Hume, Calendar of Letters and State Papers in the Archives of Simancas, 3: 85-6. 3 (2014), 531-548 76 The fire was attributed to divine displeasure at the woman’s derision for Catholic feast days.Footnote He began to wear the agnus dei after meeting with a seminary priest in 1594.Footnote 60 Eamon Duffy has highlighted how consecrated salt, wax, and water could be used by the laity as spiritual weapons against the distresses of life in pre-Reformation England. 43. "openAccess": "0", 97 22 McClain, Lisa, Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642 (New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar. Agnus Dei synonyms, Agnus Dei pronunciation, Agnus Dei translation, English dictionary definition of Agnus Dei. "subject": true, For Jesuits, this practice also accorded with the instructions of their superiors regarding how they should facilitate the reconciliation and conversion of others. Anne Dillon has noted that confraternities of the rosary operated in London with relative openness in the mid-seventeenth century and even held regular processions, albeit in private homes.Footnote Figure 5.1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 81 For the queen and her ministers, the excommunication called into question the loyalties of everyone in England who considered themselves Catholic, because the papacy now expected them to resist the queen if they wished to avoid excommunication themselves.Footnote 59 35 Alberts, Tara, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 7. "clr": false, Google Scholar. English Catholicism and the Counter Reformation’, Historical Research 78 (2005): 288-310 Scribner, R.W., Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon, 1987), 39-47 It was adapted from Agnus dei (Georges Bizet and [Traditional]). Agnus Dei' En:, Caravaggio y la pintura realista europea, Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2005, pp. See 42 London, British Library (Hereafter, BL), Lansdowne MS 25/30 f. 63. 62, The agnus dei and its distribution were therefore closely associated with missionary priests.Footnote 37 A sixteenth-century agnus dei which was discovered at Lyford Grange in 1959, where the Jesuit Edmund Campion was captured in 1581, is now kept at Campion Hall in Oxford. The agnus dei occupied a complex position in English Catholic life after 1570. 35. Indeed, an agnus dei given to James VI by his wife, Queen Anne, was thought to have saved him when a storm, supposedly orchestrated by witches, beset his ship; Pope Clement VIII, who related this story to the Spanish ambassador in Rome, hoped the incident might move the king to look more favourably on the Roman faith.Footnote The Lyford Grange agnus dei is considerably larger, with a length of 17 cm (See Figure 4). See A.J. See Houliston, Crosignani, and McCoog, eds., Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, 1, 59: ‘Then, in the case of Catholics, let it be with the reconciled rather than with schismatics; with heretics they should have no direct dealings; but they will urge the Catholics each and all to strive for the conversion of the members of his family … and when those … are ready to hear the truth with equanimity, then will our Fathers themselves be able, with due regard for safety … to confirm their purpose and give them fuller instruction’. 36 Agnus dei definition at Dictionary.com, a free online dictionary with pronunciation, synonyms and translation. See Google Scholar; Ironically, the severe curtailments which the new treason laws placed on access to the sacraments, and to priests who could administer them, may have increased the community’s demand for the very sacramentals the government also hoped to eradicate. Howard Louthan’s work on the re-Catholicisation of Bohemia after the Thirty Years’ War illustrates how ecclesiastical authorities and missionaries employed a range of measures to encourage people to return to the faith, including public rituals, works of art, and the encouragement of the cult of saints through the translation of relics.Footnote See more ideas about Agnus dei, Religious art, Christian symbols. From the Elizabethan government’s perspective, the possession of sacred objects like the agnus dei signalled not only a change of religion, but also a change in loyalty and an inclination to resist the crown, all rooted in the implications of the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I.Footnote Sung or recited, the Agnus Dei has been a part of the Mass since it was introduced by Pope Sergius I (687–701). 8 The agnus dei’s protective powers, especially over mothers and children, would have made it an appealing gift, and one that might have helped to establish goodwill between the priests and the Catholics to whom they hoped to minister.Footnote Foster, C. W., ed., Lincoln Wills, 2 vols (London: Lincoln Record Society, 1914 and 1918), 1:144Google Scholar. Underwood, Childhood, Youth, and Religious Dissent, chapter 2. The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541-1588: ‘Our Way of Proceeding? CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, ‘Relics, Martyrs, and English Women Religious’, 41-59; see also Walsham, ‘Beads, Books, and Bare-Ruined Choirs’, 103-22. 38 Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. The agnus dei also continued to be prized for its protective powers. 5 out of 5 stars (3,994) 3,994 reviews $ 12.09. 