344 EMWJ 2008, vol. 3
Book Reviews
The Marian Catholic Revival: A Review Essay
The Church of Mary Tudor. Ed. Eamon Duffy and David Loades.
Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006. xxxi + 348 pp. $99.99. ISBN 07546-3070-6.
The Theology and Spirituality of Mary Tudor’s Church. William
Wizeman, S.J. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006. x + 291 pp. ISBN
0-7546-5360-9.
In his classic but problematic work, The English Reformation, 2nd ed.
(University Park, PA, 1989), A.G. Dickens in essence ends his account
with the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559. In this schema, the Reformation
began to be established officially in England, even if tentatively and
piecemeal, under Henry VIII. Following the death of the awe- and fearinspiring king, a more thoroughgoing Protestantism was laid out by
the Edwardian regime, and, with the accession of Elizabeth, a moderate
Protestant settlement, the so-called via media, became the basis of the
Anglican Church of England. There was, of course, a brief and ostensibly
aberrational interlude—the Marian years—between the otherwise progressive ascendancy of Protestantism under Edward and then Elizabeth.
In this version of the English Reformation, the growing power and popularity of Protestant Christianity was only briefly interrupted by the lastditch attempt of Mary and her supporters to re-impose Catholicism on the
country. Yet, despite the repressive measures of “Bloody Mary,” her regime
failed to prevent the ultimate triumph of Protestantism under Elizabeth,
the Protestant Deborah.
Revisionist and even postrevisionist writings of recent years have
overturned a great deal of this idea of the Protestant Church of England’s
supposedly inexorable and inevitable triumph over a moribund late medieval Catholicism revived only briefly by the Marian church and state
through force and fear. The two works under review here are but a part
of the extensive and creative reinterpretations of many aspects of the religious, social, and cultural history of Tudor England. Perhaps no period
has needed and received as much recent attention as the mid-Tudor era,
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345
especially the Marian years. In The Church of Mary Tudor, Eamon Duffy
(a leading proponent of the considerable vitality of Catholicism well into
the Elizabethan era) and David Loades (an expert on the life and reign of
Mary) have gathered together the essays of about a dozen scholars on various aspects of the Marian Catholic revival. These essays are of a generally
high quality and, while they are by no means uniform in their approaches
or interpretations, they tend to support a much more innovative and, in
varying degrees, successful view of what Queen Mary and her church tried
to and in some measure did accomplish.
In the introductory essay, David Loades discusses “The Personal
Religion of Mary I. ” This discussion is in a number of ways a nuanced
one based on a significant amount of data, but the reader is still left with
the question as to whether or not we have reached the heart of Mary’s
“personal” life and religion. To some extent this is an understandable
problem because a similar assessment could be made concerning much of
the writing about Elizabeth’s “inner” life and beliefs. Whereas Henry VIII
wore his heart on his sleeve, so to speak, his daughters, for a whole host
of reasons, not least of which was surviving in the midst of the dangerous
Henrician court and its machinations, had to learn to hide or dissemble
some of their personal views concerning religion and other matters. Even
so, Loades argues that, “in spite of her enthusiasm for the Mass, [Mary]
was not ostensibly a Catholic at all, but what her father had made her—a
conservative humanist with an extremely insular point of view” (18). While
Mary was in some ways her father’s daughter, she was even more so her
mother’s, at least in her fundamental devotion to the old faith, despite the
public conformity that Henry all but forced on her. According to Loades,
in Mary’s religious hierarchy, devotion to the Eucharist was paramount,
compared, for example, to papal prerogatives, but that did not make Mary
in any way unorthodox or out-of-sync with other monarchs, including her
husband, Philip of Spain, the Most Catholic King.
