Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice (review)

Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice. By Helen L. Parish. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate. 2000. Pp. xii, 276. $94.95.)

Clerical marriage became a central issue not only in polemical literature but also in the formation of confessional identities and the royal policy of mid-Tudor England. In six chapters, Helen Parish of the University of Reading examines the theological and moral concerns in the debate over clerical celibacy that engaged evangelical polemicists such as John Bale, William Tyndale, and George Joye, and their conservative opponents including Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Martin, and Richard Smith. Parish carefully places this controversy of 1530-1570 into the broader context of support for clerical marriage by continental reformers including Luther and Melanchthon. In her last chapter, she considers the actual practice and reception of clerical marriage by analyzing quantitative and anecdotal evidence from selected dioceses.

The great strength of this work is that it succeeds in convincing the reader of the theological importance of the issue of clerical marriage even though the polemical literature was often riddled by scurrilous remarks and personal attacks on opponents. Parish methodically reviews the reformers' position as informed by their doctrine of salvation by faith alone, their critique of the nature and efficacy of the sacrifice of the Mass and the priest's sacramental role, their use of Scripture as the litmus test for the validity of vows, and the secondary place they assigned to the testimony of the early Church Fathers and arguments from history. The response of conservative English polemicists to such arguments receives ample coverage as well. That evangelical doctrine did not always translate into policy is evident in Parish's attention to the frustration of the English Reformers who found their own monarchs, except during Edward VI's brief reign, unsympathetic to the demand for the implementation of clerical marriage as a sign of genuine religious reform.

In the last chapter, doctrine gives way to practice. After examining clerical marriages under Edward VI and the subsequent Marian deprivations of married clergy in the dioceses of Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury, and Lincoln, Parish concludes that the safer position is "to suggest that many evangelical clergy chose to marry, rather than to claim that married clergy as a group were more sympathetic to the Reformation" (p. 217). Parish's brief comments on Queen Elizabeth's early reservations concerning married clergy recall the slow reception of religious innovations documented by scholars such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy.

There are a few problems in this work. Parish would have been wise to clarify initially the distinction between the obligation of celibacy assumed by the secular clergy and the vow of chastity made by regular clergy. (Some attempt at clarification is made in a footnote on page 139 where she points out that the polemicists themselves failed, probably deliberately, to make such a distinction.) Given Parish's close attention to the polemical and doctrinal affiliation between continental and English evangelical Reformers, this reader was disappointed with the lack of attention to the output of continental conservative polemicists, such as Johannes Eck and Johannes Cochlaeus, who were also facing challenges to the traditional status of the clergy.

Yet Helen Parish's book is a welcome addition to the work of Eric Carlson and Peter Marshall and a valuable resource for Reformation scholars seeking to connect the debate on clerical marriage to major theological issues of the day. Parish hints at a growing support by the late sixteenth century for a respectable married clergy who might model a disciplined Protestant household. Further exploration of such a shift in social attitudes would provide a more complete understanding of the relevance of clerical marriage for early modern England.

 

Ellen A. Macek
The University of Tennessee

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