The Bible in Richard III's day; and, was Richard a proto-Protestant?

The 1481 Amerbach Bible. Photo courtesy of the University of Leicester.

As part of yesterday's ceremonies, while Compline was sung at Leicester Cathedral, the University of Leicester's chaplain laid a Bible printed in the late king's day atop the coffin. You may read the related press release here.

A Bible printed in the late 1400's, you ask? Yes, this edition was printed by Johann Amerbach in 1481, a reprint of his original 1479 edition, which sold out. During Richard's reign, no Bibles were printed in England itself, but apparently, there was no problem acquiring ones made on the Continent.

You may know that Gutenberg printed his great Bible around 1455, and copies were sold throughout Christendom, even to England. Though the first printed Bibles were still substantially cheaper than the traditional hand-copied kind, they were still too expensive for private individuals to own. Gutenberg's customer base were chiefly the monasteries, universities, and cathedrals.

 

The printing press in England

William Caxton and Earl Rivers present
the first book printed in English to King Edward IV.

During the reign of Edward IV, a well-traveled English merchant by the name of William Caxton brought the printing press to England. In 1476 at Westminster, he printed the first book in England: a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He went on to produce nearly a hundred other hits before his death in 1492, all artfully made, such as Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, the first English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and even Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, which was translated from French to English by Earl Rivers (Anthony Woodville, brother-in-law to Richard III, whom Richard put to death; and notably one of Robert Downey, Jr's earlier film roles in the 1995 version of Shakespeare's Richard III).

But what about the Bible? Caxton did print religious works, including indulgence certificates, the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, and a psalter based on the Latin Vulgate (the official edition of the Bible in the Roman Church, which the Gutenberg Bibles were also based on); but he never printed a complete Bible. The history of print isn't one of my specialties, so I don't know if he was specially forbidden from printing the Bible or if there just wasn't a market demand for it. The latter seems unlikely, so I'm more inclined to think Caxton just never got a license to print the full Bible, whether in Latin or in English.

The Lollard movement

In 1409, a church synod held in London under the authority of Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, issued a series of decrees against the Lollards, a sort of proto-Protestant movement inspired by Oxford scholar John Wycliffe. Wycliffe began his claim to fame by translating (or, perhaps, directing other scholars to translate) the Bible from Latin to English. It wasn't the first Bible in English, but it gained special notoriety because Wycliffe grew increasingly suspicious of corruption in the Church and emphasized a return to Scripture. Wycliffe's concerns about the Church's abuses of wealth were actually shared by many orthodox clerics as well, His followers, the Lollards (a derogatory term given by academics of the era to capture the mumbling sounds of the illiterate lay folk who came to dominate the movement) went further and challenged pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, the taking of oaths, and even the doctrine of the Eucharist, among many other beliefs, as "un-Scriptural". The denial of the Eucharist was, in my opinion, the last straw which prompted the Church to crack down on the Lollards. The year following the synod, John Badby was burned at the stake, the first layman to be executed for heresy in English history. It seems to have worked, since there were very few executions on account of Lollardy afterward. King Henry IV was eager to enforce the anti-Lollard decrees at least partly because he had the Church to thank for assuming the throne; and, in particular, Archbishop Arundel, a fellow exile who joined forces with him during Henry's banishment by Richard II.

Wycliffe's followers, the Lollards.

But getting back to the issue of the Bible, it was this synod that strictly regulated the translation and publication of the Scriptures. It did not, however, ban the printing or even the translating of Bibles outright. Rather, one had to have express permission from Church authorities to do so. From Arundel's Constitutions of 1408:

7. The translation of the text of Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another is a dangerous thing; as blessed Jerome testifies, because it is not easy to make the sense in all respects the same; as the same blessed Jerome confesses that he made frequent mistakes in this business, although he was inspired: therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do by his own authority translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other by way of book, pamphlet, or treatise. Nor let any such book, pamphlet, or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wicklif aforesaid, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in whole or in part, in public or in private, under pain of the greater excommunication, till that translation have been approved by the diocesan of the place, or if occasion shall require, by a provincial Council. Let him that do contrary be punished in the same manner as a supporter of heresy and error.

Was Richard III a Lollard?

I've noticed a few commenters on Richard-related posts throughout the web assert that the late king was a Lollard, or a proto-Protestant, because he owned a Wycliffe Bible. They are probably referring to the Wycliffe New Testament now owned by the New York Public Library. Richard owned quite a few books in his lifetime, of which about 13 are attributed to him today. We know this because he liked to sign his books (a relatively uncommon habit for his times). The Wycliffe New Testament in question is signed:

A VOUS ME LY -- Gloucestre

This was a motto in French, meaning, "I am bound to you". The signature, simply "Gloucester", is probably that of Richard III while he was still known as the Duke of Gloucester.

From a Wycliffe New Testament
in the British Library.

