Wales, 1587–1689

This chapter considers the nature and growth of Protestant nonconformity in Wales from its first glimmerings in the Elizabethan period down to the Toleration Act. The introduction explores the particular attraction of religious dissent in the historiography of early modern Wales, which has imparted a particular cast to our understanding of this period. The chapter then discusses the relative weakness of Puritanism in the country before the mid-seventeenth century, although the important case of John Penry in the 1580s and 1590s is examined. Attention then turns to the crucial developments of the Civil War period and the work of the Commission for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales (1650–3) which was key to establishing a robust Dissenting presence in the principality. The relationship between religious nonconformity, translation, and the Welsh language is a theme that runs throughout the chapter.

Ireland

The Irish history of religious nonconformity, dissent, and toleration is distinctive. Protestant nonconformity and dissent in early modern Ireland was both energized and enervated by its relationships to the Established Church, the majority Catholic population, and the changing political environments of the neighbouring island and the religious loyalties of its governments and royal families. In securing the rights of the Church by law established, bishops were unable to prohibit the worship of the most important groups of Protestant nonconformists, who seemed continually to grow in numbers, wealth, and influence. The English Toleration Act (1689) made little difference to the circumstances of Irish Protestant Dissenters, and although they benefited from James’s Declaration of Indulgence (1687) and the granting of limited rights for Dissenters under the Irish Toleration Act (1719), their access to the opportunities of public service was only guaranteed with the removal of the sacramental test in 1780.

Religious Nonconformity and the Quality of Mercy

This chapter explores the relationship between religious arguments for and against the mitigation of legal penalties for religious nonconformity, and the arguments in Shakespeare’sMerchant of Venicefor and against the moderation of legal rigour. It argues that Elizabethan legal debates overepieikeiaor equity were heavily inflected with the debate over conscientious nonconformity. Shakespeare’s play restages these debates, not only in the courtroom scene but in a variety of moral dilemmas or cases of conscience, repeatedly supporting the ideal of individual conscience against the claims of Church of England conformists such as Richard Hooker that law can only be mitigated when it serves the public good.

Heresy, Medicine and Paracelsianism in Sixteenth-Century Italy: the Case of Girolamo Donzellini (1513–1587)

Many Italian physicians embraced Protestant ideas during the sixteenth Century: this suggests a connection between medical science and religious nonconformity. But why were physicians so exposed to the influence of Protestantism? Can we suppose that their heretical views affected the way in which they conceived medicine? And can we posit a particular link between certain kinds of medical thinking and specific religious doctrines? In order to analyse this relationship, I will focus on a specific character: Girolamo Donzellini. As a physician of great renown, put on trial five times by the Venetian Inquisition and eventually sentenced to death, Donzellini is a good case study. Moreover, his exposure to the works of Paracelsus allows one to put forward some considerations on Italian Paracelsianism, showing that medical attitudes often described as incompatible by historians could actually coexist in the same person, as a result of the complexity of the cultural and religious context.