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Treacherous Faith The Specter of Heresy in Early
Modern English Literature and Culture 1st Edition David
Loewenstein Digital Instant Download
Author(s): David Loewenstein
ISBN(s): 9780199203390, 0199203393
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 4.56 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
T R E A C H E RO U S FA I T H
This page intentionally left blank
 Treacherous Faith
The Specter of Heresy in Early Modern English
Literature and Culture

D AV I D L O E W E N S T E I N

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© David Loewenstein 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 978–0–19–920339–0
As printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 In memoriam
Fritz Loewenstein, 1926–2012
 Acknowledgments
This is a long book and I am grateful for the support of a number of institutions as
I have worked on it over the years. I thank the Institute for the Humanities at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison for appointing me to a Senior Fellowship that
enabled me to undertake a book of this scope and complexity and for providing a
stimulating interdisciplinary environment. Lady Margaret Hall and Merton Col-
lege both welcomed me warmly as a Visiting Fellow, enabling me to spend a highly
enjoyable and productive year in Oxford during 2005–6. Finally, I am deeply
grateful to The Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Endowment for the
Humanities for providing a crucial year of leave in 2011–12 in which I deepened
the research for this book and finished writing it. The interdisciplinary culture of
the Folger Library and the generous assistance of its outstanding librarians contrib-
uted in incalculable ways to my work.
Over the years I have been writing this book, many colleagues and friends have
given me valuable advice, responded to questions, challenged me to refine or
defend my arguments, and offered support: Sharon Achinstein, Norman Burns,
James Carley, Thomas Corns, David Como, Brian Cummings, Heather Dubrow,
Thomas Freeman, Achsah Guibbory, Ann Hughes, John Kerrigan, Paulina Kewes,
Laura Knoppers, Nanami Kobayashi, Barbara Lewalski, David Loades, Diarmaid
MacCulloch, Richard McCabe, John Morrill, Janel Mueller, David Norbrook, Jason
Rosenblatt, Elizabeth Sauer, Jonathan Sheehan, James Simpson, Daniel Shore, Paul
Stevens, Henry S. Turner, James G. Turner, and Michael Witmore. I am saddened
that Kevin Sharpe died before this book was published; he was always the liveliest
of interlocutors. Kristiane Stapleton and Eric Vivier provided valuable assistance as
I prepared the book for press.
At Oxford University Press, Andrew McNeillie strongly encouraged me to keep
Treacherous Faith as one large cross-disciplinary book. His creativity, keen intelli-
gence, and large imagination contributed much to this project as it developed. At
the Press, Jacqueline Baker and Rachel Platt have offered invaluable advice and
support in the later stages of my work on this book. I also thank Francesca White,
my copy-editor, for her help and expertise. I am likewise grateful to my production
editor, Rosie Wells, for her advice.
My wife Jennifer suggested the book’s title, Treacherous Faith, and patiently lis-
tened to me articulate many of its arguments. My spirited and good-humored
daughter, Stella, distracted me when I needed it.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my father who died as it was about to
go to press. He was a man who practiced medicine his whole career but who
believed keenly in the importance of the humanities.
Portions of this book have appeared earlier in different forms. This material has
been extensively revised and expanded to suit the arguments developed in Treach-
erous Faith. I am grateful for permission to draw upon these earlier publications:
 Acknowledgments vii

“Treason against God and State: Blasphemy in Milton’s Culture and Paradise Lost,”
in Stephen B. Dobranski and John Rumrich (eds.), Milton and Heresy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 176–98; “Writing and the Persecution of
Heretics in Henry VIII’s England: The Examinations of Anne Askew,” in David
Loewenstein and John Marshall (eds.), Heresy, Politics, and Literature in Early Mod-
ern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 11–39;
“Toleration and the Specter of Heresy in Milton’s England,” in Elizabeth Sauer and
Sharon Achinstein (eds.), Milton and Toleration (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007), pp. 45–71; “The War against Heresy in Milton’s England,” Milton Studies,
47 (2008), 185–218; “Heresy and Treason,” in Brian Cummings and James
Simpson (eds.), Cultural Reformations: Medieval to Renaissance in Literary History,
Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature, 2 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), pp. 264–86.
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents
List of Illustrations xi
List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1

