Suspicious Moderate ANNE ASHLEY DAVENPORT T H E L I F E A N D W R I T I N G S O F F R A N C I S À S A N C T A C L A R A ( )

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1 Suspicious Moderate T H E L I F E A N D W R I T I N G S O F F R A N C I S À S A N C T A C L A R A ( ) ANNE ASHLEY DAVENPORT UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS N OT RE DA M E, IN D IA NA

2 University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana Copyright 2017 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davenport, Anne Ashley, author. Title: Suspicious moderate : the life and writings of Francis áa Sancta Clara ( ) / Anne Ashley Davenport. Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN (print) LCCN (ebook) ISBN (pdf ) ISBN (epub) ISBN (hardcover : alkaline paper) ISBN (hardcover : alkaline paper) Subjects: LCSH: Franciscus a Sancta Clara, Franciscus a Sancta Clara, Political and social views. Catholic Church Clergy Biography. Franciscans England Biography. Theologians England Biography. England Church history 17th century. Catholic Church England History 17th century. Catholic Church History of doctrines 17th century. BISAC: RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic. HISTORY / Modern / 17th Century. Classification: LCC BX4705. F7318 (ebook) LCC BX4705. F7318 D (print) DDC [B] dc23 LC record available at This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z (Permanence of Paper).

3 P R E F A C E In the summer of 1644, after three years in the Tower of London on charges of high treason, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was brought to trial before Parliament. The charges against him included the claim that he had conspired to advance Popery in England and reconcile the English Church by degrees to Rome. The evidence that was cited to prove Laud s guilt was largely circumstantial, except for a vividly hard fact. Laud, it was alleged, had wittingly and willingly held conferences with a Roman Catholic priest one called Sancta Clara, alias Damport, a Dangerous Person and Franciscan Friar. Who was this Franciscan, known to many of his contemporaries simply as Sancta Clara, and why would pinning Sancta Clara to Laud help to secure a conviction? Because he was embroiled in powerful historic trends shaping early modern Europe, Sancta Clara s life and writings deserve special attention for three chief reasons. The first is that Sancta Clara made the strange choice of joining a loathed, feared, and persecuted papist minority. Born into a Protestant family of Coventry, he attended Oxford from 1613 to 1615, then converted to Roman Catholicism, ran off to the English College of Douay, and joined the Franciscan Order in Why would a simple Midlands youth from a middling Protestant family embrace Roman superstition, vow to live in voluntary poverty, and devote himself to restoring Franciscan life in England? The question is all the more perplexing given that Sancta Clara s half brother, John Davenport, founder of New Haven in the American colonies, made a diametrically opposite choice and became a leading pioneer of New England Congregationalism. By examining Sancta Clara s trajectory, Suspicious Moderate seeks to shed light on a dynamic English generation for whom religious self-invention opened up new existential pathways. ix

4 x Preface What motivated Franciscus à Sancta Clara to become an author? A second reason to study Sancta Clara s life and writings is that he matured into an exceptionally good theologian. In his written work, he sought to reframe Catholic theology so as to show that (1) Catholicism is compatible with freedom of conscience, (2) Catholicism is compatible with civil government, and (3) Catholicism is compatible with experimental science. Suspicious Moderate examines Sancta Clara s theological works in careful detail in order to bring his method and doctrines to light. Contemporary accounts speak of Sancta Clara s personal charm and graceful manner. A third reason to study his life and writings is that they provide a window into obscure and colorful aspects of seventeenthcentury England. Who were Sancta Clara s allies and why? He was elected provincial of his order three times, serving from 1637 to 1640 (during the reign of Charles I), from 1650 to 1653 (during the Commonwealth), and from 1665 to 1668 (during the reign of Charles II). Appointed chaplain to Queen Henriette-Marie and theologian to Queen Catherine of Braganza, Sancta Clara sought out a wide variety of interlocutors, from statesmen to scientists. He forged ties of friendship with theologians on both sides of the Channel. He conferred with the Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding and with the Flemish chemist Van Helmont, befriended the Caroline divines Augustine Lindsell and Jeremy Taylor, and interacted with Lord Baltimore s right-hand man in Maryland, John Lewgar, and with Francis Windebank. Most importantly, he enjoyed a lifelong friendship with the controversial philosopher-priest Thomas Blackloe White and through him came into contact with the circle of Kenelm Digby. In the process of researching this book, I made the lucky discovery that the mysterious Philip Scot who published one of the earliest En glish discussions of Hobbes in 1650 was none other than Sancta Clara (first announced in Hobbes Studies in 2014). I now explore some of the ramifications of my discovery. As we will see, Sancta Clara joined the effort to fight Hobbes s Erastianism by carefully reflecting on Hobbes s pioneering ideas and by attempting, in characteristic fashion, to find common ground with him, no matter how slight. During the Commonwealth, Sancta Clara petitioned Cromwell for religious freedom in the name of civil peace and formed a friendship with the Oxford librarian and Hobbes admirer Thomas Barlow. After the publication of Leviathan (1651), Sancta Clara attempted to refute Hobbes s demonization of Roman Catholicism. Six