Now, while a faithful Protestant today might jump to the conclusion that Richard showed signs of early Protestant devotion (and a faithful Catholic might find Richard guilty by association for having even owned a Wycliffe NT), in truth, this doesn't tell us much other than that Richard had an interest in reading the Bible in English. This is because, believe it or not, the Wycliffe translation of the Bible itself was not banned by the Church. This is because the Wycliffe translations, or at least, the earlier ones made in Wycliffe's own lifetime, were faithfully, if not rather slavishly, translated from the Latin Vulgate. The Church, therefore, had no quarrel with the text itself. What caused a Wycliffe Bible to fall under the ban was if the Bible had one of the prefaces by Wycliffe or one of his followers attached. When succeeding Lollards issued newer, less literal translations with more leeway for interspersing their own interpretations, Church censors often had difficulty figuring out which Bibles were to be burned. A sure measure for them seems to have been whether the volume was dated before or after the year 1409. However, non-annotated Wycliffe Bibles still were found in the ownership of local churches everywhere, so it's highly unlikely that the ownership of one on Richard's part would suggest Lollard leanings. Further, we have a tremendous amount of evidence elsewhere, such as in Richard's book of hours, that the king expressed a traditional and quite non-Lollard Catholic faith; not the least of which was his extreme devotion to the offering of Masses and other prayers for the dead.

I hope to write more on the subject of Richard's religious practices soon, but for now, I'll leave with one great irony: since the Wycliffe Bible relied so heavily on the Latin Vulgate, which was inseparably associated with the Roman Church, it was considered tainted by later Protestant translators. This was the reason William Tyndale, a true early Protestant, went to work on his own Bible, favoring Greek and Hebrew source texts. Indeed, to the contrary, the Wycliffe Bible found a new lease on life as a reference for the Jesuits who produced the Douai-Reims Bible: the definitive Catholic translation of the Bible into English from its publication in 1610 until Vatican II in the 1960's.

Richard's coffin at Leicester Cathedral, with the Amerbach Bible at left.

 

 

Other entries during "Richard III Week":

-Today in history: Henry IV: the man whose claim to the crown started the troubles that led to the Wars of the Roses

-The first day: Richard on tour: select photos from the procession on Sunday, and the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster's Compline homily

-The Bible in Richard's day, and, was Richard a proto-Protestant?: on the king's reading habits and what to make of his Wycliffe New Testament

-A requiem for Richard: on the Requiem Mass, the king's faith, his book of hours, the cult of purgatory, and the chantry chapels of Richard's age

-Of hearses and hearse cloths: looking at Richard III's funeral pall and dressing the dead in medieval times

-Richard III's claim to the throne: sanguinity, statue, or sacrament?: Examining Richard's dynastic claims and what makes a king the king

-O God of Earth and Altar: a hymn by G.K. Chesterton, used at the reinterment on Thursday

-The poet laureate on Richard III: the poem at the reinterment. Also, Benedict Cumberbatch.

The first day: Richard on tour

Earlier today, the first round of official festivities for King Richard III commenced. For the past two years since their recovery under the parking lot in Leicester, the last Plantagenet king's remains were in the care of the University of Leicester, undergoing the tests needed to verify their identity. Today, the remains were loaded onto a hearse and carried in procession around the city, as well as the site of his grisly death at Bosworth Field. Another stop on the route was the church of Saint James the Greater, Dadlington, where many of the dead on both sides of the battle were buried and where, it is believed, Richard heard his last Mass.

Returning to the city, Richard's remains were formally transferred from the University to the custody of the Dean of Leicester Cathedral. After the bones were brought in, the cathedral began the service of Compline, the last of the divine Hours, which clerks and monks traditionally pray right before bedtime. Though the service was officiated by Anglican clergy, the sermon was preached by the Catholic cardinal-archbishop of Westminster (now the head of the Catholic Church in England, as the archbishops of Canterbury once were), Vincent Nichols. The coffin now lies in state until Thursday.

There are a lot of things I disagree with in regard to the entire reburial arrangements, including the fact that Richard is being buried in Leicester in the first place, so near the site of his final disgrace. But I'm going to repost the entire text of the cardinal's homily below, which is definitely worth reading and reflecting on in its entirety, before sharing some pictures from the day's events.

My brothers and sisters, we are gathered in this Cathedral or joining in through the media, to remember the extraordinary life of King Richard III and to pray for the eternal repose of his soul. 

Two moments in this ceremony, so rich in meaning and symbolism, can focus our reflection. Both concern the coffin of this King. First: it was sprinkled with holy water; and secondly, it was reverenced in the gesture of incensing. These moments took place as we welcomed the King's coffin into its place of rest. As you will recall, this sprinkling with holy water is a reminder that King Richard, at the beginning of his life, was baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He was thereby called to live as a follower of Jesus Christ.

The course of his tumultuous life has been well traced, caught up as it was in the deadly struggle between dynastic families. In his life he must have known little peace. From his earliest years, Richard's life bore all the consequences of the violence of the age and its power struggles. He was a child of war, for a while a refugee in Europe, as he was moved from place to place, always in search of safety and protection. 

At the age of 17 he emerged as a public figure and from then on showed his steely ability to pursue his ambitions. In his day, political power was invariably won or maintained on the battlefield and only by ruthless determination, strong alliances and a willingness to employ the use of force, at times with astonishing brutality. 

