The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico)
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What separated a Fitzjames or Sherburne from a Colet was not a lack of concern for reform, but a belief that it should not involve any changes in doctrine or in the intellectual and scholarly substructure, or any challenge to the existing authority of the Church. Rather, they seem to have had in mind what Richard Fox, in his ecstatic response to Wolsey’s summoning of a legatine council in 1519, called ‘the primitive integrity of the clergy, and especially in the monastic state’, which he had found to be everywhere ‘perverted either by dispensation or corruptions, or else had become obsolete from age or depraved owing to the iniquities of the times’.403 In fact cries for a return to this ‘primitive integrity’ came from every quarter, and what was needed to achieve it was not any pulling up by the roots or drastic cutting down, but careful pruning; not the making of new laws but the strict enforcement of the old; not theological innovation but a moral reawakening.
What makes it difficult for the historian is that both radicals and conservatives tended to use the language of renovation and renewal to mean different things; and these differences could and, in the case of Colet and Fitzjames, did lead to conflict. And in reality the divisions were not clear-cut. Erasmus felt constantly threatened by conservatives, while receiving support from such as Warham and Leo x, who can hardly be called radical. And though both Colet and Erasmus were critical of many aspects of the Church’s ‘paraphernalia’, and stressed, in a way that worried many conservatives, a spiritual renewal rather than more formalized routes to salvation, neither of them challenged directly the basic tenets or authority of the Church. Indeed, as was pointed out in a previous chapter,404 there was no greater defender of the clerical orders than Colet, whose passionate concern for reform arose precisely from his belief that the clergy were mediators between God and man. And whatever difficulties he may have had with Fitzjames, it is clear that the Church hierarchy was by no means opposed to everything he stood for. He was, after all, asked by Warham to preach to the 1510 convocation and to sit on its committee for reform. He was also asked by Wolsey to preach at his installation as cardinal in 1515. The picture of reform on the eve of the Reformation is, thus, a confusing one, and no doubt it is partly this confusion that has helped to hide the considerable and widespread interest in it. What matters here, however, is not the differences but the similarities, and above all the simple fact that a movement for reform was alive, if not in every respect well, in England at the time when Wolsey acquired his legatine power. The question now arises of where precisely Wolsey fits into this picture.
The tragedy for anyone with an interest in Wolsey is that the lack of evidence makes it very difficult – some might say impossible – even to attempt an answer. Something of his personal beliefs is recorded by Cavendish, of which more later, but there is nothing on which to base a convincing history of his intellectual or religious life – not even, for instance, any direct evidence of any one book that he may have read. It might be tempting to conclude that there is no evidence because there never was a history. But before we do that, there is some indirect evidence that needs to be looked at. It is not only that Wolsey went to university; many people without any intellectual, let alone religious, inclinations have done that. More important is the fact that he read theology, became a fellow of Magdalen, a college arguably then at the intellectual heart of Oxford, and in 1498 was chosen to be master of the college’s famous school. This provided what today would be called a secondary education, preparing its pupils for entry into the college in the same way as Winchester did for New College, Oxford, and Eton did for King’s College, Cambridge. If Wolsey himself had been a pupil there, he would have been taught by John Anwykyll, the distinguished master of the school from 1481 to 1488. His successor, John Stanbridge, gave his name to the first Latin grammar written in English. Both men were at the top of their profession, presiding over a school with a first-class reputation. Too much cannot be made of Wolsey’s headmastership, for it only lasted a year, and it looks as if the appointment was always intended to be a stop-gap measure.405 Still, that he was appointed at all is likely to be evidence of some genuine interest in education, as, indeed, is the last post that he held at Magdalen, that of dean of divinity, an academic post, similar to a modern director of studies.406
Given this busy academic start to his career – and even in the 1520s, when he was overwhelmed with work, he took a considerable interest in the affairs of Oxford and Cambridge – it is difficult to believe that Wolsey had no interest in or knowledge of intellectual and religious matters. Then there are his foundations of Cardinal College and Ipswich. Admittedly, these were intended to perform a public function, and it is perfectly possible to believe that education is good for the common weal without being much interested in it oneself. Moreover, a concern for fame and reputation is always likely to lead the wealthy would-be patron to the merely fashionable, and in the early sixteenth century the founding of Oxford and Cambridge colleges was just that.407 And there was the additional attraction that founding a college did not only ensure earthly fame, but the founder’s chances of heavenly salvation were greatly increased by the provision of prayers to be said for his or her soul; indeed, a large proportion of the endowments of such colleges was set aside for this purpose. There were, therefore, plenty of reasons for founding a college that which for the present purpose will not do. What will is the almost obsessional nature of Wolsey’s involvement in his colleges, which seems to have gone beyond the merely fashionable. Even so, to state that he had some interest in intellectual and religious matters is not, perhaps, to say very much and, however difficult, some attempt at a sharper definition must now be made.
