Journal of Early Modern Christianity 2018; 5(1): 1–34 Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen* “Never Better”: Affliction, Consolation and the Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern England https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2018-0001 published online March 15, 2018 Abstract: This essay examines the central role of consolation in early modern Protestant culture. It first maps a number of the important tropes in early modern Protestant consolation literature, focusing on England. It then analyses the lan- guage of consolation in early modern printed and manuscript sources on the legal proceedings against the Puritan pamphleteers Bastwick, Burton and Prynne, show- ing how consolation was both widely shared and politically contentious, under- mining the very idea of a unified Protestant cause which it served to foster. Finally, I examine the notebooks of the London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington as a case study of the ways in which self-writers, in recording and reflecting on affliction, drew on consolation discourses. While consolation is a central strand in Wallington’s reflections on affliction, it is also elusive and provisional, especially where everyday, personal suffering is concerned. In Wallington, consolation seems available especially if the religious suffering it alleviates has a political dimension, and can be construed as a way of suffering for the true faith. Keywords: suffering, consolation, protestantism, early modernity, self-writing 1 Introduction In February 1524 Martin Luther (1483–1546) wrote a letter of consolation to the fledgling evangelical congregation in the German town of Miltenberg, whose pastor Johann Drach (Johannes Draconites, 1494–1566) had been excommuni- cated in 1523, with some of his followers executed and the Evangelical move- ment in Miltenberg suppressed.1 Luther’s christlicher Trostbrief appeared in 1 Following Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Penguin books ltd, 2003), I use the term “evangelical” to refer to “sympathizers with reform in the first half of the sixteenth century” (xx). *Corresponding author: Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, University of Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands, E-mail: [email protected] Brought to you by | Universiteit Leiden / LUMC Authenticated Download Date | 6/5/19 1:26 PM 2 J. F. van Dijkhuizen seven editions, printed in five German cities.2 The letter to the Miltenberg congregation is one of a body of consolation letters written by Luther during the 1520s, and addressed to specific early evangelical communities facing per- secution, such as those in Halle and Worms, or to persecuted Protestants more generally, such as the 1522 Letter of Consolation to All Who Suffer Persecution.3 In these letters, Luther not only comforts his coreligionists but also addresses the question of what constitutes effective and theologically sound consolation in the first place. Indeed, for Luther, the true Christian community is defined to a significant extent by the ways in which it understands and practices consola- tion – by the manner in which it bears and attaches meaning to suffering and adversity. Luther’s consolation letters are part of a broader preoccupation with con- solation that was characteristic of early modern Protestant culture from its very inception.4 This interest in consolation among Protestants was occasioned in 2 Neil R. Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter: Writings on Death (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 108. For Luther and consolation, see also Hans B. Leaman, “‘Count Every Step in my Flight’: Rhegius’s and Luther’s Consolations for Evangelical Exiles, 1531–3,” in Exile and Religious Identity, 1500–1800, ed. Jesse Spohnholz and Gary K. Waite (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), 9–24; Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 3 In Martin Luther, “Devotional Writings II,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 43, ed. Gustav. K. Wiencke (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 57–71; translation of Martin Luther, Eyn Missive allen den, so von wegen des Wortt Gottes Verfolgung lyden tröstlych (Strasbourg, 1522). 4 There is, of course, a long Christian and classical tradition of consolation literature, with the consolation letter as one subgenre. Important examples from classical antiquity are Plutarch’s On Exile; Cicero’s Consolatio and Tusculan Disputations; and Seneca’s Consolatione ad Marciam, De Consolatione ad Polybium, Epistolae ad Lucilium and De Consolatione ad Helviam. Chad D. Schrock, Consolation in Medieval Narrative: Augustinian Authority and Open Form (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) reads Augustine’s Confessions and City of God as consolatory, in that they offer narratives of consolation after the sack of Rome in 410 had rendered problematic the idea of history as a gradual and inevitable spread of Christianity. For Augustine and consola- tion, see also Mary Melchior Beyenka, Consolation in Saint Augustine (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950). The most famous medieval work of consolation is Boethius’ sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, which, in spite of its pervasive influence on medieval Christianity, drew predominantly on classical rather than Christian models, especially the Stoicism of Seneca and Cicero, and the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus (see Pierre Courcelle, La ‘Consolation de Philosophie’ dans la tradition littéraire: Antécédents et postérité de Boèce [Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1967] and Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius [New York: Oxford University Press, 1935]). For consolation in Italian humanism, see George McClure, Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). My concern in this essay is not with the classical and earlier Christian lineage of early modern Brought to you by | Universiteit Leiden / LUMC Authenticated Download Date | 6/5/19 1:26 PM “Never Better” 3 part by the fact that the persecution which they faced gave new urgency to the experience of suffering. As various scholars have shown, persecution and mar- tyrdom became central to early modern notions of Protestant identity, with the immense importance in England of the Book of Martyrs (1563) by John Foxe (1516/17–1587) as only one example among many.5 Protestants saw themselves as sufferers for a righteous cause, a community held together to an important extent by the shared experience of suffering and persecution. This centrality of martyrdom brought with it a need for consolation in the face of persecution, as is suggested, for example, by the pervasiveness of the language of consolation in the Book of Martyrs. Two examples from many in Foxe are the narratives of the Marian martyrs John Philpot (1515/16–1555) and Lawrence Saunders (d. 1555). In a letter to Lord John Careless, Philpot claims to feel “the consolation of heaven” and expresses a hope that Careless too will experience God’s “inward consolation”, while Saunders is described as being “expert” in “consolations” and “able to comforte other which were in any affliction, by the consolation wherwith the Lord did comfort him”.6 As Luther’s letters to early evangelical congregations also make clear, discourses of consolation provided a crucial framework for articulating a sense of community-in-suffering. The need to claim consolation for the Protestant cause was intensified by the existence of a body, often highly politicized, of early modern Catholic consolation writing. Prominent English examples include Thomas More’s Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (1534, reprinted in 1553 and 1573); An epistle of comfort to the reverend priestes (1587) and The triumphs over death (1595) by Robert Southwell (1561?–1595); the Spiritual Consolation (1578) by the bishop and martyr John Fisher (c.1469–1535); and Robert Persons’ The First Booke of the Christian Protestant consolation discourses, but with these discourses as a coherent framework for attaching meaning to suffering in their own right. 5 Among a large number of relevant titles, see John R. Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, 1563–1694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1999); Susannah Brietz Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Adrian Chastain Weimer, Martyrs’ Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). A useful recent study of Foxe is John N. King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 6 John Foxe, Actes and monuments (London, 1583), 1833, 1494. Foxe appended a series of letters by Philpot, many consolatory in nature, to the narrative of Philpot’s examination and martyrdom. Brought to you by | Universiteit Leiden / LUMC Authenticated Download Date | 6/5/19 1:26 PM 4 J. F. van Dijkhuizen Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution (1582), hugely popular in the 1584 Protestant adaptation by Edmund Bunny.7 In spite of the strong link between consolation and martyrdom, the dom- inance of consolation in early modern Protestant culture extended beyond the experience of persecution and martyrdom. As Ronald Rittgers has shown, the Protestant Reformation was to an