Bishop Stephen Gardiner

It was on November 12th 1555 that there occurred the death of Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester. A key figure in the story of the English reformation he is often depicted as the arch-reactionary and as " Wily Winchester ".This view is, I consider, less than fair to him.

There is an online account of his life at Stephen Gardiner and the Oxford DNB life by C.D.C. Armstrong can be read at  Gardiner, Stephen

Image:luminarium.org

My own particular interest in the life of Gardiner comes from reading Glyn Redworth's splendid biography of him In Defence of the Church Catholic an published in 1990. Unfortunately the book is now out of print. It is one I highly recommend both because of its insight into the period but also, as I have written before on this blog, because when I read it in the spring of 2004 it effectively demolished my belief in the existenc eof astable Henrician Anglo-Catholicism that could be seen as underlying or feeding into the Church of England. Rather it was a case of everything being provisional and utterly dependent on the whims of the King and court and church faction. That demolition job on one remaining part of my Anglo-Catholicism led a few months later to my realising that Rome was and is the answer. So, in away, Bishop Stephen Gardiner helped to make me a Catholic.

By coincidence I saw Glyn, whom I met several years after reading the book, in Oxford today, but did not have time to remind him of the appositeness of the anniversary.

Meme me up

I have been invited by Stephanie Mann of the blog Supremacy and Survival to respond to a meme ( I thought that was something to do with poor old Professor Dawkins... but no matter) which she forwarded to me and which is working its way around the Blogosphere. The idea is to ask bloggers to list their three favourite books and pass the meme on to five other bloggers.

Now my instinct is always rather to ignore chain letters, and thinking which three books I should list could easily worry me to death - which should I choose out of the books I have read and appreciated?. In general I am not one for lists and such like compliations. There are so many books I have read and enjoyed - and even more I want to read and enjoy.

Nonetheless I do not want to be unsporting, and as I see the idea is to list three favourite Catholic books it becomes a bit easier - and I shall not do the cop-out of choosing the Missal, the Breviary and the Bible!

The three books I shall list are therefore books, not necessarily "favourite", but rather three which reflect my decision to be received as aCatholic in 2005 - one was read afterwards - and which I would recommend. Indeed I realise I have posted about all three already - to see my prevuious comments on them follow the links at the bottom of the post to the authpr. I will list them in the order I read them and my reasons for choosing them:

Walter Ullmann A Short History of the Medieval Papacy which I read in 1994. I had read other books by Ullmann as an undergraduate and subsequently, and appreciated his vast knowledge of medieval political ideas and concepts. From this book the phrase which haunted my mind was from the Introduction :

the papacy is the only institution in the European or Western orbit of civilization which links the post-Apostolic with the Atomic age

That great continuity described not in a theological or polemical work, but in a standard history book - yes, that impressed me. This is a great standard work, well worth reading, and now available in a new edition and online.

Glyn Redworth In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner, published in 1990, was a book I read early in 2004 in connection with my academic research in the library of Pusey House here in Oxford. What Dr Redworth shows witjh clarity and elegance is the way in which the supposed;y "conservative" Bishop of Winchester from 1531 until his deprivation in 1549 was not the standard bearer of a henrician Anglo-Catholicism, but rather someone who reluctantly went along with change, telling himself and his hearers that such changes were all right...really. Until that is he realised just what had actually happened. Hence his return to the Roman obedience, and his great and moving sermon in December 1554. To the Anglo-Catholic I then was it shook the certainties of continuity with the pre-Reformation Church. Although not a direct cause of my conversion - as one friend has been known to claim - I could claim that Stephen Gardiner made me fully Catholic - I was to be received about a year later. An immensely readable and insightful book, but, alas, out of print.

Robert Hugh Benson Confessions of a Convert, which was published in 1913, but which I did not read until the summer of 2011. Here was an account of a conversion which recorderd emotions and conflcts so very similar to those I had experienced. However different our individual lives here was someone speaking so many of the same thoughts as I had had - notably the fact that once received the things which you could once articulate as an Anglo-Catholic simply slip away - you cannot really recall those compelling arguments which kept one outside the one true Church. A very readable and charming book, easy to share with intending or enquiring converts.

I shall now contact other bloggers as to their choice...

Dinner with Bishop Stephen Gardiner

Well, when I say dinner with Bishop Gardiner I mean that on Friday evening I was entertained to dinner here in Oxford by mutual friends to meet Dr Glyn Redworth, of Manchester University and author of, amongst other works, In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner which was published in 1990 by Blackwells. Unfortunately it is now out of print, but is immensely well worth reading if you can find a copy. Not only is it a wonderful biography and full of insights into the life and times of the Bishop, but for me it is important as if helped me in my process of conversion to find full peace and communion as a Catholic. Yes, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, through his amanuensis Dr Redworth, helped me to become a Catholic. Bishop Stephen Gardiner Image from Luminarium Anti-Catholic satire depicting Bishop Stephen Gardiner 1556 Image from Luminarium I read the biography in the early part of 2004, and doing so as an example of an episcopal biography of the type I was (and am) attempting to write of Bishop Richard Fleming. Hitherto I had accepted the text-book view of Gardiner as the arch-conservative Henrician bishop of the 1540s, and admired him as a (proto) Anglo-Catholic who ebentually returned to the Roman fold. Nonetheless his seeming acceptance of the Henrician church settlement legitimised to some extent its Anglo-Catholic credentials Dr Redworth provided a remarkable breath of fresh air. Gardiner emerges first of all as the humanist scholar he undoubtedly was, but not as the steriotypical reactionary of usual versions, but rather the very reluctant man who felt compelled through the 1530s and 1540s under King Henry VIII to go along with changes he did not really agree with. by 1548 he realised he could go no further and making his position clear ended up in the Tower of London and was deprived of his bishopric. Restored by Queen Mary I he accepted reunion with the Holy See as the only guarentee of the Catholic faith, and said so in his great sermon preached at Paul's Cross in the days after the reconciliation on St Andrew's day in 1554. This is not "Wily Winchester" or the arch-conservative of so many accounts, rather it is, to use modern phraseology, Gardiner the frightened conservative, or even, the dodgy liberal. The sense of a historic Anglo-Catholic patrimony being conveyed by him was eroded. The career of Gardiner did not legitimise the Henrician experiment, rather, it showed its weakness and idiosyncracy. This really proved a revelation to me, even if it did not lead to immediate submission. However I am sure it was working away in my mind until the evening a few months later when I realised, and said, that for me the future was with the One, Holy, Catholic and Roman Church. As it happened we did not get round to really talking about this last night, but the conversation ranged wide and deep over history and literature - notably The Forsyte Saga - and the whole evening was most enjoyable and convivial. Maybe on a future occasion I can recount this story to Dr Redworth. Meanwhile I feel a renewed wish to read other of his books, and would urge anyone interested in the English reformation and the origins of Anglicanism to read his life of Bishop Gardiner.