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New Additions on Christopher St German: Law, Politics and Propaganda in the 1530s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2008

RICHARD REX
RICHARD REX
Affiliation:
Queens' College, Cambridge; e-mail: rawr1@cam.ac.uk
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 281 - 300
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 John Bale, Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytanniae catalogus, Basle 1557, i. 660–1. In the earlier version of this work, the Illustrium Maioris Britanniae scriptorum … summarium, ‘Ipswich’ [i.e. Wesel] 1548, fo. 259r, Bale gave only four titles under St German's name, and that entry was in an appendix. His working papers for the revision, edited as the Index Britanniae scriptorum, ed. R. L. Poole and M. Bateson, with an introduction by C. Brett and J. P. Carley, Cambridge 1990, 53–5, give the fuller list largely as in the Catalogus, deriving much of it from the papers of one Edward Braynewode, apparently a lawyer-bibliophile. Braynewode's background in the law suggests that he may have had first-hand knowledge of St German and his works.

2 John Guy, Christopher St German on chancery and statute, London 1985, 16–18.

3 This is the item whose attribution to St German has been previously suggested. See Warner, J. Christopher, ‘A note on St German's In Mahumetem & eius sectam’, Moreana xxxiv (1997), no. 129, pp. 45–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and John Guy's introduction to Thomas More, The debellation of Salem and Bizance, ed. J. Guy, New Haven 1987 (Complete Works of St Thomas More x), pp. xxxiv–xxxv. I owe both these references to the kindness of J. Christopher Warner.

4 There is nothing to be said for the conjecture on a slip pasted on the front endpaper of the Bodleian Library copy (Bodley 8° P 295 Th), ‘I take it to be written by Sir Thomas Elyot as it was bound up in a volume containing two of his acknowledged pieces.’

5 Guy, Christopher St German, 106 and n. 1. St German cites St Bridget in his dialogue on the laws of England: St German's Doctor and student, ed. T. F. T. Plucknett and J. L. Barton, London 1974, 27.

6 A werke of preparacion, sig. L8v. This is noted in the entry at STC 25412. Clearly the error was discovered only after the St German version had been set and printed.

7 In the earlier Summarium (fo. 259r), Bale referred to this work as Contra superstitiones Turcarum. See n. 3 above.

8 A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fos xxvr–xxviiiv; Salem and Bizance, London: Berthelet, 1533 (STC 21584), fos xciiiiv–xcixv.

9 Guy, Christopher St German, 18.

10 A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fo. xxviir: ‘vnto this yere whiche is the yere of our lorde god. M. V. C. xxxi’ (compare Salem and Bizance, fo. xcviir). There is another reference to 1531 on fo. xxxr.

11 A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fo. xixv, lists his sources, including ‘Bernarde breydenbach deane of Magunce’. An answere to a letter, sig. G8r, concluding a brief catalogue of eastern Christians separated from Rome, cites ‘Bernard deane of the church of magunce in his boke of his iorney to Hierusalem’.

12 A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fo. xxixv, refers to ‘the opynyon of one that as yt semyth was a ryght connynge and a famouse clerke whiche made a declaracyon or an exposycyon vpon the sayd reuelacyons of saynt Methodius’. This clerk was Wolfgang Aytinger, whose commentary on the revelations of the Pseudo-Methodius was frequently printed with those revelations (which it has been suggested he may have composed himself), most notably in an edition of 1498 by Sebastian Brant. I have used Methodius, ed. S. Brant, Basle: M. Furter, 1515, which includes Aytinger's Tractatus super Methodium. Mahumet, fo. xxiiir–v cites Methodius, sig. c8v; and the argument at fo. xxixr–v draws on sigs b2r-v, c7v-c8r, e1v, g6r and h5r-h6r. Curtis Bostick notes the popularity of the revelations of the Pseudo-Methodius in late medieval England, with a score of Latin manuscripts and three fifteenth-century English translations preserved in British libraries: The Antichrist and the Lollards: apocalypticism in late medieval and Reformation England, Leiden 1998, 23–4. For the European interest in Pseudo-Methodius, Bostick refers us to B. McGinn, Visions of the end: apocalyptic traditions in the Middle Ages, New York 1979. St German's pamphlet is not noticed in N. Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685, Cambridge 1998, 74, where he describes the Treatyse of the Turkes lawe called Alcaron, London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1519 (STC 15084), as the only Tudor treatise concerning the Qur'an published in England, though Matar's comment that it deals ‘more with images of Islam than with the Qur'an' is equally applicable in this case.

