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Bishop Gardiner, Machiavellian*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter Donaldson
Peter Donaldson
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

Some years ago my attention was drawn by Professors Paul Kristeller and William Nelson of Columbia University to two manuscripts – one in the Bibliothèque Publique de Besançon and the other in the Escorial – of a text that appeared to be the last work of Stephen Gardiner, a leading conservative churchman, diplomat and publicist in the Henrician period, and, from 1553 until his death in 1555, Mary Tudor's chancellor. The text is in Italian, and is titled Ragionamento dell’advenimento delli inglesi et normanni in Britannia – ‘ A discourse on the coming of the English and Normans to Britain’. The translator, George Rainsford, worked from an English original now lost, and appended to the Gardiner text his own Ritratto d'Ingliterra or ‘Description of England’; he dedicated the composite volume to Philip II, among whose books the Escorial manuscript had been. The dedication is dated 16 March 1556, some four months after Gardiner's death. Both the Gardiner text and the Rainsford appendix have now been published.

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Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1980, pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Besançon MS 1169, and Escorial I—III 17. For a full description see the introduction to A Machiavellian treatise, cited below.

2 The standard works on Gardiner remain: Muller, J. A., Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor reaction (London, 1926)Google Scholar; The letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed.Muller, J. A. (Cambridge 1933)Google Scholar. Obedience in church and state: three political tracts by Stephen Gardiner, ed. and trans, by Janelle, P. (Cambridge, 1930).Google Scholar

3 A Machiavellian treatise by Stephen Gardiner, ed. and trans, by Donaldson, P. S. (Cambridge, 1975); ‘George Rainsford's”Ritratto d’Ingliterra” (1556)‘, Camden Miscellany XXVII (London, 1979), 49–111. The introduction to, A Machiavellian treatise provides documentation concerning the transmission of the text, the life of the translator, and the relation of the treatise to Marian politics. The introduction to the ‘Ritratto’ contains a section on the differences between Rainford's opinions and those of Gardiner. For full documentation on these points, the reader will be referred to the published texts.Google Scholar

4 Serious doubt on this score was expressed by Dermot Fenlon in his review of the published Gardiner text (Historical Journal, xix (1976), 1019 23).Google Scholar

5 See A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 156 8.

6 See ‘Ritratto’, pp. 59–64.

7 For documentation on this and the next two paragraphs see A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 4 15.

8 Ibid. pp. 9–15.

9 Ibid. pp. 149 50.

10 Rival ambassadors at the court of Queen Mary (Princeton, 1940).Google Scholar

11 Harbison, Rival ambassadors, pp. 214–22. Muller, Stephen Gardiner, p. 383. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, XII, 242.

12 Prince, 11–111, IV–IX.

113 A Machiavellian treatise, p. 145.

14 Ibid. p. 146. Prince, 111.

15 A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 107–21, 126, 129.

16 Ibid. pp. 132–3. Gardiner usually follows Polydore Vergil's Anglica historia (available in editions of 1534, 1546 and 1555) for the details of his historical exempla. In the case of Stephen and Canute he departs from his usual source. His account of the happy reign of Stephen and the slaughter of the Danes borders on mythmaking, but it serves his political point all the better for that.

17 Statutes of the realm, IV, 224.

18 Walker translation.

19 A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 130–1.

20 Letters of Stephen Gardiner, p. 399.

21 Obedience in church and state, pp. 173–211.

22 Ibid. pp. 192–3.

23 Acts and Monuments, ed. Cattley, S. R. (London, 1838), v, 556.Google Scholar

24 Letters of Stephen Gardiner, pp. 286 ff., 308, 318–19.

25 Ibid. p. 137. Cf. Obedience, p. 188:’Nam [contcmptus] in rebus minimis, et facilibus est major.’

26 A Machiavellian treatise, p. 139.

27 Ibid. pp. 129 30.

28 Ibid. pp. 139, 142.

29 Calendar of state papers, Spanish, XI, 335; xII, 125 6, 167, 200.Google Scholar

30 A Machiavellian treatise, p. 137.

31 Ibid. pp. 137–141.

32 Fox, Acts and Monuments, VII, 592; VIII, 618–19.

33 A Mathiavellian treatise, p. 149.

34 Loc. cit.

35 Apologia ad Carolum Quintum, in Epistolae Reginaldi Poli (ed. Quirini, ; Brescia. 1744). 1.137 ff.Google Scholar

36 Osorius, Hieronymus, De nobilitate Christiana (Lisbon, 1542), fos. 98–9; A. C. Politi Ennarationes […] assertationes, isputations (Rome, 1551–2, repr. Ridgewood, NJ., 1964), part 111, columns 339–43; Fr Heinrich Reusch, Die indices liborum prohibitorum des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1886, repr. Nieukoop, 1970), p. 198.Google Scholar

37 A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 138, 116 (cf. Italian text p. 59), 118.

38 For example Gardiner uses an animal fable to illustrate the folly of employing auxiliary forces (p. 111).

39 Obedience in church and state, pp. 77–83, 89–91, 107, 109, 117–19, 133.

40 A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 125–6.

41 Ibid. p. 145: ‘ I say, as regards mercy and cruelty, that it helps a prince to seem sometimes cruel, provided that his mind is not dominated by cruelty […] For mercy ought in any case to vanquish cruelty, otherwise the prince will not resemble God, of whom he is the living image. The Holy Scriptures call God merciful and just, putting mercy first.’

42 E.g. Louis Machon, the thesis of whose vast and still unpublished ‘ Apologie pour Machiavel’ is that Machiavelli's ideas were not only consonant with, but brought out a neglected side of biblical and patristic moral teaching.

43 A Machiavellian treatise, pp. 105–6.

44 Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, III, 16–21.Google Scholar

45 Letters of Stephen Gardiner, p. 259.