Reforming Catholicism in the England of Mary Tudor

The Achievement of Friar Bartolomé Carranza

Ronald Truman, John Edwards, John Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351905749
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

In the history of the attempted restoration of Roman Catholicism in the England of Mary Tudor, the contribution of her husband Philip and his Spanish entourage has been largely ignored. This book highlights one of the most prominent of Philip's religious advisers, the friar Bartolomé Carranza. A leading Dominican, Carranza served the emperor Charles V, whom he represented at the earlier sessions of the Council of Trent, and then Philip II of Spain, who brought him to England. Even before Mary's death, Fray Bartolomé left for the Low Countries, and then returned to Spain, where, as archbishop of Toledo, he was arrested for 'heresy' by the Spanish Inquisition. His trial, first in Spain and then in Rome, lasted from 1559 until shortly before his death, partially rehabilitated, in Rome in 1576. The book contains papers on the activity and intellectual character of the English Church under Mary, on Carranza's eventful life, particularly his activity in England, and on his often close collaboration with his friend Cardinal Reginald Pole, set in the wider context of sixteenth-century Catholicism. Attention is also drawn both to Carranza's perhaps surprising subsequent fame and influence in the Spanish Church, and to the common ground which, despite obvious differences and subsequent divisions, did indeed exist between reformers in Spain and England.

CHAPTER 1

Fray Bartolomé Carranza: A Spanish Dominican in the England of Mary Tudor

José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras

In 1964 I published, in the Rome journal Anthologica Annua, a long article entitled ‘Bartolomé Carranza and the English Catholic Restoration (1554–1558)’. Two years later I brought out an important document in my article ‘Pole and Paul IV: A Celebrated “Apologia” of the English Cardinal (1557)’. Subsequendy, and again on the theme of the English religious climate of those years, appeared my ‘Pole, Carranza, and Fresneda: The reverse sides of a friendship and a hatred’. Then, in 1975, I published a series of letters which Carranza wrote from the Low Countries to England in the years 1557–8. All these, plus the text of four sermons given by Carranza in England, were brought together in 1977 in a volume en tided Fray ftartolomé Carranza and Cardinal Vole: A Navarrese in the English Catholic Restoration (1554–1558).¹ That book brought me a first invitation to Oxford, where I gave a lecture at which Sir Peter Russell and my friend Ronald Truman were present. I never thought that, a quarter of a century later, the theme of my book could become that of a Symposium on ‘Bartolomé Carranza and the England of Mary Tudor’, in Oxford itself, under the auspices of Christ Church, and that I should be invited to open it. I should like to express my warmest thanks for this invitation, one of the greatest satisfactions of my life, proving again that research is not in vain.

It will soon be fifty years since I first set about the task of discovering and getting closer to this figure—Fray Bartolomé Carranza—forgotten and ill-treated by History, and unfortunately litde remembered except for having suffered an inquisitorial investigation that lasted more than seventeen years. Born of modest origins in the old Kingdom of Navarre, when it was still independent, he entered the Dominican Order when very young, distinguished himself as a student and later as a professor in the Colegio de San Gregorio at Valladolid, became a famous preacher, a consultant of the Holy Office, Dominican Provincial of Castile, and twice Imperial theologian at the Council of Trent, where he distinguished himself by his reforming zeal. Twice Charles V wanted to nominate him for a bishopric; he also wished to appoint him confessor to Prince Philip; but Carranza declined these proposals. On the other hand, he accepted the invitation to accompany Prince Philip on his journey to England to marry Mary Tudor and remained in England from July 1554 until July 1557, when he went to the Low Countries and very soon found himself becoming Archbishop of Toledo on the nomination of Philip II. Having arrived in Spain in the summer of 1558, he would be made prisoner by the Inquisition a year later and subjected to an inordinately long trial (procesò). Despite having such misfortunes visited upon him, we owe some thanks to the Inquisition for giving us the possibility of getting to know in extensive detail about Carranza’s time in England.

Among the various stages of his proceso, one consisted of the ‘abonos’, that is, the presentation of the positive facts of his life. Carranza presented these in the form of a hundred questions to be answered by witnesses brought in for the purpose. Now, in that retrospective survey of his life, no fewer than twenty-three questions (running from number forty-two to number sixty-four) are concerned with his stay in England and with his activities during that time. And to substantiate the factual basis of those questions nearly twenty Spanish witnesses were called, people who were present with him in England and close to the Court. It comes as a surprise to find that among the witnesses called was Philip II himself. His statement was given in Madrid on 14 October 1562. In addition to the King, statements were made by the royal secretaries Gonzalo Pérez, Gabriel de Zayas, and Pedro de Hoyo; the royal ‘Aposentador Mayor’ (Quartermaster General), Luis de Venegas; Gómez Suarez de Figueroa, Count of Feria; Ruy Gómez de Silva, Prince of Eboli; Francisco de Castilla, ‘Alcalde de Corte’; Juan de Silva, Marquis of Montemayor; Juan de Benavides, Marquis of Cortes; and others.²

With all this first-hand material I was able to piece together Carranza’s activities in England, an important chapter in his life-story and at the same time an important chapter in the religious history of England, long wholly unknown to English historiography.

