authority over councils, either to convene or guide. For Jewel, it was the
ancient emperors who sat over the earliest councils, citing the precedents
of Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea, Theodosius and the
first Council of Constantinople and Maurice I and the Council of
Chalcedon. Jewel then moves from these examples of imperial
prerogative and explains why the English had authority to change their
religion. For Jewel, it was always the power of imperium which presided
over councils, and that is why what Constantine and the other emperors
did were pious acts. Such sovereignty, however, no longer pertains to the
emperor, at this time Ferdinand I Habsburg, for ‘since the powers of the
empire are weakened (imminutiae sunt vires imperii), and kingdoms
have succeed to the imperial power, that right is [now] common to
Christian kings and princes’.^166 Jewel had taken the Conciliarist
argument, that contrary to canon law the Pope is not needed to convene
a general council, as one can be called at the behest of the emperor,^167 and
moved it a step further: since the power of the empire is so diminished –
in fact since it has devolved to the several kingdoms – the councils of
particular realms can act with just as much authority as any council that
meets at Trent. Indeed, the English convocation had more of a right. It is
not the Pope who has the jurisdiction and duty to order the affairs of the
Church, but the monarch. In a twist of phrase that adumbrated the
famous tract of Richard Montagu, Jewel wrote that the ‘Apostle Paul did
not wish to give himself over to the council in Jerusalem, but rather he
appealed to Caesar (sed potius appellavit ad Caesarem)’.^168
For Jewel the regal power stands out more clearly in View of a
Seditious Bullin which he defines a monarch’s responsibility to convene
a council, but notes that the prince must then turn all matters divine over
to the bishops, who would dispose of reform, led by the Spirit speaking
in the Scriptures.^169 As far as Jewel was concerned, this element of the
100 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^166) Jewel,ad Scipionem, in Works, IV, p. 1098.
(^167) Sigismund convened the council of Constance, though he did so also with Pisan
Pope, John XXIII, I guess just to be sure.
(^168) Jewel,Ad Scipionem, in Works, IV, p. 1100. Montagu’s tract, written against the
seventeenth-century Puritans as Appello Caesarem.
(^169) Jewel read the Bull from the Cathedral pulpit in Salisbury. Henry Parry to Sir John
Thynne, xi June 1570. ‘Thys day in the plupti at Sarum my Lord dyd uppon good
considerations showe furthe a Bull from Rome, in the whyche the Pope dyd declare the
quene an heretique and therefore no lowfull Quene of thys realme. By the sme bull all her
leage subjects discharged of theyre obedience, and that yt maye be lawfull unto all that do
receave the same Bull to burne, robbe, spoyle and kyll the Quene’s frynds as the Pope’s
enemies. thus day solemly it was shewyd. uppon Sundaye next my L. will read yt and
expounde the same. I would spend a fatt ox that my L. the Earle were present at the same:
undto whom I praye you do me into hys crue, good reason woldeso, for bycause of hym I
am not nombyrd of any other crue’, in Longleat Papers No. 3, pp. 9–48. from WA&NHM
18, 1879, p. 21.
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