Theological Controversy in England and Geneva

This chapter shows how Broughton’s historical and philological approach to scholarship as encouraged by his obsession with Jewish conversion played out in a major controversy of the sixteenth century: the meaning of Christ’s descent into hell. It argues that Broughton’s approach was revealingly different from the two major parties in the debate, the English Bishops and the Genevan divines, who were more concerned with the soteriological implications of Christ’s descent than any philological or historical questions. This, combined with Broughton’s ill-judged attempts to promote his work in Geneva, Zürich, and Basel alienated him from his coreligionists and left him extremely vulnerable to exploitation for confessional purposes—as a keen group of Jesuit onlookers were only too happy to discover. Thus, despite the fact that prominent scholars believed that Broughton’s work on the descent was correct on an intellectual level, his arguments were attacked and maligned. In studying this controversy, this chapter develops key themes of earlier chapters, including the problems caused by the appropriation of Broughton’s work by Catholic scholars; the ways in which controversy was generated from seemingly anodyne historical scholarship; and the serious consequences faced by those who, like Broughton, did not fully understand how deeply confessional identity and erudition were intertwined in this period.