We may thank God that here political power struggles are now settled in a different manner. Still today, over 500 years later, his life is studied and constantly reassessed, a window into a critical period of our history and a beguiling source of speculation.

Shakespeare's 'bubble reputation' quickly comes to mind, especially in this time of fashion for reconstructionist biographies in which saints can become villains and villains can become saints. 

The deepest intentions of Richard have always been hard to fathom. Yet that is often true for many of us. Within the depth of his heart, amidst all his fears and ambitions, there surely lay a strong desire to provide his people with stability and improvement. 

In his two short years as King, he reshaped vital aspects of the legal system, developing the presumption of innocence, the concept of blind justice and the practice of granting bail rather than being held in jail. He established the Court of Requests to give wider access to justice and insisted on the translation into English of all written laws and statutes so that they were readily accessible to all. 

Nevertheless his reign was marked by unrest and the fatal seepage of loyalty and support. All of this reminds us, if we need reminding, that baptism does not guarantee holiness of life or saintliness of nature. But it gives a fundamental and enduring shape to a journey through life, in all its struggles and failures. 

This 'King of England and France and Lord of Ireland', to give him his self-styled title, was a man of prayer, a man of an anxious devotion. In a surviving prayer, we hear him pleading with God for the protection of the Archangel Michael and for deliverance from his enemies. His prayer was indeed realistic. After the battle of Towton, in 1461, the most brutal day of fighting ever seen on English soil, he established a chantry chapel to provide for the celebration of Mass and for prayers for all who died there, both Yorkists and Lancastrians alike. He fully expected similar devotions and prayers to accompany his own death. Indeed the Collect which we will shortly pray is said to have been recited daily by the clergy of Middleham College following the King's death. 

We too play our part in this prayer, here this evening, tomorrow at Holy Cross Church and in the days to come. At the sprinkling of his coffin, the prayer expressed our faith that the baptised are joined to the death of Jesus so that 'through his merits, who died and rose again for us' we may 'pass to our joyful resurrection', the destiny of all who open their hearts and lives to the living God. This faith was also vividly expressed in the incensing of the coffin of the King. 

Traditionally, words accompany incensing: 'Let our prayer arise before you O Lord, like this incense'. So too we trust that even as the incense rose before our eyes this evening, so too our prayer will be carried to the throne of God. 

Indeed, incense signals to us the presence of God. It is a sign of his majesty. We pray that, being brought into the presence of that Divine majesty, Richard may be embraced by God's merciful love, there to await the final resurrection of all things in the fullness of time. This is the horizon against which our actions take place on this solemn evening. 

With God there is a different timescale, a day is like a thousand years. So our prayers for this King of our Land, our prayers for his eternal rest, are not impeded or made invalid by the passing of these years. We pray for him today just as those who prayed for him at the time of his death in 1485, those whose hearts were not filled with the vengeance of victory or the hatred of an enemy. 

Among those who prayed for him then was the community of Franciscan Friars, so nearby here, who surely buried him with formal prayer even if also in haste. 

So much has happened in these intervening centuries. In 1538, stone and building materials were taken from that Church of the Greyfriars and used to repair the nearby St Martin's Church, now this Cathedral Church of Leicester. It is surely symbolic that materials from the first burial place of the King are in all probability still part of the fabric of this building in which his remains are again to be laid to rest. 

Our Christian histories have become intertwined in a way, we pray, that will now lead to us give a more coherent and united witness to the truths of faith which we proclaim together this evening. 

It is also against this horizon of eternity, in the light of God's merciful promise, that we best conduct our struggles for justice, for peace and concord among all people. 

Again and again, the lessons of history are clear: force of arms alone never brings lasting peace; political ambition, if it is not to become toxic, must always be tutored by a determination to serve, especially those most in need; reconciliation is best inspired by the light of the promise of a God-given peace which is our common and enduring destiny. 

May the dignity of this Compline, the beauty of its prayer, the richness of its gestures of reconciliation, enliven in us all that desire to serve rather than be served, to heal rather than to gloat in victories great or small, to honour and respect the other rather than seek advantage. 

In these ways, may our kingdom reflect the eternal Kingdom of God, to which we commend the soul of this King even as, at last, we permit his remains to rest in peace. 

Amen.

At long last, Richard III's remains are provided a full military escort through Bosworth Field.

Re-enactors at Bosworth give the fallen king some medieval flair.

Yes, England did have cannons at the time of Richard's reign, and remnants of cannonfire have been found on the battlefield.

Some distant relatives of King Richard lay down the white roses of York. The gentleman on the left is Mr. Michael Ibsen, a direct descendant of Richard's sister Anne, whose DNA was used to positively identify the bones.

Mr. Ibsen, a furniture maker by trade, also fashioned the coffin. A lot of people have complained about the coffin's simplicity, but I say it looks quite sturdy.

The procession into the city's center.

The pallbearers in morning dress. Does anyone know who they are or why they were chosen?

And a very special mention goes to the woman of the hour, Mrs. Philippa Langley, an officer of the Richard III Society. Mrs. Langley's singular drive to raise money for research and excavation of the king's remains is what this entire event possible.

