Chapter 3 - Subjection

Summary

Chapter 3 traces the history of bowing at the name of Jesus, one of the ritual actions inherited from the medieval church which survived into the post-Reformation period. Although it was included in the 1559 Injunctions, most Elizabethan writers regarded it as a matter of indifference and assumed it would gradually die out of its own accord. Yet in the early seventeenth century it unexpectedly resurfaced as a point of theological debate when some divines argued that it was directly commanded by scripture. The chapter challenges the idea that theological controversy was conducted at a high academic level with little relevance to the lives of ordinary people. The dispute over bowing originated in polemical exchanges between Protestants and Catholics in Westphalia, which were taken up by the Reformed theologian David Pareus at Heidelberg, and then spilled over into the Church of England when Pareus’s writings were translated into English. But while it began in Latin works of religious polemic, it also led to conflict at a parish level, and a study of these parish conflicts shows that the lay opponents of bowing were often very well informed about the theological issues.