Richard Morison, Official Apologist for Henry VIII

PMLA ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 406-425
Author(s):  
W. Gordon Zeeveld
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Single Body ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Political Works ◽  
Early English ◽  
Present Description

Before the theory that early English humanism suffered an arrest at the death of More and Fisher hardens into dogma, it may be well to draw attention to the importance of a small group of English scholars who under the patronage of Henry VIII and Cromwell pursued classical studies in the household of Reginald Pole in Italy during the second decade of the sixteenth century, and who later put their learning to use in the king's service in England. One of that group, Richard Morison, deserves more than the scanty notice he has heretofore received. Drafted at a critical moment after the outbreak of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, he was advanced literally overnight to a position of strategic importance as official propagandist against the rebels. The four tracts which he wrote in 1536 and 1539 in support of the government's action, together with his unpublished writings, constitute the largest single body of evidence, though by no means the only evidence, for the persistence of the humanistic tradition in the period immediately after More's death. Moreover, they reveal a hitherto unsuspected acquaintance with the political works of Machiavelli, whose influence in Cromwellian political policy has recently been denied. The present description of the literary career of Morison is therefore of importance for its bearing on the history both of humanism and of political ideas in early Tudor England.

scholarly journals Erasmus and the Politics of Translation in Tudor England

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Lucy Wooding
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Significant Figure ◽  
Original Intention

Desiderius Erasmus was a significant figure in early sixteenth-century England, and many of his works were translated into English during the reign of Henry VIII. In the process of translation the original intention of these works was subverted as Erasmus's reputation was appropriated by his translators and their patrons for their own purposes. His works were recast in English form to serve a variety of different agendas, from those of Henrician conservatives to Protestants pushing for more radical religious reform. This article looks at some of these translations, showing how they illustrate the variations in religious attitudes during these volatile years and the competing claims for validation. In particular, Erasmus's pronouncements on the importance of Scripture translation were annexed and deployed in the debate over the English Bible, demonstrating how his views about translation were in themselves translated to reflect the political and religious needs of the English situation.

History of Universities

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
College Education ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
History Of Higher Education ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
History Of ◽  
Humanist Tradition ◽  
History Of Universities

This book contains the customary mix of learned chapters and book review chapters which cover a variety of aspects of the history of higher education, focusing in this case on Corpus Christi College in Oxford and Tudor England. Chapters look at topics such as Church, State, and corpus; patronage, performativity, and ideas at Corpus Christi; the English humanist tradition; musical participation in early Tudor education; life in a sixteenth-century college; education during the reign of Henry VIII; Tudor Oxford; and English antiquarianism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English

Mythographies were books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material. Extremely popular during the Renaissance, these works appealed to a wide range of readers. While the European mythographies of the sixteenth century have been utilized by scholars, the short, early English mythographies, written from 1577 to 1647, have puzzled critics. The first generation of English mythographers did not, as has been suggested, try to compete with their Italian predecessors. Instead, they made mythographies into rhetorical instruments designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Exploring these mythographies can contribute to previous insights into myth in the Renaissance offered by studies of iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory.

The Lost Works of Thomas Becon

The Library ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-497
Author(s):  
Jonathan Reimer
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Early Publication ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Publication History ◽  
Literary Output

Abstract This article attributes four lost works to the literary corpus of the English clergyman and bestselling Tudor devotional author Thomas Becon (1512–1567): The Shelde of Saluacion, An Heauenly Acte, Christen Prayers and Godly Meditacions, and The Resurreccion of the Masse. It ascribes these texts to Becon in light of three types of corroborating evidence: contemporary attribution, parallels of content, and early publication history. These four lost works not only furnish a fuller picture of his literary output, but also provide new insights into his career, rhetoric, and theology. As Becon was the most popular evangelical devotional author writing in English during the sixteenth century, this analysis of his hitherto unattributed books makes a valuable contribution to the bibliography of Tudor England, especially during the transformative years of the Henrician, Edwardine, Marian, and Elizabethan Reformations.

Reform and Revisionism in the Study of Henrician England - Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham. By Barbara J. Harris. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986. Pp. viii + 334. $37.50. - The Power of the Tudor Nobility. By G. W. Bernard. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985. Pp. 228. - Rome ou l'Angleterre? Les reactions politiques des Catholiques Anglais au moment du schisme. By Jean-Pierre Moreau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984. Pp. 377. - Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII. By Maria Dowling. London: Croom Helm, 1986. Pp. 283. $43.00. - Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics, and Reform, 1500–1550. Edited by Alistair Fox and John Guy. Oxford: Basil Black well, 1986. Pp. vi + 242. - The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 3: The Collegiate University. Edited by James McConica. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. $125.00. - Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration. Edited by Christopher Coleman and David Starkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. viii + 219. - Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia. By Lacey Baldwin Smith. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. 342. $25.00. - Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance. By Margaret King. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. xxi + 524.