Other entries during "Richard III Week":

-Today in history: Henry IV: the man whose claim to the crown started the troubles that led to the Wars of the Roses

-The first day: Richard on tour: select photos from the procession on Sunday, and the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster's Compline homily

-The Bible in Richard's day, and, was Richard a proto-Protestant?: on the king's reading habits and what to make of his Wycliffe New Testament

-A requiem for Richard: on the Requiem Mass, the king's faith, his book of hours, the cult of purgatory, and the chantry chapels of Richard's age

-Of hearses and hearse cloths: looking at Richard III's funeral pall and dressing the dead in medieval times

-Richard III's claim to the throne: sanguinity, statue, or sacrament?: Examining Richard's dynastic claims and what makes a king the king

-O God of Earth and Altar: a hymn by G.K. Chesterton, used at the reinterment on Thursday

-The poet laureate on Richard III: the poem at the reinterment. Also, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Today in history: Henry IV

Today in history, in 1413, King Henry IV of England died from an unknown affliction, aged 46. Unlike most of his fellow kings who are buried at Westminster Abbey, you may find Henry's body at Canterbury Cathedral, near the former shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. Henry was known to be a great devotee of the holy blisful martir, or at least, deeply wanted to be associated with him as a boost to his legitimacy as sovereign.

Known in his youth as Henry Bolingbroke, his cousin, King Richard II banished him from the realm for provoking a duel. The following year, Henry returned in force to claim his just-deceased father's titles and lands, but soon mustered enough support to just take over the entire country. Richard II was thrown in prison and died, shortly thereafter, probably by starvation or neglect. Henry IV spent virtually the entire rest of his reign putting down one rebellion after another; ironically, his very act of usurping the crown from Richard inspired many other lords throughout the land to try their luck doing the very same thing. Perhaps the only highlight of the reign was in hosting Manuel II Palaiologos, the only Byzantine emperor to ever visit England, with a joust in 1400. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry V, of Agincourt fame.

By upsetting the line of succession, Henry Bolingbroke's coup set the stage for the later Wars of the Roses; as such, Richard II and Henry IV (in two parts) are the first two plays in Shakespeare's history cycle. Henry was recently played by one of my favorite actors, Jeremy Irons, in BBC's Shakespeare series The Hollow Crown.

"Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Other entries during "Richard III Week":

-Today in history: Henry IV: the man whose claim to the crown started the troubles that led to the Wars of the Roses

-The first day: Richard on tour: select photos from the procession on Sunday, and the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster's Compline homily

-The Bible in Richard's day, and, was Richard a proto-Protestant?: on the king's reading habits and what to make of his Wycliffe New Testament

-A requiem for Richard: on the Requiem Mass, the king's faith, his book of hours, the cult of purgatory, and the chantry chapels of Richard's age

-Of hearses and hearse cloths: looking at Richard III's funeral pall and dressing the dead in medieval times

-Richard III's claim to the throne: sanguinity, statue, or sacrament?: Examining Richard's dynastic claims and what makes a king the king

-O God of Earth and Altar: a hymn by G.K. Chesterton, used at the reinterment on Thursday

-The poet laureate on Richard III: the poem at the reinterment. Also, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Henpecked husbands in medieval Europe

Some things never change. 

The image of a wife beating her husband with a cudgel is a common sight in medieval English cathedrals. You won't see them on the windows, or in the nave in plain sight of the faithful who poured in for daily worship. No, these were carved onto the misericords (literally, "mercy seats") that the canons of the cathedral leaned against or sat upon while praying the Hours through the course of the day. Because entry into this space of the church, called the chancel, was restricted to the clergy alone, the images on these misericords were only ever seen by them. They were rarely of explicitly religious scenes, as it was surely considered perverse to carve a holy image for the sole purpose of directly pressing one's buttocks against it. And so, the carvings tended to be flights of the artist's imagination, even inside jokes to help the priests get through the rigorous hours of prayer through the day. 

We can easily imagine the solace a priest took in his celibacy when looking upon this image, and perhaps, a reverently made sign of the cross in thanks for God's merciful deliverance from a life of henpecked husbandry.

Pontifical Mass at Pugin's church of Saint Augustine, Ramsgate

As longtime followers of this blog know, I try to repost anything of relevance to the great Gothic revival architect, Augustus Welby Pugin. I only just discovered that His Eminence Cardinal Burke, a celebrated (or controversial) American prelate who has distinguished himself over the years by championing the cause of the traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II forms of the sacraments in the Catholic faith, very recently made a pilgrimage through England and celebrated pontifical solemn Mass (packed to standing room only) at the shrine of Saint Augustine, Ramsgate. This is not in reference to the famous theologian and author of the Confessions; but rather, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to minister to the Britons. Pugin had a great devotion to his namesake saint, and bought property on the cliffs of Kent, near the site where Saint Augustine is believed to have first landed in England. There, in addition to his home, he built a church fully "according to the true principles of Christian architecture". What little money he was receiving from his concurrent projects at the Palace of Westminster and its great Clock Tower in London, he poured right back into the raising of this church. Indeed, the church was Pugin's not only by design, but by the fact that he used his own personal fortune to build it.... and, of course, the fact that his remains are at rest there.