As with the Queen, Loades sees a similar religious ambiguity surrounding many of “The Marian Episcopate. ” It is true that most bishops
had conformed to the Henrician religious changes, but a number of them
were far less willing to go along with what they considered to be a dangerous religious revolution during the Edwardian years. This was certainly
346 EMWJ 2008, vol. 3
Book Reviews
true of Edmund Bonner and Stephen Gardiner. Yet, in addition to considering their religious stance, Mary also chose a number of candidates
for their learning; Reginald Pole clearly fit both of those bills. If reforming bishops were crucial to a Catholic revival, the centers of learning were
also fundamental to any long-term strategy. In an article on “The English
Universities,” Claire Cross points out that all of the Tudor regimes realized
that the universities were key to their goal of creating an educated elite who
could staff the offices of church and state. Both Oxford and Cambridge
under Mary benefited from royal bounty, and, while a Catholic resurgence
had commenced at both institutions, it had proceeded at a faster pace at
Oxford. But, as in other regards, Cross concludes: “More than any other
single factor, time frustrated the plans of Mary and Pole for Catholic
higher education in England” (76).
Whereas Henry VIII had dissolved the monasteries, Mary began what
turned out to be a brief revival of religious houses. C. S. Knighton writes
about the most famous one in “Westminster Abbey Restored. ” It is debatable how much of a role religious houses and orders might have played over
the long-term. As it was, Mary refounded seven religious houses, five for
men and two for women. Before Mary’s reign, the Benedictines had played
an important part in English religious history for close to a thousand years
and presumably could do so again. The revival of Westminster, however,
lasted less than three years. Regrettably, there is neither in this essay nor
elsewhere in the book a more extended discussion of the topic of religious
life. In particular, there is virtually no examination of the revival of religious
life for women under England’s first queen regnant. As to the Catholic
revival in various locales, Ralph Houlbrooke examines “The Clergy, the
Church Courts and the Marian Restoration in Norwich. ” Although
Norwich was a relatively early and strong center of Protestantism, the city’s
Protestant leaders either submitted to the Marian church or went into exile,
and it did not exhibit the degree of overt or covert opposition found, for
example, in Colchester. Nevertheless, Norwich had its Protestant martyrs,
including some women. One of them, Elizabeth Cooper, went to her death
over her resolute interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.
Cardinal Pole was obviously a central figure in the church of Mary
Tudor and, appropriately, this collection has three related articles: Thomas
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347
Mayer on Pole as legate, Eamon Duffy on Pole as preacher, and John
Edwards on the degree of Spanish religious influence. The old canard was
that, having been so long an exile, Pole was out of touch with the religious
realities and changes that had occurred in England, and that he was more
reactive than proactive in his program for a Catholic revival. These essays
are part of a “rehabilitation” of Pole—and the Marian church—that paints
a very different and far more flattering portrait. Collectively, these essays
demonstrate that Pole had no illusions about the challenges he faced, nor
was he neglectful or insular in dealing with them. Whether in terms of
administration, finance, discipline, preaching, publishing, or instruction,
Pole and others began to make some very creative reforms and recommendations, not the least of which was the proposal concerning diocesan seminaries. In light of all the efforts of the Marian church, Mayer’s dramatic
conclusion appears to be well founded: “That England did not remain a
Catholic country must be accounted much more of an accident than we
have been readily prepared to admit” (174-5).
The classic centerpiece of Catholic spirituality was the Mass, and,
as Lucy Wooding stresses in “The Marian Restoration and the Mass,” its
restitution was paramount for Mary and her leading churchmen. That
does not mean that there was not ongoing theological reflection on the
understanding of the Eucharist and transubstantiation. In other words, in
this regard as elsewhere, Marian Catholicism looked both backward and
forward. Wooding mentions that some of the bishops, such as Thomas
Watson and Edmund Bonner, encouraged more frequent communion,
i.e., more frequent than the medieval norm, which, due to an exaggerated
sense of awe, often resulted in reception of the Eucharist very infrequently,
perhaps only once a year. It would have been helpful, however, to place the
bishops’ position within the context of early modern Catholicism, in which
more frequent communion became a growing spiritual practice, as, for
example, among Jesuits. In addition, if it is true (as Loades suggests) that
Mary herself, while devoted to the Mass, apparently only received communion at Easter, how did the queen react to this call for more frequent
reception of the Eucharist?