5 Preface xi years after Sancta Clara s death, Pierre Bayle praised Sancta Clara by name in his landmark treatise on religious toleration, the Commentaire philoso - phique. In the nineteenth century, Sancta Clara s vision of a less hectoring and more inclusive Catholic Church would help to shape the Boston mission of Bishop Cheverus and the apologetics of Étienne Badin, missionary to Kentucky and donor of the land that became the site of the University of Notre Dame. John Henry Newman s famous Tractate 90, in turn, owed a close debt to Sancta Clara s defense of the English articles of religion, which the Anglican reunionist canon F. G. Lee translated and published in Finally, attesting to a sort of enduring haunting of the English imagi - nation, Joseph Shorthouse published a best seller in 1881, John Inglesant, in which Sancta Clara is prominently featured. As Sancta Clara s life was largely lived underground and in the secretive wings of the Stuart court, his written works, mostly in Latin, constitute our chief record of his journey as a Franciscan priest grappling with the legacy of English odium. Only two book-length biographies of Sancta Clara have been written to date, both by Franciscans: one in German by Ermin Klaus (1938) and one in English by John Berkermans Dockery (1960). Neither examines Sancta Clara s theology in detail or provides sufficient context to interpret it. Sancta Clara s hallmark irenicism, however, has long attracted attention. In an influential monograph published in 1951, the French scholar Maurice Nédoncelle praised Sancta Clara s subtle arguments and enthusiastically described him as an intrepid archangel for trying to win tolerance for Roman Catholics from Cromwell. George Tavard, in turn, described Sancta Clara as a fine and little known theologian. Most recently, Sancta Clara found a champion in Bruno Neveu, who emphasized the innovative character of Sancta Clara s chief theological work, Systema fidei, in an article published posthumously in Leading scholars of the history of religion in Stuart England, such as Caroline Hibbard, Anthony Milton, Michael Questier, Brian Tyacke, Beverly South - gate, Stefania Tutino, and Jeffrey Collins, to name just a few, have consistently cited Sancta Clara in their rich contextual studies. They have not, however, examined his doctrines in detail to show his full impact on Roman Catholic theology. Why the title Suspicious Moderate? The epithet was framed by a member of the Great Tew circle and fellow Roman Catholic convert, Hugh Serenus Cressy, apparently to denounce, but actually to praise, Sancta Clara s

