Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:10:44.032Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Lap Books and Lectern Books: The Revelatory Book in the Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Extract

The size of books has always mattered – for manuscript books as well as printed books. It makes a great difference to the fate of its contents and eventual influence whether the page is in a heavy folio or a portable pamphlet. Differences of format affected authority and influence and had a direct bearing on the circulation of ideas, the critical lift-off that could take place when vocalization took the silent word into mouths and minds away from the lettered page. This may seem self-evident, but even so, given the recognized role of the book in the Reformation (or reformations) of the sixteenth century, some reflections on this aspect seem worthwhile. The revelatory quality of the book in this period is here approached first by looking at the role of small lap books, and then by considering the challenge in England to the accepted order of books, when the great lectern book of Scripture was first laid open for general reading in church naves.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Petrucci, A., ‘Alle origini del libro moderno; Libri da banco, libri da bisaccia, libretti da mano ’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 12 (1969), 295313 Google Scholar; Milsom, J., ‘Music’, in Hellinga, L. and Trapp, J.B., eds, Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. III: 1400–1557 (Cambridge, 1999) [hereafter CHBB3], 5428 Google Scholar; Wordsworth, C. and Littlehales, H., The Old Service-Books of the English Church (1904), 1047, 2036 Google Scholar; Aston, M., Lollards and Reformers (1984), 1234 Google Scholar; The Church Book of St. Ewen’s, Bristol 1454–1584, ed. B.R. Masters and E. Ralph, Publications of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Records Section, 6 (1967), 9.

3 The Greek word had the meaning of hand-knife as well as handbook, and Erasmus’s Enchiridion (STC 10480) was presented as The Handsome Weapon of a Christian Knight’.

4 Hudson, Anne, Lollards and their Books (1985), 1834, 192200 Google Scholar; cadem, The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988), 12, 112, 205, 247. On BL MSS Egerton 617–618 see Forshall, J. and Madden, F., eds, The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, 4 vols (Oxford, 1850), 1:xliii, no. 32 Google Scholar; Fristedt, S.L., ‘A weird manuscript enigma in the British Museum’, Stockholm Sttidies in Modern Philology, ns 2 (1964), 11621.Google Scholar

5 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Aug. A. 2; Forshall and Madden, Holy Bible, i:lxi, no. 153; Hudson, Premature Reformation, H5, 233(see 199 for the observation that many Wycliffite biblical manuscripts seem intended for church use and can be seen as lectern books).

6 Ibid., 233 n.34; Forshall and Madden, Holy Bible, i:xliv-v, xlvii, lxi-ii, nos 39, 60, 154, 156; Cranmer, Thomas, Miscellaneous Writings, ed. Cox, J.E., PS (Cambridge, 1846), 119.Google Scholar

7 Hudson, Lollards and their Books, chs 11, 12; idem, Premature Reformation, 200–4, 249; Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. G.H. Martin (Oxford, 1995), 438–43; Aston, M., Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (1993), 88 n. 62, 113 Google Scholar; ‘Introduction’, in M. Aston and C. Richmond, eds, Lollardy and the Gentry in the later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1997), 3–4; Somerset, F., ‘Answering the Twelve Conclusions: Dymmok’s Halfhearted Gestures towards Publication’, ibid., 53 Google Scholar; Wilkins, D., ed., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hihemiae, 4 vols (1737), 3:317.Google Scholar

8 ‘tomi, quos nos libros vel volumina nuncupamus’, quoted in Petrucci, Armando, Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy, tr. Radding, C.M. (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995), 3940 Google Scholar, from Erymologiarum sive originimi libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), 6.8.1-2; see also Petrucci, Writers and Readers, ix, 59, 118, 123, 129, 137–9. On the Codex Amiatinus (written at Jarrow) and a huge fifteenth-century Latin antiphoner, see Bruce-Mitford, R.L.S., ‘The art of the Codex Amiatinus’, Journal of the Archaeological Association, ser. 3 (1969), 125 Google Scholar; Galeazzi, A., Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Florence, 1986), 60, 218, tav. xi-xii, clxiv.Google Scholar

9 Saenger, P., ‘The impact of the early printed page on the reading of the Bible’, in Saenger, P. and van Kampen, K., The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions (1999), 323 Google Scholar; and on the condition and survival rate of larger books in libraries see Leedham-Green, E., ‘University libraries and book-sellers’, in CHBB3, 3403 Google Scholar; Martin, H.-J., The French Book Religion, Absolutism, and Readership, 1585–1715 (Baltimore, MD, 1996), 59.Google Scholar

10 Rev. 10 — 11.

11 Peter Parshall, The vision of the Apocalypse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Carey, Frances, ed., The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (1999), 1006 Google Scholar, and catalogue entries at 129–39. The Vulgate uses the word ‘devora’, where the AV has ‘cat’.