Much can be said about the history and design of Saint Augustine's, but I only intended to make this post to share a few pictures of the Mass celebrated there. As well as an architect, Pugin was a liturgical enthusiast, known even to sing Latin hymns to himself on the train or while walking down the street. He designed not only churches, but all the furnishings that went with them: chalices, vestments, altar hangings, candlesticks, and every other thing that had a place in the realm of worship. I think he would appreciate that the traditional Latin Mass is once again being offered in the church he dedicated so much of his life and energy to build.

Also, the cardinal's homily, with its sketch of the history of Catholic devotion in the realm of England, is most definitely worth reading in full (you may do so here if you wish), but I quote only one paragraph:

"Coming on pilgrimage to this shrine, I cannot fail to note the example of the Catholic architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, architect of this beautiful church which is also the place of his burial. Augustus Pugin was attracted to the truth of the Catholic faith through its reflection in the beauty of the great Church architecture of the Middle Ages. He, in turn, sought to express and inspire by his architecture the nobility and beauty of a Christian culture during a time in which the Christian foundations of society were already under serious threat from the radical secularism of the thinking of the so-called Enlightenment. Offering Holy Mass is this church which can rightly be called his, let us thank God for him and for the great treasure of the beauty of the faith which he has given to us."

 Pictures are courtesy of Juventutem London, which may be found here and here.

 

Ending the winter of his discontent: it's Richard III week!

 

 

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

--Shakespeare's Richard III

Hunchback. Usurper. Tyrant. Child-killer.

For five hundred years, these words have defined the legacy of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. His royal brother, Edward IV, died in 1483 at age 40, dragging it out on his deathbed just long enough to name Richard as Lord Protector of the realm while Edward's eldest son, the heir to the throne, was just a boy. Before that boy could be anointed as Edward V, he and all his siblings were declared bastards by Parliament, and the crown passed to Richard. Within two years, the princes in the Tower disappeared and Richard put down one rebellion, only to lose the kingdom (and his own life) in another. As the dust settled on the field of Bosworth, an obscure Welshman by the name of Henry Tudor took the throne, founding the dynasty bearing his name and forever changing the course of history... for without Henry VII, there is no Henry VIII, and possibly, no Reformation in England. And without the Reformation in England, there's a good chance that her colonies (including Canada, Australia, and of course, the future United States) would have all become Catholic nations. As for Richard III, his body was stuffed naked into an ill-fitting tomb at the Greyfriars friary in Leicester, near the site of the battle. After Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries some fifty years later, the friary was sold off and destroyed. The site of the disgraced king's tomb was lost to time and urban development as the city grew, leaving old memories behind.

For most people, even in England itself, all this might as well have happened in the days of the Pharaohs. But thanks to an initiative from the Richard III Society and the University of Leicester, the king's skeleton, punctured and battered by weapons of war, was found underneath a parking lot in 2012. Forensic tests since then have confirmed "beyond reasonable doubt" that the bones recovered in the excavation are indeed those of Richard III. Debates then raged on among interested parties as to what to do with the remains. Should he be buried in state at Westminster Abbey, or in his beloved city of York? Should the rites be performed according to the established Church of England, or the pre-Reformation Catholic usages he would have known and observed in his own day?

Old Dickon may have met his maker five centuries ago, but discoveries like this give us cause to step back and reflect on the past. Was Richard really the monster of Shakespeare's play, or is the truth obscured by Tudor propaganda? Did Richard have a legal claim to the throne? Did he, or didn't he order the murder of the princes in the Tower? For that matter, why did Parliament so quickly accept the idea that Edward IV's children were all illegitimate in the first place? What kind of reinterment does Richard deserve?

This Sunday will mark the beginning of a series of observances in Leicester as the remains of Richard III are passed from the University to the custody of Leicester Cathedral. On Thursday, the 26th of March, Richard III will finally be laid to rest in a manner more fitting (one can hope) of an anointed king of England. As the days count down, I, therefore, proclaim Richard III Week here on Modern Medievalism. I'll explore as many of the above questions, and more, as I can until the 26th. With an ever-growing body of contemporary scholarship, long-lost primary sources, and (thanks be to God) an absence of Tudor spymasters prowling the web, we'll piece together a clearer picture of what really happened during those fateful last years of the Wars of the Roses and lay to rest some of the ghosts that have haunted history ever since those bloody battles and intrigues for the hollow crown.

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree;

Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!"

Why Oklahoma's House Bill 1125 should make everyone happy (or equally mad)

For the first time, the Modern Medievalist daintily dips his toes into the shark-infested waters of our so-called culture wars and its eye of the storm: contemporary marriage politics. A few of you may know that the Oklahoma State House of Representatives recently passed a bill that, if approved by its Senate, would abolish marriage licenses issued by the state. The bill's author, Rep. Todd Russ, explains its intent:

"The point of my legislation is to take the state out of the process and leave marriage in the hands of the clergy. Marriage was historically a religious covenant first and a government-recognized contract second. Under my bill, the state is not allowing or disallowing same-sex marriage. It is simply leaving it up to the clergy."

