University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 6-1-2012 Reconciling Eros and Agape: The English Catholic Artistic Response to Reforms Nicole M. Coonradt University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Coonradt, Nicole M., "Reconciling Eros and Agape: The English Catholic Artistic Response to Reforms" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 141. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/141 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. RECONCILING EROS AND AGAPE: THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC ARTISTIC RESPONSE TO REFORMS __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Nicole M. Coonradt June 2012 Advisor: Linda Bensel-Meyers ©Copyright by Nicole M. Coonradt All Rights Reserved Author: Nicole M. Coonradt Title: RECONCILING EROS AND AGAPE: THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC ARTISTIC RESPONSE TO REFORMS Advisor: Linda Bensel-Meyers Degree Date: June 2012 Abstract This study explores the English Catholic artistic response to reforms—reforms being both internal and external to the Catholic Church—as part of the Catholic Reformation. “Response,” for the purposes of this project, may be defined in terms of an “answer” in an ongoing dialogue about the Catholic position and may be seen as both conciliatory and apologetic in nature. Understanding this response is useful when we consider the role of rhetoric and poetry in society and the attendant contemporary theories thereof, in their historical context, especially the duty of the poet. The recent “revisionist” history is central to understanding art contextually. While identifying the key doctrinal debates between Catholics and Protestants, this study traces these elements in the English Catholic art of Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, and William Byrd and focuses, especially, on the way art attempts to reconcile man’s human and divine natures, or Eros and Agape. This can enrich our understanding of the degree to which the spiritual may be found in the temporal to represent how important the concept of the soul and its believed afterlife was to Renaissance artists and their audiences particularly during a time of sustained religious unrest, censorship, and persecution. From the Catholic perspective, a significant recurring trope is the Blessed Sacrament in the then- forbidden rite of the Catholic Mass and its meritorious powers: to impart grace—even when simply gazed upon; to unify members of the Church as Christ’s Earthly Body and ii Bride; to nourish the soul; and, ultimately, to secure the salvation necessary for eternal life. As rhetoric, poetry, and drama are the fruits of education central to the Ignatian charism of “helping souls,” the Jesuit influence on Byrd and other lay figures among the Catholic recusant community such as Sir Thomas Tresham and Sir John Harington may be detected in music, buildings, and verse. This project endeavors to broaden the critical base for additional studies concerned with reforms in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England to enrich our understanding of artistic work in this period, most pointedly in terms of reconciling Eros and Agape. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the official members of my doctoral dissertation committee from the Department of English at the University of Denver (DU), including my director, Dr. Linda Bensel-Meyers, who worked tirelessly with me to get the project to the defense, and Dr. Alexandra Olsen, Dr. Eleanor McNees, Dr. Clark Davis, and our extra- departmental Chair Dr. M. E. Warlick from the Art History department for their insight and engaged participation. Additionally, this project has benefited less officially (though no less usefully) from a number of other scholars and I would be remiss if I neglected to thank them for their time in looking over drafts and offering additional expertise and support via constructive criticisms. These include Dr. Peter Davidson at the University of Aberdeen; Mr. Martin Dodwell, an independent UK scholar; Dr. Gerard Kilroy at University College, London; and Dr. Kerry McCarthy at Duke University here in the States. I would also like to extend my appreciation to the Andrew C. Duncan Trust of the Catholic Record Society for the generous grant they awarded me in 2009 that made possible my research trip to the UK the following autumn of 2010 to visit the Tresham properties in Northamptonshire, the British Library and Jesuit Archives in London, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This research proved invaluable to a better understanding of the subjects explored herein. Finally, many thanks to DU’s Peggy Keeran, Arts and Humanities Reference Librarian at Penrose, who, on several occasions, enthusiastically provided vital research assistance for projects that led to this dissertation. I hope with all due sincerity that each of those involved will find in my work some reflection of his or her generous advice. Remaining shortcomings are entirely my own. iv Table of Contents Chapter One: The Jesuit Tradition: “Helping Souls” as a means to “Love and Live” and the Function of Art in the Catholic Reformation ................................................................ 1 Chapter Two: The Drama of Edmund Campion: Ambrosia—Art as Manna ……….…..30 Chapter Three: Robert Southwell, Living the Emblem: “I Liue to Dye–I Dye to Liue” .. 85 Chapter Four: William Byrd’s Composition—“If music be the food of love, play on!” 128 Chapter Five: Concluding Reflections in which the Ending is also a Beginning ........... 157 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 161 Endnotes .......................................................................................................................... 176 v Chapter One The Jesuit Tradition: “Helping Souls” as a means to “Love and Live” and the Function of Art in the Catholic Reformation Most scholars are now aware of the religious turmoil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries due to the Protestant Reformation, but we may be less aware of the art that arose from it, especially in England. As the Reformation/Counter-Reformation pendulum swung erratically from the reign of Henry VIII through James I, the individual English subject’s concerns about matters of salvation (soteriology) became increasingly anxious as laws regarding religion were made and repealed, reinstated, and often intensified.1 Someone like Lady Magdalen Montague (1538-1608) was born during Henry’s reign and lived to see James rule for five years before she died at the age of 70, experiencing five monarchies in all.2 The shifting ideological trends generally necessitated ambiguity for anyone who wished to address matters of Church or State that challenged the status quo, regardless of the monarch sitting on the throne at any given time. In one way or another, contemporary art often reflects the increasing spiritual unrest that reforms introduced, the political and religious being almost inextricably linked; yet, because the laws forbid anxious criticisms—what Shakespeare called “Art made tongue- tied by authority” (S. 66)—one must proceed with caution when exploring period art. 1 Nevertheless, in spite of restrictions on censure, we have the idea that the poet’s duty is to counsel wayward princes, a concept extending to other forms of artistic expression as well.3 These very tensions fostered some of England’s most interesting, and at times conflicted, art.4 First, then it is necessary to foreground this study in terms of reform in order to establish the significance and usefulness of the term “Catholic Reformation” and also to justify why I employ this term throughout, rather than the more traditional “Counter- Reformation” (except where it appears in citation). Just as “revisionist” history has come to the fore in the past few decades, scholars have begun to rethink the larger picture of Early Modern religious reforms, both internal and external to the Catholic Church, and the degree to which crisis attended those reforms, a concept that is central to this project.5 As Alison Shell has argued in her recent study, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Imagination, 1558-1560, although: imaginative genres were not the main media in which controversies were conducted, they can be an unmatched guide to response; and, crucially, they remind us that responses to anti-Catholic accusation were often not fierce, but conciliatory. (109; emphasis added) Most especially then, this doctoral dissertation is concerned with exploring the English Catholic artistic response to reforms to establish what that looks like, how it was effected, and how a better understanding of this response can inform subsequent studies of art during the period. 2 Central to such an exploration is the idea that man is comprised of both body and soul, two potentially opposed forces that, ideally, should exist in harmony. These two sides are often expressed conceptually through love as being at once human and divine, temporal and spiritual, or, more classically,