In the same way that Jewel incorporated more than bare biblical
citations to bolster his claims in handling the liability of Knox, so too did
he refrain from a merely biblicistic strategy when answering charges that
Protestantism had created the plethora of anti-Trinitarian and
Anabaptist sects. Jewel never gives Harding an inch on the question,
giving as good as he got. The Peasants’ Revolt, though against the
oppression of Catholic rulers, was no Protestant movement, for Luther
had condemned it; as to those who denied the Holy Trinity, the
Zwickenfelders arose in Catholic Moravia and Silesia, Servetus in
Catholic Spain, and so these could hardly be called the offspring of
Protestantism.^123 With further respect to Servetus, he had been allowed to
live in Catholic domains, though Jewel missed the opportunity to
mention that he had been the personal physician to the bishop of Vienne.
As for ... Servete the Arian, and such other the like, they were yours
... You brought them up, the one in Spain, the other (David George)
in Flanders. We detected their heresies, and not you. We arraigned
them. We condemned them. We put them to the execution of the
laws. It seemeth very much to call them our brothers, because we
burnt them.^124The one name that never emerges in this dispute is that of Bernardino
Ochino, who had found his way first to Geneva and then to Zurich
following Edward VI’s death. Jewel made frequent reference to him in
his early letters to Zurich, especially to Martyr, asking those receiving his
epistles to give the former monk his greetings. Jewel must have known
what had happened to him in Zurich, for while Ochino’s apostasy
occurred after Martyr’s death and Jewel’s correspondence with Zurich
declines precipitously after it, he never mentioned Ochino in his letters
after that. Ochino, like numerous other Italians, had adopted
Unitarianism, and Harding must have been ignorant of the whole matter,
for it seems improbable that he would have missed a chance to associate
England’s and Zurich’s Protestants with such a notorious heretic.
Needless to say, Jewel did not bring the matter up.^125
That Jewel countenanced Knox’s Protestantism while abhorring his
political ideals addresses a telling point about our Reformer. For Jewel
the civil realm, especially the Elizabethan civil realm, represented the one
sphere and arena where a thoroughly Protestant understanding of the
Christian commonwealth must occur: an interpretation which embraced
A PRELATE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 193
subjects, and having granted them the right, urges them to revolt against her. Works, IV,
pp. 1127–60.
(^123) Jewel,Works, IV, p. 664.
(^124) Jewel,Works, III, p. 188.
(^125) Mark Talpin, The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church. c. 1540–1620
(Aldershot, UK, 2003), especially pp. 111–69, ‘The Ochino affair and its aftermath’.