Demers, Patricia. Lady Anne Bacon: An Apology or Answer in Defence of the Church of England’. Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2016. Pp vii, 213. ISBN 978-1-78188-126-2.
In this volume, Patricia Demers presents a new edition of the Apology of the Church of England, which was translated into English in 1564 by Lady Anne (Cooke) Bacon. At its first appearance, Bacon’s translation was praised and promoted by Archbishop Matthew Parker, and approved by the Apology’s original author, Bishop John Jewel. It is now volume 22 of the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations, a series which aims to make sources that were well-known to early modern readers accessible for a modern audience. According to the general editors, Andrew Hadfield and Neil Rhodes, the works of this series will demonstrate the connections between the classical and the early modern eras, showing how Renaissance culture developed as it travelled between countries, influencing scholars across Europe.
With this goal in mind, the Apology of the Church of England is certainly an excellent choice of source text. This book was a very important statement of belief for the fledgling Elizabethan Church. Commissioned by William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), it was praised by continental reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Heinrich Bullinger, translated into several European languages, and printed in England under royal authority by Reginald Wolfe, who also printed the 1559 Book of Common Prayer and Alexander Nowell’s Catechism. The Apology formed one branch of the polemical debate between John Jewel and his indomitable opponent, the Catholic controversialist Thomas Harding. Often referred to as the ‘Great Controversy’, their debate lasted for a decade, and inspired at least twenty divines to respond in print. In total, over sixty-five separate works form the complete corpus of this controversy, keeping the Apology and its related works at the forefront of Elizabethan religious debate. The verve and vitriol of this international argument confirm Demers’s observation in the preface of her edition (ix), that studying early modern religion reveals a lot about the lives of early modern people.
According to Demers, the central purpose of this particular volume is to examine how both Jewel and Bacon were viewed in the context of their own time, and compare these perceptions to modern views of them. Thus, Demers considers the Apology in light of modern-day Renaissance translation theory, which studies the interaction between author, source text and translator. Unlike many sixteenth-century translators, Bacon knew the author of her source text: Demers describes Bacon’s career as ‘interlaced’ with that of Jewel (2), due to their common involvement in Elizabethan print culture, and their equally enthusiastic defence of the 1559 religious settlement. To Demers, their relationship can be described as the parents of The Apology: Jewel as the father, Bacon as the mother (20). Bacon is raised to this level because of her skill with difficult Latin phrases and her colourful style, which managed to be both reminiscent of classical oratory and also contemporary; provocative in its elegance and yet filled with the sort of images and phrases that regular people would understand.
Anne Bacon’s version of the Apology has become the standard translation, even though it was actually the second attempt to make Jewel’s original Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562) available for those who did not speak Latin. The first, also published in 1562, lacks Bacon’s skill and has been all but forgotten. Jewel himself chose to use Bacon’s translation in his Defence of the Apology (1567), and even Jewel’s opponents worked from her translation. However, this may not have been a tacit acknowledgement of the quality of the translation on their part. Thomas Harding, for example, often blamed what he considered faults in Jewel’s work on the young lady who had translated it, suggesting that Jewel himself could not have made such errors. Jewel came to Bacon’s defence at once, praising her character and learning with great fervour. Neither one names Bacon, but this may be because they assumed her role was common knowledge. It is evident that Harding knew who had translated it, even though he was in exile in Louvain. Jewel also knew that Archbishop Parker’s letter of endorsement praising Bacon’s work had been placed prominently at the front of the 1564 English edition, only three years before the first of many references to Jewel’s lady translator was published in his Defence of the Apology.
Demers includes Parker’s letter in this volume, which provides important information about the preparation and publication of the 1564 edition. She also includes a preface which outlines the editorial conventions of her text. The Apology itself is divided into six parts, an organizational innovation that began with the 1635 edition. Demers brackets it with a valuable glossary at the end and a detailed introduction at the beginning, which places Bacon’s translation in its literary and historical context. The introduction especially provides some interesting insights into the reading culture of the sixteenth century, partly by discussing the sixteenth-century habit of close reading (and re-reading) a volume. Demers argues that Bacon’s awareness of such intense study habits inspired her to include great depths of learning in her translation, which is an aspect of the text not often considered. Other scholars have commented on the verbal style of Bacon’s work, which lent itself to reading aloud, and echoed Jewel’s oratorical style.
The original Apology is riddled with abbreviated marginalia that presupposes an in-depth knowledge of Biblical and classical texts. Demers has turned this marginalia into footnotes to provide clarity for the modern reader. She dedicates a significant amount of time and space to expanding upon the original information, explaining not only the reference itself but its significance. She also provides information about Biblical allusions that were not explained in the original marginalia, taking many of these from John Ayre’s edition of the Latin Apologia (1845-50). Ayre’s footnotes are excellent, providing not only factual references but also possible meanings for unclear references. Demers’ footnotes do much the same thing for a modern audience, providing historical context not only about the events Jewel describes, but about the sources that would have been available to Jewel and Bacon. In some cases, Demers explains the passage itself, expanding upon the main issues of Harding and Jewel’s debate, such as the power of the pope, the validity of various church traditions, clerical marriage and the role of the clergy. This goes beyond the information available in the Apology, incorporating arguments from the wider corpus of the Great Controversy, and even from later translations of the Apology. This provides a depth and breadth of knowledge that draws out the richness of Jewel’s work, and the massive amount of scholarship that supported it.