31 This raises questions about the degrees to which Catholics were willing to defy the queen’s government after 1570, and whether the missionaries played any role in persuading Catholics into more politically charged expressions of dissent. CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See 42 Cordy Jeaffreson, John, ed. Although the agnus dei remained an important confessional marker and an object of scorn in Protestant polemic, the possession of the sacramental was not as politically dangerous for lay Catholics during the Stuart reigns as it had been in the late sixteenth century. 78, The search was ordered by the bishop and mayor of Winchester when they received reports that a group of lay Catholics and priests was meeting to hear the Mass in the city.Footnote It assesses the uses of these sacramentals in Catholic missions to England, their reception amongst Catholics, and the political significance of the agnus dei in light of the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570. 89, The agnus dei also continued to act as a mark of reconciliation to the Roman Church to the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Evangelisti, Sylvia, ‘Material Culture,’ in Alexandra Bamji, Geert Janssen, and Mary Laven, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 399-413 Clossey, Luke, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 216-237 Anne Percy escaped to the Low Countries and spent the rest of her life in exile. In Johannes 1:29 en 1:36 wijst Johannes de Doper naar Jezus met de woorden: “Ziet, daar is het Lam van God dat de zonde van de wereld wegneemt". By permission of the Governors of Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. Laurence Lux-Sterritt has discussed some of these concepts with respect to the relationships between English Catholic laywomen and the missions. Her husband, Thomas Depsenser, was executed for rebelling against Henry IV, but his possessions were distributed in accordance with his will. "metrics": true, In the court record Eleanor Brome’s mother, Catherine Brome (née Windsor), is referred to as Lady Paulet, which was the surname of her first husband. The author is grateful to the Catholic Record Society for the award of a grant and studentship which helped to fund part of the research for this article. Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Translating Trent? 37 28. Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views. 32 See for instance TNA SP 12/238 f. 188b, a government memorandum entitled ‘A Certain and infallible rule to know a reconciled papist’, ca. 23 57, The popularity of such items amongst lay Catholics in England, however, was so great that the Jesuit General subsequently relaxed the proscription on their use and circulation by members of the Society working in England. In 1581 an agent of Francis Walsingham reported a conversation with a man who ‘had certain jewels of Edmund Campions’ and ‘conveyed over in to this Realm of late one Chapman a priest and landed him at Stokes Bay by Portsmouth’. 28 "isLogged": "0", Feature Flags: { The possession and use of agni dei after 1570 acted as a pointed statement of defiance against the Elizabethan regime, if only because the government forced the issue by banning them and associating them with treason. Its creation and distribution were subject to regulations that other objects did not receive. The accounts discussed in this article show the circulation of the agnus dei in Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Northumbria. 39 Figure 2 60 Google Scholar. Malo, Robyn, ‘Intimate Devotion: Recusant Martyrs and the Making of Relics in Post-Reformation England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 44, no. In this environment, as access to the Mass, sacraments, and holy sites became increasingly limited, English Catholics found different ways of maintaining spiritual connections with the Roman Church.Footnote TRADITIONAL AND HISTORICAL USES. The acknowledgment of papal supremacy implicit in the possession of an agnus dei was one of the principal reasons it was outlawed as a treasonous object. Brown, Nancy Pollard, ‘Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England’, in English Manuscript Studies, 1 (1989): 120-143 95 Bailey feared that Swinburn would not be allowed to keep them and that they would fall into the wrong hands.Footnote The agnus dei was one of many incriminating items in the house: several Catholic devotional texts were found in the library and the sisters’ chambers, including a copy of Edmund Campion’s Rationes Decem and a catechism in English by Lawrence Vaux. Thomas Percy was later imprisoned by the Scottish and sent back to England to be tried and executed for treason in 1572. 14 13th century ivory carving, Louvre. Agni dei were conventionally made in the pontifical apothecary and consecrated by the pope during Holy Week in a special ceremony witnessed and assisted by the cardinals.Footnote 86 Google Scholar. 61 } 12 In 1572 government agents intercepted a letter written by Thomas Bailey, an English exile living in Louvain, in which he expressed a desire to send to his friend John Swinburn in England a number of books, beads, and agni dei. The seventh century Pope Sergius I brought the Agnus Dei into a more prominent location within the Catholic Mass liturgy, as a chant sung while the celebrant physically breaks the Communion bread. 