PA RT I : T H E S P E C T E R O F H E R E S Y A N D
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN ENGLISH
R E F O R M AT I O N L I T E R A RY C U LT U R E
1. Religious Demonization, Anti-Heresy Polemic, and Thomas More 23
Thomas More: Heretic Hunter or Humanist Saint? 26
The Specter of Evangelical Heresy and A Dialogue Concerning Heresies 33
New Heretics and Cunning Theatricalism 47
More’s Dialogue Shuts Down 50
Defender of the Faith: Making Heretics and Demonizing Tyndale
in More’s Confutation 54
Conclusion: More, Heresy-Making, and Religious Fear 66

2. Anne Askew and the Culture of Heresy-Hunting in Henry VIII’s

England 69
Fears of Sacramentarianism and the Hunt for Heretics 72
Polemical Tactics and Reformation Hermeneutics 85

3. Burning Heretics and Fashioning Martyrs: Religious Violence

in John Foxe and Reformation England 103
Foxe’s Emergence and the Culture of Heresy-Hunting 106
Religious Extremism and Mild Martyrdom 108
Representing “Heretics” and Fashioning Martyrs: From Tyndale
to Cranmer 123
Conclusion: “Seas of Discord and Contention” 152

4. The Specter of Heretics in Later Elizabethan and Jacobean Writing 157

Constructing Heretics at St. Paul’s Cross: Richard Bancroft and
Fears of Puritan Separatism 158
Creating the Specter of Anabaptism and Thomas Nashe’s
The Unfortunate Traveller 164
Spenser and Anabaptist Subversion 172
The Specter of Familism to James VI and I 176
x Contents

PA RT I I : T H E WA R A G A I N S T H E R E S Y
I N M I LTO N ’ S E N G L A N D
5. The Specter of Heresy and Blasphemy in the English Revolution:
From Heresiographers to the Spectacle of James Nayler 191
Heresy-Making and Religious Warfare 192
The Heresiography: Constructing Heretics and the Demonizing
Imagination 197
The Warfaring Heresiographer: Thomas Edwards’s Self-Presentation 213
Monstrous Toleration and the Specter of Heresy 217
Fears of Blasphemy in the Interregnum: James Nayler as
Blasphemous Heretic and Cause Célèbre 224

6. The Specter of Heresy and the Struggle for Toleration:

John Goodwin, William Walwyn, and Richard Overton 237
John Goodwin: Heresy, Independency, and the Struggle for Toleration 238
William Walwyn: Religious Demonizing and the Tolerant Imagination 244
Richard Overton: The Culture of Heresy-Making and the
Dramatic Pamphlet 256

7. John Milton: Toleration and “Fantastic Terrors of Sect and Schism” 267
Milton and the “Terrors” of Heresy in the 1640s 267
Milton’s Later Prose and the “Terrors” of Heresy, Blasphemy, and
Toleration 282

8. Fears of Heresy, Blasphemy, and Religious Schism in Milton’s

Culture and Paradise Lost 297
Heresy Fears in Milton’s Culture from the English Revolution
to the Restoration 299
Cunning Heretics and Milton’s Satan 307
Religious Schism, Faction, and Uniformity 318
Blasphemy in Milton’s Culture and Paradise Lost 324
Paradise Lost as a Poem of Toleration? 341