13 A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fo. xiiir. In the Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde (see below), sig. A7r-v, he draws a parallel between the reluctance of the clergy to allow discussion of their laws, and the practice of the Turks.

14 R. Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, Basingstoke 1993, 117–21.

15 ‘for as moche as many can rede Englysshe that vnderstande no latyn, and some that can not rede Englysshe by herynge it redde may lerne dyuers thynges … Therfore for the profyte of the multytude it is put into the Englysshe tonge rather then in to the Latyn or Frenche tonge’: The secunde dyaloge in Englysshe bytwene a doctour of dyuynytye and a student in the lawes of Englande, Southwark: Treverys, 1530 (STC 21565), fo. 3r. See also St German's Doctor and student, 176–7.

16 ‘I haue thus set yt in Englysshe to the intente that euery man that can rede Englysshe maye the more lyghtely perceyue the falsnes of the sayd lawe’: A lytell treatyse agaynst Mahumet, fo. [ii]r. (It is not impossible that this treatise might be a translation, but there is no reason to suppose that this is so, nor has it proven possible thus far to identify it with any foreign pamphlet; and the comment just cited seems to imply original composition rather than translation, in contrast to the next citation.) ‘And to the encrease of the deuotion of them that can rede Englyshe and vnderstande nat the latyn tonge/it is translated out of latyn in to Englysshe’: Epistle of saynt Bernarde, t.p.

17 St German, A treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spiritualtie and temporaltie, London: Berthelet, [1532] (STC 21587), ch. ii, fo. 9v; ch. xi, fo. 28r.

18 Idem, Salem and Bizance, fos xxxir (trentals), lxxxviiir–v (ordination), xcviv (Our Lady) and ciiv (Marseille).

19 Guy, Christopher St German, 46–52. For example, in, ‘A dyalogue shewinge What we be bounde to byleue as thinges necessary to saluacion’ (PRO, SP 6/2, fos 33r–71v; hereinafter cited as Thinges necessary to salvacion), he was more reserved on private revelations: ‘no man is bounde to bileve … the revelacions of Methodius’ (fo. 40v). For evidence of further shifts in his theology see the discussion at pp. 294–5 of the Treatise concernynge generall councilles.

20 J. Christopher Warner, ‘A dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, c. 1532: a neglected tract belonging to the last period of John Rastell's career’, Sixteenth Century Journal xxix (1998), 55–65. This article appeared after I had already formed my own views as to St German's authorship, but its arguments have not caused me to alter my original judgement, though they have compelled me to extend this article.

21 Ibid. 64.

22 Ibid. 63.

23 Ibid. 59, citing, for ‘The Church of John Rastall’, G. Burnet, The history of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. N. Pocock, Oxford 1865, iv. 518.

24 Bale, Catalogus, i. 659–60, and Summarium, fo. 222r; though not in Index, 240–1.

25 Warner, ‘A dyaloge’, 64.

26 St German's Doctor and student, 15, 19, 29, 31.

27 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sig. D5r; Addicions of Salem and Byzance, London: Berthelet, 1534 (STC 21585), fo. 49v; A treatise concernynge diuers of the constitucyons prouynciall, London: Thomas Godfray, [1535?] (STC 24236), ch. v, sigs A8r-B1v, esp. sig. A8v; Answere to a letter, sig. G4 r. See also A treatyse concerninge the power of the clergye, London: Thomas Godfray, [1535?] (STC 21588), sig. D4r: ‘by that worde chyrche is nat vnderstande onely the clergye/for they vndoutydly make nat the chyrche/for the hole congregacion of Christen people maketh the chyrche’. The point is made yet again in the Treatise concernynge generall councilles (sigs B3r, C5v-6r), which is shown below to be a work of St German's.

28 PRO, SP 6/2, fo. 56v. Earlier (fo. 37r; see also fos 38r, 49r) he dismisses as erroneous the notion ‘that the clergie make the vniuersall churche’.

29 Answere to a letter, sigs G5v-6r.

30 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sig. B4v. For comment on this aspect of St German's thought see Walters, M. D., ‘St German on reason and parliamentary sovereignty’, Cambridge Law Journal lxii (2003), 335–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 340–2, 361.