Erasmus’s reiterated praise of Henry VIII’s court for its patronage of ‘humane studies’ is well-known, and though in his search for wealthy patrons he may have occasionally allowed himself to relax his standards a little, there are reasons for believing that he meant it.408 There is, first of all, the known intellectual quality of the people whom he cited in support of his praise, pre-eminently Colet, Fisher and More, but also the likes of Linacre, Longland, Mountjoy, Pace, Tunstall, and Warham. It is an impressive collection by any standards, and moreover, the language in which he expressed his praise seems to go beyond the requirements even of Erasmian rhetoric. Anyway, one of the Englishmen whom Erasmus singled out for praise was Cardinal Wolsey, and for the following reasons:
The study of the humanities, hitherto somewhat fallen, is rebuilt; the liberal arts, still struggling with the champions of ancient ignorance, are supported by your [Wolsey’s] encouragement, protected by your power, gilded in your reflected glory, and nourished by your magnificence, as you offer princely salaries to attract outstanding scholars to come and teach. In the getting-together of libraries richly furnished with good authors of every kind, you rival Ptolemy Philadelphus himself, who owes his fame to this even more than to his crown. The three ancient tongues, without which all learning is handicapped, are revived among us by you, for I regard the generous benefactions now offered to the famous university of Oxford a blessing to the whole of Britain … I see, I see a kind of golden age arising, if once that spirit of yours enters a certain number of princes.409
Erasmus wrote this in May 1519, at a time when he was prone to visions of a golden age; but the fact that it was Wolsey who, not only as a patron of learning but as the author of a universal peace, made the visions possible is often forgotten. Of course, the praise is excessive, but the essential point that Erasmus was making is correct. The ‘generous benefaction’ was the recent setting up of public lectureships at Oxford. Their precise details are difficult to arrive at but in 1518 it was announced that Wolsey intended to provide the money for six such lectureships,410 and in the autumn of that year John Clements was lecturing in the humanities,411 that is in Greek and Latin literature, and in 1519 Thomas Brinknell, a leading Oxford academic, was lecturing in theology.412 If other lecturers were appointed at this time no trace of them has survived. What we do know is that Wolsey was well a
ware that if the new studies were to catch on, more was required than just the setting up of lectureships; the current degree courses were so heavily weighted towards logic and moral philosophy that students would have neither the time nor much incentive to attend them. So in 1519 Wolsey asked the heads of colleges to consider making attendance at the lectures compulsory. This they refused to do, but in the following year he had better luck with the regent masters – in charge of the degree courses – who agreed to rearrange their timetables to accommodate the new studies.413
These negotiations with the university authorities are perhaps better evidence of Wolsey’s genuine interest in university education than the more obvious successes; but there were some of these as well. In 1523, for instance, he obtained the services, probably as lecturer in the humanities, of the Spaniard, John Vives, who according to Erasmus was so skilled in the classics that ‘when he writes he reproduces in our own time the example of the ancients’.414 Nor was he just a Ciceronian or stylist, for in the year before his appointment he had brought out an edition of St Augustine’s City of God. And in the coming years he was to write a number of ‘humanist’ or Erasmian works, the most famous of which was his Instruction of a Christian Woman, dedicated to Catherine of Aragon, whose cause in the divorce he was to support – and was to lead to his leaving England for good in 1528 in some disgrace.415 Nevertheless, Vives’s appointment to Oxford in 1523 demonstrates Wolsey’s concern to find the best people. In practice it proved difficult to attract good people from abroad, so that at one point Wolsey was advised ‘to be contented with our learning in England, although it be somewhat more rude’.416 And in fact his English appointments were not all that bad. John Clements, Wolsey’s first lecturer in the humanities, had been a pupil of the famous schoolmaster, William Lily, at Colet’s recently founded St Paul’s school, and subsequently a tutor in More’s household. The humanist pedigree of Clements’s successor, Thomas Lupset, was if anything even more impeccable: having been brought up in Colet’s household, on going up to Cambridge in 1513 he had helped the great Erasmus himself with two of his most famous undertakings, an edition of St Jerome’s works and his New Testament.417
Turning from people to books, the evidence is again of considerable efforts to obtain the best, which included having copies made of works in libraries at Rome and Venice. Unfortunately there is little information about what exactly Wolsey was after, though it seems as if Greek texts were a priority.418 These copies were meant for Cardinal College, and it was the setting up of this college, the building of which was under way by at least early 1525, that Wolsey saw as his greatest contribution to the religious and intellectual life of the country; and it was to be in many ways a decidedly humanist contribution. His professor of the humanities, one of six new public professorships attached to the college, was to deliver two lectures a day, one on the works of Cicero, Quintilian, Trapezuntius or some other rhetorician, the other on the works of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Homer, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, or some other Greek poet or orator,419 while in the college itself Plautus and Terence were to be taught.420
This was a massive injection of classical literature into the formal teaching of the university, which was heavily weighted towards philosophy and logic – that is, towards scholasticism. But Wolsey’s humanistic intentions need to be qualified in a number of ways. The degree courses would have remained heavily weighted towards scholasticism and, indeed, even the majority of Wolsey’s new academic courses were devoted to the old ways.421 And in the significant area of theology, Wolsey showed a continuing faith – or it might be more accurate to call it a revival of faith – in the scholastic methods. For the new professor of theology was to spend only half of his time in biblical studies, for a humanist the key to that subject; the other half he was to spend interpreting the ‘subtle questions’ of Duns Scotus, the bête noire of all self-respecting humanists.422 And since his works already provided the backbone of much of the intellectual life of the university, it is all the more surprising to find Wolsey promoting them in this way. The explanation is that he believed that scholastic skills had a particular part to play in the fight against heresy, and he began to fear that, given the increasing emphasis on classical literature, these skills would be devalued and eventually lost.