Epilogue: Making Heretics and Bunyan’s Vanity Fair 345

Endnotes 349
Select Bibliography 438
Index 469
 List of Illustrations
2.1 The execution of Anne Askew; from Robert Crowley, The Confutation of . . .
Nicholas Shaxton (London, 1548). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian
Library, Oxford. 70
2.2 The title page of The first examinacyon of Anne Askewe (Wesel, 1546).
Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 75
2.3 The title page to the 1539 Byble in Englyshe (London, 1539). Reproduced by
permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 80
3.1 Woodcut of Bishop Edmund Bonner scourging Protestants; from
John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by
permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 113
3.2 Woodcut depicting the savage persecution of early Christians; from
John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by
permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 114
3.3 Woodcut depicting the torment and burning of William Gardiner; from
John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by permission
of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 116
3.4 Woodcut depicting the reign of Edward VI; from John Foxe,
Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by permission
of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 119
3.5 Woodcut depicting the execution of William Tyndale; from John Foxe,
Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by permission of the
Bodleian Library, Oxford. 127
3.6 Woodcut depicting the burning of William Flower; from John Foxe,
Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by permission of the
Bodleian Library, Oxford. 130
3.7 Woodcut depicting the burning of John Hooper; from John Foxe,
Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by permission of the
Bodleian Library, Oxford. 137
3.8 Woodcut depicting Thomas Cranmer being plucked down from the stage
at St. Mary’s Church, Oxford; from John Foxe, Acts and Monuments
(London, 1570). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian
Library, Oxford. 150
3.9 Woodcut depicting Thomas Cranmer thrusting his right hand into the
fire; from John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570). Reproduced by
permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 151
5.1 Title page to Part 1 of Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (London, 1646).
Reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 196
xii List of Illustrations
5.2 Image of James Nayler from Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography, 6th edn.
(London, 1662). Reproduced by permission of the Folger
Shakespeare Library. 228
5.3 Woodcut of James Nayler in the pillory and being whipped; from
A True Relation of the Life, Conversation, Examination, Confession . . . of
James Naylor (London, 1657). Reproduced by permission of the
British Library. 233
7.1 Title page to A Nest of Serpents Discovered. Or, A knot of old Heretiques
revived, Called the Adamites (London, 1641). Reproduced by permission
of the British Library. 272
8.1 Frontispiece and title page to Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography, 6th edn.
(London, 1662). Reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare
Library. 300
 List of Abbreviations
CPW Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982–53).
CM The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Frank A. Patterson, 18 vols. in 21 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1931–8).
CW The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, gen. eds. Louis L. Martz,
Richard S. Sylvester, and Clarence Miller, 15 vols. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1963–97).
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004–9; online version).

In quoting from early modern texts, I have usually retained the original spelling and
punctuation. The year is presumed to begin on January 1.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

In the Bible-centered culture of early modern England, a wide range of readers,

writers, and parishioners—indeed, people familiar with Scripture by written or
oral means—were well aware of Paul’s observation to the Corinthians that “there
be divisions among you” and therefore “there must be also heresies [haireseis]
among you” (1 Cor. 11:18–19). Fear of schism had attended the Christian church
since its infancy, and Paul wrote at a moment when heresy (or hairesis) had assumed
a derogatory sense (unlike in Greek or in Hellenistic Jewish culture); his observa-
tion was a reminder that, despite the intense desire for religious unity, “in all ages
there have been, and . . . there must be” heretics and heresies threatening the stabil-
ity of the church and the state, striking at the foundation of faith, and potentially
ensnaring and destroying thousands upon thousands of souls.1 Of course, in a
culture of great religious change and conflict, like early modern England’s, such
anathematizing terms as “heresy” and “heretic” were far from stable: they were
subject to multiple, competing interpretations and understandings, as we shall
often see in the course of this chronologically long-range study.
This cross-disciplinary book examines the specter of heresy, including the mak-
ing of heretics, in early modern English literary culture from the early Reformation
to the English Revolution. Jean Delumeau has stressed the importance of studying
“religious fear in the Protestant realm.”2 Written from the point of view of a literary
and cultural historian, this book studies one major aspect of that fear and the
demonization it fueled: the intense fear of the heretic, especially the manifold ways
heretics were perceived, represented, and created in early modern English literature
and culture in response to the Reformation’s shattering of Western Christendom.
Nor is this book confined to the English “Protestant realm” since it begins by
examining the ambiguities created in Thomas More’s career by his heresy-making
campaign against evangelicals.3 This book studies early modern religious phobias,
especially as they were generated by the perception of unorthodox beliefs and their
practitioners and expressed in literary culture. It consequently focuses less on dif-
ferent expressions of heretical theology (although it inevitably touches on them)
and more on the intense fears, terrors, and cultural anxieties writers expressed and
the fantasies they constructed about pernicious heretics and pestilent heresies. It
examines the demonization of religious deviants as heretics and the emotionally-
charged language and images used to demonize them. The book analyzes in depth
early modern writers who contributed to cultural fears about the contagion of
heresy and the making of heretics, as well as writers who dared to challenge and
interrogate, in various ways, cultural constructions of heretics and heresy and the
heated rhetoric of religious fear-mongering.
2 Introduction

