The Church of England and the Palatinate, 1566–1642

This chapter explores a long-neglected relationship, which has escaped scholarly notice in part because of the assumption that reformation remained fixed after the sixteenth century. Historians previously focused on fragmentation within the Lutheran tradition following the death of Luther in 1546. Yet the conversion of the Elector Palatine Frederick III to the reformed faith in 1561 has more recently drawn attention for inaugurating a second reformation in central Europe along with the confessional conflicts that contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. The discussion follows the peculiar role of the Palatinate in constructing the Church of England’s reformed identity from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. The unique circumstances of reform initiated by the Prince, for instance, could be used by both conformist and puritan divines.

The Authority of Antiquity: England and the Protestant Latin Bible

This chapter provides a complex narrative of biblical translation in Protestant scholarship. It draws attention to Protestant efforts to produce a universal Latin translation as an intermediary between the original languages of Scripture and the vernacular. Despite the tendency to associate Protestantism with personal reading of Scripture, the multiple levels involved in biblical interpretation complicate any straightforward relationship between reformation, text, and individual reader. The Latin Bible translation also held the potential of unifying Protestants by becoming the basis of all vernacular translations. The attempt to harmonise Protestant theology through a single Latin translation, however, ultimately exposed deep divisions in Protestant biblical scholarship. The chapter also notes that Archbishop Cranmer not only extended hospitality to continental scholars fleeing from the restoration of Catholic worship under the Augsburg Interim, but solicited their work on the Latin Bible translation and laboured to bridge divisions between them.

The Reception of Martin Luther in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England

By challenging any assumed passivity in British adoption of continental reform, reception calls for a closer scrutiny of their relationships. The reception of Martin Luther in England reflects his changing role among continental Protestants. This chapter identifies how English reception of Luther shifted over time. Whereas the early English writer William Tyndale adapted Luther’s theological writing to speak to his own preoccupations, John Foxe was largely responsible for Elizabethan translations of Luther’s commentaries that provided pastoral guidance for afflicted consciences. Luther’s translations continued to speak to troubled consciences in the seventeenth century, yet English divines more often cited Luther as a symbol than as a source in the heated debates over justification in the mid-seventeenth century. The symbolic status of Luther in theological disputes, however, did not simply introduce the indiscriminate use of his example.

Erasmus or Calvin? The Politics of Book Purchase in the Early Modern English Parish

This chapter notes that the purchase of books alone misrepresents the readership and reception of continental reform in English parishes. For instance, it argues that the demands of the laity for work by Genevan reformers should be viewed alongside the concerns of parish administration as well as other purchases, such as occasional prayers. It is now evident that English Reformation was not simply an act of state as maintained by traditional accounts. New narratives focus attention on how lay reception shaped the nature of reformation, instead of quantifying reform through numbers in favour of or in resistance to the movement. Negotiation was a common practice for lay men and women, whether through the selective support of reform to suit individual interests, through the agitation for more zealous reform, or through the redefinition of orthodoxy in puritan communities.

Unreliable Witnesses

Innovation in print and the dissemination of reformation texts were as central to Protestant reform as biblical translation and the circulation of erudite Protestant scholarship in manuscript. The history of the book is an obvious starting point for understanding reformation reception and overlaps with reception studies by its concern with readership and the historical context of printed matter. This chapter explores the historical contingency of the sources available for quantifying the ownership of continental reformed texts, with particular emphasis on the universities in Britain. Probate inventories, anecdotal evidence, booksellers’ lists, and surviving books present different and often conflicting stories. The discrepancy between Cambridge and Oxford inventories, for instance, may have had more to do with the university appraisers than religious conservatism in Oxford.

‘A Generall Reformation of Common Learning’ and its Reception in the English-Speaking World, 1560–1642

This chapter provides a synthesis of the ‘Reformation of Common Learning’, which progressively developed from Peter Ramus’s pedagogy in the mid-sixteenth century to the work of the Moravian Comenius in the mid-seventeenth. The essay stretches the traditional periodisation and disciplinary boundaries often applied to reformation studies. By implication, it calls into question the understanding of a seventeenth-century ‘post-reformation’ era, a point underscored by mid-seventeenth-century writers such as Milton who spoke of reform as a continuous process. The wider intellectual currents that were contemporaneous to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theological developments become essential to understanding the reception of reformation.

Martin Bucer and Early Seventeenth-Century Scottish Irenicism

The call for religious unification was part of a polemical project itself. Irenic concerns nonetheless represent another use of reception for reformation study: the hermeneutic of ecumenism. Scottish reception of the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer is a case in point. Bucer’s mediation between continental reformers and his prominent role in English Reformation history is more often noted than his appeal to Scottish divines in the seventeenth century. This chapter highlights the changing religious milieu of the Scottish Kirk as both Presbyterians and Jesuits alike appealed to Bucer’s writing. Bucer became a favourite of the Arminian Bishop and Royalist from Aberdeen, William Forbes. The chapter finds particular potency in Bucer’s ecumenical hermeneutic, which Forbes adopted as a means of bridging confessional divisions and even searching for agreement with moderate Catholics.

John Knox, Christopher Goodman and the ‘Example of Geneva’1

This chapter provides a narrative of the sustained use of Genevan forms of worship in the British Isles after Knox and Goodman’s return from exile. Genevan devotional practices were not strictly celebrated by the former exiles alone. The broader singing of metrical psalms in England aroused suspicion by authorities of a popular brand of Calvinism. It was not ultimately Cranmer’s Latin translation of the Bible that English and Scottish Protestants shared, but a common edition of the Bible produced by the English exile congregation in Geneva. Gaelic translations of the Geneva Bible intended for an Irish readership extended the edition’s use even further. The discussion also draws attention to Archbishop Adam Loftus’s missionary plan to deploy Goodman in Ireland in order to introduce reformed worship.

Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Political Theology and the Elizabethan Church

This chapter discusses the theological affinity between the Elizabethan church and Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformer who spent his later career in Zurich. Vermigli’s thought did not simply migrate from the continent to England. The discussion notes that Vermigli’s English experience as an exile was formative for the development of his political theology and that the English monarchy left an imprint on his subsequent Old Testament commentaries on the subject of kingship. Scottish Covenanters and English puritans in the early seventeenth century nonetheless continued to find the work of Zurich reformers useful for refuting episcopacy. If the political theology of Vermigli was agreeable to the Elizabethan church, conformists associated Calvinism with political sedition on the grounds that reformation in Geneva was born out of revolution.