Inevitably the rapid spread of Lutheranism on the continent introduced a note of caution into the initially rapturous reception of humanism in English intellectual circles, but especially amongst its slightly older members. As the 1520s advanced, both Longland and Tunstall, for instance, showed increasing unease about the effects of some of Erasmus’s writings, and were not afraid to tell him so.423 The climate was changing. The mockery and satire had been all very well when the only enemy had been the immoral and the hidebound within, but now the obvious danger was that Erasmus’s weapons would get into the hands of the much more dangerous enemy without. When even More began to have doubts, not just about his ‘darling’s [Erasmus’s] books’ but his own,424 it is not surprising that Wolsey followed suit. And that he did is suggested not only by his provision of more Duns Scotus but by the lengthy defence of a new edition of the Colloquies that in April 1526 Erasmus felt it expedient to send him.425 But if doubts crept in, it remains true that Wolsey envisaged a central role in the university’s curriculum for the study of classical literature, so that, as Longland explained to the queen in January 1525, men would come from all parts of Christendom to benefit from the new college’s learning. At the same time Longland spoke of the special provisions which Wolsey had made for the study of the Bible there.426 Classical literature and the Bible – were not these two at the heart of the programme for Christian renewal that humanists had been calling for during the two decades before the founding of Cardinal College? Wolsey was not the first Englishman to give active support to this programme at the universities: both Fisher at Cambridge and Fox at Oxford, to name only the most obvious, had preceded him. However, the scale of his new foundation signalled Wolsey’s intention to give the programme a major boost. And nothing may be more indicative of this than the differences in salary of his new professors. Four were to receive £20 a year, but the professors of theology and of the humanities were to receive £40.427
The suggestion being put forward here is that, despite the severe limitations of the evidence, it is possible to assign Wolsey a position within that broad movement for church ‘reform’ whose existence was argued for earlier. It was, to use the current jargon, a little left of centre, nearer to Colet than to Fitzjames – at least as regards educational and intellectual matters. As for his personal preferences, there is no evidence that he was in love with classical literature, nor do his letters display any great knowledge of the Bible – but then diplomatic correspondence hardly lends itself to biblical quotation. Erasmus did send him a copy of the 1519 edition of his New Testament, bearing a Latin epigram written by More in which much was made of Wolsey’s ‘preoccupation’ with ‘the Law of Christ’ which More equated with Erasmus’s work.428 Still, this is not proof that Wolsey ever read the proffered gift, and in fact no acknowledgement of its receipt has survived. Moreover, as an undergraduate and fellow of Magdalen in the last two decades of the fifteenth century, neither classical literature nor the Bible would have figured prominently, though perhaps more at his college than elsewhere in the university.429 What Wolsey would have been trained in were scholastic skills, and a letter that Thomas Winter wrote in December 1528 suggests that he retained his interest in scholasticism. Winter, then resident in Paris, was giving his father an account of his studies. What pleased him most, he wrote, were scholastic questions, because of their ‘intellectual subtilty’;430 other authors merely skimmed the surface, but the schoolmen really got to the bottom of things.431 Such remarks were hardly calculated to win the heart of a committed humanist, but there was method in them, and method that may have had very little to do with Winter’s own likes and dislikes. What had happened was that the Venetian ambassador in Par
is, none other than that earlier Wolsey-watcher, Sebastian Giustinian, had remarked to Winter that any real learning was dependent on the schoolmen, adding that this was something of which ‘your patron was not ignorant’432 – ‘patron’ being an ambassadorial euphemism for natural father. Winter did what was expected of him and passed on the compliment, at the same time stressing his own interest in the subject. One could take the view that, like Giustinian’s remark, Winter’s letter was no more than an exercise in insincerity but, even as such, it would have made no sense if there had been no substance to the Venetian ambassador’s view of Wolsey’s intellectual interests. It looks, therefore, as if Wolsey never completely deserted his training as a schoolman, and that, although he came to accept the relevance of humanism to the Church’s current needs, unlike those around him, such as More and Tunstall, he was never personally reanimated by it.