‘back to Rome from whence we first imported them’. Concerning
superstition in rites and practice, Jewel and the other Reformers were
capitalizing on ideas and rhetoric ready made.^112 But the Reformers went
further than any of the Renaissance criticism. For Jewel, the criticisms of
monasticism he happily retained, though in his case as with other
Reformers, as shall so often be seen, abusus tollit usum.^113
The Reformers slighted much of late-medieval devotion as merely
another expansion of a corrupt system, a new form of the old misery. As
with Jewel, many reformers gladly pilfered Erasmus and others for
arguments against monasticism; but in the case of the other Reformers,
as in Jewel’s, they were all apprehended not to effect the reform of
monasticism, but for its removal. In a short section of The Defence of the
Apology, Jewel proceeds against monasticism, using for his assault not
Protestant notions of the Christian vocation and the priesthood of all
believers, but a litany of citations drawn from patristic and medieval
sources. Following a modus operandiusual to him, Jewel piles citation
on top of citation, often without critical comment, all aimed at his
assumed audience and reader, the faithful of the Church of England.
Among those Jewel coopted for his assault on monasticism were St
Augustine of Hippo, St Bernard of Clairvaux, Erasmus and St Jerome;
each in his turn adopted to attack some element of monasticism – sloth,
impiety, worldliness – and all used not merely to discredit monasticism,
but to bolster such matters as Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries
for the benefit of the crown.^114 Yet in a glaring omission that would
certainly not have been lost on his polemical nemesis Harding (though
perhaps Jewel hoped it would be on his audience in the Church of
England), Jewel never bothers to point out that Augustine, Jerome,
Erasmus and Bernard were all monks. The others that he cites, Nicholas
of Cusa and St Hilary of Poitiers, were extremely sympathetic to
monasticism.^115 All wrote to correct monastic abuses, none to bring
82 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^112) For the nominalist and papalist champion, the mystic Gabriel Biel see the note on
Oberman above, for Erasmus’s statement in his Enchiridion,‘Monachatus non est pietas’,
see Erika Rummel ‘Monachatus non est pietas: Interpretations and Misinterpretations of a
Dictum’, in Hilmar M. Pabel, ed. Erasmus’ Vision of the Church(Kirksville, MO, Vol.
XXXIII 1995), pp. 41–56.
(^113) This is Jewel’s basic argument to Harding in defending those in the Church of
England who refused to wear the surplice: it had been befouled by Roman superstition
(Works, III, pp. 614–18). The implications of this shall be discussed at the end of this
chapter and in Chapter Four. This dictum would hardly apply to Luther.
(^114) Jewel,Works, IV, pp. 798–801.
(^115) Nicholas of Cusa had been influenced by the Brethren of the Common Life, and one
of his better known works, De visione Dei, was written as a spiritual exercise for monks.
See John Patrick Dolan, ed., Unity and Reform: Selected Writings of Nicholas de Cusa
http://www.ebook3000.com