“Nicodemite” was a term used in the sixteenth century to identify individuals who pretended to be faithful Catholics while secretly harboring Protestant beliefs. First employed in 1522 in a pejorative sense, to condemn anyone who acted like Nicodemus, who visited Jesus secretly at night in order to hide his leanings from his fellow Pharisees (John 3:1–21), its exact origin is as hard to pin down as the identity of all such dissemblers, most of whom proved to be quite adept at hiding their inner convictions.
The behavior that came to be known as ‘nicodemism’ was not limited to crypto-Protestants and was in fact much older than the Reformation era, perhaps as old as civilization itself, but the unique vicissitudes of that age turned it into an attractive option, making dissembling more widespread then than at any other time in Western history. Having to change one’s religion overnight – on pain of punishment – was a harsh reality faced by innumerable individuals throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, and also by peoples colonized by Europeans. Consequently, whether one is speaking of dissembling conversos or moriscos in Iberia, Calvinists in France, church papists in England, crypto-Calvinists in Germany, spiritualists throughout Europe, or Mayans, Aztecs, or Incas in the New World, one is dealing with a common phenomenon. Nearly three decades ago, in 1990, Perez Zagorin convincingly called attention to this common feature of sixteenth century life in his Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modern Europe.
Anne Overell has now masterfully deepened and expanded the meaning of “nicodemite” in several ways. First, by showing very clearly how this phenomenon needs to be understood as an evolving set of attitudes that straddled, crossed, and blurred confessional boundaries; second, by proving how useful it is to place dissemblers in particular contexts of time, place, and circumstances; and, above all, by showing how crucial it is to avoid simplistic reductionism and binary “either/or” categories of understanding dissembling behavior.
The specific context in which Overell examines nicodemism is at once narrow and unusual, and perhaps also unexpected, for the sole focus of this book is the heretofore relatively ignored link that existed between two seemingly disparate communities of dissemblers, one in steadfastly Catholic Italy, and the other in constantly-changing Tudor England. Overell’s painstaking research, much of which is anchored in manuscript sources, including correspondence, casts new light on Reformation-era nicodemism by taking it out of the French context in which it has been overwhelmingly approached, due to John Calvin’s constant obsession with dissembling in his native land and to the relatively high number of scholars who specialize on Calvinism and early modern France. Dividing the book into two sections, the first focused on specific individuals who were dissemblers, the second on texts that were significant to these dissemblers, Overell examines the nicodemite attitudes of key members of the Italian reforming circle known as the spirituali and traces their influence on various figures in England, from the reign of Henry VIII to that of his daughter Elizabeth, who is portrayed as ‘the queen of nicodemites’. (p. 186).
Overell convincingly argues that the lynchpin of this Anglo-Italian nicodemite community was none other than Cardinal Reginald Pole, whose life and work was shaped by dissembling, even when participating in the Council of Trent or serving as Archbishop of Canterbury during Queen Mary’s “bloody” reign. Having lived in Italy before assuming his post at Canterbury, Pole had developed tight bonds with fellow nicodemites especially Gasparo Contarini, Giovanni Morone, Marcantonio Flaminio, Bernardino Ochino, and Pietro Martire Vermigli, creating a ‘nursery of nicodemism’ in Padua and the Veneto that ‘provided an important apprenticeship in how to wait and evade uncomfortable truths and, above all, how to deceive those with the power to harm’ (p. 37). According to Overell, the most notable of Pole’s English protégés were Richard Morison, Michael Throckmorton, George Lily, Edmund Harvel, and Thomas Starkey, nicodemites who would play significant but ambiguous roles back home.
Among the nicodemite texts examined by Overell none plays a more central role than Il Beneficio di Cristo, a product of Pole’s circle of gli spirituali, published anonymously in Venice in 1543 and later translated into various other languages, including Latin and English. Il Beneficio, which would become a devotional best-seller in England, would be condemned in 1549 by Venetian inquisitors and included in the 1559 Index of Forbidden Books due to its thinly disguised support of Protestant sola fide soteriology and its easily detectable paraphrasing of passages from the writings of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, and Juan de Valdés.
