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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
IN the early 1520s, the doctors and masters of the University of Oxford—like their peers in Paris, Louvain, Cologne, and elsewhere-faced a profound threat in the emergence of the Lutheran heresy. It is hard to exaggerate the problems of heresy for early sixteenth century mentalities. Heresy was, of course, an ‘iniquitous disease’ which could infect the mind of the Church and endanger the souls of all Christians. Popular heresies were a political menace which easily fomented rebellion. They could coalesce social and economic tensions into open attacks on the traditional order. But a learned heresy, as Luther’s at least in part certainly was, posed a particular challenge to the universities. While it is true that the academies had produced more than a few heretics themselves, one of the principal purposes of the universities (and especially their theology faculties) was to refute errors when they were heard, to proclaim orthodoxy anew, to train thinkers and preachers to oppose the heretics: in short, to fulfill their claims (made increasingly often during the later Middle Ages) to act, on the basis of their expertise, as religious authorities.
1 For surveys of these developments and reactions, see Lytle, G. F., ‘Universities as Religious Authorities in the Later Middle Ages and Reformation,’ in Lytle, G. F. (ed.), Reform and Authority in the Medieval and Reformation Church (Washington 1981) pp. 67–97Google Scholar; and Lytle, , ‘The Science of God and the Problems of Life’ in Crombie, A. C. (ed.), The Rational Arts of Living (Northampton, MA, in press)Google Scholar. On the Continental universities, see Hempsall, D., ‘Martin Luther and the Sorbonne 1519-21’, BIHR 46 (1973) pp. 28–40 (and ibid. 49 (1976) pp. 296–9)Google Scholar; Farge, J. K., Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology, 1500-1536 (Toronto 1980)Google Scholar, and his Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France: the faculty of theology of Paris, 1500-1543 (Leiden 1985); and Higman, F. M., Censorship and the Sorbonne (Geneva 1979)Google Scholar. For the English context in general, see Elton, G. R., Policy and Police (Cambridge 1972)Google Scholar; Surtz, E., The Works and Dap of John Fisher (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, A., Thomas More (Oxford 1983)Google Scholar; McConica, J. K., English Humanists and Reformation Politics (Oxford 1963) and Thomas More (London 1977)Google Scholar; Scarisbrick, J.J., Henry V111 (London 1968)Google Scholar; and n. 5 below. Luther’s Continental opponents are also studied in Lauchert, F., Die italieneschen literarischen (Niewkoop 1972)Google Scholar; Brooks, P. N. (ed.), Seven-headed Luther (Oxford 1983)Google Scholar; Wicks, J., Cajetan Responds (Washington 1978)Google Scholar; and a number of recent works on Eck (see Workman’s, J. review, SCJ 13 (1982) pp. 150–1).Google Scholar
2 For Lollardy and the Reformation, see Aston, M., Lollards and Reformers (London 1984)Google Scholar and Davis, J. F., ‘Lollardy and the Reformation in England’ ARG 73 (1982) pp. 217–36Google Scholar.
3 For Reformation Cambridge, Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge 1958)Google Scholar; Lake, P., Moderate Puritans and the Reformation Church (Cambridge 1982).Google Scholar
4 Allen, P. S. (ed.), Opus Epistolarum [Des. Erasmi Roterodami] (Oxford 1906 ff.), 111, 494.Google Scholar
5 The best account of the whole controversy surrounding Luther’s Babylonian Captivity, and some of the responses to it, is Headley, J. M., ‘The Controversy,’ in his edition of More’s Responsio ad Lutherum in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. volume 5, part II (New Haven 1969), 715Google Scholar ff Also see Tjernagel, N. S., Henry V111 and the Lutherans (St. Louis 1965)Google Scholar; Gogan, B., The Common Corps of Christendom (Leiden 1982)Google Scholar, cap. III; Rupp, G., ‘The Battle of the Books: the ferment of ideas and the beginning of the Reformation,’ in Brooks, P. N. (ed.), Reformation Principle and Practice: essays in honour of A. G.Dickens (London 1980) pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
6 On Luther’s works in England, Meyer, C., ‘Henry VIII Burns Luther’s Books 12 May, 1521,’ JEH, 9 (1958) pp. 173–87Google Scholar (esp. 175-7); Allen (ed.), Opus Epistolarum III p. 606.
7 Sturge, C., Cuthbert Tunstal (London 1938) pp. 360–1Google Scholar for the text of his letter, Meyer pp. 180-2.
8 Brewer, J. S. et al. (eds.),Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London 1862 ff.), 111 (1), p. 449 (no. 1193)Google Scholar. McConica, English Humanists, pp. 88-9. Clebsch, W. A., England’s Earliest Protestants, 1520-1530 (New Haven 1964).Google Scholar
9 Bowker, M., The Henrician Reformation (Cambridge 1981) pp. 58–9Google Scholar for the text of Longland’s letter to the university, and pp. 57-64 for the response to heresy in the 1520s.
10 Letters and Papers, III (i) p. 468; Scarisbrick, Henry V111 pp. 110-16; Meyer pp. 182-5.
11 For brief accounts of these men’s careers, see Emden (O) HI p. 1590; II p. 1053; I pp. 268,470 respectively.
12 Brown, R. (ed.), Calendar of Stale Papers…Venice… (London 1864 ff.) 111 pp. 210,213Google Scholar; Meyer pp. 184-5; Surrz John Fisher caps 1, XVI-XVII.
