which he took the occasion of the letter to inform Scipio, whose
acquaintance Jewel had made when he had studied in Padua,^155 precisely
why the English would not take part in the Council of Trent. There is
some obscurity surrounding the letter, for little is known of its official or
polemical purpose. Jewel had made comment in a letter to Martyr that
just such a tract (he does not say it will be in the form of a letter) was
being considered, and one that specifically responded to why England
would not be represented at Trent.^156 As Jewel had in the letter to Martyr
specifically referenced the Apologia,he is evidently alluding to some
other text, and one for which the Epistola ad Scipionemperfectly fits the
bill. Further, the date of the ad Scipionem is 1562,^157 and while largely
contemporaneous with the Apologiaand the Epistola,still places it a
year after them. The themes, however, which treat specifically about the
authority of councils, and particularly Trent, are far more consonant
with Jewel’s 1570 View of a Seditious Bull, published in response to Pius
V’s bull excommunicating Elizabeth, Regnans in Excelsis.^158 Whereas
Jewel’s Challenge Sermon, EpistolaandApologiatreated issues more
heuristic and in the nature of prolegomena, these two works rest upon
his former treatises, and as such expand on Jewel’s other academic
enterprises. Both the Ad Scipionemand the View of a Seditious Bulltreat
of the peculiar polity of the English Christian commonwealth and the
question of sovereignty: who has it and for what end is it to be exercised?
In this respect they are Jewel’s fullest statements defining the royal
supremacy.
96 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^155) Apart from this reference, no evidence exists in any of Jewel’s letters or his writings
that he ever was in Padua, and some have thus wondered whether this tract may not be by
Jewel. But the possibility seems readily at hand for him to have studied in Italy, as following
the Peace of Augsburg, Padua, then under the Venetians, gladly welcomed German
students. Cf. ‘“They Urinate in the Holy Water”: German Protestant Students in Italian
Universities’. Paper delivered at the 1998 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, by
Professor Paul Grendler, University of Toronto, 24 October 1998. Beyond this, the tract is
too replete with matter so peculiar to Jewel that it begs the question, if not him, then
whom? Even had Jewel never been to Padua, the notion of a fictive Scipio seems hardly
beyond the probable, as this would simply be the same type of feigned letter as the
epistola.
(^156) ‘Our queen has fully made up her mind not to send any representative to the council
... We are now thinking about publishing the reasons which have induced us to decline
attendance.’ Letter to Martyr, 7 February 1562, in Works, pp. 1245–48, quote from p.
1247, editor’s translation.
(^157) Jewel comments that it had been ten years since the Lutheran bishops and princes
had been excluded from Trent, an event which occurred in 1552.
(^158) A View of a Seditious Bull sent into England from Pius Quintus Bishop of Rome, in
Works, IV, pp. 1133–60, with a dedicatory Epistle to the godly reader, by John Garbrand,
London, 1582, in which is included A Short Treatise of the Holy Scriptures. This same pair
was again published, with some alterations, in 1611, by John Norton.
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