The Elizabethan Catholic New Testament and Its Readers
-
Thomas Fulton
and
Jeremy Specland
Abstract
Printed vernacular Bibles appeared in many European languages well before the Protestant Reformation, but in England the story is quite different. The first Catholic English New Testament was not printed until 1582, long after numerous Protestant editions had flooded the English Bible market. This article focuses on readers of this 1582 annotated Rheims New Testament, published by exiles in France and shipped surreptitiously northward for missionaries to convert, affirm, and educate British Catholics. Once in England this edition garnered an immense outpouring of printed confutations. Particularly significant was a 1589 dual printing of the Rheims text alongside the official version of the Church of England with extensive annotations by William Fulke. Reader markings in both the 1582 Rheims New Testament and its 1589 confutation, however, show early readers staking out confessional positions independent of the polemic of the printed texts, often putting these texts to purposes contrary to those intended.
Acknowledgements
We thank Maria Vrcek, who gathered information at the Huntington Library and transcribed difficult passages, and the advice of Steve Tabor. Daniel Cheely read and responded to the essay with great care, catching errors and sharpening conclusions. Earle Havens lent his expertise at a couple of stages, as did Aaron Pratt. We also gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Wim François and Sabrina Corbellini. Research for this project was made possible by a Huntington Travel Exchange Fellowship with Trinity Hall, Cambridge and a Dissertation Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Bibles in the Hands of Readers: Dutch, English, French, and Italian Perspectives
- Articles
- Shaping Religious Reading Cultures in the Early Modern Netherlands: The “Glossed Bibles” of Jacob van Liesvelt and Willem Vorsterman (1532–1534ff.)
- The Quest for the Early Modern Bible Reader: The Dutch Vorsterman Bible (1533–1534), its Readers and Users
- Framing Biblical Reading Practices: The Impact of the Paratext of Jacob van Liesvelt’s Bibles (1522–1545)
- The Elizabethan Catholic New Testament and Its Readers
- Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France
- Vernacular Books and Domestic Devotion in Cinquecento Italy
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Bibles in the Hands of Readers: Dutch, English, French, and Italian Perspectives
- Articles
- Shaping Religious Reading Cultures in the Early Modern Netherlands: The “Glossed Bibles” of Jacob van Liesvelt and Willem Vorsterman (1532–1534ff.)
- The Quest for the Early Modern Bible Reader: The Dutch Vorsterman Bible (1533–1534), its Readers and Users
- Framing Biblical Reading Practices: The Impact of the Paratext of Jacob van Liesvelt’s Bibles (1522–1545)
- The Elizabethan Catholic New Testament and Its Readers
- Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France
- Vernacular Books and Domestic Devotion in Cinquecento Italy