This is a surprising, positive development for this country, and a position I've advocated long before this blog ever came into being. Now, since Mr. Russ is also an ordained Assemblies of God minister, this might come off as shameless self-promotion of the clerical caste. And, no doubt, those of you dear readers who are of a more progressive bent are no doubt turning red at the cheeks and are itching to bang out an angry comment at what you might (with reason) interpret to be another red state angrily picking up all its marbles and going home because the gays are taking over. Before you do that, hear me out here. I'll make a general sketch and then address details and objections in a Q&A format.

A select history of marriage laws

[As I'm writing this mostly from memory, please pardon the lack of citations.]

Nicolas Poussin's Abduction of the Sabine Women, now at the Met

Whether or not you agree with Mr. Russ that marriage was instituted by God in the time of man's innocency in the Garden, we can all agree that government regulation of marriage as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon. Before anyone jumps in to say that Russ is spouting a Christian fiction that's obviously untrue by citing the existence of marriage laws in ancient Greece and Rome, I'd first quip that a civilization whose first defining act of marriage is immortalized in art as "the rape of the Sabine women" is hardly a source of inspiration for the 21st century citizen. But yes, certainly, marriage laws existed aplenty in the order-obsessed world of pre-Christian Rome. To give himself legitimacy and continuity with the old Republic by appealing to old-fashioned values, Emperor Ocavian Augustus issued many laws to promote marriage in the senatorial class, promote childbearing to "keep Italy Italian", and punish adultery. There were certainly laws governing inheritance and property rights of spouses. Nonetheless, the average Roman pleb had little need for the courts because he had little property to speak of, and what issues did come up were settled at the community level. And, while many pious couples surely sought the blessing of the gods at the local temple, most weddings were of the "common law" variety:

-abductio, or marriage by abduction, as was sadly quite normal in the ancient world. This was Romulus's mythic solution to the whole "lack of women" problem as described in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita;

-manus, the typical respectable kind of marriage by which the patriarch of one family gave the bride's hand to the hand of the groom (in manum);

-usus, a marriage which was recognized merely by a man and woman living together for a year.

-contuberium, a marriage between slaves.

All examples above were deemed legal, yet without the involvement of either priest or magistrate. And so these "common law" marriages persisted well into the Christian age in the west. Today, we are irrevocably conditioned to the idea that marriage means exchanging vows before a churchman or, his more modern counterpart, the judge (though the fact that the black robe is directly descended from the priest's cassock should tell us something about our society's values). A man and a woman who say they're married "because we said so" just doesn't feel quite as real as a couple bearing the civil license. The same goes for a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a man and two women. This is why the LGBT crusade for marriage equality isn't really about such unsexy matters as inheritance, property rights, and employment benefits. It's about the validation from state and society that comes with the civil license: that their marriage is just as real in every sense as hetero-monogamous marriage. It's the same reason why social conservatives oppose it just as much: they, more than liberals ever will, would defend to the death one's right to distribute one's property however they like. They just seem to think that if the state calls it marriage, they must call it that too.

What neither camp realizes is that the Catholic Church has become, in a sense, a victim of her own success. After the collapse of ancient Rome, the Church's canon law tribunals were the only institutions left to adjudicate on any legal issues that arose regarding marriage. And, just as they are today, canon lawyers then were swamped with cases surrounding annulments: whether or not a marriage was validly contracted. Today's canon lawyers have it pretty cut and dried because the Council of Trent (1545-1563) decreed that henceforth, no marriage between Catholics would even be considered valid unless performed in the presence of a priest with proper jurisdiction, and two witnesses:

"Those who shall attempt to contract marriage otherwise than in the presence of the parish priest, or of some other priest by permission of the said parish priest, or of the Ordinary, and in the presence of two or three witnesses; the holy Synod renders such wholly incapable of thus contracting and declares such contracts invalid and null, as by the present decree It invalidates and annuls them. Moreover It enjoins, that the parish priest, or any other priest, who shall have been present at any such contract with a less number of witnesses (than as aforesaid); as also the witnesses who have been present thereat without the parish priest, or some other priest; and also the contracting parties themselves; shall be severely punished, at the discretion of the Ordinary." (Session 24, Decree on the Reformation of Matrimony)

The Council of Trent

Trent carefully defined marriage and decreed an overhaul of the canons regarding how to contract it for two reasons: first, because the Protestant reformers had begun to deny that marriage was a sacrament, with some going so far as to insist it was a civil institution only. Second, because Catholics didn't strictly need a priest or two witnesses before the Council in order to be validly married in the eyes of the Church, a little fact which caused a lot of headaches for canon lawyers. From Roman times until the Reformation, clandestine and common law marriages were still widespread, despite repeated bans and penalties from the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 onward. Lateran IV's canon 51 went so far as to declare that children born from clandestine marriages would be considered illegitimate, and that a pastor who allows such unions to take place in his parish would be suspended for three years. Note, however, that the canon did not go so far as to say the

marriage was invalid.

