The Crisis of Religion in the Elizabethan Age :: Religion Religious Elizabethan Age England Essays

The Crisis of Religion in the Elizabethan AgeThe Elizabethan Age down the stairswent a continuing crisis of religion that was mark by a deepening polarization of thought between the supporters of the belatedly established Protestant Church and the larger material body of adherents to the roman Catholic faith. Of these latter, Edmund Campion may be taken as the archetype. Well cognize as an Englishman who fled to the Continent for consciences sake, he returned to England as a Jesuit priest, was punish by the English government in 1581 and was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1970. It has been observed that the author of the Shakespeare plays displays a massive sympathy and familiarity with the practices and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.i The intent here is to show a link between this English Catholic leader and the writer of the drama, twelfth Night, as revealed by allusions to Edmund Campion in Act IV, scene ii of that play. A Brief Outline of Campions LifeT hough Edmund Campion (1540-1581) was a scholar at Oxford University under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth Is court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Campions studies of theology, church account, and the church fathers led him away from the positions taken by the Church of England. From Campions pull down of view, to satisfy the new orthodoxy of the Church of England, a reconstructionist interpretation of church history was being set forth, one chat he found operose to reconcile with what he actually found in the writings of those fathers 2. Had the obnubilate been swept away? Were St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom really Anglicans rather than Roman Catholics? Or were the church authorities trimming their sails to the exigencies of temporal policy? Questions such as these dogged Campion, and eventually his position at Oxford became untenable since he could non make the appropriate gestures of adherence to the established church 3. Instead, Campion locomote from O xford to Dublin in 1569, where he drew less attention and enjoyed the trade protection of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy for Ireland, and the patronage of Sir James Stanihurst, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, who planned to have Campion participate in the set up of what was to become Trinity College in Dublin 4. During this period a number of significant events took place. In 1568, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, was driven from her realm into England, where she came under the protection and custody of the English Crown.