31 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sig. E3r-v, citing Proverbs viii. 15, 16 and Psalm ii. 10. Compare Treatise concernynge generall councilles, sig. Aiiir-v, and Treatyse concerninge the power of the clergye, ch. i, sig. Aiir.

32 For references to St German's discourse on the sacraments (PRO, SP 6/8, pp. 1–20; on which see Guy, Christopher St German, 17), and Swynnerton's ‘The tropes and figures of scripture’ (PRO, E 36/193) see Bale, Catalogus, i. 661; ii. 76.

33 Warner, ‘A dyaloge’, 61.

34 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sig. A2r-v.

35 Note the resemblance between that title and the reference in the Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde to ‘the great discencion that is betwene the spirytualtie and temporalte’ (sig. A6r). For 1534 see n. 38 below.

36 See Rex, R., ‘The crisis of obedience: God's word and Henry's Reformation’, HJ xxxix (1996), 863–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 879–80.

37 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sigs A5v, A7r.

38 Ibid. sig. C2v. These words may imply an intention to return at a later date to the scriptural grounds adduced for papal and ecclesiastical authority. They certainly confirm a date no later than 1534 for this text: a royalist text written after the Act of Supremacy would scarcely have allowed this classic Petrine text to pass unchallenged.

39 For the Collectanea (BL, ms Cotton Cleo E vi, fos 16–135) see G. D. Nicholson, ‘The nature and function of historical argument in the Henrician Reformation’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 1977 (D19368/77). It does not seem likely that the Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde draws directly on the Collectanea, as the material which they have in common comes in very different order.

40 Chapuys to Charles v, 3 Jan., 26 Feb. 1534, LP vii.14, 232, respectively seem to refer to the Opus eximium as in press and as despatched to Francis i. For the Anglo-Saxon laws compare Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sigs C8r–D2r, and Opus eximium, fos 48r–51r.

41 Opus eximium, fos 7r–9r.

42 ms Cotton Cleo E vi, fos 1–15. But this text could equally be copied from the printed version.

43 Sawada, P. A., ‘Two anonymous Tudor treatises on the general council’, this Journal xii (1961), 197–214Google Scholar at p. 210. Nicholson accepts Sawada's attribution, though he is not convinced of the connection with the embassy to the emperor: ‘Nature and function of historical argument’, 235 n. 4; 249 n. 1.

44 LP xiii/1, 695.

45 The two works to which Henry's instructions specifically referred Bonner and Heynes were both in Latin. See Sawada, ‘Two anonymous Tudor treatises’, 210, and LP xiii/1, 695, for these items, identifiable as Henry's Sententia, & de eo concilio, … & de ea bulla, London: Berthelet, 1537 (STC 13082) and Ad Carolum Caesarem Augustum … epistola, London: Berthelet, 1538 (STC 13080.3). Compare Thomas Cromwell's despatch to Stephen Gardiner, then ambassador to the French court, of copies of the Latin orations on the royal supremacy composed by Gardiner himself and by Richard Sampson: LP ix. 848, 19 Nov. 1535.

46 Sawada, ‘Two anonymous Tudor treatises’, 210.

47 This brief discussion of Alesius is heavily indebted to Dr Gotthelf Wiedermann, of Cambridge University Library, who has shared with me the fruits of his unrivalled knowledge of Alesius and his work.

48 I owe this point to Dr Wiedermann, who is preparing an edition of Alesius' unpublished works.

49 Sawada, ‘Two anonymous Tudor treatises’, 211. For Alesius on the Psalms see Gotthelf Wiedermann, Der Reformator Alexander Alesius als Ausleger der Psalmen. Dissertation, Erlangen 1988, and ‘Alexander Alesius's lectures on the Psalms at Cambridge, 1536’, this Journal xxxvi (1986), 15–41.

50 A. Alesius, Of the auctorite of the word of god, [Strasbourg: Kopfel, 1544] (STC 292): a translation of De authoritate verbi dei, Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1542. Bale reports that Edmund Allen translated it into English: Catalogus, i. 720.

51 Bale, Catalogus, ii. 175–6, giving a brief account of their old friendship. I owe this point and this reference to the generosity of Thomas S. Freeman.

