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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2019
John Bale is known chiefly as a dramatist and as a bibliographer. His considerable body of nondramatic polemical works has received little attention, probably because most scholars share the feelings of that biographer of Bale who says, ‘Of Bale's works as a controversialist, perhaps the less one says the better.’ However, Bale was an important propagandist for the extreme Protestant position, and a study of his nondramatic polemical works should add something to our knowledge of the art of religious controversy as exercised during the sixteenth century.
Bale's polemical works fall into two categories: those written against the bishops of the English church, accusing them of being no better than the Catholics, and those written against the Catholics themselves, although Bale does occasionally refer to the Enghsh bishops in his anti-Catholic works also.
1 Harris, J. W., John Bale (Urbana, 1940), p. 13 Google Scholar.
2 For Hunne, see A. Ogle, The Tragedy of the Lollards’ Tower (Oxford, 1949).
3 Epistel, B3v. For a discussion of Bale's treatment of history, see below, p. 222.
4 Ibid., B2r. But Henry had declared himself in favor of auricular confession by the Statute of Six Articles (1539).
5 Romyshe Foxe, F8r. This book, another account of the Oldcastle trial, was edited by Tyndale. See J. F. Mozley, William Tyndale (London, 1937).
6 Epistel, D4r, et passim; cf. Simon Fish's charges in his Supply cation for the Beggars.
7 This was a pseudonym for John Huntington. See W. T. Davies, ‘A Bibliography of John Bale’, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications v (Oxford, 1940), 214.
8 See Christina Garrett, ‘The Resurreccion of the Masse by Hugh Hilarie—or John Bale (?)’, The Library, XXI (1940), 143-159; also my ‘The Authorship of The Resurreccion of the Masse’, 5 Library XVI (1961), 210-213.
9 See H. McCusker, John Bale, Dramatist and Antiquary (Bryn Mawr, Penna., 1942).
10 The whole point of the Protestant morality New Custom is in its ironic title. When the Catholic Peruersedoctrine rebukes New Custom for making innovations in religion, the latter answers that his real name is Primitive constitution and that he is 1,500 years old (Tud. Fac. Texts, B3r-B3v).
11 The practice of papisticall Prelates, in Workes (1573), pp. 345-373.
12 Vocacyon, B4v. For Joseph, see Robinson, J. A., Two Glastonbury Legends (Cambridge, 1926)Google Scholar.
13 The main polemical technique of Bale's morality plays, and of all subsequent Protestant moralities, is the casting of Catholics as vices who condemn themselves by their own words and actions.
14 Roger of Wendover, The Flowers of History, tr. Rev. J. A. Giles (London, 1849), 1, 58-61; Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France (London, 1811), pp. 96-97.
15 John Capgrave, The Chronicle of England, ed. F. C. Hingeston (London, 1858), p. 96; Bede, Opera historica (Cambridge, Mass., 1954, Loeb Classical Library), 1, 7.
16 II Votaryes, E4v-E5r. Matthew of Westminster, The Flowers of History, tr. C. D. Yonge (London, 1853), n, 8.
17 See, for instance, More's Vindicatio Henrici VIII in Opera omnia (Frankfurt, 1689), P. 55.
18 Votaryes, G2r-G2v. See H. Thurston, ‘Pope Joan’, The Month CXXIII (1914), 450-463.
19 The cases of Anne Askew and William Tolwyn were really ‘current events’, and only that of John Oldcastle ‘history’ at the time Bale wrote. However, all three cases exemplify Bale's penchant for research utilized for polemic purposes.
20 See W. T. Waugh, ‘Sir John Oldcastle’, English Historical Review xx (1905), 449.
21 See note 13 above; also Niklaus Manuel's Krankheit der Messe and William Turner's Examination of the Mass.
22 See my ‘Thomas More's Use of the Dialogue Form as a Weapon of Religious Controversy’, Studies in the Renaissance VII (1960), 194-195.
23 For the sake of convenience, I have included under rhetorical devices all Bale's specific techniques of language as distinguished from his general treatment of ideas.
24 The purpose of the Catholic vice's slips of tongue in the Protestant polemical morality play is to reveal his evil nature to the audience. See, for instance, King Johan, ed. J. H. P. Pafford (Oxford, 1931), 11. 305-306, 502-504.
25 See my ‘More's Use of Humor as a Weapon of Religious Controversy', S.P. LVIII (1961), 97-114.
