different than the Habermasian ideal.

Our findings from these disputations point to a public sphere more in-line with observations made by Raffe, Lake, van Dixhoorn and others. First, we note that print played a relatively minor role. While printed sources were the basis for this dissertation, it becomes clear from these sources that they were but part of a much wider controversy, which included the disputation itself and oral and manuscript discussion of the event. Second, public debate was socially stratified. Different parties and social classes approached the disputation event through different media. For instance, a wealthy literate person might be able to follow the arguments made at the

Fontainebleau conference by purchasing the books published by Du Perron or Mornay. Much of the rest of the population may have only been informed about it through the reading of the king’s letter from the pulpit, or by hearing verse which mocked Mornay’s defeat. Finally, this arena of public debate was not entirely free and the rules could change. While the Edict of Nantes allowed for a relatively stable legal context for religious debate, Catholic clergy had the advantage of the support of the state and greater access to print to influence public opinion. In

England and the Netherlands, religious dissenters had no such legal protection and had to tread carefully. It should be remembered that John Fisher was technically in prison during all the disputations in which he took part. Similarly, the National Synod of Dort condemned the

Remonstrants and deprived them of their offices. Many were exiled until the Stadtholderate of

Frederik Hendrik brought greater tolerance. Nevertheless, the fact that these disputations were so

209 common shows that public debate about politics and religion was both desired and possible before the eighteenth century.

6.4 National Comparisons

Thus far, this conclusion, and much of the dissertation, has focused on the transnational patterns of disputation. With so much of the historiography of disputations compartmentalized along national lines, it was important to highlight the mobility of people, ideas, and practices across the region. Nevertheless, it is also important to recognize the differences that arose from different political contexts. While regional variations have been noted at many points throughout this study, it is worth discussing them together here.

Émile Kappler suggested in 1980 that “verbal controversy” between Catholics and

Protestanst was a phenomenon unique to France, since it was only there that the two confessions cohabited.453 Scholarship since then has demonstrated that religious coexistence was, in fact, quite frequent throughout Europe, and this dissertation further demonstrates that disputations also flourished in England and the Low Countries.454 That being said, it must be recognized, as in the previous paragraph, that France under the Edict of Nantes was a “true paradise for controversialists.”455 While the same drive to hold disputations existed outside of France, nowhere else did the legal framework exist for the sustained public debate on religion that

453 Émile Kappler, Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2011), 20. 454 Thomas Max Safely has gone so far as to argue that “Multiconfessionalism,” that is “the legally recognized and politically supported coexistence of two or more confessions in a single polity” was the “rule rather than the exception” in most regions affected by the Reformation. Thomas Max Safley, “Multiconfessionalism: A brief introduction,” in A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World (Boston: Brill, 2011), 7. 455 Élisabeth Labrousse, « La Place de la Réforme dans la controverse entre catholiques et protestants au XVIIe s. », Historiographie de la Réforme, P. Joutard, ed. (Paris, Neuchâtel, Montréal, Delachaux, Niestlé, 1977), 108.

210 disputations created. French historians have often remarked that these conferences were a continuation of the Wars of Religion.456 By situating these conferences in the context of public opinion, we can add to that conclusion and interpret these conferences as attempts by clergy and laypeople alike to tease out the new post-Nantes religious context. This explains the apparent particular interest in high-profile disputations with political undertones like that of Nancy in

1599 and Fontainebleau in 1600. This approach can also shed light on Kappler’s finding that of the 166 conferences he studied, 70% of them occurred between 1593 and 1630, after which point the main instigators of disputation, the Jesuits and Capuchins, refocused their mission activities more on education and rural preaching.457 That combined with deprivation of Huguenot political power in the 1620s and followed up with increasing repression during the reign of Louis XIV may have resolved some of questions about the religious makeup of the kingdom that were more contentious at the beginning of the century.458

