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Ben Jonson, Catholic Poet / 103 Resolved Either by the Minister of the Parish Or Some Other in the Scruple He Maketh Therein” (HS 1: 221)

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Ben Jonson, Catholic Poet / 103 Resolved Either by the Minister of the Parish Or Some Other in the Scruple He Maketh Therein” (HS 1: 221) Ben Jonson, ROBERT S. Catholic Poet MIOLA Résumé : Cet article considère les éléments biographiques portant sur le Catholicisme déclaré de Jonson et propose que cette religion encadrait et infléchissait sa poésie. Maintenu à travers ses années de production littéraire les plus importantes, le Catholicisme de Jonson met son art sous une lumière révélatrice. Sa poésie reflète des sympathies et des croyances catholiques autant en panégyrique qu’en satire. Elle met l’accent de façon surprenante sur les bonnes actions et la sainteté de la vierge Marie. Elle représente le monde hostile dans lequel vivaient les Catholiques anglais, assujettis à la trahison et à la persécution. Le Catholicisme offrait à Jonson un cercle d’amis, des traditions d’érudition et de cérémonie, une esthétique de la beauté et de l’image et une gamme de croyances et pratiques dévotionnelles. “Imprisoned, and almost at the gallows” for the murder of Gabriel Spencer in a duel, Ben Jonson, astonishingly, converted to the forbidden religion, Roman Catholicism: “Then took he his religion by trust of a priest who visited him in prison. Thereafter he was twelve years a papist” (Conversa- tions, 203–5).1 The priest may have been Thomas Wright, a loyalist, anti- Spanish Jesuit imprisoned at this time,2 and Jonson may have explained his reasons for converting and reconverting back later in Motives (1622), a work that unfortunately has disappeared. But one thing is certain: the conversion to Catholicism was inexpedient, even reckless, from a worldly, political point of view. After all, one of Jonson’s interrogators in a 1597 bout with the law over TheIsleofDogshad been Richard Topcliffe, the savage priest-hunter who regularly tortured his victims. And the church/government of early modern England eyed Catholics suspiciously, compelled them to attend state services, spied upon them, interrogated, charged, and punished Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXV, 4 (2001) /101 102 / Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme them, and, on occasion, executed them for treason. Jonson’s Sejanus (1603, pub. 1605), it seems, landed him in exactly this kind of trouble with the authorities: one of Jonson’s enemies, Northampton, summoned him before the Privy Council for writing Sejanus and accused him “both of popery and treason” (Conversations, p. 273). Since Drummond’s notice is tantalizingly brief and since the earliest surviving copy of the play, the 1605 quarto, embodies substantial revision, the charge remains mysterious. The Revels editor, Philip J. Ayres, reasonably conjectures that the original treason trial in Sejanus mirrored the sensational trial of Ralegh just months before, thus angering Northampton, one of Ralegh’s chief persecutors. Jonson’s perceived sympathy for Ralegh could be construed as treasonous and popish because the brief against Ralegh included conspiracy to depose the king and “to alter religion, to bring in the Roman superstition.”3 Whether Jonson’s Silius reflects Ralegh or not, that character, when accused of treason, certainly echoes the protests of Catholics about “the execution of justice in England,” to use the infamous phrase of William Cecil, Lord Burlegh:4 Alas, I scent not your confederacies? Your plots, and combinations? I not know Minion Sejanus hates me; and that all This boast of law, and law, is but a form, A net of Vulcan’s filing, a mere engine, To take that life by a pretext of justice Which you pursue in malice? (3.241–47) Jonson’s professed Catholicism involved him subsequently with state authorities. Two days after the discovery of the Gunpowder plot on 5 November 1605, he received a warrant from the Privy Council to convey a promise of safe passage to an unnamed priest. Failing to find the man, Jonson began his letter to Salisbury the next day, 8 November, by protesting both his labor and sincerity “in the discharge of this business, to the satisfaction of Your Lordship and the state.” He closes the letter offering to “make further trial” and again asserting his integrity and loyalty (HS 1: 202).5 The details remain unclear but the incident reveals Jonson nervously operating in the uncomfortable middle-zone between the government and its enemies. On 10 January 1606 the Consistory Court cited Jonson and his wife Anne for absenting themselves from communion “as far as we can learn ever since the king came in” (1603); “he is a poet,” the citation continues, and “by fame a seducer of youth to the popish religion” (HS 1: 220). Four similar citations followed that year. Jonson paid recusancy fines but repeatedly denied the charge of persuading young people to Catholicism. Moreover, he refused to take communion, according to the citation for April 26, “until he shall be Robert S. Miola / Ben Jonson, Catholic