Occasionally, Demers’ footnotes also comment on the unique benefits of Bacon’s translation. In one, Demers shows how Bacon’s translation captured the essence of the Jewel’s debate with Harding: the question of whether the church or scripture was the ultimate source of interpretive authority. In others, Demers comments on how Bacon’s choice of word conveys not only meaning but mood, or how Bacon expands upon an image to fill out the contrast between sources. It is in these fascinating glimpses that one can begin to understand why Demers considers Bacon the ‘mother’ of this text (20), but they are few and far between. Further exploration of Bacon’s word choice and imagery within the text would have expanded upon the information provided in the introduction and proven very helpful.
This edition is an invaluable resource for both students and scholars for many reasons, such as its structure and features, the excellent background information in the introduction, and the clarity of Demers’s writing. Like Bacon, Demers has the ability to find the perfect phrase: one notable example is her description of Lady Bacon’s busy spiritual and intellectual life as a ‘holy commotion’ (27). However, this edition does make a claim that cannot be fully supported. When explaining her editorial conventions, Demers does a very brief overview of the various editions of the Apology from 1600 to the present day, saying that Bacon was not given credit as translator for nearly 200 years. This is an exaggeration that undermines the legacy and long-lasting significance of the Apology.
The claim is based on the removal of Matthew Parker’s endorsement letter from later editions. Because it was not included in the publication of Jewel’s Works in 1609 and 1611, Demers suggests that the parts of the Apology reprinted in them were used without any acknowledgement of Bacon herself. However, Bacon is mentioned in the preface of both editions as the translator of the 1564 Apology, which is rather more of an acknowledgement than many such translators received. Also, because Archbishop Richard Bancroft ordered the 1609 edition of Jewel’s Works to be placed in parish churches throughout the country, knowledge of her role may well have become quite widespread in seventeenth-century England.
Similarly, although the letter from Archbishop Parker praising and attributing Bacon’s work was not included in either the 1600 edition by Thomas Chard or the 1635 edition printed by John Beale, it does not mean that acknowledgement entirely disappeared. In 1685, ‘T.H.’ published an edition of the Apology for Richard Chiswell that gave Bacon credit for her translation, even though Parker’s letter was not included. Bacon’s work was also acknowledged in 1711, not in an edition of the Apology but in John Strype’s book The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker. Strype re-printed the endorsement letter that had been removed from the editions of the 1600s.
From 1711 until William Jelf’s publication of Jewel’s work in 1849, attribution to Bacon is rather more difficult to find, but that is mainly because new editions of the Apology were actually fresh translations of the original Latin text, written in the 1700s and 1800s by various clergymen. Because these men were presenting their own translations, they would have no reason to mention Bacon’s work, and yet one did: Stephen Isaacson, whose translation came out in 1825. Also, in 1831, William Whittingham published Standard Works Adapted for the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the US (vol 3), which included the Apology and started with a lengthy passage about Anne Bacon. Thus, it could be argued that knowledge of Bacon’s translation was never truly lost; it became part of the wider history of the Church of England, acknowledged in print when appropriate.
This claim reflects a tendency to over-emphasize Bacon’s contribution in this new edition of the Apology. It is perhaps helpful to remember that this famous defence of the Church of England was available in other languages: the Latin Apologia alone went through at least eleven editions between 1562 and 1700. Bacon’s work, while brilliant, is only part of the greater story of the defence of the Church in Elizabethan England. To truly place Bacon’s work in its historical context, as this edition aims to do, it is important not only to value her contribution, especially in light of the limitations placed on women writers at the time, but to see how she fitted within the wider atmosphere of religious publication and polemic. For this reason, Jewel’s name should have appeared on the front cover of this edition as author. While his original authorship is acknowledged on the title page, the cover removes both his name and his image from his own work.
Through her footnotes and introduction, Demers has expanded upon the Apology in a way that introduces it to a whole new audience. She has shown the unique power of Bacon’s translation, and effectively demonstrated how a female translator made a huge difference in the male-dominated world of religious debate. Even if this portrayal sometimes inflates Bacon’s significance, it does not lessen the value of Bacon’s translation, or the excellence of Patricia Demers’s work. This volume will prove very useful to scholars of the Elizabethan Church, and its glossary and footnotes also make it accessible for students. Considering the centrality of its argument to early Elizabethan religious debate, this new edition is an invaluable addition to modern translations of early modern primary sources.
Angela Ranson
Newcastle University
48.2.11
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In total, over sixty-five separate works form the complete corpus of this controversy, keeping the Apology and its related works at the forefront of Elizabethan religious debate.
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