52 Guy, Christopher St German, 58, citing and endorsing More.

53 Ibid. 56 (for the ‘Little treatise’ itself see pp. 106–26).

54 Ibid. 17.

55 Treatise concernynge generall councilles, sig. A8r.

56 Ibid. sig. B2r. Compare St German's hesitant doubts about the lawfulness of worshipping images in his Treatise concernynge diuers of the constitucyons prouynciall, sig. F2r.

57 Treatise concernynge generall councilles, sig. A8r-v.

58 Ibid. sig. C3v. See Marshall, Peter, ‘Papist as heretic: the burning of John Forest, 1538’, HJ xli (1998), 351–74Google Scholar at pp. 357–61, 371–3.

59 Compare Treatyse concerninge the power of the clergye, chs i-iii, sigs Aiir-viir with Treatise concernynge generall councilles, ch. i, sig. Aiiir-vir.

60 For example, the Treatise concernynge generall councilles complains that the bishops of Rome and other bishops and priests claim ‘that they haue auctoritie to expounde and declare the doubtes of scripture’ (sig. B3r), while Thinges necessary to salvacion objects to the view that ‘the bisshop of Rome and the clergie haue auctoritie texpounde doubtes of scripture’ (fo. 36v).

61 Thinges necessary to salvacion, fo. 51r–v.

62 Ibid. fo. 53v.

63 Treatise concernynge generall councilles, sigs B5v-B8r (note that sig. B5 is mislabelled ‘C.v’).

64 Guy, Christopher St German, 33–4.

65 Ibid. 44–5.

66 The letter, of 25 July 1534, is summarised at LP vii.1008. This reading of the letter is endorsed by Gerald Bray in Tudor church reform: the Henrician canons of 1535 and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, Woodbridge 2000, pp. xx–xxi.

67 Logan, F. Donald, ‘The Henrician canons’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xlvii (1974), 99–103Google Scholar.

68 Idem, ‘The first royal visitation of the English universities, 1535’, EHR cvi (1991), 861–88 at pp. 867, 877.

69 M. R. McCarl, The plowman's tale: the c. 1532 and 1606 editions of a spurious Canterbury Tale, New York–London 1997, 37–49, and appendix B at pp. 232–40 (catalogue of Godfray's imprints).

70 Ibid. 38.

71 Nicholson, ‘Nature and function of historical argument’, 226–7 n. 3 for the treatises, and p. 236 for the connection: ‘There is powerful corroborative evidence of Alesius's involvement with this and the other related treatises.’ For further useful comments on these texts see pp. 226–60.

72 Guy, Christopher St German, 127–35, edits a draft statute of St German's, which he dates to 1531 (pp. 31–2). I still prefer G. R. Elton's dating of that piece to 1534, but regard Guy's arguments for St German's authorship (pp. 25–6) as conclusive.

73 Answere to a letter, sig. G1v. For comment on this see John Guy, ‘Tudor monarchy and its critiques’, in John Guy (ed.), The Tudor monarchy, London 1997, 78–109 at pp. 87–8. Compare the texts expounded in the draft statute at SP 6/4, fos 106–21, 123–32, for which see also Nicholson, ‘Nature and function of historical argument’, 227 n. 3 (continued), item 5. The similarities in argument and wording between this draft statute and the dialogue Thinges necessary to salvacion make it almost certain that they are by the same author.

74 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, C5r-v; An answere to a letter, ch. vii, sigs G5v-G6r. See also Guy, ‘Tudor monarchy and its critiques’, 87–8.

75 W. Ullmann, Principles of government and politics in the Middle Ages, London 1961, 19–26.

76 PRO, SP 6/2, esp. fos 48v-49r, 64v, 67r-v, 70r; Guy, Christopher St German, 17, 43–4.

77 Treatise concerning generall counsailles, sig. D3r-v. Nicholson, ‘Nature and function of historical argument’, 226–61, includes a great deal of helpful comment about the regime's policy on general councils.

78 ‘I thinke verilie that sithe the tyme of the Apostles there hathe not oon generall counsaile be gathered and holdon to all intentes according to thauctoritie of scriptures for though the said councel of Nicene and some othere were gathered, by auctoritie of the Emperour and kinges, yet laye men had never voices yn any of theym’ (a comment uttered in the person of the ‘Doctor’): Thinges necessary to salvacion, fo. 54r.

79 Dyaloge betwene Clemente and Bernarde, sigs E4r, D5r.