Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury, was much loved by the Queen. He had been the Chaplin to her Protestant mother, Anne Boleyn (second wife of Henry IIIV). He had also been Chaplin to the young Elizabeth throughout the dark and difficult years before she became Queen (she had, for example, been imprisoned by her sister Mary in the Tower of London for a short time – uncertain of her own fate – and this was the same prison fortress where her Mother had met death at the hands of a sword wielding headsman). So Elizabeth and Parker had a shared personal history; and she had every reason to feel fond affection for him – and forgave him for having married when she appointed him her Archbishop (one of the idiosyncrasies of Elizabeth’s faith is that, although a Protestant, she was a firm believer in celibacy for those clergy raised to the rank of bishop).
Her appointment of Parker was also a shrewd move – I think we are mistaken if we view her depth of faith and political shrewdness as incompatible; she needed a conciliator and moderate to restore the Protestant faith to her realm in such a way as not to threaten violence and schism. This was a time when all religion was political (and even the pacifist Anabaptists refusal to buy into State controlled Magisterial Protestant religion was interpreted as an act of political rebellion).
So we know of Parker’s influence on the Queen – although we can be sure that she certainly had a mind of her own too! So what can we say about the influences that shaped Parker’s? Can these tell us anything about the context of the abrogation of the 42nd article (before we look at this in detail).
Regarding sources, we actually have good resources of primary source documentation for Parker – which I will give details of very soon in a separate post not much to say). However, I think we can be almost 99% certain that none of these sources give us a clear window into Parker’s soul regarding whether or not he was a Universalist (or whether or not the young Queen Elizabeth shared these sympathies with him before bitter political experience took its toll on her spiritual optimism). All I can do is make a good case for his Universalist sympathies based on the possibilities from the evidence.
Parker was educated at Oxford University and, unlike the other major English Reformers, he actually studied Patristics. So he knew the Church Fathers and it is very likely that he had studied Origen in some shape or form. He would certainly have been aware of the theology of Origen from the writings of the Dutch Christian Humanist Erasmus, who had a great influence on the English Reformers prior to the Genevan ascendancy of the Elizabethan Calvinists (I will do a separate post on the influence of Erasmus because I feel this is vital in making my ‘case for the possible’). Parker was also the friend and colleague of the moderate continental reformer Martin Bucer who was resident at Oxford university during the reign of the boy King Edward IV (I will also do a separate post on Bucer)
When Parker became Archbishop, one of his first acts was to call upon the ancient powers and authority of ‘Convocation’ to reinstate the Ecumenical faith subverted by the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome. And this Convocation which revised Cranmer’s 42 Articles to 38 (that later became the 39 Articles) was modelled on the Great Ecumenical Councils of the early church at which the Bishop of Rome was merely a ‘first amongst equals’ – as Parker well knew from his study of the Patristics. The Elizabethan Convocation was composed of; Parker; Richard Cox Bishop of Ely - an ill tempered and peppery anti-Calvinist by all accounts; and Edmund Gheast (or Guest) Bishop of Rochester who had been Parker’s Chaplin and was a man after Parker’s heart. (In some sources I have seen the third Bishop named as Edmund Grindall, Parker’s successor to Canterbury, but the most recent sources name Gheast so I assume the others are in error). Farrar in ‘Eternal Hope’ tells us that the alterations made by this Convocation to Cranmer’s articles – which included the abrogation f the 42nd - were given the consent of ‘the Bishops and Clergy of both…provinces’ (that is Canterbury and York).
Parker’s first love was Church History on which he wrote prolifically. In his writings he made a case that the English Church since Saxon times had always showed a degree of independence from the tyranny of Papal authority – and thus was keen to stress the continuity of the Reformed Church with the church founded by St Augustine of Kent, missionary to the pagan Angles and Saxons (a different Augustine from St Augustine of Hippo, the foremost ‘Severe Doctor’ of the Church). In his historical interests Parker stood foursquare in the tradition of Christian Humanism.
Christian Humanism began in the fourteenth century with the Italian scholar Petrarch. Whereas the medieval scholars had concentrated single-mindedly on the study of Divinity and the things of Eternity, Petrarch showed a new interest in the Human story of Human history. He lived in the City State of Florence which was under threat from the ‘fascist’ tyranny in Milan. Partly in repose to this threat he revived interests in the Classics of Republican Rome, written before the Caesars, and spoke of a Republican Age of Freedom and Light (in Rome), and a republican age of Freedom and Light (in Florence) with a ‘Middle Age’ of darkness that lay between the two. From this we derive the concept of the Middle Ages and, it seems, Petrarch’s insight had an enormous influence on the development of historical consciousness – of our awareness of change through time. Parker was basically following Petrarch’s model in writing his History of the English Church.
Christian Humanism never dismissed the claims of Eternity but tried to hold these in creative tension with the claims of Time. Hence the Humanists were interested in theology and biblical studies, but they were also interested in history, politics, law and in human emotion and empathy. As the motto of the Christian Humanists, taken from a Roman poet, put it – ‘I am a human being and therefore nothing human is alien to me’. In this connection the favoured Christian Humanist model of salvation was the Greek Orthodox one of salvation being a process of collaboration between the Human and Divine wills (Jacob Arminius was himself a Christian Humanist).
Christian Humanists were also concerned to establish the best texts for the Bible – going to the Hebrew and Greek originals rather than depending on the authority of the Latin Vulgate and ahving an evangelical purpose in doing this – and they were concerned to settle matters of doctrine by research into the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils. So again Matthew Parker fits the profile.
During the reign of Bloody Mary. Parker had kept a low profile rather than flee to the Continent or court martyrdom. He had actually spent a lot of time absorbed in his studies. Because of this I can anticipate a macho response that he somehow ‘wimped out’ of martyrdom from some quarters – and this is worth briefly reflecting on. Both Jesus and Paul avoided death until they had no alternative but to face it. And Paul’s hymn to Agape in 1 Corinthian 13 gives us a timely warning about the death loving cult of martyrdom – real Martyrs die as witnesses to love, not for ideological reasons. As the Anglican Universalist William Law wrote, ‘Martyrdom has had its fools’. I note for example that Cranmer who was martyred under Mary, was the same Cranmer who persuaded the boy King Edward to sign the warrant for death by burning of an Anabaptist woman of blameless life. I have also often been haunted by the sentiment expressed by the scholar Richard Marius in his biography of Luther. He wrote that Luther’s position was often precarious and he was undoubtedly a very brave man who would have faced death with resolution if this had been required of him. However, because of the intemperate violence with which Luther pursued the cause for Reform, Marius concludes that if Luther had not been born perhaps a hundred thousand people who died horrible deaths in war and persecution would have died quietly in their beds.
All the best
Dick