Concerning contemporary accounts, Gary Gibbs provides an insightful reinterpretation of “Henry Machyn’s Manuscript. ” Gibbs argues that,
348 EMWJ 2008, vol. 3
Book Reviews
although it has traditionally been labeled as a “diary,” it would be much
more accurate to view it as a “chronicle,” that is, not as something personal
and anachronistic, but rather as a historical account with subtle political, social, and religious commentary. In this context, Machyn lauds the
Marian regime’s use of ceremony and spectacle to garner and shore up
support. Such a chronicle is a helpful counterbalance to the traditional
historiographical emphasis on the Marian martyrs and exiles. Still, martyrs
there tragically were. Patrick Collinson focuses his discussion of this issue
on “The Persecution in Kent. ” With regard to exiles, he points out that, in
addition to those who fled to various Swiss and German cities, there were
also a number of “internal” exiles. As for the martyrs, Kent produced more
of them than anywhere except London, and this included many women as
well as men. Particularly interesting is Collinson’s treatment of John Foxe
who, in his so-called “Book of Martyrs,” not only preserved but also transformed the memories of many of the Protestant martyrs. While Foxe’s
work is invaluable, we must take his “hagiographical agenda” into account.
There is one further essay in The Church of Mary Tudor, William
Wizeman’s “The Theology and Spirituality of a Marian Bishop: The
Pastoral and Polemical Sermons of Thomas Watson. ” This essay dovetails with Wizeman’s important monograph, The Theology and Spirituality
of Mary Tudor’s Church, in which he examines a wide range of Marian
Catholic texts, through which he discerns a fairly consistent theology and
spirituality designed to win over “heretics” and reform and strengthen
the Catholic faithful. In successive chapters, Wizeman investigates
Marian Catholic texts concerning Revelation, Christology, Soteriology,
Ecclesiology, Sacraments, Spirituality, Piety, and Eschatology. Various
Marian Catholic writers, a number of whom were bishops, addressed
almost all of the major theological controversies of the day, including the
role of Scripture and its interpretation, Patristics and church councils,
the faith/good works debate, and the related issue of predestination.
Marian theologians wrote relatively little about the controversial issue
of the royal supremacy. Wizeman argues that many writers were likely
embarrassed by their previous acquiescence, but, between the extremes of
completely independent national churches and thoroughgoing ultramontanism, the question remains as to what the fundamental ecclesiology of
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349
certain bishops was—Stephen Gardiner, for example. With regard to “the
burnings,” there were ongoing debates, with writers on both sides of the
religious divide arguing that a “heretic” could not be a true “martyr. ” While
very few relished persecution, some believed that, in combination with a
program of reform and re-education, some degree of persecution, especially
of more radical opponents, would bring about a long-term Catholic revival.
In any event, was not much more lost than gained in this trial by fire?
In a number of ways, and with strong counterarguments to the
alleged insularity of the Marian church, its writers supported practices that
were becoming more common in early modern Catholic Europe, including
more frequent confession and communion, the examination of conscience,
and engaging in various methods of prayer through “Spiritual Exercises,”
whether those of Ignatius Loyola or the Englishman William Peryn,
the latter being in no small part a translation and adaptation of those of
Loyola and Nicholas Van Ess. Wizeman argues persuasively that Marian
spirituality was christocentric, sacramental, ecclesial, and penitential—all
of which linked it to the international Catholic Reformation. The Marian
church also contributed to contemporary and future Catholic spirituality
and reform by replacing the traditional hanging pyx for the Eucharist in
churches with a tabernacle on the main altar, and by promoting seminaries
for the clergy as well as religious instruction for the laity. Yet, as creative
as it was, it is probably going too far to argue that “the Marian church
invented what is often called the Counter-Reformation” (251). The scholars examined in this review essay argue convincingly that the church of
Mary Tudor was much more creative, forward-looking, and international
in its theology and spirituality than its many critics have acknowledged.
At the same time, the Marian church was but a part of a multifaceted and
widespread movement of reform and renewal in early modern Catholicism,
to which many individuals, groups, institutions, and countries contributed,
the latter including Italy and Spain, as well as England.
Robert Scully
LeMoyne College