Suspicious Moderate

The Life and Writings of Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680)

Anne Ashley Davenport, Danielle M. Peters, Danielle M. Peters

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780268101008
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Dénominations chrétiennes

The historiography of English Catholicism has grown enormously in the last generation, led by scholars such as Peter Lake, Michael Questier, Stefania Tutino, and others. In Suspicious Moderate, Anne Ashley Davenport makes a significant contribution to that literature by presenting a long overdue intellectual biography of the influential English Catholic theologian Francis à Sancta Clara (1598–1680). Born into a Protestant family in Coventry at the end of the sixteenth century, Sancta Clara joined the Franciscan order in 1617. He played key roles in reviving the English Franciscan province and in the efforts that were sponsored by Charles I to reunite the Church of England with Rome. In his voluminous Latin writings, he defended moderate Anglican doctrines, championed the separation of church and state, and called for state protection of freedom of conscience.

Suspicious Moderate offers the first detailed analysis of Sancta Clara's works. In addition to his notorious Deus, natura, gratia (1634), Sancta Clara wrote a comprehensive defense of episcopacy (1640), a monumental treatise on ecumenical councils (1649), and a treatise on natural philosophy and miracles (1662). By carefully examining the context of Sancta Clara's ideas, Davenport argues that he aimed at educating English Roman Catholics into a depoliticized and capacious Catholicism suited to personal moral reasoning in a pluralistic world. In the course of her research, Davenport also discovered that "Philip Scot, " the author of the earliest English discussions of Hobbes (a treatise published in 1650), was none other than Sancta Clara. Davenport demonstrates how Sancta Clara joined the effort to fight Hobbes's Erastianism by carefully reflecting on Hobbes's pioneering ideas and by attempting to find common ground with him, no matter how slight.

NOTES

ONE. Anti-Catholicism and the Sanctity of Conscience

1. William Overton, A godlye and pithie exhortation, made to the iudges of Sussex (London, 1579?), unnumbered pagination.

2. Ibid.: “I will referre it to your own knowledge and conscience that you have a duty to rise up against Roman Catholicism.”

3. See The English Romayne Lyfe. Discovering: The lives of the Englishmen at Roome: the orders of the English Seminarie: the dissention betweene the Englishmen and the Welshmen; the banishing of the Englishmen out of Roome: the Popes sending for them againe: a reporte of many of the paltrie Reliques in Roome, their Vautes under the grounde: their holy Pilgrimages: and a number of other matters, worthy to be read and regarded of every one. There unto is added, the cruell tiranny, used on an Englishman at Roome, his Christian suffering and notable Martirdome, for the Gospell of Iesus Christe, in Anno 1581.

4. Citing from Anthony Munday, The English Roman Life, ed. Philip J. Ayres (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 24–28.

5. Ibid., 38–39 and 42–44.

6. Ibid., 18–19.

7. Charles Dodd (Hugh Tootell) and Mark A. Tierney, Dodd’s Church History of England from the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century to the Revolution in 1688 (London: C. Dolman, 1840), 3:36 and 37. See also the Jesuit Robert Parsons’s argument against occasional conformity, A briefe discourse containing certaine reasons, why Catholikes refuse to goe to church (1601).

8. The Act Against Recusants (1593), 35 Elizabeth, cap. 2, in Documents Illustrative of English Church History, ed. Henry Gee and William John Hardy (New York: Macmillan, 1896), 498–508; Dodd and Tierney, Dodd’s Church History of England, 3:75–170, and appendix 11, p. xl, and appendix 38, p. ccxv. A useful summary of penal laws against Catholic recusants is found in Elliot Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans under Elizabeth I and James I (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 11–14.

9. The Act Against Recusants (1593), 35 Elizabeth, cap. 2, 499.

10. A true and perfect relation of the whole proceedings against the late most barbarous traitors, Garnet a Iesuite, and his confederates (London, 1601), unnumbered pagination.

11. Pope Pius V’s 1570 bull Regnans in excelsis against Elizabeth, which also explicitly absolved “the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm” from oaths and “from any duty arising from lordship, fealty and obedience,” was posted on Bishop’s Gate in London and confirmed by Sixtus V in 1588. See Thomas Norton, A disclosing of the great bull and certain calves that he hath gotten, and specially the monster bull that roared at my Lord Byshops gate (London: Iohn Daye, 1570).

12. John Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and others in England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Camden Society, 1861), v. See also Tierney’s commentary in Dodd’s Church History of England, 3:29–31.

13. The arraignment, tryal and condemnation of Robert Earl of Essex and Henry Earl of Southampton, at Westminster the 19th of February, 1600 and in the 43 year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth for rebelliously conspiring an endeavouring the subversion of the government, by confederacy with Tyr-Owen, that popish traytor and his complices (London, 1679), 16.

14. Ibid., 5, 12, 15, and, especially, 21, where Cecil confronts Essex: “Your religion appears by Blunt, Davies and Tresham, your chiefest Councellors for the present, and by promising Liberty of Conscience hereafter.”

15. Dodd’s Church History of England, 4:8n.

16. Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–1625 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), chap. 3.

17. Dodd’s Church History of England, 3:47–56.

18. Ibid., 53 and 55–56. The moderate priests came to be known as “Appellants” because they appealed to Rome against George Blackwell.

19. Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland, introduction, xxxiv–xxxvi.