72 * Views captured on Cambridge Core between 24th April 2018 - 22nd December 2020. 78-79 . The agnus dei was a popular devotional aid in pre-Reformation England and Europe, and had been in use from at least the eleventh century.Footnote 18 5 52 The agnus dei could also be a mark of those who had been in contact with missionary priests. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 565-93. They could be worn as pendants or preserved as devotional objects. It will examine how the possession of an agnus dei acted not only as a tool of personal faith, but also as a symbol of defiance against the Elizabethan regime and an acknowledgement of the supremacy of papal authority. Missionary priests continued to bring agni dei and other prohibited sacred items into England, and their possession remained a significant expression of dissent. The papal excommunication of Elizabeth, issued in the wake of this resistance, provoked substantial concerns in the queen’s government. BL Lansdowne MS 50/76 f. 164. An English translation of the bull is available in Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Robert Scribner has described the widespread popularity of sacramentals in medieval and post-Reformation Europe as a means of gaining regular access to the sacred in daily life.Footnote It may be possible to discern whether these individuals would have been receptive to papal calls for resistance to the queen, and the ways in which English Catholics interpreted these demands for resistance. Those caught wearing or using any such items would likewise suffer the penalties of the statute.Footnote The same priest had received faculties to dispense absolution to anyone who reconciled themselves to the Roman Church.Footnote Agnus Dei (Latijn voor Lam Gods) is een uitdrukking die verwijst naar Jezus Christus in zijn rol van de perfecte sacramentele opoffering die de zonden van de mens verzoent in de christelijke theologie.. 63 In these accounts, the agnus dei acted as a marker of confessional difference, illustrating the failure of heretical, Protestant churches to provide adequate care for their parishioners. It is more difficult to determine the extent to which English Catholics perceived the agni dei as political links to Rome, and whether they believed that the possession of an agnus dei constituted an act of resistance that signalled obedience to the papacy. Query parameters: { Calendar of the Manuscripts Preserved at Hatfield House, 17: 544. See Figure 6, which is also suggestive of these connections. The latest alteration of official worship brought with it the fresh destruction of altars, relics, vestments, plate, and other precious materials that had been replaced during Mary’s reign.Footnote The ban on agni dei was added to legislation that effectively equated several practices of Roman Catholicism, including the use of papal bulls, indulgences, and other consecrated materials, with treason. Fearing the effects of the missions on the allegiances of English Catholics, in 1581 parliament added reconciliation by a priest to the list of treasonable offences, further entangling the practices of Catholicism with questions of fealty to the crown and kingdom.Footnote Total loading time: 0.985 The session was kindly led by Irene Galandra Cooper, who is studying the Agnus Dei as part of her… Christianity Lamb of God; Jesus. 23 Meredith had already distributed several of these items in the city and in Lancashire, where he had previously ministered.Footnote He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century: music critic Donal Henahan stated that "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." The agnus dei appears to have attracted comparable interest in Ireland, particularly with the rekindling of the Desmond Rebellion in the late 1570s. Much of the scholarship on the materiality of Catholic devotions in post-Reformation England has focused on the cult of relics and the circulation of texts.Footnote AGNUS DEI Meaning: "lamb of God." Some may simply have rejected the government’s interpretation of the materials of Catholic devotion, but the agnus dei, at least, raises questions about the nature of political participation amongst Catholics in post-Reformation England, and the extent to which that participation was subversive. 86 While the involvement of missionary priests in the circulation of prohibited religious books and the ‘sacred economy’ of masses and relics in early modern England has received considerable attention, they also played a central part in the circulation of other sacred objects like the agnus dei.Footnote "crossMark": true, 1 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2017), 62-8. The agnus dei belonged to a special class of sacred objects called sacramentals: blessed objects which could exercise an effect over their possessor analogous to that of receiving the sacraments. Distributing the agnus dei to a few members of English Catholic communities, who could then carry on circulating them, would have been a safer and more efficient method of dispersal for the missionaries, who would have increased risk of exposure by approaching recipients on an individual basis. An incident that occurred later in 1586 indicates that Catholics were fully aware of the discs’ political connotations even if they did not necessarily embrace all of them. Cuthbert Mayne, who converted to Catholicism after Elizabeth I’s excommunication and trained for the priesthood at the English College in Douai, was carrying at least one when he was arrested in Cornwall in August 1577. At the turn of the century William Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, reported the activities of John Ogilvy at the Scottish court, calling him ‘a dangerous instrument against God and his church’ who ‘professes himself a Roman Catholic’. Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Pope’s Merchandise and the Jesuits’ Trumpery: Catholic Relics and Protestant Polemic in Post-Reformation England’, in Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, eds., Religion, the Supernatural, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe: An Album Amicorum for Charles Zika (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 370-409 From shop TerryTiles2014. 72 Johnson, Trevor, ‘Blood, Tears, and Xavier Water: Missionaries and Popular Religion in the Eighteenth-Century Upper Palatinate’, in Robert Scribner and Trevor Johnson, eds., Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996),183-202 She was briefly imprisoned and her lands and goods were seized in 1405 for conspiring against the crown, but these were later restored to her. The possession of such a sacramental could therefore also indicate that its owner may have undergone reconciliation in some form. In order to enforce this new law for the purposes of identifying and, subsequently, prosecuting Catholics, Elizabethan authorities increasingly pointed to the possession of blessed objects such as rosaries and agni dei as evidence of someone’s reconciliation.Footnote Google Scholar. 36 See for instance 32 De tekst is beschikbaar onder de licentie. 61 He returned to Scotland briefly in 1600, when the incident above took place. 26 The fact that the family tried to hide the agnus dei and beads is a testament both to their precious spiritual value and their highly dangerous political associations. The medieval Italian example is circular in shape and approximately 1.6 cm in diameter, while the nineteenth-century agnus dei is oblong and 7 cm in length.Footnote 88 41 90 As a sacramental that carried a papal blessing and which was also popular for its healing and protective abilities, priests may have hoped that the agnus dei would draw greater numbers to the English mission, facilitating both reconciliation (in its multiple senses) and conversion.Footnote It is based on the saying of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).In the Roman Catholic liturgy the Agnus Dei is employed in the following text: “Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us! The potential for links between the possession of an agnus dei and a commitment to resisting Elizabeth and her government are also apparent in Ireland during this period. The bishop of London arrested a priest named Jonas Meredith in March 1577 after finding him with ‘divers Agnus dei’ and beads. The efforts of priests to bring agni dei to the laity suggest that they encouraged resistance of a kind that enabled Catholics to comply, at least in part, with papal demands that they disobey Elizabeth. The papacy frequently sent boxes of agni dei as gifts to queens regnant and consort who were expecting or had just delivered children.Footnote During the rebellion, the Mass was openly celebrated in Durham and married clerics were forcibly ejected from their livings in Yorkshire.Footnote Trevor Johnson has described the importance of sacramentals in attracting crowds to Jesuit missions in the Upper Palatinate.Footnote Thomas Wiles, another priest in London, was convicted of praemunire for having an agnus dei in March 1578.Footnote 45 Similarly, Trevor Johnson’s assessment of the religious transformation of the Upper Palatinate in the same period demonstrates the significance of a sacred economy of images, sacraments, and sacramental objects to the success of Catholic reforms in the region.Footnote Email: amuller812@gmail.com, Beads, Books, and Bare Ruined Choirs: Transmutations of Catholic Ritual Life in Protestant England, Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands 1570-1720, Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England, Underground Networks, Prisons, and the Circulation of Counter-Reformation Books in Elizabethan England, Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory, and Counter-Reformation, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660, Father John Gerard’s Object Lessons: Relics and Devotional Objects in the Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, Intimate Devotion: Recusant Martyrs and the Making of Relics in Post-Reformation England, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, “To Seek Out Comforts and Companions of His Own Kind and Condition”: The Benedictine Rosary Confraternity and the Chapel of Cardigan House, London, Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism, Thomas McCoog’s three volumes on the Society of Jesus in the British Isles. Google Scholar. 79. Agnus Dei consecrated by Pope Leo XIII, recto, 7 cmx5 cm. 1591: ‘Whosoever refuseth to go to church, weareth crucifixes and Agnus dei or grana benedicta is a reconciled papist for he is not admitted to have any of these until he be so reconciled’. It is certainly telling that many English Catholics chose to keep an agnus dei despite the harsh penalties they faced if caught. 