It's likely that church authorities had difficulty enforcing these prohibitions because such forbidden unions were so widespread. The most explosive clandestine marriage case of the Middle Ages (or the Renaissance, if you prefer) was probably the affair of two soured lovers, Giovanni della Casa and Lusanna di Benedetto, in Florence. In 1455, Lusanna, a middle-class woman, sued Giovanni, youngest son of a wealthy merchant family, for bigamy; that is, for publicly marrying (or attempting to marry, as you like) another woman while he was still wed to Lusanna. The problem was that Lusanna's marriage was of the clandestine sort. According to her testimony, the two had made marital vows to each other two years before in the privacy of her bedroom, before two witnesses. Assuming this truly happened, it's likely that Giovanni persuaded Lusanna toward the secret marriage because of the shame it would bring to his family if he were to publicly acknowledge marrying

a woman of a lower class. Indeed, that was his primary defense when he later denied having done any such thing; that marrying Lusanna would have been as unthinkable as marrying a prostitute.

Saint Antoninus

The case of Giovanni and Lusanna is all but forgotten today, but it was the OJ Simpson trial of the 15th century because Lusanna had an unlikely friend in a high place: Antoninus (later Saint Antoninus), archbishop of Florence. Giovanni's family attempted to bribe the archbishop into throwing the case out, just as they had likely bribed the witnesses at the secret wedding into denial. But Antoninus was incorruptible and took to Lusanna's defense with remarkable vigor, considering that her humble origins and her admittance to having a twelve-year long affair with Giovanni while her previous husband was still alive. When Florence's first family, the Medicis, fell on the side of Giovanni, Archbishop Antoninus practically declared war on the entire aristocracy of the city, going so far as to excommunicate the podesta. Armed scuffles ensued between city and church guards. The matter was only settled when Cosimo de Medici worked around the archbishop by appealing to Pope Calixtus III, who declared the supposed marriage between Giovanni and Lusanna null and void.

That's the highly condensed version of the story, at any rate. For the in-depth treatment (which I assure you is thoroughly interesting, if you're a history fan), see Gene Brucker's 'Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence'. Why did I bring up the story of two obscure Florentines in today's post, though? To illustrate the idea that, as late as 1455, it was still accepted by Church authorities that one could have a perfectly valid marriage (no matter how illicit or shameful) merely by making vows: "I take you as my wife" and "I take you as my husband". It was not until Trent that a priest was absolutely required in the Catholic world for marriages to be valid, and even then, it took up to two centuries for all the nations of Catholic Europe to fully implement the decrees.

The dawn of civil marriage

Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke and lord chancellor

So much for the Catholic world. What of Protestant England, whence we derive our American laws? The Church of England continued to be the sole body governing marriage law in that realm until 1753. In order to curb ever-growing cases of questionable clandestine marriages, Lord Hardwicke's Act required that all marriages in England take place in an official ceremony presided by an Anglican minister in order to be valid. Couples who didn't adhere to the traditional banns of marriage had to first acquire a state license before proceeding with a ceremony. The law granted exceptions for Quakers and Jews, but not for Catholics or other nonconformist Protestants! Anglican clerics who didn't comply with the law could face deportation to the American colonies for fourteen years. The threat of America scared the entire Church of England into strict compliance in short order. Lord Hardwicke's Act was the first step toward civil interference in marriage laws, culminating at last with the Marriage Act of 1836, which allowed couples to have secular weddings at a registrar's office.

America's history of civil marriage is much harder to describe because each state has its own peculiar storyline. For example, Louisiana, as a former French possession, inherited its marriage laws from Trent and, thus, never recognized common law marriages. In general, though, clandestine and common law marriages during the colonial period were far more prevalent than in the mother country. Since the Church of England had a far weaker hold in the colonies than it did at home, most colonial governments authorized secular magistrates to officiate weddings (according to the rules of the Anglican Church) as a concession to the lack of ministers out in the hinterlands. North Carolina preceded England by issuing government marriage licenses in 1741. State laws surrounding marriage grew ever since, especially whenever a particularly odious form of the union came about that legislators felt called to suppress; namely, interracial marriages and polygamous unions from the Mormons out west. Still, common law marriages persisted on, and in 1877, the U.S. Supreme Court even declared in Meister vs Moore that (as the name suggests) common law marriages are a part of the common law, and therefore, are not illegal unless a state has explicitly made it illegal by statute.

The Modern Medievalist's Solution

Just last month, a Texas state court ordered a clerk in Travis County to issue a civil marriage license to a lesbian couple. Subsequently, a Texas probate judge ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. I emphasize that this is Texas, a state which prides itself on its reputation as the most "conservative" state in the Union. That might be up for debate, but it's certainly true that Texas has a disproportionately high influence in national politics. As Texas goes, so does the rest of the country. I would bet real money that, one way or another, within the next ten years following this post, same-sex marriage will be a completely legal and uncontested institution in every county of the state... and that's not much of a bet at all. While it's true that the millennial generation is more conservative on average than their parents' in several key respects (it might be the generation that overturns Roe vs Wade, for instance), the overwhelming majority of my peers are in favor of same-sex marriage. And, even for the few who oppose it on moral grounds, they have no argument against it from a legal perspective. They're finding it difficult to defend a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage from a purely secular standpoint while acceptance of the idea grows every year. Even big businesses, widely perceived to be a stronghold of right-wing policy, are eager to be seen on the right side of history by endorsing same-sex marriage. The war to protect the traditional definition in law was lost before it began, and all that's left is for social conservatives to bow out of the political arena on this matter gracefully.