12 On the metaphor of reading and eating, the text as nourishment, see Camille, Michael, ‘Visual signs of the sacred page: books in the Bible moralisée ’, Word and Image, 5 (1989), 114, 11718 Google Scholar; Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), 1789, 242 Google Scholar, 282 (Peter Comestor or Manducator = the one who had chewed up and digested Scripture).

13 Recent works on German pamphlet literature include Cole, R.G., ‘The Reformation pamphlet and communication processes’, in Kohler, H.-J., ed., Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, Symposium, Tubingen, 1980 (Stuttgart, 1981), 13962 Google Scholar; Russell, Paul A., Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany, 1521–1523 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Chrisman, Miriam U., Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–1330 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1996)Google Scholar. For remarks on pamphlet reading through the period see Martin, , French Book, 12, 23, 389.Google Scholar

14 Cameron, Euan, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), 1012 Google Scholar, summarizes this output.

15 Hutchison, J.C., Albrecht Durer (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 165–6, 217 n.4Google Scholar; Conway, W.., Literary Remains of Albrecht Durer (Cambridge, 1889), 107, 123, 1569 Google Scholar; Danieli, David, William Tyndale (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994), 1081 1Google Scholar; Mozley, J.F., William Tyndale (1937), 701.Google Scholar

16 Flood, J.X., ‘The book in Reformation Germany’, in Gilmont, J.-F., ed., The Reformation and the Book (Aldershot, 1998), 445, 56, 778 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Subversion in the Alps: books and readers in the Austrian Counter-Reformation’, The Library, 6th ser., 12 (1990), 198–9; Hudson, Premature Reformation, 464–5, 471, 474–5, 477–8, 486–7; Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 204–5.

17 Johnston, A.G., ‘Printing and the Reformation in trie Low Countries, 1520-c.1555’, in Gilmont, , Reformation and Book, 163 Google Scholar; Hudson, , Premature Reformation, 201–2, 312–13 (examinations of 1413 and 1421)Google Scholar. A paper pamphlet of several leaves (‘certa folia papiri scripta’), confessed as written in his own hand, formed part of Taylor’s 1423 trial and we know its length since it was transcribed in the record, and filled about three folio pages in Chichele’s register (fols 58v-60r): The Register of Henry Chichele, ed. E.F. Jacob, 4 vols, Canterbury and York Society, 42, 45–7 (Oxford, 1938–47), 3:162-6.

18 Longhurst, J.E., ‘Julián Hernandez Protestant martyr’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 22 (1960), 90118 Google Scholar; Higman, F.M., ‘French-speaking regions, 1520–62’, in Gilmont, , Reformation and Book, 143 Google Scholar; Kinder, A.G., ‘Printing and Reformation ideas in Spain’, ibid., 31213 Google Scholar; Davis, N.Z., Society and Culture in Early Modem France (1975), 2023 Google Scholar; Chaix, Paul, Recherches sur l’imprimerie à Geneve de 1550 à 1564 (Geneva, 1954), 194 Google Scholar; Crespili, Jean, Histoire des Martyrs, ed. Benoit, D., 3 vols (Toulouse, 1885–9), 2:46871 Google Scholar. Longhurst, ‘Julián Hernández’, 99, shows how the printers prepared smuggled texts to evade suspicion, and this included removing Geneva from the title-page of the Imagen del Antechristo.

19 Kingdon, Robert M., ‘Patronage, piety, and printing in sixteenth-century Europe’, 1964 paper reprinted in his Church and Society in Reformation Europe (London, 1985), ch. 17, 2731 Google Scholar (I thank Elizabeth Ingram for this reference); Davis, Society and Culture, 4–5, 86–7, 168–9, 171-2, 184, 189; idem, ‘The Protestant printing workers of Lyons in 1551’, in H. Meylan, ed., Aspects de la propagande religieuse (Geneva, 1957), 247–57.

20 STC 2419–2498.5, 2499.9-2500, and 2375–2402.5 for prose edns; Temperley, N., The Music of the English Parish Church, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979), 1, chs 2, 3Google Scholar. For the Prayer Book see Maltby, Judith, Prayer Boofe and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998), esp. 2430 Google Scholar, 44–5 on ownership of the book; cadem, ‘“By this Book”: parishioners, the Prayer Book and the Established Church’, in Fincham, Kenneth, ed., The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke, 1993), 11537.Google Scholar

21 Foxe, John, Actes ana Monuments [hereafter /VAI] (1563), 468Google Scholar; Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities (Cambridge, 1974), 21617 Google Scholar; The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. Keeble, N.H. (Letehworth, 1974), 7 Google Scholar. For editions of Bunny’s Protestant adaptation of Parsons’ A Booke of Christian Exercise, appertaining to Resolution, 1584–1630S, including a Welsh version, see STC 19355–90.