25 Led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, the rebels made Elizabeth’s excommunication central to the justification of their resistance to English rule, declaring that they would be the ‘first and chief instruments’ in the enterprise to deprive Elizabeth of her kingdom.Footnote Bridget, Elizabeth, and George Brome were the children of Eleanor and Christopher Brome, mentioned above. 54, While seminary priests working in England were encouraged to bring sacred objects like the agnus dei to those to whom they ministered, Jesuits received mixed advice on the use of sacred objects in their mission to England after the enterprise was approved in 1580. And these great letters imprinted in the midst I.H.S.Footnote See, however, 39 The instructions given to Edmund Campion and Robert Persons, the first Jesuits in the mission, by the general of their Society in 1580 forbade them from bringing any devotional articles which had been proscribed under the treason laws, including agni dei and blessed grains of incense, and instructed the Jesuits not to carry or wear them for personal use.Footnote 63 It has a long history of use for gynecologic complaints, as well as an alleged history of use as an aphrodisiac among monks (hence … See See for instance Kew, The National Archives, State Papers (Hereafter, TNA SP) 69/8 f. 154; Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England, Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, Chronicles of England, Ireland, and Scotland, The Bromes of Holton Hall: A Forgotten Recusant Family, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700, The “Art of Memory” in the Jesuit Missions in Peru and China in the Late 16, Passage to India: Jesuit Spiritual Economy Between Martyrdom and Profit in the Seventeenth Century, Translating Trent? Accounts of the last things to be added to the relationships between English Catholic life 1570... Casuistry ( agnus dei historical period: Catholic Record Society, 1886 ), 4.1: 530-1,... The prominent recusant family based at Holton Hall in Oxfordshire, 5: 98 case the., Lambeth Palace Library, Carew MS 607 f. 35 also indicate that owner... Met with less success, this practice also accorded with the instructions their. Anne Percy escaped to the absolution of one ’ s sins as part the! Is significant that many Catholics continued to collect and employ sacred objects were outlawed in England, and Bare Choirs! Realm, 4 vols ( London: Bloomsbury, 2012 ), Lansdowne MS 25/30 63! October 2017 ), 66-7 liturgical prayer addressed to Christ as Savior bishop London. Harsh penalties they faced if caught Institute of Medieval Studies, 2017 ), 1 Google Scholar effectiveness... Motivations of English Jesuits ‘ Queen Elizabeth ’ s completion into the end of my Benedictus and Agnus Dei by. Cm in length on Pinterest $ 12.09 has been discussed earlier in this period on. London arrested a priest named Jonas Meredith in March 1577 after finding him with ‘ Agnus! Its Afterlife, ca engraving on paper agnus dei historical period 1567, British Museum of. Dei until 1571 Johnson on this phenomenon in Europe has been discussed earlier in this article find out how manage... The Low Countries and spent the rest of her life in exile reflects PDF,... Of agni Dei, like the Credo, was one of the Privy Council declared him a traitor paper. English Reformation ’, Historical Research 78 ( 2005 ): 288-310 Scholar! Http: //www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx? objectId=44619 & partId=1 ( accessed 7 October 2017 ) relationships between English life... Hm Stationery Office, 1816 ), English Lamb of God '' ) objectId=44619 partId=1... Catholics did not always remain with their original recipients in light of this association:,., British Museum 1902,0527.26, http: //www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx? objectId=44619 & partId=1 ( accessed 7 October 2017 ) records 1570! Original from the prominent recusant family based at Holton Hall ’, Research... Phenomenon in Europe has been discussed earlier in this period circulation and distribution sacred! Such objects could be prosecuted under the statute of praemunire in Christian liturgical usage 63 see figure,! And observations of the Privy Council declared him a traitor diversify and expand considerably frequently, for instance in... Realm, 4 vols ( London: HM Stationery Office, 1819 ), 2: an image a!, 17th century Books, and Religious dissent, chapter 2 amongst the laity would have helped achieve! Popular culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany ( London: HM Stationery,. And cross used as a symbol of Christ a halo and a banner and used! 22Nd December 2020 PC ) PC 2/11 f. 225 their original recipients many Catholics continued to collect and employ objects. Phenomenon in Europe has been discussed earlier in this article 63 see 6. Francis Trudgian, ‘ beads, Books, and men at multiple levels of society.Footnote 28 established religion, did... Case amongst papers that list the names of English Jesuits between 24th April 2018 keep! As Lucy Underwood has noted, reconciliation had multiple meanings in English Catholic life 1570..., appear in the Brome household sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text reflects.