The context for disputation in the contemporary Low Countries was quite different. The re-Catholicization of the Habsburg Netherlands appears to have opted more for coercion rather than winning over public opinion through tools like disputation — a policy facilitated by the mass emigration of Protestants to the Dutch Republic. Meanwhile, the Union of Utrecht of the

Dutch Republic guaranteed freedom of conscience, but not religious practice. As a result,

Catholic-Protestant disputations appear to have been rarer there than in France. If they did occur,

456 Bernard Dompnier, Le Venin de l’hérésie : Image du protestantisme et combat catholique au XViie siècle (Paris: Le Centurion, 1985), 169; Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 13-14. 457 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 111-114. 458 This interpretation aligns with that of Bernard Dompnier’s assessment of the Catholic battle against the Huguenots of the seventeenth century. Dompnier, Le Venin de l’hérésie, 257-260.

211 they seem likely to have remained private, rather than create a public debate after the fact.459 A notable exception was the controversy involving Antwerp Jesuit Joannes de Gouda and the

Lansbergens of Rotterdam, which also created an off-shoot disputation in Breda between Henrik

Boxhorn and Pieter van Dornik.460 This particular series of controversies was facilitated by the peace of the Twelve Years Truce and the close connections along the newly created border between the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands.

The large Catholic minority in the Dutch Republic seems to have been content to keep a low profile while their Protestant compatriots focused on controversy with one another.

Disputations seem to have been fairly frequent between the Reformed and Mennonites, who with their similarly stringent moral requirements for membership were often in more direct competition for adherents than Catholics. If the 1646 reprint of Godfridus Udemans account of his 1609 disputation with Frans de Knuyt is any indication, the Reformed-Mennonite controversy was also one that continued after the period of this dissertation.461 However, these disputations appear to have existed moreso on a local rather than national register. Like

Catholics, Mennonites did not wish to draw attention to themselves and risk their legally precarious position by engaging in public debate in print. At least some of their Reformed

459 Christine Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics during Holland's Golden Age: Heretics and Idolaters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 85-88. 460 Hendrik Boxhorn, Vaerachtich verhael vande disputatie ende het ghespreck gehouden den vierden Januarij anno M. D. C. XIII. tusschen ... Henricvm Boxhornivm licentiaet ende bediender des h. euangelij tot Breda, ende ... Peeter van Dornick licentiaet ende paeps-pastoor in de Haghe by Breda (Delft: Adraen Cornelisz, 1613). 461 Samme Zijlstra has noted frequent Reformed-Mennonite disputations throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Samme Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675 (Hilversum & Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren & Fryske Akademy, 2000), 351-353, 367- 371.

212 opponents appear to have been content to keep things local, as Abdias Windmarius appears to have done, recording his disputations in a diary, but not publishing them.462

The controversy that was most analogous to the French disputations was the conflict between the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants. In this case, both sides were able to discuss their debate publicly and had access to print. Moreover, the political ramifications of adopting one or the other position ensured that their disputations would attract a wide audience and generate a vibrant public debate. However, unlike France, the public debate was soon terminated when the Reformed Church with the support of the Stadtholder decisively defeated the

Remonstrant party. As a result, the two anti-Catholic controversialists Franciscus and Samuel

Lansbergen were exiled from their congregation in Rotterdam in 1619. Ironically, because of their insufficiently orthodox views they relocated to Antwerp where they had championed the

Reformed cause ten years earlier. When comparing the archtypical absolutist state of France and the Dutch Republic, famed both in the seventeenth century and thereafter as exceptionally tolerant, we note a further irony that the former had a more tolerant atmosphere for public religious debate than the latter.

The context for English disputations appears to have fit somewhere in the middle between the legal stability that allowed for a longstanding controversy between Catholics and

Protestants in France and the more repressive context of the Dutch Republic. Legally, Catholics were in an even worse position in England than in the Dutch Republic, but King James became increasingly tolerant towards Catholicism in the latter years of his reign. This combined with a

462 F.S. Knipscheer, “Abdias Windmarius’ Twistgesprekken met de Mennisten in 1627/8 gehouden te Uitgeest; Benevens eenige bijzonderheden uit de geschiedenis der Doopsgezinde gemeente aldaar.” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 47 (1907), 36-76.