22 Frere, W.H. and Kennedy, W.M., eds, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, 3 vols, Aleuin Club Collections, 14–16 (1910)Google Scholar [hereafter VAI], 2:35-6; Select Works of John Bale, ed. H. Christmas, PS (Cambridge, 1849), 376, from The Image of Both Churches [1548?]. On the Great Bible see Hellinga, L. and Trapp, J.E., ‘Introduction’, in CHBB3, 278 Google Scholar; Hellinga, L., ‘Printing’, ibid., 1056 Google Scholar; Neville-Sington, P., ‘Press, politics and religion’, ibid., 5924.Google Scholar

23 A Supplication of the Poore Commons (1546), STC 23435.5, sig. A6v; Four Supplications, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS, e.s. 13 (1871), 66–7; Whiting, Robert, Local Responses to the English Reformation (Basingstoke, 1998), 1978 Google Scholar; Kastan, D.S., ‘“The noyse of the new Bible”: reform and reaction in Henrician England’, in McEachern, C. and Shuger, D., eds, Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (Cambridge, 1997), 54, 66 Google Scholar; Bowker, M., The Henrician Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), 170 Google Scholar; Mozley, J.F., Coverdale and his Bibles (1953), 261 Google Scholar4; Hughes, P.X. and Larkin, J.F., eds, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols (New Haven, CT, and London, 1964–9), 1:2968.Google Scholar

24 Herbert, A.S., Historical Catalogtie of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1325–1961 (London and New York, 1968), 2535 Google Scholar, gives the sizes of the Great Bibles.

25 Randall, Gerald, Church Furnishing and Decoration (1980), 7981 Google Scholar; Cox, J.C., Pulpits, Lecterns, and Organs in English Churches (Oxford, 1915), 162203 Google Scholar; Cox, J.C. and Harvey, A., English Church Furniture (1907), 7881 Google Scholar. I am very grateful here to Trevor Cooper for his generous help and stimulation.

26 Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath, Devon, 1520–1573, ed. J.E. Binney (Exeter, 1904), 103, 126, 133; Churchwardens’ Accounts of Ashburton, ed. A. Hanham, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, ns 15 (1970), ix, 107.

27 Mozley, Coverdale, 173, 261–2, 263; Cox, J.C., Churchwardens’ Accounts (1911), 118, 120 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Nicholas Bennett for confirming that an ‘ancient desk and chain in the library of Lincoln cathedral’ surmised (by Cox and Harvey, English Church Furniture, 332) as probably that which housed the Great Bible, is a chimera.

28 Bonner was elected bishop on 20 Oct. 1539 and made arrangements for setting up the Bibles before his departure for France in late Feb. 1540: A&M (1570), 2:1362, 1381; Brigden, Susan, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1989), 332.Google Scholar

29 VAI, 2:137.

30 Ibid., 2:59.

31 Ibid., 2:9.

32 Supplication, sig. A6r; Furnivall, Four Supplications, 66.

33 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodic, 21 vols (1862-1932) [hereafter LP], 15:308-9 (648); PRO, SP1/ 160/8; Mozley, Coverdale, 265.

34 King, John N., Tudor Royal Iconography (Princeton, NJ, 1989), 704 Google Scholar (note comments at 72); MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, CT, and London, 1996), 23840.Google Scholar

35 Cranmer, , Miscellaneous Writings, 11825 Google Scholar; Cranmer, MacCulloch, 25860 Google Scholar; MacCulloch, D., ‘Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church’, in idem, ed., The Reign of Henry VIII (Basingstoke, 1995), 175 Google Scholar; SE. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1977), 229–31.

36 The ‘admonicion’ (which measures about 217×174 mm) faces the title-page, mounted on modern paper, of the Bible Society copy in the Cambridge University Library, described by Herbert, Historical Catalogue, no. 52 (28-9), where the text is printed. Both Bonner’s notices are printed from Bonner’s register, London, Guildhall Library, MS 9531/12, pt 1, fols 26v-27r, in Foxe, A&M, ed. SU. Cattley and G. Townsend, 8 vols (1837-41), 5, App. xiv.

37 A&M (1570), 1381, compare (1563), 621; Mozley, Coverdale, 265–9; Brigdcn, London, 333, 339–40; Janelle, P., ‘An unpublished poem on Bishop Stephen Gardiner’, BIHR, 6 (1928–9), 1617, 16772 Google Scholar. According to this source (168), ‘Every halydayc unto polys he wolde resorte / and reddc some story of the bible openlye’, at which he had a greater audience ‘then we hadde to here our mummynge masse and matyns / whereat your canons of Poolis toke displeasure’.