Treacherous Faith: The Specter of Heresy in Early Modern English Literature and
Culture examines the ways fears of heresy and the making of heretics fueled bitter
cultural conflicts, religious instability, persecution, and violence in early modern
England. By violence I mean both corporal violence—burning heretics at the stake,
putting them on the rack, mutilating them, boring them through the tongue for
blasphemy—and verbal violence in the sense of demonizing religious deviants as
heretics in a way that generates or expresses acute fear, terror, and hysteria on the
part of the accuser or the culture at large. I am concerned with not only the corporal
and legal punishments of heretics for deviant beliefs (after all, despite the intense
horror with which they were regarded, heretics in early modern England did not
always suffer capital punishment), but also with the verbal, rhetorical, and symbolic
means by which they were demonized and imagined as incarnations of evil and
agents of corruption. “Persecution with the tongue,” as one Quaker writer noted in
the early Restoration, could be as savage as “Persecution with the hand.”4 Topics of
heresy, demonization, and persecution have frequently been addressed in medieval
studies, including in relation to literary culture.5 The construction of heresy and
making of heretics have received less sustained, long-range consideration in early
modern literary studies where there has been more attention devoted to literature in
relation to dissent and martyrdom.6 This book inevitably touches on these latter
topics (as for example in Chapter 3 where I discuss John Foxe’s construction of
martyrdom in relation to the specter of heresy), but its focus is also notably differ-
ent: it is primarily concerned with the representations of heresy and the construc-
tion of heretics by writers—especially the darker fantasies and the inner fears they
unleashed—and with the malleable language of heresy-hunting, and the demoniza-
tion it created and encouraged, in early modern England. It is a book about the
multiple ways that religious fear, the demonization of the heretic, and the literary
imagination interacted in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The book
examines how fears of heresy could stimulate and shape the literary imagination;
and, conversely, how the literary imagination helped to make and reshape the fright-
ening specter of heresy. The book discusses heresy-making from the point of view of
a literary scholar focused on language, rhetoric, and representations.7
This study is the first book-length account of the ways writers from Thomas
More to John Milton (and, briefly at the end, John Bunyan) generated, sustained,
or questioned cultural anxieties about heresy and heretics in sixteenth- and seven-
teenth-century England, along with the bitter, polarizing language these anxieties
generated. It examines the dark, often brutal, story of identifying, defining, and
punishing heretics in early modern England, and especially the ways writers them-
selves contributed to or interrogated that story. There has been important scholar-
ship in early modern English studies devoted to examining the fantasy and
punishment of the witch during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.8 This
book, instead, concerns the cultural fantasy and construction of the heretic from
the early years of the Reformation to the fractured religious world of Milton’s Eng-
land. I focus on the dangerous religious deviant or heretic perceived as a grave,
mortal, internal, and even existential threat to the religious, political, and social
order—and to the well-being of Western Christendom—who, by challenging and
 Introduction 3

rejecting orthodox doctrines and practices, consequently fueled a sense of instabil-