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-197
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University ◽  
Oxford University Press

Presidential Address: Tudor Government: The Points of Contact III. The Court

1976 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Elton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Interesting Topic ◽  
History Books

WHEN on the previous two occasions I discussed Parliament and Council as political centres, as institutions capable of assisting or undermining stability in the nation, I had to draw attention to quite a few unanswered questions. However, I also found a large amount of well established knowledge on which to rely. Now, in considering the role of the King's or Queen's Court, I stand more baffled than ever, more deserted. We all know that there was a Court, and we all use the term with frequent ease, but we seem to have taken it so much for granted that we have done almost nothing to investigate it seriously. Lavish descriptions abound of lavish occasions, both in the journalism of the sixteenth century and in the history books, but the sort of study which could really tell us what it was, what part it played in affairs, and even how things went there for this or that person, seems to be confined to a few important articles. At times it has all the appearance of a fully fledged institution; at others it seems to be no more than a convenient conceptual piece of shorthand, covering certain people, certain behaviour, certain attitudes. As so often, the shadows of the seventeenth century stretch back into the sixteenth, to obscure our vision. Analysts of the reigns of the first two Stuarts, endeavouring to explain the political troubles of that age, increasingly concentrate upon an alleged conflict between the Court and the Country; and so we are tempted, once again, to seek the prehistory of the ever interesting topic in the age of Elizabeth or even Henry VIII.

VIII.—Elizabethan Sheldon Tapestries

Archaeologia ◽  
1925 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 181-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Country Houses ◽  
Similar Character ◽  
Fine Collection

For many centuries, though a good many tapestries were woven in France, Flanders was the chief centre of the industry, and supplied the various European countries with tapestries and hangings of a similar character. Cloths of Arras were in demand for English country houses, and large purchases were made from time to time by the richer nobles. It was, however, at the beginning of the sixteenth century that tapestries came increasingly into demand and favour in England, as is evident by the fine collection made by Cardinal Wolsey for Hampton Court, and that of King Henry VIII for his own palaces. The inventory taken after his death records over 2,000 specimens, while a writer states that ‘one ship from the Continent carried no less than one thousand tapestries for the King of England’. Agents were employed in Flanders to secure the finest specimens as they were woven.

A Venetian Secretary in England: an unpublished diplomatic report in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice1

1997 ◽  
Vol 70 (172) ◽  
pp. 170-181
Author(s):  
Robert Barrington
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Political Analysis

Abstract Venetian diplomatic relazioni are a familiar source to sixteenth‐century historians. They often present a detailed philosophical and political analysis of the courts to which Venice had sent ambassadors. At their best, they are sophisticated humanist commentaries on the state. Relazioni from Tudor England were no exception. Unfortunately, the politically turbulent years of the early Reformation are marked by a break in the Venetian relazioni coinciding with the period when diplomatic representation was suspended. However, a newly‐discovered document reproduced here, from the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, is almost certainly a secretary's report which fills this chronological gap. The document is formal in tone and follows the structure of a model relazione. The lengthy descriptions of England's history and geography and references to contemporary events suggest a date of c. 1540.

scholarly journals The Dissolution of the Monasteries and its Impact on Education in Tudor Times

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Marek Smoluk
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
English Society ◽  
Selective Basis ◽  
Lord Chancellor ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Made In ◽  
Key Questions

In 1536 the English Parliament under pressure from Henry VIII and the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, gave its consent for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and abbeys in the king’s realm, and three years later with the sanction of MPs some of the greater religious houses also suffered the same fate. The principal aim of this paper is to assess the importance of this political decision with a view to examining the progress being made in the field of education in England in the middle of the sixteenth century resultant upon this dissolution. The evaluation of the merits and demerits originating from the suppression of the English monasteries is made in terms of both primary and academic education. The answers to these key questions are preceded by a short analysis of the reputation monasteries and abbeys had acquired by that time. Also on a selective basis, some opinions have been presented here to provide an overall picture of the standing of the monks and nuns and their concomitant activities, as perceived through the eyes of English society; the eminent scholars and humanists In particular. Subsequently, before assessing the consequences resulting from the dissolution of the religious houses in England, some consideration is given to the reasoning and rationale which lay behind both Henry VIII and his Lord Chancellor’s political decisions.

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