King James I and the Religious Culture of England (review)

James Doelman, King James I and the Religious Culture ofEngland. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. 240 pp. $75. by Kate Narveson James Doelman takes as his starting point the assumption that a monarch exercises defining cultural influence on his reign; his book is "an attempt to assess the role of James in that aspect of English culture, religion, which most attracted his interest" (p. 1). Doelman takes issue with Malcolm Smuts's suggestion that James was not a major trendsetter, countering that Jacobean religious culture took its bearing from James. By religious culture, Doelman means areas of thought and activity beyond the church proper, matters on the periphery of church activity that are nonetheless expressions of religious preoccupations, such as efforts to gain patronage for religious verse, gain converts, and use biblical figures to shape James's public image. Doelman proceeds in roughly chronological order through areas to which James paid attention. He begins by presenting the ways in which James's Scottish upbringing led him to chafe against churchmen who set their power over that of the king. James was eager to assume the English throne, which would allow him to be not a "sillie vassal" but a bishop of bishops. At the same time, he devoted significant effort to his poetic endeavors, thereby establishing the expectation that he would be the "chief reader and patron of any religious work" (p. 19). Doelman examines the consequent "outpouring of religious verse" at James's accession that demonstrates the "interaction between royal taste and national culture" (p. 20). Basilikon Down advocated a poetry "not full of vanitie, but of vertue" (p. 23) and a striking number of poets turned to religious verse in a bid for royal patronage, which, however, proved disappointing as James's interests shifted by 1610 toward "straight theology without poetic embellishment" (p. 38). James's interest in religion also prompted writers to adopt the prophetic mode as another way to address a godly king. Doelman examines the range of ways that writers used biblical models of prophecy, and also the difficulty they found in using prophecy to criticize a David who recognized no Nathan. Doelman attends chiefly to George Wither, contending that Wither's early career is wrongly labelled oppositional, since he pursued royal patronage based on the belief that James was still potentially a godly king. However, Doelman argues, Wither disdained aristocratic patronage networks and wished to speak directly to the king. If under Charles the 118Book Reviews prophetic mode was oppositional, under James, who saw himself in terms of biblical kings, it was a more flexible stance. Doelman next traces the career of Scottish theologian Alexander Melville, who initially, in Scotland, balanced the roles of neo-Latin court poet and opponent of episcopacy, but whose increasingly outspoken criticism of James's views of church authority led to a break when Melville sided with the Millenary Petitioners. Silenced from preaching, Melville used satiric Latin epigrams to criticize James, which led to his imprisonment until 1610, whereupon he spent the rest of his life abroad. Melville's epigrams had an ongoing life in religious controversies (being answered by George Herbert, among many), and were revived in battles over the imposition of English worship in Scotland. Doelman argues for their importance both because they had an international audience and because their brevity and ease of circulation meant that, unlike books or sermons, they could evade censorship. Doelman also looks at James's public image, showing how consciously and centrally it was shaped around religious figures — Constantine as Christian emperor and, more often, Solomon as wise ruler and peacemaker, a role that, Doelman argues, reflected a coherent pacifism. Doelman traces the fortunes of James's image in written texts and not visual imagery, despite the misleading use of the term "iconography" throughout the chapter. The next chapter, on conversions to and from Rome, analyzes case studies to show the interrelated influence of political, economic, and religious causes behind most conversions, touching only incidently on James's role. James's presence is more directly felt in the next chapter, on psalm translations. Doelman demonstrates the way that James's own intention to produce a verse translation of the Psalms that...