ity, insecurity, paranoia, and disorientation. Moreover, the spread of heresy and the
insidious presence of heretics, resulting in the destruction of souls, were likewise
deeply frightening because of the threat they posed to the theological beliefs and
practices that enabled men and women to achieve salvation by escaping from the
prison of death “in this wretched worlde” into everlasting life and “be parteners of
the heuenly blysse.”9 After all, cunning heretics did not simply aim to seduce pro-
fane persons (“whom the Devill hath ensnared already”), but “such [persons] as are
desirous of heaven.”10 The propagation of errors by obstinate heretics was a crime
of the utmost danger and grievousness, for “seducing and destroying peoples
soules,” one orthodox godly controversialist stressed during the upheavals of the
English Revolution, was “a far greater crime then to murder their bodies.”11 And
because it was so “infectious and dangerous,” heresy could be regarded as “an unlaw-
full warre,” as Jeremy Taylor noted in the 1640s, because “it slayes thousands.”12
Indeed, Christian or Protestant heretics posed a graver threat and generated
greater anxiety than did Jews or Muslims, who, after all, stood outside the Chris-
tian community and outside the faith since they had never (through the sacrament
of baptism) become members of the body of Christ.13 In an age when heretics were
imagined in terms of spreading terrible contagion, Jews and Muslims were not in
this sense diseased or gangrenous limbs of the corpus Christianum; they were
instead infidels or unbelievers and thus religious outsiders and foreigners rather
than traitors to the Christian faith.14 As one Restoration commentator stressed,
drawing upon the Church Fathers to support his point, “Haereticks are more
abominable, than the very Jews that crucified Christ.”15 Nor should the explosive
term heretic be applied to unconverted heathens “who never believed yet in the
Gospel . . . and never yet were convinced of the way of the Lord, nor ever tasted of
his Word and Power, but have always been strangers to the Israel of God, and Ene-
mies to the Church of Christ.”16 Heretics, however, were more treacherous and in
this respect deemed more insidious:17 calling attention to religious difference
among Christians—that is, among their own kind—they were considered traitors
to the Christian faith and community. After all, they had willfully rejected, revolted
against, and betrayed religious truths they once professed or appeared to profess
for, as we shall see, heretics were often represented as especially cunning and skilled
in theatrical behavior, including assuming a saintly show of piety.18 To put it
another way: heretics, as the influential Church Father Tertullian had observed,
knew the truth but chose—since in the original Greek the word “heresy” (αίρεσις)
meant choice—to follow their own private fancies and commit acts of malicious
will.19 Deemed traitors to the Christian faith, heretics thus posed a particularly
dangerous religious threat in the sense that they endangered the salvation of indi-
viduals and the health of the corpus Christianum to which they once belonged and
refused to return. Moreover, unlike Jews, whose beliefs seemed so very different,20
heretics could be especially pernicious when they were persons, as the heresiogra-
pher Thomas Edwards warned orthodox godly readers in the 1640s, “in this King-
dom, yea of such who live and dwell among us”21 and yet had chosen to desert the
Christian faith to pursue their deviant beliefs.
4 Introduction

Consequently, this book attempts to address a number of interconnected ques-

tions about the specter of heresy and the demonizing of religious deviants. How
did some writers in early modern England themselves operate as heresy-makers,
creating the religious fantasy of the heretic? How and to what degree did other
writers question the fears, perceptions, and religious violence associated with
heresy-making and the idea of heresy as a heinous sin? How did writers both con-
tribute to and challenge England as “a persecuting society,” to borrow a resonant
phrase from R. I. Moore’s work on heresy and persecution in the Middle Ages?22
Focusing on writers who, from diverse perspectives, construct and interrogate the
specter of heresy in early modern England, my book addresses such questions from
both a literary and cultural point of view.
In literary studies, “new historicist” work has, in the past, often ignored religious
conflicts and spiritual warfare in early modern culture or viewed religious belief
primarily (or almost exclusively) as a front for issues of power; or, indeed, viewed
religion as a kind of “alien other.”23 Although I try to avoid reducing often deeply-
held religious beliefs to issues of power, issues of power do find a place in my
account of the fears and representations of heresy and the cultural fantasies about
heretics and their relations to the Bible. After all, the struggles to define, repress,
and eradicate heresy in early modern England, while they evolved and changed in
the course of the lengthy period covered by this book, were vital to the creation
and assertion of power and authority in church and state and to the construction
and enforcing of religious orthodoxy. Moreover, these evolving struggles included
the power—often fiercely contested once the vernacular Bible became widely avail-
able in print—to maintain control over the exegesis of Scripture, the power of the
clergy over the performance of the Mass, and the power of religious institutions to
define and enforce what was permissible in religious doctrine and practices.24 One
reason the Geneva Bible included extensive marginal annotations was to contain
the blight of heresies enabled by wider and potentially more dangerous scriptural
exegesis opened up by the vernacular Bible: “considering how hard a thing it is to
vnderstand the holy Scriptures, and what errors, sects and heresies growe dailie for
the lacke of the true knollage thereof,” the Geneva translators gathered “brief anno-
tations vpon all the hard places, as wel for the vnderstanding of suche wordes as are
obscure.”25 If heretics too appealed to the Bible, then the vernacular Bible—a bat-
tlefield of ideas that provoked argument about religious doctrines and interpreta-
tions and that could be invoked both to generate heretical notions (e.g., the
Anabaptist claim that the New Testament does not support infant baptism) and
check them—required control, however difficult this proved to achieve. Demoniz-
ing heretics and making heresy were crucial to asserting power and wielding
authority during the periods of religious change, uncertainty, and upheaval dis-
cussed in this book.
The book, however, not only assumes the crucial roles of religious discourses and
beliefs in early modern English culture; it also explores the instabilities, insecuri-
ties, and paranoia generated by religious heterodoxies across early modern English
literary, religious, and political culture, a perspective that can further illuminate
the creation of mainstream, dominant religious culture which other critics have
 Introduction 5