Poet / 103 resolved either by the minister of the parish or some other in the scruple he maketh therein” (HS 1: 221). The court assigned him such “learned men” as he requested, including the Dean of Paul’s and the Chaplain to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, no less. Jonson had to confer with some of these tutors twice a week and report to the Court on the last day of the following term. Jonson later recalled his reconversion to Protestantism (1610) and, “in token of true reconciliation,” his draining of the communion cup (Conversations, pp. 261–63). Both the late date of the reconversion and the mockery implicit in the gesture suggest that the poet proved a most refractory pupil to the good doctors. Even after this time Jonson attended a Paris debate about the nature of the Eucharist, in 1612.6 Jonson could speak of his religious allegiance cavalierly, claiming that he was “versed in both” faiths (Conversations,p. 613); and he was certainly capable of using anti-Catholic discourse in his poetry and plays.7 But Jonson paid penalties for his Catholicism and took considerable risks to maintain it. His final reconversion elicited harsh judgment from at least one eulogist, Thomas Willford: “The last act did disgrace the first; / His part he played exceeding well, / A Catholic, until he fell / To sects and schisms” (HS 11: 493). Jonson’s Catholicism conditioned and inflected his “wit’s great over- plus,” the phrase of friend and fellow poet Robert Herrick, as criticism is beginning to recognize. T. Wilson Hayes (1991) situates Jonson among a group of dissident Catholic intellectuals. A. W. Johnson (1994) notes the possible influence of Thomas Wright and the operation of a Catholic aesthetic in the structuring of the poetry. Taking the conversion to Catholi- cism seriously, James P. Crowley (1996) discerns a coherent religious ethic throughout Jonson’s poetry. Observing that Jonson’s years as a professed Catholic, 1598 to 1610, coincide with the period of his greatest literary production, Ian Donaldson (1997) discusses Jonson’s Catholicism as neces- sitating a kind of duplicity throughout his career. Reviewing the evidence of Jonson’s Catholic faith and the critical neglect, Richard Harp (1999), co-editor of the Ben Jonson Journal, calls for a full study of Jonson and religion.8 Such reevaluation must recognize at the outset that Jonson, like many English Catholics, lived and died loyal to crown and country. There is no reason to read dissimulation in the poems celebrating the king’s preservation from treason and praising Lord Monteagle for uncovering the Gunpowder plot (Epigrams, 35, 51, 60), or, for that matter, in the masques.9 Such reevaluation must also acknowledge that both Catholicism and anti- Catholicism evolved during the long period of Jonson’s life, taking many shapes and offering varying capacities for compromise and co-existence.10 These things being granted, Jonson’s Catholicism offers an illuminating angle of vision into his art, especially his poetry, early and late. The verse 104 / Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme reflects Catholic sympathies and beliefs, as it runs, characteristically, to panegyric and satire. The poetry occasionally has doctrinal implications, exhibiting a surprising emphasis on good works and a recurrent devotion to the Virgin Mary. Moreover, Jonson’s poetry depicts the hostile world in which the early modern Catholic lived, prey to spies and betrayal, reliant on conscience and a community of the faithful. Most immediately, Jonson’s poetry of praise attests to his relations, literary and personal, with fellow Catholics in early modern England. Jonson wrote a prefatory poem to The Sprite of Trees and Herbs (1598–99), an unpublished botanical emblem-book by Thomas Palmer, the Oxford don deprived of his post because of his Catholicism and persecuted in retirement. In the poem Jonson admires all the plants that thrive “in spite of storms and thunder” (l. 7). Jonson supplied an allegorical ode to preface Pancharis (1603) by Hugh Holland,11 a poet who, like Jonson, studied at Westminster School and converted to Catholicism. Holland returned the favor soon after, supplying two prefatory poems to Sejanus,oneofwhichassertstheauthor’s innocence of all crimes represented in the play. At about this time Jonson also contributed a prefatory poem to Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Mind.12 A Jesuit who taught in several colleges on the Continent, Wright had also written A Treatise Showing the Possibility and Conveniency of the Real Presence of our Saviour in the Blessed Sacrament (1596), which may have contributed to Jonson’s scruples about communion.13 Jonson also wrote commendatory verses on the poems of his “honoured friend,” John Beaumont, a Catholic born at Grace-dieu, the former priory, brother of the more famous Francis Beaumont. John Beaumont’s collection of sacred and secular poems, Bosworth Field (1629), Jonson says, resists attack and “makes his muse a saint” (l. 22). In addition to these prefatory poems, Jonson wrote more pointed pane- gyrics.
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