condition of the universities, especially his Oxford, in an apparently
tragic state both intellectually and morally. In his very first letter to
Martyr on his return to England Jewel opines that ‘Oxonii a tuo discessu
duae praeclarae virtutes incredibiliter auctae sunt, inscitia et
contumacia’. Two months later he warned Bullinger not to send any men
to England for an education, as they would only return ‘impios et
barbaros’. Even a year later he would write to Martyr that Oxford was
‘sine boins literis, sine lectionibus, sine sudio ullo pietatis’.^80 These
laments echoed his thoughts that he was going to be wasted as a bishop
on the administration of the Church. In the event, as Jewel’s tenure as
bishop progressed and he became more and more obligated to his two
debates with Harding, debates which saw Jewel neglect the more
significant arguments made against him by others, his correspondence
with Zurich fell off. Thus the private scholar was torn from the otiose
shadows of his library and thrust into the arena of public duty for which
he had little appetite. This may account for the lack in the resources in
time necessary to answer his critics.
Unlike his polemical works, ‘renaissance self-fashioning’ notwith-
standing, Jewel never intended his letters for public consumption.
Nonetheless Jewel’s essentially private correspondence reveal a great deal
about his public life. Any investigation reveals both a scholar needing
more time to study and a Reformer embittered about the pace and extent
of reform. Since the correspondence gives insight into those things he
would not say in public, they become a fairly good lens through which
to view his public sentiments. Certainly care must be taken, as these
letters may be considered as having been written to his ‘Zurich public’,
that is, Martyr, Bullinger, Simler, Ochino, et al. Yet this distinction hardly
sustains scrutiny, as if Jewel were playing to two audiences, writing what
he thought each would want to hear. Unlike his English readers who
never saw these letters to Zurich, his Zurich readers were part of his
public audience, reading at least some of his polemical writings. Peter
Martyr wrote Jewel lauding the Apologia.^81 The essentially private
nature of Jewel’s correspondence can be illustrated with two examples.
In March 1566, Jewel asked Bullinger for information on three matters,
two of which are important.^82 The first matter concerns the Greek
Orthodox Churches and whether they practice any form of ‘private
Mass’. Jewel had previously written on this in 1565 against Harding,
noting that the Greeks had never used the private Mass. Having now
176 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^80) Jewel,Works, IV, pp. 1199, 1212, 1232.
(^81) Zurich Letters, I, Appendix I, Letter I, pp. 339–41.
(^82) Jewel,Works,IV, 1269–70. The other question concerns the identity of a certain
Camotensis. Jewel never found out that Camotensis, ironically, was John of Salisbury.
http://www.ebook3000.com