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Introduction
- Wayne State University Press
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INTRODUCTION Mary Arshagouni Papazian n hopes of enriching our understanding of the complex relationship between John Donne and the Protestant Reformation, this collection of thirteen essays by an international—and internationally known—assembly of scholars focuses squarely on the question of the impact of the Reformation on Donne’s life, theology, poetry, and prose. While the arguments presented in these essays represent the finest and most recent scholarship on Donne and the English Reformation, an attempt has been made to present the essays in a form that is also accessible to and of interest to students and nonspecialist readers as well as to specialists in the field. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German Augustinian monk, posted his Ninety-five Theses on indulgences on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg , thereby initiating what history refers to as the Protestant Reformation . Luther’s act would result in the breakup of Catholic Europe into warring Catholic and Protestant states, and its consequences would ripple throughout Europe, including England, for the next 150 years. By 1521, Luther’s ideas—which were drawn from a careful reading of St. Paul’s epistles and the anti-Pelagian works of St. Augustine, and which focused on the effects of original sin on man’s nature, man’s inability to respond to God without divine grace, and the belief that man can be justified only through faith—began to influence English universities. While King Henry VIII initially resisted the influence of the Protestant reformers, thereby gaining from Pope Leo X the title “Defender of the Faith” for his attack on heresy and defense of papal authority, ultimately dynastic interests— represented in Henry’s desire to divorce his Spanish Catholic wife Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn—led him in 1534 to issue the Acts of Succession and Supremacy. The Succession Act legitimized Henry’s marriage to Anne and declared that her children would be legitimate successors to the Crown. The Supremacy Act declared Henry 1 I “supreme head” of the Church of England, thereby completing England’s schism with Rome. A series of additional laws severed all financial, judicial , and administrative bonds with Rome. Although King Henry’s 1534 declaration formalized England’s transformation from a Catholic to a Protestant nation, the transition was neither sudden nor smooth. Indeed, upon the king’s death in 1547, at a critical time for the Church of England, Henry’s only son, the ten-year-old Edward VI, who had been educated by strongly Protestant tutors, succeeded his father to the throne. During Edward’s reign, the Church of England, led by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, became solidly Protestant, as illustrated in the First and Second Protestant Books of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552) and the Forty-two Articles of Religion (1553), which contained the statement of doctrine for the now independent and Protestant Church of England. Upon Edward’s early death in 1553, his eldest halfsister , Mary Tudor—as the daughter of Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, Mary had been raised Roman Catholic—became queen, despite efforts by the dying Edward and his Protestant advisers to install his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne. Despite some initial leniency toward the leading Protestants in England, Mary soon began persecuting English Protestants and restored papal supremacy, thereby reconciling the country, at least temporarily, to Rome. Upon Mary’s death in 1558, the Protestant Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, took the throne and established England once again as a Protestant nation. Early in her forty-five-year reign, Elizabeth restored the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, which had been adopted under Edward VI. She also oversaw the adoption in 1563 of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, a modified version of the Edwardian Articles, which included some compromises with Catholicleaning , conservative Englishmen. While the Elizabethan compromises attempted to integrate Catholics into the new Protestant English society, England under Elizabeth remained decidedly Protestant, both in its religious theology and in its political and cultural associations with other Protestant states throughout Europe. England’s Protestant orientation became particularly clear in the 1580s and 1590s, when Elizabeth turned more decisively against English Catholics, a consequence in part of her growing fear of Catholic plotting. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 allowed Elizabeth to declare once and for all God’s favor for his Protestant followers in England. Protestant England, in short, saw itself as nothing...