213 well established communications network with noble patrons, a Catholic press based in the

Southern Netherlands, and Catholic and Protestant clergy both eager to engage in disputation, allowed for periods of sustained public debate ignited by disputations. While this debate was more short-lived than in France, English Catholic-Protestant disputations closely resembled their

French counterparts in form and the public controversy which followed them.

Looking outside the period of our study, it appears that the Catholic-Protestant controversy seems to have died down after the reign of James I ended in 1625. However, this was not because the appetite for disputation was allayed. Instead, England seems to have followed the Dutch Republic in focusing more on intra-Protestant debates. This change is signaled in the preface of William Laud’s 1639 reprint of his disputation with John Fisher in

1622 which added warnings against the threat of puritan separatists. 1639 was also the year that this threat began to be realized as the Scottish Covenanters began their invasion of England in response to the religious policies of Charles I, setting off the chain of events which would ultimately result in the king’s deposing and execution in 1649. The religious turmoil of the War of the Three Kingdoms and the religious tolerance of the subsequent Commonwealth created another paradise for religious controversialists. Between the 1640s and 1660s, numerous disputations were held between the various Protestant sects vying for adherents. Despite some similarities to France between 1600 and 1630, these debates took place in a very different context, and were therefore excluded from this study. The different context is succinctly encapsulated in the final years of the career of Daniel Featley, whose final polemical work, The

Dippers Dipt (1645) was his most successful. Rather than the anti-Catholic polemic that had been the bread and butter of his career, this work was based on a 1642 disputation held in

Southwark with the Baptist minister William Kiffin. However, he wrote it from prison, after his

214 support of episcopacy caused him to be accused of being a royalist spy. He died 17 April 1645.

His final words were reportedly “The poor Church of God is torn in pieces.”463

This dissertation set out to understand why disputations were so common in early seventeenth-century northwestern Europe. Having now come to the conclusion of this study, we can say that the appeal of disputation was its unique effectiveness in communicating religious controversy for a culture of performance and the early modern public sphere. It acted out religious divisions in a way that was well suited to engage with the multiple socially stratified audiences of the early modern public sphere. While this study focused on a limited number of disputations in a specific period of time, it is worth concluding by reflecting on the broader influence and legacy of these disputations.

Alexander Novikoff’s study of medieval disputation argued that the form became a

“cultural practice,” citing its influence in iconography, liturgical drama, musical counterpoint, and other literary genres.464 Our study is not nearly as broad as Novikoff’s, but we can still note the influence of the culture of disputation that he traced. Disputation informed how Christians approached each other in the multiconfessional environment following the Reformation, but it also influenced how they engaged with other faiths. Not long after the Sephardic community began to become established in Amsterdam, the English Brownist minister Hugh Broughton held

463 Arnold Hunt, “Featley [Fairclough], Daniel (1582–1645), Church of England clergyman and religious controversialist,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last modified January 2008, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/9242. 464 Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, 4-7.

215 a private disputation with Dr. David Farar, published by Broughton in 1608.465 It appears that this was the first of many similar disputations between Christians and Jews in the Dutch

Republic.466

The practice of disputation also informed European missionaries outside of Europe.