Fray Bartolomé Carranza, taken to England by Philip II, appears as a highly-placed figure in Court circles, enjoying particular esteem on the part of the King and Queen and the Papal Legate, Cardinal Reginald Pole. Carranza had an active role in preparing the way for the arrival of Pole in England and would recall that the King personally gave him the news of the Cardinal’s imminent arrival in Whitehall. After he arrived, the difficulties relating to the Kingdom’s return to the Roman obedience had to be faced. In this Carranza played a particular part, in association with the King and Pole. We know that, as regards the restitution of property—monasteries and convents—that formerly belonged to the Church, Carranza favoured a gende approach, and by persuasion rather than by force he achieved the return of three Dominican houses, a Carthusian one, a Benedictine one (Westminster), and a further one belonging to the Knights Hospitallers. Furthermore, he had been given the tide of Commissary for his own Order in England. In the Royal Council he was a regular consultant on religious matters. How far will English historians, I wonder, be able to follow the course of his activity in such high places?

Among his activities at a lower level we encounter his preaching. In 1555 he preached in the King’s Chapel (the Spanish Capilla Real which Philip brought with him to England) and, during Lent of that year, he gave a sermon which he was asked to have published. Thus came into being his little book entitled ‘How to hear the Mass’, printed at London, Antwerp, and Salamanca. We know that he preached at Hampton Court, defending the primacy of the Pope, on St Peter’s Day, in that same year of 1555. In each case, I have published the text.³ He re-established Corpus Christi processions, specifically at Kingston upon Thames (see below, Chapter 8), and preached there before a great concourse of people. In 1556 he accompanied the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, in a Corpus Christi procession at Fulham, and, the following Sunday, himself celebrated Mass and preached at Whitehall. The King and Queen provided liturgical ornaments, silver, and wax candles for the occasion, and many attended, especially Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and the households of Pole and the ambassadors of Venice and Portugal, as well as English people.

When Philip crossed to the Low Countries, in September 1555, he ordered Carranza to remain in England and busy himself with religious matters. Here a matter of outstanding importance was the English Synod that began on 1 November of that year. In this Carranza took an active part. The Synod’s decrees were drawn up with his advice and agreement as instructed by Pole as Legate. In Lent the following year the Synod was suspended so as to allow bishops to visit their dioceses, to permit the visitation of Oxford and Cambridge Universities (see below, Chapter 9), and to assist the work of the Synod, when it began again, with the information thus gathered. It should not be forgotten that, among the decrees of this Synod, there is one relating to the creation of seminaries. This was some years ahead of the decrees that would be issued in the closing stages of the Council of Trent. In line with the aims of the Synod, it fell to Carranza in person to take part in the visitation of Oxford and its thirteen colleges. He was able to satisfy himself that the doctrine taught there was indeed Catholic. Among others teaching there were the Spaniards Fray Pedro de Soto, former confessor to Emperor Charles V, and Fray Juan de Villagarcía, a great friend of Carranza.

Strangely, in questions that Carranza presented in the course of his proceso to be answered by witnesses, he was silent about something regarding the Synod that he would many times repeat in other documents. In view of the ignorance of the English clergy and the disarray brought about by three profound religious changes within a few years, the Synod decided to draw up a set of homilies and an extensive catechism expounding Christian doctrine. The second of these tasks fell to Fray Bartolomé Carranza, who composed his Commentaries on the Chnstian Catechism in England and for England. He wrote it in Spanish, but its translation into Latin and English was immediately set in hand. Does any manuscript of these translations survive, I wonder? The work itself was published at Antwerp in 1558. It comes as a surprise that a work devised to counteract Protestant propaganda reaching England should itself, in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, become an object warranting the accusation of Protestantism.

The Synod of London (or Westminster, as it is sometimes known), with its two sessions planned for 1555–6, represents the most positive factor in the great attempt to restore Roman Catholicism—a project officially endorsed by Parliament The Synod’s decrees, which we have now published, invite study, as does the make-up of the Catholic hierarchy involved in the Synod. Did the latter reassemble in 1556? Did it contribute new information on the state of the dioceses? Did it approve new synodal initiatives? What was on balance the overall outcome of this synodal activity? Did the latter perhaps fall away because things began to move in a new direction?

