John Bale, Mythmaker for the English ReformationJohn Bale (1495 - 1563) made a strong impact on the growth of English Protestant self-consciousness in the sixteenth century. He spent twenty years as a Carmelite friar, and then converted to Protestantism in the mid-1530s. Henry VIII's government enlisted Bale to write and produce plays against the Papacy; he had a decisive influence on John Foxe, and Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' (1563); and Bale's drama 'Kynge Johan' was an important link between the medieval mystery plays and the age of Shakespeare. His greatest achievement, however, was his re-telling of English history in light of the Reformation. Bale argued that England had a divine vocation to protect and defend Protestantism against Roman political subversion and non-Biblical religion. Bale's story of England as the "new Israel" shaped the self-consciousness of the Elizabethan age, and via John Winthrop and New England in 1630 bequeathed a sense of national vocation to America as well. |
Contents
Conversion | 31 |
A Pattern for Church History 50 | 71 |
The English Past | 86 |
Appendix II | 165 |
Notes | 173 |
Bibliography | 221 |
| 235 | |
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Acta Romanorum Pontificum Actes of Englysh Anglorum Heliades Anne Askewe Anne's Antichrist antiquarian Antwerp Apocalypse Bale wrote Bale's Barnes Basel belief Bible Bishop Bodleian Library Bodley 73 Book of Revelation British Museum Cambridge Carmelite order Catalogus century Chapter Christ Christian chronicles Church history clerical celibacy convent Doncaster early Church edition England English Reformation Englysh votaryes evidently examinacyon exegesis exile faithful Foxe's Francis Lambert friar God's godly Gospel hagiography Harley humanist Ibid Image John Bale John Foxe John Leland Kynge Johan Lambert late medieval later listed in Davies Lollards London Lutheran Manne of synne manuscript martyr McCusker mendicant Mierdman millennium Norwich notebooks Okeden Oldcastle Oxford papacy past pattern period piety Pope preaching Protestant published Roman Church Rome saints Satan seal-opening Selden supra 41 sigs spiritual STC number Straten Suffolk Summarium theology Thomas Thorndon thought tract tradition true Church Tyndale vocacyon of Johan Wesel William Wyclif