Francis Xavier used language that is remarkably similar to that of Jean Gontery and François

Véron in a letter of 1543.In it, he describes his encounters with Brahmins during his mission to

India. He writes that the Brahmins are “liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people.” Like Gontery, his solution is to engage the Brahmins in debate, as he did with a senior Brahmin in a dialogue held in a pagoda in the presence of 200 of his peers.467 In roughly the same period of this study,

French Jesuits employed the same tactics of discrediting religious leaders before and audience in

North America as they did in France. Of the obstinate among the Huron-Wendat, Jean de

Brébeuf wrote in 1635, “I am often in I am often in conflict with them; and then I show them they are wrong, and make them contradict themselves, so that they frankly admit their ignorance, and the others ridicule them.”468 Dot Tuer has noted how their fellow Jesuits in South America enaged in verbal duels with Guaraní shamans, making use of the Guaraní practice of “shaman

465 Hugh Broughton, Ovr Lorde Famile and many other poinctes depending vpon it: opened against a Iew, Rabbi David Farar: who disputed many houres, with hope to overthrow the Gospl, opened in Ebrew explication of Christianitie (Amsterdam: 1608). 466 See R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, De Sefardim in Amsterdam tot 1795 : aspecten van een joodse minderheid in een Hollandse stad (Hilversum: Historische Vereniging Holland: Verloren 1989), 89-101. 467 Francis Xavier to the Society at Rome, in The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, Vol. 1, ed. Henry James Coleridge (London: Burns and Oates, 1872), 158–159. 468 Jean de Brébeuf to Paul Le Jeune, 27 May 1635, in The Jesuit relations and allied documents: travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, Vol. VIII, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co, 1896 ), 145. Dominique Deslandres has made a similar observation. Dominique Deslandres, “New France,” in A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, ed., Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 132.

216 battles” to determine who the greater master was over special chants, or “beautiful words.”469

Tuer argues that this shows that the Jesuits adapted to Guaraní cultural practices, but given the

Jesuits’ advocacy of disputation as a mission tool, we might instead conceive of these verbal duels as a cultural mixing which made use of a shared cultural practice, albeit one which was articulated in different ways.

Not only can we see these seventeenth-century disputations as the continuation of an influential medieval cultural form, we can also situate them as part of a wider culture of debate that was to come. Disputations, particularly in the form of the “private conferences” of England and France bear a strong resemblance to the later salons that have been central to scholarship on the Enlightenment and the eighteenth-century public sphere. Dena Goodman’s seminal study suggested that French salons were “institutions of sociability” that developed to counter the

“courtly institutions of the absolutist state” such as Academies and print shops.470 However, our study would suggest that salons can be seen as an evolution of the culture of aristocratic hospitality that gave rise to “private conferences,” in which (often female) aristocrats would host their peers to hear and engage in religious disputation in their homes. As Antoine Lilti has argued, eighteenth-century salons differed in that they were regularly held events and that access was determined by adherence to rules of civility. A final crucial difference from private

469 Dot Tuer, “Old Bones and Beautiful Words: The Spiritual Contestation between Shaman and Jesuit in the Guaraní Missions” in Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500-1800, eds. Allan Geer and Jodi Bilinkoff (New York: Routledge, 2003), 78-94. 470 Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 13-14, 24.

217 conferences was that salon sociability was defined by “the absence of an explicit objective other than sociability itself.”471

Religious disputations did not go away as these new arenas for dialogue and debate developed. Kappler notes that disputations continued in France right up to the Revocation of the

Edict of Nantes. Similarly, the Quaker William Penn (1644-1718), for instance, was famed for his skill as a disputant.472 However, it appears that their heyday in northwestern Europe was in the first half of the seventeenth century. They were a performance that effectively acted out religious controversy in the context of a communications culture that was still very much rooted in performative and oral forms of communication. As that cultural context changed, their appeal faded and new forms of debate replaced them. Nevertheless, the concerns that these debates saw style triumph over substance to appease audiences, were overly concerned with the reputations of the participants, and that partisan reports obscured the truth all seem as familiar in the twenty- first century as they did in the seventeenth.

471 Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19-22. 472 Kappler, Conférences théologiques, 830,869; Mary K. Geiter, Penn, William (1644–1718), Quaker leader and founder of Pennsylvania. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last updated January 2007, https://doi- org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1093/ref:odnb/21857.

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