illuminated.26 Heresy and orthodoxy or heresy and anti-heresy, however unstable

and evolving their relationship may have been in early modern England, are neces-
sarily intertwined and co-dependent. It takes two, after all, to make heresies and
heretics: the heretic or religious deviant with his or her dissenting beliefs and prac-
tices; and the Church and its apologists to condemn his or her heretical views and
to create and enforce orthodox doctrine.27 As one commentator on heresy and
medieval culture has put it, “heresy exists only in so far as authority chooses to
declare its existence,”28 and that was certainly the case as well in the period of early
modern England covered by this book.
Moreover, I examine the impact of heresy—especially the religious phobias and
cultural fantasies associated with it—on both canonical and non-canonical writers,
from Anne Askew, who was burned at the stake for heresy in the 1540s, to Milton
who was condemned in Parliament for it in the 1640s, and who consequently
offered some of the most skeptical, probing, and imaginative responses to the
orthodox godly campaign to define, reduce, and eradicate it. In Part I, I focus on
the creation of the specter of heresy and its impact on the literary culture of the
English Reformation. Part II then turns to discussions of writings that both con-
structed and questioned the deep-seated fears and perceptions of heresy and here-
tics in the English Revolution and its immediate aftermath, when anxieties about
political and religious division became especially acute because of the fragmenta-
tion of zealous Protestantism and the proliferation of radical religious sects and
groups.
A book about the early modern specter of heresy—especially the intense
conflicts, irrational fears, and religious hatred it generated, the ways it was repre-
sented and constructed by writers, and the polarizing language of demonization it
provoked—may seem more timely in the twenty-first century, and more than sim-
ply an academic exercise. We live in a divisive and anxious world unsettled by
religious conflict, suspicion, violence, as well as fears of fundamentalism. We find
ourselves in a world unsettled by culture wars—a world in which Muslims and
Christians, liberals and conservatives, believers and secularists engage in demoniza-
tion, mutual recrimination, and intolerance.29 This is consequently a timely
moment to study from a literary perspective a crucial period in the history of reli-
gious demonization and its imaginative expressions. If “the imaginary is part of
history,” as Michel de Certeau famously claimed,30 then the power and conse-
quences of religious demonizing and heresy-making are a crucial part of cultural
history during the early modern period; I aim to illuminate ways the literary imagi-
nation interacted with religious demonization, heresy-hunting, and an obsession
with diabolical heretics in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.
Of course, in twenty-first-century America and Europe, as one scholar observes,
“heresy” and “orthodoxy” may be considered “improbable, culturally constructed,
archaic categories that in and of themselves make little sense” and bear no relation
to reality;31 after all, the practice of religion is voluntary and habits of thought
generally post-Enlightenment. Fears and anxieties about pernicious heretics, and
the scare tactics used to demonize them in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
England, were analogous in some ways to the irrational paranoia about Salem’s
6 Introduction