38 Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders et al., 11 vols (1810-28), 3:896 (34-35 Henry VIII, c.1).

39 To Hughes and Larkin, Proclamations, 1:296-8; Turner, W., The Huntyng & Fyndyng out of the Romyshe Fox ([Bonn], 1543), sig. D8r (cited Mozley, Coverdale, 269)Google Scholar; Bale, Image of Both Churches, in Select Works, 440; Supplication, sig. A6r; Furnivall, Four Supplications, 67.

40 LP, 18/ii:294, 299, 300, 307–9, 318, 358; MacCulloch, , Cranmer, 297322 Google Scholar, and on Christopher Nevinson at 204.

41 The phrase used in the 1541 proclamation, cited in 11.23 above.

42 LP, 18/11:300 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 128, p. 31), 307, 315, 358.

43 The First Churchwardens’ Book of Louth 1500–1524, ed. R.C. Dudding (Oxford 1941), 152–3, 172–4, lists books belonging ‘to the hey qwere’.

44 LP, 18/ii:315. This related to Dawby’s curacy of Lenham, before 1543.

45 Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The Priming Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979), 1:358 Google Scholar; MacCulloch, , Cranmer, 28991, 301 Google Scholar; Lehmberg, , Later Parliaments, 184 Google Scholar; Wilkins, , Concilia, 3:863 Google Scholar. Lay readings of Scripture in church were banned at once under Mary. See VAI, 2:354 for Bonner’s London article of enquiry as to whether any layman had ‘expounded or declared any portion or part of Scripture in any church or elsewhere’, and Hughes and Larkin, Proclamations, 2:5-8, for Mary’s 1553 proclamation forbidding anyone to presume ‘to preach, or by way of reading in churches … to interpret or teach any Scriptures’.

46 See, for examples, Georg Penez’s 1531 contrasting sermons, Foxe’s title-page, the woodcut prefacing book 6 of the Acts and Monuments, and Latimer preaching before Edward VI; King, J.N., ‘The godly woman in Elizabethan iconography’, Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), 4184 Google Scholar; idem, Tudor Royal Iconography, 97, 100, 162, figs 25, 28, 52; Aston, M. and Ingram, E., ‘The iconography of the Acts and Monuments ’, in Loades, David, ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 1997), 757.Google Scholar

47 Bray, Gerald, ed., The Anglican Canons 1529–1947, Church of England Record Society, 6 (Woodbridge, 1998), 1769, 1823 Google Scholar; VAI, 3:321, 335–6, show the bishops of Winchester and Rochester seeing to this order. [See also no.52 below.]

48 Feleh, Susan, ‘Shaping the reader in the Acts and Monuments’ in Loades, , John Foxe, 5760.Google Scholar

49 Nussbaum, Damián, ‘Whitgift’s “Book of Martyrs”: Archbishop Whitgift, Timothy Bright and the Elizabethan struggle over John Foxe’s legacy’, in Loades, David, ed., John Foxe: An Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 1999), 13553 Google Scholar; Lander, Jesse, ‘“Foxe’s” Boots of Martyrs: printing and popularizing the Acts and Monuments ’, in McEachcrn, and Shuger, , Religion and Culture, 6992.Google Scholar

50 London, Guildhall Library, MS 4249 (‘The Bentley Register’), fols 235t. 236v. In 1584 the churchwarden, enjoining better keeping of the church books, gave a copy of Jewel’s works to replace the Calvin on Job (set up in 1580/1) that had been stolen.

51 Steinberg, Leo, ‘A corner of the Last Judgment’, Daedalus, 109 (1980), 260, 2723, n. 90 Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Last Judgment as merciful heresy’, Art in America, 63 (1975), 4863 Google Scholar; de Tolnay, Charles, Michelangelo, 5 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1943–60), 5:334 Google Scholar; Barnes, Bernadine, Miche langelo’s Last Judgment (Los Angeles and London, 1998), 60, 146 n. 69 Google Scholar. Rev. 20.12 speaks of the opening of books in the plural, but Last Judgement depictions, such as those of Jan Provost, represent the single opened ‘book of life’ mentioned in the same verse: Harbison, Craig, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth Century Northern Europe (New York and London, 1976), 38, 11516, figs 6, 57, 115.Google Scholar

52 Addendum to n.47: For the recent discovery that there were at this time unrealistic hopes of placing copies of Foxc’s book in all churches see Evenden, Elizabeth and Freeman, Thomas S., ‘John Foxe, John Day and the printing of the “Book of Martyrs”‘, in Myers, Robin, Harris, Michael, and Mandelbrote, Giles, eds, Lives in Print: Biography and the Book Trade from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century (2002), 30, 46.Google Scholar