As Overell correctly sees it, in opposition to Carlo Ginzburg’s thesis in Il Nicodemismo (1970), nicodemism was not a coherent theology or philosophy, or much less a secretive elite sect, but rather a flexible attitude toward the external dimension of religion and toward the relation between beliefs and behavior, with a marked preference for ambiguity, ambivalence, equivocation, obscurity, inscrutability, and secrecy. These nicodemite traits flowed from a conviction that what mattered most in religion was one’s inner disposition - what was in one’s heart - rather than whatever one did with one’s body or said with one’s mouth. Given their penchant for hedging and concealment, Overell’s nicodemites are most often identified as such through their behaviour, rather than by any explicit doctrinal affirmations or instructions. Evading situations in which they might have to remove their masks is one such trait often singled out by Overell, along with their carefully measured prevarication, and their constant waiting for some change in circumstances that would allow them to freely voice their beliefs and promote them. Nonetheless, despite their slipperiness and apparent ambivalence, Overell thinks that Pole and his circle did seem to have a definite preference for the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone.
Given the many sudden changes and reversals in religion required by English monarchs between the 1530s and the 1590s, Overell contends, nicodemism in England was more varied than in Italy, where all dissembling involved hiding one’s opposition to the Catholic status quo. Moreover, as she points out, due to the unstable and unpredictable arc of circumstances in England, dissembling seemed to become much more of a necessity there than almost anywhere else in Western Christendom. Consequently, English nicodemism assumed various forms on a broad spectrum over time, depending on which monarch was on the throne and which particular version of the Christian religion each of them tried to impose on their subjects.
When all is said and done, then, according to Overell, Queen Elizabeth and the Calvinists and Catholics harassed and persecuted during her reign were all forced into becoming nicodemites at some point in their lives by the peculiar circumstances of Tudor royal policies: Elizabeth was a nicodemite during the reign of half sister Mary, when she grudgingly pretended to be Catholic, and puritans, recusants and church papists became nicodemites during her own reign, for most of them could not afford the fines and penalties imposed on anyone who failed to attend Sunday services in her Church of England, as required by law.
By Elizabeth’s reign, however, the nicodemite heritage of Pole, his English protégés and Italian spirituali cohorts slips out of view in Overell’s account, and its relevance becomes somewhat unclear. Nicodemism under Elizabeth, then, becomes an instinctive reaction to circumstances, detached from the individuals and texts that are so meticulously analyzed in the first three quarters of the book. What the reader is left with at the end, then, is a gauzy assortment of Calvinists, church papists, and other nonconformists who have no apparent connection to Pole, his disciples, and the spirituali. In sum, then, the two final chapters focus on a new generation of dissemblers, a collection of odd bedfellows or merely accidental nicodemites who pretend to be perfectly comfortable with the queen’s via media and her Book of Common Prayer while their hearts seethe with various degrees of resentment.
Readers who have been following Overell’s work on nicodemism may not find much that is new here, for this book gathers together five previously published articles and bits and pieces taken from other essays. Nonetheless, by assembling all of this work, adding new material, and providing a flowing narrative and a cogent analysis, Overell has not only sharpened the edge of her own work and made her significant contributions more accessible to a wider reading public, but also deepened our understanding of dissembling behavior in the early modern age, especially in England.
Tellingly, the best summation of the attitude so perceptively analyzed by Overell in this book comes from Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the most remarkable nicodemites of his day, and also perhaps of all time. And thanks to Overell, who wisely chose to quote him at the beginning of her narrative (p. 20), the painful choice made by every nicodemite, past or present, becomes crystal clear, with stinging immediacy:
‘One bears more easily the evils to which one is accustomed. Therefore, I will put up with this Church until I see a better one, and it will have to put up with me, until I become better. And surely a person does not sail infelicitously if he holds a middle course between two evils.’