Among Carranza’s activities in England are some that relate to the repression that marked the second period of Mary’s reign. After an initial period in which a certain spirit of understanding and willingness to proceed by persuasion seems to have prevailed, there followed another where severity took over, extending as far as the persecution of dissidents. It would be interesting to establish the moment of this change and the motivations that brought it about. Was it prompted by intolerance stricdy speaking, or does it rather represent an inevitable reaction against certain forms of provocation and challenge? How far is it possible to know who those were who suffered punishment and repression, and what the reason for their condemnation was?

The cases in which Carranza intervened throw some light on this delicate question. He recalls the case of a ‘heretic sacramentarian’. Was this a Wycliffite, a Calvinist, an Anabaptist? This heretic set upon a Dominican, dressed in clerical (not Dominican) attire, with a knife, when he was distributing communion in the parish church of St Margaret, Westminster. The atrocious nature of the crime, rather than the fact of religious dissidence, merited exemplary punishment. Carranza was in favour of this and gave his approval to the cutting off of the man’s right hand and his subsequent condemnation to the flames; nevertheless, Carranza gave help to the victim of the attack, and assisted his return to the Order in which he had professed. How far is it possible for us to know about the trials of those condemned to death at the end of Mary Tudor’s reign and the reasons for their condemnation?

Other episodes of a repressive character recalled by Carranza and in which he played some part include the following. On his visit to Oxford he found that, buried in the Cathedral, close to the body of St Frideswide, was the wife of Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian apostate who became Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford. Considering her burial in such a place to be a profanation, he ordered her remains to be disinterred and burnt. Another condemnation was of a different order of importance: that of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Carranza recalls Cranmer’s condemnation by the Pope and the College of Cardinals in Rome. In the face of the difficulty of carrying out their sentence, Carranza persisted, as he stresses, even though Cranmer’s supporters were placing obstacles in the way. In a sermon which he preached in the Observant Franciscan church at Greenwich, he had emphasized royal responsibility for ensuring that exemplary punishment was carried out; at the same time he condemned Cranmer’s past conduct. He thereby earned the hostility of those of the Archbishop’s supporters who were present, and who declared that a black-clad friar was waging war on them at Court. The Papal sentence passed on Cranmer dates from 4 December 1555. Right here in Christ Church Cathedral he was disgraded from his episcopal order, on 14 February 1556, by the Bishop of London, Bonner, by Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely, and John Harps field, Archdeacon of London.

Along with this celebrated case, Carranza collaborated in lesser cases where judgement was given by bishops, especially the Bishop of London, and contributed his vote or advice as regards the sentences passed. He recalled in particular the case of Sir John Cheke, who was captured in the Low Countries, condemned, and later reconciled after the opportune recantation that he made before the Queen in St James’s Palace.

Another aspect to be noted of this repressive attitude on Carranza’s part is his effort against the diffusion of heretical books or the vernacular Bibles that had been withdrawn from churches, and his part in the promulgation of an edict against booksellers offering such books for sale.

Indicative of the same spirit is the impulse that he gave to the appointment of Catholics to major posts in government. Carranza says that it was at his request that a Catholic was appointed Chancellor of the Kingdom, against the wishes of certain others. Philip II himself would recall years later that Carranza and Don Juan de Figueroa wrote to him on the matter, and he wrote to Queen Mary, recommending Nicholas Heath for the post of Archbishop of York, and Heath was in fact appointed. Finally, Carranza states that he approved of the exhumation and burning, in Cambridge in December 1557, of the remains of the Continental Protestant preacher Martin Bucer, who had been buried in Great St Mary’s Church. It is not at all surprising, in view of his manifest belligerence in such matters, that Carranza should have acknowledged that his antagonists wanted to kill him and one night broke down the door of his room. Such, in outline, is the story of Fray Bartolomé’s activities in England.

So far I have only touched on his closeness to the King, the Queen, and to Cardinal Pole, the weight he carried in religious questions, the frequent visits he made to one place and another, and the friends with whom he conversed. More needs to be said on this. Between Cardinal Pole and Carranza there was great friendship, which began in their days at the Council of Trent and grew in their time of common endeavour after they had met again in England, the one as Papal Legate and the other as ‘consultant’. The letters between them bear witness to the warmth of their feelings for each other, their shared aspirations, the pastoral demands that they faced. These letters deserve to be read and re-read. To them I would add a remarkable document, Cardinal Pole’s ‘Apologia’, written by him as he faced the hidden persecution that he suffered from Pope Paul IV after he had been suspended from his Legate’s functions and summoned to Rome, where trial and imprisonment would have avaited him, as it did Cardinal Morone.⁴ It w...