20. For Catholic optimism at the advent of the Stuart monarchy, see Dodd’s Church History of England, 4:35–37, along with Tierney’s extensive footnotes. See also Alice Hogge, God’s Secret Agents (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 300–309. For a more nuanced view, see the account of reactions in Oxford, described by Gabriel Powel in A consideration of the papists reasons of state and religion, for toleration of poperie in England (Oxford, 1604), 4: “Some of the simpler sort crying out in expresse terms alas! alas! how shall the poore catholickes do now! We are all undone!”

21. Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland, 61. For Northumberland’s role in presenting the petition to James, see Mark Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 128.

22. Reprinted in Dodd’s Church History of England, vol. 3, appendix 8, lxxii–lxxvi.

23. The Catholics’ Supplication, in Dodd’s Church History of England, 4:lxxiii: “The gates, arches and pyramids of France proclaimed the present king pater patriae et pacis restitutor because that kingdom, being well nigh torn in pieces with civil wars, and made a prey to foreign foes, was, by his provident wisdom and valour, acquieted in itself, and hostile strangers expelled; the which he principally effected by condenscending to tolerate them of an adverse religion to that was openly professed.”

24. Ibid., 4:lxxiv.

25. James’s letter to Cecil, in Bruce, Correspondence of James VI of Scotland, 37.

26. Mark Nicholls, “Treason’s Reward: The Punishment of Conspirators in the Bye Plot of 1603,” The Historical Journal 38, no. 4 (1995): 822.

27. Gabriel Powel [1576–1611], The Catholikes supplication unto the Kings maiestie; for toleration of catholike religion in England with short notes or animadversions in the margine. Whereunto in annexed parallel-wise, a supplicatorie counterpoyse of the Protestants, unto the same excellent maiestie. Together with the reasons on both sides, for and against toleration of divers religions (London, 1603), 18, margin gloss 35: “As if the Pope by one word were not able to dispence with all this; and to cause any Papist to doe any thing even at a becke under payne of the greater damanation of bodie and soule, in case of refusall.”

28. Powel, “Catholikes reasons,” in ibid., 20.

29. Ibid., 21–25.

30. Ibid., 35.

31. Basilikon doron (Edinburgh, 1599), in Political Works of James I, ed. Charles McIlwain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), 16. See further John J. LaRocca, S.J., “‘Who Can’t Pray with Me, Can’t Love Me’: Toleration and the Early Jacobean Recusancy Policy,” Journal of British Studies 23, no. 2 (1984): 22.

32. Letter to Cecil, in Bruce, Correspondence of James VI of Scotland, 36. For the role of conscience in conserving religion, see Basilikon doron, 13.

33. Letter of James to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, dated from Hatfield March 24, 1603, in Bruce, Correspondence of James VI of Scotland, 76.

34. Cf. LaRocca, “‘Who Can’t Pray with Me, Can’t Love Me,’” 22–36.

35. The Trew Law of Free Monarchies; or, The Reciprock and Mutuall Duetie betwixt a Free King, and His Naturall Subjects (Edinburgh, 1598), in Political Works of James I, 59: “We never read that ever the Prophets perswaded the people to rebell against the Prince, howsoever wicked he was.”

36. See James’s letter to Cecil, in Bruce, Correspondence of James VI of Scotland, 36: “I wolde be sorie that catholikes shoulde so multiplie as thay micht be able to practice thaire olde principles on us.”

37. Cited by Nicholls, “Treason’s Reward,” 829.

38. See “Epistle to James,” in A survey of the new religion detecting manie grosse absurdities which it implieth. Set forth by Matthew Kellison, doctor and Professour of Divinitie. Divided into eight books (Printed at Douay, 1603), unnumbered pagination. Kellison writes, at the start of the dedication: “All rejoyce at your coronation.”

39. Ibid.: “I think now to be the very time, when the Legates of the Kings of the earth, in their Lordes and Masters name, wish you a long and prosperous Raigne, to salute you from the Great Monarche of heaven, whose Legate I am, in that I ame a Preest, though a miserable sinner, in that I am a Manne, and your Maiesties lowest subjecte, in that I am an English man.”

40. Ibid.: “I offer myself as your maiesties most lowly and faithfull servaunte; which is a guifte so great, be ye giver never so vile, that ye great King of heaven requireth, yea desireth no more at our handes, but esteemeth that we give all, when we give ourselves and that we give noe litle, when we give our All.”

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. “A Protestation of Allegiance made by thirteen missioners to Queen Elizabeth, January 31, 1603, in Dodd’s Church History of England, vol. 3, appendix 36, clxxxviii.

44. Ibid., 47.

45. John Colleton, A Supplication to the Kings most excellent Majestie, wherein, severall reasons of state and religion are briefely touched; not unworthie to be read, and pondered by the lords, knights, and burgeses of the present parliament, and other of all estates. prostrated at his Highnes feete by true affected subiects (English secret press, 1604), 9–10: “The permission of the libertie wee intreate, is, neyther in reason of state, a thing hurtfull, nor by the doctrine of Protestants unlawfull to be granted.… And the favour we sue for, is but the benefite of that position which they held for most true and scripturall.”

46. Ibid., 48–49.

47. Ibid., 49: “Then they will all ioyne in one supplication to the Pope, for recalling such priestes out of the Land, whosoever they might be or how many soever.”

48. Matthew Sutcliffe, The supplication of certaine masse-priests falsely called catholikes (London, 1604); and Gabriel Powel, A consideration of the papists reasons of state and religion, for toleration of poperie in England intimated in their supplication unto the King’s Maiestie (Oxford, 1604).

49. John Lecey, A petition apologeticall, presented to the Kinges most...