born on Henrician principles nor least of all on evangelical ones.^17
Likewise under Edward VI, though certainly Protestant, as with the
question of vestments, so with the matter of images, the alacrity of
reform did not satisfy the program or agenda of some. Officially,
Edward’s policy was that of his father, that images ‘unabused’ (not used
idolatrously) were to be condoned.^18
Stephen Gardiner addressed the matter of icons in his February 1547
letter to Nicholas Ridley, quite aware of the drift of the new government,
and realizing the place the alteration of religious policy had in it.
Gardiner understood there could never be a separation of religion from
national interests, and saw religion as one of the constitutional elements
of the English nation.^19 For Gardiner, Edward’s minority demanded
peace and stability, but the changes sought by some (he cites Barlow of
St Davids) embraced only peril for the state. In a letter to the military
governor of Portsmouth, Edward Vaughan, Gardiner noted that attacks
on religious images presaged political upheaval, even as it had done in
Germany during the Peasants revolt.^20 While he annexed political and
national considerations in his letters to Somerset and Vaughan, Gardiner
in his letter to Ridley, addressed matters from both the theological and
historical vantage point. He cites Eusebius in favor of the antiquity of
images, noted that the transitory nature of the Mosaic code makes it a
poor prop for iconoclasm, and further noted that unlike pagan idols,
which were vanities and nonexistent things, the images in the Church
were of Christ and his saints. He also noted that not even Luther, who
had ‘pulled away al other regard to them, strove stoutly and obteined, as
I have seene in divers of the churches in Germany of his reformation, that
they shuld (as they do) stand stil’.^21 Gardiner further argued that if
learning and devotion by the sense of sight were to be removed, should
not preaching then, using the auricular sense, also be removed? For
Gardiner the political ramifications of iconoclasm were never out of
sight, especially when denouncing it to Somerset, but he always kept the
considerations that such actions had for devotion paramount.
126 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^17) Cf. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England,
1400–1580(New Haven, 1992); and John Phillips, The Reformation of Images:
Destruction of Art in England, 1535–1660(Berkeley, 1973).
(^18) This same type of abuse argument is used by the Protestant establishment regarding
Eucharistic adoration, and is a main feature of Jewel’s own polemic.
(^19) Along with laws, land and decrees. To Somerset, 28 February [1457]. James Arthur
Muller, ed. The Letters of Stephen Gardiner(Cambridge, 1933), p. 265. These sentiments
are expanded in a letter of June 1547, Muller, pp. 286–95, cf. 288–90.
(^20) Muller, Letters, pp. 273–74. In a later letter to Somerset Gardiner points out that
evidently it was a rood screen that was pulled down.
(^21) Muller, Letters, p. 256.
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