witches in the late seventeenth century or Communists in the twentieth century,

or fears about terrorists today, or Islamophobia. To reformulate my point: the hys-
teria generated by fears of heresy and heretics multiplying and insidiously spread-
ing like a horrifying plague, threatening to destroy thousands of souls, the stability
of the nation, and the unity of the church was an early modern version of the hys-
teria generated by the spread of Communism or even terrorism. Heretics were not
only minions and “agents of Satan” (as the church father Irenaeus had first identi-
fied them); as evil incarnate, they were enemies of Christendom and humanity.32
They were regularly depicted as treacherous, malicious, cunning, theatrical, and
skilled at exploiting ambiguous language. Like the word “terrorist” today, the word
“heretic,” built up as a terrifying label or name, conjured menacing implications.
Stimulated by their “phantasycall and madde braynes,”33 heretics seemed espe-
cially stubborn in their commitment to irrational and unnatural beliefs—the crea-
tion of the unchecked, heated religious imagination—that went against, distorted,
and refashioned Scripture and that clashed with the authority of the Church or
church traditions. The human imagination was far from trustworthy; relying upon
it, rather than upon the Bible or a venerated church authority, could lead a person
to succumb to or promote religious error: heresies, one early seventeenth-century
commentator observed, arise “when wee are wise in our owne conceits; such a one
is apt for any errour.”34 Subjective interpretations of the Bible were dangerous and
could encourage a kind of narcissism: heretics, a Restoration observer noted, “are so
much in love with their own Heretical Opinions, that they will let the Scripture
speak no sense but theirs.” Thus in the hands of contemptuous heretics, Scripture
was to be remolded in whatever way their imaginations devised; it might seem
like a flexible substance “as Wax, to receive the impressions of their own wild Fan-
cies.”35 Such subjective, unconstrained interpretations were responsible for the ter-
rible plague of heresies that had blighted England, the character of Conformist
asserted in a Restoration dialogue dismantling arguments in favor of toleration:
“Witness those Swarms of Heresies, that have over-spread this Land, since the Bible
has been deliver’d up to the Interpretation of Private Spirits.”36
In addition, the uses of the label “heretic,” as we will see, varied greatly and could
be highly subjective and slippery, driven by acute religious fears and insecurities. To
be sure, I have tried to avoid being anachronistic and to recognize the specific cul-
tural and historical contexts that account for the intense fears and anxieties about
heresy and heretics in early modern England, as well as the language of religious
anathematization that the politics of fear produced. Early modern religious fears and
constructions of heretics need to be understood in historical as well as literary per-
spective. Yet at the same time, brief comparisons with other moments of fear-
mongering in history, when tactfully made, can account for the power and fascination
of the subject—the horror of heresy and the demonization of religious deviants as
fanatics and pernicious heretics—and can help us approach it from a fresh and urgent
perspective that renders the topic both distant and more immediately relevant.
This book about perceptions of heresy and its dangers, as well as the anxious
atmosphere it generated in early modern England, aims to provide a unique,
historically-informed perspective on the ways that fears about religious divisions
 Introduction 7