13 For good accounts of the Assertio and the negotiations, see Scarisbrick Henry VIII pp. 110-16, and references there; Headley, ‘The Controversy,’ pp. 718-25; Doernberg, E., Henry VIII and Luther (London 1961).Google Scholar
14 Statutes of the College of the University of Oxford (London 1853)1 (Lincoln), p. 7.
15 For the best account of these English and Continental accusations and Oxford sensibilities, see Crowder, C. M. D., ‘Some Aspects of the English “Nation” at the Council of Constance’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1953)Google Scholar. Several chapters of the forthcoming vol. II of The History of the University of Oxford (ed. J. Catto) will analyse the reactions in detail. Also see Smith, K. S., ‘The Ecclesiology of Controversy: scripture, tradition and church in the theology of Thomas Netter of Walden (1372-1430)’, (Cornell Ph. D. diss., 1983)Google Scholar. Edward Powell does not cite Netter in the work discussed below, but the latter’s influence in early sixteenth century Oxford still needs to be analyzed.
16 While the emergence of a large number of rival theology faculties across Europe is often cited as a contributing cause, Courtenay, W. J. has made a case for the decline in the intellectual quality of Oxford from the later fourteenth century in, ‘The Effect of the Black Death on English Higher Education’, Speculum 55 (1980) pp. 696–714.Google Scholar My own views will be argued in my forthcoming social history of late medieval Oxford and my studies of the theology faculty in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
17 For these two men’s careers, see Emden (O) II p. 1047; III PP. 1510-11, and the D.N.B. X p. 1185; XVI pp. 239-40.
18 Mitchell, W.J. (ed.), Epistolae Academicae Oxon. 1508-96 (Oxford 1980) pp. 109–10.Google Scholar
19 Ibid. pp. 110-11.
20 Ibid. pp. 111-13.
21 Ibid. pp. 113-14.
22 Ibid. See also Lytle, ‘Universities as Religious Authorities.’ and for the universities and the divorce, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, caps. 7-8; Kelley, H. A., The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford 1976)Google Scholar cap. 10.
23 By Pinson, London, 1523. For a discussion of the printing and the fact that Powell’s work was printed before More’s first refutation of the same year, see Headley, ‘The Controversy’, p. 793.
24 Emden (O) HI pp. 1510-11; for his proposed lectures on St. Augustine (from which duty he may later have been excused), see Oxford, University Archives, Registrum G, fol. 24r.
25 Powell, Propugnaculum, preface.
26 Ibid. fol. 6, 39V.
27 Ibid. fol. 24.
28 Ibid. fol. 13.
29 Ibid. fol. 7.
30 Ibid. fol. 40.
31 Ibid. fol. 43V.
32 Ibid. fol. 56,78.
33 Ibid. fol. 27V, 74.
34 Ibid. fol. 120.
35 Ibid. fol. 150.
36 Ibid. fol. 158-62.
37 For 1528, see Clebsch pp. 79-80; for 1530, see Oxford, Univeristy Archives, Letter Book FF, fols. 109-18.
38 For what follows, in addition to the sources cited in n. 17, see Paul, J. E., Catherine of Aragon and Her Friends (London 1966)Google Scholar. Dowling, M., ‘Humanist Support for Katherine of Aragon’, BIHR 57 (1984) pp. 46–55Google Scholar. For the Bristol background see Chester, A. G., Hugh Latimer (Philadelphia 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar cap. 13; and Skeeters, Martha C., ‘The Clergy ofBristol, 1530-1570’, (U of Texas Ph.D. diss., 1984)Google Scholar cap. II.
39 For the best recent account, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 378 ff On Barnes and other aspects of the context, see Clebsch; Rupp, E. G., Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge 1949)Google Scholar; and Chester, A. G., ‘Robert Barnes and the Burning of the Books’, Huntington Library Quarterly 14 (1950-1) pp. 221–2Google Scholar; Tjernagel, N. S., ‘Dr Robert Barnes and Anglo-Lutheran Relations, 1521-1540’, (U of Iowa Ph.D. diss., 1955)Google Scholar esp. cap. VIII. Also of interest is the anonymous c. 1540-1 pamphlet The Metynge of Doctor Barons [Barnes] and Doctor Powell at Paradise Gate… [STC 1473].
40 Fisher, John, De ventate corporis it sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia … aduersus Iohannem Oecolampadium, in his Opera (Wirceburgi 1597) pp. 748–9Google Scholar; Surrz, JoAn Fisher pp. 49-50.
41 Rupp, ‘The Battle of the Books’ p. 12; Chester, Hugh Latimer p. 88.
42 Mayor, J. E. B. (ed.), The English Works of John Fisher, Part I (London 1876) pp. 339Google Scholar; Sum, John Fisher pp. 322-3.
43 Sura, John Fisher pp. 330-1.
44 (London, 1582); Rosenberg, E., Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York 1955) pp. 260–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For this period, see also Dent, C. M., Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford 1983).Google Scholar