6 xii Preface irenic strategy of conciliation. Viewed with suspicion from all sides for his attempt to reconcile opposing views, Sancta Clara was himself suspicious of dogmatism, of the political uses of religion, of Roman Catholic blindness, and of Puritan fanaticism. It is by trusting his own suspiciousness of human folly that Sancta Clara navigated storm after storm to become a champion of freedom of conscience. There is yet a third, darker sense in which the title is meant to remind us of a perennial obstacle facing sincere reformers. As we will see, Protestants were most often unwilling to believe that a Roman Catholic could genuinely be moderate. Even someone like William Penn, who was himself persecuted for being a Quaker, remained suspicious of Sancta Clara s effort to reframe Catholicism and denounced him as a fraud. By calling attention to Cressy s characterization of Sancta Clara, the book s title hopes to emphasize the multidimensional context of suspicion and prejudice in which Sancta Clara s life and theology evolved. Eschewing the satisfaction of clear-cut positions, moreover, we will immerse ourselves in realms of ambiguity and in strategies that were shaped as much by unreasonable hope and unreasonable suspicion as by facts. Starting before Sancta Clara s birth, as an intellectual biography must, because acculturation is marked by initiation before new departures are possible, the first two chapters evoke a key aspect of the anti-catholic hatred that was transmitted to Sancta Clara by his Protestant milieu and that loomed large over his life. At stake was a highly politicized claim by Prot - estants that papists were simply incapable of making moral decisions independently of Rome. The attempt to answer Protestants in this regard and to hammer out a new theory of moral freedom for Catholics started with Sancta Clara s predecessors, jailed at the Clink (see chapter 2). Sancta Clara learned from them, gained their support, and eventually developed their approach into a comprehensive rejection of religious persecution. Chapters 3 and 4 narrate Sancta Clara s childhood, education at Oxford, conversion to Roman Catholicism, and Franciscan calling, culminating with his travel to Rome and first publication (1628). Chapter 5 explores the revival of English Franciscan culture under Sancta Clara s energetic leadership, but it also evokes the religious community of Little Gidding to argue that nostalgia for supererogatory holiness must be singled out as a key feature of the 1620s and 1630s, blurring confessional lines

7 Preface xiii and offering new opportunities for ecumenical rapprochement. This sets the stage for chapters 6 and 7, in which Sancta Clara s most notorious work of theology, Deus, natura, gratia (1634), is presented and analyzed, along with his appointment as chaplain in Queen Henriette-Marie s entourage. Chapter 8 describes Sancta Clara s effort to reunite the Church of England and the Roman Church, highlighting the atmosphere of anxiety and deceit within which Sancta Clara pursued his dream. Chapter 9 pre - sents Sancta Clara s exhaustive defense of episcopacy (1640) and argues that Apologia episcoporum was overtly written against Presbyterians and Puritans, but covertly aimed at promoting a moderate alternative to Jesuit papalism, hoping to appeal to Laudian prelates. Chapter 10 examines damaging accounts of Sancta Clara that were written in the context of the English Civil War. After chapter 11 briefly presents a Catholic and Protestant debate over religious infallibility, mainly among members of Great Tew, chapter 12 presents Sancta Clara s opus magnum, a veritable metatheology entitled Systema fidei (1648). I put forth the thesis that Systema fidei aimed at framing a theory of Catholicism suited to a religiously pluralistic, post- Westphalia Europe. Special attention is given to Sancta Clara s philosophi - cal fallibilism and to his effort to protect the autonomy of Catholic conscience by arguing that personal assent need never exceed the degree of available evidence. Chapters 13 to 15 turn to Sancta Clara s English writings during the Commonwealth, documenting his involvement in clandestine efforts to obtain religious toleration from Cromwell and his engagement with the work of Thomas Hobbes. Once again, the problem of the autonomy of conscience occupies center stage, inspiring Sancta Clara to defend a strict separation of church and state in the hope of refuting Hobbes s Erastianism. Chapter 16 examines Sancta Clara s last published treatise, Religio philosophi, which is concerned with miracles. Published during the Restoration, when Sancta Clara was again given a royal appointment as theologian to Queen Catherine of Braganza, Religio philosophi belongs to the expanded context of Thomas Browne s popular Religio medici. Far from approaching miracles simplistically, our English Franciscan shows that the Catholic belief in miracles (1) poses no threat to the project of science, (2) protects believers against malignant forms of superstition, and (3) puts

8 xiv Preface in place a rational and intersubjective bulwark against atheism. Chapter 17 looks at the last eighteen years of Sancta Clara s life and brings the investigation back to the problem of the autonomy of personal conscience, arguing that Sancta Clara drew on Hobbes to frame a liberating theory of self-censorship. My epilogue provides a summary of Sancta Clara s major themes, a sketch of his main intellectual heirs, and suggestions for future research.