and unorthodox beliefs have been represented, constructed, and interrogated by

writers. While definitions of heresy in early modern English culture were unstable,
subjective, various, and went through numerous permutations,37 the spread of her-
esy and the practices of so-called heretics were often associated with religious
extremism and anarchy. Responses to it were not only severe but sometimes vis-
ceral verging on hysteria—as in the case of Thomas More or mid-seventeenth-
century heresy-hunters—in a protracted period of religious change, division, and
uncertainty when it was perceived as an existential threat to political, religious, and
social stability. Investigating the making of early modern religious fears, the lan-
guage and representations used to express or question them, and their implications
for understanding some of the religious differences that divide our own world,
should be part of the critical work of the humanities, including—and not least—
literary studies. Employing a combination of literary and historical analysis, this
book illuminates the specter of heresy in early modern England, the intense cul-
tural and religious conflicts it generated, and the wide range of polemical, literary,
and imaginative responses it elicited from writers.
A few words about my critical methodology are in order. Although I work as a
literary historian in this book, this project is a cultural study of early modern reli-
gious phobias, the fantasies they generated, and their representations in a large
number of writings. The violent controversies and writings about heresy and its
religious politics during the lengthy period addressed in my study invite a cross-
disciplinary approach to them: one that combines historical inquiry with rigorous
attention to literary and hermeneutic issues, including the bitter struggle to con-
trol biblical exegesis in early modern England. In Treacherous Faith, I undertake
the work of a literary scholar interested in illuminating the broader cultural history
and religious conflicts of the period. My aim is to be particularly sensitive to the
nuances of political and religious language and rhetoric, as well as the powerful
images and representations (for example, heresy as a lethal contagion or disease),
used to construct the specter of heresy—and the intense fear and fascination it
generated—in early modern England. Although I focus on the heated religious
imagination and literary culture, I also work extensively with a wide range of his-
torical materials: proclamations; church documents; religious sermons and politi-
cal tracts; martyrologies; heresiographies and anti-heresy tracts; and manuscripts
and printed sources describing heresy trials and the frightening impact of heretics.
Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, the focus of Chapter 3, is itself a massive mélange of
historical materials, sources, and writings, assembled in such a way as to give us a
particularly dramatic reconstruction and interpretation of the cataclysm of the
Reformation, the individuals who shaped and suffered in it, and the apocalyptic
perspectives unleashed by it. Such materials in Foxe and addressed in other chap-
ters of this book tell us much about the heated religious imagination during peri-
ods when fears of heresy were acute. Nonetheless, I use and examine these texts as
a literary and cultural historian most interested in the ways the specter of heresy
was constructed in language and represented in images, as well as the ways it was
also challenged and interrogated. Moreover, although my work has benefited from
scholarship on the complex interplay between tolerance and intolerance in the
Another Random Scribd Document
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 Music - Learning Objectives
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Chapter 1: Practical applications and examples

Learning Objective 1: Experimental procedures and results
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 1: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Learning Objective 2: Experimental procedures and results
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Learning Objective 3: Current trends and future directions
• Current trends and future directions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Learning Objective 4: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Learning Objective 5: Study tips and learning strategies
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Practical applications and examples
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 6: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Example 6: Experimental procedures and results
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Remember: Ethical considerations and implications
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Example 8: Study tips and learning strategies
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
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- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 9: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Important: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Methodology 2: Literature review and discussion
Example 10: Research findings and conclusions
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 11: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 12: Key terms and definitions
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Experimental procedures and results
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 15: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Historical development and evolution
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 17: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Key terms and definitions
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Study tips and learning strategies
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Introduction 3: Study tips and learning strategies
Example 20: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Example 22: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Key terms and definitions
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Note: Research findings and conclusions
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Key Concept: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 27: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Study tips and learning strategies
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Current trends and future directions
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Remember: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 30: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Discussion 4: Ethical considerations and implications
Note: Research findings and conclusions
• Research findings and conclusions
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- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Key terms and definitions
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Important: Best practices and recommendations
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 35: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Important: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Current trends and future directions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 36: Historical development and evolution
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 37: Current trends and future directions
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Key Concept: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 39: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Key Concept: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 40: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Conclusion 5: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
Example 40: Experimental procedures and results
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 41: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Important: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 42: Current trends and future directions
• Theoretical framework and methodology
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Example 43: Study tips and learning strategies
• Case studies and real-world applications
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- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Remember: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 45: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Remember: Experimental procedures and results
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 46: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Definition: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Practical applications and examples
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 49: Experimental procedures and results
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
Introduction 6: Ethical considerations and implications
Example 50: Key terms and definitions
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 52: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Literature review and discussion
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Example 53: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 54: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Key Concept: Case studies and real-world applications
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 55: Study tips and learning strategies
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
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Practice Problem 56: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 57: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 58: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 59: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Literature review and discussion
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Abstract 7: Learning outcomes and objectives
Example 60: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Key terms and definitions
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- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 61: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Remember: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Learning outcomes and objectives
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- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Best practices and recommendations
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- Example: Practical application scenario
Practice Problem 63: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Literature review and discussion
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- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Literature review and discussion
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
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- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 65: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Case studies and real-world applications
• Practical applications and examples
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- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 66: Ethical considerations and implications
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Practical applications and examples
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 68: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 70: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Test 8: Fundamental concepts and principles
Practice Problem 70: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Current trends and future directions
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 73: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Remember: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
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