At this point, I invite people on both sides of the issue to ask themselves: should you really need the state's permission to get married, anyway? The social conservative would probably say, "no, marriage is of God, not man". The LGBT rights activist would say, "no, marriage is about love, no matter what the government says." And here, we can find some common ground. After all, it was the Church alone; not the Enlightenment philosophers, and certainly not the ancients; that gave us the idea that marriage is a union of love based on mutual consent. You now need to go to the third world to find any sizable number of people who disagree with that one.

Therefore, I suggest that Oklahoma's House Bill 1125, while certainly not perfect, is a step in the right direction. By taking the state out of the marriage question (as much as possible), most critically by abolishing the idea of the civil license to wed, we may at once claim to be looking to the past; returning to an earlier framework of marriage from the Middle Ages and beyond, whereby the state was uninvolved in the defining of marriage... and the future, where people in a pluralist society can define what marriage means for themselves, and within their own communities, without needing the approval of fallible entity.

Q. What would Oklahoma's bill actually do?

A. HB 1125 would change state law so that country clerks would no longer grant a marriage license in advance of getting married. As in (I believe) all states in the Union, even if you get married in a house of worship in Oklahoma, you must first get a license at the county courthouse before the ceremony takes place if you want it to be deemed legal by the state. Most churches and other religious communities also require you to bring your marriage license with you to the altar as a matter of practical policy. What this bill would do is abolish that step, meaning you would no longer have to seek the state's approval before getting married in the first place. The county clerk instead would merely record your marriage in a certificate after the fact.

Q. Why is this a big deal if the state is still involved in the process?

A. It's a subtle change, sure, but an important one from a philosophical point of view. By removing the requirement; indeed, even the possibility; of getting a "license to wed" from the state, Oklahoma acknowledges that the state has no right to define marriage, or to permit or prohibit what sorts of marriages take place. (Sort of. Caveats to be addressed in a moment.) The state's role would be passive: to merely record what you did, for legal purposes.

Q. Isn't same-sex marriage currently illegal in Oklahoma?

A. An amendment to Oklahoma's constitution currently bans the legality of same-sex marriage, yes. It will almost surely be struck down by the Supreme Court, however. If and/or when it does, Oklahoma's bill will not prohibit same-sex marriages in any way. Indeed, the bill's author, Rep. Russ, has said he's confused by the objectors to his bill, since it does, in fact, effectively signal the legalization of same-sex marriage. If a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, file a marriage at the county clerk's office, all the clerk does is record what took place. An editorial piece on Reason.com, a site this blog has little common ground with other than that we both write in English, has a fitting, if not entirely accurate headline: "Oklahoma Bill Would Legalize Gay Marriage; This Apparently Bothers Democrats and Gays."

Q. Wouldn't this also pave the way for polygamy, incest, and underage marriage?

A. Quite possibly, yes. There are other statutes in Oklahoma law that forbid these unions, but if future civil rights movements cause these to be repealed, then nothing else would stand in the way of their taking place. Even social liberals might find them repugnant today, but such is the price of (for leftists) a pluralist, inclusive society; or (for rightists) the privatization of marriage.

Q. At the beginning of your post, it says only clergy can officiate weddings. What about secularists or people belonging to faiths without clergy?

A. The bill has subsequently been amended to fix sloppy language. A couple can still wed before a justice of the peace, though I believe (but am not sure as yet) that a judge has no legal obligation to officiate them. Most importantly, citizens can simply file an affidavit of common law marriage, which eliminates the need for a judge, clergyman, any other officiant whatsoever, or even a ceremony. For legal purposes, the common law marriage is of equal status in every way to marriages officiated by clergymen or secular magistrates.

Q. Are you advocating a religious change to marriage laws?

A. None whatsoever. It's precisely the point that religious bodies not feel beholden in any way to state definitions. As a Catholic Christian, even as a medievalist, I acknowledge that the Council of Trent's late requirement of a priest (or, in current canon law, a deacon) for a marriage between two Catholics to be valid is for the best. Plus, requiring a priest to officiate weddings was a good move from an ecumenical point of view since the Eastern Orthodox Church also considers it necessary. I only point out that, for most of western Christian history, a priest was not considered strictly necessary for a marriage to be valid, and that for non-Catholics, this continues to be true.

Q. I'm a liberal/conservative, and this is an outrageous proposal. I'm not reading your blog anymore!

A. That's not a question, but as the left/right-wing dichotomy is mostly an invention of the French Revolution and its national assembly, there's no place for it among modern medievalists. Your emotional outburst is excused.