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Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic Chapter 12 The Restoration episcopate and the interregnum: autobiography, suffering and professions of faith Sarah Ward Clavier1 R estoration bishops came in all flavours: Laudians, Calvinists and those who have apparently left so little indication of their religious views that they still remain a mystery to posterity. They ranged from authoritarian micromanagers to those who seemed barely interested in the business of their individual dioceses. On the whole, however, it is difficult to imagine the events of
This book explores how conceptions of episcopacy (government of a church by bishops) shaped the identity of the bishops of France in the wake of the reforming Council of Trent (1545–63). It demonstrates how the episcopate, initially demoralised by the Wars of Religion, developed a powerful ideology of privilege, leadership and pastorate that enabled it to become a flourishing participant in the religious, political and social life of the ancien regime. The book analyses the attitudes of Tridentine bishops towards their office by considering the French episcopate as a recognisable caste, possessing a variety of theological and political principles that allowed it to dominate the French church.
. That creativity also embraced the church’s episcopate: first, the social and educational features which would characterise it through the remainder of the ancien régime were defined during these decades. Less known, however, is the fact that these years were formative for the episcopate, and indeed for the entire French church, in yet another manner. From a long-term perspective, it is obvious that these dynamic decades saw an unprecedented evolution in ideology and a veritable outpouring of views, old and new, on the status of bishops, the theological significance
even had their own official Assembly in which their mainly episcopal deputies could voice the church’s concerns and seek support from the crown. With privileges came responsibilities, however, for just as the church made demands on the temporal realm so it sought to gain from its connections with the church. As the self-proclaimed leaders of the French church, the bishops were at the centre of this far from straightforward exchange. The topic of church–state relations is a vast one, only aspects of which relate directly to the episcopate and episcopal ideology. What
Introduction 22/3/04 12:11 pm Page 1 Introduction An overview of the Catholic episcopate in early modern Europe comments that ‘one of the most far-reaching if usually under-remarked changes of the Reformation period as a whole concerns the function and necessity of bishops in the church’.1 Although immediately applicable to those regions of the Reformation where bishops disappeared altogether from the ecclesiastical and political landscapes, this observation might appear to have no relation to Catholic Europe.2 Here, bishops not only survived but also
defining the doctrines, rites and ceremonies of the Church. (Hooker went on to argue that these laws were given authority by the consent of Parliament, something which both Crown and hierarchy would dispute.) In general, the Crown and the episcopate shared identity of purpose after the translation of Whitgift to Canterbury (1583–1603) and harmony was threatened only in specific areas. Patrick Collinson singled out 1559, 1603 and 1625 as moments of crisis. Awareness of the potential for conflict, however, fed a tradition in which some of the bishops stressed that they
period, probably because the civil wars discouraged it in favour of straightforwardly robust polemics. To compensate, Latin and vernacular editions of nonFrench episcopal literature were published to serve the needs of the French episcopate, a practice continued in the following century, with French editions of Possevin’s discourse on Borromeo, Giussano’s history of Borromeo and an abridged life of the archbishop of Milan based on existing literature.2 Then, as the French church recovered in the first decades of the seventeenth century, French writers began to compose
The 1830s and 1840s are commonly seen as the moment when the figure of the bishop came to dominate Anglican mission. When the high churchman Samuel Wilberforce popularised the idea of the heroic missionary bishop among British audiences in the late 1830s he was only giving voice to an idea that had been developed by others earlier in the decade. For example, the episcopate had been
individuals was common.11 Lorraine had been under French occupation for much of the seventeenth century, and this left a profound imprint on its ecclesiastical hierarchy.12 Many of the Savoyard episcopate had trained in France,13 and much in the Savoyard church had been reformed in the seventeenth century on the French model, including the diocesan seminaries established in Annecy and Saint-Jean.14 All these influences meant that Lorraine and Savoy were subject to many of the same currents circulating in France, so during periods of French occupation the lines between