Archbishop Pole
John Edwards
Ashgate £70
(978-1-4094-2057-6)
Church Times Bookshop £63 (Use code CT318
)
THIS is a book in an projected series of lives of Archbishops of
Canterbury, of which one of those already published covers a 12th-
century cluster falling between Anselm and Thomas Becket. Reginald
Pole clearly deserves a volume of his own, and this is a scholarly
and substantial one. It has the drawback that its author does not
always realise that the non-specialist reader will not be so close
to its subject, and may need visible signposts in order to find his
way to the point of the story.
Pole (1500-58) became the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Canterbury. His family stood genealogically on the fringes of the
royal family, and there was dark old family history. (Henry VII had
murdered Pole's uncle.) Pole was at Oxford when Linacre and Latimer
were teaching there, and he also studied at Padua (paid for partly
by the King), where he encountered other famous names of
Renaissance and Reformation.
He became a jobbing diplomat-theologian to Henry VIII, who was
happy to lavish livings on him even while he was not yet ordained
to the priesthood. He was sent to Paris to canvass leading academic
opinion when Henry decided he wanted to have his marriage to
Catherine of Aragon annulled, and marry Anne Boleyn. During his
years of exile from 1536/37, and attainted for treason until the RC
Mary became Queen in 1553, Pole was made a Cardinal, though still
not ordained, and acted as Papal Legate. His tenure of the
archbishopric of Canterbury lasted from 1556 to 1558, and his
ordination as priest took place at last two days before his
consecration.
Pole's was, then, a life intimately entangled with great events,
in England and in Europe, and this new biography takes the reader
into the thick of the endless controversy that surrounded him and
his activities. Its strength lies in staying close to the sources,
and his own writings - he remained an academic manqué even when he
was forced to become a politician for his very life.
A substantial Appendix gives glimpses, first of the treatise he
wrote for Henry VIII "In Defence of the Unity of the Church". This
was not initially published but offered to the King in manuscript,
for his private reading. In 1539, it was printed, however, in Rome
and against Pole's wishes. The extracts include Pole's own
assertions that he is not by preference a controversialist, and
that he is personally fond of the King. Then there are passages
about papal and monarchical authority, and the problem of the
occasional wicked papal office-holder; there are extracts giving
Pole's impression of the way the early hopes of Henry's reign have
given way to the unsatisfactory behaviour over Anne Boleyn and the
annulment; warnings of potential popular rebellion; views on the
martyrdom of John Fisher and Thomas More.
Further extracts cover the period when Pole tried to negotiate
with Somerset to return to England in the reign of Edward VI. The
last group of extracts describe Pole's disillusion with the
"Satanic" Pope Paul IV, who had behaved like a tyrant and not
listened to his cardinals and bishops, including Pole himself.
Dr G. R. Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and
Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.